The Cowboy's Pregnant Bride

“She said it has to be a coincidence.”

“Oh.” Annette frowned. “It’s definitely a marked coincidence.”

He thought so, too, but that’s where he left the conversation. He didn’t need to add that his suspicions about Tony were so strong that he’d checked into the St. Valentine Hotel at first, poking around the fringes of town in local libraries and on the internet, doing his own seemingly dead-ended research because he was too broke now to hire a P.I. Then he’d gotten a job and rented a cabin on the outskirts of town until he could get more answers.

The bell on the door rang as new customers entered. Obvious tourists, with their Grand Canyon sweatshirts and white city sneakers.

Annette went to wait on them, and Jared got to his lunch. The fries were fairly cold by now, but it didn’t much matter. Not when Annette passed by and gave him one of her pretty smiles.

He finished his grub, stood and put enough cash on the counter to take care of the bill, plus a nice tip for Annette.

It was his day off from work, but that didn’t mean there was any rest for the wicked, he thought, tucking the journal under his arm as he canted his hat to Annette.

“Thanks again for the gift,” he said.

“Thank you.” She held up his bill and grinned, then put the folder into her apron pocket as she went to the customers’ table to take their order.

He watched her, positive now that he could make out a definite bump under her apron as clear as day.

But Jared’s smile tamed itself as he thought of his own child, and he walked away just as he had the first time, something foreign gnawing at the edges of his heart.

Chapter Two

I never meant to fall in love with her. She is young—eighteen—while I am a man of thirty-five with a past that clings to me like an attached shadow, ready and waiting to tap me on the shoulder....

Jared set Tony’s journal down on the seat beside him as he sat in his green Dodge truck on Horizon Road, the cracked blacktop stretching through lanes of fences. Around him, pastures dotted by trees reflected a February late afternoon, the branches like stark bones against the gray, rain-heavy sky.

He hadn’t made it too far out of the old town before he’d choked off the truck’s engine and opened the journal, fueled by curiosity as he scanned it. He’d even made it through the entire thing, but...

This passage. It was the one he would come back to time after time, as if it were tar that sucked at his boots, keeping him from continuing.

My terrible sins...

A past that clings to me like an attached shadow...

He couldn’t get those phrases out of his head. And they frustrated the hell out of him because, as it turned out, the journal was filled with vague statements like these. In fact, the book was actually more of an outlet for a side of Tony that Jared had never expected: a lovelorn man who’d scribbled his innermost thoughts down over the course of a few months, as if the pages were the only things he could talk to.

And by the last page, when there should’ve been so many answers about who Tony was and what exactly those terrible sins of his were...

The entries just ended.

Par for the mysterious Tony’s life, huh?

Jared gave the journal the stink eye. As much as he was interested in this nameless woman Tony had crushed on way back when—and Jared already had a guess as to who she was—he wanted to know the nitty-gritty. The past Tony kept referring to. The confessions he should’ve been making.

Then again, there was a part of Jared that didn’t want to know the man’s dirty deeds at all because Tony the saint—and Jared’s possible great-grandfather—had a hold on him that wouldn’t quit.

To think, he would’ve finally been proud of something in his life besides the championship rodeo belt buckle he wore—an object that seemed more tarnished than anything to Jared.

He stared down the road out his windshield, which was speckled with a few stray drops of rain.

So Tony had a few sins. What if all his good deeds overcame everything else about the man?

Jared shook his head. He had always looked out for the shadows instead of the sunlight—it was how he’d been raised by Uncle Stuart, an emotionally inaccessible man. Sure, Stuart had gruffly seen to it that Jared had everything he needed, but he hadn’t been a real parent, and he’d seemed to be keenly aware of that. He’d never even tried to live up to the title, leaving four-year-old Jared in a room down the hall shortly after his parents had passed on, his blankets pulled up around his neck, his brain refusing to let him go to sleep because of all the shadows on the walls and all the things out there that would get to a person, whether it was a trick of the nightlight making warped shapes near the closet door or even a nightmare about a train that went off the tracks.

