Her jaw dropped. “Didn’t I bring you here? Introduce you to the girls? I want you to be a part of their lives.”
“On your terms though,” he said, reading the truth in her eyes. “Come and go when you say? Show up for appointed visitation? Damn it, Sadie, I’m their father. I want more than weekends.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” she said softly.
“No, it doesn’t.” The very thought of being cut off from his children was like a knife in the gut to him. He’d already missed too much. He hadn’t seen Sadie pregnant. Hadn’t heard the first cries of his babies being born. Hadn’t seen that first smile or heard that first laugh.
A man alone treasured the thought of family. He wasn’t about to lose his chance at having one.
“We can be together.” Nodding, he took a breath. “We’re their parents. It’s only right we be married.”
“This isn’t a Victorian novel,” she argued. “We can coparent successfully even if we’re not a couple.”
“Coparent.” He snorted and looked down at her with a derisive half smile on his face. “Tidy words. Keeping each parent in their place. Is that it? Sounds like it came straight out of a self-help book.”
“What if it did?” Her gaze shifted from his. “It makes sense.”
“Not to me,” Rick said flatly, holding her close enough that her body heat slipped into his. She wriggled some more, but all she succeeded in doing was rubbing herself against him until he was as hard as stone and she was panting with her own needs.
As soon as she realized that he had noticed her reaction, she went completely still. Rick smiled. “I know you can feel what you do to me.”
She still wouldn’t look him in the eye, but her breathing was heavier and she had stopped trying to pull away.
“I know you’re feeling the same things I am,” he said, sweeping one hand down her spine to the curve of her behind.
She sighed, closed her eyes and whispered, “It doesn’t matter what we feel.”
He rubbed her bottom until she was nearly purring in his arms. Rick had discovered on their one night together that beneath the surface of the genteel, aristocratic Sadie Price, there beat the heart and soul of a very sensual woman. He had been thinking about nothing but her for three long years and now that he was holding her again, he didn’t want to let her go.
Ever.
All he had to do was convince her to marry him. How hard could it be?
“Baby, we’re good together. That’s more than a lot of people have when they get married.”
Instantly, her eyes flew open and she glared at him. Damn, Rick thought, the woman could turn on a dime and he was never ready for it.
“Do not call me ‘baby,’” she told him, then added, “I’m not marrying you just because we were good in bed together.”
“Fine,” he argued, “marry me because we have two children.”
“And I thought my brother was the most stubborn male on earth.”
Rick shook his head and tried to bite back his own frustrations. Most women in her situation would be leaping at the thought of marriage. Sure, she didn’t have to worry about money. He couldn’t dangle his own wealth in her face as a lure, because she came from the same kind of hefty bank account he did. But he didn’t care how much the world had changed, being a single mother was harder than having a partner to share the work and worry. Why couldn’t she see that?
“This isn’t about stubborn. This is about you and me and what’s best for our daughters.”
“And you think that the girls would be better off living with two people who don’t love each other?”
Scowling, he let her go when she pushed at him again. “This isn’t about love. It’s about duty. Our duty to our children.”
“Duty isn’t a reason for marriage, either. Trust me on this, I know what I’m talking about.”
“Fine. Leave duty out of it.” Rick shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching for her again. “If we’re married, we’ll love the girls. That will be enough to build a family.”
“No,” she said with a harsh laugh. “It isn’t enough. I’m not going to marry a man who doesn’t love me. Not again.”
She backed up a step or two, still shaking her head so firmly, Rick wasn’t sure which one of them she was trying to convince.
“If you’re talking about that moron you were married to for all of fifteen minutes …” he said.
“It was seven months and ten days,” she countered hotly, her blue eyes flashing with the kind of heat that could fry a man. “Seven months before I actually caught him cheating on me. I found out later from my ‘friends’ that he’d been cheating on me all along, but nobody wanted to tell me.”
“Don’t you compare me to that piece of—” He caught himself and broke off. Then he moved in on her again, stalking her like a cat would a bird. “I don’t cheat. And I don’t lie. If I make a promise to a woman, I keep it.”
“Good for you,” she snapped. “I’m still not going to marry you.”
Exasperated, he threw both hands high and let them drop. “Why the hell not?”
“I just told you,” she muttered, keeping her voice low enough that Hannah wouldn’t overhear their argument. “I married Taylor Hawthorne because it was expected of me. It was for the family. Good for business,” she said and her mouth screwed up as if even the words tasted bitter. “I did what I was told. My father wanted me married, so I married. I was raised to do the right thing. To take one for the team,” she said snidely. “To do my duty for the Price family. Well, no more. This is my life and I’ll do with it what I damn well please.”
She was shuddering by the time she stopped talking. Her breaths were coming fast and hard and there were unshed tears glittering in her eyes. Rick felt for her. He’d always known the Price family was far too interested in how things looked. When she married that no-account Hawthorne, Rick had assumed she simply had god-awful taste in men. But damned if he would have guessed that Sadie had laid herself down on a sacrificial altar for the sake of her father.
“I can understand how you’re feeling, Sadie. Pisses me off just hearing it, so I imagine living it was that much worse. But it doesn’t change a thing.”
Stunned, she simply stared at him in confusion. “What?”
“We had children together, Sadie. We should be married.” He moved closer, every step small and stealthy. Then he played his ace in the hole. He said the one thing he knew might sway her to accept his proposal. “I don’t want my girls being called bastards. Do you?”
“Of course not!” She shook her head and chewed at her bottom lip and he knew he’d gotten to her with that.
The thought of anyone calling his babies names was enough to make him see red. But he knew as well as Sadie did that life in a small town wasn’t always pretty. People would talk. Children would overhear it and they would repeat what their parents said.
He didn’t want his girls paying for his mistakes.
“But I don’t want to get married just for their sakes, either,” Sadie said, her voice hardly more than a sigh. “That’s not exactly a recipe for happiness, Rick.”
A more stubborn woman never drew breath, he thought and swooped in on her, unable to keep from touching her for another minute. If he couldn’t sway her to his point of