Free The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) by Anna Jeffrey Page A

pill had been bad for her skin and had other negative side effects and he hated condoms. They both hated that slimy spermicidal shit the drug stores sold. After experimenting and rejecting most of it, they had ended up using the rhythm method. STDs hadn’t been a concern between them. Pic had never doubted Mandy’s discretion and by the time he hooked up with her the second time around, his own wild and wooly days were well behind him.  “Don’t say that. You’ll give me a heart attack.”
    “Why? What if it wasn’t okay? Would me having your baby be so bad?”
    “That’s not what I meant. You know that.”
    “How would I know that?”
    Pic closed his eyes and arched his brow. She wanted to hear him say he loved her. He wasn’t sure he could define love. His parents professed love and look at the mess they were. He thought he had that feeling for Mandy, but he didn’t dare say it. Those three words had consequences. They would lead to something for which he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t said them since his marriage eleven years ago.
    “We’ve been sleeping together ever since my dad died,” Mandy continued. “Over two years. We’ve known each other since I started kindergarten. It isn’t like we’re strangers or we’re too young. You’re thirty-three and on Sunday, I’ll be thirty-one. Everyone I know who’s our age has kids.”
    This wasn’t the first time for this conversation. He had always done his best to either avoid it or talk around it. And that’s what he wanted to do now. He already felt guilty for thinking about another woman during even hotter than usual sex with Mandy. “You know what’s going on with me right now, Mandy. I can’t imagine myself taking on a wife and fatherhood on top of everything else I’m trying to do.”
    “I don’t know why. Men have been managing their jobs and marriage and babies at the same time forever. Even your big brother has succumbed. He’s rebuilding half of Dallas, yet he’s gotten married and in another few months, Shannon will still have his baby. You’d be a wonderful father, Pic. Think about how much you love baby animals.”
    True, h e was a cream puff when it came to baby animals. As a boy growing up, he had wanted to make a pet out of every one he saw. But he didn’t have the same emotion about baby humans. Unlike human beings, baby animals were not totally helpless. Most of them needed their mothers for only a short time and they never needed their fathers.
    Beyond that, he had rarely seen a baby unless friends in town or the wife or girlfriend of one of the ranch hands had one. He had never even held one. No way could he let her talk him into agreeing with her.
    He sighed. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. I can’t remember the last time I even saw a baby.”
    “Actually, you do know where to begin.” She angled a sly smile at him. “And I might add, you do it very well. I can’t imagine making a baby being more enjoyable than it is with you.”
    His cheeks warmed with self-consciousness and he wasn’t even a man who embarrassed easily. When they were both hotter than a prairie fire and he was buried to the hilt inside her and she told him how big he was or how good he felt, that was one thing. But when they were in the bathroom cleaning up afterward, open conversation a bout making babies was another.
    “Mandy. C’mon now. Let’s save that talk for later, okay?”
    “That’s fine,” she said. “But the way things are going, we really should start thinking more seriously about real birth control.”
    Ouch! That hurt. But she was right. Their opportunities for sex were erratic these days and inopportune moments were bound to happen.
    “I mean, think about it. What would happen if we hadn’t been together for a month or six weeks and you showed up when it was the wrong time of the month?”
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
    Leaving him with that unsettling thought, Mandy turned away and unhooked her robe from the back of the bathroom