Free The Mountain Between Us by Cindy Myers

throat. Oh, God, please don’t let me start bawling, she thought. Tears had a way of derailing any serious discussion. Not to mention if she got too emotional he was liable to flee in panic—and she wouldn’t blame him if he did. She took a deep breath, marshaling control.
    â€œI’m glad to hear it,” she said gently. “And you can do that. You don’t have to be a husband to be a father, any more than I have to be a wife to be a mother.”
    He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumping in his throat. “I don’t know anything about being a good father. My own dad did a pretty lousy job.”
    He’d never said a word about his father before. All she knew about his family could be summed up in a few sentences: His mother lived in Florida, he hadn’t seen any of them in years, and he rarely talked to them. She had the impression he had a sister somewhere, though he never talked about his father. She resisted the urge to ask for more details; now wasn’t the time.
    â€œI don’t know anything about being a mother either, but I guess we’ll learn. People do it all the time.” She tried to sound more confident than she felt. There was only a person’s life at stake here; she could think of a hundred different ways they could screw this up.
    He wore his stubborn look again. “It doesn’t seem right, letting my kid be a bastard.”
    This surprised a laugh from her. “Hello! This is the twenty-first century. Things like that don’t matter anymore.”
    â€œThey matter to me.”
    Who would have guessed such traditional emotion ran through the heart of an avowed rebel? “Jameso, it will be all right, really.”
    â€œWhat about your dad?”
    Her father? What did Jake have to do with this? “What about him?”
    â€œI know he ran out on your mom right after you were born. I want to prove to you I won’t be like that.”
    This was why she loved the man—he had a talent for getting to the heart of the matter. “Then the way to prove it is to stick around. A marriage license didn’t stop my dad from leaving.”
    â€œI do love you, Maggie.” He held out his arms and she went to him, the tension draining out of her as his arms encircled her.
    â€œI know. And I love you. But that’s not enough.” She’d loved Carter, too. At least in the beginning. But the love hadn’t lasted. She wasn’t sure it ever could. And she was certain that marrying someone because you thought it was what you should do, instead of what you wanted to do, was a surefire way to kill whatever passion they shared.
    â€œSo what are we going to do now?” he asked.
    â€œWe go on the way we have been, and we’ll decide how to work things out when the baby gets here. We’ve got seven or eight months to figure it out.”
    He held her tighter. “That doesn’t sound like long enough to me.”
    Or to her, but it was seven or eight months for her and Jameso to get to know each other better and to figure out if they had a future that went beyond a shared child. A thought occurred to her and she nudged his shoulder. “Did you buy me a ring?”
    â€œA ring?”
    â€œAn engagement ring. Did you buy me an engagement ring?” After all, he’d said he wanted to do things right.
    â€œUh, yeah. I went to a jeweler’s in Montrose this afternoon.”
    That answered Rick’s question about what Jameso had been up to. “Let me see.”
    He stepped back. “Uh-uh. You turned me down, remember?”
    â€œOh, come on, let me see!” She might never wear Jameso’s ring, but she could at least see what he’d picked out for her.
    â€œNope.” He shoved both hands in his pockets. Was that where he’d stashed the ring? “If I hurry, they’ll probably give me my money back.”
    â€œYou can still show it to me.”
    â€œNo, I don’t