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

by Green, Crystal

  She spoke up, and everyone locked gazes on her because she’d been quiet this entire time.

  “All he’s asking,” she said, “is that you look at what you’re doing with Tony and think about whether the answers would be worth shining an even bigger spotlight on a man who took a lot of pains to ensure his privacy.”

  Neither of the Jacksons said anything...not until Jared started to lead Annette away toward the cowgirl and cowboy lights.

  “Just so you two know,” Davis said, halting them, “we’re not doing this to cause trouble for anyone.”

  Jared was still holding tight to Annette’s hand.

  “In fact,” Davis said, “you’d be surprised to know that people in this town are more disposed to being friendly to you than you might think.”

  Jared’s laugh was cutting. “There were a few ex-miners the other day who might disagree with you.”

  “They’ve been talked to, Jared,” Davis said. “And you won’t find them to be so disrespectful again.”

  Jared finally peered over his shoulder. “Why’s that?”

  “Let’s just say that we’re all trying to get along better these days.”

  Annette suspected that this new attitude in town had a lot to do with Davis, who’d been working for a long time to mend the rifts among the ex-miners, the so-called “richies” and everyone else who’d been caught in the middle of the social warfare after the kaolin mine closure had severely affected the town’s economy more than five years ago.

  Jared met Davis’s gaze, paused for a second, then nodded to him.

  “Thanks, Jackson,” he said.

  “No thanks necessary.”

  With a grin, Davis put his arm around his wife and led her into the cowgirl lights.

  Annette watched them leave. “I think he likes you.”

  “I think he’s still trying to get an interview and this is his new way of doing it.”

  She nudged him. “Don’t you have any faith in humanity?”

  He gave her a long look, and she could see a thousand different stories there—dark stories, like the day he’d visited his birth mom and the time he’d read that letter from his deceased dad revealing his adoption.

  But then Jared’s gaze gentled, and he cupped her face with one hand, running his thumb over her cheek.

  “I’m getting more faith by the day,” he said, bending down to kiss her right there in public.

  Right where the lights surrounded them with so much hope and brightness.

  * * *

  Optimism was a strange thing.

  As Jared drove back to Annette’s condo that night, it got a hold of him as it never had before, maybe because of that meeting with Davis and Violet Jackson.

  Or maybe because everything was starting to come together for Jared, and all it had taken was time...and the right woman.

  When he took a detour on a side road in the opposite direction of where they were supposed to be headed, Annette seemed bewildered.

  “Are you lost?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you just plumb crazy then?”

  “I guess I am.” He smiled, steering onto a gravel driveway.

  It didn’t take long for the light from his cabin porch to appear over the slight hill.

  As he pulled up to his rented home, Annette slid him a glance.

  He said, “This is where I live.”

  “The Batcave?”

  “Something like that.”

  From her seat, she inspected his domain: the aged pine plank walls, the windows that looked like an old man’s dimmed, closing eyes.

  “For a while,” she said, “I thought maybe you didn’t live anywhere.”

  “That’s because I’ve never brought anyone here before.”

  The words meant more than they seemed. He wasn’t just giving her a tour. He was ready to let her in.

  Step by step, bit by bit, he was getting nearer to... He couldn’t say what it was just yet, but it was becoming clearer every day. It was just a matter of when he’d be prepared to let her all the way into his life, with the darkest areas of himself bared.

  She opened her truck door and got out before he could help her, as he always did. But that showed him, didn’t it? Annette could handle herself.

  She could handle a lot, if he would only give her the opportunity.

  Climbing up the porch steps, she said, “I’m getting a real cabin-in-the-woods feeling but without the woods.”

  Around them, the moon swamped the long-bladed grass of a field, and he looked at it with a fresh gaze. The gaze Annette had given to him.

  “I chose this place because it was off the beaten path,” he said.

  “Huge surprise.” She smiled back at him from the porch as she waited by the doorway.

  He hadn’t locked up, so he opened the screen, allowing her to open the actual door and do the honors of going in first.

  As she crossed his threshold, a thrill grabbed him. He’d never thought he would see the day when someone like Annette would be here, in a place he had only called his own.

  But as soon as he hit the lights, she looked perfectly at home, standing amid the sparse furnishings that had come with this cabin—a Naugahyde sofa, two mismatched reclining chairs and a hickory end table holding a tacky lamp that someone had made out of a cowboy boot, probably as a joke. Behind her, the stone fireplace waited, and when she laid eyes on it, she took in a long breath.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “I always wanted a fireplace. They’re so rustic.”

  He leaned against the wall, content to watch her. “What kind of houses are you used to?”

  “Rented condos, just like the one I’m in now. My mom and I lived in hers for years before she died. Brett was going to buy it for me, but...”

  “You wouldn’t have been happy living in a place someone gave to you, Annie. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, it’s that you don’t mind making your own way.”

