She’s come to Gold Valley, Oregon, for a fresh start—and roped the perfect cowboy

Jackson Reid is a man fully in control of his world, and his ranch. But when a past one-night stand shows up without warning and leaves him holding a baby, his whole life is turned upside down. He’s in over his head, and he has one solution: a nanny. But when he picks Savannah Sturm up from the airport, he finds that she’s so much more than the “plain and tall” woman she described herself as...

With one glance, Savannah’s new boss makes her feel more than her cheating ex ever did. Jackson insists he can’t do relationships, especially now that his priority is baby Lily. But his “no strings, just sex” offer is irresistible. And as raw desire gives way to something far deeper, maybe it’s Jackson’s turn to learn how right being wrong can feel...

Also By Maisey Yates

Cowboy Christmas Blues (ebook novella)

Smooth-Talking Cowboy

Mail Order Cowboy (ebook novella)

In Copper Ridge, Oregon, lasting love with a cowboy is only a happily-ever-after away. Don’t miss any of Maisey Yates’s Copper Ridge tales, available now!

Shoulda Been a Cowboy (prequel novella)

Part Time Cowboy

Brokedown Cowboy

Bad News Cowboy

A Copper Ridge Christmas (ebook novella)

The Cowboy Way

Hometown Heartbreaker (ebook novella)

One Night Charmer

Tough Luck Hero

Last Chance Rebel

Slow Burn Cowboy

Down Home Cowboy

Wild Ride Cowboy

Christmastime Cowboy

Take Me, Cowboy

Hold Me, Cowboy

Seduce Me, Cowboy

Claim Me, Cowboy

Look for more Gold Valley books coming soon!

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Mail Order Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08635-6

MAIL ORDER COWBOY

© 2018 Maisey Yates

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Praise for New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates

“Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts.”

—RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)

“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”

—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy

“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”

—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy

“[A] story with emotional depth, intense heartache and love that is hard fought for and eventually won.... This is a book readers will be telling their friends about.”

—RT Book Reviews on Brokedown Cowboy

“Yates’s thrilling seventh Copper Ridge contemporary proves that friendship can evolve into scintillating romance.... This is a surefire winner not to be missed.”

—Publishers Weekly on Slow Burn Cowboy (starred review)

“This fast-paced, sensual novel will leave readers believing in the healing power of love.”

—Publishers Weekly on Down Home Cowboy

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

JACKSON REID KNEW what he liked. He liked riding the perimeter of his family ranch, liked working from sunup to sundown until his muscles ached and his body was worn out. He liked drinking. And he liked women.

Women were the reward for all that work he did.

Work hard, drink hard, fuck hard.

He had no intention of settling down, no intention of changing. If he could die on the back of a horse, or with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand, or in the bed of a beautiful woman? Any of those things would be a fitting end for him. So why in hell would he change his life? He was on the path to any one of those ends, which meant he was on the right path for him.

His stepmother didn’t approve, but she’d moved away from Gold Valley six months ago, and his father was dead. So there wasn’t anyone around to mourn the fact that he wasn’t after marriage or babies.

He’d worked damn hard that day, like he did every day. It was pouring down rain and he’d been soaked to the bone by the time he’d come in. He’d had a hot shower, and now he was about to get down to the drinking. But that was when he heard a knock on his door.

He stood up, ambled over to the door and opened it. For a moment, he thought the sex had been delivered right to him. There was a blonde on his doorstep, bundled up against the cold and the wet.

Then he realized a few things. The first being that he recognized her. The second that she was tearstained and miserable. The third...that she wasn’t as bundled as she had initially appeared.

She was holding a blanket. And in the blanket was a baby.

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

“Sasha?” That was her name. He vaguely remembered her from a liquor-soaked night quite a few months ago.

More than nine months ago, as a matter of fact.

Hell.

While that realization was rolling over him, she reached forward and thrust the baby at him, into his arms.

The bundle felt fragile, and at the same time...heavy. He looked down at the tiny thing in his arms and felt... He couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t reason or rationalize the expanding sensation in his chest, or the ever-increasing sensation of weight. In his arms. On his shoulders.

“I can’t,” she said again. “I know you can take babies to a hospital or a police station, but she’s yours. You can take her there if you want.”

“Mine?” he asked.

His. His baby. He’d never even held a baby before, and now it turned out the one he had now was...his.

