McCall looked at the ring. At the girls. At Edith, who was still in the doorway. And then at him. Austin figured this wasn’t the most romantic proposal that’d ever been, but he could tell from McCall’s smile—and the happy tears in her eyes—that it was a surefire winner.
“Yes,” McCall said. She kissed Austin and gathered them into her arms. That tipped them all over on their backs like long-legged turtles. “I’ll marry all three of you.”
* * *
That Night In Texas
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN HE SPOTTED the pregnancy test, Harley Garrett’s hands froze under the stream of running water in the bathroom sink. Heck, his entire body froze. Possibly the entire state of Texas did, too.
Blinking to make sure he was focusing, he stared down at the white Magic Marker–sized stick in the trash can on the tiled bathroom floor. He wasn’t an expert about such things, but it was definitely a pregnancy test.
Harley gulped in his breath. Not a very manly reaction considering he was a tough cowboy and champion bull rider, but there were just some things that could shake him to the core.
Turning off the water and wiping his hands to dry them, he stooped down for a better look. Harley could see the little screen on the stick, which was blank, but he had no idea what it meant. Unfortunately, he had an idea of who’d put it there.
Crap.
This was the bathroom off the reception area for his family’s guest ranch, Rustler’s Ridge, and while guests did occasionally use it, at the moment they didn’t have anyone staying in the main house, only in the cabins. The ranch hands didn’t normally head in here, either, since there were bathrooms in the bunkhouse. The only reason Harley had ventured into it was because a meeting with a buyer had run late, and he’d needed to make a pit stop before heading back to the barn.
The doorknob jiggled, causing Harley to jolt, and the jolting just continued when he heard the voice on the other side of the door. “Harley? You in there?”
It was his kid sister, Liv. The very sister who was involved with a scumbag cowboy on a neighboring ranch in their hometown of Lone Star Ridge, Texas. The very sister who was barely twenty-four and frequently used this bathroom because she often worked out of their mother’s office when she was setting up schedules for the riding lessons she gave.
Harley mumbled some very bad curse words, threw open the door and faced Liv. He didn’t bother to tamp down the glare that was surely on his face. “Are you knocked up?” he demanded.
He’d been so sure that she would look guilty, maybe even sputter out a not-so-convincing denial, but his sister only stared at him as if he’d sprouted multiple sets of eyeballs.
“Uh, no,” Liv said, exaggerating that two-word response. “But thanks for asking me a question that’s basically none of your beeswax.”
“It is my beeswax.” Though he hated using that term. “You’re my sister, and there’s one of those pee sticks in the trash can.”
Her expression went from surprised sisterly annoyance to curiosity, and Liv stepped around him to have a look for herself. She gasped.
“It’s not mine,” Liv insisted, shaking her head, and as he’d done, she leaned in to no doubt check if it was a positive or negative result. “It’s blank.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed, “but someone obviously felt the need to take the test.” And it was possible the test had indeed given the result before fading.
However, at the moment the results weren’t the big question here. Someone had put that pee stick in the garbage can, and he’d just ruled out one of the possible females who could have left it there.
That left him with two other prospects.
“Darla,” he said, referring to Darla Givens, the receptionist who’d worked at the ranch for the past two years.
“No way,” Liv concluded. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Believe me, if she did, she would have told me.”
Maybe. But if he excluded Darla, then there was only one other likely candidate.
“Hell,” Harley grumbled just as Liv gushed out, “Holy crap. You think Mom’s pregnant?”
That was indeed the only remaining female who made regular use of this particular bathroom. His forty-eight-year-old mother, Tracy, who’d had Harley when she’d been only seventeen in what had sure as hell been an unplanned pregnancy. One that’d had her parents tossing her out of their house. To make matters worse, Harley’s father, whom he’d never met, had skipped town and never shown his face again. If it hadn’t been for Tracy’s great-aunt leaving her Rustler’s Ridge, Tracy and he wouldn’t have even had a roof over their heads.
When Harley was four, Tracy had married a local mechanic, Jerry Darlington, and they’d had Liv three years later. Jerry and Tracy had divorced shortly thereafter, and there’d been a string of relationships after that.
Messy, broken relationships.
Harley loved his mother, most days anyway, but she’d made an art form out of hooking up with dirtbags and other turds who could give her the most trouble. She’d become a cautionary tale to Liv and him about not getting involved too deep in their own relationships.
Maybe that was what’d happened again—another messy relationship for Tracy—but this time it’d led to something more permanent. Like another kid.
Harley repeated his “Hell.”
Liv repeated her “Holy crap.” But then she shook her head. “Isn’t Mom too old to get knocked up?”
Harley gave his sister a flat look to remind her that not only didn’t he know that sort of thing but it also wasn’t something he wanted to know. Still, he had to consider it.
“Maybe it was someone who just dropped by for a visit,” Liv speculated.
He hoped she was referring to the person who’d left the pee stick and not someone who’d possibly gotten their mom pregnant. But the moment the thought went through his head, Harley got a bad feeling. Apparently so did Liv because at the same time they blurted out, “Marty Jameson.”
