A Baby Changes Everything by Marie Ferrarella Page B

brief moment in time, the long years of marriage, with its routine that caused him to take things for granted, faded into the background, along with the overwhelming weight of all the responsibilities he had on his shoulders. For a brief moment, all there was was Savannah.
    He sank into the kiss, allowing the fire that came up into his belly to spread out to his limbs.
    Making him want her.
    Making him wish with all his soul that he didn’t have to walk out that door in the next few minutes because his men and his ranch were all waiting on him.
    Savannah had no idea what came over her husband, or why. All she knew was that for a second, he was her Cruz again, the man who could have made her walk to the ends of the earth if he’d so much as indicated that he wanted her to.
    The man who could make her head spin and her pulse race even faster than it had the moment she’d seen Luke go crashing onto the tabletop and then through it; or the time she’d seen him sail off his swing and arc into the air, only to mercifully land in his sand pile, sustaining bruises instead of broken bones.
    Her pulse raced faster than all that.
    Her fingers tightened around the lapels she was grasping as she rose up on her toes, sinking further into the kiss.
    Into the promise.
    She felt his body harden against her and she smiled broadly against his lips.
    Finally, Cruz forced himself to pull back, knowing he was at the critical point. If he didn’t stop now, he wasn’t going to. And there was no telling when Luke would come down or one of his men might come to the door, looking for him, wondering what was keeping him.
    He smiled down into her eyes. “Consider that a retainer.”
    Savannah grinned, touching her lips as she leaned against the table at her back. “If I knew you were going to react that way, I would have suggested camping a lot sooner.”
    He was about to answer her when there was a knock on the front door.
    â€œGo.” She waved him off. “That’s bound to be Hank, wondering why you haven’t come out to play yet.”
    â€œPlay,” he snorted, shaking his head. “Woman, do you have any idea what it is I do out there?”
    â€œYou work very, very hard,” she agreed. “But you also like what you’re doing. It’s not as if you’re putting on a jacket and tie and going off to sit behind a desk in an office all day.” She knew that would have killed him as surely as a well-aimed bullet. There was another knock on the door and she shooed him again. “Now go. Make yourself and us proud,” she instructed.
    In that order, too, she thought as she watched him head out the front door. Because if Cruz wasn’t proud of himself, then no amount of words from her could make him feel that way. He needed it as much as he needed the very air he breathed.
    Savannah just wished it wouldn’t take quite so much out of him.
    Â 
    They were getting worse.
    Coming out of nowhere, the headaches would attack without warning, laying siege to his temples, his forehead. Wild, savage little men with pickaxes would storm over his skull and begin pounding madly.
    Sometimes the headaches were almost blinding.
    Sitting at his desk in his spacious office suite, Ryan Fortune ran his hand along his forehead, as if the action could somehow make the almost wrenching pain recede, if only a little.
    But it didn’t.
    Just as he knew it wouldn’t.
    He sighed, telling himself it was a case of mind over matter. Telling himself to hold on until this newest bout would fade, as it always had before.
    It felt as if the very top of his skull was being torn off.
    The headaches were happening more frequently now, and it was getting harder and harder to pretend that nothing was wrong. That this was just some anomaly, an annoying roadblock that his body was throwing up for no apparent reason.
    Aches and pains were facts of life. First they assaulted you as growing pains, then