She saw her father’s pickup parked at the back door and realized she needed to get away faster and farther than a horse could take her. Pippa took a chance that the keys would be over the visor, where he usually kept them. She had the engine started and was ready to slam the truck into gear when she was startled by a knock on the window. She angled her head and saw her father standing there, a worried look on his face.
She debated whether to drive away or open the window.
He knocked again insistently, and she heard him say, “Open the window, Pippa, and talk to me.”
She opened the window and asked, “What do you want, Daddy?”
“Where are you going?”
She started to make a flippant response, but she didn’t want to argue with him. She just wanted to be gone before he realized how close to the edge she was. “I’m going to town for breakfast.”
He frowned, and she realized he wasn’t sure whether to believe her.
“The twins are back,” she said. “I can’t endure any more ear-bashing from them.”
He pursed his lips, acknowledging her point. “When will you be back?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, irritated that he’d asked, making her feel like a kid with a curfew. He was the one responsible for her being in this situation. If she’d had a mother…If he’d sent her away to school…If he’d said something about Tim being married…This was all his fault!
“King made plans yesterday to spend time with Nathan at the barn this morning,” she added. So he couldn’t accuse her of shirking that responsibility. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“Maybe you should see an obstetrician. At least get an appointment.”
Pippa’s neck hairs hackled. “Oh, so now you want me taking care of this baby? The one you want me to give away?”
“I want you taking care of yourself,” he replied through tight jaws.
“And the baby can go to hell?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
Pippa felt her face heating and her stomach revolting. “Don’t worry, Daddy. I’ll take care of myself and my baby. You don’t have to worry about either one of us!”
She gunned the engine, the tires screeching as she backed the truck, then took off down the drive that led to the main road, scattering gravel and leaving a trail of dust.
As she raced away, she watched her father in the rearview mirror through eyes blurred by tears. She felt another spurt of resentment toward him. Sure he loved her and wanted the best for her, but she felt smothered by his concern.
Pippa was suddenly gasping for air again and quickly pulled to the side of the road. She crossed her arms on the steering wheel and dropped her head onto her hands, choking and sobbing. She wanted to run away. But where could she go? And how would she support herself when she got there?
She felt the urgent need to escape, to run away from all her troubles. But there was no escape from the reality she faced. A child—her child—was growing inside her. In a matter of months she would be a mother.
I want my mother.
She realized that made no sense. She’d never had a mother to seek advice from. Her father had always been the one she’d turned to. But it was her mother she wanted, all the same. She needed a sympathetic ear. She needed a soft shoulder to cry on. She needed someone who would be on her side. She had a mother out there somewhere who could perhaps fill all those needs. The problem was Jennifer Hart might not want anything to do with her supposedly dead daughter—even if Pippa hadn’t been unwed and pregnant.
Pippa wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but her stomach growled, and she realized she was hungry. She swiped the tears from her eyes with her sleeve, started the pickup, and followed the road into Jackson.
Staying on the correct side of the road required concentration, which was a blessing, because her mind skittered from one possibility for the rest of her life to the next and the next, without ever settling on one. She had no idea what she wanted to do and no idea where to go from here.
The one thing Pippa knew for sure was that she wanted to meet her mother. She knew her mother’s name and that she was living in Texas. Surely she could find her.
Every time Pippa got to that point, she couldn’t help wondering how her mother would feel about a long-lost pregnant daughter who showed up unexpectedly. Maybe she should wait until the baby was born. But she was only in the first trimester. Did she really want to wait that long?
Pippa was no closer to knowing what she wanted to do when she reached town than she had been when she’d left the ranch. She parked her father’s pickup on the town square, which she found quaint—because each of the four corners had a wide, freestanding arch built entirely of weather-whitened antlers. The nearest establishments were nightspots and art galleries, and she started walking down Cache Street, looking for a café where she could get some breakfast.
She turned left onto Broadway, the main street through town, figuring that was the most likely place to find what she was looking for. Instead she discovered ice cream shops and fashion outlets. She turned right on King Street and found the Sweetwater Restaurant, but it didn’t open until 11:30. She glanced at her watch. It was 8:30 a.m.
She was standing on the corner, trying to decide which way to go, when she spied Devon across the street. He was coming out of one of the Jackson Hole Fire Department’s open truck bays cradling something in his arms that was swathed in a baby blanket.
Curiosity kept her standing in place. Then he looked up and saw her, and it was too late to escape without being noticed. She blotted her damp eyelashes again with her sleeve, wondering if he could tell she’d been crying.
He seemed as unsure as she was about what to do. Then he crossed the street and headed toward her.
“What do you have there?” she asked when he reached her.
He opened the blanket so she could see inside. “It’s a juvenile Great Gray Owl.”
Pippa studied the tiny gray-and-white-feathered bird, its yellow eyes sunken in concave circles bracketed by downy gray backward parentheses.