It wasn’t a stretch for them to come up with that name when connected to a pregnancy test. Marty Jameson was an aging country-rock music star who’d fathered more than a few kids, including the ones with his ex-wife. He was staying in cabin number three on the ranch, something he did from time to time. Supposedly, he was there to work on some new tunes, but maybe he’d taken a break from music writing to knock up yet one more woman.
“I’ll talk to Mom about this,” Liv volunteered.
Harley had no trouble hearing the subtext in that. Liv thought she could ask the question with more finesse. And she probably could. But he didn’t want to wait around to hear a rehashing of that conversation. He wanted to get to the bottom of this right now.
With Liv by his side, he hurried out of the bathroom and headed straight for Tracy’s office. She wasn’t there and neither was Darla, who was on her lunch break. However, Harley did spot someone through the large bay windows that fronted the house.
Amelia Wade.
Seeing her didn’t nearly cause a heart attack as the pregnant stick had, but Harley got a jolt of a different kind. A good one. One that arrowed right to his groin and other parts of him.
He’d had a thing for Amelia since he was old enough to have things, and the years hadn’t cooled it down one bit. Thankfully, it was the same for her. Amelia worked for a cattle broker in Wrangler’s Creek, which was about thirty miles away, but she often made trips to the ranch since Harley and his mom bought livestock from her boss.
Harley usually found a reason to go to her place, too, but if weeks went by without them contacting each other, neither of them got bent out of shape about it. That was because Amelia was no more interested in anything serious than he was. Between th
e two of them, they had enough emotional baggage to derail any hint of serious.
“I’ll find Mom,” Liv said when she followed Harley’s gaze to the parking lot, where Amelia had just exited her truck.
That pulled him out of his gawking, something he was prone to do whenever Amelia was around. The woman was definitely a looker without even trying. Amelia managed to make worn jeans, boots and a plain shirt look amazing. Ditto for her long brown hair that she had scooped away from her face and into a ponytail. Her brown eyes were in the same amazing category, too, but today she had them covered with sunglasses.
“Don’t talk to Mom about the test until I’m with you,” Harley warned his sister.
Liv certainly didn’t agree to that, and she headed to the back of the house to look for their mother, just as Amelia came through the front door.
Harley experienced more of that groin tightening, and despite the possible situation involving his mom, he found himself smiling at Amelia.
“I didn’t know you were coming to Rustler’s Ridge today,” he greeted, walking toward her.
Harley wanted to kiss her, but then that wasn’t a new reaction. Nor was it one Amelia would appreciate. She didn’t exactly keep their friends with benefits relationship a secret, but she didn’t announce it to the world, either. Even though her folks knew she was seeing Harley, she wouldn’t want them kissing in public and becoming fodder for gossip. Gossip that her parents wouldn’t like one little bit.
The Wades might overlook their high-society-born daughter working for a cattle broker, but they wouldn’t want their friends to know that she occasionally bedded a cowboy who’d been born on the wrong side of the sheets. That was why Amelia and he had adopted the saying of “what happens on Rustler’s Ridge stays on Rustler’s Ridge.” That had worked out well for going on three years now, and Harley didn’t want to stir up anything that would put an end to Amelia’s visits or give her any grief with her snooty folks.
Amelia smiled, too. It wasn’t quite as dazzling as usual, and she immediately hitched her thumb in the direction of the road that led to the ranch. “There’s a reporter with a wide-angle-lens camera parked at the end of the road. Looks like he might be up to something.”
Harley sighed, cursed under his breath. “Marty Jameson’s staying here.”
Amelia didn’t seem surprised about that. Marty didn’t often draw interest from the paparazzi, but there were occasional rabid fans who wanted to meet the former heartthrob. If the reporter didn’t leave, Harley would need to have a chat with him. With Marty, too. But that would wait until after he’d figured out why Amelia had come.
She took off her sunglasses, hooking them over the neck of her shirt, and she glanced around. “Is your mom here?” she asked.
So, this was business. Odd, though, that his mom hadn’t mentioned it. Then again, if his mother had been preoccupied with pregnancy tests and her latest scumbag, then it might have slipped her mind.
“She’s around somewhere,” Harley said, going closer to Amelia.
Because he just wanted to touch her, he reached out and ran his fingers over her bunched-up forehead. He would have asked her what had given her those worry lines, but her phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket and muttered something he didn’t catch. Not a happy muttering, either, but Harley thought that was possibly because her father’s name, Patrick Wade, had popped up on the screen.
Harley saw the debate she had with herself about answering the call, but she finally hit the answer button. “No, I haven’t found her,” Amelia said without so much as a hello. “I’ll get back to you if she’s here.”
Frowning at that, Harley waited for Amelia to end the call, and she looked at him. “My parents had a big argument, and my mother left,” Amelia explained. “She might have come here.”
That only deepened Harley’s frown. Rustler’s Ridge seemed like the last place in Texas where the old-money heiress Nadine Wade would go, but he went to the now empty reception desk to look through the reservations. They used computers for keeping info like that, but his mom also liked to keep an old-fashioned guest book that people signed. Other than Marty and a family in cabin number six, there were no other guests.
