She stopped pacing to look directly at him. “Knowing what you do is one thing. Watching you do it is something else entirely.”
“I understand you’re concerned that I might get hurt,” he said calmly. “But I know what I’m doing, darlin’. I’ve been riding bulls for almost twenty years and I’ll admit that I’ve had a few close calls. But in all that time I’ve only been seriously injured once.”
As far as she was concerned that was one time too many. But she refrained from telling him that. She still wasn’t sure where things were going with them and didn’t feel she had the right to ask him to give up riding, even though her heart was telling her that was exactly what she wanted. If he quit, it had to be because it was what he wanted. Not because it was something she wanted him to do.
“I understand that, Nate.” She shook her head. “I’m just telling you I can’t watch you.”
He got up from the couch to walk over and put his arms around her. “Why does the possibility of seeing me get hurt bother you so much, Jessie?”
His deep baritone and the feel of being wrapped in his strong arms caused tears to fill her eyes. Unwilling for him to see how emotional she was about the subject, she laid her head against his broad chest.
“I don’t like seeing anyone hurt, Nate,” she hedged. “Being a nurse, I’ve seen how truly fragile the human body can be.”
“You didn’t answer my question, darlin’,” he persisted, kissing the top of her head. “What bothers you so much about the idea of me being hurt?”
She knew what he wanted her to say—knew that he wanted her to reveal how she truly felt about him. But she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready to admit, even to herself, just how much he really meant to her. If she did that and he didn’t feel the same way about her, she would only be opening the door for more heartbreak. She had done that too many times before and each time she had been devastated when it didn’t work out between them. The last time, she hadn’t been sure she would make it until she discovered she was pregnant. And as crazy as it sounded even to her, she had taken comfort in the fact that if she couldn’t have Nate in her life, she would at least have his child.
“I think I’m going to go upstairs,” she said pulling from his arms. She needed time to come to terms with the fact that she was so very close to falling in love with him again—if she hadn’t already. “I’m really tired and I’d like to be rested up for the drive down to Waco tomorrow to have the ultrasound.”
Walking from the media room without looking back, Jessie knew Nate watched her leave. She was grateful that he hadn’t tried to stop her, even if a small part of her was disappointed that he hadn’t.
Six
Sitting in the waiting room next to Jessie, Nate watched several pregnant women and their partners being called back to the examination rooms and wondered if the guys felt as clueless about all this as he did. He’d done a little research on the internet about what a woman went through as the baby grew inside her and how her body changed, but he couldn’t say it felt all that real to him.
Maybe he hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he was going to be a daddy. He still couldn’t feel the baby move when Jessie told him to put his hand on her rounded stomach. When was a man supposed to feel a deep emotional connection with his baby? Was he the only guy to feel like he was part of something that he couldn’t quite get a handle on? Or was he destined to be like his biological father—a man who was incapable of feeling anything that didn’t benefit him in some way or hadn’t come out of a whiskey-soaked haze?
The thought that he might turn out to be cut from the same cloth as his worthless father was Nate’s worst nightmare. Joe Rafferty had been an abject failure at being a husband and father, and the day he walked out to leave his two sons on their own after their mother died had been the luckiest day of their lives.
They’d had to resort to armed robbery just to survive. But even that had turned out to be a lucky break for them. After getting caught, they had been placed in the care of Hank Calvert and during their stay at the Last Chance Ranch, they’d learned what it meant to be honest, law-abiding men.
His brother Sam had turned out to be a great husband and father despite the early example their father had set for them. But Nate had yet to prove himself. Could he live up to the standard his brother had set? Could he be the man he’d always hoped he would be?