He was their son.

And Ty was entranced with him.

He’d never really watched a baby’s antics before, and he was mesmerized—with more than Jordan. There was such a look of devotion on Marissa’s face. Her eyes sparkling with the joys of motherhood, she was absolutely beautiful. Beautiful in a way he hadn’t recognized before.

“I’ve never held a baby,” he admitted to her.

Her lips quirked up. “They’re just as squiggly as a baby calf.”

That analogy brought an unexpected chuckle from him. “Okay.” He’d held on to baby calves before.

Marissa was close enough that he caught the scent of her. Oh, how he remembered that scent. That night he’d made love to her, her hair had smelled like flowers, and that’s the scent he caught now. It triggered a response in his body that was totally inappropriate. He willed himself to block off any attraction to her. To focus on Jordan.

He slid his large hands under Jordan’s tiny arms and lifted him from Marissa’s hold. His little boy was solid and warm.

His little boy.

Ty’s chest constricted and his throat tightened. Just what in the blue blazes was happening to him?

* * *

The Mommy Club It’s about caring, family… and love

The Cowboy’s Secret Baby

Karen Rose Smith

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling author KAREN ROSE SMITH’s eighty-seventh novel will be released in 2015. Her passion is caring for her four rescued cats, and her hobbies are gardening, cooking and photography. An only child, Karen delved into books at an early age. Even though she escaped into story worlds, she had many cousins around her on weekends. Families are a strong theme in her novels. Find out more about Karen at www.karenrosesmith.com.

To my son…

who has always made everything brand-new.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Marissa Lopez’s heart began beating faster. Her stomach seemed to turn upside down. Oh, no. That couldn’t be Ty Conroy over there, could it?

She’d stopped in at the physical therapy center to talk to her friend, Sara Cramer. On her lunch hour, she didn’t have a whole lot of time. But she needed Sara’s advice.

However, now—

“What’s wrong?” Sara asked. “You suddenly went pale.”

Marissa pointed her chin toward the other side of the room, where one of the physical therapists was sitting in a chair across from Ty.

Ty.

The father of her baby. Ty. The father of her baby who didn’t know he was the father of her baby.

Sara looked in the direction Marissa had indicated. “Do you know him?” she asked.

Sara wasn’t from Fawn Grove. She didn’t recognize the boy who had made good in the rodeo riding circuit. She didn’t know the bull rider who Marissa had spent a night with. A mistaken, foolish night.

Although she could never even think about her life without her son, Jordan. Not for a moment.

Sara was one of the few people who knew the name of her baby’s father.

“That’s Ty Conroy,” Marissa answered in a shaky voice.

Sara’s eyes went wide. “Are you serious? What are you going to do?” She knew Marissa had never expected Ty Conroy to return to Fawn Grove, California.

“Do you know why he’s here?” Marissa asked, edging toward the door.

Sara shook her head. “I don’t work with him. Even if I did, I couldn’t tell you—patient privacy and all that.”

Marissa couldn’t help but take another glance at Ty, who was now minus his cowboy hat and boots. His hand was on his knee and she spotted a cane leaning against the table. Just what had happened?

She was definitely out of that bull riding loop. Her job at Jase Cramer’s winery, Jordan and her volunteer work with The Mommy Club, an organization that helped parents in need, captured all of her attention and energy. She rarely even watched the news or any TV for that matter, except for SpongeBob and The Disney Channel. Sara was the same. They were both busy women.

Her glance at Ty lingered a little bit too long. The physical therapist moved away from him and Ty’s gaze zeroed right in on hers.

Oh, no! she thought again.

Though she told herself to look away, her eyes took him in. Two years hadn’t made much difference in her appearance, nor had they made much difference in his, though there were more lines around his eyes now.

Where before his expression had been pensive, now he broke into a grin and motioned her over.

She groaned.

“How are you going to play this?” Sara asked, clearly worried for her.

“I don’t know,” Marissa murmured. “I need some time to think about it.”

“You can run out of here,” Sara suggested.

“Running never helped anything. I’ll just have to figure this out as I go.”