  “I’d much rather do that than take scraps from someone like Brett.” She went to the fireplace and ran her hand along the stone mantel. “I would’ve made a horrible trophy wife.”

  Jared wished he had more to give her than he did, even if she didn’t want fancy trimmings and silver spoons.

  She wandered over to a bookcase that was built into a wall. It was stacked with disorderly tomes bound by leather covers.

  “Those belong to the owner, too,” Jared said. “Lots of stuff with Greek names, but there’re some art books, too.”

  She picked one up. It was huge, requiring her to hold it with both hands, and she brought it to the couch and let it thump to the cushion. Then she sat and gingerly opened it up.

  “Oh,” she said. “Impressionists. Monet. I used to try and paint like him during college until I found out that imitation really isn’t the sincerest form of flattery if you stink at it.”

  “I’ll bet your paintings were great.”

  “You would say that.”

  She grinned, and he automatically did, too, as if he were her puppet on a string—a place he didn’t mind being.

  “These really bring back some memories,” she said, turning the page. “It seems like aeons ago that I wanted to pick up a paintbrush. It’s like that kind of indulgence belongs in another person’s life.”

  “You got pretty busy,” he said, going over to the couch and sitting, bracing his forearms on his thighs. “After everything settles down for you, you can go back to it.”

  “You know, I think I will.”

  Why was she smiling at him as if he was some sort of Valentine cupid who’d brought her a gift? He hadn’t done anything but told her a fact—that she could do anything she set her mind to.

  She was the strongest, most vital wom
an he knew, so why not?

  When she closed the art book, he knew she had something on her mind again, and his stomach tightened.

  “I’ve just been wondering...”

  Uh-oh. This was how it always started out.

  He waited, holding his breath.

  “Tomorrow at nine,” she said, “I’m going to the doctor for a checkup at the medical plaza in New Town.”

  Ah-ha. “You need a ride? It’d be no problem to give you one if you’re going to be too tuckered out to drive.”

  “That’s not exactly it, Jared.”

  So what was it?

  She bit her lip, then said, “Dr. Andrews is giving me a sonogram, and I thought...well, maybe that you might want to come along?”

  It was as if a fist had pounded him flat on the head, releasing images that he’d stowed away: his ex-wife showing him a picture of their unborn child and him taking it with him to the next rodeo. His little daughter in the arms of another man when Jared had seen the new family in a restaurant through a window, just before he’d walked away, knowing he had no right to invade their peace.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jared heard himself saying now.

  Annette didn’t seem to understand. She knitted her eyebrows.

  “I mean,” Jared said, his voice flat, “I... God, I don’t think it’s my place to do that.”

  Her face paled.

  Dammit, he hadn’t meant to be so frank. But he hadn’t expected her to ask such a thing, either, and so soon, at that.

  Hadn’t she been betrayed by a man not too long ago? How the hell had she bounced back so quickly?

  How could she trust someone like him after what she’d gone through?

  As she stood, pulling her coat around her as if shielding herself, Jared wanted to take it all back. It was just that she’d made things so damned real with that sonogram question when, these past hours, it’d seemed as if they were in a bubble that protected them from what was truly waiting outside.

  Now that bubble had popped with one simple invitation.

  “I didn’t mean to say it like that,” he told her, getting to his feet, too. “It’s just...”

  “It’s just that I assumed too much.” Her voice was as flat as his had been. “A few days together and I’m already asking you to do something a father should be doing. I’m sorry for putting you in such a weird place.”

  How could he tell her that he might’ve come around to doing something like this soon? That he was slowly but surely making progress and that she shouldn’t lose faith in him?

  See, Tony would’ve handled this better with the woman he loved, Jared thought. Tony wouldn’t have wasted a moment in saying yes to her.

  “Annie...” he started.

  But she was already going toward the door. “I’m really tired, Jared. Can you just take me home?”

  This time, he had no choice but to say yes.

  * * *

  Annette could not believe she’d actually asked him to do such a thing.

  Really? Come to my sonogram with me?

  As she lay in bed that night, a drained glass of milk by her bedside and an herbal compress on her lower back, she wanted to beat her head against a wall.

  She had no idea what had gotten into her, other than that asking him had seemed like a really good notion at the time. She’d just felt so close to Jared, what with them making love and then him taking her to his so-called cave. Both were big deals for a man like him, but she’d totally taken things too far.

  And if she could tell anything from the mood in his truck on the ride over here, it was that she’d probably come off as a pushy, needy woman.

  Which she wasn’t.

  Right?

  She fell asleep wondering, though, then early the next morning, got ready and took off to get her sonogram, still wondering.

  But things changed when, more than an hour and a half later, she was clutching a picture of her daughter in her hand.

  A girl.

