She parked and got out, all fluttering pale pink summer dress and wild blond hair. And he had the irresistible image of laying her down on the grass and stripping her naked underneath the sky.

Yeah. That was what he wanted. And bad.

He moved quickly, closing the space between them, but she stopped him with one look from wide blue eyes.

“I have something to tell you,” she said.

“What?”

He was immediately struck by terror. Because she looked afraid, and anything that scared Sammy struck him deep.

“I... I just took a pregnancy test.”

It was like the mountains all around the horizon had tipped in on themselves and crumbled. Like the world had gone concave, leaving only the place they were standing on. His boots were rooted to the ground, that same ground that he had worked all these years. That familiar, unchanging earth. And yet, it was all new now. Everything was. It would never be the same again.

“It must’ve happened that first time,” she said.

“I know when it would have happened,” he said.

They had used a condom every time since.

“I know I said I wasn’t going to...”

“Look, I wasn’t opposed to getting you pregnant,” he said, because there was nothing else to say. It was true. That first night he had fully intended for the sex they’d had to result in the pregnancy she was looking for, because the alternative was that she was going to go find it with another man. He had been happy enough that she had decided to put it off. But that chance had been there.

And he knew what had to happen next. As sure as he knew the sun would rise tomorrow and that he’d work this ranch like he’d done every day for the past seventeen years.

“We’re getting married,” he said.

Her face popped up, her hair swinging with the movement. “No,” she said. “No. We don’t have to do that. I mean... Why can’t we just live here? Live here in this place and... I don’t know. I can be in the camper. And you can be in the house and we can be together sometimes and...”

“Because it’s not enough,” he said.

“Why not?”

“That’s not how families work.”

“It is how families work. It’s how our family has been for the past seventeen years.”

He gritted his teeth. “We’re not family, Sammy.”

She jerked as though he slapped her. And he hated the look of pain that crossed her delicate face. “No. Of course not. I mean, not that way. I get it.”

“That isn’t what I meant. I just meant that we can be family. The way that my parents were family. That’s how it should work.”

“I’m not going to do something like that just because that’s how it should be.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because believe me, marriage is not just the answer to everything. I lived in a house with a horrible dysfunctional marriage and will not raise a child in an environment where two people are stuck together.”