Could’ve been his imagination, but Outlaw snorted in reply.
He scratched the horse’s neck. “Good. How about you lead me to them so we can call it a day?”
He lifted the calf onto the saddle first, then hoisted himself up, the weight of the water and mud making him feel a good fifty pounds heavier than he had when he’d left the stable. The orphaned calf looked up at him, helpless and trusting. Brett usually didn’t think of the livestock as cute, but this one surely was, with long lashes, a soft buttercream-colored coat and a pink nose. He wrapped his coat around it and held it close.
“We’ll get you home soon and make you up a bottle as soon as we find your mama’s friends. I do believe we’re gonna name you Twister. How does that sound?”
The calf’s tongue came out to lick a pebble of hail from its nose, the cutest thing Brett might’ve ever seen besides his nephew, Seth.
Jack, Brett’s oldest brother, was going to be furious about the loss of the cow. Already, he didn’t trust Brett, and this wasn’t going to help. But Brett was tired of working under his brother like some hired hand, getting his butt chewed for every perceived misstep. He was ready to redeem his reputation and earn his slice of the Colton legacy—and he had just the plan to make it work. All he needed now was to hire a financial whiz to help him crunch the numbers and profit projections he’d need to help Jack see his point of view.
With a whistle and a nudge of Brett’s boots, Outlaw burst into motion back through the storm toward home while Brett’s mind churned, plotting and planning his next move to seize a hold of his bright future once and for all.
* * *
Being a poster girl for the perils of sin had gotten Hannah Grayson nowhere fast. For as much mileage as her family’s church had gotten out of using Hannah’s accidental pregnancy as a cautionary tale, they could have at least provided her with a small stipend to ease the sting of being disowned by her parents, fired from her job and evicted from her apartment, all while battling a nasty case of morning sickness.
From her pocket, she withdrew the help-wanted ads she’d printed from Tulsa World newspaper’s online classifieds. Every lead on the papers but one had been crossed out as a dead end. She’d been counting on her newly minted accounting degree from Tulsa United Online University to help her land on her feet, but every employer she’d met with had taken one look at the now-obvious swell of her belly and decided she wasn’t qualified for the job.
With her meager savings running out, she’d made a deal with herself to explore this one last lead before giving up on accounting in favor of a retail or a fast-food position, but it was a long shot at best.
Tulsa businessman in need of an accountant for a temporary project, discretion a must.
No name or company name given, no phone number or address. Just a generic email address of “oklahoma45678” that could belong to anybody. Including a psychopath. Which was why she’d created a new, generic email address of her own to reply to the ad and had refused to give out even her name to the individual when she agreed to meet him at a window booth in the Armadillo Diner & Pie Company.
Replacing the classified ad in her purse, she paused at the window of the Fluff and Fold to check herself in the window reflection. Wisps of her pencil-straight black hair lifted in the wind that had hung around Tulsa since the previous week’s storm. She smoothed them into place and used the pad of her thumb to sharpen the line of her light pink lip gloss on her bottom lip.
The gray slacks were a clearance-rack find from a couple months earlier, when they’d been a loose fit. Now, the waist sat below the swell of her belly, which she’d covered with a form-fitting pale pink blouse. She could have de-emphasized the evidence of her pregnancy with another outfit, but all that had done in the past was delay the inevitable disinterest from the prospective employers that came when she disclosed the truth, and wasted everyone’s time. Better to put her condition out in the open right up front, before a single word was exchanged.
With her eyes on her reflection, she stood tall and proud, rubbing a hand over her belly. “Something’s going to work out, little guy. Or girl. If this opportunity isn’t it, then we’ll keep trying. I’m not going to let you down.”
She squared her shoulders and strode toward the diner door, harnessing her pride and owning her power. She was a terrific accountant and a good person. That had to count for something. Maybe Mr. Anonymous Businessman would be the first person to see her for the workplace asset she could be.
Inside the Armadillo, the smell of old, burned coffee and cooking eggs rushed up on Hannah, making her stomach lurch. She ground to a stop in the waiting area. Hands on her hips, she raised her face to the ceiling and breathed through her mouth as the wave of nausea passed. When she’d selected the diner as a meeting place, she’d been hoping for a free meal, not the possibility of the diner smells triggering her morning sickness.
“You okay, darlin’?”
Hannah lowered her gaze to see a middle-aged waitress eyeing her with concern from behind blue-tinted eyelashes, tapping a laminated menu against her palm.
“I think so. Food smells, you know?” She rubbed her baby bump and offered a smile to Janice, or so the waitress’s name tag read.
“Oh, I know. Try working here while pregnant, with the omelets in the morning and the liver-platter special at dinner. I spent the first half of each of my pregnancies serving the food, then running to the can. How far along are you?”
The mention of eggs and liver had Hannah raising her face to the ceiling again. “Nineteen weeks.”
“Ah. Well, the worst of it should be about over. You want a table near the air vent, I bet.”
After another fortifying breath through her mouth, Hannah lowered her face and smiled at Janice. “Actually, I’m meeting someone here. Job interview.”
