“Apparently you have some strong opinions on the subject,” he noted. “Why don’t we continue this discussion elsewhere, and you can enlighten me?”
She absolutely wanted to continue this discussion—or any discussion—if it meant spending more time with the broad-shouldered sheriff with the mesmerizing eyes and sexy smile.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, determined to play it cool despite the anticipation racing through her veins.
“I could buy you a drink,” he suggested.
She considered herself a smart woman—too smart to hook up with a stranger. But while she didn’t know even the first page of Reid’s life story, she knew that he set her blood humming in a way that it hadn’t done in a very long time. And after more than two years without a man even registering a blip in her pulse, she was too curious to walk away without determining if the attraction she felt was reciprocated.
She wasn’t looking for love. She wasn’t even looking for sex. But she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed looking at Sheriff Reid Davidson.
Sometimes you don’t know what you want until it’s right in front of you.
With the echo of her sister’s voice in her ears, she made her decision. “A drink sounds good.”
* * *
Reid had never been afraid to admit when he was wrong, and he’d realized—less than halfway through the workshop discussion—that he’d been wrong about her.
Katelyn.
The name struck him as a unique combination of the classic and contemporary, and as intriguing as the woman herself. Because while she might look prim and cool, there was a lot of heat beneath the surface. She argued not just eloquently but passionately, making him suspect that a woman who was so animated in her discussion of a hypothetical situation would be even more interesting up close and personal. Now he was about to find out.
There were two bars in the hotel—the first was an open lounge area that saw a lot of traffic as guests made their way around the hotel; the second, adjacent to the restaurant, was more remote and private. He opted for the second, where patrons could be seated at pub-style tables with high-back leather stools or narrow booths that afforded a degree of intimacy.
He guided her to a vacant booth. When the waitress came to take their drink order, Katelyn requested a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon and he opted for a locally brewed IPA, signing the check to his room when the drinks were delivered.
After the server had gone, he raised his glass. “To stimulating discourse.”
Though she lifted her brows at his deliberately suggestive word choice, she tapped the rim of her glass against the neck of his bottle.
“Where are you from, Sheriff Reid Davidson?” she asked, after sipping her wine.
“Echo Ridge, Texas.”
“You’re a long way from home,” she noted.
“So it would seem,” he agreed. “How about you?”
“Northern Nevada, so not quite such a long way.”
“Humboldt, Haven or Elko County?”
“You must have aced geography in school,” she remarked.
“I didn’t ace anything in school,” he confessed. “But I recently visited the town of Haven.”
“Why were you there?” she asked, then held up a hand before he could respond. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“Why don’t you want to know?”
“Because almost everyone in Haven knows everyone else—or at least knows someone who knows that someone else, and if it turns out that you hooked up with someone I know, this—” she gestured from her own chest to his and back again “—isn’t going to happen.”
“Is this—” he copied her gesture “—going to happen?”
She sipped her wine. “I’m thinking about it.”
“While you’re thinking, let me reassure you that I’ve never hooked up with anyone from Haven.” His lips curved as he lifted his bottle. “Yet.”
She set her glass on the table, her fingers trailing slowly down the stem. “You’re pretty confident, aren’t you?”
“Optimistic,” he told her. “But I do need to ask you something.”
“What’s that?”
“Is there anyone waiting for you at home in Haven?”
“Aside from my father, grandparents, sister, two brothers, several aunts, uncles and cousins, you mean?”
“Aside from them,” he confirmed.
“No, there’s no one waiting for me.” She traced the base of her wineglass with a neatly shaped but unpainted fingernail. “What about you, Sheriff Davidson—are you married?”
He shook his head. “Divorced.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No,” he said again. “Any more questions?”
“Just one,” she said.
He held her gaze, waiting, hoping.
“Do you want to take these drinks back to my room?”
Chapter Two
Five weeks later
“I can’t believe you’re leaving.” Trish Stilton pouted as she rubbed a hand over the curve of her hugely pregnant belly. “Especially now, only a few weeks before the baby’s due to be born.”
Reid dumped the entire contents of his cutlery drawer into a box. Though he didn’t dare say it aloud, considering the imminent delivery of his ex-wife’s baby, he’d decided that his timing was almost perfect.
“Just last week, I told Jonah that we should ask you to be the godfather, but now that you’re moving to Nevada, that’s out of the question.”
Which further convinced Reid that he’d made the right choice in accepting the offer to take over the sheriff’s position in Haven. Though he and Trish had been divorced for more than four years and she’d been remarried for almost three, they’d remained close. Maybe too close.
When she’d walked down the aisle to exchange vows with her current husband, Reid had been the man to give her away. Yeah, it had seemed an odd request to him, but he didn’t see how he could refuse. When she’d found out that she was pregnant, she’d stopped at the Sheriff’s Office to share the news with Reid even before she’d told her husband. And when she’d cried—tears of joy, because she was going to be a mother, mingled with grief, because her child would never know his grandfather—he’d held her and comforted her.
