“We spent a month together,”

Josie continued. “I know all about him. I know he got his first horse when he was six. I know that when he was ten his collie died, and he carved the gravestone himself.”

The lawyer’s eyes widened slightly. “Anyone could know those things.”

“No,” a harsh voice came from the doorway. “Not anyone.”

The lawyer leaned forward. “Chase!”

Josie felt nauseated again. Who was this? Were they trying to fool her, bringing in someone to pose as Chase and hope she’d snap at the bait?

“It was Chase who told me.”

“That’s a lie. Until you wrecked your car in my driveway, I had never seen you before in my life.”

He sounded…so certain. So indignant. So exactly how an honest man unjustly accused would sound. Suddenly she understood. The dashing heartbreaker she’d met and the tenderhearted rancher’s son whose stories had won her heart…they were two different men.

“Damn it. Say something.”

She met his furious gaze helplessly. She had nothing to say. Not to him. All she could possibly say was…

“I’m so sorry, Mr Clayton. I’ve never seen you, either.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If you could own any horse, it would be… (um, would someone else muck out the stalls?) If so, then Tornado, Zorro’s beautiful black Andalusian. John Wayne or Gary Cooper? Cooper, of course! “Don’t shove me, Harv. I’m tired of being shoved.” Favourite Western? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Best name for a horse? Merrylegs, from Black Beauty. Cowboys are your weakness because… I love a man who can do, will do and doesn’t ever complain. What makes the cowboy? It’s the hat. Think James Dean in Giant. Oh, what a perfect tilt can do to a woman!

Dear Reader,

Having a baby is one of the most exciting things a woman can do – and one of the most terrifying. A new human being is taking shape inside you, a child who will own your heart and change your life. Yet you have no idea what this new person will be like. Sometimes we’re mature enough to think about the genetic implications of the man we pick to father our children. More often, I’d suspect, we’re just swept away, by love or lust, or the hope of relief from loneliness.

Josie Whitford was hungry for all those things. And now, too late, she discovers that she doesn’t know who the father of her child really is. But then she meets Chase Clayton, the handsome rancher who is everything her lover wasn’t. As they search for the man who abandoned her, she begins to have second thoughts about what makes a “father.” Is it possible that birth is only the beginning?

Yes, a father can give you curly hair and brown eyes. But he can also give you love and patience, wisdom and courage and, above all, time. Time spent telling bedtime stories, explaining photosynthesis, kissing away tears. His constancy can make you confident. His strength can make you brave. His compassion can make you kind. Chase Clayton could be that kind of father. But Josie’s already pregnant, and he’s engaged to someone else. Surely it’s too late for them.

Or is it? Is it possible that love really can conquer all?

I hope you enjoy their story.

Warmly,

Kathleen

Texas Baby

KATHLEEN O’BRIEN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE MORNINGS.

No, Josie Whitford corrected herself as she poured another round of coffee into Mr. Benetta’s cup, smiling even though she had a hammering headache, that was a laughable understatement.

It was one of those years. The ones in which you just couldn’t catch a break, couldn’t get ahead, couldn’t even run fast enough to stay in place. Ones where you felt yourself stumbling, slipping backward, as if life were a treadmill set on the highest speed, programmed to cycle out the weak.

Of course, the morning itself was lousy, too. Raindrops as fat as marbles, true Texas raindrops, bounced off the oily pavement, and the windows of the Not Guilty Café had turned gray and runny. They reminded Josie of the last plate she’d carried to the kitchen, prune juice splashed into the remnants of over-easy eggs. For a minute, just remembering, she thought she might get sick.

Oh, God, she wasn’t finally catching that flu, was she? She’d managed to avoid it all winter, but lately she’d been so run-down, so damn tired. The splat of gravy on her apron, courtesy of the kid at table two, sent up a wave of odor, and the banana she’d had for breakfast rose in her throat.

No. She clamped her jaw. Not on the customer. That would be the perfect excuse to fire her, the one Ed had been waiting for.

She pivoted away from Mr. Benetta, breathing through her mouth to avoid the smell of bacon grease wafting from the grill. The Not Guilty Café didn’t use the best cuts of anything, but it had the benefit of a great location. Tucked into the shadow of Riverfork City Hall and courthouse for the past fifty years, the café had become a tradition for the local politicians, businessmen and lawyers.

For a minute, she just stood there, the coffeepot hot against her hand, the banana roiling in her stomach. She looked around, panicked, but oddly paralyzed. On a day like this, when the rain made a good excuse for arriving late to work, the customers lingered, and the café was jammed. Where could she throw up without having to pay someone’s dry cleaning bill?

Nowhere. She felt sweat break out on her forehead even as a chill passed across her back, from shoulder to shoulder. She set down the coffeepot, which suddenly felt as heavy as an anchor.

Oh, how she wanted to go home. She longed for a nap, for the soothing warmth of the expensive sheets Chase had bought her that day in the Galleria. Sometimes, when she snuggled down into the five-hundred-thread cocoon, she could imagine that Chase, with his hot hands and his hard body, was still lying there beside her.

That she wasn’t completely alone.

But she was alone. And unless she intended to sell those sheets to pay next semester’s tuition, she’d better stay put, chills or no chills. She needed every penny she could make today. And then some.

“Hey, gal, come out of that trance. Is your blood sugar low? Table six is getting cranky. And you know Ed’s watching.”

Josie snapped to attention, anxiety taking precedence over nausea. She tossed Marlene, her favorite coworker, a grateful grimace, then glanced toward the front register, where Ed stood, giving her the evil eye.

The bastard. If she was exhausted, it was his fault. He’d been working her double shifts for weeks, seating all the most demanding customers in her section, riding her like a devil. No one could keep that pace, and he knew it. He would torment her as long as he could, for the sheer fun of it, and then he’d fire her.

“Don’t let him get to you, hon.” Marlene leaned in, her shoulder warm against Josie’s, her voice a raspy whisper. “You know he’s just cranky ’cause he can’t get into your pants.”

Josie nodded, though that wasn’t exactly true. Ed was angry, all right. But he wasn’t upset just because Josie always told him no. What made him positively rabid was that she’d told Chase Clayton yes.

Fat lot of good that had done her. At least if she’d slept with Ed she might have gotten a raise and some decent shifts. Sleeping with Chase Clayton hadn’t left her with anything but a bruised heart, a cynical attitude toward romantic dreams and a C on her English lit exam—her first C in four long years at the community college.

And, of course, a set of supersoft sheets.

Maybe her blood sugar was low. She felt tearful suddenly, just at the thought of Chase, which was really dumb. He’d been gone for two months now, twice as long as the fairy tale had lasted in the first place.

She dug in her pocket for a glucose tablet and popped it surreptitiously into her mouth. Ed saw, of course, though he probably thought it was gum, or an aspirin. Marlene was the only one who knew about her diabetes and the shots she’d taken every day since she was a kid.

Frowning, Ed called her name out in a booming voice. He always talked like a radio announcer, probably to compensate for being shaped like a stick of spaghetti. And maybe other shortcomings, as well. There must be a reason the waitresses secretly called him “pinkie.”

“Josie!” He made a circular “hurry up” motion with his hand. He pointed toward the waiting area, a ten-square-foot nook where some of the biggest deals in Riverfork politics were forged by big, red-faced men with soft drawls, Stetson hats and lizard-skin boots.

It wasn’t Josie’s turn to straighten the area, and, just as Marlene warned her, the dad at table six was tapping his menu and shooting her dirty looks, but she knew better than to argue with Ed.

Still, there might be trouble, and she didn’t have the energy to cope with it today. The dad looked like an Alpha male and would undoubtedly complain about her slow service. Ed obviously expected that—wanted it, even. He had a stack of write-ups on her now, and when he got tired of torturing her, he’d stuff them down her throat.

She should quit.

But even that took more energy than she had today.

As she gathered old, crumpled paper coffee cups, dirty stir sticks and torn straw wrappers, she felt Ed’s gaze crawl across her back like bugs.

She took shallow breaths, trying not to smell the old, spilled coffee. Though her hands shook, she moved aside the mints and the rumpled newspaper sections, which felt clammy, absorbing the stormy air. Putting those back together would take forever, but she might as well get started.

Ed was a fool to keep the customers waiting, just to play this power trip on her. Someday one of them would complain to the owners, and he’d learn that managers could lose their jobs, too.

