Hold Me Close (Bridgewater County Book 4) Page 5

  It had been far too long since that damn night in the parking lot and despite Matt’s optimism, she showed no signs of thawing toward us. Oh, she was all bright and cheerful for the other staff members, but when we were alone in the administrative area, she was like a glacier, thawing toward us at such a slow pace, the change wasn’t even visible.

  She’d been pissed at us for a solid month. Thirty days of fantasies instead of getting my hands on her and living out every single one of them. I looked forward to seeing her every day at the office, gleaning all I could from her. Her scent, her voice. And when I took in her vacant spot, remembered she’d gone to a doctor’s appointment, I wanted to kick the trash can through the window.

  When she’d asked for the day off, I wanted to ask if she was all right. She hadn’t looked sick, and I certainly would have noticed if she changed even her hairstyle. I’d tried not to hover ever since. A boyfriend could ask personal health questions, but not a boss. And I wasn’t her fucking boyfriend, dammit, since she’d made that distinction perfectly clear. If I asked, it would be an invasion of privacy.

  I’d been following the plan Matt and I came up with—giving her space and hoping she would warm up to us. To show her we were nice guys. Normal. Hell, I’d laid it out there that night in the lot when we’d crashed her date. Instead of warming up to us, she’d put up even more of a wall. Now it wasn’t just Matt she was giving the polite-but-distant act to, it was me, too. Maybe it was time to admit this plan wasn’t working.

  That was what I mulled over as I glowered at Rachel’s empty desk. There was no way in hell either of us would ever give up on making her ours. With every day I spent in her company, I only became more convinced. She was the one for us.

  I thought I’d made it clear that night we wanted her as our woman. Was it possible she hadn’t understood? Or maybe she just wasn’t interested. No, I’d seen interest there, at least before we’d fucked it all up.

  But this was destiny. She was our fate. Maybe it was time to push a little, to take her to dinner, maybe even a trail ride. Something to get time alone with her out of the office. She needed to see us as men, not her damn bosses.

  I might not have grown up in a Bridgewater family—my dad took off when I was a baby—but I watched my mom find her happily ever after with my two stepfathers when I was off at college. Besides that, I’d grown up watching my friends with Bridgewater families have the kind of secure, loving family I’d always wanted. I wanted that with Rachel. To share her love with Matt, to become a family of our own.

  So what was the hold up? Rachel. No, this wasn’t Rachel’s problem. It was ours. It was the Bridgewater men’s responsibility to show their woman what it could be like. We hadn’t done that.

  Yet.

  This “keeping our distance” plan was not working and I was running out of patience. There had to be a way to prove to Rachel how serious we were. How good it could be. No, not could. Would.

  When the phone at her desk rang, I walked over to pick it up. As I gave the caller the run-down on the services we offered, I caught myself idly staring at the things on her desk. There were a few pictures of her sister’s baby, which wasn’t a surprise. Emmy had brought the little girl by to meet everyone and watching Rachel with her had been more than I could bear.

  Rachel’s whole demeanor had changed as she lit up with joy. Her eyes had been filled with warmth as she’d cuddled the baby close and all I could think about was how much I’d love to see her holding our baby.

  Soon, I promised myself. Matt and I would come up with a way to get through to her one way or the other and if she wanted a baby, we’d start a family with her. The idea of filling her with our seed, watching as she swelled with our child? I stifled a groan as I said goodbye to the prospective guest.

  My eye caught on a note she’d scribbled for herself on the pad next to the phone. There were two numbers there, one for a place called CyroBank and one for SeattleSperm.

  What the hell?

  SeattleSperm? There couldn’t be any confusion on what that business was.

  My blood rushed in my ears so loudly I didn’t hear Matt come in until he was standing next to me.

  “You all right, Ethan? You look like you’re having a stroke.”

  I snapped out of the shocked trance and turned to face him, holding up the notepad like it was evidence in court. I waved it back and forth and he grabbed the pad from my hands.

  “She’s gone off to have a baby.”

  “A baby? Are you crazy? Rachel’s not even pregnant.”

  I spun around, pointed at her neat handwriting. “Read it.”

  Matt was understandably confused until he finally looked. His stunned gaze met mine. “No. Hell, no.” He dropped the notepad back on her desk. “There’s no way in hell we’re letting her have some stranger’s baby.”

  “She’s obviously going to raise it on her own since there’s no men in her life.” Yeah, we’d been vigilant about watching Rachel. Unless she snuck dates into her house, she had no guy in her life. Besides us.

  I knew I was overreacting but I couldn’t help it. Fear had taken over. Rachel was ours. Her babies would be ours. Now, I had no objection to raising another man’s child, but there was no way I wanted Rachel to raise a child alone.

  I’d been the product of a fatherless home and I hated to think of Rachel’s child not having a daddy. Not when there were two men standing in this room who wanted nothing more than to claim her and do it with her every step of the way.

  “She’s at the damn doctor’s office now. No, not doctor’s office. Sperm bank.”

  I filled him in on the fact that Rachel had asked for the entire day off for some sort of doctor’s appointment.

