Chapter Six

 

 

COLBY TRIPPED.

Not any ordinary catch-yourself stumble, but a fall of mammoth proportions all the way down the front porch stairs.

“Colby!” Rose cried. He heard her scuttle across the porch and down the stairs, crunching nearer on the gravel path. Then she crouched alongside him, pressing her left hand on his forehead and her right to his cheek. “Are you okay?”

He eased open his eyes.

“Thank goodness,” she said with a relieved sigh. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if something had happened to you.”

Groaning, he said, “That’s funny. I figured you’d be relieved to see me finally kick the bucket.”

Tears shone in her eyes. “H-how could you say such a thing? Do I come across as that heartless?”

Though every bone in Colby’s body ached, his heart hurt more. He was sorry for bringing those tears to her eyes, but dammit, she hadn’t exactly been playing nice.

“No,” he finally said. “Here, give me a hand up, then I’m calling it quits—at least for the night. Maybe all these accidents are a sign that you’re right and we shouldn’t be together.” Already heading toward his black Jeep, he glanced at his gravel-ravaged palms.

“You’re bleeding.” Rose chased after him. “Let me drive you home, then I’ll bandage those cuts for you.”

“Are you kidding? After everything you’ve already done, you expect me to hand you the keys to my Jeep?”

“If you do,” she said with a wide smile, “I promise to at least consider your proposal. Sort of.”

“Really?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She nodded.

He tried to reach for his keys, but she quickly caught on to his problem.

“Let me,” she said, sliding her hand deep into his front pocket, setting off all manner of sparks. Luckily, once she realized his distress, she finished her task efficiently and without any cracks about him having a flashlight in his pocket.

 

 

BENEATH HIS CABIN’S soaring cathedral ceiling, Rose dabbed Colby’s fingertips and palms with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball.

They sat across from each other—Colby on the couch with his hands over a towel she’d folded on the coffee table. Rose perched on the edge of an overstuffed armchair.

She’d expected his house to be the quintessential mountain man’s digs. But while it wasn’t exactly neat as a pin, the open living room with its loft, which she assumed was the master bedroom, and the roomy country kitchen made the place as welcoming as any home she’d seen.

Honey-hued logs rose to the polished plank ceiling, providing a suitably impressive backdrop for the river rock fireplace. She could all too easily imagine warming herself beside it on blustery winter nights…

Colby’s furniture wasn’t so much about style as it was about comfort. It was big and overstuffed, upholstered in a navy-and-forest-green plaid that managed to be manly yet inviting. He didn’t have knickknacks gracing tabletops, just a few pictures. Most of those had been taken with an older woman Rose assumed was his mom. Other shots of him and his friends showed Colby hanging one-handed off the edges of cliffs, skiing, and hamming for the camera during a skydiving free fall.

Rose frowned, accidentally pressing harder than she’d intended on one of his deepest cuts. Good thing Baby Talbot would be growing up a safe distance from his adrenaline-junkie father!

“Ouch,” Colby said with an exaggerated wince.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m trying to be gentle, but for someone who looks like such an adventure-seeking stud in all these pictures, you squirm more than a six-year-old.”

“This how you’re going to treat our son?” he asked. “All gruff and businesslike without even a kiss to make him better?”

She frowned.

“Here I am in pain—lightheaded and downright dizzy—and you’re not healing me, you’re roughing me up.”

“Am not!” she protested.

“Oh yeah? Then prove you have a tender side hiding somewhere behind those soulless brown eyes.”

“Soulless? Did you just call my eyes soulless?”

He grinned.

“Oh, I’ll give you soulless, right in your…” What she wanted to give him was a good tongue-lashing, but thinking up a suitably insulting response would take too much energy—especially since that infuriatingly handsome grin of his already had her worried for her next breath.

Maybe a better approach would be showing him just how tender she could be?

Raising his hand to her lips, she rained hot, soft kisses all around his wounds and right on up to the pulse points on his wrists.

He had a minor scrape on his right cheek, too, so she leaned forward, taking on the perilous task of kissing him while at the same time trying to keep her belly from grazing his.

Only she failed miserably—and on way more points than bumped bellies.

Rose had meant her sexy ministrations to affect only him—and to prove she was the most tenderhearted person she knew. But when she paused, hoping Colby was ready to apologize, he was quiet and she felt strangely addled.

“How’s that?” she whispered into his right ear.

He gulped. “Better.”

“Sure you don’t need additional medicinal kisses?”

He shook his head.

