Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm (best free ebook reader .txt) 📕

she’d been an emotional teenager and visited him in the hospital. Worse now knowing how...he’d survived it. All alone. “You said you had to do it.”

“No,” Dev said in that voice she remembered from that awful time. He’d spent weeks in the hospital after he’d finally woken up from the coma, but when he’d gotten home it hadn’t been...good. Dev had been like a void. No emotions. No...personality. He’d been a shell. It had taken him years to come back to himself. He still wasn’t all the way there, but this made it all worse again.

It about broke her heart.

“I said he saved my life on a condition. It’s not the same as having to do it.”

“It is to me,” Sarah said quietly, afraid if she spoke any louder her voice and composure might break.

He shook his head. “Jamison never would have agreed to that deal. That I know for sure.”

“And Jamison would be dead. That I know for sure. And if he’d died then, Liza and Gigi would probably be dead, too, since Jamison was the reason they escaped the Sons. Heck, maybe all of you would be dead after last year’s troubles. So if this whole thing with Ace and his other son had to happen, then I’m damn glad it happened to you, who’d had the sense to make a deal.”

He tugged his hand out of hers and she couldn’t hold on to his grasp though she tried.

“A deal with the devil?”

“With the outcome that let you live.” Since she couldn’t hold on to his hand, she reached up and touched his face. She wasn’t prone to physical acts of affection, but the thought of life and death had her feeling weepy and desperate. Or maybe that was pregnancy hormones. She’d happily blame it on that. “You being alive is the most important thing to me.”

He covered her hand as if to pull it off his face, but she had a flash of a kiss, a murmur. The feelings of their bodies moving together. Something...otherworldly.

She blinked as he removed her hand and dropped it. Memory or fantasy, hard to tell. And pointless either way.

“Stop being nice to me,” he muttered. “It’s weird.”

“It isn’t weird when you’re the—”

He cut her off with a look. Because she wasn’t supposed to think of him as the father of her baby. Her baby didn’t have a father in that sense, and she’d been okay with that. Grandma Pauline had raised those six grandsons of hers on her own. Turned them into amazing, wonderful men after terrible childhoods stuck in their father’s gang. She’d wanted to do that, too.

Sometimes she just had a hard time remembering that. Which irritated her, though she wasn’t even sure why or who she was irritated with. Him or herself.

“It’s Christmastime,” Sarah said loftily. “Peace on earth and goodwill toward men. I’m good-willing you. Get used to it.” She winced as pain tightened her belly. Stupid early contractions.

Dev was immediately dropping his horse’s reins and propelling her back and onto the rickety bench. “Damn it, Sarah.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, breathing like the doctor had told her to. “The doctor said so.”

“No, the doctor said you had to take it easy. Not that it was nothing.”

“I am taking it easy.” The pain eased, slowly, but it eased. She managed a smile up at him. “See? All gone. The doctor said the contractions should come and go for weeks without any progress. That is why I have an appointment every week until the due date. It’s fine. I promise.”

“Sarah.” The stark way he said her name had the smile dying on her face as he kneeled before her.

“This is bad. It’s danger all over again, and one we have less experience with. It’s even more imperative that no one ever suspect...” There was a twist of pain on his face as he looked at her belly—a kind of pain she’d never seen him allow to show on his face like that. This time it was him grabbing her hands. “You need to stay away,” he said resolutely. “Stay on your property. I’ll keep helping out at your ranch for you, but you need to stay away. Stay in bed. Rest, like the doctor said. Please. I’m begging you.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. She didn’t know how to do what he was asking, but she also didn’t know how to say no to him when he was like this. Emotional and very close to desperate.

No, she couldn’t argue with him. “I’ll...try,” she promised.

Chapter Three

Sarah spent the morning away from Dev and the Reaves ranch. She took some time off her feet until the contractions were completely gone. People might think she pushed herself too hard, but she was careful.

Besides, she was only two weeks away from her due date. What would be the harm in the baby coming now? She’d happily bake him a little longer, but labor wouldn’t be the worst thing at this point. Especially on a day when there was no snow in the forecast.

Once she’d felt better and eaten some lunch, she’d bundled up and headed outside. Dev’s dogs, which he’d insisted on having live at the Knight Ranch since the trouble last year, pranced ahead of her.

Staying inside made her too antsy and anxious and today, it made her replay Dev’s emotional plea over and over in her head.

I’m begging you.

She couldn’t...sit with that. She needed a chore to do, even if it wasn’t labor intensive. She needed the cold winter air and something to do with her hands. She needed the ranch. It had always been her solace, her heart. No one could stop her from seeking that out just because she was going to have a baby soon.

She smoothed her hands over her belly—even bulkier with the heavy coat on over it. She’d give her baby the space to like and love whatever he wanted, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t fantasize about him feeling the same way about the