Rita Niles’s cowgirl sister, Kim, was blindfolded by a pink bandanna decorated with images of a chubby-cheeked infant girl. Meanwhile, she grasped a cutout picture of a baby with tape on the back, and her hands were outstretched as she clumsily searched for the fake tummy propped in a chair in a game of “Place the Baby on the Mommy.”
It was a version of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” and Annette was so very happy that no one had thrown her a shower and foisted games like these on her friends.
Then again, Violet Jackson, Rita’s best friend, had gotten an early start on shower-throwing because some of Conn’s and Rita’s family members were in town for their wedding this weekend. And, Annette reminded herself, there was still plenty of time for some soul to put together a baby extravaganza before her delivery date.
“You’re getting warm, Kim!” shouted Margery Wilmore, one of Rita’s older hotel employees.
Kim was actually on a collision course with Conn’s mother, who sat in a chair by the gift table, stifling a laugh. Nearby, Rita watched with amusement as her sister stumbled about in her denim skirt and cowboy boots.
Next to Rita, Violet Jackson sat quietly. Every once in a while, she would give Annette a strange glance, and Annette had no idea why. It was as if the woman were nervous about something.
But why would that be if she’d been friendly enough to invite Annette to this shower?
In the end, Kim taped the baby picture to Conn’s mom. The women cheered for the cowgirl, probably just because she’d managed to get through her turn.
“I give up,” Kim said after ripping off her blindfold. “This is such a ridiculous game.”
Rita laughed. “I’d like to hear you say that during your own shower someday.”
“Don’t count on one of those,” Kim said, handing the blindfold off to Violet’s mother, Andrea. “Here, Mrs. Osborne, have at it.”
“I’d like to go last,” said the woman with gray-sprinkled red hair. “It’s part of my strategy.”
No-nonsense Kim gave the blindfold to Annette, who was sitting next to Andrea Osborne, then took her own seat again, seemingly bored out of her mind.
Annette got up, ready to put on the bandanna.
“Wait,” Rita said. “I think Annette should sit this one out. I don’t love the idea of spinning around a woman who’s even more pregnant than I am and then expecting her to trip around blindfolded.”
Everyone agreed, and Annette didn’t mind so much.
As she handed off the bandanna to Margery, the matronly woman said, “So have you and Jared thought of a name for your child yet?”
Boing. That was what it sounded like as Margery’s faux pas bounced through the room.
No time like the present to set everyone straight. “This isn’t actually Jared’s baby,” Annette said.
She felt kind of funny explaining this to a roomful of women she didn’t know very well, but what else could she do?
Rita took up her cause. “Annette was pregnant when she got to St. Valentine.”
“That’s right,” Margery said, thumping herself on the head. “I’d heard your husband passed away. I’m sorry about that.”
Annette didn’t correct her. “Thank you.”
“It does seem,” Margery said, “that you have a ready-made father handy, though. Doesn’t it?”
“Margery,” everyone said at the same time.
Annette had heard that the woman didn’t have many boundaries when it came to sticking her nose in everyone’s business. Heck, maybe this was just some sort of St. Valentine initiation that she’d have to endure to be accepted.
“It’s all right,” Annette said, sitting down and hoping everyone would get back to the game pronto.
And they did, with Margery taking her turn.
Blindfolded and obviously disoriented, Margery immediately headed the wrong way, toward the exit to the tearoom, and the ladies hooted. Annette sat there, quietly circling her palm over her belly.
Obviously, it was quite natural for people in this town to think Jared was the father. It seemed as if the rumor that had circulated recently hadn’t died out.
At the very thought, something between a jabbing ache and a contented glow filled Annette. She only wished this little girl were Jared’s child and that everything between her and him was as perfect as the townsfolk apparently believed.
But even after Annette had gotten on Jared for avoiding the truth about Tessa Hadenfield with her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still acting like a stranger in some ways.
She hated that, though, because truly, she did want to believe in him.
Margery was just making her way back to the chairs when, behind her, the door to the hallway opened.
As Jared appeared, Annette sat up in her chair, charged by seeing him. But something about his expression gave her pause.
And something about the way Violet Jackson had gone stiff in her chair.
Without interrupting, he made it clear that he’d like to see Annette, so she glanced at Rita.
She smiled, gesturing for Annette to go to him.
Violet merely watched Jared, as if inspecting him. As if wondering if he was okay.
Why did Annette get that feeling?
She grabbed her purse, and after he’d shut the door behind her, she rested her free hand on his forearm.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I hate to pull you out of there, Annie, but I’ve got something to tell you.”
It sounded urgent, and she went with him into the falling evening, where he led her toward his truck parked on Amati Street.
He helped her into the cab, then drove.
“Jared,” she said, “you’re scaring me.”
“I don’t mean to. But this is a discussion that needs some privacy.”
“What’s it about?”
