The Cowboy's Baby: A Small Town Montana Romance (Corbett Billionaires Book 1)

by Imani King

  "What?!"

  "Yeah. I saw it. I went over to see if he was home the other day, when you suggested a surprise visit. I thought it was a good idea, that we could have dinner or something – and I saw them through the window. She had a baby, Amber."

  "Dallas Corbett doesn't have a baby," she replied, frowning. "He doesn't have a girlfriend, either. That guy is down at the bar every week or so. I mean, I haven't seen him since that night we all went, but after you told me what was going on I kind of just assumed that you were the reason why he'd made himself scarce since then."

  I shrugged. "Well I'm pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating. I know it's stupid to be upset about it, it's not like we were in some serious relationship or something. But it sucked to see them together. I'm pretty emotionally fragile these days, you know? I just didn't need to see that. And I wish he'd said something about her. Maybe I could have made some smarter decisions."

  So, wait," Amber said, holding up one hand. "Let me get this straight. You went to his house and saw him kissing a woman with a baby. What kind of kissing are talking about here? Full on making-out or, like, a kiss on the cheek?"

  "Honestly, I don't know. It looked like they were arguing at first – I could hear the woman yelling. And I saw her pass the baby to Dallas. When she went in to kiss him I just left, I didn't want to watch that."

  Amber looked thoughtful. "So you didn't actually see them kissing? And you have no idea whose baby it was?"

  "Well, no," I conceded. "I didn't actually see it. But I saw her move in for it – and she wasn't moving in for a peck on the cheek. And why would she be handing the baby to him if it wasn't his?"

  Amber gave me a look like I might be crazy. I actually found it comforting – I wanted to be crazy in that situation. It was preferable to the alternative of Dallas having a girlfriend and, possibly, a child with her.

  "So you didn't actually see anything except some woman yelling at him? A woman with a baby, I mean?"

  "No! I mean, yes, but it was their body language. Hers especially. She was – you know how you can just tell when two people are a couple? It was like that, it was too intimate for her to be a stranger."

  "That doesn't mean she's his girlfriend," Amber stated matter-of-factly. "And it doesn't mean the baby is his. I don't know, Tia, I feel like you should at least give him a chance to explain himself before you go ghosting the guy. Maybe it's some psycho chick he slept with who can't let go? Maybe it was a family member? Who knows?"

  I really wanted what Amber was saying to be true. About the woman I'd seen with Dallas possibly not being his girlfriend. And about the baby being anyone else's but his.

  "You like him a lot, huh?"

  I looked up and met my friend's gaze, realizing in the moment that it was obviously true and denying it would be useless.

  "Yes."

  Amber took a deep breath. "Well, I guess it kind of makes sense now. I can see why you'd be paranoid about seeing that –"

  "Amber, it's worse than that."

  She looked up at me expectantly.

  "I lost my virginity to him."

  At exactly that moment, a woman appeared at Amber's till with a full cart of groceries and we had to break off our conversation. As soon as she was finished packing the groceries into bags and telling the woman to have a nice day, Amber turned back to me, concerned.

  "Did he know? Did you tell him – before, I mean?"

  "Yeah, I did."

  She leaned back in her chair, twisting a lock of blonde hair around one finger over and over. "Well then, we do need to find out who that woman was. Because if he took your virginity and lied about having a girlfriend, I'll punch him in the face myself."

  I couldn't help giggling a little at the thought of the look on Dallas's face when Amber, who was 5'3" on a good day, took a swing at him. It was nice to feel supported, though. To have the validation of someone else understanding my reason for being upset.

  "So, maybe I'll go see him after work?"

  "Yeah, you should. As soon as possible. No point in torturing yourself over this for days. Go see him – and don't beat around the bush about it, Tia. Just ask him straight up what the deal is."

  The two of us spent the rest of the day speculating about who the woman might have been. Amber was kind and gentle with me, she didn't once scold me for choosing to lose my virginity to River Bend's resident asshole, and she didn't make fun of me for making it to nineteen without having sex. When my shift ended, it actually felt like maybe I could handle it if he did have a girlfriend. Like instead of it being another devastating emotional trauma, it might just end up being the kind of minor drama that ends up not really mattering at all. That's what I told myself, anyway.

