The Rancher's Christmas Baby

He arched a brow and stepped beneath the spray.

“I’ve had a change of heart.” She’d decided she could make love without being in love after all.

Teddy regarded her skeptically.

“This time we’d be doing it for a very good reason,” Amy said, continuing to make her case hurriedly, aware if she thought about it too much she’d lose her nerve. “It’d be part of our Christmas gift to each other.”

Teddy shook his head in mute frustration, even as his lower body rose to the challenge. “I know you, Amy. You’ll never go all the way.”

Maybe she wouldn’t if she didn’t want a baby with him so very much. She folded her arms in front of her militantly. “I will, too!”

“Really?” Teddy turned to adjust the temperature of the spray, giving her a fine view of his backside.

“Yes, really!” Amy wished he would take her seriously.

“Then prove it.” Teddy turned toward her once again, making no effort to hide his desire. His eyes locked with hers as he rubbed soap over his chest. Lower still. “Go in the bedroom. Take off your clothes. And wait for me.”

Amy could see from the sardonic curve of his lips that he still didn’t think she had the nerve.

She turned on her heel and marched back out of the bath. “I thought it was going to be a lot easier to be married to you!” she called over her shoulder.

“No kidding!” he called right back.

Huffing in exasperation, Amy marched over to the bed and stood staring down at it for one long second.

“This is to make a baby,” she whispered to herself defiantly, already toeing off her boots. “Our baby. And he or she will be made in the spirit of tenderness and hope and love.” This baby would be the ultimate Christmas gift to each other.

With trembling fingers, Amy turned back the covers.

Hearing the water shut off behind her, she closed her eyes and reached for the hem of her sweater.

“I’m not sure I understand the rationale for closing your eyes while you undress yourself.”

Amy gulped again and opened her eyes.

She turned to see Teddy lounging in the doorway, his strong, tall body glistening with droplets of water, a towel draped around his waist.

“Oh, hush,” she grumbled, irritated he had just spoiled her semiromantic mood. Now, she was going to have to work to get it back again.

He strode toward her, smelling of soap and man and…the potential for sex. “The fact you can’t even undress without an attack of nerves should tell you you’re not ready for this.”

Amy let out a nervous little laugh and finished removing her sweater. “I may never be ready for this.” Sex with her best friend. It didn’t change the fact she wanted a baby. His baby. “Which is precisely why we should keep going.”

Teddy lifted his hand to her breast, his fingertips caressing the swell of flesh above her lacy black bra.

Suddenly, he wasn’t the only one getting aroused.

He regarded her ardently, a sense of purpose glittering in his eyes. “This isn’t a game of Red Light, Green Light.”

Amy’s heart gave a nervous kick against her ribs. “I know.”

His voice dropped. “If we get started…”

She let out a shuddering breath as she tilted her face up to his. “We’re not going to stop.”

“Exactly.” Gently, he scored his thumb across her lips. “So now’s the time for second thoughts….”

Defiantly, she held the challenge in his eyes. “I don’t have any. Don’t want any.”

“Amy…”

Yearning welled up inside her. Not just for a baby now. But for him. Amy went up on tiptoe, wreathed her arms around his neck. She pressed the softness of her body against the hard length of his. “Kiss me, Teddy. Kiss me the way you did the other night.”

Their lips met halfway in a fierce explosion of heat and need, want and passion. She put everything she had into the kiss, fitting her lips to his, adjusting her head to just the right angle, experimentally touching his tongue with hers. She expected gentleness, acceptance. Instead, his lips were hard and hungry, his tongue hot and wet and unbearably evocative. Taking command, he kissed her again and again, until she was lost in the taste and touch and feel of him, lost in the ragged intake of his breath and her own low, shuddering moan. And suddenly the idea of making hot, wild love with Teddy McCabe was every bit as enticing as the sight of him, clad in nothing but a towel.

Teddy hadn’t expected Amy to take him up on his challenge. But now that she had…now that she was in his arms, kissing and holding him like there was no tomorrow, he could no more walk away from her than he could have not married her.

Maybe they didn’t love each other in the usual head-over-heels way, Teddy reflected, dropping his towel and divesting Amy of her bra. But they did have a connection between them that was as deep and enduring as anything he had ever dreamed. Excitement building inside him, he sifted his hand through the silky texture of her hair. Her body shuddered and softened against his, and he let all he wanted come through in another deep, searing kiss. He wanted to be a husband to her in every way, and as he undressed her and drew her slowly down to the bed, she seemed to want it, too.

Sensing the need pouring out of her, he cupped the soft weight of her breasts in his hands, bent his head, loving her with mouth and lips and hands. She clung to him wordlessly, arching her back, moving restlessly beneath him. He stretched out beside her, catching her by the waist. Shifting her onto her side, he pressed his hips against hers, kissing her again and again, until she was in a frenzy of wanting, murmuring her need low in the back of her throat. Wanting her to have everything she deserved, he made his way down her body, engaging every sense, until there was only the driving need, and the throbbing of his body and hers.

He slid upward, capturing her lips in another kiss.

“I want you,” she whispered, taking him in hand.

Her breath hitched as he filled her.

Yielding to him with the sweet surrender of a woman who should have been his long before, she clasped his shoulders and trembled as he kissed her and possessed her again and again. Their bodies took up an age-old rhythm, until there was no doubting how good this felt, how good they were together, and would always be….

Teddy slid his hands beneath her, lifting her to him, driving deep. Together, they soared toward a completion more stunning and fulfilling than anything he had ever felt. More incredible for him than the feel of her beneath him, her arms and legs wrapped around him, was the thought that at this very instant…they might be making the baby they both wanted so very much.

AMY HAD NEVER BEEN A particularly sexual person, never imagined she could feel this way about the lifelong “friend” who was now her husband, but Teddy’s lovemaking had made her feel white-hot. As if she was not just capable of conceiving the child they yearned for, but was all woman, too. As capable of giving…and receiving… emotional comfort and physical ecstasy.

“That was incredible,” she whispered in Teddy’s ear, wanting him to know just how wonderful he had made her feel. She could see now she shouldn’t have worried about the lack of traditional romance in the making of their baby. What she had just experienced was one of the most powerful and compelling—not to mention unbearably tender—moments of her entire life.

Teddy chuckled, pressing his lips against her neck in a series of hot kisses. “Tell me about it!”

Still shuddering with reaction, she rested her head on his shoulder. She liked the unexpectedly sexy turn their relationship had taken as much as the sound of his low, husky voice. With a sigh of contentment, she splayed both hands across his chest. “Who knew?”

He found her lips with his. His kiss was tender and sweetly coaxing. “I guess we should have.”

Aware that she had waited a lifetime to feel like this, Amy searched his eyes, needing somehow to put a label on this, so that it wouldn’t all ease away, as quickly and unexpectedly, as it had occurred. “What does this mean?” Were they married now—in their hearts? Or was this the friends-with-benefits scenario he had once proposed?

Teddy smiled and gave her a lazy once-over, seeming every bit as contented as she now felt. “It means,” he said, gently disengaging their bodies and rolling so that she was on top of him, “that we’re every bit as compatible—in a marital sense—as we first thought.”

Not exactly the declaration of undying love she had hoped to hear. Amy lamented softly, “Except that so far we fight about everything.”

Teddy stroked a hand down her spine, eliciting tingles of delight that made her want him all over again. His slow smile was as enticing as his touch. “Maybe not making love is what we’ve really been fighting about.”