  “You’re telling me our girl is getting knocked up while we’re standing here with our thumbs up our asses?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why is she rushing?”

  “Because she’s too impatient to wait for the right man to come along.”

  “Men,” Matt countered. “And we’re right fucking here.”

  “At least we know there isn’t someone else.”

  Matt narrowed his eyes, probably thinking about a dick like Bob getting his hands on her.

  I groaned, paced. “Goddammit, if she just gave us a chance we could give her everything she ever wanted. It would be our honor and privilege to make her dreams come true. If that meant a houseful of babies then it’s our fucking job to give them to her. Not a damn test tube.”

  As I was working myself into a state, Matt leaned down, powered up her computer and started doing some research. He glanced up at me, his expression abnormally grim. “I doubt she went to Seattle, so that one’s out. That first clinic is in Helena. I’m sure that’s where she’ll be.”

  I grabbed the keys for my truck from the end table in the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  I tried to calm down on the drive to Helena but it seemed the closer we got the more my frustration grew and the faster my foot pressed on the gas pedal. She’d never even given us a chance. We’d waited too long.

  I was angry at myself for not acting sooner and pissed at Matt for making such a mess of things with our woman during their first meeting. Considering my heightened emotions, I probably should have stopped for a moment and thought through what I was about to say and do. But I was driven by an urgency to stop Rachel before she made a mistake. Matt seemed just as impatient as he raced to the front door of the clinic beside me. We’d barely spoken on the drive, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  Yeah, we may have looked like lunatics going in, but I didn’t care. It was time to stake our claim because she was making a serious, life changing decision without knowing how we felt—we could end up losing her for good.

  Now was the time for action, for better or for worse. That was what I was thinking as we stormed into the clinic and it was what gave me the nerve to walk right past the reception desk and the startled doctors and nurses in the hallway.

  We stopped ha
lfway down. On both sides of us there were multiple closed doors.

  “Where the hell is she?” I whispered. I had no idea how we were going to find our girl.

  “I guess we could just start opening doors,” Matt countered. “That seems a little extreme, even for us right now, and sure to get us kicked out before we could find her.”

  Yeah, I had no intention of walking in on some guy jerking off into a cup.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.”

  We spun about at the voice, ready to do battle, but found ourselves facing a smiling gray-haired woman in scrubs. “The donors’ waiting room is that way.”

  Donor waiting room?

  She pointed in the opposite direction of where we’d been headed. Matt tipped his cowboy hat and gave her a smile that had been known to make panties drop all around the state. “Thank you kindly, ma’am.”

  Oh lord, his aw-shucks cowboy drawl was over the top. But if he intended to make the nurse sweet on him, it did the job. I assumed he was planning to sweet talk the old lady into telling us which room was Rachel’s, but his tactics proved unnecessary.

  I saw her walk from the bathroom back to one of the closed doors and step inside without glancing in our direction. Matt must have seen her too, because he turned on the charm and told the older lady. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  The moment she turned the corner, we were down the hall, our long strides eating up the distance in two seconds flat and busting into Rachel’s room. She was seated in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, a tabloid magazine in her lap. Her head snapped up as we barged in and her eyes widened with shock. Or maybe it was horror…

  “Ethan! Matt? What are you doing here?”

  Yup, it was horror. Her pretty fair skin turned red as she looked from me to him and back with those overly wide green eyes

  “What are you doing here?” Matt asked.

  I didn’t think she could turn any redder, but I was wrong. Her lips thinned and she wasn’t going to respond, even though the answer was obvious.

  “We’re here to stop you,” I said. If I’d taken a moment to think before I’d spoken, I might have come up with something better. Something that didn’t have her staring at me like I’d just lost my mind.

  “What he means is, we wanted to talk to you,” Matt said. I noticed he’d taken off his hat and was twisting it in his hands in a rare show of uncertainty. He looked around the sterile, cold room and I could see he was just as terrified as I was. We were losing her—our woman, the one we’d been waiting all our lives for—for a vial of damn sperm.

  “You want to talk here?” she said, her voice little more than a squeak. “Now?”

  I didn’t know where to start. We needed time. She needed time to get to know us and to realize we were the men for her. “Don’t you think you’re rushing into this?”

  She looked like I’d slapped her. For a second, she just stared at me with her mouth partially open. Then she let me have it, stepping up to me and jabbing her finger in my chest. “What on earth gives you the right to come in here and share your opinion on…this.” She seemed to struggle with how to say it. I heard her, every word, but I was growing hard at the fiery anger, the way she was giving me hell and the fact that she was actually touching me. Yeah, she was poking me with her damn finger, but my cock didn’t seem to care.

  “And what exactly is this?” I countered. If she couldn’t even say it, she wasn’t ready to commit to this path. “What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes widened even further, this time to let me know that I clearly had a screw loose. “What do you think I’m doing here? I’m going to get pregnant.”

  “With some stranger’s baby,” Matt finished, his voice laced with anger. Or maybe it was hurt. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from Rachel to see his expression.

