The Rancher's Surprise Baby

by Trish Milburn

  “You remember that time Greg got me in trouble in high school?”

  “How could I forget? Those pictures were epic. I thought Mr. Kushner was going to pop a vein.”

  “Mandy may have given me a way to finally get some payback.”

  “Okay, now I’m intrigued,” Sloane said.

  He told them about the wrongfully delivered pink streamers and how Mandy had suggested they wrap Greg’s truck in them and how he, in an evident moment of insanity, went along with it. He mentioned how they’d almost been caught but skipped right over how he’d held Mandy in the dark, feeling her soft curves and her chest rising and falling against his, how he’d experienced the almost irresistible urge to drop his mouth to hers.

  “I’d give good money to have seen Greg’s face when he saw that truck,” Sloane said.

  “Heck, I’d settle just for seeing the truck.” Angel laughed.

  Ben pulled out his phone and scrolled to the photo Mandy had sent him then extended the phone to Angel.

  “Oh, my, that’s awesome,” she said before handing the phone to Sloane.

  Sloane snorted. “I cannot wait to tease Greg about this.”

  “Don’t tell him who did it.”

  “I won’t, but probably half the town knows about this by now. People are probably hopping in their cars to cruise by to see it.”

  “He may have it all off by now.”

  “Trust me, a fair number of people would have gone to gawk before he managed to remove all that. You and Mandy did an excellent job.” She shook her head then looked up at him. “One thing I don’t understand, though. How did that prank on Mr. Kushner even come up in conversation?”

  He shrugged as he took his phone back. “Don’t remember how we got on that topic.”

  “Nice try but you’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yep, you are, and I’m going to figure out what you’re hiding.”

  “You live to annoy people, don’t you?”

  “Side benefit of being part of a big family.”

  He shook his head in annoyance. “Good night, Angel.”

  Sloane just laughed as he headed inside. He wished he’d gone straight in when he arrived instead of confessing what he’d been out doing. This day just needed to end before the house caved in on him.

  * * *

  MANDY DRANK THE last bit of coffee in her cup as she stared out the window over her sink, which gave her a good view of the driveway. She wasn’t normally an anxious person, but waiting for Ben to arrive had her fidgety. She’d only been able to eat a piece of toast. There was probably a trip to Mehlerhaus Bakery in her future about midmorning.

  She recognized how crazy it was to have a fear of morning-after awkwardness when it really wasn’t a morning after. There’d been no sex. Not even any nakedness.

  No! She did not need to think about Ben and being naked. Not when he would be arriving any minute.

  It had taken her forever to fall asleep the night before, but she’d had the hope that she’d wake up and feel perfectly normal this morning. That all the unexpected attraction to Ben had simply been an odd side effect of the crazy day before she’d had. Ha! The attraction had followed her into sleep, where she’d had dreams about things that could have happened in that darkened corner next to Greg’s shop if he hadn’t come close to discovering her and Ben.

  Mandy’s face flushed and she splashed it with water for the umpteenth time that morning. Good thing she was a minimalist when it came to makeup—it only took her about thirty seconds to reapply it.

  The sound of Ben’s truck sent her heart into overdrive. That was it. She would call Greg when she got to work and tell him she needed her repaired car, like, yesterday.

  She dumped the last dribbles of coffee into the sink, rinsed the cup and placed it on the counter. After a deep, calming breath, she grabbed her purse and headed outside. She didn’t give him time to get out of his truck, stepping up to the passenger door as soon as he came to a stop.

  “Good morning,” she said with perhaps too much enthusiasm as she pulled herself up into the truck.

  Ben looked across the cab at her, the area between his brows furrowed. “You always this peppy in the morning? If so, I’m going to have to rethink my offer to drive you to work.”

  “Grumpus.”

  He just growled at her and proceeded to back out of the driveway.

  “I appreciate you taking me to work. You won’t have to again. I’m calling Greg today to tell him I really need my car back.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ben said as he pulled out onto the road. “I just didn’t sleep well.”

  A pang of guilt hit her. “I’m sorry I dragged you out last night.”

  “No need to apologize. It was actually the best part of my day.”

  The guilt in her middle got shoved aside by a zing of excitement. Acting normal would be so much easier if he didn’t say things like that, even if he didn’t mean it in the way she’d like him to.

  “Admittedly, it only had to clear a really low bar,” she said.

  “True. Still, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall—or in the tree, I guess—while he was removing all those streamers.”

  Mandy smiled at that image in her mind. “Heaven help us if he finds out we did it.”

  She fidgeted when the conversation died. Normally, she didn’t have trouble chatting away with people whether they were friends, casual acquaintances or complete strangers. But the buzzy feeling she’d gotten around Ben since the previous day had her second-guessing everything she might say. The fact that it was still hanging around this morning after a night of sleep and several hours away from him had her feeling equal parts antsy, thrilled and confused. How could you go basically your whole life knowing someone without feeling more than a passing knowledge that he was good-looking and then one day, whammo, your heart rate refused to behave itself around him?