Her curiosity about Mr. Anonymous’s identity had her shifting her gaze from Janice to the row of window booths. There was only one man at a booth by the window. Brett Colton, and he was standing up next to the table, his napkin in his hand, nailing her with a gaze of utter shock.
Gasping, Hannah wrenched her face away. Crap on a cracker. This can’t be happening.
Janice’s voice floated over the air as though from a great distance. “Well, bless your heart, looking for work in your condition. What does your baby daddy have to say about that?”
Her baby daddy was about to say a whole lot because, judging by his expression, he’d heard the whole exchange with Janice and was really good at doing fast math in his head.
“Excuse me,” Hannah muttered. Then she pivoted in place and marched back out the door.
She paced the sidewalk in front of the diner, garnering her courage because she knew with 100 percent certainty that Brett was going to follow her out and demand the answers he deserved. Over the past few months, she’d played this moment in her head a dozen different ways, but it never looked anything like this. She never planned to leave him in the dark about the baby. All she’d wanted to do was hold off on telling him until she had a job and a permanent place to stay.
“Anna, wasn’t it?” The growl of Brett Colton’s sexy-as-sin voice had her freezing in her tracks. She squeezed her eyes closed as mortification set in that the father of her child didn’t even remember her name correctly. Then again, what did she expect from Tulsa’s most notorious playboy? She bet he seduced a different girl every night of the week, or so the rumors would have her believe.
She fluttered her eyes open and caught sight of her reflection in the Fluff and Fold window again, surprised at the sight of a meek girl hanging her head, dread and guilt etched in her features. What happened to the proud, confident woman she’d been only a few minutes earlier? She’d done nothing wrong and broken no rules. There was no official timetable on telling a man you were pregnant with his child.
Clinging to that truth, she
straightened up, smoothed her features, and then spun to face Brett. “It’s Hannah, actually.”
He winced at that, and then those soulful green eyes turned sheepish—a reaction that Hannah found absurdly comforting. “Sorry. Hannah.” He closed and opened his mouth, his eyes flitting from her belly to her face, as though he was in the same clueless state of communication as she was. “I, uh...you’re, um...nineteen weeks. That’s about when we, uh...”
“Yes. I know. It’s yours,” she blurted. And cue her turn to wince. So much for breaking the news to him gently.
The sheepishness vanished from his face, along with the color. “That’s impossible.”
She schooled her features to mask a sudden flare of irritation. “Really? Ya think?” Okay, so maybe she hadn’t done that terrific a job concealing her feelings.
“We used protection, so how is that possible?”
She’d asked herself that same question a million times. “Yes, we did. We used protection that you supplied, in fact. So maybe you should be the one explaining to me how it happened.”
His eyes narrowed. “Moving on. You’re going to have to work pretty hard to convince me of the reason you kept this from me. When were you planning on telling me, anyway? Or did you?”
The accusation dripping from his words got her back up. “So you didn’t remember my name correctly, yet you expected me to remember yours and know where to find you? Narcissistic much?”
His mouth fell open at that and the color returned to his face in full force. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I...”
He looked so abashed and sincerely apologetic that all the fight rushed out of her. “That wasn’t fair of me. I’m sorry. The truth is, I did remember your name and I fully planned to tell you. I was looking to get my life in order first.”
The ranching community of Tulsa was an everybody’s in everybody’s business kind of town, and Hannah couldn’t bear for her baby to be born under a cloud of suspicion and rumors that his or her mother was a gold digger, getting pregnant on purpose to get at the Colton fortune. It would be bad enough for her baby having its mama’s reputation run through the mud in the church community.
His mouth screwed up as though he didn’t buy what she was selling. “By answering a sketchy classified ad for temporary work? I’ve been in your car and to your apartment. Your life is the opposite of screwed up. Try again.”
She smoothed a hand over her stomach out of habit. If he wanted to hear the whole pathetic story, then who was she to deny him?
“That’s the truth, whether you believe it or not. When my parents found out I was pregnant, they relieved me of the burden of being their daughter, which included firing me from managing the feed-supply store they own. And, because I’d sunk all my money into getting my accounting degree, I had nothing in savings. So I sold my car to pay my doctor bills, which then got me evicted from my apartment.
“I’m trying to get my life back on track, but nothing I’ve tried is working. I can’t just snap my fingers and fix my life. All I wanted to do is land on my feet before coming to you. A job. And a place to live.” She’d wanted to tell him truthfully that she was doing fine and didn’t need his financial support or—God forbid—a mercy proposal of marriage. She’d seen enough of her parents’ own unhappy marriage to know that wasn’t the life she wanted for her or her child.
“The only trouble is,” she continued, “who’s going to hire a pregnant lady for any kind of real job, with health insurance and maternity leave? Nobody, as it turns out, because I’ve looked. I’ve scoured this whole darn city looking for work that would help my baby—” Emotion tightened her throat. She was exhausted and nauseous and so tired of being judged unfairly. She swallowed and took a breath. “I’ve been looking for work that would help my baby have a good life.”
Grimacing, he wrenched his face to the street, his hands on his hips, his eyes distant.