That ought to please her, but somehow it didn’t. She couldn’t really feel anything but this pulsing nausea. She ought to start stumping for a new job. She ought to sue him for sexual harassment.

But the very idea of any of those things felt like climbing a jagged, frozen mountain. She couldn’t even summon up enough indignation to hate him right now.

What on earth was wrong with her? She wondered if her insulin dose might be out of whack after all. Surely this weary exhaustion wasn’t completely emotional. Surely it wasn’t all about Chase Clayton.

Coming home to find her fairy-tale lover vanished, her idyll smashed, had been painful, but not completely crushing. As beautiful as the fantasy had been, she’d always known it couldn’t last. A rich, handsome rancher with 25,000 acres romancing a twenty-five-year-old waitress struggling to make her rent and finish community college?

Yeah, right. Everyone knew how that story ended.

So, though it had hurt, she’d fully expected to nurse her bruised heart and childish disappointment for a while, then dust herself off and get back to work.

But instead of feeling a little stronger every week, she’d actually been sinking, going deeper each day into this shadowy hole of lethargy. Last night she’d been so depressed she had even picked up the phone and begun calling her mother’s house in Austin.

Luckily, she’d come to her senses before the last number was punched. Her hands had trembled as she put down the receiver, grateful for the near miss. Suppose her stepfather had answered? He’d warned her she couldn’t make it on her own. She’d spent the past seven years proving him wrong, by God, and she wasn’t going to give up now.

She picked up the sports section, the most pawed-over of the lot, naturally, and rearranged the pages. Then she added the front page, with its war news and bold black headlines predicting bird flu, rising murder rates and new taxes.

She closed her eyes, fighting back another wave of nausea.

It must be the flu. Maybe she’d better see the doctor next time Ed gave her a day off. If he ever did.

Finally she located the feature section, which had been folded inside out. The page on top was all weddings and engagements, row upon row of finger-sized pictures of beautiful young women who radiated confidence and optimism, as if they were lit by the shimmer of their engagement diamonds. As if they’d been sprinkled with the magic dust of True Love.

She squeezed the paper so hard it bent and softened in her damp fist. How lovely it would be to feel like that. Adored, pampered, beaming. Your whole life in front of you, and a loving partner to stand beside you, in sickness and in health.

To know that you would never be alone again.

“I’ve transferred table six to Marlene,” Ed said, his swollen voice suddenly right behind her shoulder. “They were ready to get up and leave. For God’s sake, I had no idea cleaning up over here would take you so long.”

Yes, you did, she wanted to cry out. But vomit closed off her throat, and a deep heaviness flowed into her veins, as if she’d been injected with mud. She didn’t even look at him. She kept her eyes on the happy women, the healthy, happy women standing on the threshold of paradise.

Aleshia Phillips to marry Timothy Braxton.

Sandra Culter to marry Arthur Brun.

Susannah Everly to marry Chase Clayton.

What?

Her heart stopped. She tried to take in air, but her throat wasn’t working, either.

Susannah Everly to marry Chase Clayton.

No.

Chase Clayton.

Josie felt her head bobbing, as if her heart beat so hard it shook her whole body with every stroke. She saw her own brown bangs, which needed cutting. They looked dull and lank as they trembled across her vision. She tried to think, but none of the gears in her brain seemed willing to turn.

She held out one hand toward Ed. “I,” she began, strangling the word. “I—”

He had no pity, as usual. He looked annoyed by her incoherence. He shifted, and his cologne filled the air. “Jeez, Josie, get a grip.”

And then, finally, she lost the battle, all the battles. With her pride, with her heart, her exhaustion, and even, to Ed’s dismay, her roiling stomach.

“I—” She tried one more time.

And then she threw up all over his lizard-skin boots.

CHAPTER TWO

TWO HOURS into his own engagement party, Chase Clayton was bored and restless and having trouble hiding it.

He had agreed to put on a tie and make nice with all their friends for Susannah’s sake—she loved parties—but the truth was, he was bored stiff.

Besides, there was work he needed to do. Well, needed might be an exaggeration. Trent, his ranch manager, was too good to leave much for Chase to worry about.

But there was work he’d rather do. Every time another person in this endless line of well-wishers came up, slapped him on the back and offered the same carbon copy congratulations, he smiled politely, but his mind was a mile away, wondering how things were going on the reroofing of the south stable.

When his phone vibrated on his belt, it was like getting a governor’s reprieve. He eased back his jacket and sneaked a peek at the text. Trent had a problem and needed a minute. Chase could say no, but he wasn’t going to. Fate had thrown him a life raft, and he was jumping on.

“Would you excuse me? That call was from Trent. Some kind of hay emergency, if you can believe there is such a thing.” Chase smiled at Jenny Wilcox, the pastor’s wife, who for some unknown reason seemed to be so damn happy about Chase’s engagement that she’d spent the past twenty minutes alternately giggling and then tearing up like a leaky faucet.

“Of course. I’ve kept you from Susannah far too long,” Jenny said, sniffing in a bliss of emotion. “Oh, I’m so pleased that you two finally got together! You’re so perfect together. And with the ranches right next door…oh, it’s just too perfect!”

Before another spill of tears could appear, Chase squeezed her hand and turned away. Trying not to attract attention, he set down his tumbler of ice water and eased toward the corner of the terrace. He wondered, just for a second, whether Trent had manufactured this crisis. He knew Chase well, and might have guessed that his boss needed a breather.

Or maybe it had something to do with Sue. Chase looked over his shoulder. Susannah Everly stood by the fountain talking to Jim Stilling, their lawyer. She held a glass of white wine that caught the sunshine when she drank, tossing it in gold sparkles onto her strong, tanned shoulders. Jim seemed mesmerized, and even Chase had to admit that Sue looked great. That low-cut green dress was the girliest outfit he’d ever seen her wear, and he’d known her all her life.

Any man in his right mind would be thrilled to marry a woman like that.

The man he was about to meet, for instance. Trent Maxwell had loved Susannah for years.

Which showed how Fate enjoyed a little kick of irony, didn’t it?

Chase slipped around the edge of the terrace. As the chatter of voices faded, he strolled to the front of the house, ignoring the small twinge of conscience at being absent from his own celebration.

All through his childhood, he’d been infamous for sneaking away from family parties. His parents had thrown the biggest balls and barbecues in the county. Anything was an excuse for a Clayton festival—Christmas, birthdays, Chase’s elementary school graduation, the full moon…anything. But Chase always found himself bored, drifting down to the riverbank to catch minnows, or into the stables to brush Captain Kirk, the lazy bald-face bay his parents had given him when he’d turned fourteen.

“You sure you’re a Clayton, son?” His father, a huge, happy man, loved to snag his young son by the feet. “You sure your mom didn’t slip the corral about nine months before you were born?” He’d check Chase’s heel, just for the pride of seeing the walnut-colored Clayton birthmark. “Yep, you’ve got the family brand, but I’ll be damned if I know where this antisocial stuff sneaked into the bloodline.”

It had sneaked in, though. Chase and Trent had been friends since elementary school, and Chase sometimes wondered whether they had been accidentally switched at birth. Trent was suave and well dressed, socially sought after, the ideal guest. Chase preferred blue jeans and hard work, and the company of horses.

“Hey, corporal, over here,” a voice said, and Chase looked toward the front porch. Trent stood in the shadows, leaning over the balcony, his shoulders oddly stiff. He hadn’t turned his head in Chase’s direction. Instead, he seemed half-frozen, staring out toward the road.

Chase wondered what Trent was looking at. The main house fronted pretty close to the street, so this view wasn’t the one that took your breath away.

The real beauty was from the back, where the party was going on right now. The Double C was substantial, but not grand—25,000 acres now that Chase had bought the Hillman land—and, behind the house, acre after acre of green pasture and ponderosa pines undulated down to the creek. Clayton land splashed right through the clear, pebbled water and then marched across another ten thousand acres of peach orchard, almost all the way to the Austin city limits.

Out here, though, there wasn’t much to see, unless you counted the bluebonnets on either side of the white fence that marked the half-mile driveway. But as Chase drew closer, he got a better view of Trent’s face. He realized his friend hadn’t been looking at anything. He’d just been staring blind.

Of course. This wasn’t going to be an easy day for Trent, no matter how you cut it.