  “See the mountain lion again?”

  Oh, good, safe topic.

  “No. Hopefully he’s moved on.”

  “Would be better if he’s found before he hurts someone or attacks a pet or cattle.”

  “Will he be killed? That doesn’t seem fair.”

  Ben glanced toward her. “If he’s not hurt anyone, he may be relocated.”

  “Let’s hope that happens.” She wondered if Ben thought she was too much of a softy toward a wild animal, but she couldn’t help it. The cat was just being a cat in a world where the ability to do so was shrinking every day. She didn’t want anyone hurt or, heaven forbid, anything worse to happen, but she also didn’t want the mountain lion put down just for scaring the daylights out of her by strolling across her yard.

  Their trip into town seemed both too quick and glacially slow. She liked being around Ben, surprising as that might be, but his proximity also threw her off-kilter. A day of work and talking with people who weren’t Ben Hartley might be what she needed to settle back into the normality that existed prior to his unfortunate bird to the head the day before.

  He pulled into a spot a couple of doors down from A Good Yarn but left his truck running, indicating he had work to get back to.

  “Thanks for the ride. Don’t worry about picking me up.”

  “Until your car is fixed, you’re just going to have to get used to me being your chauffeur.”

  Why was he being so adamant about that? “You sure are stubborn.”

  “So my mom has always said.”

  As she hopped out of his truck onto the sidewalk, she spotted a few familiar faces noticing whose vehicle she was exiting. Not that the entire town didn’t already know he’d driven her home the day before. That was how things worked in small towns. Honestly, she and Ben would be lucky if the fact they were behind the Great Streamer Caper didn’t become
public knowledge.

  “Happy saddle making,” she said with a wave.

  “Happy yarn selling.”

  Knowing that eyes were upon her, she made sure she didn’t smile too widely and resisted the urge to watch him drive away. Instead, she unlocked the front door of the shop, walked inside and went straight to the phone.

  It took Greg four rings to answer his phone at the garage. She supposed his office help hadn’t arrived yet.

  “Hey, it’s Mandy Richardson. Just checking on my car.”

  “I’ve got a couple more in front of it, but I should be able to begin work on it tomorrow.”

  “Begin? How long is it going to take?”

  Mandy paced the length of the three aisles lined with knitting, sewing and assorted craft supplies. “There’s no way you can get to it sooner, like today?”

  “I thought you had a driver for a while.”

  She detected the hint of teasing in his voice, and she had to bite her tongue to not ask him how he liked having a pink truck complete with a big bow.

  “Ben has work to do. So do I. Work that is located nowhere near each other.”

  “Seems only fair. He was the one who ran into your car.”

  “Greg, I don’t know if Verona Charles is paying you or something, but cut it out.”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Bull. How about you stick to fixing cars—like mine?”

  Mandy spotted Devon at the front of the shop. She hadn’t even heard her come in and wondered how much of the conversation she’d heard. The way Mandy had urged her to go for Cole, she didn’t have any doubt what her best friend would say when she found out that Mandy was attracted to Ben. After all, Devon would no doubt see some parallels since she’d known Cole for years without them spending any significant time together.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Greg said in her ear.

  She mumbled a quick thanks and hurried to hang up the phone. “Hey,” she called out as she walked toward the front of the store. “What are you doing here?”

  Devon shrugged. “Just decided to come in for a little bit.”

  Yeah, right.

  Devon leaned her hip against the front of the counter that held the cash register, a grin rivaling the brightness of her red hair. “So, Ben Hartley, huh?”

  Mandy pulled out her best Meryl Streep. “What about him?”

  “Nice try.” Devon motioned back down the aisle. “I heard you giving Greg an earful over your car. That is not the laid-back Mandy Richardson I know. So I asked myself, ‘Self, why would she be in such a hurry to be free of her hunky chauffeur? Might it be because she’s attracted to him and it’s freaking her out?’”

  Mandy snarled at her friend and walked past her to place the phone in the base charger. “Sometimes you’re really annoying.”

  Devon laughed. “I think I might have said something very similar to you not all that long ago.”

  Mandy sank onto the tall stool behind the counter. “I feel as if I was the one hit in the head by the pigeon.”

  Devon turned to face her. “Why?”

  Because she knew her friend would pry every bit of information out of her anyway, Mandy shared everything that had happened the previous day from the moment Ben had run into her car.

  “I thought maybe I was having these weird feelings because it had been a crazy day or as a result of being around my besotted best friend all the time, that it would go away with a good night’s sleep.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Nope.”

  “And why is that a problem?”

  Mandy shrugged. “I don’t know. Just feels strange to suddenly start liking someone like this when I’ve known him forever, and not even been close friends.”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “Trust me when I say I recognize the irony.”

  “Just go with it and see where it leads.”

  “What if it goes nowhere?”

  “Then at least you’ll know.”