Hannah did a whole bunch more swallowing, reining in her hormone-fueled emotional fireworks as she studied his profile. He really was a stunning specimen of a man—his face perfection with those masculine cheekbones and that fit cowboy’s body that had brought her so much wicked pleasure that night. He kept his light brown hair disheveled just so, adding a rakish quality to his charm. No wonder he turned the head of every woman in Tulsa when he walked down the street.
He deserved better than to find out he was going to be a father on the side of the road outside a Laundromat, not with a woman he loved, but with a virtual stranger.
When she was sure she could speak calmly, she said, “I’m not trying to get at your family’s money, Brett.”
He jerked his face in her direction, his face a stone mask now. Gone was any trace of the smile he’d wooed her with nineteen weeks ago at the Tulsa club where she’d decided to let her hair down after her college graduation.
“You still need to pay your bill, hon,” called a female voice.
Hannah and Brett both turned to see Janice standing at the Armadillo’s door, waving a slip of paper.
“I’ll be right there,” Brett called to Janice, his voice tight with harnessed emotion. To Hannah, he added, “I need to take care of this, and then we’re going to go somewhere private to talk.”
Hannah nodded, even as her stomach ached, empty. She’d been counting on the interviewer’s promise in his email to buy her breakfast. She wrapped her arms around her ribs and battled a fresh round of pathetic tears. “I’ll wait here.”
He huffed, his hardened, distant expression not really seeing her when he looked her way and took her arm. “I don’t think so. You’re coming inside with me while I pay the bill. I don’t want you disappearing on me before I get some answers. I don’t even know your last name.” He swept his hand in front of him. “After you.”
Chapter 2
Brett was pretty sure he’d never been so blindsided by anything as seeing the woman he’d slept with a few months earlier appear at the diner where he was waiting to interview a temporary accountant—and learning that she was pregnant with his child.
His child. Good God, what had he done?
He’d already come to think of that bender of a weekend as life-changing because he’d nearly gotten himself killed, not because he’d knocked up the girl he slept with, the one whose last name or phone number he hadn’t even bothered to ask, he was so drunk and self-destructive. He was lucky he remembered her face at all, given the state he’d been in, but she held the dubious honor of being his last conquest before he’d gotten right with himself and had given up partying, drinking and women cold turkey.
He held the diner door open for Hannah, who marched past him, her feathers clearly ruffled. “I know you’re upset, but you don’t get to treat me like a criminal.”
He wasn’t trying to, but he also wasn’t taking a chance on her sneaking away before he got some answers. All he had was the email address she’d contacted him with about the job, and he doubted that was anything but a shell account. He didn’t even know her last name, and hadn’t even recalled her first name correctly. Didn’t that just say it all about how severely he’d screwed up his life?
At the hostess desk, he paid for his coffee and left a generous tip. That’s when he heard it. Hannah’s stomach growled. Loudly.
He froze, his change halfway in his wallet.
“Shoot,” she muttered. “You didn’t hear that.”
In his periphery, he watched her arms wrap around her middle, protective and proud. His attention slid to the scuffed black flats she wore. They were old, worn. The edges of the material fraying. Yet she’d worn them to the job interview so they had to be the best pair she owned. She’d lost her job, her car and her apartment. Where was she living now? Was she getting the medical care she and the baby needed?
That’s when it hit him that the answers to those questions didn’t matter yet. All that ma
ttered at that moment was that she was clearly hungry. She was also too thin, now that he thought about it. Hungry. Jobless. Homeless—and she was having his baby. Damn.
“Change of plans.” His words came out as a croak. He cleared his throat, then met the waitress’s confused gaze. “Could you seat us again? Turns out I’m hungry for breakfast after all.”
Hannah stiffened. “I don’t need your charity.”
Judging by her growling stomach, she did, but she was far too proud to accept it. She hadn’t come to him for help when she first found out she was pregnant or when she’d lost her job. She’d made of point of telling him that she wasn’t after his money. Other than her dancing skills—both of the club variety and the horizontally-in-bed variety—her sense of pride and honor were just about all he knew about her. That, and the fact that she was an accountant, which he would have never pegged her as.
Proud, dancing Hannah the accountant didn’t follow the waitress, but stood stock-still, giving him a stink-eye that even his mother would admire. She didn’t want help or charity and didn’t seem to trust his breakfast offer, but Brett did have one thing he could offer her that he bet she wouldn’t refuse.
“You came here today to interview for a job and I need an accountant, so I say we get on with the reason for our appointment.”
She held him with a searching gaze as though testing his intentions, then gave a terse nod.
He fought against letting his relief show on his face as he ushered her ahead of him to follow the waitress to a booth.
The waitress handed them menus. “I’m glad you came back for some food, darlin’. I was worried that your morning sickness got the better of you.”
Hannah offered the woman a warm, genuine smile that held Brett riveted, his memory jogged. He remembered that smile from the night they’d hooked up and what it felt like to have it directed at him.
“Wait,” he said as the waitress turned to leave. “Janice, I’m really hungry. I think we’d better get that food on order right now. Hannah, you ready?”
Colton's Cowboy Code Page 2