Chase climbed the six steps and joined his manager on the porch, leaning his elbows on the banister, too. “So, what’s up? Is there really a hay emergency, or are you playing guardian angel, giving me a breather?”

Trent laughed. “Both. About the hay—we went with that new company you said you wanted. Old Joe’s daughter’s new business. She delivered a semi load today, and the first three bales were moldy.”

Trent’s educated voice was clipped, clearly irritated. He didn’t tolerate moldy hay, or any other kind of shabby work, which was what made him the perfect ranch manager. He was what cowboys used to call “square.” Completely on top of his job.

“Damn it.” Chase whistled through his teeth and scuffed a toe against the balustrade. “I really wanted to throw her some business. Joe asked me to, and you know he wouldn’t ask a river for water if he were dying of thirst.”

“That’s why I called. Ordinarily, I’d just send it back and get another hay company. We don’t give second chances. But since she’s old Joe’s daughter…”

“Yeah.” Hell’s bells. Chase knew he was without options here. Joe had been ranch manager for two generations of Claytons, and he’d reluctantly retired when Chase’s dad had died five years ago. But the old guy had dropped enough of his sweat on Clayton soil that Chase would always feel beholden. “Okay. Just this one time. She gets a do-over.”

Trent glanced at him, his mouth a one-cornered smile. “Somehow that’s what I thought you’d say.”

Chase smiled, too. Trent wasn’t kidding anybody. This little decision definitely hadn’t required a face-to-face. He’d just been saving Chase’s ass, and Chase appreciated it. Their business was done, but he didn’t move. He didn’t want to go back.

For a couple of minutes, they stood together in silence, watching the leaves of the sweet gum tree carve shapes on the front yard. In some intangible way, the silence wasn’t as companionable as it used to be, before Chase’s engagement.

He wondered if Trent was ready to talk about it. For the past month, they’d both pretty much pretended it wasn’t happening.

Finally, without taking his gaze from the grass, Trent spoke. “So. How’s it going back there? I saw her. She looks happy.”

Chase made a noncommittal sound. This was tricky territory they were stepping over, and he wasn’t sure of his footing. “I guess she is. That ranch means a lot to her. If it meant she could keep it, she probably would have married the devil himself.”

Shit. Two seconds into this conversation, and Chase already had a mouthful of foot. “Hell, Trent. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. She would have married anyone.” Trent straightened up and met Chase’s gaze. He shrugged in that elegant way that drove most women mad. “Anyone but me.”

It was so true, there was no way to contradict it. So Chase didn’t try. Every word he thought of had a “quicksand” warning sign posted all over it. Better, when you didn’t have the gift of gab, to shut the hell up.

He considered laying his hand on Trent’s shoulder, but that seemed patronizing, too.

Apparently Trent agreed. He took a deep breath, then began descending the porch stairs. He paused at the bottom. “You heading back now? You probably should, you know. If your mom was here, she would’ve had a fit if she saw you leave your own party.”

Trent was right there, too. Chase’s mother had come from Virginia, and she’d had very strict ideas about how her son should behave. She didn’t mind his quiet nature, but whenever he was rude she’d always “explained” his mistake to him so gently and sweetly he ended up wanting to shoot himself.

“In a minute,” Chase said. “I need a little time alone. Jenny Wilcox was talking my ear off.”

Finally Trent smiled. “Your mom always said trying to teach a Texan manners was like trying to teach a snake to tap-dance.”

“Yeah. But she never had to talk to Jenny Wilcox.”

Trent chuckled, but still hesitated.

“Look, Trent,” Chase said, feeling oddly defensive. “I don’t plan to saddle up and ride off into the sunset. I’m not going to back out on her. I just want a few minutes alone.”

“Okay,” Trent said. “Just don’t…” He frowned. “Don’t stay out here so long it ends up embarrassing her.”

Chase nodded. “Never,” he said solemnly. He held Trent’s gaze. “That’s a promise.”

After Trent was gone, the minutes stretched out quietly, interrupted only by the carrying-on of the robins and the wind flirting with the sweet gum tree. Chase let his tired gaze rest on the bluebonnets, which were blooming their hearts out today.

They should have held the party out here. Susannah had the terrace decorated like something out of a magazine, lots of cute ribbons and potted plants shaped like illustrations from geometry textbooks. But for his money you couldn’t beat the first big honest splash of spring flowers.

He felt his chest relaxing. His breath came deeper, from the gut, where it was supposed to. After a few more minutes, he was a little sun-stunned, and when he heard a strange noise in the distance he wasn’t completely sure he wasn’t dreaming.

But then he transferred his gaze to the road and identified a foreign spot on the horizon. A car. Almost half a mile away, where the straight, tree-lined drive met the public road. He could tell it was coming too fast, but judging the speed of a vehicle moving straight toward you was tricky.

It wasn’t until it was about two hundred yards away that he realized the driver must be drunk…or crazy. Or both.

The guy was going maybe sixty. On a private drive, where kids or horses or tractors or stupid chickens might come darting out any minute, that was criminal. Chase straightened from his comfortable slouch and waved his hands.

“Slow down, you fool,” he called. He took the porch steps quickly and began walking fast down the driveway.

The car veered, from one side to the other, then up onto the slight rise of the thick green spring grass. It barely missed the fence.

“Slow down, damn it!”

He couldn’t see the driver, but he definitely didn’t recognize the automobile. It was small and old and hadn’t cost much even when it was new. It used to be white, but now it needed either a wash or a new paint job or both.

“Goddamn it, what’s wrong with you?”

At the last minute, he had to jump away, because the idiot behind the wheel clearly wasn’t going to turn to avoid a collision. He couldn’t believe it. The car kept coming, finally slowing a little, but it was too late.

Still going about thirty miles an hour, it slammed into the large, white-brick pillar that marked the front boundaries of the house. The pillar wasn’t going to give an inch, so that car had to. The front end folded up like a paper fan.

It seemed to take forever for the car to settle, as if the trauma happened in slow motion, reverberating from the front to the back of the car in ripples of destruction. The front windshield seemed to ice over with lethal bits of glassy frost. Then the side windows exploded.

The front driver’s door wrenched open, as if the car wanted to expel its contents. Metal buckled hideously. Small pieces like hubcaps skipped and ricocheted insanely across the oyster-shell driveway.

Finally, everything was still. Into the silence, a plume of steam shot up like a geyser, smelling of rust and heat. Its snakelike hiss almost smothered the low, agonized moan of the driver.

Chase’s anger had disappeared. He didn’t feel anything but a dull sense of disbelief. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. Not in his life. Maybe the sun had actually put him to sleep.

But he was already kneeling beside the car. The driver was a woman. There was no air bag. The frosty glass of the windshield was dotted with small flecks of blood. She must have hit it with her head, because just below her hairline a red liquid was seeping out. He touched it. He tried to wipe it away before it reached her eyebrow, though of course that made no sense at all. Her eyes were shut.

Was she conscious? Did he dare move her? Her dress was covered in glass, and the metal of the car was sticking out dangerously in all the wrong places.

Then he remembered, with an intense relief, that every good medical man in the county was here, just behind the house, drinking his champagne. He found his phone and paged Trent.

The woman moaned again.

Alive, then. Thank God for that.

He saw Trent coming toward him, starting out at a lope, but switching to a full run when he saw the car.

“Get Dr. Marchant,” Chase called. “Don’t bother with 911.”

Trent didn’t take long to assess the situation. A fraction of a second, and he began pulling out his cell phone and running toward the house.

The yelling seemed to have roused the woman. She opened her eyes. They were blue, and clouded with pain and confusion.

“Chase,” she said.

His breath stalled. His head pulled back. “What?”

Her only answer was another moan, and he wondered if he had imagined the word. He reached around her and put his arm behind her shoulders. She was tiny. Probably petite by nature, but surely way too thin. He could feel her shoulder blades pushing against her skin, as fragile as the wishbone in a turkey.

She seemed to have passed out, so he put his other arm under her knees and lifted her from the car. He tried to avoid the jagged metal, but her skirt caught on a piece and the tearing sound seemed to wake her again.

“No,” she said. “Please.”

“I’m just trying to help,” he said. “It’s going to be all right.”

