“Four?” Sky’s mouth dropped comically.
“I know.”
“But you and Beck have been together since high school, so maybe it’s just the rodeo. He wants to focus on his career because it’s such a short one.”
The rodeo.
Ashni wiped at her tears, embarrassed. She didn’t know Sky all that well, but she really liked her and felt they could become close friends.
What was she going to do? She was just finding her feet, taking baby steps and now this: a baby. But Sky balanced motherhood with her career.
I will too.
She bit down on her lip. Sky had Kane. And a large family. She’d be alone.
Ashni tried to corral her panic. She was making a huge leap. Maybe she wasn’t even pregnant. The pinprick of disappointment following that thought was dismaying. She and Beck were broken up. She shouldn’t want to be pregnant. She’d just cut Beck loose to live his life while she lived hers. No way did she want to spring this surprise on him. The visual of his discomfort as Jerry pressed him about his plans swam into view.
Her impulse was to head to the store, buy a test and take it. Instead she dragged in a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. She’d been invited to dinner with all of Sky’s extended family in Marietta, and she was going to stay and enjoy herself. She wanted a life rich with friends, and this week was her start.
“Ashni, are you freaking out?”
“I should be.” She picked up her iced tea and pressed the cold glass against her forehead. “But I’m not going to. I might not be pregnant.” Wow, that word sounded alien coming out of her mouth. She’d spent the last decade determined to not get pregnant. “Beck and I are always very careful.”
“Yeah. So were Kane and I,” Sky said ruefully, looking down at her still-flat stomach. “But some cowboys just got good game, and science cannot win against that.”
“Beck better not be one of them.”
Chapter Nine
Beck was.
The next morning Ashni stared at the blue “pregnant” line for who knows how long. Then she put the test down and made herself a chai. She sat down on the top step of the studio apartment and stared at the large oak tree in the yard that shaded an outdoor patio space and then lifted her gaze farther to stare down Bramble Lane.
She felt eerily calm. Usually, her mind raced with plans, ideas, things to do. This morning, as dawn crept over the black, star-studded sky and turned it a pinky gray her mind was blissfully silent.
She finished her chai, her hands cupping the mug for warmth, and waited for it to get light enough so that she could go for her morning run. How long would she be able to run? She’d need to buy a jogger.
“So much for a quiet mind.” She laughed at herself.
She got back up and went inside. She looked at the test again. Still pregnant. She stripped off her clothes and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She looked the same. She touched her breasts. They were tender, aching a little. Her stomach was still taut—a little ripped as she liked to work out. That wouldn’t last long. She touched her muscle definition.
What was she going to do?
The pregnancy wouldn’t change her plans. She would still stay in Marietta and take the job. She’d have to tell her new boss. That was only fair. And her parents. Her eyes widened in panic. And Beck. She’d have to tell him. Oh. God. This was a disaster.
“You’re changing everything,” she accused, but her palm, which had flattened over her abdomen spread out, and wonder seeped through her panic.
She was going to be a mother.
A single mother. Not a concept she’d ever thought would ever relate to her because she’d always had Beck. Beck who hadn’t contacted her since Monday night. He’d left her alone as she’d asked except to send tacos and chips and salsa for her class on Tuesday. And cookies from the Copper Mountain Gingerbread and Dessert Company on Wednesday. What would he send today, pacifiers? Sippy cups?
She’d tell him after the rodeo. He didn’t need the distraction, and she had to come to terms with it so she didn’t panic and cling to him, launching herself back into his life.
Unnerved by her thoughts, Ash dressed in her leggings, a sports bra, long-sleeve Nike zip-up tee, and running shoes. A hard run would settle her. She’d figure out how to tell Beck—after the rodeo.
She left the apartment. The spit dried in her mouth.
Beck stood at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in running shorts and a wicking tee that hugged his shoulders and pecs. Her mouth opened. He stretched as if nothing in the world had changed between them.