“I have to go. I need to go get... I need to get out of here.”

And then Sasha turned and ran. Ran away from the front door and down the steps, through the rain and back to her car.

He should do something. Go after her. Stop her. But he was frozen in place, staring down at the bundle in his arms. He moved the blanket away from the baby’s face and something in him shifted. Changed. As he looked at that tiny, vulnerable bundle in his arms, Jackson Reid felt like he no longer knew a damn thing.

Three months later...

I have a degree in early childhood development. The daycare that I worked at recently had to close, so I’m out of a job right now. I’m also out of an apartment, but that’s a long dramatic story.

—S

Lily is four months old. She doesn’t sleep through the night and I think I’m about to die of exhaustion. Cows don’t delay their care, even if babies don’t sleep, it turns out. She doesn’t take after me. If I hadn’t had a paternity test done I almost wouldn’t have believed she was mine. Too sweet, for one thing. And she’s the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know a damn thing about babies.

—J

She sounds perfect.

—S

She would be, if I weren’t drowning. I need help. Room and board, plus the pay we discussed previously.

—J

I can get there in a week.

—S

I’ve got all your flight info. I’ll be at the airport to get you.

—J

You can’t miss me. I’ll be the one with the bright, flowered suitcase. I’m plain and tall.

—S

A week after that...

SAVANNAH STURM STOOD in the tiny airport and looked around. She’d come into gate number three, and it turned out it was... Well, it was gate three out of three. In the only terminal the airport had.

She had been worried that her new employer, Jackson, might need a sign to help her find him. Now she imagined she’d just look for the man with the baby, assuming he was a man with a baby and not an ax murderer. The possibility was there that all of this was a scam of some kind. She was counting on him ringing alarm bells while they were here in public if she needed to be scared of him.

She adjusted the strap on her carry-on bag and stuffed her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, walking in line with the people who had just gotten off the very small plane and through a revolving door that led to...

What looked like the lone baggage carousel.

She stopped and looked around. The waiting area had a smattering of people in it. Not many, but that wasn’t terribly surprising since her plane couldn’t have had more than fifty people on it.

She didn’t see a man with a baby.

The main doors to the outside slid open. The man who walked in was head and shoulders above everyone else in the room, a black cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. He was wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed up, revealing muscular forearms that had lumberjack-caliber definition.

And he was holding a little pink bucket seat with a lacy blanket draped over the top.

Fathers of infants should not look like that. They should not look like every bad boy fantasy she’d never allowed herself to have. Fathers of infants shouldn’t look like fantasies at all. They should look softer. Less angular. And he certainly shouldn’t make her stomach tighten, and her body remember that it had been a very, very long time since she had been touched by a man.

And even longer since she had particularly wanted to be.

She blinked, grabbing hold of herself and retrieving her consciousness from that strange space it had just been in. She wasn’t here to check out a hot man. She was here to do a job. To reclaim the broken pieces of a life that hadn’t even been hers anymore after a particularly traumatic divorce.

She had herself firmly back together. Breathing normally.

Until she realized with absolute certainty that this wasn’t just any hot dad wandering through the airport terminal.

It was the hot dad she was waiting for.

Jackson Reid.

He was nothing like what she’d expected. She felt silly, suddenly, that she’d had an expectation at all. But a single dad with a tiny baby made her think of someone soft, and the man she’d corresponded with online had seemed...maybe even sweet.

Checking out her boss in the first ten seconds of meeting him was kind of a bad start. But then, she supposed she could forgive herself that. She’d been with Darren for five years, and during that time, it had never even occurred to her to check another man out. Finding herself unattached again was presenting some interesting side effects.

That was all this was. That part of herself naturally inclined toward seeking attachment reminding her that she currently didn’t have one. And all she had to do was remind that part that she didn’t want one. She squared her shoulders and crossed the space, standing closer to the baggage carousel, but also a little bit nearer to Jackson.

Who was apparently a hard-bodied cowboy.

She waited for him to see her. Waited for him to close that remaining distance. But he didn’t. Instead, he continued to scan the crowd, such as it was, his eyes skipping over her easily. She didn’t know how to feel about that. Particularly since her eyes had gone immediately to him, and had had a nearly impossible time leaving.

She cleared her throat and looked back at the baggage carousel. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe she was still waiting for Jackson Reid. Maybe it was some other man all by himself with a little baby. Maybe this man was waiting for his wife.