Ty motioned to her again. She walked across the room, every step filling her with anxiety, every inch closer to him making her pulse race faster. They’d definitely had chemistry that night, and she could feel it now, even this far away from him.

He looked glad to see her and that made her feel even worse.

By the time she reached him, he was on his feet. Even without his boots, he was over six feet tall, and those broad shoulders—

In a snap-button shirt, with the collar open and his sleeves rolled up, he looked good enough to...to...hug. But she wasn’t about to do that.

He was still smiling.

Before he could say a word, she blurted out, “What are you doing here?” Once the question was out, she couldn’t take it back. Besides, she had to know.

“I’ve been back about two months,” he said, not really answering her question.

She motioned to the physical therapy room. “But what are you doing here?”

He looked down at his left leg and grimaced. “I guess the latest gossip hasn’t reached you.”

Fawn Grove was a small town, and if you kept your ear to the ground, and the coffee shop, and the family diner, and the feed store, rumors floated all over the place. But she didn’t get to any of those places. Besides, only Sara and their friend Kaitlyn knew she’d had a fling with Ty. So why would anybody tell her anything about him?

“So let’s bypass the gossip and get to the truth,” she suggested.

His Stetson was on a chair beside the table where he’d sat. He studied it for a moment, then raised his gaze to hers. “My rodeo days are over. A bull got the best of me, and I had to have a knee replacement.”

Wow! She hadn’t been expecting that.

“When did it happen?”

“About four and a half months ago. I had surgery in Houston, and I did rehab there. But I’ve come back to the Cozy C to help out my uncle, to get plans going that we started when I was in Houston. The doc in Texas thought it was a good idea if I continued physical therapy here, considering I wanted to be back in the saddle sooner rather than later.”

“You’ll be able to ride again?” she asked, knowing how much it meant to him.

“I am riding. Horses, not bulls.” His tone was wry and she suspected there were a lot of feelings behind it. However he didn’t express them.

“I did hear your uncle’s having a tough time of it.” Jase Cramer, Sara’s husband, had mentioned he was thinking about buying the Cozy C property if it ever went up for sale. He’d mentioned Eli Conroy was having a problem paying his taxes. She’d briefly thought of Ty when she’d heard that, but she’d never imagined he’d be back here.

“Yeah, Uncle Eli has had it rough. He was finally honest with me about it after this happened. But I won my best purse ever the night that bull did me in. So Uncle Eli and I are going to turn the Cozy C into a vacation ranch.”

Marissa supposed that was one solution. That would take an awful lot of money, and one huge overhaul. Which meant Ty was going to stay around...

She had to get out of here. She couldn’t make chitchat with him. She didn’t want him to find out anything she didn’t want him to know, at least not yet. Though she understood in her soul that the day was coming when she’d have to tell him about Jordan.

She checked her watch. “I’m on my lunch hour and I have to get back to work. It was great to see you. Good luck with your uncle’s ranch.”

And before Ty could say another word, could even utter a goodbye, she turned and fled.

* * *

Ty stared after Marissa Lopez, totally baffled by what had just happened. When their gazes had connected across the room, he’d seen the same sparks there now that he’d seen when they’d attended the wedding of friends together two years ago. They’d known each other years before that. They’d gone to the same high school, known some of the same kids, though he’d been two years older than Marissa and had stayed away from her. No easy feat, because she’d been a beauty even back then.

Automatically his thoughts returned to the wedding they’d attended in Sacramento. He’d known the groom and she’d known the bride. At the reception, they’d hooked up. Then they’d gone back to his motel room.

That had been a night that had been hard to put out of his memory. That had been a night he’d even thought about the day the bull had ended his career. Thinking about Marissa had helped him deal with the pain. He had to admit he’d intended to look her up again eventually—when he was whole once more, when this PT was all done with, when the Cozy C was an amazing success. He didn’t know why all that had been important, but it had been.

Seeing her today...

His gaze still on her as she headed toward the door, he watched the receptionist stop her. He listened, without being concerned at all about eavesdropping.

The blonde at the reception desk asked, “Are you going to be helping with The Mommy Club food drive for Thanksgiving?”

Casting a quick glance his way, Marissa turned her back to him, nodded and then murmured something in reply.