  Amber gave me a hug in the parking lot after work.

  "Call me when you get in tonight, OK? Not for gossip, just so I know you're alright. Promise?"

  I smiled and hugged her a little tighter. "I will. And thank-you, I mean it. Things are kind of crazy for me right now, it's difficult to really know if this is a big deal or not. I'm just – yeah, thank-you."

  "We're friends," she replied simply. "That's what friends do. Call me."

  "I will."

  But as I drove out to Dallas's ranch, my courage started to dissipate. I toyed with the idea of just turning around and going home instead. But, no, I had to know. Even if it was bad news, I had to know so I could decide what to do.

  Ten

  Dallas

  Larissa and Bentley left to go back to Washington the next morning. Nothing was sorted out. Nothing was arranged. It wasn't even clear to me why she'd even come, seeing as how she seemed more interested in having sex with me than fostering a relationship between Bentley and myself. When she told me she would come visit again in another week, I went along with it. What could I do but wait until she actually asked me for something specific? I couldn't tell her to get lost, because that sweet little baby was my son, so I had to accept that I was kind of just at her mercy until she decided she wanted something concrete. Maybe she wanted money? I had money. But maybe she did actually just want Bentley to grow up knowing his father? Maybe she wanted a relationship with me? The point was, until I actually knew what it was, specifically, that she wanted from me, the only thing to do was wait.

  I had chores to attend to either way, so I headed out to the fields and got on with it. For dinner, I ate soup straight out of the can, because I couldn't quite bring myself to attempt ratatouille again – it made me think of Tia. She was strangely cold with me at Parson's and I was just disheartened about everything – and not a little angry at myself. Why had I let her in? Why had I let her get to me? It was stupid, and I knew better.

  At eight-thirty, just as I was about to go out and check the livestock one last time before bed, I looked out the window and saw the headlights of a car heading up the driveway. Fuck, was Larissa coming back?

  No, it wasn't Larissa. It was Tia, I recognized her aunt's car as soon as it pulled into the little clearing in front of the cabin. What was she doing? She'd seemed supremely uninterested in a single thing I had to say just a few hours before.

  Still, it felt impossible to be mad at her, especially given the circumstances of her life at the time. I opened the front door and walked out onto the porch, calling out to her when she got out of the car.

  "Tia – hey. What's up?"

  No response. Goddamn she looked good, though. When she got close enough for me to see her face illuminated by the porch light, I could see she wasn't happy to see me. She just stood there, a few feet away, staring at me and making no move to even give me so much as a hug.

  "Is something wrong?" I asked, when it became apparent she wasn't in the mood for small talk.

  Tia looked down at the ground, sighed, and then looked back up at me. "I don't even know why I'm here, Dallas. Well, I do, but it's probably really stupid."

  "If this is about the grocery store," I started, holding back from going to her and scooping her up in my arms, "it's OK.
I know you're going through something really rough and I know sometimes things get weird and you need to sort of go into yourself for a –"

  "Who was that woman?"

  "Uh, what?" I asked, taken aback. "Who was what woman?"

  "That woman you were kissing last night. The one with the baby. I came to see you and she was here – I saw her through the window."

  I held up both my hands in a 'slow down' gesture, even as my heart-rate quickened. Fuck. Fuck. Of course that would be the goddamned time she'd show up, when Larissa was all over me. Not that I'd given in – I hadn't even been tempted.

  "You didn't see me kissing anyone, Tia," I said, unsure of what exactly she had seen but certain she had definitely not seen me kissing Larissa. "You might have seen her trying to –"

  "Yeah, but who is she?"

  I could feel myself getting annoyed, but I bit back the instinctive defensive response that was my usual go-to and consciously calmed myself down. "She's someone I met last year. Once. I met her one time, and she –"

  "You mean you slept with her, right?"