A wife who would no doubt be pretty and petite, and as striking as he was.

A wife who was probably sexually confident and not frigid and buried under years and years of issues.

She took a deep breath, and the conveyor belt on the carousel began to turn. People crowded in, collecting their bags. She wasn’t expecting hers to show up anytime soon. It was her own little Murphy’s Law that her bag was always last off the plane. She wasn’t quite sure how.

Not that she had traveled very much. She’d gone on a few little trips before her marriage. A post-graduation excursion to Disney World with some friends, a couple of spring breaks where she had been fully out of her element and had spent most of the time in the hotel room sober and trying to pretend she didn’t know her friends were hooking up with strangers a floor above her.

Then she had met Darren and they’d taken that first trip to Colorado to meet his parents, and then had moved to his hometown to be surrounded by his family. A family that had, at first, seemed like a dream to her, given her own parents. She’d settled into a life that had slowly grown more and more confining in ways that Savannah hadn’t totally realized until she had been free of it.

Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized the baggage carousel had emptied out, and her flowery, purple bag was going by. She grabbed hold of it, happy that the cheerful color and pattern made it easy to spot. Always being the last bag helped, too.

She hefted it off the carousel and turned around, and her eyes collided with his.

Oh, it was definitely him.

“Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.

“I think I’m waiting for you,” she said, looking down meaningfully at the little pink bundle.

“Savannah Sturm?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

His eyes landed on her suitcase. “I suppose your description of the bag was true enough.”

She blinked, looking up at him, and wondered if he had been thrown off because she had characterized herself as tall. Well, at nearly six feet, she was. But then, Jackson had to be nearing six-five, so it was entirely possible he didn’t see tall the same way that she did.

“Sorry. I guess tall is subjective.”

His scorching brown gaze moved over her, and for an instant she thought she was going to be singed alive. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he simply turned. She moved to follow him, and he stopped to take the bag from her hand without asking if she wanted him to.

“You’re holding the baby,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, well, Lily doesn’t weigh fifty pounds, and I assume the suitcase does. Either way, I can handle both just fine.”

She had no trouble believing that. Still shamefully taking a visual tour of his muscles, she watched the way he maneuvered both baby and bag easily outside, to where his truck was parked against the curb. There was an old security guard standing right next to it, looking officious, like he was about to make a proclamation. Jackson zeroed that gaze onto the guard. “I’m leaving.”

“It’s for loading and unloading only,” the guard pointed out, tapping the sign with his forefinger to illustrate the point.

“And I’m loading,” Jackson returned, his voice and glare as hard as steel.

Well. He was a whole thing.

Savannah gave an apologetic wave and got into the passenger side of the truck. Jackson hefted her suitcase into the bed, and then opened up his door, gently installing Lily’s car seat in the small bench seat behind the driver side. Then, he got in and started the engine, pulling them both away from the airport.

“How was the flight?” he asked.

“Quick,” she responded. “It’s only a couple hours from Colorado.”

“It’s going to take half that time to Gold Valley,” he said. “Near enough.”

“So there’s no airport in Gold Valley.”

“Nothing beyond a tiny municipal airfield. Not for commercial flights.”

“I figured as much when you told me to fly into Tolowa.”

“Our ranch is a bit out of town. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”

“Who’s... I thought you were... I didn’t think Lily’s mother was in the picture.”

“She isn’t,” Jackson said. “But I live on a family spread with my brothers and my stepsister. Lily and I live in our own cabin, and you’ll stay there with us.”

The idea of living in a cabin, which sounded cozy to the point of being tiny, seemed almost impossible now that she had actually laid eyes on the man. He was so large. He would fill up so much...space. It was impossible that he wouldn’t.

She didn’t say that out loud, though, and hid any discomfort. She’d been looking for a change. Looking for a new job in child care, because that was what she did, and when she had run across the ad from Jackson it had seemed like a godsend. Because wherever she ultimately landed, this job would provide her with the means to get away. And she desperately needed to get away.

Living in a small community where her ex-husband was a hometown legend, where his family owned half of everything, was impossible. She’d been choking on the mile-high air in her old life. A clawing desperation to be anywhere else taking over her every thought, as her options in her little town had been eliminated little by little. But moving was expensive, and it required a hell of a lot more credit than she had at this point in her life. Everything being linked to Darren had been fine when she had assumed that it would be forever. But when her marriage collapsed, she’d been left with nothing.