“One of the firefighters found this little one on the ground after they put out a small forest fire. The vet told him it probably wouldn’t survive because of smoke damage to its lungs, but it was still alive this morning, so my brother Brian—he’s a firefighter year-round and a smoke jumper in the summer—called me to come pick it up.”
“Can you help it?”
He covered the owl back up. “I can give it a quiet place to recuperate, and it either will survive, or it won’t.” He surveyed her face and asked, “Are you all right?”
Pippa flushed at his perusal, knowing she must look like hell warmed over. “I’m fine,” she lied.
“What are you doing here in town?”
“Things got a little crazy at the ranch, and I made a break for it.”
“Sounds like the Brats have been acting bratty again.” He smiled, one side of his mouth tilting higher than the other, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
Pippa suppressed a gasp as her body flooded with desire. How did he do it? How did he make her want him with so little effort? “I’d better go,” she said.
“Have you had breakfast yet?”
She thought about lying again but then shook her head. She was hungry, and she needed to eat to keep her stomach from getting upset. “I’ve been looking for an open restaurant.”
“I need to get this owl settled into a comfortable nest. How about coming home with me? I can offer you scrambled eggs and bacon.” He must have seen she was on the fence, because he added, “You can meet Satan—the horse that refuses to be tamed.”
She was intrigued as much by the chance to see where Devon lived as by the horse that couldn’t be broken. Besides, visiting his cabin would keep her away from home a little while longer. “All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”
“Are you here with anybody?”
“I’m on my own.”
“Where are you parked? Do
you want to follow me?”
She recalled her harrowing trip into town trying to stay on the opposite side of the road from what she was used to, and said, “I’d rather ride with you.”
“Fine. Come on.”
When they reached his Dodge Ram, which was parked a little farther down the street, he opened the door so she could step up into it. Before he shut the door, he handed the owl to her and said, “Do you mind holding him? He’ll do better if he’s kept warm.”
As Pippa cradled the tiny bird, it dawned on her that in a few months she would be holding her own child in her arms. Assuming her father didn’t wear her down and convince her to give it away to a loving family. Pippa bit her lower lip. Surely she had more willpower than that.
She wondered if it might be possible to go live with her mother. She imagined a scene where she introduced herself in one breath and admitted she was pregnant and unmarried and needed a place to stay in the next. Tears rose in her eyes, and she turned away from Devon as she blinked them back. Waiting wasn’t going to solve anything. She’d just end up greeting her mother for the first time unwed, homeless, and with a newborn baby in her arms.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Pippa glanced around and saw they were passing the elk refuge outside of town. She wished she were as free to roam as they were. But she was as bogged down by her circumstances as a calf in a mudhole. Since she wasn’t ready to reveal her pregnancy to Devon, she said, “My father admitted to me that my mother is still alive, and that she’s living in Texas.”
“Wow! That’s…Wow! Are you going to call her? Maybe go see her?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. She doesn’t know I exist. Her parents told her I died at birth.”
Devon raised a brow in astonishment. “And no one ever told her the truth?”
“My dad never did. I don’t suppose her parents did, either, since they were the ones who lied to her in the first place.”
Pippa noticed they’d turned off the state road onto what must once have been a wagon trail bounded on both sides by thick forest. “It looks like you live off the beaten path.”
He grinned. “Yep. We have another half hour or so to go to get to my cabin.” He hesitated, then said, “I have to admit I was surprised to see you in town.”
She sighed. “The Brats aren’t the only ones making my life difficult. When I got home from our picnic my little brother Nathan was missing, and the police were there helping to search for him.” She saw Devon’s alarm and interjected, “We found him and he was fine. But it’s my job to watch him, and my dad wasn’t too happy with me for delegating the responsibility to Leah. We argued about that…and other things.”
“So you didn’t just come into town for breakfast without the Brats.”
She shook her head, feeling her throat tightening again, feeling the crushing weight in her chest that made it hard to breathe. “I needed to get away. From Daddy. From the Brats. From…everything.”
“Then I’m glad I ran into you. You’re welcome to hang out at my place for as long as you like.”
Pippa caught her lower lip in her teeth. There it was in front of her. A bolt-hole for a haunted animal on its last legs, so exhausted it can barely draw breath. Pippa grabbed at the chance to escape with her life. “Do you have room for me?”
He looked startled for a second, then said, “You mean somewhere for you to sleep overnight?”
She nodded, realizing that she’d misconstrued his offer, but desperate enough that she was willing to accept a bed on the floor if that was all he had. “Anything would do. A pallet on the floor is fine.”
He raised a brow at that, and Pippa realized she had to do a better job of hiding her anxiety. She didn’t want him asking questions she wasn’t yet willing to answer.
“It’s no trouble,” he said. “I have a second bedroom. I’m just a little…I mean, after what happened at the pond, I’m surprised you asked.”
Pippa flushed and shot him a look from beneath lowered lashes. She was the one who’d said she couldn’t be his friend anymore. Did she owe him an explanation? She lifted her gaze to meet his and said, “There’s a lot going on I can’t tell you about. It would mean a lot to me if I could stay with you for a little while.”