She seemed profoundly distressed. She wriggled in his arms, and she was so weak, like a broken bird. It made him feel too big and brutish. And intrusive. As if touching her this way, his bare hands against the warm skin behind her knees, were somehow a transgression.

He wished he could be more delicate. But he smelled gasoline, and he knew it wasn’t safe to leave her.

Finally he heard the sound of voices, as guests began to run around the side of the house, alerted by Trent. Dr. Marchant was at the front, racing toward them as if he were forty instead of seventy. Susannah was right behind him, her green dress floating around her trim legs.

“Please,” the woman in his arms murmured again. She looked at him, the expression in her blue eyes lost and bewildered. He wondered if she might be on drugs. Hitting her head on the windshield might account for this unfocused, glazed look, but it couldn’t explain the crazy driving.

“Please, put me down. Susannah… This wedding…”

Chase’s arms tightened instinctively, and he froze in his tracks. She whimpered, and he realized he might be hurting her. “Say that again?”

“The wedding. I have to stop it.”

CHAPTER THREE

CHASE ENDURED the next hour the way he’d endured most of the crises in his life—he kept busy.

He played host the best he could. He soothed the hysterical—Jenny Wilcox was hyperventilating and her husband, Pastor Wilcox, wasn’t far behind. He deflected the curious. He tried to get as many guests as possible to go home. This became much more difficult once the rumor began to circulate that the mysterious woman lying upstairs in the north guest room, being tended by Dr. Marchant, was Chase Clayton’s discarded, suicidal lover.

And he refused to dwell on worst-case scenarios. Josephine Ellen Whitford, twenty-five years old, from Riverfork—all information they’d learned from her driver’s license—was going to be okay. She had seemed dazed, scraped and bruised and maybe concussed, but surely not damaged enough to be in danger.

Whatever mischief she’d come here to start, he would face when it presented itself. If it ever did. He still hoped he might have misunderstood her last, slurred words.

He took a deep breath as he waved the Wilcoxes’ car down the drive, which was turning blue in the twilight. He shut his eyes for a minute, gathering his focus for the next job…probably finding a taxi for old Portia Luxton, who had stopped driving ten years ago.

He could handle it, whatever it was. He’d been through worse things than this. His parents’ deaths and the collapse of his first marriage, for starters. And of course the life of a horse breeder came with a hundred little agonies, from the liquid-eyed foals who take a few breaths and die, to the beautiful, doomed stallions whose wild streaks can’t be tamed.

“It’s going to be all right,” Sue said, appearing at his elbow. Her voice was soft. “It’ll be the talk of the town for a week or so, and then Elspeth Grimes will see Elvis in the oil stains on her garage floor and everyone will move on.”

“I know.” He appreciated Sue’s commonsense approach to things, which had been her trademark, even as a child. It was the main reason he’d agreed to this marriage. He could trust her to keep it clean. To carry their plan out to the letter. Marry him, satisfy her autocratic grandfather’s absurd will, then take the money and run.

No sticky emotional swamps. No tangles, no hidden agenda.

No last-minute complications, like sex. Or love.

“I know,” he said again. “I’m just sorry it spoiled your party.”

“It didn’t.” She smiled, but her mouth and her eyes didn’t match. She looked toward the house. “I hope she’s okay. She looked kind of…sick, don’t you think? I mean, not just hurt from the accident, but unwell.”

Chase nodded. He had thought exactly that. Miss Whitford didn’t look like a healthy woman. She was painfully thin, and so pale she might have been made of wax. She probably had beautiful eyes when she was rested, large and blue, with feathery black lashes. But right now they were dull, sunken into deep circles like river stones set in mud.

“I wonder who she is.” Susannah was still looking at the house.

Again, Chase merely nodded, trying to hide how much he, too, wanted the answer to that question. Susannah had no idea that the woman had spoken both their names and had even said she wanted to stop the wedding. He wasn’t planning to talk about those cryptic, disturbing words. Not until he had to.

But for the love of God, what could the woman’s motives be? No one had a problem with this wedding. No one wanted to stop it.

Everyone in Texas knew that Susannah Everly had inherited a raw deal from her grandfather, who had written his will while under the influence of alcohol, the leading edge of Alzheimer’s and one of his all-too-common rages.

It was only fitting, their neighbors believed, that her best childhood pal should help her out of it. A few romantics even dreamed that a butterfly of love might come winging out of the chrysalis of friendship, creating that storybook happy ending everyone craved.

No. No one wanted to stop this wedding. Not even Trent Maxwell. That’s how much the poor sucker loved her.

“Here comes Dr. Marchant,” Sue said. She put her hand on Chase’s arm. He glanced at her steady profile, and he wondered if she’d heard the rumors. What a mess. He remembered promising Trent, just an hour ago, that he’d never embarrass her.

He wondered how long he could keep that promise. Perhaps no longer than it took a seventy-year-old man to travel the few yards of oyster-shell driveway between them and the house.

He watched the old man striding toward them, his shock of leonine white hair glowing, even in this gathering gloaming. His face was unreadable in the dim light, but he’d taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. Something in his movements suggested that his news would not be good.

When Marchant reached them, he didn’t waste time with a preamble. He had always given his diagnoses the same way he gave his medicines—nothing more than you needed, and nothing less. And he expected you to take it like a man, even if you were only four and frightened.

He didn’t believe in sugarcoating.

“She’s going to be fine,” he said.

“Oh, thank heaven,” Sue breathed. She squeezed Chase’s forearm.

Chase knew Marchant’s expressions better than Sue. He knew there were more pills here to swallow. “But?”

“The girl is a Type I diabetic,” the doctor said, looking grim. “She hasn’t eaten since this morning, and apparently she vomited that up hours ago. She was very nearly in insulin shock. It’s amazing she could still drive at all.”

“Good grief,” Chase said. “I knew it was something, but I wouldn’t ever have thought of that.” He watched the older man carefully. “Is that all?”

“No.” Marchant glanced toward Susannah. “Maybe we should talk privately?”

Sue’s hand was very still on Chase’s arm. He could feel the slight tremor that ran through her index finger. “Of course,” she said in an even voice. “Whatever you prefer.”

“No,” Chase said. “I don’t have any secrets from Sue, Matt. Whatever it is, tell us both.”

Marchant shrugged. “Okay. Ms. Whitford is generally in very poor condition. Recent weight loss, maybe a little anemic. I’d say she’s overworked, underfed and possibly depressed.”

He hesitated, an uncharacteristic move. It chilled Chase to the bone. Whatever came next, Marchant really didn’t want to say it.

“The bottom line is, the girl is pregnant.”

Sue’s hand dropped. “Oh, my God,” she breathed. She looked at Chase. “Pregnant?”

Chase looked at her, and he shook his head. “No.” He turned to Marchant and shook his head again. “No.”

“I’m afraid so,” the doctor said, looking first at Chase, then at Susannah, and then back at Chase. For the first time, his dark intelligent eyes showed his age. “I confirmed it, of course, before I agreed to speak to you at all. She is indeed with child. I’d say about three months gone.”

“And…” Chase couldn’t finish the sentence. He shifted his feet to find firmer ground, and then he tried again. “And—”

“And I’m sorry, son. She says that you’re the father.”

JOSIE WRAPPED HER PALMS around the cool glass of orange juice brought to her by a uniformed maid moments ago. She used both hands, because she still felt a little shaky, even though the doctor had assured her that the injection he’d given her should stabilize her blood sugar just fine.

She leaned her head back against the cool sheets and shut her eyes. She must have been pretty far gone this time. She’d had insulin reactions before, of course. They had been a part of her life for two decades, since she was diagnosed at only five years old.

But this one had been the worst ever. The doctor had told her about the crash, though she remembered nothing after she took that last left turn, steering her car under the arching iron sign that said Clayton Creek Ranch.

He said she was lucky, given how fast she was going, to escape with only some cuts and abrasions. But she didn’t feel lucky. She hurt everywhere. And she knew the car was totaled. It probably didn’t look like much to a rich doctor, but it had meant the world to her.

It had meant she could get to work, at least. And to the clinic.

Now what would she do?

Especially if, as she feared, Chase refused—

She heard footsteps coming down the hall, and her hands flew to her hair, trying to smooth the tangles. She caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror, and forced them down again.