“Thought I’d join you.”
He looked so beautiful—his face a little leaner, his gaze more somber than she’d ever seen it except when a cowboy on the tour had been seriously and permanently injured, and they’d visited him in the hospital and his pregnant wife had been there openly weeping while he’d been sleeping off the anesthetic from the surgery that hadn’t been guaranteed to ensure he’d ever walk again.
That could be Beck someday.
“Ash?”
Even his voice sounded deeper, darker, and whispered through her heating her blood in a way that was all too familiar.
In answer, she took off at a dead run.
*
This had been an interesting morning, Beck thought after a five-mile run that had seemed more like a race.
“I have an outdoor shower.” Walker Wilder poked her head out of one of her French doors. “It’s more for dogs, but I make Calum clean up out there sometimes when he puts in a messy shift at the raptor rescue center out near Bozeman. Water’s heated.”
“Thanks.” He waved at her, a bit embarrassed that he’d been caught shirtless after the run and hosing off in her driveway probably before she’d knocked back her first coffee.
“It’s more private.” Walker smirked. “Not that I minded the show, but Calum’s getting ticked that I’m googly eying you.”
“No, I’m not.” Calum joined his wife at the door and wrapped his arms around her and his hands cupped her very large, very low baby bump. Women were amazing, nurturing life inside of them. And how the heck did their skin and muscles stretch out that much?
If Ash ever got pregnant, he’d be a nervous wreck.
“I took a few pictures and posted them on the Copper Mountain Rodeo site.”
Beck turned off the hose and dried off with his T-shirt.
“And then I posted to my Ghost Quest site that I spotted an exhibitionist spirit in my yard. Pretty pale there, cowboy. Find some sun.”
They closed the door, still laughing at him. Yeah, that’s what he had time to do with Ashni kicking his backside to the curb, the moms descending and riding his ass with a million chores to prepare the ranch and house for a party and imminent sale, and his granddad acting out of sorts and contemplating selling his ranch and leaving Marietta forever—relax for a few days on a beach.
He grabbed his jeans and shirt from his truck, found the shower, and washed off quick. Ash had improbably agreed to have breakfast with him at Main Street Diner, and he didn’t want to give her a reason to change her mind.
He’d showed restraint worthy of a UN diplomat for not contacting her for several days. He’d wanted to. A million texts had run through his mind. Pictures he could have taken with funny captions that would have made her laugh or remind her of special moments. The whole ranch was one giant memory—more with her than growing up with his cousins. She couldn’t be out of his life. It would be like cutting off his arm.
He’d sent food to the kids and only one picture—no caption. A hale bale in the loft of the barn that he’d covered with a red and white eyelet plaid slipcover, that he’d positioned to look out of the barn’s loft window.
It was their spot. They’d made love there. Sure. But so much more. Some evenings they’d just sit, watch the sun go down, hold each other, talk about nothing and everything, and sometimes she’d play her guitar and sing.
He had to win her back. Ha
d to. And it had nothing to do with Bodhi’s damn game and everything to do with Ash. The tour had emailed him back asking him if he was sure he didn’t want to re-up for next year. He was. They said he could change his mind until after the Christmas holidays. His agent had emailed back to say he was crazy. His endorsements would dry up. Beck didn’t care.
He’d win his girl back and rebuild his life starting with her, with or without the ranch.
He dressed quickly and sat on top of a picnic table to wait. Arguments and words bombarded his mind. He just needed the right combo to persuade her, but even as she opened the door—stealing his breath in her dark skinny jeans, paisley-printed tunic top with embroidered flowers on it, and her hair tumbling freely down to the small of her back—he hadn’t settled on what to say.
He just wanted to kiss her.
She flicked one end of her long, silky scarf nervously over her shoulder.
“I’m ready,” she said softly looking anything but.
