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

by Green, Crystal

  “I had told you it might be up at Heartbreak Hill, but no one truly knows. The sheriff had cleaned up Tony’s house right afterward, taking Tony’s body and then finding an undisclosed resting place. He wouldn’t tell Tessa any more than that about it. He wanted her to forget Tony.”

  Jared’s heart cracked. So his great-grandfather and great-grandmother were apart, even in death. It left a dark spot on him, right alongside the one that still remained there—the one he’d earned by leaving his daughter.

  But couldn’t both of them be erased, just as Tony had erased his own?

  Gran’s gaze pleaded with him. “I’m dead serious about keeping this in the family, Jared. It would’ve shamed your grandfather if anyone had known the truth.”

  “But I’m the truth.” He gestured to himself. “There’s no denying it now. Tony’s always going to be a part of our history. St. Valentine already knows I belong to your family, Gran, and they can keep suspecting I’m related to Tony all they want. But there’s nothing that says I need to give them all the details. Just the fact that I know where I come from makes all the difference.”

  Her eyes went teary again and, for the first time, Jared went to his grandma for a hug. She embraced him wholeheartedly, telling him that he would never lack for a home.

  But, in all this, the one thing he realized above all others was that he wanted to give Annette a home, too.

  When Gran went to the kitchen to put together lunch, he gathered his guts to finally call the woman he would do anything for, even if she wasn’t going to call him.

  But when Annette answered the phone, all Jared heard on the other end of the line was a clatter, then a male voice.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you were gone, Annette?”

  Stunned, he listened for another few seconds, as the mystery man kept talking, hardly sounding like a friend of hers.

  Jared left that instant, calling to Gran that he needed to go, running out the door and taking off in his truck, his belly fisting with dread as he prayed he was wrong about who he thought that voice belonged to.

  Chapter Twelve

  Annette had been gripping her cell phone in her hand when it rang.

  Without thinking of the consequences, she pressed the answer button on the sly, hoping Brett wouldn’t notice.

  But he saw what she’d done, and he grabbed the phone, tossing it away.

  At least he hadn’t taken the time to disconnect the call as he raised his voice to her. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you were gone, Annette?”

  She recognized this man through and through. This was the Calm-Before-the-Storm Brett who’d tried to reason with her after she’d seen him kissing her bridesmaid in his dressing room.

  And the guy who’d turned into something much worse when he’d lifted a hand to hit Annette after she told him that she wasn’t going to marry him.

  “Really,” he continued calmly, although with a more aggressive tone than normal, “it hurts that you’re surprised to see me. Didn’t you think I cared enough to find out where you went?”

  She merely watched him as he stood in the home she’d nested in after escaping him. He was still as handsome as an all-American quarterback, with his perfectly cut sandy hair, piercing blue eyes, male-model jaw and weekend-at-the-resort shirt and khakis.

  The complete opposite of Jared, she thought. In so many ways.

  He was tense, and she got the feeling that if she said the wrong thing, he might lash out, grab on to her arm, force her out of the door with him to who knew where.

  So she remained collected. “I don’t want any trouble, Brett.”

  “I’m not here to make trouble.” He scanned her with his gaze, then frowned as he came to her tummy. “You’re...pregnant.”

  “Yes.” She swallowed. “There’s a man I met here, and we—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Annette.”

  She shook her head, sensing his temper escalating. “I’m not lying. Brett, you never loved me, and when I realized that, I found comfort in the only way I could.”

  Lies, lies, lies.

  Please believe them, she thought.

  But did he? Because he didn’t say so, one way or another. Maybe he didn’t even care about having a baby with her except for it being something he needed to do as a husband, just to show the world he was a perfect Cresswell. During their short engagement he’d never talked with any enthusiasm about having kids, although, for a brief time, she’d believed that news of her pregnancy might set a spark to life in him.

  But she’d never told him, thank God.

  He was still looking at her stomach, and she distracted him.

  “If you loved me so much,” she said, “why did it take you so long to find me?”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets, but they were fisted.

  She didn’t like his silence. “It’s been months since I left,” she continued. “Did you hire a P.I. and he ran into stumbling blocks? Or did it just take a while for you to do the hiring?”

  A small you-got-me smile lifted the corner of his mouth. So he hadn’t rushed to find out where she’d gone. Something had changed his mind about tracking her down.

  “You always were perceptive,” he finally said. “Maybe a little too much so, but you made me a promise, Annette. And it embarrassed the hell out of me when you didn’t keep it.”

  “You made me a promise, too, or did you forget it when you helped yourself to a bridesmaid?”

  She should’ve just kept that last remark to herself because his gaze darkened.

  “You know,” he said, “at first, I told my dad that it was for the best that you left. Yeah, you tore apart my pride, but it was easy to announce to the wedding guests that you were ill. You weren’t around to tell anyone differently, and when, afterward, I made it known that I broke off the marriage, I thought I could live with that. I was fine with finding someone new. Someone who didn’t have it in her to disappoint me like you did.”

