A Texas-Sized Secret (Texas Cattleman's Club: Blackmail 6)

The whole room was inviting, and Naomi had to at least partially blame herself for that, since she’d helped him decorate the house. But she’d never imagined herself sleeping in the master bedroom.

“I thought I’d be staying in one of the guest rooms,” she argued. “You’ve got seven bedrooms in this place.”

“Yeah.” He scrubbed one hand across the beard stubble on his jaw. “But married people sleep together. That’s what folks expect.”

He had a point, and why hadn’t she considered it before? She hadn’t counted on this at all. How was she supposed to share a bed with her best friend?

“Okay, look,” he said, clearly reading what she was thinking. “We’ll try t

his. You can sleep in the room next to mine, but all your stuff stays here, in my room. That should throw Rebecca off the scent. Especially if we keep that guest room looking like nobody’s been in it.”

“Okay. I can do that.” This was crazy and getting worse by the minute. Enforced closeness was going to push their friendship places it had never been before, and it really worried her that the relationship might just snap from all the tension.

Reaching out for him, she laid one hand on his forearm and waited until his gaze shifted to hers. “You have to promise me, Toby. You have to swear that no matter what else happens between us, we stay friends.”

“That’s not even a question, Naomi.” He pulled her in close for a hard hug, and Naomi surprised herself by leaning into him, relishing the feel of his strength wrapping itself around her. So much was changing so quickly that he was her stable point in the universe, and if she lost him, Naomi didn’t think she could take it.

“We’re gonna do fine, Naomi. Don’t worry.” His hands moved up and down her back, and tiny whips of heat sneaked beneath her defenses. Startled by that simmering burn, she stepped away from him, told herself that she was just tired. Distracted. Vulnerable. But that heat was still there, and Naomi knew she needed some distance.

And she didn’t think the guest room was going to be far enough away.

* * *

Naomi hadn’t been awake at 6:00 a.m. in...ever. And couldn’t understand why she was now.

An avowed town girl, Naomi had always believed the only reason to be up with the sun was that your house was on fire. Yet now she was going to be a rancher’s wife. She was in the country, where the quiet was so profound it was almost alive. There were no cars roaring down the street, no neighbors with a too-loud stereo. Here the night was really dark and there were more stars in the sky than she’d ever known existed.

She hadn’t slept well, either. Lying there in the dark, listening to the quiet, knowing Toby was just on the other side of the wall, had kept her too on edge to do more than doze on and off. So this morning, it was too early, she was too sleepy and felt too off balance. Clutching the single measly cup of coffee she allowed herself each day she stepped out onto the back porch, where the soft, morning breeze slid past her.

The only reason she was up early enough to watch the sun claim the sky and begin to beat down on Texas with a vengeance was that Toby had woken her in the guest room so she could move into his bedroom while he went to work.

Once in Toby’s bed, she’d tried to get back to sleep, but the pillows carried his scent and the sheets were still warm from his skin, and none of that was conducive to sleeping. She could have stayed upstairs and unpacked, but instead she’d grabbed one of Toby’s T-shirts and pulled it on over her maternity jeans—that thankfully didn’t look like maternity jeans unless you saw the elastic panel over the belly. She wore slip-on red sneakers and left her hair to hang in a tumble over her shoulders.

Now she looked around in the early morning heat and thought how beautiful Paradise Ranch was. There were live oaks studding the yard, providing patches of shade under the already blazing Texas sun. A kitchen garden behind the house was laid out in tidy rows and surrounded by a low white picket fence in the hopes of discouraging rabbits. The corral was enclosed by a high fence, also painted white, and the barn as well as the bunkhouse used by the cowboys who worked for Toby were freshly painted in a deep brick red. Toby’s workshop was on the other side of the property from the barn and was the same farmyard red as the rest of the outbuildings.

The yard in front of the house boasted a neatly tended green lawn. Summer flowers in bright jewel tones hugged the base of the big house. But the house itself was the masterpiece. Two stories, it was the kind of house you expected to see in a mountain setting, with cedar walls, river rocks along the foundation and tall windows that opened the house up to wide views of the ranchland. To one side of the house was a pool, surrounded by rocks and waterfalls so cleverly designed that it looked like a naturally formed lagoon, and the whole thing was shaded by more oaks and a vine-covered pergola. A wraparound porch held tables and comfortable chairs that signaled a welcome and silently invited people to sit and relax.

This wasn’t her first visit to Toby’s ranch. She’d helped him design it. Helped to decorate it. Yet it all felt...different to her now. Not surprising, she told herself, since now she was living here. And awake way too early.

She took another sip of her coffee and let her gaze slide across the trees, the field beyond the barn and then back to the corral where Toby was grooming one of his prized horses.

Toby stood near the fence, brushing down a golden-brown horse whose coat seemed to shine in the sunlight. But as beautiful as the horse was, Naomi couldn’t take her eyes off Toby. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. She took another gulp of coffee and struggled to swallow past the knot in her throat.

His chest was broad and chiseled, skin tanned, and every move he made had his muscles rippling in a way that made her think of those cool sheets and the wide bed.

“Oh, God...” Hormones, she told herself. Had to be hormones running amok inside her. Pregnancy was making her crazy. It was the only explanation for why looking at her best friend could suddenly turn her insides to mush.

She laid one hand on her rounded belly, and touching her baby seemed to ground her. Remind her of why she was here. What she’d agreed to. And for heaven’s sake, Toby was her friend. She had no business getting all ruffled over a muscular chest and a tight butt encased in worn blue denim. She shouldn’t even be noticing how the shadows thrown across his features by his cowboy hat made his face look sharply dangerous. And if she had any sense at all, she’d turn right around and go back in the house.

“Naomi?”

Oh, thank God. She turned to the open back door where Rebecca stood, holding out a sturdy wicker basket. “Yes?”

Rebecca had graying red hair, bottle-green eyes and freckles sprinkled liberally across her nose and cheeks. She was a widow in her midfifties with two grown kids who lived in Houston. She’d been working for Toby for five years and lived in a set of rooms off the kitchen. And she couldn’t be more excited at the prospect of having a baby in the house to take care of.

“I’ve got to get breakfast going, and you could do me a huge favor if you’d go collect some eggs for me.”

“Eggs?”