The Rodeo Cowboy’s Baby

by Heidi Rice

  What the hell did she mean? Was it his kid or wasn’t it? Didn’t she know? Was he just one of a number of guys she’d slept with? Because if he was that would make him even more of a chump, for believing her when she’d said he was the first guy she’d slept with in a long time.

  “Why wouldn’t you believe her?” Gabe interrupted his careering thoughts. “It’s not like she’s gonna come all the way to Marietta—get the cold shoulder from the whole town—just to tell you a lie.”

  Flynn heard the hint of accusation in Gabe’s voice and knew exactly what he was thinking. Shame pushed at the resentment in his throat.

  He sunk his fingers into his hair, trying to ease the headache pounding at the base of his skull. “If she is pregnant and it’s my kid, it’s not my fault.”

  “Oh yeah, how do you figure that, little bro?” Gabe didn’t look convinced. “You not responsible for where you put your dick now?”

  “She told me she couldn’t get pregnant. That there was no chance. I asked, after I forgot to suit up the first time. So we did it the whole rest of the weekend without protection, because I believed her.” He could hear the whine in his own voice and his shame grew, because it reminded him of his old man—the drunken excuses, the lame qualifications, the crappy way he’d treated women. “And now she gives me some story about thinking she was infertile. Seriously? What the fuck? How dumb does she think I am?”

  Gabe just stared at him for the longest time, then said, “Well you look pretty damn dumb from where I’m sitting. Haven’t you ever read her column, you schmuck?”

  “What the heck has that got to do with anything? Of course I haven’t read it. I already know the shit she wrote about me because I had to put up with the snark and the trash talk and the pitying looks it caused all over town for weeks.”

  “She told me she didn’t write that column.”

  “Huh?”

  “She said she couldn’t take credit for it, when I congratulated her on it. She said her editor wrote it.”

  “What?” He stared at Gabe, so shocked by the revelation he didn’t know what to say, or think. Could it be true? That Evie had never been the architect of that snarky piece? But even as he tried to convince himself he was making a bigger schmuck of himself by wanting to believe it, all the doubts he’d had in the beginning—about how the girl who had been sweet and sexy and so vulnerable could have been a hard-nosed lying bitch in disguise—came flooding back.

  “She said she didn’t write it,” Gabe repeated. “And I believe her.”

  “Well, if she didn’t write it, why didn’t she tell me sooner?” he said, but he could hear the break in his voice. Why hadn’t he gotten in touch with her and asked? Instead of spending eight long weeks licking his wounds?

  “Maybe she thought you wouldn’t believe her,” Gabe said, the sarcasm strong enough to make Flynn’s blush heat up. “But I’m not talking about that column anyways, I’m talking about all the others.”

  “What others?” Flynn said, even more confused now.

  “She wrote a whole load of stuff about being infertile, how her husband walked out on her because she couldn’t have a kid.”

  “You read that shit?” Flynn said, trying to process what Gabe was saying.

  “Yeah, because it wasn’t shit. After you became the star of it, I read some of the back issues on the Internet. She’s a good writer—it’s girl talk mostly but it’s funny, and poignant. She writes from the heart…” Gabe fixed him with a penetrating stare. “You want to know something else?”

  He wasn’t sure he did, because he was starting to feel like the worst kind of asshole. But he nodded anyway.

  “She hasn’t written one of those columns since the one she wrote about the rodeo. Or rather didn’t write about the rodeo. And you.”

  “She hasn’t?”

  “Maybe you should ask her why she stopped writing for that paper—right after that column went viral. Because that’s something I’d want to get to the bottom of. Why she didn’t cash in on her newfound fame? That’s kind of weird behavior for a hard-nosed newspaper woman who’d do anything to exploit you, don’t you think?” Gabe lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “And I’ve gotta add that if you failed to suit up first, you’re as much in the frame for her getting pregnant as she is for thinking she was infertile.”

