The Cowboy's Pregnant Bride (St. Valentine, Texas)

by Green, Crystal

  If he were around...

  His boots thudded on the planked walk as he made his way past the busy Queen of Hearts Saloon, toward the Old West–tinged St. Valentine Hotel. As he drew closer, he didn’t see Annette out front by the bench, which was occupied by some scruffy guys he recognized as ex-miners. And they weren’t the type of ex-miners who had come around to recently making their peace with the rest of the town years after the mine had been shut down by the Feds because of a safety exposé that Davis Jackson had written and published. They were the type who still clung to their bitterness, feeling forced out of St. Valentine when they’d had to claim jobs in the natural-gas fields out near Houston.

  Looked as if they were home for the festival, and when they laid eyes on Jared, they were already wearing dirty-minded grins.

  Jared’s temper had been just simmering before, but he felt his blood rolling and popping now.

  As he walked past them, willing to ignore their suggestive looks, one of the ex-miners tugged down on the brim of his baseball cap and muttered to his buddy, “If it ain’t the lucky hombre who got it in to Blondie.”

  Even in a fit of temper, Jared had never been one to go overboard, and it wasn’t any different now. All he did was grab the front of the guy’s flannel shirt, twisting it as he brought him up against the old wood of the hotel.

  “I’d love to discuss this when my front’s to you instead of my back,” Jared said through his teeth.

  Baseball Hat smiled, then moved his gaze to his left.

  When Jared saw Annette standing there, her hand to her throat, her mouth agape, he let go of the ex-miner.

  The guy laughed and went back to his friends as Annette turned around and quickly walked away.

  “Annie—”

  Catcalls came from behind him, but he didn’t pay them any mind. Not with the look he’d just seen on Annette’s face.

  There’d been a sort of horror there, and Jared couldn’t reconcile that to a face that was always smiling.

  “Annie!” he said, finally catching up to her by an alley that lined the side of the Queen of Hearts.

  He guided her into it, and she raised her hands, palms out, as if warding him off.

  He stopped in his tracks.

  She had her eyes closed, as if she couldn’t stand to look at him, and it was like a blow to his gut. He’d been expecting this kind of reaction from her if she ever found out about the daughter he’d left. But now?

  Now he didn’t know what to do but stand there helplessly.

  Finally, he found his tongue. “They said something that I wasn’t about to countenance, Annie. It wasn’t my best moment, but—”

  “Stop.” She had her back to the wall, her hand on her stomach now.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, panic forcing him forward.

  “Yes, Jared, I’m fine. The baby’s fine.”

  “Thank God.” He bunched his hands at his sides. “I wasn’t picking on that guy for no reason, you know.”

  “I heard what he said, Jared.”

  “Supposedly people are saying stuff like that all over town, and it isn’t right.”

  “That’s not why I...” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just saw you there, getting in his face, and it reminded me of...”

  Something far deeper than what it seemed was happening. Jared thought about what she’d said to him last night about how she was pretty good at knowing when a man should wear a white hat instead of a black one.

  He lowered his voice. “What’s going on?”

  There was a chair by the back door to the saloon, and he led her to it, sitting her down. She pulled her coat around herself.

  “That day when I caught Brett with a bridesmaid,” she said, “things didn’t go as smoothly as I described when I called him out on it.”

  He tensed up. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that he didn’t like how I was ‘sassing’ him, and he raised his hand to me.”

  The remnants of Jared’s temper shot up, gathering in his head, nearly blinding him.

  “But,” Annette said, obviously seeing how his face had gone ruddy and his hands had fisted again, “that’s why I didn’t stick around. That’s why I took off in my car and never looked back. I wasn’t about to give him a second chance, because he showed me everything I needed to know about him. Men like that don’t change, and when I saw you and that ex-miner...”

  “I would never lay my hands on you like that, Annie. Never.” He’d done some crappy things, but nothing like that.

  Emotions that he’d never felt before—a rage that went beyond mere anger, shock, hurt for what had almost happened to Annette with her fiancé—swamped Jared, bringing him to a knee in front of her.

  He took her hand, not bothering to check himself, not bothering to think how Jared Colton didn’t reveal himself to anyone.

  “Tell me you’re not afraid that I’m going to be like that, too,” he said, his voice ragged. “Tell me you don’t think I’m like Brett.”

  “No, I don’t. It was just that seeing it...” Her grip tightened on his. “It brought back some unpleasant memories.”

  As he searched her gaze, he saw that, in spite of her words, she really wasn’t sure who Jared Colton sincerely was.

  White hat? Or maybe just a really dark gray one.

  Hell, he still didn’t know which it was, either, even after reading Tony’s journal in the hopes that it would tell him what was in his past, his blood.

  He wrapped her hand in both of his. “It won’t happen again. I swear it.”

  “I know it won’t.” She nodded, and the light started to come back into her eyes. “You’re tough in so many ways, Jared, but I can’t help the gut feeling that being cruel to women isn’t one of them.”

