“Out,” he said.

“Spoilsport,” she said, leaving the bedroom and closing the door behind her. And for the life of her she had no idea why her heart felt like it was going to escape from her chest, or why it felt like she had put her head into a bonfire.

But it couldn’t be because of Ryder’s body.

It just couldn’t be.

Because she had a mission to complete tonight, and she had plans. None of those plans included ruining the best relationship that she had.

CHAPTER SIX

THE GOLD VALLEY SALOON was packed full of people. Ryder hadn’t been back since the other night when Sammy had said that she wanted to have a baby. And now, here he was, ready to help join in with her harebrained scheme.

He had to wonder if it mattered if the conductor of the train was a little bit more sane than the passenger if it was headed straight to hell anyway.

Which was maybe a little bit dramatic. Hell was probably not the right word.

Probably.

“Okay,” she said. “There are some good options in here.”

“Are there?”

“Sure,” she said. “Laz, for starters.”

He looked over at the bar owner, whom he quite liked, but for some reason he felt a little bit less charitable toward him at the moment. Well, okay, he knew the reason.

He wished that Logan hadn’t come to impart his wisdom on him earlier, and he really wished that Sammy hadn’t followed him into his bedroom before his shower tonight. Because none of that helped with this. Not with any of it.

Fundamentally, it didn’t matter that in spite of his best efforts, looking at Sammy made him...

He’d fixed it so it wasn’t lust, not strictly. He’d had years to climb that particular mountain. But he wasn’t at the summit so much as camped somewhere in between.

Because all his feelings about that were just too tied up in knots. It wasn’t straightforward, it wasn’t simple, and if—and that if was pretty big—he was ever going to touch Sammy, it would have to be as uncomplicated as it could possibly be.

And there was no having that. So he didn’t go there. So he drew a line around it in the sand and called it sacred ground.

“Well, you could just go ask them,” Ryder said.

“I know that you don’t actually think I should do that,” she responded. “You want me to fail.”

“I do not want you to fail.”

“You do. And OMG what would you do if I got up right now, went over there and said, ‘Laz, I want to have your baby.’”

He didn’t even want to imagine that.

“I want you to be happy,” he bit out. “But I can’t say that I understand why you seem to think this is the way that you’re going to be happy. I’m not exactly understanding that at the moment. I’m not going to lie to you.”

She looked up at him, and the expression of desperation on her face made him want to reach out and touch her. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not when things were still a little bit altered from that moment in his bedroom when he had walked out of the bathroom in his towel. He had been trying to get a reaction out of her. Because he had fashioned himself into a brick wall to separate Sammy from the rest of the world, and still sometimes he got a little bit upset when she looked at him and saw a wall instead of a man.