What was the use? Her hair had lost the shine he used to admire. It wouldn’t spill like honey through his fingers anymore. She’d lost ten pounds, in all the wrong places. She’d cried off her mascara and worried away any hint of lipstick long before she got to the ranch. And now she had a bandage on her forehead and a black eye that made her resemble an off-kilter raccoon.

Chase had turned his back on her two months ago, when she’d been pink-cheeked and bright-eyed with first love. His lust wasn’t likely to be reawakened by her “beauty” today.

She’d have to appeal to his honor, or nothing at all.

Which was why her hands started to tremble again as the footsteps drew closer. This was a man who hadn’t even bothered to leave a goodbye note. Honor probably wasn’t his strong point.

She forced herself to watch the door steadily. She squared her shoulders, trying to look as dignified as possible. She didn’t need to cower before him. She hadn’t created this baby alone. They had done it together, with laughter and tenderness and passion, however short-lived it had been.

She might be a poor waitress, and he might be a rich rancher. But this was the twenty-first century, and she had no intention of slinking away to starve nobly on the streets for her sins. She wasn’t a martyr or a fool.

They’d made the baby together, and they would face the consequences together. She lifted her chin and waited for him to show up in the doorway.

But the man who appeared there wasn’t Chase. He was older, for one thing. Short and neat, brunette and sober-faced.

“Hello, Ms. Whitford,” he said. “I’m Chase Clayton’s lawyer. May I come in?”

“His lawyer?” She felt some of the bravado whoosh out of her, as if a hole had been torn in her sail. So far she’d seen Chase’s doctor, his maid, and now his lawyer. Apparently he had an army of people he could send ahead, like the military’s front lines, to wear the enemy down.

“Yes. Jim Stilling. May I come in?”

She nodded. “Of course, Mr. Stilling. It isn’t my room. I’m not in a position to deny anyone access to it.”

He smiled, waving that idea away and entered the room. He sat on one of the soft chairs, which were covered in butter-colored silk. He looked at home there, even though the decor was so feminine, with powder-blue and butter-yellow-flowered wallpaper, a white lace canopy on the bed and a huge window overlooking rolling green hills.

She’d never slept in a room this beautiful, much less owned one. She’d been trying not to let that intimidate her.

“And please,” he said, still smiling softly. “Call me Jim. So. Are you feeling better?”

Josie knew a lot of lawyers. The Not Guilty Café was full of them. Her stepfather was a lawyer, too. But she’d never met one with such warm eyes and gentle smile.

All the better to fool you with, my dear.

“Yes,” she said politely. “Much better.”

“Good. I’d like to talk to you a minute, if you don’t mind. Dr. Marchant has told me about your condition. Apparently you gave him permission to discuss it?”

She flushed slightly, remembering. She’d told the doctor he could shout the news to the whole world if he wanted. She had been angry, embarrassed that she’d caused such a ruckus, ashamed of her scrawny, scraped-up body, which she’d been required to lay bare for his inspection, so that she could prove she wasn’t lying about the baby.

“Yes,” she said. “He has my permission. The pregnancy isn’t something I’ll be able to keep secret very long, anyhow.”

The lawyer steepled his fingers. “And is it your contention that Chase Clayton IV is the father of this child?”

Her eyes narrowed. That sounded like something on a subpoena.

“Maybe we should dispense with this prologue, Mr. Stilling, and get to the point.” She drew herself up even straighter in the bed. She put her hands under the blanket, to hide the tremor that hadn’t quite disappeared. She didn’t want to appear weak. She was tired of being weak. Now that she knew why she had been feeling so sick and exhausted lately, she wasn’t afraid anymore.

And she was all through with cringing and enduring. She was going to be a mother, and that was a job that called for courage. It was time to find out if she had some.

“Yes,” she said. “It is officially, legally, my contention that Chase Clayton IV is the father of my baby. Is it his contention that he is not?”

“I didn’t say that,” the man said, shaking his head as if alarmed by her sudden adamance. “I haven’t spoken to Chase about this yet. I assume Dr. Marchant is filling him in on the situation at this very moment. He doesn’t know I’m here. In fact, I probably shouldn’t be here. It’s just that, I’m very fond of Chase, and I thought perhaps I might—”

“Make me go away? Make me change my story? That isn’t going to happen, Mr. Stilling. Back in January, Chase and I spent a month as lovers. He may regret that now. In fact, given that he’s planning to marry someone else, I’m fairly sure he does. But regret doesn’t change the fact that it happened. It also doesn’t change the fact that I’m carrying his child.”

“There’s no need to upset yourself, Miss Whitford. I’m not trying to make you do anything. It’s just that…” Stilling looked sincerely uncomfortable. “You see, I’ve known Chase a long time, and it’s hard for me to believe that—”

“Chase is the father,” she said firmly. “I understand that you know nothing about me, about my character. Maybe you think that…I don’t know, that I have dozens of lovers, and I just picked the richest one to pin it on.”

The lawyer shook his head. “No. Really. I’m not implying anything of the sort.”

But he was thinking it. Of course he was. It would be the perfect out for Chase, if he could prove she was a tramp. This Stilling guy was a lawyer, and he represented a rich man accustomed to taking what he wanted and throwing it away when he was through.

Like her stepfather. Funny, how that seemed to be her pattern. Her mother’s husband had forced her out of the house at eighteen. For her own good, he said. So that she’d learn to stand on her own two feet. A year later, in a moment of weakness, she’d asked him if she could move back home for a while, just until she got her AA. He was drunk, of course, but his answer was unequivocal. Hell, no. Having her show up again was the equivalent of having the trash guy bring back his garbage.

As if the insult had happened yesterday, she felt tears pressing at the back of her eyes, and she fought them away. They were part of the old weakness, and she was done with them.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But it simply isn’t true. I have had only one lover. It was Chase. I met him at the restaurant where I work, and he was—”

Somehow she stopped herself. She didn’t need to justify herself to this man. She wasn’t on trial for immorality here. She didn’t have to tell him how lonely she’d been, and how the handsome cowboy had swept her off her feet, which were aching like fire from twelve-hour shifts. She didn’t have to admit how easily he’d romanced her with a fancy car, expensive meals and whispers about the stars in her eyes and the honey in her hair.

That story wouldn’t make her look one bit better. It would make her look gullible and pathetic, which was worse than trashy any day.

And anyway, how could she ever describe how sweet Chase had seemed, at the beginning? The first night, after they’d made love, they had stayed up for hours, eating the chocolates he’d brought her and telling each other stories about their childhoods.

The sex had been nice, but it was those stories that had made her fall in love with him. She’d been able to picture him as a little boy of eight, fishing in the creek that bore his name and throwing everything back. And at nine, killing a rattlesnake with a golf club and shaking for an hour afterward.

She’d never known a man so willing to admit he had a tender heart.

“Anyhow, it’s all true,” she said. “We spent a month together. Every day. I know all about him, Mr. Stilling. I know he got his first horse when he was fourteen, and its name was Captain Kirk. I know that when he was ten his collie died, and he carved the gravestone himself.”

The lawyer’s eyes widened slightly.

“The doctor says I can’t get out of bed, but if I could, I’d go to that window, and I bet I could see the stone from here. It says Yipster, the World’s Nicest Dog.”

“Anyone could know those things,” he said carefully. “Anyone could—”

“No,” a harsh voice from the doorway said. “Not anyone.”

Stilling leaned forward. “Chase!”

The man in the doorway didn’t take his gaze from Josie. “Only someone who knew me well could have told you those stories, Miss Whitford, and I’d like to know who it was.”

She shook her head, feeling nauseated again. She wondered if her blood sugar might have dipped again, from all the stress. She couldn’t quite follow what seemed to be happening. Who was this? Were they trying to fool her, bringing in someone to pose as Chase and hope she’d snap at the bait?

The man glaring in at her was very tall and beyond handsome, with thick golden hair and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. They were also the coldest eyes she’d ever seen.

“It was Chase who told me,” she began, her voice betraying her anxiety. It was like walking on a road rigged with land mines. She didn’t know what they were trying to do.

“No,” the man said roughly. “That’s a lie.”

A woman stood at his elbow, just behind him. She looked familiar, though Josie had no idea why. “Chase,” the woman said gently. “That’s too harsh.”

“It’s not harsh—it’s true. You are lying, Miss Whitford. I told you nothing. Until you wrecked your car in my driveway this afternoon, I had never seen you before in my life.”

