The Rodeo Cowboy’s Baby

by Heidi Rice

  But as the cab bounced up the track toward the highway, she made sure she didn’t look back. Not once.

  And despite all her qualifications, her desperate attempts to control the pulsing pain in her chest, as the cab turned onto the highway, an errant tear escaped, and slid silently down her cheek.

  Chapter Five

  “Honey, I just read your column.” Janice Wakowski’s gaze lasered on Evie from across her desk. She did not look happy.

  Evie drew in a deep breath. The column had been tough to write. How to encapsulate all the excitement of the rodeo and the enlightenment she’d gotten from her fling with Flynn without including any details. She’d made a conscious decision not to mention him. Or their three-day affair.

  Their time together had been precious, sweet and sexy and so life-affirming. The man was a ride and no mistake. But she couldn’t afford to read too much into it, to cling to something that wasn’t real, because her heart seemed to be doing that already.

  Not going into too much detail had been the obvious solution.

  But still she thought she’d nailed everything else in the piece, in fact she’d actually had fun—albeit, desperately bittersweet fun—writing about the local color, the feeling of small-town camaraderie. Her attitude to small towns had certainly changed over this monumental weekend. Marietta had a magic about it. Yes, people got involved in other people’s business—the Twitter storm surrounding one of the bull riders and a single mum, which had been started by the town gossip according to Charlie, being a case in point. But the nosiness felt more friendly than frosty, more encouraging than judgmental. And she’d tried to put that feeling of small-town unity into the column, too.

  So why was Janice all squinty-eyed? And could she even be bothered to care?

  All she wanted to do now was go home and sleep for a week. The problem with having a wild fling with a cowboy which you got way too invested in was that it was exhausting. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in three days. Even her first night in Montana had been disturbed by dreams of Flynn O’Connell. And the reality had turned out to be even more tiring. The man had been insatiable. But then so had she.

  As she’d banged out the column on her laptop on the flight home, Evie had already felt drained. The fun Evie, the carefree Evie, the reckless Evie she’d discovered over the weekend, and who had started to fade as soon as she’d said her final goodbye to Flynn the night before, had disappeared completely by the time she’d walked through the arrival gates at LaGuardia and grabbed a cab for the twenty-minute journey to The Brooklyn Voice’s offices in Red Hook.

  Unfortunately, as soon as fun Evie had disappeared, the old Evie had returned.

  That would be sad, vulnerable, uptight, pathetic Evie.

  Had some of that Evie seeped back into her writing without her realizing it? She was already feeling fragile as the memory of Flynn—standing in the yard frowning at her as she waved goodbye—kept repeating over and over in her head.

  It was now four o’clock and the paper was due to be put to bed in less than an hour. She’d hoped to slip off home, drink a whole bottle of wine, have a hot bath and then watch a mindless chick flick and give in to the good cry that had been trapped in her throat since last night.

  She was going to miss him. There was no getting around it, apparently even a three-day-long fling could have that effect on a woman if it was a good fling with a good guy.

  But she’d get over it. And be ready to reapply herself and maybe re-figure out what she wanted to get out of her life once she’d had a good night’s sleep.

  Getting her column right, though, was her first priority. She’d gone down to Marietta to resurrect her career, after all. She’d stopped caring about her readership a long time ago. Had stopped feeling comfortable sharing and discussing every aspect of her life. Here was her opportunity to find a happy medium again, a new balance, which satisfied her readership without leaving herself defenseless.

  “What’s the problem with it?” she forced herself to ask.

  Janice’s gaze sharpened. “The problem is, I can’t run it.”

  Evie felt her insides sink to her toes. She’d been prepared for some criticism. She knew the column she’d written wasn’t the one Janice had been expecting, because she hadn’t found a single thing to be snarky about in Marietta. But she hadn’t expected a reaction quite this drastic or final. Janice had never refused to run a column before—even when Evie had been navigating the darkest days of her divorce.