They had come to the edge of town, and he pulled under an oak tree near Piell’s Gas Station, where a vintage Phillips 66 sign accompanied another one that said Pumps Are Closed.
After turning off the ignition, Jared wiped a hand over the lower half of his face. She saw that he was tired.
So very tired.
“Davis Jackson pulled me into his office today,” he said.
Annette unbuckled her seat belt so she could slide closer to Jared on the seat.
“And?”
“And he told me something that shocked the tar out of me.”
He described a picture he’d seen of a Prohibition-era liquor runner named Bugs Moran with his arm around a man whose face was only partially visible.
“Davis told me that he and Violet think the other guy in the picture is Tony,” Jared said.
His voice was flat again, just as it always got when he shut down. But Annette wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Do you have the picture with you?” she asked.
“I bolted out of that office so fast that I didn’t think to grab it.”
At least she knew now why Violet had been so odd toward her at the shower. “So what do you think? Did it look like Tony?”
“Yes.” The answer seemed bitter in Jared’s mouth.
She allowed the information to sink in, but it didn’t seem real.
“What does this mean then?” she asked.
“It means that Davis and Violet are going to investigate further.”
She touched his hand on the steering wheel. “You’re afraid that Tony won’t be the man you wish he was.”
“I know who he was. His journal shows me who he was.”
Even Annette could tell that Jared was clinging to his last hopes about Tony—that his so-called mirror was cracking and his fanciful perception of his great-grandfather was damaged.
Maybe along with his o
wn self-image.
“Do you really think,” she asked, “that anything you find out about Tony is going to matter? Especially to me?”
He barely nodded, staring straight ahead.
She wouldn’t let him distance himself like this, so she put her hand under his chin and turned his gaze to her. It was dark with banked anger, helpless fury...and despair.
“Jared, I already know what I think of you, and it’s all good. It’s pure. And it’s enough for me to want you to be in my life and my baby’s life forever.”
Her confession rang in the cab, and he shut his eyes.
“Did you hear what I said?” She didn’t mean to, but she grasped his chin harder. “You’re the man I want to raise my daughter.”
A swell of emotion seemed to take him over as he opened his eyes.
So dark, so confused...
“Annie,” he said, his voice shaking, “I already have a daughter.”
Chapter Eleven
Jared had known that Annette would look just like this when he told her.
Destroyed. Puzzled beyond measure.
Betrayed.
It was unfortunate that the truth had come out in this way, but it was too late to go back now. Too late for so many things because he couldn’t change history—not Tony’s, not his.
“A daughter?” she finally asked, her voice just a creak.
Then it all came out of him—the avalanche that had started when he’d heard about gangster Tony, the pain that had been threatening to spill.
“That ex-wife I told you about,” he said. “She’s the mother of my daughter, Melissa. Joelle and I got married too soon after meeting each other. I’d left home recently, running away from my uncle Stuart’s ranch after I’d read that letter about my adoption. You could say I was myopic, focusing on what I’d always wanted to do—bust broncs on the rodeo circuit.”
He tried to lock his gaze to Annette’s, but this time she was the one who wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Still, he went ahead. “I was reeling, but I found a home on the circuit. Nobody bothered me much about where I’d been or where I was going, yet I felt like there were so many others like me there. We were an odd family, and that filled a void. So did the adrenaline rush I got from competing.”
“A rush,” she said, as if she had to utter something, so it might as well be this.
“Yeah. A rush. See, for a long time I’d suffered from my parents’ deaths, and I needed... Well, I didn’t know what I needed back then. Uncle Stuart had always done his best to make me feel at home on his ranch, but he’d never gotten married, never had kids or been a part of any significant relationships. He liked being alone, and I felt that about him. So when I found out I was adopted, it made me feel more isolated than ever, and it wasn’t too hard to leave.”
“So you could find what you needed.”
Part of him argued that he shouldn’t be searching Annette’s face for more of a response, that he should be as removed as possible, because it had always worked in the past.
But it didn’t feel right. Not with Annette.
“I ended up at the rodeo, like I wanted.” He was still gripping the steering wheel, and he let up on it. “I met Joelle after a rodeo one night. She was a buckle bunny but not in a way that meant she slept around. She was looking for love. I suppose I was, too, in a way, and I told myself that I’d found it with her. But I was actually just too selfish to know what I was talking about. At any rate, she got pregnant right away, and when she told me the news, I came out of my dream world and realized that it was too soon for me to take care of anyone—a wife...a child.”
“And how long ago was this?” Annette asked.
“About twelve years now.”
The moonlight was starting to invade the inside of the truck through the windshield, and it didn’t offer its usual gleam. Instead, it made Annette look pale.
Jared’s heart stirred, as if trying to tell him something, but the careful part of him pushed it away.