They walked to the Main Street Diner. He’d hoped to drive her and convince her to come out to the ranch to see all the work he’d been doing, but Ashni said she had some things to do at Harry’s House, and his spirits—soaring because she’d gone on a run with him, dipped. Would she even come to the party?
Flo greeted them. Took their breakfast order. Ashni ordered yogurt and fruit and toast. Beck loaded up on the protein. He had a busy morning ahead and was moving Raider to the rodeo grounds later in the afternoon.
Flo brought the coffee and tea, but Ashni still hadn’t said anything. Her gaze pinged around the room, but she was all that held his attention.
“Ashni, whatever it is, we can make it right. Together,” he said, his hands capturing hers as she fiddled with her cutlery.
She finally looked at him.
“I promise. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He meant it. Wanted her to see that he meant it.
“I’m pregnant.”
Millions of men had been slapped upside the head with that word. He was only one more. There was probably an appropriate response. A safe one. A twenty-first-century self-actualized male response, but Beck had no idea what it was.
What? How? When?
Stupid questions. Irrelevant questions so he clamped his mouth shut. Was this why she’d been acting so weird? Relief coursed through him, warring with shock.
She kept watching him, wary and defiant.
The defiance threw him. Had she gone off birth control on purpose? That was so un-Ash-like that he dismissed the suspicion immediately. Besides, it was irrelevant. The baby was his. Ash was his.
A response was required. “How are you feeling?” he asked carefully. It seemed the safest option of everything screaming in his brain.
Damn, but he couldn’t breathe. And he felt sweaty and prickingly hot. He should have stuck with the hose. That icy glacier-fed water had damn near frozen his balls off—probably something Ash would appreciate right about now.
“Weird. Crappy.” She stirred honey in her tea, seemingly calmer just as his freak-out was ramping up.
“How…how long?” He winced. Totally stupid question. Pregnant was all or nothing. A week or a month didn’t make a woman any more pregnant.
“I don’t know. Maybe a few weeks. Or more.”
“Or more?” he echoed. “How can you not know? Why are you just telling me now?”
“Keep your voice down.” She scanned the busy restaurant. “I’d prefer to announce the news with an ad in the Courier,” she said sarcastically.
“We never should have gone for that run,” he burst out. He hadn’t been protecting her. He hadn’t been protecting their child because he hadn’t known! “Why are you just telling me now?” he demanded.
“I was going to wait until after the rodeo. I didn’t want you distracted, but it’s all I could think of this morning. Even the run didn’t clear my mind.”
“Why the hell would you sit on news like this?”
“Calm down,” she urged. “It’s not like me being pregnant changes anything.”
“Like hell it doesn’t. It changes everything.”
Ash shook her head, quick, hard. Beck dropped her hands like they were stove-hot.
“We’re still broken up,” she said calmly as if she weren’t aiming a Marlin Model 336 rifle at his chest. “In fact—”
“We are not broken up. You’re pregnant.”
By now a few people were looking. Beck didn’t care.
“I am not marrying you because of a baby,” she hissed.
“Too bad. I am not not marrying the mother of my child. You’re being ridiculous.” He busted his leash on calm twenty-first-century male. “Stop playing games. First, you’re pissed that I don’t ask you to marry me, and now you say you won’t marry me when you’re pregnant. We are going to be parents, and I take that seriously. I am not walking away from my responsibility.”
Ash launched up, eyes spitting fire. “I am not marrying a jackass cowboy who thinks of me as a responsibility. I can take care of myself and my baby.”
She shrugged back into her cropped denim jacket and fluffed her hair so that it swung around her angry face like a dark cloud of doom. She kept her voice low, but each word was a precisely articulated bullet.