Dr. Marchant’s low, gruff voice came from the hall, somewhere out of sight. “Chase, really.”

Josie tilted her head back, trying to make enough room in her lungs to breathe. Thank God she wasn’t standing up. She would have fallen into a heap, like a puppet with no strings.

“Well? I’m waiting for an explanation, Miss Whitford. I swear on my life, I have never seen you before.”

He sounded…so certain. So indignant.

So exactly how an honest man unjustly accused would sound.

The bed seemed to tilt. Her heart hitched.

But then everything cleared. And suddenly she understood.

Yes, she thought as she took in the man’s generous mouth, his wide, clear brow and his intelligent eyes, everything finally made sense. The one mystery, the one thing she hadn’t ever been able to figure out, came clear. She’d never understood how a boy who had cried over killing a rattlesnake could grow into a man who could break a woman’s heart without batting an eye.

How could anyone change so much?

He couldn’t. That was the simple, terrifying answer.

He hadn’t changed. The dashing heartbreaker she’d met, and the tenderhearted rancher’s son whose stories had won her heart…they were two different men entirely.

“Damn it, woman. Say something.”

She met his furious gaze helplessly. She had nothing to say. Not to him. All she could possibly say was…

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Clayton. I’ve never seen you, either.”

CHAPTER FOUR

IT TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES for Chase to clear the room. Obviously, once Josie had dropped her bomb, no one wanted to leave before the mystery was sorted out.

The lawyer, in particular, resisted. He used euphemisms, but Josie wasn’t an idiot, so she understood. He was trying to warn Chase about being alone in a bedroom with a woman like her. According to Stilling, Josie probably planned to wait thirty seconds, scream “Rape!” and live off the hush money for the rest of her life.

But apparently no one ordered Chase around in his own house, even for his own good. Though he never once raised his voice, pretty soon everyone was filing out, slowly and still chattering, offering last-minute advice.

Everyone except the woman Josie had seen earlier, standing just behind Chase in the doorway. As soon as the auburn-haired beauty entered the room, Josie recognized her. She was Susannah Everly, Chase Clayton’s fiancée. Apparently she was going to be the official witness.

Josie wondered whether Susannah was staying to protect Chase from the crazy lady in the bed, or to protect her own romantic interests. Either way, Josie could imagine how much the woman must resent an interloper on a day like this. Josie had already gathered that she had crashed an engagement party…literally.

“Okay, Ms. Whitford,” Chase said, his voice hard. “Let’s talk.”

Josie braided her fingers in her lap, hoping that would keep them from feeling so shaky. “I wish I knew what to say. Obviously someone’s been impersonating you, Mr. Clayton, and I fell for it. I was upset this morning, when I set out to come here. I’d just learned I was pregnant, and I…I didn’t think it through, I suppose.”

She looked at him, trying to believe what seemed to be true—that he was the real Chase Clayton. “It was terrible timing. I’d say I’m sorry for causing such a commotion, but that doesn’t seem to quite cover it, does it?”

“No,” he agreed. “Not even close.”

She waited, unsure where to go from here. On the exhausting drive to this ranch, she’d been fueled by fiery indignation, believing she must make Chase do right by his own child. But now…

Now she just felt like a fool.

Chase was watching her through narrowed, appraising eyes. She lifted her chin. Okay, she had been a fool, but she didn’t have to be a pitiful fool. If only she were sure her legs would hold her, she’d get out of the bed and…

And what? Her car was in bad shape. And she certainly didn’t have money to take a cab all the way back to Riverfork.

“I think maybe you’d better start from the beginning,” he said slowly. “For starters, how did you meet this…this man you thought was me?”

“About three months ago, he came into our café, the Not Guilty Café in Riverfork. I wait tables there every morning.”

She almost added that she went to school in the afternoons, that she was just one semester away from getting her associate’s degree, but she bit her lip. He hadn’t asked for her life story. And besides, she wasn’t ashamed of being a waitress. She didn’t have to impress this man or his elegant fiancée.

She noticed that Susannah had subtly separated herself from the conversation. The tall, slender woman stood over by the window, silhouetted against the deep blue, dying light. Of course she could still hear every word, but Josie appreciated the tact. At least Josie didn’t have to look into her eyes while she revealed her own stupidity.

She turned back to Chase. “He came in every day for a week before he ever asked me out. He always requested one of my tables. He was friendly. We talked a lot. He said his name was Chase Clayton IV. He told me all about his life, his ranch, his—” She stopped. “I guess it was your life, though. Your ranch.”

“Apparently. But you just swallowed the story whole? You didn’t check him out? You didn’t even ask for identification?”

“No. It never occurred to me. Some things you just take for granted, don’t you? You can’t go around suspecting everyone of fraud. Do you check out every single person you meet?”

“Absolutely. Especially if it involves business, or anyone who will be granted…a degree of intimacy.” He took a step closer. “Like sleeping in my guest room, for instance. Stilling is downstairs doing a LexisNexis search on you right now. If you have a criminal background, he’ll find it. And if you do, then believe me, Miss Whitford, you’ll be out of that bed in a hurry.”

She frowned, stung by his tone. “And you can believe me, Mr. Clayton, that I have no intention of being your guest one second longer than is absolutely necessary.”

She felt herself flushing. “I’m not sure what you suspect me of, Mr. Clayton. I’ve already admitted, in front of witnesses, that I made a mistake. That I’m not accusing you of being the man who…the man I…”

Over by the window, Susannah stirred. “Chase, Dr. Marchant said she needed to rest. Don’t you think…” She let the sentence dwindle off.

Chase looked at her for a minute. Then he took a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re right, Sue.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, mussing the golden waves of hair that curled around his collar. “You’re right, darn it. You always are.”

He smiled. It was just a one-sided, self-mocking smile, and it wasn’t even directed at Josie, but it was enough to make the soles of her feet tingle under the covers. Wow. She could only imagine the sex appeal if both sides were in play.

Susannah Everly was a very lucky woman. But then Josie had known that from the moment she glimpsed the woman’s beaming face in the paper.

Chase turned back toward the bed. “I’m sorry, Miss Whitford. I’m being a jerk. If my mother were alive, she’d tan my hide. You are my guest, and I’m not doing a very good job of being a host. And honestly, I don’t always see a conspiracy behind every shrub. It’s just that—”

“I know. I embarrassed you in front of your guests. I’m very sorry. Your reputation—”

He waved his hand. “I don’t give a damn what the guests think. Most of them are my friends, and they’ll understand. The rest of them don’t matter. And, just for the record, the only reputation that matters around here belongs to my horses.”

“Yes, your quarter horses. They’re considered the best in Texas. Especially Alcatraz, right? And you almost didn’t buy him, which would have been a terrible mistake. His stud fees alone—”

“Damn! He knew everything about me, didn’t he?” He narrowed his eyes. “Who is this guy? What can you tell me about him? Did he look like me?”

She gazed at him. “No.”

“What did he look like? Tell me everything you remember. If he knew me that well, I might recognize him.”

She hardly knew where to begin. Looking at this man, trying to think of him as Chase, was as disorienting as looking into a fun house mirror.

Her Chase had been handsome, with a slight, but well-muscled body and a face so pretty it was almost feminine. The day he sauntered into the café, his rosebud lips and china-blue eyes had turned every female head. He was a little girl’s childhood dream come to life, a fairy-tale prince with a charmingly cocked Stetson hat and sexy snakeskin boots.

This Chase wasn’t anything that simple. He was too ruggedly male, too intimidatingly real, to have stepped out of any kind of dream. He was a good six inches taller than her Chase, with double the shoulder span. His whole body seemed to have been carved from a much-harder material, and his energy radiated out, creating a force field that she imagined few could resist.

His face was full of fascinating contradictions. His square, don’t-mess-with-me jaw came to a sweetly dimpled chin. His bedroom-blue eyes were fringed in black lashes so long that when he shut them they brushed the prominent, knife-blade cheekbones below.

His upper lip came to a sharp bow. Not like her Chase’s lips. This mouth wouldn’t ever make a woman think of rosebuds, because she’d be too busy thinking of… other things.

“He was smaller,” she said, though she knew it was woefully inadequate. “Several inches shorter, and…more wiry all over. He had blond hair and blue eyes, but paler than yours. Less intense.”

“Was he my age?”