  “You can’t… Why not?” Evie asked. Maybe the column hadn’t been what Janice was expecting, but it had been truthful, and it had been good writing. She’d adored every aspect of the small-town rodeo, even the bull riding. And she’d put all that in the piece. She was sure women everywhere would appreciate the heads-up on what these guys were like to watch in the flesh.

  “Because this isn’t an Evie8 column, sweetie—you’re not even in it. I could run it on the travel pages, but not in your slot. And we can’t run this with Charlie’s best work.”

  Evie frowned. “I don’t understand…” Charlie had sent over two hundred shots for Janice and the paper’s art editor to chose from. She’d shown Evie just a few of them that morning, but they were all terrific. Surely Janice could find something to use.

  “Honey, let me show you the photo I want to run…” Janice clicked her laptop and then swung it round to show Evie.

  Evie’s heart battered her tonsils and the pang, which she’d thought she’d cauterized on the plane journey home, tore through her chest.

  There in glorious Technicolor was a shot of her and Flynn, dancing alone on the dance floor in front of the courthouse during the steak dinner in Crawford Park on Saturday night. Charlie had taken the shot through the crowd. The tables laid out for the steak dinner, full of laughing couples, and the twinkling fairy lights ringing the dance floor, the giant mountain in the background, even the rodeo sign in the distance all blurred around the edges of the frame, leaving her and Flynn as the focal point in the center of the shot, caught as a couple in the midst of action but totally alone.

  She swallowed, her throat hurting. She was gazing at him with absolute adoration on her face. And he was grinning back at her, as if he cared, really cared about her.

  It was all just an illusion. Charlie was a brilliant photographer who could make anything look compelling. But even so, Evie’s throat felt as if someone were working it over with sandpaper.

  “Who is that guy?” Janice said. “I want to know what happened there. Because you look so happy. And happy we can use.”

  “He’s just…one of the ranch hands at The Double T. We hit it off, that night. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Please don’t let it be a big deal.

  “Sweetie, you don’t look at a guy like that if it’s not a big deal. Are you seriously telling me nothing happened between the two of you while you were down there?” Janice’s eyes went sharp. Like all good pit bulls, she could scent blood.

  “We had a small fling,” Evie qualified.

  “Then write about it,” Janice pushed. “That’s what your readers are gonna want to hear. You finally found your rebound guy. This is great news.”

  But I don’t want to write about it. I don’t want to ruin it, cheapen it, make it meat for my column, when it felt like so so much more than that.

  The words herded into her brain, but she couldn’t spit them out of her mouth. Because they made no sense at all.

  How could she refuse to write about a casual fling, when she’d happily farmed out every aspect of her dating life, her marriage, her baby woes and her divorce to everyone in the Manhattan metropolitan area over the last five years? It wouldn’t wash with Janice and it shouldn’t wash with her.

  If Flynn really was just a fling, why had she stopped herself from even mentioning him in the piece?

  “The fact that he’s cute as hell doesn’t hurt either,” Janice added.

  “I don’t want to identify him,” Evie managed, strugg
ling to wrestle her big girl panties back on.

  She was a professional journalist. A columnist. Every single thing in her life was meat for her column—that’s how this worked. It’s what she’d signed up to when she started writing Evie8.

  But Flynn didn’t sign up to it, a little voice in her head piped up.

  “We don’t have to use his name,” Janice said. “Charlie will get a release form signed when we tell her which shots we’re using—so he can get an option to decline the use of his image. There’s some others here too that I love…” Janice flicked through the files. “Those rodeo cowboys are seriously hot, honey.” She lifted up the laptop, showing a photo of Evie as she chatted to Shane Marvell and Jesse Carmody after their warm-up for the saddle bronc finals on Sunday. Of course, her body language with the two of them suggested this was a casual acquaintance, not an intimate one like the shot of her with Flynn… But…

  “There’s no need to go into specifics,” Janice continued. “But I sent you down there to get your mojo back. And this cowboy looks like he helped you find it, so let’s give him some credit.” Janice closed her laptop and sighed. “Your column needs that injection of feel-good and sass again. We’ve had the rough ride, which gave it guts and authenticity. But let’s lift the lid on all the downers now. You had a good time down there? That’s what I’m already getting from what you wrote? Am I right?”