If she’d asked him to be her baby’s godfather—as Jonah Stilton had warned him she intended to do—Reid wouldn’t have been able to refuse. How could he refuse any request from the daughter of the man who’d saved his life?
Reid had been an orphaned teenager running with a bad crowd when the local sheriff took him under his wing. He didn’t just turn Reid’s life around, he saved it, and Reid knew there was no way he could ever repay the man who had been his mentor, father figure and friend. So when Hank realized he wasn’t going to beat the cancer that had invaded his body and he’d confided to Reid that he was worried about his daughter, Reid had promised to take care of her. The news of their engagement had been a balm to the older man’s battered spirits, and he’d managed to hold on long enough to see Reid and Trish exchange their vows.
“I’m honored that you thought of me,” he said to his ex-wife now. “But I’m sure your baby’s father would prefer to have his brother fill that role.”
“Jonah understands how important you are to me,” she said, without denying his claim.
“You’re important to me, too, but I think this move is going to be the best thing for all of us.”
“But why do you have to go so far away?” she demanded.
“Nevada’s not all that far,” he said soothingly.
“But Haven?” she pressed. “I looked it up—it might as well be called Nowhere, Nevada, because that’s where it is.”
“Then I won’t expect you to visit,” he said mildly.
“Of course, I’ll visit,” she promised. “Because
you don’t have any friends or family in that town.”
“Actually, I do have a...friend...in Haven.”
“A female friend?” she guessed.
He nodded.
“I knew there had to be another reason that you suddenly decided to leave Echo Ridge—something more than a temporary job.”
“She’s not the reason I’m leaving,” he said truthfully. “But I am looking forward to seeing her again.”
“What’s her name?”
Reid shook his head. “None of your business.”
Trish smiled. “Afraid I’ll track her down and ask about her intentions?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
Not that he was really worried. He had no doubt that Katelyn Gilmore could handle his ex-wife. But the attorney had no idea that he was moving to Haven, because they hadn’t exchanged any contact information before they went their separate ways after the conference. And with the perspective that came with time and distance, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made the weekend they’d spent together into more than it really was.
“Well, it would only be fair,” Trish said now. “You wouldn’t let me go out on a second date with Jonah until you’d done a complete background check on him.”
“Because your father asked me to take care of you,” he reminded her.
“He wanted us to take care of each other,” she said.
And for a while, they’d done just that. But Trish had wanted more than he’d been willing or able to give her—an irreconcilable difference that led to the end of their marriage. When that happened, he felt as if he’d let down Hank as much as Trish, but he knew his old friend would be pleased to see his daughter in a committed relationship with a man who could give her everything Reid couldn’t.
He was sincerely happy for her, because she was happy. For himself, he’d decided a long time ago that he wasn’t cut out to be a dad. A kid who’d been knocked around by his mother’s various boyfriends for the first six years of his life, then raised by his widowed grandmother for the next eight before being kicked into and around the system didn’t know anything about being a father. He’d lucked out when he’d met Hank. Trish’s father had given him an idea of the type of man a dad should be, but Reid suspected it was too little too late, that the scars from his earlier years were too numerous and deep to ever truly heal.
“Now you’ve got Jonah,” he reminded her.
“Yes, I do,” Trish said, smiling through the tears that filled her eyes again.
“Jeez, will you stop with the waterworks?” he demanded, passing her a box of tissues.
She plucked one out and dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t help it—it’s pregnancy hormones.”
“Well, let your husband deal with your blubbering—he’s the one who knocked you up.”
“Yes, he did,” she said proudly, rubbing a hand over the enormous swell of her belly. “And those hormones have also led to doing a lot more of what got me into this condition.”
He lifted his hands to cover his ears. “Way too much information, Trish.”
She laughed through her tears. Then she reached out a hand to touch his arm. “Can I give you one piece of advice?”
“Can I stop you?” he countered drily.
She ignored his question. “Before you get involved with this woman—before she gets involved with you—be honest about what you want and don’t want from a relationship.”
“I never meant to be dishonest with you,” he said quietly.
“I know,” she admitted. “The problem was, we rushed into marriage without ever talking about all the things we should have talked about.”
He nodded. “But now you have everything you wanted.”
“Soon,” she amended, rubbing a hand over her baby bump again. Then with her other hand, she grabbed his and drew it to the curve of her belly. “Do you feel that? He’s kicking.”
He did feel it, little nudges against his palm. He wondered if it hurt her, to have a tiny human being moving around inside of her, but that seemed like too personal a question to ask. Not that his ex-wife seemed to care about boundaries, which was why Reid was moving out of state in an effort to establish some. Instead he asked, “He?”
