Free Don't Tell Me You Love Me (Destiny Bay Romances~The Ranchers Book 6) by Helen Conrad

voice trailed off.
    “Ever since he saw me,” Johnny supplied.  
    She nodded reluctantly.  
    “Here.” He reached out. “Let me carry him for awhile.”
    “Oh, I don’t think… .”
    “Come on. He’s my kid too.”
    She searched his gaze, then let him take the boy. Zach’s eyes opened wide and he cried a little harder, but it seemed that even he was losing the energy to make a big display of anger. Finally he just closed his eyes and sobbed.  
    Johnny didn’t have much experience with babies, but he had carried a few of them in his time – mostly those of friends -- and it didn’t feel all that strange to him. He settled the boy against his chest and began to pace slowly around the room. Cheyenne looked on anxiously.  
    “He looks so tense.”
    “He feels tense, too.”
    “Does he feel feverish to you?”
    Johnny shook his head. “You said he didn’t have a temperature.”
    “No, but that was a few minutes ago.”
    Johnny looked at her and almost grinned. “Right. These things don’t come and go all that quickly, I don’t think. Calm down, Chey. It’s going to be okay. He’s going to relax, and little by little this will work out.”
    “You really think so?”
    He looked down at the soft hair and the button nose and he smiled. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a song came to him and he began to hum the tune in time with the steps he was taking. And then he was softly whispering the words as well.
    “Este nino lindo, se quiere dormir…”
    Cheyenne listened in wonder, watching as though this was a Johnny she’d never seen before.  
    “What was that?” she asked when the song was done.
    He looked up at her with a crooked grin, surprised himself. “Just a song my Mexican grandmother used to sing to me when I was little. I forgot I even knew it.”
    He sang the song again, and then every other simple tune he could remember from his youth. Zachary was looking up at him with wide, dry eyes, and then a miracle—Zachary was asleep.
    “Oh thank God,” Cheyenne said, looking happy again. Then she looked at Johnny and added, “And thank you! I can’t believe that worked with him. You’re a genius.”
    He paced with him a little longer, then carefully laid him in his crib. Looking down at the sleeping child, he realized something. He was beginning to feel things about this boy that he’d never felt before. Something was growing in his heart and it scared him.  
    “Cheyenne….” He turned toward her and she raised her face to him. If he tried to kiss her, he could see that she might be receptive, at least in this slippery, passing second or two. But he resisted temptation. He knew what he had to do.  
    “Cheyenne, if I keep coming here and I keep seeing this child, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk away.”
    She blinked at him, startled. “What do you mean?”
    “I can’t be here, be around you, watch the family that should have been mine become Frank’s. I would be tortured and go crazy and do something destructive. I can feel it.”
    Like I did before was unspoken but understood between them both.  
    “I think it would be better if I just left. Right now.”
    “But… .”
    “I won’t be seeing you again. I’ll probably be heading overseas soon. In the meantime, I’ll go down to L.A.”
    “But… .”
    Tears started to roll down her cheeks. He turned away. He couldn’t stand it when she cried.  
    “You’re right,” she said. “Go. Go right now. Hurry.” She took a shaky breath. “I shouldn’t have called you. I can’t get you involved in his life. It’s just so hard to see you with him and not be able to…..”
    A sob shook her and she didn’t finish the sentence. He stared at her, wanting to hear the rest.  
    “I’m just being weak,” she choked out. “Go.”
    He turned and left and it was the hardest thing he’d ever made himself do. But it was the right thing to do. He had to leave, he had to let Cheyenne and Zachary begin to form a family unit