  Evie nodded. Yes, she had had a good time. An awesome time. Maybe a bit too awesome.

  “Then you owe it to yourself and your readers to put the awesome in your column.”

  Evie nodded. “Okay, Janice.”

  Exhaustion felt as if it was weighing down her shoulders. Was Janice right? Perhaps mentioning their fling in the column would be a good way to give the whole episode perspective. Maybe then, the thought of never seeing Flynn again would feel manageable. Preferable even. The way it should. And then perhaps the new Evie she’d discovered in Marietta—the Evie who embraced adventure and hope—would show up in Brooklyn, too?

  Janice grinned, the feral light in her eyes one Evie recognized. She struggled not to flinch.

  Courage, Evie, this is your career—the one thing that’s worth saving.

  “Okay, great, now scram,” Janice said. “You’ve only got forty-five minutes to put this guy into the column.”

  Evie pushed herself out of the chair.

  She didn’t need to do a complete rewrite, just enough to give a flavor of what had happened between her and Flynn.

  Janice lifted her cell phone. “I’ll call Charlie and get her to get the release forms signed by your cowboy. And those other cowboys, too.”

  But he’s not my cowboy.

  As Evie left the office, she tried to feel enthusiastic about what she was doing. She could do this; it would be a good way to finally say goodbye to Flynn properly. And if he was really opposed to appearing in the newspaper he wouldn’t sign the release form. Plus she was pretty sure Evie8 wasn’t even syndicated in Montana.

  So it was all good. She pushed down the wary, defensive feeling in her stomach. Tried to stall the exhaustion.

  All she had to do was keep her eyes open while typing her heart out in forty-five minutes or less. Her priority had to be her career right now, because what else did she have? After her experience in Marietta, she knew there was more—and once she’d got this done and put it behind her, she’d finally be able to make a start on finding it.

  She let out a heavy sigh as she flipped open her laptop.

  No pressure, then.

  *

  Evie jerked awake the next morning. The tantalizing tendrils of a dream involving a certain studly rodeo cowboy still whispering through her abdomen, making her stomach heat and her heart hurt.

  Snap out of it, Donnelly, he’s not here.

  The loud buzz of her phone vibrating against her bedside table made her realize what had woken her.

  She picked it up as she assessed the bright sunlight filtering through her window blinds. She’d overslept. It had to be almost noon.

  She focused on the screen. Then jolted, the last of the foggy feeling of sleep disappearing in a rush.

  A string of missed call alerts from Charlie were followed by a text.

  WAKE UP and call me. Logan is freaking out. I can’t believe you wrote that stuff about Flynn.

  What stuff?

  Evie levered herself up in bed. After getting back from the paper yesterday evening she’d crashed into bed and managed to sleep for an astonishing eighteen hours straight.

  But instead of feeling rested, she felt edgy as she tapped in her code.

  The phone’s home screen appeared.

  What the…?

  Her Evie8 social media accounts had exploded. She had over five hundred notifications on her Twitter account and even more on Instagram and her Facebook page.

  What was going on? The Marietta column had gone to press yesterday and would have hit the Internet as well as the syndicated papers for this morning’s editions at about six o’clock. She’d always had a good response on social media when a new column dropped—back in the days before her marriage had hit the skids—but never anything this good.

  And what did Charlie mean about what she’d written about Flynn?

  When she’d rewritten the column yesterday afternoon for Janice, she’d been careful to edit in a few tantalizing details about their affair, but she hadn’t put in anything controversial. And she’d been so careful to respect him and everything he’d done for her. It had been a way to say goodbye properly to him, the way she hadn’t had the guts to do in person.