Jackson’s ad seeking a live-in nanny had seemed perfect, and their back-and-forth conversation online had been effortless, making the decision to take the job even easier. But she hadn’t considered the stark reality of being in such close quarters with a stranger.

“What do you do on the ranch?” she asked. She was desperate to fill the silence. If she didn’t, she would be left with her thoughts, and her thoughts were perplexing her at this point.

“Cattle ranch,” he said. “We supply USDA-approved beef to a large distributor.”

“It keeps you pretty busy?”

He chuckled. “You could say that. In fact, I’d say my life was packed full before I found out I had a kid.”

He hadn’t given her the full story of why he was a single dad, but his choice of words just now was odd. She didn’t know if he was divorced, but it had been pretty clear based on the tone of his messages that there was no one else involved. Maybe his wife had died. But then, he hadn’t mentioned that. He hadn’t mentioned a woman at all. It was like...

Like he had just found a baby on his doorstep.

“I see,” she said, not really seeing all that clearly.

Neither of them said anything else for a while, and Savannah turned her focus to the scenery. It wasn’t completely unlike Colorado. Mountainous and full of pine trees. She liked that. She loved the mountains. Compared to the exceedingly tame neighborhood she’d grown up in on the East Coast, she really liked the way that things were out West. She hadn’t wanted to leave Colorado, per se. She had just needed to escape a town dominated by her ex, where he was still making choices about her life even when he wasn’t directly in it. The way he manipulated things in town...

She’d had to get out.

She had thought that Oregon might be a natural place to get to. It had either been that or Montana, maybe Wyoming. But Oregon was where the opportunity had arisen, and she was also attracted to the idea that she would be able to drive out to the beach. Something she hadn’t been able to do living in Colorado.

They drove through the small town of Gold Valley, all redbrick buildings and Wild West aesthetic, which burned a bright spot inside of her soul. Made her feel like—in spite of the initial awkwardness—she had made the right choice.

They continued on out of town, down a winding two-lane highway lined with thick trees, ferns and thickly carpeting the floor of the forest encroaching over the side, nearly to the road.

He was right, the ranch was quite a ways outside of the town itself, and if not for the two wooden posts holding up a sign over a narrow driveway that said Box R, she wouldn’t have known there was even a ranch there at all.

They turned onto that dirt road. The trees cleared and revealed pastures, several empty, and one with a herd of cattle, before the road narrowed and the pines thickened again. It was just remote enough, just isolated enough that a jolt of adrenaline shot through her. Maybe she’d been stupid to come out here. Maybe there was no cabin and she was just on a dirt highway to murder.

But then they came to the end of the drive and she saw a little cabin. It was rustic, and rough, but then, it was what she’d expected a cabin to be, she supposed. She sat there while he got out, watched as he tended to his daughter. As strange as it all was, the way that those large, battered hands cradled the tiny infant when he took her out of her car seat made her feel...

A whole jumble of things. Most of them centered down deep in the pit of her stomach.

“I’ll just get Lily laid down in her crib, and then I’ll show you to your room and get your things,” he said.

She nodded and watched as he walked up the steps to the front porch and disappeared inside the cabin.

She climbed out of the car. She supposed she could follow him in, but he hadn’t said to, so she just stood there out in the gravel drive, turning a half circle and looking around the isolated place. What in hell had she gotten herself into? She realized it didn’t much matter. She didn’t have anywhere to go back to. She had no real friends left to speak of, no family that wanted anything to do with her.

For better or for worse, this was the place from which she was starting over.

So she had to make it work.

At least for a while.

CHAPTER TWO

PLAIN AND TALL.

Jackson played those words over and over in his head as he prepared his coffee and breakfast the next morning.

After he and Savannah had arrived at the cabin, he’d given her a quick rundown on Lily’s schedule and where everything was. He’d shown her to her room—which was across the house from his, and next to its own bathroom—and he’d told her not to worry about taking care of Lily that night, because while he was an ogre sometimes, he wasn’t enough of one to make her interrupt her sleep on a night when she’d been traveling all day.

She’d gone to bed early, early enough that he was pretty sure she was avoiding spending time in his company. Not that he minded. But he didn’t think she’d eaten at all. Which meant he was making up a double portion of bacon this morning.