“So you were only twenty-one when this happened.” At this, Annette’s gaze seemed to give off a little spark of optimism. “You were young.”
“You’re about the same age as I was, and I can’t imagine you being the same way.”
And there went the flash of hope he’d seen in her. Gone. Just like that.
He went on. “Joelle had no idea what was going through my head. I shut her out. So when she asked me to leave the rodeo—she said it was too dangerous for a daddy—I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because the feeling of winning and being admired was the only thing filling the void.”
She was touching her belly now, as if wondering if he’d been pretending for a time that he’d enjoyed the feel of this baby and that he was going to drop her cold, as he had with his other one.
At least she understood what he was. What he always might be.
“That’s when my wife left me,” he said, wishing he didn’t want to touch Annette and her baby now. “She told me I wasn’t father material. I knew she was right, too. After that, I went on the road again, sending home child support and writing letters, thinking I would somehow change my mind. Then I heard that she’d fallen for a cowboy who did take it upon himself to retire from the rodeo to be with her and Melissa. That’s when I knew without a doubt that she and the baby would be much better off without me.”
Annette was shaking her head, but she wasn’t saying anything. It was as if she were fending off every word.
“I know in my soul,” he said, “that the man Melissa calls Father is the best thing that happened to her and Joelle.”
“But she’s yours, Jared. How can you...”
“Just leave her like that?”
He sent a laden glance to her. Look who I am. Did you expect any different?
“You can’t compare yourself to your birth mom,” Annette said. “You hadn’t even met her yet.”
“Then I’d say it’s in the blood.”
Bad blood, and it might have traveled on down the line, from Tony Amati, to his birth mom, to him.
But he didn’t want to believe it—about Tony or him.
You couldn’t run from the truth, though....
Annette had inched away from him, and he hadn’t even noticed until the space between them became obvious, like a wound that was starting to bleed.
“So that’s it?” she asked.
“What more is there? Several years later, I had to retire from the rodeo after I got too old to be competitive at bronc busting.” And that’s when he’d felt the void more keenly than ever.
That’s when he’d also regretted his treatment of Melissa more than he’d thought possible. He’d even hoped that she wouldn’t ever think of him.
“You never went back to your daughter,” Annette repeated, as if she was finally accepting who he was.
“I wasn’t about to ruin a good family. That would’ve made me an even worse person because Melissa should’ve been free to love her adoptive dad the way I remember loving the man and woman I called my real parents.”
Annette remained silent, and Jared knew he’d lost.
That he was lost, more than ever, without her.
He hurt all over—his chest, especially, where he’d dug his own heart out.
“After that,” he said, needing to finish this, “my uncle Stuart died. He left me his ranch, and I decided to sell it. And he would’ve understood that I couldn’t be tied down. The ranch was on the slide anyway, and he’d been looking to get out of the life himself.” Jared swallowed, remembering how hard his uncle had attempted to be a decent parent, even though he wasn’t made of the right stuff for it. But at least he’d tried. “That’s when I hired the P.I. to track down my birth mom. The loneliness got to me, I guess. And the cu
riosity.”
Now Annette’s voice was hard. “And that’s when you realized that it’d probably be safer to be a drifter, right? It’d be easier to distance yourself from everyone else before they could do it to you.”
She’d hit the target, and the punch reverberated through him. He wanted to tell her that, even as he drifted, there was always a place in him that longed for some roots and an identity.
But she already knew that.
And it wouldn’t matter.
She only proved his worst fears when she opened the truck’s door and got out.
“Annie—”
But she was already walking down the road, back toward town.
He followed and caught up to her in a heartbeat. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She whirled around, firing back with her own question. “What were you doing with me then? Were you trying to make up for all your mistakes? Being a constant boyfriend, being someone I thought could make a great dad?”
He’d asked himself that before. What had he been doing?
And why, now as he stood on a deserted road with Annette, did it seem as if he’d had the ability to be good at both?
“You know what the final blow is, Jared?” Annette had her arms crossed over her chest, as if a chill had taken her over. “It’s the fact that you still kept this detail from me, even after I told you that I could handle everything you could throw my way. Even after you read from Tony’s journal to me.”
The journal. It was the one thing that Jared knew was true—just as true as the words he’d spoken to her.
Just as true as the man he’d wanted to be.
“How many more secrets do you have?” Annette asked, her voice bruised. “And what kind of damage are they going to cause?”
“I don’t have anything left to hide,” he said, but it sounded so damned hollow.
Because he was that way now. Empty as a shell.
As she began walking back to the truck, he knew more than he’d ever known anything that he loved her. But what was the point in saying it now, when he’d already lost her?
Before she opened the driver’s side door, she said one more thing to him.
“I wish you could see yourself as I do, Jared. You break my heart every time you refuse to look at what I can see so clearly.”
The Cowboy's Pregnant Bride (St. Valentine, Texas) Page 15