“He said he was thirty-one. He looked about that, I’d say. But again, I didn’t check his ID.”

“That could be a million guys in Texas alone, including me. Is there anything else that might help? Did he have an accent? Any scars? Tattoos? Injuries? Anything unique?”

She thought hard. It was strange, but her mental image of Chase—her Chase—had grown fuzzy, like someone seen through a fog. What had done that, she wondered? The discovery that he was not merely a garden-variety love-’em-and-leave-’em heartbreaker, but also a first-class fraud and a liar?

Or had he just been obscured by the sheer force of the real Chase?

“Well…he had a slight Texas accent, a nice voice, well-educated East Texas. But that could have been fake, too, I suppose.”

“What else?”

She shut her eyes and tried to summon up a clear image. “Nothing else, really. Nothing unique, anyhow.”

“There must have been something special about him.” Chase sounded impatient. “You met him only three months ago. Dr. Marchant says you’re almost three months pregnant. So I repeat. There must have been something special about him.”

“Chase.” Susannah left the window and came toward the bed. “I don’t think this is the time to—”

“It’s all right,” Josie said. She squared her shoulders and looked at Chase. “I don’t mind the question. It wasn’t that simple, Mr. Clayton. I didn’t fall for him because of the way he looked. It was the way he acted. It was the way he made me feel. He was nice to me. He was friendly and had a good sense of humor, and he knew how to have fun. He took me out to expensive dinners, and he listened to me when I talked. He rubbed my feet when they hurt after work, and he bought me things. Not flowers and perfumes, but things I needed. A teapot. A clock radio. New sheets.”

Susannah moved even closer, her hand outstretched. “Miss Whitford, you’re very tired. It’s been a terrible day—”

“No,” Josie broke in. She didn’t want pity. Especially not from this woman, who had everything Josie would never have—a healthy, golden life with the real Chase, the sexy rancher with gentle hands and a tender heart.

She hadn’t told them how the fake Chase had really seduced her—using the sweet, corny stories of a little boy who loved his home, his horse and his dog. The little boy who sold a baseball card to buy his mother chocolates, but ate them all before he made it home.

She had believed her heart—and her body—were safe in the hands of a man like that.

She tried to speak. To her horror, she realized she’d begun to choke up again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m all right. I think being pregnant does a number on your hormones, that’s all. I’m not crying. At least not…not because of Chase.”

Chase gazed at her, unblinking. “I’m Chase.”

“Of course.” She wiped roughly under her eyes with the knuckles of her index fingers. “You know what I mean. I’m not crying because of him. I’m anxious about the future, and of course the baby. And I’m shocked to discover how completely I was conned. But I’m not heartbroken.”

“Why not? Are you saying that what you felt for him wasn’t really love?”

She hesitated. That first week, she had thought it might be. But maybe it had just been…hope.

Hope that she could still be lighthearted and happy, in spite of working so hard and worrying every minute about money.

Hope that, on any given day, something special just might walk through that café door and single her out. Her. Sickly little Josie Whitford.

Now she had new hope. Hope that she could stay healthy enough to have a healthy baby. Hope that she could be a good mother. Hope that she could face her future, whatever it was, with courage.

And honesty.

She took a deep breath. She might as well begin today.

“No,” she said, in spite of how she knew it would sound. “It definitely wasn’t love.”

“WHAT A MESS.” Susannah Everly tossed her front door keys onto the end table and dropped her purse on the floor. Shutting her eyes, she leaned back against the foyer wall. “What a big, bad, supersized Texas mess.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Susannah’s eyes flew open. She hadn’t realized that Nicole was within earshot. She’d sent her little sister home with the Parkers hours ago, with instructions to clean her room and do her homework. Judging from how Nikki’s room had looked this morning, that should have taken her a couple of weeks.

Where was she? Susannah scanned the foyer, which was large and beautiful, the prettiest foyer of any ranch in the county. Her mother had decorated this foyer right before she died. Susannah had been fifteen at the time—Nikki a toddler. Susannah had been allowed to pick out the paneling, and she’d chosen a honey pine that she still loved just as much today.

Of course, she loved every inch of Everly Ranch, which had been in her family for six generations. Every hole in the knotty pine floor, every beam and timber and pane of glass. Every leaf on every peach tree in the thousand-acre orchard.

Finally, Susannah spotted Nikki lying at the foot of the staircase, her brown hair fanned out on the floor, just a shade redder than the wood. Her feet were cocked up on the third tread, the cordless phone resting on her stomach. It was her favorite position for a long chat with…

Probably with Eli. The new ranch boy over at the Double C had been spending a lot of time over here, in spite of Susannah’s objections that he was too old for Nikki. It was the new hot spot between Susannah and her sister. Just mention the name Eli Breslin, and things got ugly in a hurry.

Right now she ignored the sight of the phone. She wasn’t up to swimming in that swamp tonight.

“Yeah,” Nikki repeated, a little louder. “I heard.”

Susannah straightened. “You heard what?”

Nicole gave her an oh-brother look.

“Heard about your super-sized mess.” She kicked her bare feet and began using her toes to play with the banister. She knew that irritated Susannah, who actually cared how hard the servants worked.

Nikki had also changed into her tightest cutoff shorts, also guaranteed to annoy. The cream-lace dress she’d worn to the party was probably on a heap in her closet, right above a mildewing swimsuit or stinky sneakers.

“Yep,” Nikki continued when she didn’t get a rise out of Susannah on the first try. “A real mess. Everybody’s talking about it.”

“Everybody? That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think? I’ll bet there are Bedouins in the Sahara who haven’t a clue.”

Susannah leaned toward the mirror over the end table and pretended to check her lipstick, although she’d chewed it off hours ago, back in Chase’s guest room.

“And speaking of messes, if I went upstairs right now and looked in your room, what would I find?”

She could see, even in the mirror, the glower that passed across Nikki’s face. She bit back a sigh. Teenagers were so…melodramatic. And the last thing she needed today was more melodrama.

Nikki swung her feet around and sat up, balancing the phone on one knee. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? Your engagement is falling apart, you’re the laughing stock of the whole county, and all you can worry about is my room?”

“Don’t be absurd. My engagement is not falling apart.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s not what I hear.” Nikki climbed to her feet. Her face was bright and feverish, as if she’d worked herself into a real state.

Susannah turned around, more disturbed than she wanted to let on. “What do you hear?”

“I hear that woman in the accident today was Chase’s secret lover. I hear she was trying to commit suicide because Chase was planning to marry you.”

Susannah’s stomach tightened. “Is that what Eli Breslin told you?”

Nikki scowled. “He’s not the only one saying it. You should have seen the Parkers, when they drove me home. They kept looking at each other in this totally shocked way. And then they’d look at me like, poor little kid, she doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

“I think you’re imagining things, Nikki. The woman in the crash today is just an old friend of Chase’s. She was coming to see him, but she’s a diabetic, and she had gone into insulin shock. That’s why she lost control of her car.”

This was the story she and Chase had agreed on, after they’d left Josie Whitford, pale-faced and frightened, lying in the guest room. As much truth as possible, they’d decided. Not a word of the impostor Chase. It was quite possible, judging from his intimate knowledge of Chase’s history, that he was someone from around here, and they didn’t want to tip him off. Of course, there still was a possibility that the “fake” Chase had been fabricated by Josie Whitford to advance some agenda they didn’t yet understand. Susannah felt sorry for the young woman, but she wasn’t buying her story wholesale. She still had some serious reservations.

Apparently Nikki did, too. She’d scrunched up her nose and mouth. “A diabetic old friend?” She snorted. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

All in all, it was a pretty good story. Still, she might have liked to try it out for the first time on a less cynical audience.

Nikki had scrunched up her nose and mouth. She looked very young when she did that, though of course she’d have died if anyone pointed that out.

She snorted. “A diabetic old friend? Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe.” Susannah shrugged. “If you prefer to invent lurid fantasies, that’s your choice. All I ask is that you not bore me with them. I’ve got to make some calls for the Burn Center tonight, and I’m tired.”

With a curse, Nikki tossed the phone toward its regular table, but she missed. The plastic went clattering to the floor.

“God, you really don’t give a damn about him, do you? I know you told me it was just a business deal really, whatever that means. Personally, I think it’s disgusting. You shouldn’t marry a man you don’t have one single feeling for.”