  “Then why did you come here?”

  “Because, according to my dad, I must’ve done something to run you off. He and my mom genuinely liked you, Annette. Your family had a good name, even if they went broke. You were like Princess Di to them—sweet, charitable, beautiful enough to garner positive attention in the society column.”

  How had she never seen through this guy? “That’s why you’re here? Because your parents approved of me?”

  “Not exactly.” He removed his hands from his pockets and casually folded his arms over his chest. “Let me ask you this—if someone wronged you and got away with it, would you stand for that?”

  Oh, God. He didn’t want her back at all, did he? He wanted something altogether different, although she wasn’t sure what it was yet.

  It was too bad she hadn’t seen his true colors until their wedding day, when she’d realized that Brett didn’t think like a lot of other men. Even though his parents seemed kind, they had clearly spoiled him, brought him up in some way that made him believe he could take whatever he wanted...including a belated trip to see her.

  “Okay,” she said, trying to steady her voice, thinking of the phone in the corner. Hopefully whoever had called was listening in and getting help. “It sounds as if you were going to let me off the hook at first. What changed your mind?”

  “The thought of finishing what you started.”

  She started to inch to the side, toward the door.

  He went on. “My reputation didn’t really suffer after the wedding. We did some very good spin doctoring. But, as the months passed, what you did to me started to eat away at my gut. I knew a man would never take what you’d dished out, so I called a P.I.”

  He held up a hand in a gesture that caused her to halt in her tracks. He had noticed what she was doing.

  “
I’m not here to hurt you, Annette.”

  That didn’t make her feel any better. Still, she tried to reason with him.

  “Don’t you understand why I left?”

  He gave her a “because you overreacted about the bridesmaid” look. “Listen, I just thought I knew you better than I really did. All the people we’re acquainted with have understandings in their marriages. It’s no secret in the circles I run in, at least. I don’t know about yours. Besides, I thought your parents had the same arrangement mine did, and you were savvy enough to realize what would be expected.”

  “No. My parents were never like that.” Had she been ultra-naïve about the high society world she’d supposedly been a part of? Her mom had never told her to expect a lying, cheating dog of a husband.

  If Mom had been alive to meet Brett, she might’ve seen through him and warned Annette away.

  “Wow,” Brett said, laughing. “See, I just assumed you were up to speed on all that. I was pretty certain you were more worldly.”

  She tried to see in him what had drawn her in the first place—his charm, his smile, his manners and philanthropic pursuits. But they’d all been so superficial.

  She hadn’t looked deeply enough, as she’d gotten the opportunity to do with Jared.

  Jared...

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her phone on the carpet. Was it too much to hope that the caller had been Jared?

  Brett gestured toward her stomach. “Are you sure this isn’t mine?”

  “I told you that she isn’t,” Annette said, attempting not to sound desperate, but sweat was starting to bead up on her skin.

  He frowned, and for a moment, she wondered if he was rethinking his trip down here. She knew that Brett was too proud to raise another man’s child as his own, so she hoped that he would want nothing to do with her daughter.

  Annette shifted position again. The door didn’t seem too far away. “I’m not worth the effort you’re taking. I don’t know exactly what you want from me, but—”

  “I want you to know that there are consequences for leaving me at the altar.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said my pride smarted when I let you go at first. But I also said a man shouldn’t stand for the way you treated me.”

  She’d narrowed her eyes when he’d described himself as a man. A man was someone who owned up to his wrongs, who tried to correct them. Someone like Jared, who’d sent her that text this morning that had opened his emotions wide.

  Her expression had obviously pushed a button in Brett, and he stepped toward her, getting close to her face.

  “Don’t you ever look at me as if you’re above me.” He nearly growled the words in a dark, rumbling tone.

  Then he peered down at her stomach again, leveling out his voice. It wasn’t any less scary, though. Actually, this kind of calm from Brett was far more frightening.

  “Annette,” he said, “all you have to do is come back to Tulsa with me. Not for a marriage but to do your own kind of damage control.”

  “I thought you already took care of that.”

  The PR the Cresswells had done obviously wasn’t enough. Brett wanted a pound of social flesh.

  He and his ego wanted satisfaction.

  “I need you to show yourself around town,” he said. Then he gestured toward her sweater and sweatpants. “I’d like everyone to see you in these clothes you’re wearing now as you tell them that you want me back.”

  She could appease him by saying yes just to get out of this situation, or she could tell him to go to hell.

  The choice would’ve been easy if she didn’t have a baby between them.

  “Annette.” The scary voice returned as he backed her against the wall.

  She held up her hands, her pulse skittering, telling her to run again, to try and—

  The sound of a key in the front door startled her as she and Brett whipped their gazes over to the entry, where someone was coming in.

  As the door creaked open, a tall man dressed in black stood, his arms at his sides.