  Shame engulfed Flynn at the hard look in Gabe’s eyes, and the unsympathetic appraisal of the way he’d behaved.

  What the hell had he done?

  She’d come all this way, told him she was pregnant with his child, and he’d as good as kicked her off the ranch. Heck, it was worse than that, he’d let Logan do the dirty work for him.

  Did it even matter what she had said or hadn’t said about him in some dumb newspaper column? Did it even matter how she had gotten pregnant—and who was to blame? The fact was there was a life growing in her uterus right now that had his DNA. And hers. A life they’d made together, however inadvertently.

  Like Gabe said, he’d failed to suit up first, maybe she’d gotten pregnant later, during the eight… He frowned, the heat flowing back into his groin. No, ten times they’d made love bareback after that initial mistake. But what if she’d gotten pregnant the first time? Then the whole responsibility for this was on his head.

  And why did whose fault it was that she’d gotten pregnant even figure now? All that figured now was that there was a kid. And it was his kid.

  As he accepted that, and let it sink in, he realized anger wasn’t what he was feeling. Shock maybe, panic sure—because this situation was still super fucked up—but most of all he felt…if not happy, certainly not unhappy at this turn of events. That was something he could build on, something he needed to figure out, and the only way to do that was to speak to Evie. To find out how she felt about it.

  You’ve given me something that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

  The sweet genuine words, and the overwhelming emotion in her voice pounded in the center of his chest.

  He knew how she felt about the baby. All he had to figure out now was how he felt about it. And how she felt about him.

  He swore softly under his breath. And jumped up. He had to go find her. Before Logan drove her out of town. However screwed up this whole thing was, he didn’t want her to leave. The chair crashed onto the floor behind him and Gabe winced.

  “Hell, do you mind?” Gabe whined. “I’ve still got a hangover here.”

  “Then stop getting wasted.” Flynn flung the words over his shoulder as he stormed out of the cabin.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Gabe shouted from the porch, as Flynn climbed into the truck, to find his keys still in the ignition.

  “To find Evie?” he shouted as he fired up the engine.

  He didn’t know what the heck he was going to say to her, he didn’t even really know what he wanted to happen next—but one thing he did know was, he wasn’t an asshole like his old man. He never had been, but it was way past time he proved it. To himself most of all. And stopped letting what had happened to him as a little kid screw up all the important decisions he made in his life.

  Gabe shouted something that sounded like: “Hey, what about my ham and eggs?”

  But Flynn was too busy gunning the engine and shooting up the track at breakneck speed to tell him exactly where he could shove his ham and eggs.

  *

  “Evie, why didn’t you tell us you were coming back?” Charlie passed a cup of tea across the checked tablecloth, while sending her the first sympathetic look she’d received since getting off the plane at Bozeman. “And what were you doing at Flynn’s place?” she added, sitting down on the chair next to her.

  Logan had dumped Evie here five minutes ago, giving Charlie strict instructions to get her on the flight out of Bozeman that evening. Charlie had pretended to agree, but the minute her boyfriend had driven off, back to Marietta, she had enveloped Evie in a hard hug and forced her to come inside and have a cup of tea—because like all Brits, Charlie thoug
ht a cup of tea was a cure-all for all life’s ills.

  Evie had allowed herself to be led, too broken by her encounter with Flynn to put up much of a resistance. But she was fairly sure a cup of tea was not going to fix this. Even so, she lifted the mug to her lips and took a sip. If nothing else at least it would give her a moment to collect herself and figure out what she was going to say to her friend.

  How exactly did she explain to Charlie why she had been at Flynn’s? Especially as she knew now, after her reaction to Flynn’s cold dismissal, that she hadn’t really come back here to tell him about the baby. Or not just to tell him about the baby. In many ways, that had just been a convenient excuse, because the minute she’d laid eyes on him again, all those feelings that she had been trying so hard to suppress, so hard to convince herself weren’t real the minute she’d climbed in the cab to leave Marietta and The Double T all those weeks ago, had blindsided her all over again.

