He snorted. “Not an obligation, Cassie,” he said, “a thorn. An attractive thorn that I wouldn’t mind tossing onto my bed about now, but still a thorn.”
She had been just that right from the start. A thorn jabbed into his skin, painful and irritating until he pulled it out and still felt the ache. Cassie had wedged herself into his life, made him nuts while she was here on the ranch, and then made him full-on crazy once she left. Now she was back and he couldn’t make sense of anything he was feeling, thinking.
The only thing he knew for sure was that he wanted her. Bad. His desire for her hadn’t waned a damn bit while they were apart and he knew now it never would.
“Wow. Be still my heart.” Shaking her head slowly, she said, “That’s even less incentive to marry you, Jake.”
“You want incentive? What about our son?” God, that felt weird to say. Weird to know that he was a father. “What does he deserve?”
“He deserves to be loved,” Cassie said quickly, decisively. “And cared for. And not thought of as a cross to bear.”
That flash of anger burned a little brighter. Did she really think him so small that he couldn’t love his own child? No, he hadn’t planned on having a family, trusting fate to keep them safe so he wouldn’t have his heart ripped out, but now that the choice had been made for him, he wouldn’t wish it away.
“You don’t get to say that to me, Cassie. How old is he?”
“Almost five months.”
Jake gritted his teeth. “You’ve had him five months and knew about him for nine before that. You’ve had the chance to love him. I’ve barely caught a glimpse of him. So don’t be telling me that I won’t love my son.”
“I don’t want you to have to love him. Don’t you see the difference?”
“If you had told me about him from the jump there wouldn’t be any worries about ‘having’ to love him, would there?”
She threw her hands in the air. “How do I know that? How do you? If I had called you when I first found out, would you have wanted the baby?”
He swallowed hard past the knot of emotion clogging his throat. Cassie latched onto that moment of hesitation.
“See? You don’t even know how you would’ve reacted, and I couldn’t take the chance. Not with my baby’s future happiness at stake.”
“I deserved to know,” he finally said, not bothering to counter her arguments because at the heart of it, he was right and she was wrong and he had a feeling she knew that as well as he did.
All of the fight went out of her like air sliding from a balloon. “You did. You really did. And I’m sorry.”
Nodding, he looked down at her and felt resolution settle into his soul. He wouldn’t say he loved her because how the hell did he know what love was? But he could admire her. Respect her. Desire her. She’d been a single mom and she’d done a good job. Luke looked healthy and happy and that was due to her. He had no idea what her life had been like over the last fourteen months, but he knew what his had been. Enduring endless nights, where he cursed the solitude he used to crave. Spending the days doing what he always had, never once guessing that a piece of him was living and growing without him.
She had been strong and he could appreciate that. But now things had changed. Now she was here, and he wasn’t letting her go again. There was only one way this was going to end. His way.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry too, Cassie.”
She flicked him a sideways look, wary and suspicious. “Sorry for what?”
Jake cupped her chin in his fingers and felt that buzz of connection that he’d felt the very first time he touched her. He held her so that she was forced to meet his gaze, forced to see in his eyes that he meant everything he said next. “You don’t have to worry about my mother anymore. But I’ll tell you this. You either marry me, or I’ll sue you for custody myself.”
Cass pulled out of his touch and the tips of his fingers still felt warm from the contact with her skin.
Eyes wide, breath hitching in her chest, she said, “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Watch me,” he promised, even as he acknowledged objectively that the Hunters were a damned vindictive family. Even him. She’d wanted him to save her from his mother and now she was finding out that the price for that favor was surrendering to him. He wouldn’t have thought himself capable of threatening a woman—especially this woman—but it seemed the surprises of the day were still coming.