“For your information, Beck Ballantyne, you’re the last man I’d marry. When I do marry, if I marry—” she stressed the if like that was going to impress him “—I’m going to marry a man who adores me. A man who can’t wait to share his life with me. A man who doesn’t want to go one more day without me as his wife. And I definitely am not going to marry a man in a quickie courthouse ceremony. When I marry, my family will be there. I will have a red sari and a white dress. I will celebrate jaimala in front of my family and friends. I will have a sangeet party with mehndi and singing and dancing and food. I will have a ceremony with vows that my future husband and I write to each other, and we will make promises to each other in front of God and everyone. And I will be loved and happy and build a home and a life with the man of my dreams, who doesn’t see me as one more chore he’s got to take care of. And my baby will know it’s loved, not one more thing grudgingly scrawled on a to-do list.”
Ash grabbed her purse, tossed her scarf gracefully over her shoulder, and swept out of the restaurant.
And for the second time in one week—that had to be some sort of a record, didn’t it?—Beck watched Ashni walk away from another meal and him while a man he didn’t know in the booth behind him asked, “Son, you gonna go chase after your baby mama?”
“Nope,” Beck said feeling strangely sanguine and pissed at the same time. He picked up his coffee and watched Flo approach with two breakfasts. Good. He was hungry. “I already caught her. Just thinking of the best way to reel her back in.”
*
“It’s Friday night,” Bodhi sang out and executed a dance move that kicked up fresh sawdust.
Christ, after another day of hard labor that lasted late into the night, and finally receiving a terse ‘we both need time to process’ text from Ashni after he’d called and texted several times throughout the day, he’d again been unable to sleep. He’d spent the time researching Montana’s marriage license requirements and diamonds online. Beck was not in the mood for Bodhi’s playfulness.
He and his cousins were about to load up their horses and head to the fairgrounds.
“Look at you, all grumpy because you’ve been getting none.” Bodhi laughed.
“Bodhi.” Bowen’s voice was low. But it had that tone. The tone that usually stopped everything and everyone dead in its tracks.
But not this time.
“Maybe it’s time to switch horses mid-ride, Mr. All Flapping Jaw But No Action,” Bodhi taunted.
Beck didn’t even remember moving. Next thing he knew he was breathing hard, Bowen had flipped him over his shoulder and had him in a headlock, and Bodhi was getting up off the ground, his mouth bleeding and a bruise already coming up high on his cheek.
“Damn. That was fast.” Bodh
i, as usual, seemed wryly amused. “Haven’t seen you move like that since you were fourteen and I asked—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Bowen strong-armed Bodhi across the barn. “For once, zip it.”
Bodhi picked up his hat and slapped off the dust. “Zipped.” He smirked.
“We good?” Bowen asked.
No. Beck was anything but good.
He was going to be a father.
And the mother of his baby didn’t want anything to do with him.
And he couldn’t even share his good news because it wasn’t good yet since Ash said he was the last man she’d marry. And his family seemed intent on beautifying the ranch to offload it on a celebrity or multi-millionaire who wouldn’t appreciate the heritage. Beck’s child might never sit atop Plum Hill or swim in the creek or learn to ride over the endless fields of Three Tree Ranch.
Bodhi had another bruise coming up along his jaw.
“Sorry,” Beck muttered. He hadn’t realized he’d hit that hard. He just remembered seeing white as everything buzzed out. He had to pull himself together.
“Is that a sorry, not sorry?” Bodhi grinned and held out his hand to be slapped. Hard. It had been that way since they were kids. Bodhi’s idea, of course. He could never do anything the normal way, not even a handshake.
“Mid-way to a real sorry. I was hoping a true love relationship, even a fake one, would improve you, but no such luck.”
Bodhi’s cocky grin faded. Steel entered his gaze.
Interesting.
“No such luck.” Bodhi repeated and eloquently shrugged his shoulders. “Damn, I think you got in five or six punches before Bowen put your ass down.” Bodhi adjusted his body as if to see if it still worked. “Getting slow in your old age,” he said to Bowen. “You used to pull him off before he got in two.”
“Why’s that my job?” Bowen was his usual laconic self. “You just stood there, mouth hanging open like the target everyone wants to take a swing at.”
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