Jared had learned early on to be tough, to close his eyes until his heartbeat smoothed out. To hold back the tears and take care of himself rather than call to his uncle for help, even though Stuart had told him that he could.

Yes, growing up, Jared had learned to distance himself from fear and love because both could disappear if you just closed your eyes.

But this time...shouldn’t he open them, just to see if there was something else out there besides the shadows, like the love Tony had recorded in his journal? What if Tony was related to him and it turned out that he didn’t really have much as far as “terrible sins” went?

Jared longed to find out, to maybe even believe that a good man like Tony might’ve welcomed him into the family more than his granddaughter, Jared’s birth mom, had.

He took his gaze off the book, tapping his fingers on his steering wheel. He could see the cluster of brick condo buildings through the dots of rain on the glass.

The complex they’d built on Tony’s old ranch property.

Annette had told Jared that she’d dug up the journal in her garden. What were the chances that old Tony had buried more there?

Family documents? Pictures? Another journal in which he actually let those terrible sins off his chest?

And what were the odds that Annette might have finished her early shift at the diner by now?

A burst of fire roared through his veins. That shiny moon-blond hair, her creamy skin, her lips...

Jared chuffed and wiped a hand down his face. His mind—or whatever it was—didn’t belong on a woman. He’d had his share of them in the past, both buckle bunnies and cowgirls, and he’d overstayed his welcome only once. It’d been a mistake he was still living with.

Yet, all he needed from Annette was access to that garden of hers.

He sat there for a while longer—time enough for him to turn on the radio for a marathon of country songs. Time enough for him to tell himself that he should probably just drop this and move on.

But then, through the dusk, he saw a bright red Pontiac pulling into the complex and passing the iron gates with a rustic arch that spelled out Heartland—the name of Tony Amati’s original ranch.

Jared rested a hand on his door latch. Didn’t Annette drive a Pontiac? He’d seen it in the parking lot every time she worked.

He blew out a breath.

This was crazy. Was he really thinking of going through with this ridiculous mission?

Then he opened the door. Hell, yeah, he was thinking of it. He hadn’t stayed in St. Valentine because of the meatloaf or ham sandwiches. Or because of the gorgeous blonde who served them.

Right?

As a niggling thought permeated him, he shook it off, pulled his dark shearling coat out of the truck cab, then shut the door. The air smelled as if the earlier rain had made everything new, and that made him think that maybe this was a better idea than he’d first thought.

He ambled to a rose-lined walkway that led to a gate in a brick wall. At the same time, he pulled up the collar of his coat, minding the threat of the moody sky. Up ahead, the walk was sprinkle-damp, and yellow lights from condo windows beckoned.

One of them was Annette’s.

As he shut the gate behind him, he corrected himself. I’m not looking for Annette, just a certain garden patch.

He came to a bricked cove with a bank of mailboxes, each with a last name posted on it. But there were no corresponding numbers for the condos.

Okay, then. No worries. He would just continue on his way, and he might run into Annette coming out of her garage or a parking space.

So he went right on ahead. But...

What would he say to her exactly?

How-de-do, I just happened to be in the neighborhood. And, really, I’m not a weird stalker. I’m only interested in doing some archeological work in your backyard.

How lame would that sound?

He almost turned around right then and there, except that’s when he caught sight of some movement in a lower-level window and saw...

My God—a silhouette half-hidden through the sheer mist of yellow curtains.

Jared’s heart slammed into his ribs, and he couldn’t take another step because he could feel it in his bones—it was Annette.

Yeah, he should’ve averted his eyes, but the light was coming from behind her, showing her in a haloed, curvy profile without that waitressing apron that had covered her belly today. Now, without it, there was very clearly a bump in plain view.

A baby.

After she took a step toward the window, apparently to draw the shades, she came into full sight.

She hesitated, then tenderly eased both of her hands over her tummy, sliding them beneath it to cup the child growing within it.

Jared’s chest felt pierced, lanced by an ache.