  Tia was angry. And I knew why she was angry – because she was hurt. She was a little like me in that way, trying to cover her sensitivity with something that made her feel strong rather than weak. I respected her too much to lie or bullshit, so I just replied honestly.

  "Yeah, I did."

  "And you only saw her that one time? Then why was she at your house last night? What did she want?"

  I knew where this conversation was heading – a fight, raised voices, angry words. I didn't want that. "Listen," I said gently, "do you want to come inside? I'm not blowing you off or trying to avoid this, but I can see that you're upset and I think we should try to talk about this without just getting angry at each other."

  "I'm not angry!" she snapped. Angrily. But a second later I saw the tension drain out of her body as she put her hands over her face before looking back up at me. "Well, I guess that's not true. I am angry. I don't – Dallas, I don't even know why. I know I'm not your girlfriend, I know it would be ridiculous to get mad at you for something that happened before we even met. I just, damn, I –"

  Tia began to cry. When I approached her and tried to put my arm around her shoulders, though, she backed away. "Don't."

  "OK, I won't. But I want you to come inside. We need to talk about this and I don't want to do it out here in the dark."

  She relented and followed me inside, immediately spotting the two empty soup cans on the counter and laughing in spite of herself.

  "I see my cooking lessons haven't helped."

  "That's not true. That's the only canned food I've eaten since you taught me how to make ratatouille. I couldn't make it again today, though. It made me sad."

  "Why?"

  I gestured to the sofa, leaping ahead of her to pull the sheet I'd slept on last night off it before she sat down. Beau jumped up beside her at once and licked her hand respectfully.

  "He's as bad as Ranger," I joked. "Whenever you're around, I'm chopped liver." I hadn't answered the question. I sat down in my battered old armchair and looked Tia in the eyes. "Why did it make me sad? Because it made me think of you, and it made me think of how you were going to react when I told you about Larissa – the woman you saw last night."

  "So, what is going on?" Tia asked, dejected.

  "I slept with her. Not last night – last year. I met her at the bar in River Bend, we literally spent less than three hours together. Then she calls me up out of the blue a few days ago to tell me I have a son. That she wants me to meet him. How could –"

  Tia seemed to physically shrink back into the sofa. I wanted to go to her, put my arms around her, let her bury her pretty face in my neck like she had that first night. But I couldn't do it that time, because Bentley was mine and nothing I could say, no gesture of affection or kindness, was going to make that fact go away.

  "That's what I thought," she whispered. "I thought he was yours. I saw her handing him to you and it just looked like – aw, damnit, Dallas. Why didn't you use a condom? You just have unprotected sex with all these girls you meet at the bar? You probably have fifty freakin' kids out there, you know that?"

  "Hold up," I said. "You just hold on right there, Tia. I did use a condom. I always use condoms. I –"

  "You didn't with me..."

  She was right. I hadn't used a condom with her. Stupid. "That's true. We didn't use a condom. But that's the first time since before I left for Iraq that I've done that. You probably don't believe me but that's the plain truth. I used protection with every single one of the girls I've met – except you."

  Tia eyed me, like she was trying to figure out if I was full of shit or not. Which I wasn't, but I couldn't blame her for being suspicious. It's not like I had a rep for chastity. "Well why didn't you use one with – never mind, it doesn't matter. So you're saying you got this Lisa pregnant because the condom broke or something? Actually, that doesn't matter, either. She got pregnant. And now she has a baby. Now you have a baby."

  Why did I have to meet Tia Kinsley when I did? Why couldn't it have been the previous summer, before I ever even laid eyes on Larissa? As soon as the thought popped into my mind, though, I realized what it meant – it meant wishing that Tia's parents had been involved in their accident a year sooner, that her life had been destroyed a year sooner. And that was something I would never have wished, selfish dick or not. Still, talk about bad timing. I didn't ever expect to feel what Tia made me feel ever again. And I'd pretty much gotten used to the idea of living a solitary life before she showed up that day outside Parson's and insisted on petting Ranger. My lies to myself had been exposed for the bullshit they were, and now it seemed there hadn't even been a purpose. It was all for nothing.