“If she’s here, she didn’t sign in,” he relayed.
“She wouldn’t have signed in,” Amelia immediately verified. “It’s possible she’s with Marty Jameson.”
Well, hell in a big-assed handbasket. Harley certainly hadn’t expected to hear that. “They know each other?” He had to ask.
“Apparently,” Amelia said on a heavy sigh.
For such a short answer, it carried a crap load of emotion. The wrong kind of emotion, too. Marty had plenty of fans, many of them about the same age as Nadine, but she sure didn’t seem Marty’s type. Then again, maybe Nadine had done some fan-girl slumming. Or perhaps she’d simply lost her mind, which seemed far more plausible to Harley than it did for Nadine to be voluntarily hooking up with Marty.
“You really believe your mom could be with Marty?” Harley pressed.
She shook her head, shrugged. “His name came up in the argument, and my dad seems to believe she left to come and see him. How long has Marty been here?” Amelia asked.
“About two weeks for this visit.”
And before Amelia had shown up, Harley had been thinking that’d been enough time for Marty to knock up his mother, but it seemed a stretch for even Marty to impregnate one woman while keeping company with another. However, if anyone could manage that, it’d be Marty.
“I haven’t seen any other cars headed toward his cabin, but I can call him so you can ask him about your mother. Or I can take you there,” Harley offered.
“Take me there,” she said after a couple of moments of hesitation.
Harley motioned for her to follow him, hoping this didn’t lead to some big blowup between Nadine and Amelia, but before they even reached the door, Darla Givens, the receptionist, walked in.
As usual, Darla was dressed, well, like no one else in Lone Star Ridge with her pink poofy overalls, pink hair and, yeah, pink sandals. The woman gave a beaming grin to Amelia while she tugged off her—what else?—pink sparkly sunglasses.
“You’re back,” Darla said. “And I see you found Harley.”
Harley didn’t think it was his imagination that Amelia also hesitated before giving Darla a nod.
“Amelia came by earlier to see you, but you were still in your meeting,” Darla added.
This time Amelia didn’t just hesitate. She seemed to freeze, and she didn’t look at him when she said, “We need to talk.”
Harley had been about to say the same thing to Darla. Despite Liv’s assurances about Darla not having a boyfriend, he wanted to ask her about the pregnancy test. Obviously, though, it would have to wait because Amelia clearly wanted to get out of there.
Darla wasn’t exactly a gossip, but Harley understood why Amelia would want to keep it quiet that her mother might be in Marty’s cabin. That was why Harley went ahead and led Amelia outside. The cabin wasn’t far, only about a quarter of a mile from the main house, and it sat just off a tree-lined curvy dirt road. So with Amelia right by his side, Harley headed in that direction.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to see me earlier,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Obviously, this situation with your mother has shaken you up.”
Amelia stopped, pulling her hand from his, and with her mouth already open as if ready to say something, she whirled around to face him.
But she didn’t say anything.
After a few seconds, she groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. For the second time in the same day, he nearly had a heart attack when Amelia finally did speak and said what was on her mind.
“Harley, I think I’m pregnant with your baby.”
CHAPTER TWO
AMELIA BRACED HERSELF for Harley’s reaction. Which she
was certain would be bad.
He had a right to be stunned and furious. After all, they’d practiced safe sex, and making a baby hadn’t been on either of their radars. Yet, here they were, facing the real possibility that their noncomplicated relationship had just crossed over into a huge complicated zone.
“Say something,” Amelia finally insisted, just to break the silence.
He nodded but still didn’t speak. That was because he seemed to be gathering his breath and trying to shake off the stunned and furious reaction she’d been expecting. At the moment, though, there didn’t appear to be any fury on his face, but he had the shocked look down pat.
And it made her realize that she’d never seen him like this.
Harley was usually rock steady. Hot rock steady with his rugged cowboy looks and laid-back ways. Which was why she’d been attracted to him in the first place. Troubles just seemed to slide off him. Unlike her. Amelia always felt wound too tight, always felt one step off from who she was supposed to be, but when she was with Harley, he had a way of keeping her level. She was hoping he could do that now.
First, though, he apparently had to level himself.
He tugged off his Stetson, wiping his forehead with his arm and pushing the dark blond strands of hair away from his face. She always thought he looked more like some Viking god than a cowboy, but he was indeed the latter. A real honest-to-goodness cowboy. And he was wearing the championship rodeo buckle to prove it.
“The pregnancy test in the bathroom was yours,” he finally managed to get out, after he swallowed hard.
Of all the things she’d expected he might say, that wasn’t one of them. Amelia pulled back her shoulders and shook her head.
“Uh, no,” she answered. She studied him a moment, trying to figure out if his comment was because he was in shock, but she didn’t think it was that. “There was a pregnancy test in your bathroom?”
Good grief. She hoped there wasn’t someone else out there who might be carrying his child. But she immediately rethought that. Harley wasn’t the sort to sleep around. Neither was she. In fact, the only people they slept around with was each other, and that was one of the reasons their relationship was uncomplicated. That and because they didn’t put demands on each other.
Chasing Trouble in Texas Page 27
