Tina Leonard - Her Callahan Family Man

He was definitely digging down to find his deepest layer of smart-ass. “Working professionals with benefits. You know that as well as I.”

“And now that you’re pregnant, those benefits are no longer beneficial?”

She could hear the smirk in his voice. “That’s right.”

He hit the main road, but they weren’t heading for Tempest. “I believe you went the wrong way,” Sawyer stated.

“I’m going the only way we need to go,” Jace said. “You and I are taking a side trip to Vegas. We’re going to give my children my name. Then if you want to sleep alone, that’s your choice. I won’t fight you about that. But being a father to my children, Sawyer, I will fight for.” He glanced at her, his smile slightly amused. “I’m a pretty good fighter.”

She knew that. All the Callahans were stubborn, steeped in loyalty to family and land. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with Jace. Now he wanted to marry her, have a quickie wedding to seal the torrid love affair they’d shared under the family radar. She was a Cash and he was a Callahan, and the two were never supposed to meet on more than a professional basis.

“We can do this without marriage,” Sawyer said a bit desperately as he sped toward Vegas. “We can divide custody with the use of legal instruments instead of a marriage ceremony.”

“We’ve come this far, we may as well go all out. My family’s going to flip out when they find out I’ve...” He hesitated, then glanced at her with a grin. “That I’m having children.”

“That you’ve impregnated the enemy?” She glared at him. “I can’t think of a worse reason to get married.”

“I can’t, either, but we’re apparently past needing a reason and are moving swiftly on to cause. Those children deserve a proper start in life. That’s all there is to this, Sawyer Cash. Don’t feel guilty because you’ve worked your wiles on me, and are finally getting what you wanted all along, when you made your way into my bed.”

“Not your bed.” Not with the furtive lovemaking they’d enjoyed. There’d been nothing traditional about their stolen moments together.

“Doesn’t matter if it was truck bed, front seat, barn, canyon or Rancho Diablo roof. We misused ye olde condom somehow, and now the piper must be paid.”

She rolled her eyes. “About that time on the roof...”

“You said you wanted to see the stars. I believe we achieved your goal.”

He really was an insufferable jackass, quite confident that his lovemaking was the end-all to a woman’s dreams, the gold buckle of mind-blowing sex.

She couldn’t argue the point. She’d left Rancho Diablo when she’d realized she’d fallen head over heels in love with him, and that he had zero desire for a serious romance between them. He’d never said it in so many words, but she knew the difficulty of their relationship as well as anyone.

She’d thought she was in the clear, had made her escape with her pride intact. And then the morning sickness had begun.

“I don’t want to get married, Jace.”

“It’s not about you. It’s about our children. Now try to get some rest. There’s a blanket in the backseat if you want it. When you awaken, it’ll be time for us to find the fastest house of I do in Vegas.”

Great. That sounded like a wedding she could always look back on with a fond smile. No magic wedding dress for her, no marriage at the beautiful seven-chimneyed mansion at Rancho Diablo like all the other Callahan brides.

Drat. I had to fall for the one Callahan for whom a quickie, no-strings-attached marriage is just ducky.

Sawyer pulled the blanket over herself and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t think about what she’d done, blowing her entire bank account on the wildest, wooliest Callahan of all. When she’d known quite well that the Callahans and the Cashs were never, ever going to trust each other.

Babies notwithstanding.

Chapter Two

“It does trouble me that you felt like you had to win me to have this conversation,” Jace told Sawyer an hour later, as he sped toward Las Vegas. “I’m flattered you spent several months of your Rancho Diablo salary keeping me from another woman, but I would have withdrawn myself from Aunt Fiona’s bachelor raffle if I’d known I was a father.”

He looked over at Sawyer, noting that the spicy redhead looked as if she wanted to give him a piece of her mind, and probably would in a moment. He remembered the first time he’d ever laid eyes on her. Galen and he had played backup to Dante when he went over to see Storm Cash, and Sawyer had opened the door instead of her uncle, catching all of them off guard. Jace had seen a big smile, a slender, athletic body, cute freckles across a tiny nose, big blue eyes twinkling at him, and felt himself fall into deep, fiery lust—lust so strong that every time he saw her, he wanted her.

Of course, he’d known better. There were some lines one could cross, but sleeping with the enemy was a mistake only a man with his mind anywhere but on his job would make. But then she’d been hired on at Rancho Diablo by his brother Sloan and Sloan’s wife, Kendall—and suddenly the red-hot neighbor sex-bomb was in Jace’s sights like a tornado he couldn’t avoid.

It hadn’t taken him long to respond to the magnet pulling him toward Sawyer—only to discover that she seemed to feel the same desire. They’d made love as often as possible, as discreetly as possible, keeping their affair completely locked away. Sawyer didn’t want to jeopardize her job, knowing that she still had to earn Callahan trust—and Jace hadn’t wanted his family harping on his lack of loyalty.

His family was in for a big shock, but right now, he had to make certain his little firecracker mama got to the altar.

One thing about the Callahans: they were deadly serious about their ladies once they found them. But rare was the Callahan bride who’d made her way to the altar quietly.

He intended to avoid that unnecessary heartburn.

“I did not,” Sawyer said with annoyance, “want you to withdraw from Fiona’s event. You’d been advertised on barn roofs and billboards for months as Diablo’s prize of the century. It wouldn’t have been right to tell you at Christmas that you were going to be a father, and make you withdraw. That would have devastated Fiona, taken all the fun out of the Christmas ball and denied the charities that she funds much needed revenue, which comes from the purses of women who are hoping to win the dream man lottery.”

Jace perked up at the idea that Sawyer might think he was a dream man, suddenly hopeful that shoehorning her into marrying him would be simpler than it had first seemed. She didn’t appear all that anxious to say I do.

Unaware of his hopeful state, Sawyer took a deep breath and stated, “I took care of the obvious problem of my children’s father hanging out with another woman simply by winning you. It wasn’t that big of a deal, Jace.”

“You cute little thing.” He smiled at her, impressed by the starch in her attitude. “I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not thrilled to find out you’re my mystery girl. I’ll be happy to put a ring on your finger tonight, Sawyer.” And then, if good fortune smiled on him, maybe after the I dos were said, he’d finally get his little darling into a real bed, in a room with a closed door that locked, so he could enjoy her for hours on end.

“It’s going to feel great not to rush things anymore,” he said, not really aware he was speaking out loud, and Sawyer said, “I feel pretty certain we’re rushing marriage. Marriage is the one thing in life that shouldn’t be rushed at all.”

“Well, that cow is long out of the barn, so we won’t worry about that. Let’s move on to big decision number two.”