  She rested a palm on her tummy as she walked through the parking lot. A little girl who would wear pink dresses and want to have tea parties with her someday. A child who would hopefully resemble her birth father in no way and who would nestle into her arms dreaming sweet dreams every night.

  The euphoria was enough to make Annette forget what she’d done to Jared, but only for a short time, because when she got to her bright red car in the parking lot, she found a note waiting under the windshield wiper.

  She took it out, unfolding it.

  I knew you’d be here for your appointment, and it wasn’t hard to find your car. It stands out in a crowd just like you do, Annie, and it was all I could see. And that’s why I’m not going to let another day go by without clearing the air with you.

  Would you come over to my place tonight, 6:00? I have some big apologies to make.

  It was signed by Jared.

  She held the note for a few seconds while, in her other hand, she grasped her daughter’s ultrasound picture. It’d been the first one taken after Annette had finally decided to learn the sex of her baby, an important moment to put in the scrapbook she planned to make for her daughter.

  It almost felt as if she was weighing the picture and the note against each other.

  Should she give Jared another chance, even if she suspected that he was holding back from her when all she wanted to do was rush into everything with him?

  Or was she being too impulsive with a baby on the way—a child who could get far more hurt than Annette had ever been by the betrayal of a man?

  She slipped both papers into her coat pocket together, already knowing the answer.

  * * *

  When Jared heard Annette’s car come up the graveled drive to park by his porch, his blood gave a mighty leap in his veins.

  She’d left him a message on his cell earlier, while he’d been assuaging a fitful stallion at the ranch. And all day he’d been flying on adrenaline, counting the hours until he could see her again.

  Her footsteps thudded on the porch, and she knocked on the door, the sound echoing his heartbeat.

  Here went nothing.

  When he answered, he had to take a moment, just as he did whenever he laid eyes on her. This time the porch light burnished her light blond hair, which she’d worn long and wavy. The lamp also lent a warm glow to her red coat and the cable-knit light blue sweater she wore over a plaid wool skirt. On her feet she was sporting those Ugg boots, as if they were the most comfortable thing a pregnant woman could wear.

  He held the door open for her. “Glad you came, Annie.”

  Hope you make it worth my while, said her smile as she held out two items to him.

  In one hand, she had a pie from the diner, packed in a box. In the other, Tony’s journal.

  He grasped on to both, then set the book on the nearby end table. The journal seemed to watch him, just as if Tony was here, encouraging him to be the best he could be.

  “It’s cherry pie,” Annette said. “I know you like to have it on occasion.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stood aside, and she walked in, immediately becoming a part of his home again.

  “You went in to the diner today?” he asked, taking her coat and draping it over a nearby flower-upholstered chair that didn’t go with anything else in the room.

  “Just for the pie. And to talk to Terry about modifying my work schedule.”

  He almost said it was high time for her to talk to her manager until he realized that he’d forfeited any right to be interested when he’d turned her down cold about the sonogram last night.

  “How did Terry take it?” Jared asked instead.

  “Great. He’s going to have me work the register and do some of the accounting during slow ti
mes.”

  “I didn’t know you were good at numbers.”

  “I’m okay. I took over my mom’s finances when she got sick and I ran the household. Plus, I took a class in college, which impressed Terry for some reason.”

  Sometimes, when she sounded so responsible and together like this, it was easy to forget that she was only in her early twenties. Still, her eyes had seen a lot—of heartache and loss, betrayal.

  When he noticed her gaze flick toward the fireplace, he suddenly remembered the dinner preparations and he made a beeline for it. He’d put aluminum-wrapped bundles in a tray over the fire, trying to impress her with his unusual cooking method.

  “Foil dinners?” she asked, coming up beside him at the stone hearth. “I haven’t had these since I was in Girl Scouts.”

  “I tried to make them the healthiest I could. I used ground turkey meat with vegetables. I also got some seven-grain bread and a cauliflower casserole from the market.”

  “You went to a lot of trouble.”

  “Not half as much as you deserve.”

  Her defenses seemed to melt right then and there, her shoulders sinking. “Are you trying to win me over or something?”

  He turned to her. “I mean it, Annie. Last night was a bump in the road for us. I never intended to hurt you. I should’ve...”

  “If you’re about to say you should’ve said you’d go to the sonogram, don’t. Yeah, it stung when you turned me down, but I was pushing things, Jared. I was in the moment, and I didn’t stop to consider the big picture.” She paused. “You’d think I would’ve learned to slow down after Brett. Lord knows I should’ve done my due diligence there.”

  “Annie,” he said, coming closer to her, “you’ve got such a good heart. Never apologize for that.”

  They looked at each other, and he felt himself falling, fast and hard.

  He wanted so badly to make her happy, even if he wasn’t capable of it in the end.

  “So how did your appointment go today?” he asked, smoothing a strand of hair back over her shoulder.

  Her cheeks were pink, maybe because they were standing so close to the fire.