by Caro Carson
She sounded so calm, so infuriatingly right. It reminded Sophia of the way Travis had talked to her, until she’d showed him her scars. “How do you suggest I do my own shopping for boots? You know I can’t walk into a store. I could shop online, if I had any internet access. You’re going to have to get me a laptop or a smartphone. Then I could be independent.”
Grace bit her lower lip, a habit that Sophia knew she still did as well. She knew, because cameras caught everything.
“I don’t think having internet access would be a good idea,” Grace said.
“Why not?”
Grace couldn’t quite look her in the eye. “Hackers will use it to find you.”
“That’s not the whole story, is it? What’s on the internet that you don’t want me to see?”
“It’s just...things haven’t really died down the way we’d hoped. Not yet. But they will. Um...when do you want to tell Deezee you’re pregnant? Alex and I want to be—”
“I’m not pregnant.” There. Those words felt much better out loud than rattling around in her head.
“What?” Grace’s arm was suddenly around her shoulder. Her voice was all sympathy, shopping and laundry and every other offense forgotten. “Oh, Sophie. When did you miscarry? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t. I was never pregnant in the first place. The tests can be wrong, you know. It says so in the instructions.”
“So you got your period this month?”
That startled Sophia. She hadn’t been paying attention, really, but she quickly counted the weeks up in her head. They couldn’t be right.
She shrugged. “I don’t feel pregnant. Look at me. Does this look like a pregnant woman’s body?”
Grace looked at her, but not at her stomach. She smoothed Sophia’s hair over her shoulder with an almost painful gentleness. The expression on Grace’s face was unbearable. Concern, compassion, pity—just horrible.
Sophia turned back to the pasture and shaded her eyes with her hand. “Where’s Samson? Do you see him? He’s the big bay with black points.” She forced a laugh. “Aren’t you impressed with my cowgirl talk? That’s just a horsey way to say brown with black trim. Travis left the ATV here. I bet he took Samson out for the day. Anyhow, Samson just loves Jean Paul’s shampoo. When I get back to LA, I’m going to ship a gallon of it to the ranch.”
“Sophia—”
“Just so he has it to remember me by.”
“Sophia, you’re pregnant.”
She whirled to face her sister. “I am not. I wish I’d never done that test in the first place. It’s just making everyone worry over nothing.”
“You’ve missed two periods and had a positive pregnancy test.”
Sophia kept her chin high. The fence rail was solid under her hands. She wasn’t going to crack. She wasn’t going to fall apart.
“I’m not, but it wouldn’t matter if I was.”
“It matters to me,” Grace said.
“I had to get out of the spotlight for a little while, anyway, right? If I am pregnant, which I’m not, then I already told you the plan. I’ll just have the baby and give it up for adoption.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Some couple is out there just dying to have a baby. I’d be a surrogate mother. That’s a really noble thing to do, you know.”
“But you’re not a surrogate mother. This is actually your baby.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She started walking toward the barn, done with the whole conversation, angry at her sister for bringing it up.
Patch stayed with the horses, but Grace dogged her heels. “Well, I do want to talk about it. It’s the whole reason I came out here today.”
Sophia nearly tripped on those words. She’d been suckered into thinking that Grace had sought her out because she wanted to be her sister and her friend, but it was just a betrayal. She didn’t want Sophia’s company. It had all been a trap to force Sophia to talk about something she didn’t even want to think about.
Sophia broke into a run, sneakers pounding relentlessly into the ground until she reached the barn. Until she reached the office. Until she threw herself into Travis’s chair.
“Sophie! Where are you?” Grace stopped in the office doorway, breathless. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what? Not talk about something I don’t want to talk about? If I’m pregnant, it has no bearing on you.”
“Yes, it does. I’m trying to plan a wedding. My wedding. And I came here today because I wanted to ask you to be my maid of honor.”
Sophia closed her eyes. She’d hated herself plenty of times before, but this one was the worst.
“But we need to talk about your pregnancy.” Grace had tears in her voice. “I tried to be flexible. I chose a bunch of different locations, but the soonest I could book any of them was September. You’ll be showing in September.”
“And you don’t want a pregnant cow in your wedding.” Sophia murmured the words more to herself than to Grace.
“No. That isn’t it at all. If you were keeping your baby, then it wouldn’t matter at all that you were showing. You’d have nothing to hide.”
Grace took a deep breath, and Sophia knew she was about to hear something she didn’t want to hear.
“But if you want to keep everything a secret, then I have to respect that. I tried guesstimating when you were due and how long it would take for your body to recover so that people wouldn’t suspect you’d ever had a baby. If you’re due in January, I think you probably wouldn’t be comfortable trying to pull it off until April, even with the way you work out. I don’t want to wait until next April to marry Alex. I want my big sister in my wedding, but it’s not just about having a white gown and a party and some photos. It’s about actually being married to Alex. I want to make him those promises now. I want to start our lives together now, not next year.”
