“Well, it’s what you said,” she told him, swinging her hair back from her face. “My God, you don’t even see how insulting that is, do you? What? Am I some airhead who doesn’t know how babies are made? Is that it?”
“No, damn it, what are you so mad about?”
“Oh, this is just typical,” she muttered darkly, her hands fisting on the duvet until her knuckles went white. “I’m so tired of everyone around me acting as though I’m a porcelain doll or something. No mind of my own.”
She scooted off the bed, still clutching the duvet tightly to her. “My father, my ex, Dave and now you.”
He jumped off the bed, too, and stood there naked, watching her stomp barefooted around the edge of the mattress. “Don’t lump me in with them.”
“If it walks like a duck…”
“Great. Perfect.” He threw his hands up and shook his head. Weirdest damn after-sex conversation he’d ever had. “You’re an intelligent woman in charge of herself who might be pregnant because of a faulty condom. Happy?”
“Delirious,” she snapped. “You just don’t get it. I spent most of my life taking orders from the men in my life, who insisted they knew better than I did. I didn’t argue, either, which is totally my fault,” she added in a disgusted undertone. “I even married a man my father picked out because I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
Lucas shoved one hand through his hair. “Always wondered why you married that jerk.”
“Now you know. Spineless Rose. That was me,” she said with a shudder. “I look back and even I don’t believe what a doormat I was.” Flashing him a look that should have set him on fire, she added, “But you know what? Being married to Henry, living through the humiliation of him constantly cheating on me, was a valuable lesson.”
“In what? Torture? Self-sacrifice?” He snorted a laugh. “Figures Saint Rose would find the silver lining in the middle of the storm.”
She inhaled sharply and her expression was horrified. “Saint Rose? That’s what you think of me?”
“That’s what everyone thinks of you. The good. The perfect. The always proper and demure Rose Clancy,” he said, despite the voice in his head warning him to step carefully.
She kicked the duvet away from her feet and, still clutching the top of it to her br**sts, marched over to him, fury stamped on her features. When she was close enough, she poked him in the chest with her index finger.
Didn’t look demure now, Lucas thought warily. Her eyes were flashing and her mouth was flattened into a thin, straight line that told him he was lucky she wasn’t armed.
“I’m no saint,” she snapped, defining each word with a sharp stab of her finger.
“I’m getting that.”
“And I’m not the same Rose you used to know. I’m done taking orders from men—any man.” She gave him a shove that didn’t budge him an inch. “I’ll make my own decisions, and I’ll worry about my own mistakes, and I don’t need you telling me what to do.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at her. “Fine. Make your decision. Start with what do we do now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked with a choked-off laugh that sounded just this side of hysterical. “There’s nothing to do. It’s done. A little late to be locking the old barn door, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck and nodded to himself. “We’ll just see what happens and if you are pregnant, then we’ll get married and…”
“Married? What? You’ll throw yourself on a funeral pyre? Gee, thanks. I feel so much better now.” Shaking her head, she added in an undertone, “Ten seconds and he’s back to treating me like an idiot again.”
“How am I treating you like an idiot?”
“Hah! Just look at you. Acting like—” her voice dropped to a poor imitation of a man’s “—poor, helpless Rose. I mistreated her badly. Better find a way to make it up to her.” She slumped over dramatically. “I know! I’ll just fall on my sword. That should take care of things.”
“What the hell—”
She straightened up and flashed him another look that promised all sorts of retribution. “I don’t need you sacrificing yourself for me, okay? It was sex. Great, earth-shaking and as it turns out, unprotected sex. I can deal. What I am not going to do is marry another man for all the wrong reasons. So come on out of the nineteenth century, Lucas.”
He’d listened to her, dumbfounded, while she went on her rant. Well, now it was his turn. “Maybe this isn’t about what you can deal with, Rose. Ever consider that?”
Turning his back on her, he scanned the floor for his jeans and grabbed them up. Shifting back to face her again as he pulled them on, he kept talking, irritated not just with himself, but also with the woman who only moments ago had had his engines roaring.
“Do you know who my father is?”
“What?” She scowled at him. “What does that have to do with—”
“Ben King, that’s who,” Lucas told her, shoving both hands through his hair with nearly enough heat to pull out every strand. “Ben King is to illegitimate sons what Johnny Appleseed was to trees. Do you get it now? Do you see why I’m taking responsibility for this?”
“No! What does your father have to do with anything that happens between us?”
He stomped to her side, noting that she held the duvet higher and closer to her chest. The image of her as a pagan goddess slammed into him again. Moonlight sifting over her, outlining her in silver until she didn’t even look real. She looked, actually, like every man’s dream woman. Rumpled and sexy and ready to be tossed onto the nearest bed.
Which is just what he wanted to do.
Instead, he grabbed her bare shoulders and felt the heat of her blast into his hands. “My father spread his sperm in such a wide swath, we haven’t even met all of our brothers yet,” he told her flatly. “I promised myself years ago that I would never do that. I would never create a child that wasn’t wanted. Planned for. Loved.”
Her features clouded up briefly, but her eyes had lost their fire when she said, “Okay, I can understand that, but Lucas, you did the right thing. You were thinking. I sure as heck wasn’t. Protection never occurred to me, I’m ashamed to say. You thought of it.”