  Was her attraction a temporary condition? If not, she didn’t look forward to harboring it knowing that Ben wasn’t interested. That sounded like a barrel of fun when they’d no doubt be unable to avoid each other for the rest of their lives. And what if he got married and started having a bunch of little miniature versions of himself?

  Dang, her imagination was revved up on rocket fuel.

  Devon’s phone buzzed with a text. When she looked down at it, she laughed. “Looks as if your handiwork is making the rounds.”

  Mandy looked at the image of Greg’s pink streamer-covered truck from the night before and noticed several people in the background with amused looks on their faces. She couldn’t help a snort of her own laughter at the sight of that big pink bow on the trailer hitch.

  “He’ll probably spin this so that it actually was perpetrated by some gal who is madly in love with him,” Mandy said.

  “Why Verona hasn’t set her sights on him yet, I have no idea. Maybe we should put a bug in her ear.”

  Mandy pointed toward the image on Devon’s phone. “That might be the bug right there.”

  As the next couple of hours progressed, she threw herself into work while trying to forget about Ben and her unexpected attraction. But her brain was having none of it and kept thinking about his smile, his laugh, the feel of his arms around her as they’d hidden from Greg, how quickly he’d come to her front door when he thought she might be in danger from that mountain lion and how willing he’d been to take part in pranking Greg even after a long, tiring day. Damn, the man hit all her buttons, but now she understood why Devon had been so worried about confessing her true feelings to Cole. She couldn’t imagine the awkwardness of repeatedly having to see the person you liked who didn’t like you back. She suspected unrequited crushes didn’t get any easier with age.

  But would it be unrequited? Her attraction wasn’t the only thing that had surprised her in the past twenty-four hours. The fact that she was so nervous about it, the possibility that it might not fade, and that she might find out Ben didn’t want to explore that path with her had her feeling as if she wasn’t even herself.

  Talking with customers and stocking shelves did nothing to alleviate her racing mind or inability to stop fidgeting.

  “I’m going to get something from the bakery,” she said as she grabbed her wallet from beneath the front counter. “Want anything?”

  Devon looked up from where she was emailing out the latest shop newsletter. “I wouldn’t say no to a bear claw.”

  Thankful to get away from Devon’s knowing glances for a few minutes, she strolled down the street then crossed over at the corner. When she stepped into the bakery and inhaled the heavenly scents of chocolate, cinnamon and vanilla, she felt herself relax and her mouth water. This was what she needed. If there was one thing that stood a chance of shoving the memory of being pressed close to Ben’s chest from her mind, it was an infusion of sugar and carbohydrates.

  Keri Teague, the owner of the bakery and wife of local sheriff Simon Teague, waved from where she was taking what looked like a tray of freshly baked turnovers out of the oven. “Be there in a sec.”

  Keri’s sister-in-law, Josephina, was busy ringing up the order for a group of customers.

  “What can I get ya?” Keri asked as she stepped up behind the glass-fronted display case.

  “Were those turnovers you just pulled from the oven?”

  “Yes, apple and cherry.”

  “Well, one of those apple pies has my name on it. And Devon wants a bear claw.”

  “Coming right up.”

  “Hey, Mandy.”

  She turned to see that one of the women who’d been paying for a purchase was none other than Shantele Drayton Osborne. Just her luck. Next to
Shantele stood her bestie, Fancy Drennan. Mandy still couldn’t believe that anyone would name their child Fancy.

  “Hi, Shantele. Fancy.”

  “Heard Ben Hartley ran into your car yesterday,” Shantele said as she used her finger to scoop part of the icing off the edge of her pink-frosted cupcake.

  “Yeah.” Though she would remain civil, Mandy wasn’t about to be her normal chatty self and invite more conversation with these two. Her dislike of them and how they’d walked all over people like her stretched back years, and they probably didn’t even have a clue. Mandy had the ungracious thought that they rarely had a clue.

  Shantele had such a history of self-centeredness that she probably didn’t even remember the dress incident.

  Mandy watched as Shantele licked the dollop of icing from the end of her finger and hoped she got fat.

  “I wouldn’t mind if Ben Hartley ran into me,” Shantele said.

  Red-hot jealousy shot through Mandy’s veins like a torpedo. She didn’t have any right to feel that way, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  “I’d think your husband would have something to say about that.” Mandy somehow kept her facial expression neutral when she really wanted to revel in her zinger.

  Shantele glanced at Fancy with a knowing smile then said to Mandy in a conspiratorial, faux whisper, “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  The very idea of Ben with Shantele, especially after his admission that he’d once had a thing for her, made Mandy want to take Shantele’s cupcake and shove it up her nose. That wasn’t very kind or ladylike, but hey, you felt what you felt.

  “It’s a small town. He’d find out.” She let her words lie between them, letting Shantele wonder if Mandy might be the one to tell him. “Can’t imagine the tantrum he’d have.”

  Mandy detected the slight narrowing of Shantele’s eyes before she pulled her fake smile from her repertoire and said, “Always good to see you, Mandy. We’re off for a day of shopping in Austin.” She said the last as she and Fancy exited the building.