Then she was gone.

Just like she’d been gone the morning after their night of passion.

He’d awakened as she’d dressed, but he’d known they really hadn’t had anything to say. He was going out on the circuit again. She would be staying in Fawn Grove. He didn’t know when he’d be back. So he’d let her leave without a word.

And that had been that.

But the receptionist’s question stuck with him.

The Mommy Club? What did Marissa have to do with that? Every once in a while he checked in on Fawn Grove’s Chamber of Commerce’s Facebook page, just to see what events were going on, what was happening in the town he’d grown up in. He vaguely remembered seeing postings about The Mommy Club.

As soon as he got back to the ranch, he’d have to check it out.

* * *

As Ty opened the newly painted white wooden screen door and stepped into the Cozy C’s renovated kitchen, he was barely mindful of the smell of new paint and coffee. Yet he couldn’t miss the sight of his uncle Eli sitting at the oak pedestal table nursing a mug of a dark brew.

“You’re leaning on that cane pretty heavy. Tough workout?” his uncle asked.

If it were up to Ty, the cane would be tossed into the recycle bin. He rarely used it now, though his physical therapist wanted him to. But after today’s exercises, he needed to ice the muscles around his knee before getting along with his day.

“No tougher than any other,” he assured his uncle, leaving the cane by the door and hanging his Stetson on the hat hook. There were four of them there now, for any of the dude ranch’s guests who came to visit the main house’s kitchen.

“Still smells like paint in here,” his uncle grumbled.

“You wanted to keep the wooden door. It needed a facelift.”

“And that stainless-steel stove and refrigerator make me want to close my eyes when I come in here in the morning. It’s so damn bright.”

That was an exaggeration if Ty ever heard one, but he could tell his uncle was in a complaining mood.

“You like the new touch faucet, though, don’t you?”

His uncle glanced at it and scowled. “I liked that old white porcelain sink just fine. And in my day, a spigot for hot and a spigot for cold was all I needed. Now we’ve got that fancy sprayer and a filtered water tap.” Eli shook his head.

“Any complaints about the new guest cabins?” Ty asked, amused by his uncle’s rant.

“If somebody wants to stay here, they should be happy with the bunkhouse,” Eli muttered.

“You can’t expect a family to stay in a bunkhouse, even if we did give it an overhaul and a more refined look. Single guys who come for the ranch experience can bunk with the hands there. But what if we get a couple who wants to explore the area on horseback for their honeymoon?”

“So you want to provide a love nest?” Eli sounded aghast at that thought.

“I want to provide a cozy cabin where they’ll be happy so they spread the word to their friends and we get even more guests. Instead of all these changes, would you have rather sold the Cozy C?”

They’d had the conversation many times since Eli had confessed the state of the ranch while Ty was still in Houston. Ty supposed his uncle hadn’t wanted him to return and be shocked by what he found. And Ty would have been. When he returned two months ago, the place had been sorely run-down. The tax collector had been on Eli’s doorstep for the past year. With his bull riding winnings tucked into a bank account, Ty had been able to think, plan and move fast—from his rehab facility in Houston. He and his uncle had spent long sleepless nights over this decision before renovations started, but there really had been no other choice but to turn the Cozy C into an income-generating ranch.

Now Eli took a long swig of coffee, then set down his mug with a thump. “I still don’t like the idea of using all your winnings for this. You could have had a sweet retirement fund.”

“That’s a long way off.”

At twenty-nine, Ty had plenty of years to worry about retirement. If they could make a success of the Cozy C, he and his uncle would both be set.

“This place is going to be great, Unc. You’ll see.”

Eli pushed his chair back, stood, and went to the new sink. “All I see is you working day and night when you should still be recuperating.”

“I’m done recuperating. Haven’t you noticed?”

Eli turned and looked him in the eye. “I don’t know if you’ve ever started.”

