“But not most women,” he countered. “You demean yourself.”
“Yeah, well. How many frogs have you had to kiss?”
“What is it with you and frogs?”
“Never mind. I have another question. Why are you so hell-bent on us being married, anyway? Do you want to sabotage the park so badly that you’re willing to get married to do it?”
“Sabotage?”
He felt her exasperated sigh move through both of their bodies. “That’s the only reason you’re here, isn’t it?” she said. “You went on a blind date with me because you knew I was building a park. And you’re here now, demanding to be my husband, so you can stop me from finding the gold that will fund it.”
Holy hell. The woman had a warped mind—and a very low opinion of him. No, this was not going to be a peaceful union.
“There will be no park,” he replied. “And the gold has nothing to do with it, because I’m not selling my land to your group of people. And without that land, there will be no park,” he repeated, just in case she hadn’t heard him the first time.
He gave her a less than gentle squeeze. “And the park has nothing to do with our marriage,” he continued fiercely. “I want you, and now I have you. It’s that simple.”
“Well, I don’t know why,” she said, her voice quivering. “I can’t even do it right.”
“Do what?”
“M-make love,” she whispered. “When you stopped,” she said, somewhat louder this time.
Morgan could only stare at this poor, confused woman. She really did know nothing of men. Without thinking how she would react, he threw back his head and let out a deep laugh.
“It’s not funny. I’m apologizing here.”
“Ah, lass. I’m not really laughing at you,” he said with a lingering chuckle. “Well, I am, but mostly I’m laughing at myself. I stopped because I was done, Mercedes.”
“Done what?”
Well, hell. He could see that he was going to have to be blunt. “I was done making love to you. The shout you said I made was really a sound of pleasure and fulfillment, when I poured my seed deep inside you.”
“You poured your… ” She suddenly snapped her mouth shut. Her eyes crossed, and her face sort of turned green—just before it went completely white.
“You… you didn’t use any protection, did you?” she asked in a whispered squeak.
“No.”
Her face turned green again. Morgan leaned back when he saw her hand go to her belly, afraid she was about to be sick.
“I could be pregnant.” She looked at him, her glare angry enough to make him lean back even farther. “Dammit to hell. I will not get pregnant.”
She jumped off his lap, making him grunt in surprise and cup himself protectively. She whirled and pointed her finger at him.
“I will not make my mother’s mistakes!” she all but shouted, her anger flushing her face back to a flaming red. “And I’m sure as hell not making my baby sister an aunt before she’s even three months old.”
She stomped off after that outburst, in the direction of the river. Morgan leaned back and scrubbed both his hands over his face, attempting to wash away the still lingering echoes of their anything but successful truce. But then her last words finally caught his attention. What baby sister? He counted nine months forward on his fingers, then subtracted three.
And finally it dawned on him what her words meant.
Well, hell. Charlotte Quill was pregnant.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte Quill paced the length of Sadie’scabin porch, the concern obvious in every taut line on her face. Callum stood in the door of the ransacked cabin, watching his woman work herself into a fine state of worry.
She stopped in front of him. “Who would do such a thing?” she asked with motherly outrage. “And where’s my daughter? Callum, there was blood on the floor,” she whispered, digging her nails into his arm.
Callum reached out and pulled her into a mighty embrace. “It’s old blood, Charlotte,”
he assured her. “And Sadie is fine, I promise you,” he added. He pulled back and leaned down to look her in the eye. “I know for a fact that Morgan was coming out to see her. And this was the act of only one man, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”
Charlotte pulled free, took a step back, and stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“The muddy footprints he left. This happened this morning, after the storm.”
She resumed pacing, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, but stopped again and whirled to face him. “I’m going to find my daughter,” she suddenly announced. “I won’t have any peace until I see for myself that Sadie’s okay.”
Her tone was that of a woman expecting resistance, and Callum kept his smile to himself. Charlotte was almost as predictable as the sunrise. In fact, he’d already been mentally planning their camping trip into the valley since the moment he’d seen the destruction to Sadie’s cabin.
The first sign of trouble had been the door torn from its hinges. The second thing had been the odor of freshly opened food emanating through the gaping hole. The family of raccoons, whiskers caked with crumbs, had come running out of the cabin the moment Callum’s boots had hit the steps.
Charlotte, ignoring his command to go back to the truck, had silently followed him inside and silently looked around at the destruction. Furniture was overturned, a window was smashed, the bed slashed by a knife. But it wasn’t until Charlotte had seen the model of the valley that she had helped Sadie build that she had finally found her voice. She’d become a mother on a mission then, to avenge the violation of her daughter’
s home. She was mad, worried, and just daring him to contradict her plan.
Callum reached out and pulled Charlotte back into his arms. “I’ll drop you off at home so you can pack your gear,” he told her, freeing his smile when she gasped in surprise.
“I’ll get my own things together and then pick you up again.” He pulled back and looked at her. “Any idea where Sadie might be headed?”
Still looking shocked that he was being cooperative, Charlotte could only shake her head.
“Doesn’t she carry a cell phone?” he asked.
Charlotte nodded but scowled. “She does. But I haven’t been able to reach her on it once in these last ten weeks. She’s either misplacing it, breaking it, or letting the batteries run down.”
She pulled away from him, her motherly outrage returning threefold. “I swear that girl has the sense of a pine cone sometimes. She spends her time walking around with her mind in either the past or the future but never in the present. If she’s not wallowing in guilt, she’s planning absolution for her imagined sin.” She angrily waved at the woods surrounding the cabin. “Like this stupid park she’s trying to build. It’s not a work of joy for her but an obsession to obtain her father’s forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness for what?” Callum asked, trying to follow the woman’s logic.
“For killing Frank and Caroline.”
Callum was stunned. “Sadie didn’t kill her da,” he said. “Or Caroline. I thought it was a house fire.”
“That she started. Sadie went to bed and left a candle burning in the study.”
“But Frank died only three years ago.”
“From a weak heart,” Charlotte explained, worry and lingering grief etched into the lines of her face. “The fire damaged his lungs, and he never fully recovered.”
Standing stone-still and staring at his woman, Callum was appalled. “Do you blame your daughter, Charlotte?” he asked.
Outrage returned, and Callum watched as she balled her fists against her sides, as if restraining herself from striking him.
“Of course not,” she snapped. “I love my daughter.”
Charlotte’s anger suddenly deflated, and she threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his shirt with a loud wail of anguish. “Oh, Callum. I don’t know how to help her.