He hoped she wasn’t a vegetarian, because everything was cooked in the bacon grease, and it was too late for him to do anything about that.

Probably would have been a good idea to ask.

There were some aspects to having a stranger in his house that he hadn’t fully considered. He had just been desperate for the help. And since he needed round-the-clock help, offering room and board had seemed like the smartest thing to do. Of course, that meant sharing his space. Which he didn’t like to do. But then, he was already sharing it with a woman, a bigger diva than he’d ever encountered before in his life.

Apparently, the tinier the female, the more willing a man was to submit to her whims. He couldn’t explain the way that having Lily made him feel. He didn’t like babies. He didn’t like kids. He’d never wanted any of his own. He wasn’t sure he did now. But the fact of the matter was he had a child, and he would die for her. Hell, he’d kill for her.

He didn’t know what exactly the feeling was that had invaded his chest, but it was intense. He wasn’t...content or happy, necessarily. No, the kind of feeling that Lily gave him wasn’t settled in the least. It was entirely opposite to the way he had always imagined domestic life would go. Which he had imagined as death by monotonous inches.

The appearance of Lily in his life had taken everything he thought he’d known about himself, and about what he wanted, and turned it all on its side. He was sleep deprived, his chest ached when he looked at her, and every damned morning when his feet hit the floor, he had no idea what he was doing.

He’d been a rancher all of his life. When it came to working the land he knew what he was about. Backward and forward. He’d lost his virginity at fifteen to a pretty, older teenage girl who’d shown him exactly what to do, and hadn’t been shy about demanding he do it better. Since then, he’d considered himself something of an expert on women. Everything he did in his life, he had a firm handle on.

Until now.

Feeling like a greenhorn was a total mind fuck, and apparently caused him to make decisions he might not have otherwise made. Like inviting this so-called plain, tall nanny to come live with him.

That was a far cry from reality. She was... She was stunning. It was a problem. Leggy and blonde, with sea green eyes and full, gorgeous lips.

He hadn’t been with a woman in quite some time. And that was playing havoc with him. The messed-up thing was he hadn’t even thought about it. Not since Lily. He hadn’t had the energy to even consider that kind of thing. He’d been so busy coping with the new life he found himself with he hadn’t spared a thought to his old life.

But then the nanny had shown up, and he wanted to fuck her, which told him everything he needed to know about what kind of asshole he would be in a more conventional life. Because wasn’t it only asshole husbands who wanted the nanny? Yeah, he knew that it was.

He wondered why she thought of herself as plain. Maybe because she wasn’t fussy. She didn’t have any makeup on when he picked her up at the airport. She had been wearing a T-shirt and a pair of leggings, but that seemed par for the course for travel. Maybe that was how she was all the time.

But if that’s what she thought made her plain... Well, he wondered what kind of men she’d had in her life before.

Doesn’t matter. You’re not a man in her life.

He needed help with Lily. At least until she was old enough to go to a daycare or preschool part-time. He and Savannah had discussed that over email. And if he went and messed with the only help he’d been able to find, and earn himself a shady reputation on top of it, he was going to be more screwed than he already was.

It was getting late, and he shouldn’t waste any more time standing around in his kitchen. He had work to do, but seeing as he didn’t have to strap Lily to his chest this morning and go about his work, trading her off between his siblings as they went through different tasks, he was going to hang around the house for a while. He needed to get Savannah established in her new role.

As if on cue her bedroom door cracked open and she appeared. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, a gray T-shirt molding over her slight, but perfect curves. She was wearing similar black leggings to the ones she’d had on yesterday.

“Good morning,” he said. “Bacon?”

“Coffee before anything,” she mumbled, stepping into the small kitchen, her gaze avoiding his a little bit too neatly.

As if it was intentional.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

Her green eyes collided with his and he wondered if he had overstepped. Honest to God, he didn’t know how to talk to her. Three months out of the game and he was this bad at communicating with women? Or maybe the problem was he didn’t know how to communicate with a woman he was attracted to that he couldn’t touch.

He hadn’t exactly lived a life of restraint.

“I slept fine,” she said. “I feel bad that I didn’t help with Lily. Tonight I’ll be ready to take the baby monitors.”

“I might be a little bit of a tyrant,” Jackson said, “but I wanted you to start out with a good night’s sleep. No sense in us both being sleep deprived from the get-go, right?”

