Free Rodeo Daddy: Book 3 in the Stubborn Texas Siblings Trilogy by Faith Loveright

floor. He still had yet to willingly hand
Alexis over to her and their daughter stubbornly refused to
leave her father’s arms as long as he was willing to hold
her. She was leery of this connection father and daughter
had formed and wondered about where she fit in to the
comfy picture they made. She hadn’t expected Jeff to be
any kind of father to their daughter, but as she watched him
smooth his big hand over her tiny back, Dana had to admit
that at the moment, he was doing a damn good job of
faking it.
    Finally, after what seemed like hours, he stopped and
turned to face Dana. “I WILL be part of her life… and she WILL have my damn last name. I won’t hear a word of
argument on the matter. And I want my God Damn name
on her birth certificate, Dana.”
    She felt her blood-pressure rise as a lump of fear formed in
her throat. “No. There’s a reason I left your name out of the
paperwork other than just to keep my sanity around my
sister. I told you; I don’t want my daughter raised by a man
who is gone at one rodeo or another, hopping from one
woman’s bed to the next with every different stop his work
takes him to.”
Jeff’s nostrils flared with anger. “I’m trying my damndest
to have patience with you, woman… but this is MY daughter too. I have rights and if you won’t do this the easy
way, I won’t have a choice but to do it the damn hard way.
I’d HOPED we could be civil with each other, given our
rather…. explosive sexual relationship,” he said pointedly,
daring her to deny it after the way she’d literally caught fire
in his arms the night before. “Clearly, it means a far sight
more to me than it does to you… and yet, here you are,
chastising me… the guy who went out of his way to only
sleep with ONE woman for well over a year… a woman I
did nothing to entice into my bed that first time, thank you
very much. You came of your own damn will, Dana and
you bloody well know it. Why can’t you just admit that?”
    “Yes,” she said shakily. “I did.” Swallowing hard, she went
on. “But then, I went and did a really beyond stupid thing
and I fell in love with the world’s most emotionally
unavailable man and tried like Hell to hide it from you.
Then I did the hardest thing a woman in love ever has to do
when I found out that I was pregnant… I left the only man I
have ever or ever will love, without saying a bloody word
because I knew you didn’t want anything to do with family
or commitment. So don’t even give me that guilt trip about
just falling into your bed. Don’t try to make it okay that
you make a habit of taking all sorts of willing women there
as often as you can.”
    “And I want to know where you get off saying that, when I
did willingly drop all other women for the duration of the
time we were together. Yes, I will admit after you left, I
went back to it… what did you expect me to do, Dana?
Wait for you forever when I had no clue if you’d ever come
back to me again?”
    Emotion clogged her throat and she struggled to hold back
the tears that threatened to fall as her mind answered;
screaming in her head so loudly, she could have sworn
she’d actually answered him. ‘ Yes, damn it… Is it so much
to ask of the man that made me fall so deeply in love with
him when I haven’t so much as looked at another man
twice since that first time I saw you? ’
    She blinked rapidly in an unsuccessful attempt to quell the
tears that slid down her cheeks and dripped off the tip of
her chin onto the floor at her feet. Ashamed of her
weakness for the man in front of her, Dana turned away
from him and faced the wall with her arms wrapped around
herself in a comforting gesture so she didn’t have to look at
him and see the pity written on his face as he realized how
deeply she still cared for him.
    Jeff took a staggering step towards her, unable to keep his
distance. He then reached out and placed a suddenly
clammy palm on her arm, unsure what to say or do. The
pain