Ty wasn’t even going to ask what that meant, though his uncle was probably referring to his childhood, not just the bull riding accident. Ty had spent the first few years of his life in Texas. Vague memories that had to do with dust and heat and hills sometimes shadowed his dreams. His dad had ridden the circuit and his mom, well, she’d gotten tired of the whole thing—the dust, the heat, as well as being alone and taking care of a child all by herself. One weekend, when his dad had come home between rodeos, she’d announced she was leaving. Not only leaving, but she was leaving Ty with his dad.

His father hadn’t had a clue how to take care of a four-year-old, so he’d called his brother Eli. In no time, the two had moved to Fawn Grove, California, and the Cozy C. Once they had, his dad had gone on the circuit again. He’d been killed by an ornery bull a few years later. Maybe Ty had gone into bull riding to prove he wouldn’t have the same fate.

No, not the same. A different one.

Needing to change the topic of conversation, Ty went to the coffeepot and filled his own mug. Standing there as casually as he could, he said offhandedly, “I ran into Marissa Lopez in town.”

“That gal who turned your head when you were in high school?”

“She didn’t turn my head. She was two years younger and—”

Eli cut in and waved his hand. “Never no mind. Just stay away from her. She had a baby with no dad in sight. You don’t want to get tangled up in that kind of complication.”

She’d had a baby? That’s why she was involved in The Mommy Club.

“How old’s her baby?” Ty asked.

“A year, maybe a couple of months more. It’s not like I keep track of everybody in town.”

A year? Fourteen months? His heart pounded in his ears.

His uncle acted as if he didn’t keep track, but Eli often drove into the diner for breakfast, and he and his cohorts gossiped as much as any women’s group. They knew the comings and goings. They knew the old-time residents. They knew who was new. They just knew.

Making quick calculations in his head, Ty didn’t like what he came up with. If her baby was a couple of months over a year old, and it took nine months to have a baby...

That would put the night of conception right about when he and Marissa had hooked up after the wedding.

He hoped he was totally mistaken. The thing was, he had to find out...and soon.

* * *

Ty didn’t like the looks of the apartment building at all. It was shabby, like the landlord could care less about it. Its pale yellow stucco had seen too much sun. The pavement was cracked under Ty’s boots as he walked around the back of the building to the apartments on that side. Checking the address on his phone again, he saw that Marissa’s apartment was the middle one, on the second floor. He mounted the stairs and the finish of the railing came off like powder on his hand. Sure, maybe he’d stay in a place like this on a long rodeo stint, but it was no place for a mother and a child. He imagined Marissa was living here because she could afford the rent. Still...

Just where did Marissa work? Did she make enough money to support her and her baby? Was there a guy in the picture now?

He remembered again the wedding they’d attended in nearby Sacramento. They’d been on opposite sides of the aisle in the church, he on the groom’s side and she on the bride’s. But he’d ended up behind her in the receiving line and they’d taken seats at the same table at the dinner. They’d talked some, laughed at high school escapades they’d remembered. They’d shared the bride and groom’s happiness as the couple had exchanged pieces of cake and then danced. That’s when the real night had started for him and Marissa. He’d asked her to dance.

That dance...

It had started the rest of the night.

At the top of the stairs, he stood at her door, which was decorated with a wreath of autumn leaves, nuts and gourds, not knowing exactly the right way to handle this. Maybe there was no right way.

He pressed the doorbell, but when he didn’t hear it ring, he knocked. It was after six. She should be home having dinner, taking care of her baby.

When she opened the door, he saw that she’d changed from the beige slacks and cream shirt into worn jeans and a T-shirt that proclaimed JORDAN’S MOMMY.

So she had a son, and his name was Jordan.

She looked horrified when she saw him glancing down at her T-shirt. Her face went pale. But he had to give her credit. After a deep breath, another second and a lifetime later, she produced a smile.

“Hi, Ty. I didn’t think I’d see you so soon. What brings you here?”

She was holding the door three-quarters of the way closed behind her, but he could hear sounds coming from inside the apartment. They sounded like baby squeals.

He motioned behind her. “Can I come in?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “It’s not a good time.”

“When would be a good time?” he asked in a compromising tone.

“I don’t know. I’m fixing supper, and then I have work to do. My to-do list is pretty full this week.”

No matter what she did or said, he was determined to have a talk with her.

“Invite me in, Marissa, for old time’s sake. I won’t stay long.”