  "Yeah," I nodded. "Now I have a baby. There's something else, though, Tia. About the condoms – about not using one with you. I didn't want to. Was that dumb? Yeah. But I didn't. I should have. Jesus, I'm not explaining this very well. What I'm trying to say to you, admittedly very badly, is that I like you. A lot. I didn't think that the way I feel about you was something I was ever going to have in my life again. Do you understand?"

  Tia's gaze flickered for a moment and then she shook her head. "Why are you telling me this, Dallas? What am I supposed to do with it? Twenty-four hours ago it was the only thing I wanted to hear in the whole world and now – what? You have a baby. You're life is going to change now, you might move away, you might decide to be with Lisa."

  "It's Larissa," I corrected her gently. "And although yes, you're right that my life is going to change, I can say for sure I'm not going to marry – or do anything else with – her. She's, uh, let's just say that it wouldn't be an option even without you in the picture."

  We sat quietly together for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything. We both needed to let it sink in. Finally, Tia glanced up at me.

  "I don't know what to say, Dallas. I don't know if you understand what a mess my head is right now. It was a mess before I even met you. I just feel like most of the time I'm hanging on by a thread, you know?"

  I nodded. I did know – better than I ever wanted to – what that felt like.

  "It's like it takes all my energy just to keep it together," she continued. "And being with you, it was just such a relief. Like a break from the constant effort of having to put a smile on my face and act like my world hasn't fallen apart. And now this is just – it's so real. I mean, a baby? What does that even mean for you? Is he going to come and live with you or are you going to leave River Bend or –"

  "I don't know, Tia. Honestly, I have no idea. I don't know anything about Larissa but she seems a little unhinged. I thought maybe she would have a plan, like she might ask me for child support or try to work out a custody arrangement or something but she didn't even talk about that stuff much. Mostly she just wanted to sleep with me. Oh, and ask me about my family money."

  I admit it, I kind of threw out that last sentence as a test. In no way did Tia seem the
type to be interested in a man's money, but I remembered what it was like when I was in the military and the girls who frequented the bars around the base found out that I came from money. To say the attention became a little more intense once they realized my daddy owned half of Texas would be an understatement. It was part of the reason I lived so frugally after moving to River Bend – I just didn't want to be that guy anymore. The rich kid. The one, everyone assumed, who never suffered, never worked, just lived on easy street due to daddy's money.

  "What's that about?" Tia asked, totally ignoring the comment about my family's money. I'm not even sure she heard it. "Trying to sleep with you, I mean? Does she think you're going to marry her?"

  "I don't know. I have no idea. I made it very clear that a relationship wasn't on the cards but she just kept pushing."

  I wanted to go to Tia. She was curled up on the sofa, looking like a little lost kitten, and I could feel how badly she wanted to connect. So I did it. I got up and sat down beside her, leaning in close enough to smell her shampoo. The tension between us was still there, blazing as bright and obvious as a forest fire. When I reached out and put one hand on her thigh, she let it stay there – for a few seconds – before pulling away.

  "Dallas, don't. Did you just hear anything I said? About being confused, about not knowing where my head is?"

  "I heard you," I responded, stung. "I guess I was just trying to – fuck, I don't know what I'm doing, Tia. I don't know what's going to happen."

  "I think I should go."

  I felt the shutters come down on my heart when she said that. I didn't show it, or let her know, it was just a feeling I remembered from the old days, before I moved to Montana.

  When she went to kiss my cheek before leaving, I almost jerked my head away. And when she was gone, and the red glow of her car's brake lights had faded, the feeling was one of sadness, disappointment and a strange kind of relief. Meeting her, as awesome as it had been, threatened my idea of myself. If she disappeared from my life, it meant I could go back to my routine, go back to the safety of not caring. Of course it wasn't what I wanted, but I'd become pretty damn good at pretending I didn't want things back then. I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat down on the sofa, trying to figure out why I was so angry.