She obviously already loved that child. But where was the father?

Where were you when your own daughter probably asked the same thing?

Feeling shamed, both because he’d witnessed such a private moment and because of his failures, he fisted his hands and got out of there before she saw him.

* * *

Before work the next day, Annette took a moment to soak her feet, then massage them before she had to stand on them all day at the diner. She’d done the same thing last night before going to bed, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d be craving a foot spa 24/7—and before she would have to significantly cut back on her hours at the diner or take a leave of absence altogether.

Rest, healthy eating and some pampering—that’s what the doctor had ordered when she’d gone to him early in her pregnancy. She’d chosen a practitioner in the new part of town because it was more modern, relatively more crowded and less personal there.

She meant to make good on all the doctor’s suggestions this morning, so she’d eaten scrambled eggs and a yogurt parfait with fresh fruit, granola and almond slivers for breakfast, then left her home an hour before her shift. That gave her enough time to run a couple of errands around the Old West streets of the Old Town portion of St. Valentine. The weather-beaten buildings contained things like a mercantile store and boutiques geared toward tourists. There were even burros roaming around—descendants of the beasts of burden owned by the silver miners who’d once lived here.

Now, of course, the silver mines were gone, along with the kaolin mine that had replaced them, and that’s what had put St. Valentine in the economic dumps. But matters were improving, she thought as she rested on a bench in the town square after dropping by the general store for a few necessaries. And judging from the decent number of tourists she knew would be descending on Old Town and the diner in about a half hour, St. Valentine was rising once again.

She lifted her chin, letting the crisp morning air tweak her cheeks. Truthfully, St. Valentine had Jared to thank for their resurrection. It’d been his appearance that had stirred up interest in Tony Amati and alerted Violet and Davis Jackson to his mysterious death, which had taken place on the same night old Sheriff Hadenfield’s home had been burglarized.

From the church, the sound of the recently restored bells tolled through the cleared-up sky, marking the hour. Outside, some people were decorating the trellises in the yard with white-flowered streamers.

A wedding.

Images crept back to Annette: reflections of a bride in a mirror, her Grace Kelly gown so white that no one would ever guess the results of the pregnancy test she’d just taken. Pictures of a woman who couldn’t keep the news to herself and had rashly left her dressing room intending to tell her husband-to-be that they were going to be parents.

Nightmares of what she’d found when she’d opened his door, only to find him en flagrante delicto with a bridesmaid. And then...

Apologies from him after he’d sent away her friend. Yeah, a “friend,” for God’s sake.

Then the worst of it. A flash of his hand rising in the air after the bride had the temerity not to accept all his excuses and then call off the wedding.

“You look a little lost,” said a man’s voice.

It shocked Annette, partly because she hadn’t expected anyone to be nearby, but mostly because she recognized who it was and because he left a twist of need spiraling through her.

She looked up to find Jared standing there in his black coat with Tony Amati’s journal tucked under his arm.

Her blood surged, sending her pulse scampering.

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” she asked, putting a smile on her face for him.

He smiled back in that lopsided way that took the edge off him. Then he gestured toward the bench.

“May I?”

She scooted over and pulled her long felt coat around her, as if that would protect every vulnerable angle he’d just seen.

But it didn’t do any good—not when she could smell the hay scent of him, even over the fresh air, and surely not when she was all too aware of his broad shoulders under that coat.

He tilted up the brim of his hat, and she couldn’t take her eyes off his strong profile.

“I think I got a little lost yesterday myself,” he said.

“In the diner?” she asked, remembering their conversation after he’d first looked in the journal. He’d definitely seemed lost enough for her to have commented on it.

“Not in the diner.” He laughed. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I got it into my head that your garden would be some kind of burial place for more Tony Amati artifacts. So I drove out there, hoping to just knock on your door and see if you’d let me do a little Indiana Jonesing.”

Her skin flushed, just as if he’d spread fire over it. “You paid me a visit?”

“Before my better sense got to me, yes. I did.”