  Oh, he’d been cruel in the past, all right, but it wasn’t in an explosive way. Just in a neglectful one.

  And he regretted it down to his very core.

  Was this his chance to make up for that, though? By protecting Annette and making her life easier while he could?

  Tony would’ve done that, Jared thought, holding on to the only hope he had. Tony was going to tell the love of his life whatever truths he needed to confess to her. He would’ve told me to do the same and to reshape my life for the woman I...

  As with everything else, Jared didn’t have an answer for what Annette had become to him, either.

  * * *

  Jared couldn’t put off digging any longer, and when he went to Annette’s that evening after he ran some errands in town, he wondered what kind of reception he would get, even though they’d cleared the air.

  Would it be back to square one, where they’d started, with her being polite to him and him being polite to her, as if these past few days had never happened?

  When he came in through her back gate, he took solace in the fact that, when he’d walked her back to the diner this afternoon, she had seemed fine, although he couldn’t stop wondering if he’d planted a seed of doubt in her that wouldn’t ever go away. That, from now on, she might just be waiting for him to lose his cool again and it would validate what he’d always thought about himself all along—that he wasn’t a white-hat kind of guy in the least.

  He was just about to put on his work gloves when she slid open the door and walked onto the concrete patio. She had already changed into a comfortable pair of pink sweats and Ugg boots, her hair in a ponytail.

  “I forgot to thank you for the Valentine greetings,” she said, gesturing toward the lights. The red box he’d picked up at a drugstore was gone, and he guessed that she’d put it inside.

  “It was nothing,” he said.

  “Wrong. It was wonderful.” She idly kicked at a piece of mulch that had strayed from the garden, tucking her hands into the front pockets of her sweatshir
t. “You’ve been working like a dog lately. Why don’t you take a night off and come inside for a sec?”

  “I took a long break last night.”

  “You were decorating my backyard. I’d call that work.” She stepped back over her threshold. “I bought some pink cupcakes with red sprinkles on top. Live a little, won’t you?”

  Cupcakes. It’d been a long time since he’d had any of those. Besides, she was making a peace offering to him, showing him that there were no hard feelings left over from this afternoon.

  He’d take it.

  Once they were inside, she showed him to her sofa. The red box with its white ribbon was indeed in a place of honor, right next to the TV, which was playing some Charlie Brown special with hearts and Snoopy all over the place.

  As she brought over the cupcakes and some coffee, he noticed a few things. There was some kind of special cocoa-and-shea-butter lotion on the leather chest that she used as a coffee table. There was a pile of books about being a parent, too, alongside Tony Amati’s journal.

  The last thing he saw as she sat down was that, in the mug she’d kept for herself, there wasn’t any coffee.

  She noticed that he’d noticed. “Herbal tea,” she said.

  “Is that what all your books tell you to drink?” He motioned with his mug toward her minilibrary.

  “They suggest it, and I’m nothing if not a good student.”

  “You think they studied up on childbirth back in the Stone Age?”

  “Oh, don’t even say that. I can’t imagine what those poor women had to go through.” She leaned back, her tummy like a cute, rounded ball peeking out from under her sweatshirt. “I’m starting to get nervous enough as it is, even with all the modern conveniences.”

  “You don’t come off as being anxious.”

  “I try not to show it. What’s the use?”

  “I suppose there’s not much of one.” He wrinkled his brow. “So what’re you going to do about having the baby? I mean, is there anyone to take you to the hospital and all that stuff?”

  She raised her eyebrows, looking somewhat shy. “I was just starting to plan for that.”

  Was she going to ask him?

  His nerves jittered. Maybe, if he told her straight out that he was the last person who should be acting like a caretaker, she would make some real plans, asking one of her coworkers or neighbors to help out.

  But...

  He glanced at that tummy, so round and touchable. He had put his palm over his ex-wife’s stomach a time or two when she’d been pregnant, but he’d been absent most of the time on the rodeo circuit.

  It was as if the heat of his glance made Annette itch, because she absently scratched her belly. “We never did talk about why you were putting that ex-miner in his place this afternoon.”

  “Is that why you invited me inside for cupcakes?”

  She smiled. “I appreciate what you were doing. I’ve never really had anyone stand up for my honor before.”

  Again, with the white hat thing. Guilt pressed down on him.

  “I’m not sure who started the rumor,” she said, her cheeks going pink, “but you know what? I actually don’t mind. I mean, at least not as far as I go. I can handle a little airy chatter, because it’s far better than what I would’ve had to deal with when it came to Brett. But I feel bad that you’ve been pulled into it.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” He watched as she scratched at her tummy again. “I couldn’t care less about an unvarnished reputation.”

  He wrinkled his brow. What exactly did he mean by that? Didn’t he care that some folks in St. Valentine thought he might be the father?

  As the thought settled, he was even more puzzled. Truthfully, he didn’t care. It would mean that a woman like Annette had accepted him into her life, and how could that ever be a bad thing for him?