  Somehow or other she’d fallen hopelessly in love with him. Not halfway, not three-quarters of the way, but the whole way… In the space of three nights.

  What a grand time to finally acknowledge that. On the very day she dropped a bombshell into his life he clearly didn’t want—and discovered that those feelings could never be returned, because of all the mistakes she’d made.

  “I’m hoping it was to tell him that column had nothing to do with you,” Charlie prompted.

  Evie’s gaze rose from the cup of tea, and the sting at the back of her eyeballs became an acid bath. She blinked furiously, but the emotion rose up—all those feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, unworthiness that she had kept at bay for years with her career, with a marriage of convenience and the fruitless quest for a baby, and a purpose—became like a tidal wave bursting through all the barriers she’d spent a lifetime erecting around her heart.

  And the choking sobs burst out of her mouth.

  “Evie! Bloody hell!” Charlie jumped out of her seat and wrapped her arms around Evie’s shoulders. “What the hell is going on? You need to tell me. You’re not sick are you?”

  “No…” She sniffled against Charlie’s cotton T-shirt, the tears burning down her cheeks now, in between the hiccupping sobs. “I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re… Flipping heck!” Charlie’s shock should have been funny, but Evie was fairly sure in that moment nothing would ever be funny in her life again. “Is it Flynn’s?”

  Evie nodded, no longer able to find the words.

  Stop making such a production. You’re a drama queen and no mistake.

  She could hear her mother scolding her as if she’d been fourteen again instead of thirty-one. And she cringed inwardly, as Charlie held her close, absorbing the shock wave of tears, the shuddering sobs she couldn’t seem to control.

  Maybe this was just the pregnancy hormones? The doctor had told her her emotions might be volatile. But even she knew this was so much more than that. She’d finally fallen hopelessly, completely in love with a man for the first time in her life. The father of her child. And she’d ruined it.

  She’d never cried this way over Dan’s rejection—even after three years of marriage. And now she’d managed to generate a depth of feeling she’d always held herself back from in the space of three nights. Did she really want this baby for her? Or had it always been just another connection to a man that she shouldn’t be in love with, and who didn’t love her?

  The whole thing would be laughable if it weren’t such a monumental heartbreaking mess.

  “Did you tell Flynn?” Charlie asked, pressing warm hands onto Evie’s cheeks and forcing her gaze up to meet hers.

  “Yes… He’s…” she stuttered, tried to drag in a tortuous breath.

  Her mother had been right: she was a drama queen of epic proportions. But she couldn’t seem to stop sobbing.

  “Breathe, Evie.” Charlie shook her gently, her face shadowed with concern. “You’ll choke if you don’t breathe.”

  Evie dragged a breath into raw lungs. “He’s not interested in being involved,” she managed. The sudden break in the sobbing fit made them both aware of the sound of a truck arriving in the yard.

  Grand, Logan’s returned to cart me off to jail.

  “Please don’t tell Logan about the baby,” Evie said, around the boulder in her throat, as Charlie left her to lean over the sink so she could get a look at the backyard.

  She was becoming hysterical, she needed to breathe, to stop crying, but she felt broken inside. All the bravura of the last few years, everything she’d survived, even the joy she’d felt over this pregnancy, was somehow descending into that huge pit in her stomach that had opened up when Flynn had walked back into his cabin as if she didn’t exist.

  It was all mixed up in her head now, with all the times her mother had told her off for being too sensitive, too needy, all the times she’d realized she didn’t have a dad and every other girl in the class did, all the times Dan had looked at her as if she were a failure.

  “What the fuck?” Charlie’s growled shout cut into Evie’s pity party. “It’s not Logan, it’s Flynn.”

  “What?” Evie felt disorientated, confused, the stupid wellspring of hope almost as devastating as the black pit of guilt and recriminations.

  “Wait here. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind for treating a pregnant lady like that…” Charlie marched past her out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the back porch.