“All right then.” She eyed the latest bulge in his pocket, wishing she could forget the night when she’d grown intimately acquainted with that particular part of his anatomy. “That’s, um, probably good. Now, quit whining and let me get on with my nursing.”

Five minutes later, she’d applied antibiotic ointment, gauze and tape to Colby’s scratches. When she placed the small square of gauze on his cheek, a twinge of guilt rippled through her. He looked so sad. If she hadn’t been running off at the mouth, he wouldn’t have been running down those steps to escape her.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked.

From his perch on the sofa, with his long, lean legs propped on the coffee table, he said, “There’s sun tea in the fridge. Think you could pour me a glass?”

“Sure.”

“Extra ice.”

“Coming right up.” She’d enjoy sticking her entire overheated body in the freezer. At least being in the kitchen gave Rose a much-needed breather. What was it with him constantly invading her personal space?

Oh, right, like it’d been him kissing you?

There went her cheeks again.

She’d only kissed him because he’d called her soulless. What else could she have done?

Reaching into the fridge for the tea, she lingered in the blessedly cool air.

Must be some baby hormone symptom turning up her thermostat. Without a crackling fire in sight, the only other thing that could be causing such unbearable heat was her frustration with Baby Talbot’s father.

You’re frustrated, but way more because of all that time spent apart from Colby than with him.

Scowling, Rose slammed the fridge door hard enough to rattle the pickle relish and three olive jars. She loved olives. Could it be a sign that Colby apparently did, too?

No. She didn’t believe in signs any more than she believed in love.

Setting the jug on the granite counter, she rummaged through various cabinets for a glass, finally finding one to the left of the sink. The sink that held five dirty glasses, a cereal bowl with a few Cheerios still floating in it and another bowl wearing what she guessed to be the remains of last night’s chili supper. Before leaving, Rose decided she’d wash everything. With his hands in such rough shape, Colby shouldn’t get them wet.

She marched back across the room to the side-by-side stainless steel fridge, which had an ice and water dispenser in the door. Slipping the glass beneath the ice nozzle, she said over the mechanical tinkle and crunch, “You’ve got a great house.”

“Thanks.”

“I take it Alaskan pilots make a nice living?”

He shrugged. “I do all right. Guess I usually just go for the top of the line in most items. It’s a bear getting appliances or electronics up here, let alone repaired. I’d just as soon pay extra for quality goods, then not worry about them breaking down.”

Rose nodded. She respected his good financial sense. With luck, her son would exhibit the same logic.

She poured Colby’s tea over lots of ice, then delivered it to him.

“Aren’t you having any?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m off caffeine. Plus, after the milk incident, I’m not thirsty. I am hungry, though.”

“I’ve got plenty of snack food in the pantry.” He set his glass on the coffee table. “This time, I’ll serve you.”

“Nope.” After delivering him a gentle shove, she added, “You’re the wounded one, remember?”

He shrugged. “All right, Miss Independence, help yourself.”

“Thank you, I will.”

If he’d added a TV, Colby’s pantry was so big it could’ve doubled as a den. A dazzling array of boxes and bags and cans contained everything from flour and canned green beans and yams to cookies and chips and—yum, more squirt cheese!

Rose snatched a can of bacon and cheddar cheese along with a box of crackers, then returned to the living room. “I also like your taste in snacks. Squirt cheese isn’t the sort of thing I’d buy myself, but—”

“But you don’t mind wolfing down mine?”

There went her stupid blazing cheeks.

“It’s okay,” he said. “There’s plenty more where that came from. I buy in bulk.”

“Gweat,” she said with a happy, cheesy sigh. Mmm… Squirt cheese ought to have its very own section on the food pyramid her baby books were always yapping about.

She downed another and another, having fun making pretty patterns on the cracker tops. “What?” she asked when she caught him eyeing her. “I’m hungry.”

“I see that.” He grinned.

She was mortified that the mere sight of his green eyes and adorably mussed hair squeezed her heart. Would Baby Talbot look like him?

Oh, she hoped so. God had never created a more beautiful man. Not that she was admiring Colby for her own benefit. She was merely making note of it for her son’s sake.

“So,” he said after a long spell of awkward silence during which all she could hear was herself chewing. “Ready for our talk on marriage?”

That brought her appetite to a screeching halt.

She swallowed her last cracker, then snapped the plastic lid on the cheese can and methodically crinkled the cracker bag shut before slipping the cardboard tab into its slot on top of the box.

“Well?” he asked again.