  “Yes,” she said, her face turning crimson again. She crossed her arms over her chest, her breasts only lifting beneath her summer dress. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “It sure as hell is our business,” Matt said, his voice rising dangerously.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ETHAN

  This time it was my turn to step in before Matt said or did something we’d both regret…again.

  “Rachel, we’re not here to judge you, it’s just—”

  “That is exactly what you’re doing,” Rachel said, glancing at Matt, then me. “You’ve invaded my privacy, completely overstepped your bounds as my employers, and now you’re here—at my sperm bank—to tell me that I’m making a mistake.”

  Matt made a noise that sounded like a growl, but she held up a hand. “What right do you have to be here?” Before we could answer, she continued, narrowing her eyes. “The answer is none. I am your employee, nothing more.”

  “But why like this?” Even I could hear the desperation in Matt’s voice. “You’re young, beautiful, smart…there’s no rush, is there?”

  She whirled on him, her ponytail whipping around. This time, he got the chest poke. “I’m ready to start a family,” she said. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, so why not start now?”

  Matt ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Now’s fine, but not with a damn turkey baster. Why not wait to meet a man and—”

  “If I wait for a man, it’ll never happen.” Rachel’s cheeks were still pink and her voice was filled with an emotion I couldn’t place, but it made me want to hold her close. Something wasn’t right here. This wasn’t just about her being ready. That she wanted a baby as soon as possible.

  I didn’t want her to feel like we were ganging up on her, even though that was exactly what we were doing. “Why not?” I asked, my voice much calmer than it had been.

  She noticed and so did Matt if the raising of his eyebrows was any indication.

  She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Trust me, it just won’t happen. Not anytime in this century.”

  “Why not?” Matt asked again. He moderated his growl to match my softer tone.

  “I don’t want to say.”

  I glanced to Matt, who frowned. He reached his arm out, but didn’t dare touch her. “We’re standing in a sperm bank, sweetheart. There’s no secrets from us now. I think you can tell us all of it, don’t you?”

  She shifted from one foot to the other and dropped her gaze down to her feet. “Because I’m not...appealing like that,” she murmured. Her voice just above a whisper. “Not to men. I don’t, um…I don’t do that.”

  Her jumbled explanation had Matt and I exchanging a look of utter confusion. “You think you’re not appealing to men?” I asked.

  The thought was baffling, but she looked sincere when she tilted her chin up with defiance. “I’m not very good in bed. I don’t like being…intimate.” She shrugged as if it was no big deal, but the emotion in her eyes gave her away. The heated anger was replaced with a mixture of strange self-loathing and embarrassment. “If I’m waiting on that, I’ll be waiting a long time. I’m not willing to put off my dreams just because I can’t…you know.” She waved her hand in the air.

  “Get laid?” Matt finished. I glanced over to see him staring at her in complete shock and I knew my face must have looked the same.

  I was trying to understand what she was saying. She wasn’t good in bed. She wasn’t appealing to men. She didn’t do intimacy.

  Yeah, right. Her cheeks darkened again and her lack of an answer was an affirmative. It seemed impossible a gorgeous woman like Rachel could seriously think she wasn’t attractive to men. But she didn’t just believe it, she felt it, too. Felt it enough that a sperm bank was her only option to have a baby.

  “Why on earth do you think you’re not appealing to men?”

  She looked to Matt even though I was the one who asked the question. Her big eyes were filled with embarrassment. She bit her lip.

  If she only knew how hard that small gesture made me, seeing her plump lower lip indented from her teeth, she’d think differently about herself.

  Tears fille
d her eyes, but she took a deep breath, willed them back. I was so impressed with her bravery, with her ability to stay strong when she felt anything but inside.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Even Matt noticed the first time he saw me.”

  When I turned to Matt he looked just as confused as I felt.

  She met my gaze and let out a sigh. “Fine. If you really need to hear me say it, I’ll say it. I’m a virgin.”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response. My brain short-circuited at that bit of news. I heard Matt mutter “holy shit” under his breath as he struggled to process this, too. It wasn’t like we thought Rachel slept around. She definitely didn’t seem like someone who took sex lightly. But a virgin? That was a whole other level of innocence we hadn’t been expecting. She was young—younger than us, at least, but not that young.

  Holy fuck, that meant she was untouched. That no man had seen her gorgeous body, touched it. Made her quiver with pleasure, learned what made her hot. No man had made her come, heard her scream when she did so.

  She seemed to know what I was thinking. No, she didn’t because she would have run out the damn door.

  “That’s right,” she grumbled, walking over to the door. “I’m probably the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in America.”

  She looked mortified and angry, and I scrambled trying to think of some way to make this right. To get it through to her she could trust us. That we could make her happy and give her everything she dreamed of.

  Matt beat her to the door and stood in front of it, blocking her way. He should have done this months ago, to corner her and get the truth out of her. She hadn’t been ready. Now? She’d made a big decision about her life and was following through with it—or had been before we barged in—and now perhaps she’d be ready to see everything. Including us.

  “You’re keeping me here?” If looks could kill, we’d both be dead.