A feeling of warmth and excitement expanded in her, and the awareness spilled over, alerting her to their proximity on the bench. Only a small space separated them. If she would only move her hand an inch, she would feel a vibration from his leg, a sense of being closer to him than ever.

What if she dared?

She didn’t. The last thing she needed was to get involved with a guy she knew next to nothing about. A guy who rattled her as Brett had first done with his own manly presence, and look how that had turned out. She was better off not trusting her first impressions.

Besides, her baby needed more than a drifter. Actually, all her child needed was her, not any man at all.

Jared must have interpreted her silence as wariness, and he grabbed the journal from under his arm. “I ended up going home and rereading this entire thing in depth last night. It changed my mind again about approaching you.” He offered it to her. “There’s not a heck of a lot in here unless you’re looking for a love story, so I’m hoping to find more—even if it’s in your garden.”

She took the journal. “Just like a man. If there aren’t explosions and car chases, you’re not interested.”

“I’m interested, all right. I just didn’t expect Tony to be...” He motioned with his hand.

“A sap for love?”

“Maybe.” He paused. “All he talks about is some girl he fell for.”

“I’d ask if he married her, but I know Tony never took a wife.”

“Right. He wrote about how they met in secret all the time. She was engaged to marry someone else, though Tony says she didn’t love him.”

“She was a bad girl? How progressive for the time.”

“Nah, from what Tony says, she was an angel. But her father disapproved of him, and it wasn’t because of their age difference. Evidently, Daddy thought Tony didn’t ‘suit’ his daughter.”

“Ooh—a forbidden romance.” She wanted to ask if Tony had “gone digging in the girl’s garden,” but there were limits to flirting, especially with someone like Jared.

He leaned back, resting his arms on the top of the bench. His coat brushed her shoulder and she shivered.

“It’s weird, though,” he said. “Tony never wrote about the...details when it came to him and his girl.”

“Details?”

Jared raised an eyebrow, and she understood.

Intimacies, she thought, thankful that Jared hadn’t put it out there.

Was he feeling the tense atmosphere between them, too? Did he want to avoid it just as much?

He went on. “Tony doesn’t even give her name. It’s not that kind of notch-on-the-bedpost journal.”

“What kind is it then?”

“The type of crap Romeo would’ve written about. You know, ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’ That sort of flowery stuff.”

Annette playfully narrowed her eyes at him. “You know your Shakespeare.”

“No, I don’t.” He looked disinterested. “I just had to read it freshman year in high school. The girls in class had this thing where they’d go around quoting it whenever they were sighing over some guy.”

And how many of those girls had quoted lines about him?

“Anyway,” he said, once again the persistent subject-changer, “you can read the journal if you want to, but later, after I show it to my grandma. I owe you that much for bringing it to me. But, if you do take it, I’d ask that you keep it out of sight.”

Annette didn’t know how to respond. He’d said it so casually, but she got the feeling that letting her in on this was a big deal for Jared Colton.

She treated his gesture with the respect it deserved. “I’ll do just that, Jared.”

At the sound of his name coming from her, he met her gaze. It was as if his irises had heated to dark fire, and she had to glance back down at the journal to keep from getting scorched.

Without looking at him, she said, “And if you want to do some digging, you’re welcome to come over to my place.”

Because it was no big deal, right? Besides, she meant digging in the sense of “investigative labor,” not...well, “digging in her garden.”

His voice lowered, scratching over her skin. “Then I’ll do that. Dig, I mean.”

What precisely did he mean by “dig”?

Whatever it was, she would avoid it. He could be a friend, and that would be easy enough because she got the feeling he’d be leaving just as soon as he satisfied himself about Tony Amati for whatever reason.

That made everything pretty simple.

He stood, reaching out a hand to help her to her feet. When she grabbed it, a blast zipped up her fingers, heating her hand, her arm. Her chest.

Everywhere.

“I’m off work tomorrow if that suits you,” he said. “Maybe I could drop by sometime early?”