“Right,” she agreed.

He poured her a mug of coffee and set it in front of her. “Cream and sugar?”

“Please,” she said.

“All the food in the house is yours,” he said. “My stepsister, Chloe, grocery shops once a week, and she does delivery. So if there’s anything you like, be sure to get it to me and I will put it on the list.”

“I can get my own groceries,” she said. “I don’t mind taking Lily to the grocery store.”

“Food is part of your pay,” he said. “It’s fine if you want the outing, but you don’t have to buy your own.”

“I appreciate that. I... I need to figure out getting a car. I have the money. I sold my car in Colorado.”

“We can work on that, too.”

“Are you a good cook?” she asked.

“I’m terrible,” he said. “Which is another thing. Chloe cooks for us sometimes, but often we fend for ourselves, and you may not like that. So, while I did not hire you to be a chef...”

“If I want to enjoy my dinner I might have to cook for both of us?”

“Just a fact,” he said.

“Good to know.”

“I’m happy to eat frozen pizza. And a lot of garlic bread. Throw a steak in a pan with some butter. I’m not picky.”

“That’s going to catch up with you someday,” she commented, eyeballing his midsection.

“Hasn’t yet,” he said. “Other things have, obviously, but not my eating habits.”

She hesitated for a moment, taking two very pointed sips of coffee. Then she put her mug down and looked at him. “By other things do you mean... Lily?”

He sighed heavily, rubbing the back of his neck. He supposed there was no way around having this conversation.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m the last guy on earth that should be raising a baby by himself. I don’t know a damn thing about kids. And I was not exactly in a white picket fence place. But here I am. When I say I don’t know anything about babies and fatherhood, I mean it.”

“Who is her mother?”

“I know her name, but beyond that, I don’t know much,” he said, shame sliding over him when he said that.

He’d already had to explain this to his brothers, his stepsister, and to their stepmother. He’d never been bothered by his behavior before. Until this.

Because when people talked about him and his reputation it was all euphemistic. Elbowing, winking and nudging. Nobody came right out and said that he had sex with every woman he talked to in a bar, but the fact of the matter was he did. And Lily was undeniable evidence of that.

The fact that he didn’t really know her mother was further evidence of who he was. And put all out in public like that, it shamed him. Knowing that someday he would have to explain to his daughter how he’d acted bothered the hell out of him. Knowing he was the kind of man that he would never, ever want Lily to even speak to was another layer of that altogether. Because he was raising her. And he had to find a way to be better.

“So, she wasn’t your wife.”

“She wasn’t even my girlfriend,” he admitted. “I didn’t know she was pregnant. I hadn’t seen her again, not since we hooked up. And she showed up a couple of months ago with the baby. Told me that she couldn’t do it. I had a paternity test, and I have full, legal custody. Permanently. Lily’s mother gave up her rights.”

“Oh,” Savannah said, looking down.

“It’s not a great story,” he said. “But when I said I was in over my head...”

“You really meant it,” she said softly.

“I sure as hell did.”

Their eyes met and held, and he felt something stretch between them, something that was definitely mutual, and clearly unwelcome. Both for her and for him. He looked away.

“For a while I could wear her for a lot of the ranch work I do, but it’s getting harder.”

She was staring at him, a perplexed expression on her lovely face.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t believe those words all just came out of my mouth, either.”

“I have to admit, you don’t look like someone who would have a lot to say on the topic of baby wearing.”

“I never thought I would.” He sighed heavily. “Babies are scary. And I say that as someone who is not scared of much. But... I can’t tell you how many times a night I have to check and make sure she’s still breathing.”

“I don’t have any children of my own,” she said. “But I’ve heard that before.”

“It’s a hell of a thing.”

“Hopefully I’ll make it a little bit easier.”

“What exactly are you getting out of it?” He couldn’t help but ask. After all, she was living in his house and taking care of his daughter. He had a right to know exactly why. Another thing that was hitting him a day late and quite a few dollars short.

“Room and board? Pay?”

“I imagine you could get a job taking care of kids a whole lot of places.”

“I needed to get away,” she said.

It occurred to him then that he maybe should have done a background check on her or something. But he didn’t know how to do a background check on someone. He’d never had to. He’d never had to concern himself with anything like that, but he was letting this woman take care of his baby.