Sophia knew she was supposed to say something, but she had nothing to contribute. Grace had thought everything through while Sophia had refused to think of it at all.
“If you don’t want to be seen, I thought about asking someone else to stand up with me. I’ve made some friends, and...well, I really like Kendry MacDowell. She’s married to Alex’s department chair, Jamie MacDowell. When Alex was putting out feelers about finding a place off the beaten path, Jamie mentioned his mother’s house was vacant, so that’s how we found this place for you. His baby picture is on the wall in your house, isn’t that funny? Anyway, his wife Kendry is my age, and—”
“I understand.” Sophia didn’t want to hear it. Neither she nor Grace had been able to make friends outside their two-sister world, not when deli clerks were bribed to expose them. She knew she should be happy for Grace, but she didn’t want to hear how Kendry was going to hold Grace’s bouquet while Alex put a gold band on Grace’s finger and started a new life with her.
Her little Grace had lost the best mother. She’d gotten a skittish big sister as a poor substitute. But Grace wasn’t letting anything get in her way now. She was doing so much better out of the nest on her own than she ever had when Sophia had dragged her around the world in pursuit of Hollywood dreams.
“I’m so sorry,” Sophia said. She was. About everything.
“Don’t be sorry. The wedding will be great. We’re thinking about a ceremony earlier in the day. We found the cutest bridesmaid dresses, this lemon yellow that’s short and swingy. It would be great for a daytime wedding. Kendry’s expecting, too. She’s further along than you are, so we were excited to find a dress that will work. Even though it’s not a maternity dress, it will look cute on her.”
Stop. Please, stop.
Sophia couldn’t act her way out of this. Kendry’s expecting, her sister said, like it was a good thing, something to look forward to. If it turned out that Soph
ia was really pregnant, there would be no excitement, only plans for damage control.
“It would look really cute on you, too. It’s only June. You might change your mind by September. You could be in the wedding, too.”
Sophia could only shake her head, a vehement denial, as her tears began falling.
She looked around the office, but there wasn’t a tissue box in this male space. She already knew there were textbooks on crops and cows, a computer she couldn’t access. There was a baseball on the shelf above the neat stack of T-shirts.
Sophia grabbed Travis’s T-shirt and mopped up her face.
“Oh, don’t cry, Sophie.” Grace’s voice was husky with her own tears, a sound Sophia remembered from those awful nights when they’d grieved together. “I just wanted... I wanted to talk to you in person. I’ve tried to ask you about it before, but you wouldn’t...well, at some point, I just had to make the call, so we put the deposit down on this rooftop venue for September.”
Sophia stood up, clutching Travis’s shirt close in case she couldn’t pull off the greatest acting job in her life. “September sounds like a good time of year for something outdoors on a rooftop. It won’t be as hot as it is now.”
Grace looked so concerned. Sophia was being as unselfish as she could. The least Grace could do was let herself be fooled by the act.
“This is just one day out of our whole lives,” Grace said. “It doesn’t change anything between us. We’re sisters.”
“Always.” But Sophia felt a little frantic. She wanted to get out of the barn and go somewhere else. Be someone else.
Travis had a digital clock on the wall, the kind that gave barometric pressure and humidity and a lot of other stuff that wouldn’t matter to Sophia once she gave up and went back to bed. “Look at the time. I have to go back to the house before anyone comes in from the range. Travis is the only one who knows I’m here. There are other guys working today, and one of them might come in any second.”
It was a lie. Travis had told her she’d be safe, but she didn’t feel safe. She needed to hide and lick her wounds.
Grace followed her out of the barn. “I’ve got a little bit of time before I have to go. I’m meeting Kendry at this florist that did her brother-in-law’s wedding. Braden’s. Do you remember Lana and Braden? They were at your table at the Texas Rescue ball...oh, never mind. Sorry.”
“I met them. For about five seconds.”
Before Deezee showed up and I made the dumbest decision of my life.
Grace did her best to keep talking as if that hadn’t been an awkward reminder of a terrible event.
Sophia let Grace’s voice wash over her as they walked side by side in the sunshine. The calm weather made a mockery of Sophia’s inner turmoil. If she could just turn back time to the person she’d been before she met Deezee...
She’d thought the same thing after she’d tried to touch Travis’s wet body and he’d turned her down cold. She’d been certain the pre-Deezee version of herself would’ve been more desirable. Yet this morning she’d flirted with Travis, and he’d dropped everything he was doing to stand a little too close to her under that kitchen door awning. He seemed to like the current version after all.
Grace had changed topics from her life to Sophia’s. “I don’t know how to keep you hidden at ob-gyn appointments, but there are midwives associated with the hospital who make house calls. That might work. They have patient confidentiality rules in place, but I’ll look into a more comprehensive confidentiality contract, the kind we had for the housekeepers and staff back in LA.”
Before meeting Deezee, Sophia had entrusted her day-to-day routine to her personal assistant, but she’d made all the big decisions herself. She’d set her long-term goals and planned out every strategic move to get there. Her reputation as a smart and savvy actor had been earned. Now, Grace was deciding Sophia’s medical care for her.