Susannah drew her brows together. “Nikki, that’s out of line. You know I care deeply about Chase.”

“Care deeply?” Nikki snorted. “I care deeply about my iPod. That’s not how you describe the man you’re going to marry. Eli says you just want the Clayton money. He’s right, isn’t he? You wouldn’t care if Chase had a hundred secret lovers, would you?”

Her tone was poisonous, even more insulting than usual. Susannah felt the blood drain from her face. Nikki had always been a handful, even as a toddler. She’d seemed older than her years, more precocious and demanding than such a little girl should be. Certainly more than Susannah, who had been forced into surrogate “motherhood,” much too early, knew how to control.

Susannah had always suspected that, behind Nikki’s brash facade, lay a painful insecurity. It made sense. Whether it was fair or not. Nikki probably felt abandoned by their parents, who had died together in a car crash so long ago she hadn’t had a chance to know them. So yeah, Susannah understood. She even ached for her stormy little sister, who didn’t have the memories Susannah had to sustain her.

She just hadn’t known what to do about it.

Maybe, she thought, looking at Nikki now, she had made a mistake, not fully explaining why she and Chase had agreed to a marriage of convenience. She couldn’t just gloss things over anymore, the way she’d done when Nikki was a child. Maybe, at sixteen going on forty, Nikki was old enough to handle all the facts.

“Sit down,” Susannah said.

Nikki looked wary. “Why? I don’t want to hear another lecture about Eli.”

Susannah moved wearily to the staircase, with its beautiful scrolled banister. She lowered herself onto the nearest tread.

“Not Eli, Nik. I want to explain about Chase. And I’m too tired to stand up while I do it.”

Nikki hesitated, but her curiosity overcame her defiance. She plopped down next to Susannah with a heavy sigh. “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me how wrong I am.”

“You’re not wrong.” Susannah leaned back on her elbows, too tired to care what happened to her expensive party dress. “Chase and I aren’t in love, not the way you mean. We’re very good friends—the best. We always have been, ever since we were kids. You know what a super guy he is.”

Nikki shrugged noncommittally, which made Susannah smile. Nikki adored Chase, and everyone knew it. He was the only person on earth she confided in.

“Anyhow, the bottom line is that, because of some weird rules that Grandfather put in his will, I have to get married in order to have any real control of the ranch. And I need control. We’re having money problems. You knew that, right?”

“Of course. How could anyone not know, the way you always go on about it? What I don’t know is how come. The ranch is huge. And our peaches are like the best anywhere. I don’t know anybody who buys anything else.”

Susannah thought of all the planning, fretting, investing and pure backbreaking work that went into creating those lush peaches everyone wanted in their pretty cut-glass dessert bowls. But she’d always spared Nikki the details, trying to allow her to grow up carefree, without the worries and obligations that had weighed Susannah down too soon.

Maybe that had been a mistake, too. Maybe a little responsibility would have been good for her.

Well, better late than never.

“It’s a combination of a lot of things, Nik. We’ve had frost two years running. That hurt us a lot. And some of the acres on the west ridge are just about used up. They’ll have to lie dormant for a few years before they can be replanted. Worst of all, though, is that one of our best buyers is in deep financial trouble. They just might go bankrupt.”

“So? Can’t you find another buyer?”

“Believe me, I’m trying. But it’s not that easy. There’s a lot of competition. The thing is, we’ve crunched the numbers every way we can think of, and the only answer is to sell some of the land.”

Nikki’s mouth hung open. “Sell Everly?”

Susannah put her hand on Nikki’s arm. “Not the whole ranch, honey. Everly has always belonged to the Everlys, and it always will. Just a couple of hundred acres, not enough to miss really. But enough to put us back in the black.”

Nikki rubbed the pad of her thumb over the glossy pink polish on her index finger. Susannah knew that habit. It meant Nikki was thinking hard.

She hoped she wasn’t overloading her with too much scary information. There was a mighty fine line between character-building and spirit-crushing.

“I guess I still don’t understand what this has to do with marrying Chase,” Nikki muttered, staring down at her finger. “Grandfather left you the ranch, right? Can’t you do whatever you want?”

“Not unless I’m married, and even then my husband gets to make the decisions. You know how Grandfather was. You know how he felt about women.”

Nikki looked up with a half smile. “Totally chauvinist? Totally caveman?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Susannah sighed, remembering the fights, the rip-roaring yell-fests as she tried to keep an ornery ninety-year-old man from running the ranch into the ground. Arlington H. Everly had a true Texas-sized ego. No one told him what to do. But take advice from a woman? “Not unless my wits get up and go prancing in the pepper patch,” he’d vowed.

Tragically, toward the end, it had come to that.

“Does Chase know all this stuff?” Nikki’s upturned face looked pale, and, although Susannah might be imagining this, she looked a tiny bit older already.

“Yeah. He knows. He’s doing me a favor. You can see that I couldn’t risk marrying just anyone. They’d get control of the ranch, and…”

She couldn’t even finish the thought.

“Anyhow, I trust Chase. After we’ve been married a year, he can sell the acres we need to unload. Grandfather didn’t stipulate how long the marriage had to last beyond that first year. So then we’ll end it, and we’ll go back to being friends.”

She looked down at Nikki, and to her surprise realized that the girl’s eyes were glistening in the light from the overhead chandelier.

Susannah felt her heart squeeze. Damn it. She really had screwed up. Nikki must actually have hoped that the “marriage of convenience” might turn into more than that.

She must actually have hoped Chase might become her big brother for real.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about all this sooner—”

“Don’t be,” Nikki said roughly. She stood, yanked on the hem of her short-shorts, stretching them out just enough to cover the lacy white underwear. “I don’t care what you do.”

She headed up the stairs. Susannah watched her go helplessly.

“Nikki…”

The girl reached the first landing, then turned furiously, her face set and white. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. You tell me I shouldn’t hang out with Eli. Well, at least we really love each other.”

“Love?” Susannah rose instinctively to her feet. “Love?”

“That’s right. And you can say whatever you want about how young I am, or how stupid I am. At least I know how to love somebody. So I guess I’m not as stupid as you are.”

CHAPTER FIVE

CHASE HAD MADE IT crystal clear. Under no circumstances was Josie to get up before Dr. Marchant came in the morning, checked her out and gave her the green light.

But by nine, she was too restless to stay put a minute longer, even in this comfortable guest suite, a bedroom and bath that together were nearly as big as her whole apartment.

She’d been awake for hours, since the first bout of morning sickness swept through her around dawn. During the night, someone had placed a tray of soda crackers and a pitcher of ice water beside her bed, and by six she felt strong enough to nibble the edge of one of the little saltine squares.

After that, the house had been too full of noise, doors banging and people calling to one another, trucks pulling up in the drive, horses whinnying and phones ringing. The ranch was coming awake for the day.

A few minutes later, the sun woke up, too, and her pretty room filled with clear lime-colored light that danced on mirrors and curlicue silver picture frames, and even on her water glass.

But she remembered her promise and tried to sit still, waiting for the doctor. She pulled one of the chairs up to the window and sat for an hour, just drinking in the beauty of the ranchland. It seemed to stretch out to forever. The hills rolled softly into the distance, going from green to gray to foggy blue.

She’d been right about where the little hand-carved headstone should be. From her window, she could just see it, beneath the sparkleberry tree, which was shedding its starry white flowers all over the collie’s grave.

Funny, that one spot of the Clayton Creek Ranch had been as vividly real to her as her own kitchen. Her lover—she no longer found it comfortable to call him Chase—had described it so perfectly, down to the way the headstone had been set crooked in the grass.

She tried to picture him standing there, staring down at the sweet, silly inscription and thinking, Yes, I can use this someday. Some brainless bimbo will fall for this like a pile of rocks.

After that, she’d paced the room for a while, testing out her legs. In spite of a roaring headache and her purpling bruises, she felt stronger today.

Probably because she’d had a good night’s sleep. And, for once, her stomach hadn’t been required to wake right up and handle the smell of greasy sausage and fat-marbled bacon.

But even the luxury of laziness grew uncomfortable after a while. She was used to being busy. She checked her watch. Nine-thirty. Despite Chase’s command, she needed to get going.

She started with her shot—thank goodness she’d had enough presence of mind, after the shock of discovering she was pregnant, to pack a small bag of essentials, including her insulin.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.