  Shaking himself out of it, he pointed to her tummy as she kept scratching.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Oh.” She stilled her hands, allowing them to rest on the sides of her belly. “My skin’s expanding, and the itchiness is starting to drive me nuts.”

  He leaned forward, put down his coffee and grabbed the lotion. “I assume that’s what this is for.”

  “Thanks.” She took it from him.

  When she opened the lid and squeezed, a bunch of lotion blooped out, and she startled as he put his hand under hers, catching the excess lotion as it dripped from her hand.

  He took the bottle from her. “There’s enough here to paint the side of a barn.”

  “I appreciate that observation.”

  His laugh was easy. “I’m not comparing you to one.”

  “Well, I’m starting to feel as big, and my bump’s just going to get huger.”

  He helped her put the lotion back into the bottle, and she started to get up from the sofa.

  “Where’re you off to?” he asked.

  “I...”

  “For heaven’s sake, Annie, your stomach’s been peeping out of your sweatshirt all night. I’ve seen a little skin.”

  She cozied back into the cushions. “I didn’t want to assume.”

  Assume what? That he was as curious about her tummy as he’d been about kissing her the first time and that another line would be crossed?

  It was as if she’d suddenly gone shy as she leaned back and rubbed some lotion over her belly, making circles.

  Making him far more curious than he’d hoped he would be.

  As he watched out of the corner of his eye, he imagined his own hands on her, rubbing, feeling her flesh under his palms as he lulled her and comforted her.

  A pain from the past shot through him—a piercing that ricocheted and echoed, showing him just how empty he was. He’d missed so much by being an absentee dad.

  Yet now...

  Annette must’ve seen the look on his face because she wrinkled her brow.

  Was she wondering if he was thinking about his adoption? About how he’d acted in the nursery that day because he was supposedly smarting about how his parents had given him away?

  Even if she misinterpreted the details, she had the rest of him nailed when she took him by the hand and laid his palm on her belly.

  He didn’t move.

  “It’s okay,” she said quietly. But there was something else in her tone, too.

  Something like longing.

  The feel of bare skin and the firm roundness of a child beneath his hand tugged at him. His throat got clogged, and he couldn’t say a word.

  “Jared, it’s really okay,” she repeated on a whisper.

  Not thinking of anything but the warmth that was stealing through him, he moved his hand back and forth, the lotion making her skin so smooth. She sighed as he gently touched her baby, touched her.

  And he kept rubbing the lotion in, getting used to the intimacy, even the innocence of this moment.

  “Have you thought of a name yet?” he finally asked.

  But when he glanced at her again, her eyes were closed, her breath deep and even.

  She’d fallen asleep.

  He brought his hand away, suddenly realizing what he’d been doing—getting too close.

  Way too close.

  Carefully, he pulled her legs up onto the sofa so that she lay lengthwise on it, then fetched the chenille blanket from the back and tucked it around her.

  Then he took one last look at her before he forced himself to retreat outside, to a near distance, where he truly belonged.

  Chapter Seven

  On the night of her mother’s birthday, Annette left the Orbit Diner at four o’clock—enough time for her to go home and bake the same cake she did every year in remembrance of the mother who’d raised her pretty much by herself.

 
As she drove to her condo, she tried not to think about how she’d told her coworkers that she had plans with some so-called out-of-town family. It was a fib, of course, but she hadn’t wanted anyone to feel sorry for her.

  And she hadn’t wanted anyone to pry.

  Instead, she tried to get excited about the whole-grain macaroni and cheese with broccoli and ham dinner she was going to put together to enjoy in front of the TV, watching a bunch of DVDs she’d rented. Funny movies, romantic ones—a whole marathon that would make her remember how her mom used to laugh, or even when she had friends who used to come over and celebrate this day with her back in Tulsa. Contacting those friends in person was just too risky, even if she had sent them emails telling them that she was okay.

  Most of all, though, tonight’s movie marathon would help her not think about Jared.

  She hadn’t seen him for a few days—not since she’d let him touch her belly. He’d just seemed so... Was freaked out the phrase she was looking for? Because, when she’d woken up from her nap, he’d been outside, doing his digging and staying out there late into the moonlit night, well beyond the time she’d finally gone to bed. He’d managed to avoid her at the diner, too, although she’d seen more evidence of his digging outside her backyard fence as proof that he was still coming by the condo.

  She turned her car onto Horizon Road, the last of the day’s winter sun brushing the fields and fences that rolled by.

  If she’d scared Jared off, she thought, then it was probably meant to be. And, really, shouldn’t that point have been driven home to her the other day when she’d seen him with that ex-miner in town, shoving the man up against a wall?

  Yes, it was true that all Jared had been doing was defending her. She even appreciated that fact. But the very sight of him angry, threatening...

  Lord, the last thing she wanted to believe was that Jared was anything like Brett. That every man she met from here on out had it in him to lift a hand and strike out at someone, just as her ex-fiancé had almost done with her.