  Pushing her chaotic hair off her face, she ignored the social media explosion and called Charlie. Because it sounded like Logan wasn’t the only one freaking out.

  The call connected and was picked up instantly.

  “Fuck, Evie, at last. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” Charlie said. She sounded tense and on edge, which was not like Charlie at all.

  “I’m sorry,” Evie said. “I was asleep. It was an exhausting weekend. What’s going on?”

  “You tell me,” Charlie said. “I can’t believe you put that stuff about Flynn in your column…” Her friend swallowed. Good Lord, she sounded on the verge of tears. “This is all my fault,” Charlie said. “I should never had set you two up like that. But seriously, Evie, I didn’t think you’d take such cheap shots at him and the town. I can’t see how any of us deserved it.”

  Cheap shots? What?

  Evie was still struggling to process Charlie in panic mode—and what it was she’d said, when she heard a muffled voice and then Logan came on the phone.

  “Don’t bother coming back to Marietta, Miz Donnelly, because you won’t be welcome here.”

  “Logan? I don’t…” What had she done? Or what did they think she’d done?

  “Flynn O’Connell may be a rodeo Romeo to you, but he’s a good guy. He work’s damn hard and he treated you with respect. It would have been nice if you’d shown him the same courtesy. I welcomed you into my home. The whole town welcomed you into Marietta. And Flynn welcomed you most of all. And this is how you repay us? With sarcasm and putdowns, like we’re all a load of dumb…”

  Logan’s diatribe broke off with an angry curse word, which was so unlike the unfailingly polite rancher Evie’s head started to hurt.

  Rodeo Romeo? Sarcasm? Putdowns? What. The. Actual. Fuck?

  She’d never put anything like that in the column she’d filed. She’d been circumspect and enthusiastic and…

  Her stomach sank all the way to her toes at the barely controlled disgust in Logan Tate’s tone when he started up again.

  “Why did you do it, Miz Donnelly?” he said, his gruff voice tense with accusation and disgust. “So your column would go viral? I thought you had some ethics, or failing that, at least some manners. But the one thing I won’t forgive is that you put Charlotte in the middle of all this. Her work is in that piece too, and that’s gonna give her a tough ride with some of the fol
ks here. If you couldn’t have respect for me or Flynn, you could at least have had some respect for her. I thought she was your friend?”

  Evie couldn’t talk. She was utterly speechless. She should apologize, she knew that. She should try to explain. But she needed to see the column first. And her tongue had swollen up to twice its normal size. A reaction she recognized from when she had gotten the endless dressing downs from her mother—because she suddenly felt like that guilty, humiliated teenager again, not sure what she’d done that was so wrong, but knowing it was bad.

  She heard some more muffled cursing, then Charlie came back on the line again. “I’m sorry, Evie. Logan’s pretty mad.”

  There was another hissed conversation. And then a door slammed.

  “It’s not you who has to be sorry, Charlie,” Evie managed to say around the huge lump in her throat.

  No, the person who needed to apologize to the whole of Marietta, to Logan and Charlie, and to Flynn most of all, would be her. For not keeping a closer eye on her editor. Because Evie’s fuzzy brain had finally started to function again and she knew Janice Wakowski had to be the source of all this.

  Yes, Evie had agreed to add a few words about her fling with Flynn to the column. Which she could see clearly now had been the wrong impulse. Why had she let Janice bully her into re-editing a perfectly good piece? But even exhausted and heartsore, she knew she hadn’t put anything in that rewrite that could be construed as disparaging or disrespectful. And she sure as shite hadn’t used the phrase rodeo Romeo. That had definitely come from Janice, and her famous ear for tabloid alliteration.

  “I swear, Charlie, it was never my intention to make fun of Flynn, or Marietta, or the rodeo,” Evie said.

  “It wasn’t?” Charlie asked, sounding unsure. “Then why did you write all that stuff about him being a great ride and…”