Not Quite Married by Christine Rimmer

that. “Now finish your soup.”
    “I’ve had all I want, thank you.”
    He only looked at her patiently.
    She stared back at him, defiant. But not for long. Finally, with a put-upon little scowl, she picked up the container and started spooning it in her mouth.
    * * *
    Dalton slept in the upstairs bedroom that night. Clara lay in her bed downstairs and thought about him up there, in that room that just happened to be directly above hers, sleeping in the old cherrywood sleigh bed that had once belonged to her mother’s mother.
    Life was so strange, really. You could give a man up, totally accept that it wasn’t meant to be. And then six months later, have him sleeping in your spare room, determined to take care of you whether you wanted him to or not.
    In the morning, he cooked oatmeal with raisins and honey for breakfast. She ate a nice, big bowlful.
    Then she camped out on the couch with the TV remote, her phone and her laptop. Renée was under orders to call in and report between the breakfast and lunch rushes, and then a second time once they closed the doors for the day.
    It was during the after-breakfast report that all the stuff Dalton had ordered brought up from Denver started arriving. She heard the front door opening and closing, men’s heavy footsteps going up and down the stairs. They were pretty quiet about it, actually, and that made her smile. She could just picture Dalton scowling at them, ordering them to keep it down because there was a pregnant woman on the couch who was supposed to be resting.
    The men’s footsteps came and went for over an hour. Ryan came by to see how she was doing as Lord knew what all was still being hauled up the stairs.
    He came and sat in the wing chair beside her and said, “I don’t think your new boyfriend likes me very much.”
    She was instantly on full alert. “He’s not my boyfriend. Did he say he was? Tell me the truth. What did he do? I’ll talk to him.”
    Rye gave her his most charming grin. “Leave it alone. It was just a dirty look.”
    “I mean it. If he gives you any grief, you had better come and tell me.”
    For that she got one of those guy looks, a look of simultaneous patience and dismissal. “Come on, Clara. You know damn well I’m not going to do that. We’ll work it out, him and me, in our own way.”
    “As long as there’s no bloodshed involved.”
    “I’m making no promises—and are you even going to tell me why it looks like the guy is moving in?”
    “Because he is moving in. I’m on modified bed rest and Dalton wants to help.”
    “Help.” Another guy look. The kind that said she was a woman and women had no idea what was really going on.
    “Yes, Ryan. Dalton is here to help.”
    “If he wants to help, he should man up and marry you.”
    There it was again. Marriage. Everybody seemed to think it was the only solution when the stick turned blue. “I love you, Ryan. But right now I just want to kill you.”
    “Why kill me ? He’s the one who—”
    “I am so tired of having this conversation over and over. He asked me to marry him, okay? I turned him down.”
    Ryan opened his mouth—and then shut it without speaking. And then finally, he said, “You turned down his marriage proposal, but you’re letting him move in?”
    “What’s so hard to understand about that? He wants to help, okay? He wants to be sure that I take care of myself.”
    Ryan frowned. “I don’t get it.”
    “You don’t have to get it.”
    A one-shouldered shrug. “Whatever you say.”
    Clara suggested, “Let’s just change the subject, okay?”
    So they talked for a little longer about nothing in particular. And when he got up to go, he asked her if she needed anything.
    She said, “Just stop by and cheer me up now and then. It’s looking like I’ll be right here on this couch or in my bed until this baby’s born.”
    He bent over and kissed her on the forehead and said he’d be back soon and she should call him if she needed him. “Anytime,