“I did promise a discussion, didn’t I?” As soon as the words left her mouth, panic struck. “But first, where’s your restroom?”

 

 

LEANING FORWARD, RESTING his elbows on his knees, Colby sighed.

Leave it to Rose to bolt the moment they finally talked about something that mattered. To kill time, he grabbed his phone to check emails.

“Sorry,” she said a few minutes later. “Being pregnant has been hell on my bladder.”

He winced. “T-M-I.”

“It’s the truth.”

“See?” Leaning back, he set his phone on the side table. “If we’d been together from the start, that’s a factoid I would have already known. Which only reinforces the fact that it’s imperative we get this wedding on the road. We’re not much for hothouse flowers up here, but I can at least pick you a forget-me-not bouquet. Nugget will bake us a cake. We’ve got a historic chapel Preach can do the ceremony in—or, for that matter, we can do it at the lodge or even here. Doesn’t matter to me. I always figured that’d be the kind of detail better left up to my bride. Oh, you’ll need a dress. I’ll have to think on that one. Guess if you feel up to it, we could hop over to Valdez or down to Yakutat to buy you something lacy and white.”

“Sounds as if you’ve got this all thought out.”

“Sure. Waiting for you back at the lodge gave me time to plan.” But that was only part of the equation. Part of him felt as though he’d waited his whole life to get married. To start a family. Demonstrate to his father how marriage was done. How being a great dad was done.

Colby had come damned close to sealing the deal with Margot, but with the benefit of hindsight, he figured things had worked out as they did for a reason. Margot was a Texas girl, used to the finer things in life. Looking back on it, he realized she wouldn’t have lasted through the first week of an Alaskan winter. But Rose, hell, she’d already been through the worst Alaska had to offer, and here she was back for more.

She fiddled with her fingers on her lap before turning her warm brown eyes on him. “In all that planning, did you ever think about what marriage truly means?”

“I don’t get the question.” Of course, he knew what marriage meant. Forever.

“That’s my point.” She sounded a little choked up. “Marriage is supposed to be a lifetime commitment, right?”

“It will be for me.”

“Okay, but here’s the deal. True, we shared one unforgettable night, but other than knowing we’re compatible in a shared sleeping bag, what else do we have? We’re strangers. Do you really want to marry a stranger?”

He shrugged. “Don’t take this personally, but this isn’t so much about me wanting to marry you as it is about me having to marry you.”

“Who says? Nugget and those old codgers down at the lodge?”

“Hey…” He raised his tea, emptying it in a few refreshing swigs. “Those codgers happen to be my friends.”

He stood.

Rose stood, too.

“Even after taking them out of the equation,” he said, “I’m going to marry you because of my son. No matter what you say, I know he’ll be better off in a two-parent home.” He curved his bandaged hand around her baby bump. How could he have only been with her a few hours, yet she and his baby had already become an addiction?

Snatching his empty tea glass, he strode to the kitchen for a refill.

She chased after him, stopping beside him where he lightly gripped the edge of the sink, staring out the window at the view that never failed to calm him. From this vantage point, a good twenty feet back and above a narrow portion of Kodiak Gorge, the jagged gray rock canyon looked impenetrable. But it wasn’t. A secret path led to the canyon floor. Took him a month to find. Just like that path, winding his way into Rose’s life might take a while, but eventually, he would, changing everything between them for the better.

Hand on his shoulder, she gently turned him to face her. “Do you think your son would want to grow up in a strife-filled home?”

He tensed.

“Because face it, Colby, that’s what the two of us would share. If we can hardly get two words out of our mouths without bickering now, what happens when mutual resentment sets in? What kind of message would that send to a child? Trust me, I will love this child heart and soul. I promise he will never want for anything. Does that sound like such a horrible life?”

He grunted. “Now, who sounds like she has it all worked out? All except for what you’re going to say when Nick gets old enough to ask about his dad. Where is he? he’ll ask. Why doesn’t he love me enough to be with me? You promise he’ll never want for anything, but you can trust me that our son will one day want that father-son bond.”

“You make valid points, but for all you know,” Rose crossed her arms and turned away. “The issue of Talbot’s father may never even come up. Maybe he’ll never miss you at all.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Why not? How could you possibly know?”

“How?” He gripped her shoulders, forcing her to face him. “I damn well know how, Rose, because I learned firsthand what it feels like growing up without a dad. As long as there’s breath in my body, you can be damned sure I’ll never bring my own son that kind of confusion and pain.”