“I’m going to have to ask you why you needed a fresh start,” he said, lifting his coffee mug to his lips. “I want to keep this as professional as possible. But I do need to know a little bit about you personally. And I realize asking you now, on the first day, is maybe a little bit late, but I’m new to all this. I’m not exactly thinking of everything here.”

“I feel the same way,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know anything about you, either. Except for what you told me. But I wanted to get away. I needed to. I’m not running from the law or anything. I just got divorced. Actually, I got divorced about eight months ago, and I tried to keep on living where we were. I loved our little town. But my husband—ex-husband, that is—has lived there all of his life, and there’s no way I can combat that local mentality. His whole family is there and they own half the businesses in town. And they are... They’re angry at me for leaving him.”

“So the asshole made it impossible for you to live there?”

“Basically. And I was not going to go back home to live with my parents. I lived with them until I could legally leave, and as far as I’m concerned, a phone call home once a month is enough.”

“Fair enough. I work right here on the property, and I’ll be back to check on you probably more often today than usual. Just a warning.”

A smile curved the edge of her lips. “Are you afraid to leave her?”

“It doesn’t feel real yet,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ve been afraid to take my eyes off her since the moment her mom handed her to me. Still. And I’m not going to lie, sometimes the responsibility feels so big I almost wish the whole thing was a dream. But then, the minute that thought enters my head...it’s followed by total terror. Because sometimes I feel like nothing in my life was anything until her. I’m not sure I can ever go back.”

That was the worst part. Wanting something of his old life, and knowing it wouldn’t feel the same. He could never see himself or the things he used to do the same way again. Not now. “I better head out.”

“I’ll be fine. I remember where everything is.”

“If you need anything...”

“I have your phone number. I have your stepsister’s phone number. I have both your brothers’ numbers.”

“And I’ll be back.”

“I know.”

For the first time in three months, Jackson Reid stepped outside with empty arms and headed out to work.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE WAS A larger housekeeping element to this job than Savannah had expected, but she didn’t mind it, either. In fact, over the next couple of days she found a strange kind of bliss in it. Jackson was gone most of the time, and she usually woke up to coffee he had made and some leftover bacon, which she helped herself to, and then set about to preparing Lily’s first bottle, and getting set up to change diapers.

She read to her. Made sure she had the recommended amount of tummy time, and sang to her off-key. But at Lily’s age, the bulk of what she did was sleep and wiggle. And that gave Savannah a decent amount of free time. So she cleaned the tiny cabin, she made herself lunch, and then she prepared a dinner for both herself and Jackson.

Jackson had come in late the last couple of nights, and they didn’t take dinner together, but Savannah didn’t mind eating by herself.

It was a revelation, to be in a new setting like this. She had lived on her own for the last eight months, and had been distant from her husband before that, but still, she could feel his specter looming over her the entire time. Actually living in this new place, with this fresh start, was awfully blissful. Tonight she was making pot roast, which was even more blissful. She had never made it before. She hadn’t done a lot of cooking even when she’d been married, not because she couldn’t, but because she’d worked full-time and had usually been too exhausted at the end of the day to put together anything more spectacular than a pot of spaghetti.

She and Darren had often eaten out, or gone to his parents’ house for dinner. He didn’t really enjoy her cooking. That was the biggest part of it. And so they had settled into a routine where they had what he liked to eat, when he wanted to eat it. And often, his mother facilitated that. Darren had certainly been the one in charge in their house, but if there had been anyone pulling rank above him it’d been his mother.

She frowned. It had all been so slow and insidious, and she hadn’t realized that nothing in her life was hers until the end, when Darren finally pulled the plug on that marriage by announcing he had found someone else.

That was the worst part.

She’d been unhappy for a long time, but she had been primly pressing on because there was nothing else to do. Because she’d made vows and she would honor those. And that someday, maybe they would find the kind of happiness they’d had when they were dating.

It wasn’t until they’d divorce that she realized she’d walk herself right into the same marriage her parents had had.

She hadn’t given it the necessary amount of thought until it was too late, but somewhere, deep down, she’d believed her parents had always been unhappy. That they’d never been giddy about each other, that they’d never felt reckless and young. And so, when she’d met Darren and fallen in love for the first time, experienced attraction and infatuation for the first time, she’d imagine she’d gone and sidestepped her great fear.

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