“I’m worried about the press, though,” Grace said. “If they wanted to know what you ate so badly, I can’t imagine what lengths they’ll go to for baby gossip.”
Before Deezee, it had never been her assistant’s job to decide what to do next. Sophia had never put that burden on her sister’s shoulders.
“Hey, Gracie?”
They stopped by her sister’s car.
“You’ve got enough on your plate without worrying about doctors and confidentiality and all the rest. I’m going to look into it.”
“Are you sure? I was going to try making some anonymous calls to a few adoption agencies to see what’s involved—”
“Stop, sweetie.” Sophia took a deep breath. “You’ve been an absolute rock for me, but I’ve got this, okay? I can make the calls, if and when I need to. You, meanwhile, are the bride, and you’ve got an appointment in town with a florist and some friends. Go.”
“Are you sure?”
Sophia nodded. This didn’t feel like acting. This felt like being herself. Not her old self, not her new self, just herself.
She used the T-shirt to gesture toward Grace’s car as she smiled at her beautiful baby sister. “Go be the bride. Order your flowers. No one will look at them when they can look at a bride like you, but get the prettiest ones you can, anyway.”
“Oh, Sophie.” But Grace’s voice wasn’t sad. She was excited. “Thanks for being so understanding. I can’t tell you how nervous I was about this. You’re the best.”
The T-shirt in Sophia’s fist couldn’t crack. She wouldn’t crack, either.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Grace popped her trunk with a press of the button on her key fob. “Look, a whole basket of tomatoes for you.”
Chapter Thirteen
We got a visitor.
The text message hit his phone when Travis walked away from the burning pile of cedar saplings. Cell phones were unreliable like that out here. One part of an empty field could get a cell signal and another part couldn’t.
The text was from Clay, who was working at the pond near the edge of the property that bordered the road to Austin. The time stamp indicated the text was two hours old, just now reaching his phone.
His cell phone pinged again, receiving another text.
Same car as Sunday.
Grace or Alex had come to see Sophia, then.
Travis put the cell phone back in his pocket. He felt like more of a forester than a rancher today, since he’d been swinging an ax instead of throwing a lasso. It had to be done, though. The cedar could destroy a pasture in a matter of years, multiplying and spreading roots that would hog all the water and kill the grass his cattle needed for forage.
Another ping sounded, rapidly followed by more, all the texts that had been lined up, waiting for a satellite to find his phone.
Got another visitor.
The time was ten minutes ago. The text had been sent to all the men working the River Mack today.
Blue 4-door sedan? Anyone know it?
No.
No.
When Travis’s voice mail played its alert sound, he was already halfway to the shade tree where he’d left Samson.
He listened to Clay’s message as he walked. “We got a visitor, boss. I’m too far away to get a good look, but I don’t know the car. It doesn’t look like it belongs here. I’m knee-deep at the pond. Might be faster if you could meet ’em at the next gate.”
There were three sets of gates on the road that led to the house. The main gate was the one Clay had seen. The second set of gates were about a mile and a half farther into the ranch itself, and the third set of gates were a mile closer to the house from there.
This year’s new ranch hand, always called the greenhorn, was standing with a shovel near the fire, his phone in his hand. Clearly, he’d just gotten the texts, too, and was reading.
“You want me to come with you?” he called to Tra
vis, with all the excitement of a first-year cowboy in his voice.
“You can’t leave a fire unattended,” Travis reminded him as he untied Samson’s reins.
“I’m gonna miss all the fun.”
“Greenhorns aren’t supposed to have fun.”
He swung himself into the saddle. His horse’s idea of fun was to be given his head so he could run, so Travis pointed Samson toward the ranch road and let him go with a sharply spoken gid-yap. They covered the mile or so to the second set of gates in a handful of minutes. The blue car had gone through the gate, but it was still there, waiting for its passenger to close the gate and get back in.
Travis reined in Samson, then walked him to the middle of the road and stopped a little distance away from the car. He didn’t recognize it. More than that, he didn’t like the look of the man that was closing the gate—or rather, he didn’t like the camera that the man held in one hand. It had a two-foot-long lens that looked like it was compensating for some shortcomings in some other department. That, or the man was a professional photographer.
“What’s your business here, gentlemen?”
The cameraman looked absolutely dumbfounded to see a cowboy on a horse in the middle of the road. City folk. What did they expect to see on a ranch?
The driver stuck his head out the window. “You’re in the way. Move.”
Travis didn’t bother answering that.
The driver threw up a hand. “What do you want?”
“I just asked you that.”
“We’re going to see a friend of ours.”
That lie didn’t really deserve an answer, but Travis supposed he needed to spell things out for them. “You can turn your car around and head back the way you came.”
“We’re not leaving,” the cameraman said. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”
“That’s not for you to decide. You’re on private property.”
“What’s your name?” the cameraman demanded, as if he had the right to know.