He shrugged as though it were no big deal, and said, “My house is your house.”
Pippa tried to smile in thanks but couldn’t manage it. What had she just done? Was she really going to stay with Devon and not go home? Why not? As she’d told her father, she was a grown woman. She could make her own decisions. Right now, space from her father and her aunts was something she needed as much as she needed air to breathe. She felt a fleeting remorse for leaving Nathan on his own, but there was no help for it.
She considered calling to let her father know what she was doing and where she would be staying but decided against it. Knowing how protective he was, and judging by his behavior when she’d taken off with Tim, she was pretty sure he’d insist she come home. She didn’t want to have to fight him. She needed time and distance to figure out what to do about her baby. About her mother. About her life.
She’d left the keys in her father’s truck, and he could easily find it in town. She’d text him tomorrow and tell him that she was fine and that she’d be in touch when she was ready to come home—if and when that time came.
Pippa felt a niggling sense of unease but tamped it down. She needed the space to breathe freely again. And she was going to do whatever was necessary to get it.
Chapter 13
PIPPA ISSUED AN “Aaah!” of appreciation when she saw Devon’s home for the first time. She hadn’t expected his cabin in the mountains to look so rustic. The huge logs blended into the surrounding forest of pines and budding aspens and the pitched roof created a cozy porch across the entire front of the house. Scattered patches of snow surrounding the cabin were interspersed with sunlit patches of green growth.
“What a wonderful porch,” she said.
“What a necessary porch,” he replied as he took the owl-in-a-blanket from her. In response to her questioning look he explained, “That’s the only way to keep the snow from blocking the front door in the winter.”
Wulf came loping around the corner of the house and ran straight to Pippa to be petted.
“Hey,” Devon said. “What about me?”
The wolf put his paws on Devon’s shoulders and immediately stuck his nose into the blanket in his hands. Devon quickly pressed the blanket against his chest to protect the baby owl. “This is not food!”
Wulf dropped to all fours and headed up the steps toward the front door, where he sat and waited to be let inside.
“I guess he must be hungry,” Pippa said with a laugh.
“I keep him well fed so he doesn’t turn the local cattle into lunch.”
Pippa gestured toward the baskets filled with spring flowers that hung on the front of chest-high pine stumps. The stumps also provided a base for ornamental lamps on either side of the steps. “All of this is lovely.”
“And also necessary,” he said as he headed up the steps before her, cradling the owl. “It’s pitch black out here at night.”
The door wasn’t locked, and he opened it and gestured her inside. “Welcome to my home.”
Pippa shivered as her left breast accidentally brushed Devon’s arm when Wulf crowded her as she entered the house. She took three steps inside, then turned in a circle that ended with her facing Devon, who stood just inside the door, which he’d closed behind him.
She smiled. “Your home looks like something from another century.”
“I made most of the furniture myself,” he admitted. “The buffalo hide I picked up from an estate sale, and I bought the Navajo rug over the fireplace at an art festival in town.”
She crossed to a painting on the wall and studied it. She glanced back at him over her shoulder and asked, “Local art gallery?”
“Good guess, but no.” He crossed to an empty cage on the kitchen floor,
put the baby owl—blanket and all—inside, and turned on a light above the cage intended to keep whatever was inside warm. Then he took off his coat and hung it on the back of one of the two stools at the cut-stone counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. He immediately began pulling out pots and pans.
“Can I help?” she asked.
He gestured with his chin toward one of the bar stools and said, “Make yourself comfortable. I’ve got this.”
She arranged her coat on the back of the second stool and sat down. “So where did that lovely painting come from?”
“My brother Brian.”
“It was a gift?”
“He’s the artist.”
Pippa swiveled the stool around to look at the exquisite painting again. “Brian the firefighter?”
Devon chuckled. “You sound surprised.”
She swiveled the chair back around to face him. “I am.”
“How do you like your eggs?” he asked.
“Scrambled.”
“Bacon? Raisin toast?”
“Yes, please.”
He spread a half dozen slices of bacon on a flat skillet and began cracking eggs into a bowl. He dropped four pieces of raisin toast in a toaster and shoved down the lever. Once he had their breakfast started, he began preparing what turned out to be a bowl of food for Wulf, who was investigating the owl with his nose. Pippa was interested to see that the bowl contained mostly raw meat, which finally diverted Wulf’s attention from the injured bird.
Devon set down the bowl and continued, “Firefighters have a lot of spare time on their hands at the station. Some of them work out. Some learn to be better cooks. Some read a lot of books. Brian spends his time painting.”
She left the stool to take a closer look at the painting of a cowboy in a yellow slicker on horseback, riding along a creek with a single Black Angus cow in the foreground. She studied the cowboy’s evocative face. He looked lonely and alone. “Your brother’s a good artist.”
“Better than just good, I think,” Devon said. “But Brian refuses to show his art. He gives his paintings away to friends, but only if they promise not to reveal the artist.”
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