Trish smiled and nodded. “It’s a boy. We’re going name him Henry—for my dad.”
Reid had to clear the tightness from his own throat before he could respond. “That’s a great name.”
She watched him tape the flaps of the box shut. “I really wish you weren’t going.”
He hadn’t expected that his ex-wife would make this easy for him, but he hadn’t expected that it would be so hard, either. But he didn’t—couldn’t—waver. He needed to move on with his life, and as long as he was living a stone’s throw away from her, he knew that wouldn’t happen.
“You’re going to be okay, Trish. You don’t need me anymore.”
She sniffed and knuckled away a tear that spilled onto her cheeks. “But what if you still need me?”
She’d been his family—his only family—for seven years now. But it didn’t matter if he still needed her—it was time for him to move on.
* * *
Kate thanked the clerk as she slid the judge’s signed order into her client’s file, tucked the file into her briefcase and turned away from the desk. She exited the courthouse, pausing outside the doors to perch her sunglasses on her nose in defense against the bright afternoon sun, then continued on her way. She’d been told that she moved purposefully, like a woman on a mission, and she usually was.
Today her mission was to get away from the courthouse before she threw up. She crossed the street and ducked into the shade of the trees that lined the perimeter of Shearing Park. The greenspace was usually quiet at this time of day, offering the privacy she needed. She lowered herself onto the wooden slats of a bench and reached into her briefcase for the sleeve of saltine crackers she’d been carrying for the past few days.
She inhaled, taking three long deep breaths. Then she nibbled on a cracker and sipped some water. When she felt a little steadier, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed her office.
“I’ve got the custody order for Debby Hansen,” she said when her assistant answered the phone. “If you want to print up the cover letter and final account so everything’s ready to go, that would be great. I’m heading to a settlement conference in Winnemucca this afternoon, but I’ll be back in the office in the morning.”
She could picture Beth frowning at Kate’s schedule on her computer screen. “I don’t have anything about a settlement conference.”
“I set it up myself—a favor for a friend,” she explained.
Lied.
If she was looking in a mirror, she would see flags of color on her cheeks. Thankfully, Beth wasn’t able to see the telltale proof of her deception.
“Okay,” the other woman said agreeably. “I’ll leave your docket and the files for tomorrow morning on your desk before I lock up.”
“Thanks, Beth.”
She disconnected the call and nibbled on another cracker. She’d never felt good about lying, but lately she’d been doing a lot of it.
Lying to her assistant, to explain her absences from the office. To her dad, when he said she looked peaked. To her sister, when Sky asked what was wrong. To her grandmother, when she hinted that Kate was working too hard.
To herself, when she suggested that the first home pregnancy test was faulty and there was no reason to panic.
It was only when a second, and then a third, test showed the same obviously inaccurate result that she’d decided to see an ob-gyn.
She tucked her crackers back into her briefcase, walked to her car and headed toward Battle Mountain. Because she would rather drive thirty-five miles out of town than risk the inevitable speculation that would follow a visit to a local doctor.
“Good af
ternoon, Ms. Gilmore—I’m Camila Amaro.”
Kate accepted the proffered hand of the woman who entered the exam room. “Thank you for squeezing me in.”
“You sounded a little panicked on the phone.”
“I’m feeling a little panicked,” she admitted.
The doctor didn’t go behind her desk to sit down but leaned back against it, facing her patient. “Is this your first pregnancy?”
She managed a weak smile. “So much for thinking the results of three home pregnancy tests might be wrong.”
“False results do happen,” the doctor acknowledged. “But a false positive is extremely rare, and the test we ran here confirms the presence of hCG—the pregnancy hormone—in your system.”
“I’m really pregnant? I’m going to have a baby?”
“You’re really pregnant,” the doctor confirmed.
She’d dreaded receiving this confirmation. How could she possibly juggle her professional responsibilities with the demands of a baby? And yet, something surprising happened when the doctor said those three words. She felt a loosening of the knots in her stomach and unexpected joy in her heart.
A baby.
And she knew then that it didn’t matter that she hadn’t planned for this—she would figure out a way to make it work.
“Do you want to set up a sonogram so we can establish how far along you are and discuss the options that are available to you?” Dr. Amaro asked.
“Five weeks and six days,” Kate told her.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Broken condom.”
The doctor opened the folder she carried and made a note in the file. “Are you in an exclusive relationship with the father?”
The question was matter-of-fact and without any hint of censure, but Kate felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment that she’d been so foolish and careless. A weekend fling had seemed like a good idea at the time—some harmless fun to break the monotony of her everyday life. She’d never anticipated that a few unforgettable nights would give her a lasting reminder of those nights with the handsome sheriff from Texas.
“No,” she admitted. “In fact...I haven’t seen him since the weekend that we were...together.”
The Sheriff's Nine-Month Surprise Page 2