  Evie scrambled up. The last person she wanted to see right now was Flynn. But somehow she knew she had to face him alone. She couldn’t let Charlie get involved.

  She raced out of the house behind Charlie to find her friend standing on the porch facing down Flynn.

  Seeing him again in the flesh, that lean masculine beauty, the face she had obsessed about, the face she loved, the face she’d convinced herself she didn’t deserve to see ever again almost brought her to her knees… The emotional storm was still sitting under her breastbone ready to blow. But before she had a chance to regroup or even figure out why he might be here, Charlie launched into a tirade worthy of a mother grizzly defending her cubs.

  “You son of a bitch, I thought you were one of the good guys and then you treat Evie like this. After you got her bloody pregnant!”

  “Charlie, please don’t…” Evie said, trying to stop her friend. “Flynn’s not the bad guy…”

  “Butt out, Charlie,” he said looking past Charlie and staring straight at her. “I need to speak to Evie alone.”

  Charlie sputtered, obviously not used to a polite guy like Flynn talking to her that way.

  Evie felt the blush ride up her face as he mounted the steps, strode past Charlie, and walked straight up to her.

  “You’ve been crying?” he said.

  “I…” She swallowed, mesmerized by his face and tongue-tied by all the things she wanted to say to him, but couldn’t seem to get past the boulder in her throat.

  “Of course, she’s been bloody crying—you treated her like dirt,” Charlie announced.

  “Please, Charlie, I…” she began.

  Before she could say any more though, Flynn simply bent down and scooped her into his arms. She grasped his neck as he carried her off the porch and back toward his truck.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going with my friend?” Charlie demanded, racing after them.

  Plonking her in the passenger seat of the truck, he turned to Charlie. “I like you, Charlie, you’re a good person and you’ve been a good friend to Evie. But she’s pregnant with my kid, which gives me seniority here. So you need to back the hell off.”

  “You made her cry,” Charlie said, deflating as she tried to look over Flynn’s shoulder.

  Flynn glanced back at Evie, the look he gave her so searing, so sensual, and so possessive her heart got wedged in her throat again. “I know, and I’m aiming to fix that.” He turned back to Charlie. “But I can’t do that with you butting into our business.”

  Charlie nodded. “Okay, but…” She pushed past hi
m. “I need to hear Evie tell me she’s okay to go off with you now.”

  Evie nodded, her heart imploding in her chest. “Yes, I’m… Yes we need to talk—he’s right.”

  She had no idea what he wanted to say to her. No idea what that searing, possessive look meant. But she was through being a coward about everything now. Through pretending that meeting him, making love to him, and the intimacies they’d shared hadn’t changed her—and all her priorities.

  He probably just wanted to talk about the baby. But that meant so much to her already. She didn’t dare hope his appearance meant more than that, she still had a lot to answer for, she knew that, but this felt like a start.

  And the tiny kernel of hope blooming to life in the black pit in her stomach couldn’t be denied.

  “Okay, if you’re sure, Evie?” Charlie asked again. Because she was easily the best friend Evie had ever had.

  Evie nodded.

  Charlie stepped back as Flynn slammed the passenger door, strode round the hood of the vehicle. And climbed into the driver’s seat.

  He started up the truck.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, because it was the only thing she could think of to say that wouldn’t make her stomach hurt more.

  He glanced her way as he drove out of the yard. “I know a place. It’s not exactly fancy but at least we’ll be alone,” he said. Then to her astonishment, he reached across the seat and gave her trembling fingers a quick squeeze. “How are you doing?”

  The thoughtful question, and the memory of how he’d squeezed her fingers once before made her want to cry again. She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. “I’m good,” she said, determined not to give in to the urge.

  Flynn wanted to do the decent thing, because he was a decent guy. But she was not going to get ahead of herself here and think that his solicitude, his care and attention now meant more than it did. Because that way led to more heartache. And she wasn’t sure she could weather another crying jag today without losing her shit completely.