Based on his regular appearances at the diner, he had to know that tomorrow was her day off, too. But she had some baby furniture being delivered at nine, and she didn’t want him there to see proof of her condition. Not before she was ready for the dirt to hit the fan in this town and for her to have to tidy up all the growing lies she would have to tell.

“How about eleven?” she asked, going for something a little later than an early-rising cowboy probably had in mind.

“Sounds like a plan.”

They hadn’t disconnected hands yet, and when she realized it, she stepped away, finally distancing herself.

Her skin still burned, though. Wanting, needing.

She gave him back the journal, and when he started to walk away, the hunger didn’t ease off, as her stomach tumbled with what had to be a thrill.

Suddenly she found herself asking him something better left unasked.

“Just why is it so important that you find out everything you can about Tony?”

His shoulders stiffened as he paused. But then he shrugged, and he almost pulled it off, too, except for the way his smile seemed strained.

“It’s not important,” he said as he lifted a hand in farewell, then sauntered toward his truck parked near the entrance to the mercantile, where he’d probably be filling it with supplies for the Harrison ranch.

It was the first obvious lie he’d ever told Annette, but she reminded herself that it was for the best.

She should be grateful for the distance he was putting between them, step by step.

And heartbeat by wistful heartbeat.

* * *

After Jared had banked some hours on the Harrison ranch, doing maintenance around the stables, he headed for dinner at Gran’s house.

She lived in what he thought of as a gingerbread cottage, with brown planked walls and white trim around the doors and windows. He’d found out that the hand-painted decorations on the flower boxes under the windows had been done by his grandpa, back in the day, before his heart attack had left Gran alone for going on ten years now.

When he knocked, it took her a few minutes to answer, but he knew she’d get around to it just fine.

And when she did, she had a smile on her face as she opened her arms to him and gave him a great big hug.

“It hasn’t been but a few days, but I missed you silly,” she said as she pulled away, lifting her hands to pat his cheeks.

Jared hadn’t ever had his cheeks patted like that before, and he felt his face going red. Gran thought that was pretty funny, and she had a good laugh.

He waited her out, still cautious around her because he’d never had a grandma before. His adoptive mom and dad had been older, both orphaned, and that’s why Uncle Stuart, who’d never planned to have kids, had taken him in. In his own way, he had shown Jared that he wasn’t very wanted.

He supposed that’s why Tony held such an appeal for him—the man wasn’t here to ever turn him aside, whereas a real-live grandma just might turn Jared away someday.

When she was done with her chuckles, she waved him inside, where it smelled like gingerbread, too. And casserole. And mothballs. But it was a comforting combination of smells that had already grown on him as much as he would ever allow it to.

“Take a seat,” she said, gesturing to a battered recliner that had seen better days.

She settled on the worn doily-decorated sofa next to him, pouring sodas into waiting glasses, just as efficient as always.

She’d already donned a flowery housedress, as if it was a gown she used for entertaining guests—or, conversely, as if she’d become so used to him that she didn’t mind what she wore when he came over. Her silver hair was in a low ponytail, and she was far too delicate to resemble a cowgirl who’d once helped to run a ranch with her husband before they sold it off years ago.

He set the oilcloth-wrapped journal on the table, and she stopped pouring.

“I thought I saw you bearing a gift, Jared, but I’m more of a roses or chocolates woman.” She touched the oilcloth. “Just what is this?”

“I asked the same thing yesterday when a friend brought it to me.” He explained who it belonged to and why his friend had found it in her garden.

It didn’t take Gran but a second to pounce on the item. Her creased forehead told him that she was worried about the contents.

“Don’t fret,” he said. “I didn’t find out a whole lot about the man.”

“I’m not fretting.” But she used her finger to help her speed through each line of each page anyway.

While she did that, Jared drank his soda. He even grabbed the remote to turn on the old TV and flip through the channels.

He wanted to ask Gran if she wouldn’t mind getting out all the old photo albums she’d shown him over the months. Pictures of her wedding to his grandfather, images of Grandpa as a dimple-cheeked blond child.