  * * *

  Jared’s blood curdled at the sight of the blond man cornering Annette and her unborn baby.

  When she saw him, her eyes were wide with not only relief but more. So much more.

  A flash of the past rolled over Jared’s mind—Tessa Hadenfield in her house that night, threatened by the thugs, just before Tony had saved her. She’d been pregnant, too, that night, even if it hadn’t been obvious to anyone.

  But Tony had given everything for the woman he loved and their child, Jared thought. And, like Tony, he was going to be Annette’s hero, and not just for today, either.

  Raw emotion made him spring at the intruder just as he was backing away from Annette. But Jared caught him, grabbing him by the shirt, shoving him into the kitchen.

  “You all right?” he asked Annette while still glaring at Brett. He’d been listening to her phone call on speakerphone all the way here, so he knew everything that had happened.

  “I’m good,” she said.

  He walked toward Brett, who was just as tall, just as built but not half as motivated. Jared shoved Brett backward again, and he hit the refrigerator.

  “You like picking on women?” Jared asked.

  Brett raised his hands. So he was a lover, not a fighter?

  “This is my fiancée,” he said.

  Jared actually laughed at that. “I don’t think so.”

  “You the baby’s father?” Brett asked.

  Without hesitation, Jared said, “Yeah. I sure as hell am.”

  Now that this guy had been painted into a corner, Jared could see his dander rising.

  But Brett was nothing to Jared, not after he’d spent years busting broncs. This kid was a prancing pony compared to them.

  Jared hovered, an inch from Brett’s face. “If you want to draw my blood for a DNA test, just go ahead.”

  Brett seemed somewhat relieved by the strong words and the confidence Jared had that the baby was his. Good, because now, more than ever, Jared wanted to be the one who would get to see the baby grow in Annette’s tummy, see her born, see her every day for the rest of his life.

  Time to end this. Jared took him by the shirt again and hauled him toward the door. But before he threw him out, he said, “Do I need to ask if you’re gonna leave us alone?”

  “I—”

  “I’d hate for you to operate under the impression that you had any rights whatsoever to a woman and baby who aren’t yours.”

  Brett got a rebellious gleam in his gaze. “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.”

  “Sure I do. And I think the slime I’m dealing with has a reputation in Tulsa society he kind of enjoys, right?”

  Brett’s smile told Jared that he was indeed correct. He had a reputation. But Jared wasn’t talking about the kind that would scare people off with threats of what he could accomplish with his money.

  He was talking about a vulnerability.

  “I like men who value their reputations,” he said. “They have something to defend. Just how precious is your reputation to you, Brett?”

  Before he could answer, Annette spoke up from behind them. “Precious enough so that he came down here to preserve it. He wanted me to do an apology tour in Tulsa.”

  “So I heard.” Jared shook his head. “A reputation’s a hard thing to maintain, especially if it’s been highly polished over the generations. I wonder how happy your dad would be if some of my reporter friends got wind of a tasty little scandal like this. A society creep who chases down women and unleashes his temper on them. Sounds like one of those pieces of crap you’d see on Nightline.”

  It took Brett only a hot second to recognize that Jared wasn’t BSing him.

  “Ju
st remember,” Jared said quietly, “I’ve got my friends on speed dial.”

  He opened the door for Brett, and the man walked out. But he glanced over his shoulder on the way, as Jared started to follow him.

  “I didn’t want her back anyway,” he said. “Just look at her—a small-town slob. That’s what she’s turned into.”

  Jared started to walk toward Brett, but the other man continued to the parking lot. It wasn’t until Jared saw him get in his Porsche and drive off that he went back inside.

  Annette was waiting for him, but neither of them made a move toward each other.

  Jared felt his blood go cold. Fear crawled up his spine. When they’d last been together, they had argued. He’d sent that text and she’d never answered.

  Was everything going to be okay between them or had she—

  She rushed into his arms, embracing him as if she would die before ever letting him go anywhere again. He let loose the breath he’d been holding and returned the hug tenfold, burying his face in her hair, choked with emotion.

  “I hope you didn’t take anything he said to heart,” he murmured.

  “The small-town-slob comment?” she asked, laughing into his chest. “How can I feel inferior when I have you?”

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him as if he were her entire life. As if he were all the hero a woman could ever want.

  He kissed her back, pressing his mouth to hers so hard that he was afraid he would bruise her. But, when he eased up, she deepened the kiss again, getting everything she could from him.

  And he was willing to give it all.

  They came up for air, and she said, “I’m so glad you came back, not only because he was here, but—”

  “I was going to come back to you even before I heard you on the phone. That’s why I made that call to you in the first place—so I could see if you’d still have me.”

  “Yes, I’ll have you. I’m never letting you think that I want you to be anywhere but here, Jared.”

  He kept planting little kisses on her temple, her nose, her mouth again. She tasted so sweet, tasted like his.

  Stroking her face, he looked her over.