With another glance over her shoulder, she gave a huge sigh, opened the door and motioned him in.

He couldn’t read the expression on her face. Was it dread, nervousness, regret? He’d love to know what was going on in her head.

He walked in and saw the baby right away. On the rodeo circuit Ty had talked with kids and horsed around with them. He liked their innocence and naïveté and optimistic outlook on life. They made him laugh. But he’d never been around babies.

This little fellow was seated in a high chair, playing with little round cereal pieces on his tray. Ty barely noticed the yellow-and-white kitchen curtains, the skillet simmering on the stove with what looked like barbecued beef. The smell wafted through the kitchen but it didn’t even make his stomach growl. He couldn’t take his eyes off the little boy.

“My uncle told me you’re unmarried and you have a baby.”

Marissa kept silent.

“How old is he?”

As if Jordan wanted to answer for himself, he pounded his tiny fist on the plastic tray, squealed and gave a lopsided toothy grin to Ty. Ty’s heart turned over in his chest.

“He’s fourteen months old,” Marissa said.

Ty’s gaze swung to hers. He could see she was trying hard to hold it together, to act as if nothing were the matter, acting as if that hadn’t been the most important question in the world.

“We used protection,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Not in the middle of the night,” she reminded him softly.

How could he have forgotten that? How could he have forgotten they’d reached for each other, half-asleep, come together as if they’d been lovers for years and rocked the bed as if lightning was striking all over again?

“He’s mine.”

She only hesitated a moment, and then he saw what he’d sensed about her from the very beginning—from the time they were in high school. She was honest and wouldn’t lie.

“Yes, he’s yours. His name is Jordan.”

As if he was drawn by a very powerful magnet, he crossed to the child and stared down at him, trying to let the implications of it all wash over him. The little boy was pounding on his tray again, gleefully burbling, kicking his legs. He had Ty’s brown hair, a much lighter shade than Marissa’s. But the baby had Marissa’s dark brown eyes, sparkling and shiny with new life and expectant hope.

Suddenly the gravity of what was happening hit Ty in the solar plexus. He swiveled on his boots, faced her and said, “You should have told me.”

She looked dumbstruck for a second.

He held up his hand, knowing they both needed to take a few deep breaths. “I need some air. I’m going for a walk, but I’ll be back. Don’t leave.”

“You can’t order me around, Ty. This is my life, not yours.”

“That baby is our life, Marissa.”

With that, he left her kitchen. With that, he took a few gulps of fresh air. With that, he hurried down the steps of the shabby apartment building.

He had a son. Somehow he had to wrap his mind around the idea that he was a father—and then quickly decide what to do about it.

Chapter Two

Marissa’s hand shook as she warmed Jordan’s baby food and scooped it into a dish for him. Her own barbecued beef supper would be sitting in that skillet and serve her for the rest of the week. She had no appetite.

Would Ty come back tonight? Or had he just said that to keep her on alert, to keep her off balance? She was already way off balance. What was she going to do?

As she dipped the spoon into Jordan’s food and made noises like an airplane to coax him to eat it, she wondered what Ty Conroy was going to do.

She’d seen the thunder in his eyes when she’d confirmed the fact that Jordan was his. That thunder was anger that she hadn’t told him. She was pretty sure of that. With his lifestyle, she’d concluded he’d want nothing to do with a baby. She’d concluded he might never be back in Fawn Grove again. The circuit could take him anywhere, including to his best dreams. When he had enough money to fund his dreams, why would he want to come back to Fawn Grove? He could do or be anything he wanted. He could travel. He could have a different girl in each town and never get bored.

Ty had had a following of girls in high school. He’d been a wrestler and won a state championship his senior year. However, the book on him was that he didn’t date much. When did he have time with wrestling practice and chores on the Cozy C? But when he did date, he dated a different girl every time. The thing was, the girls he dated only once still spoke highly of him. They still liked him. They said he was polite and charming and made them laugh. He was a good time.

Marissa knew for certain that he was a good time. She looked at Jordan and she remembered that night with Ty explicitly.

The knock on her door came less than fifteen minutes later. She answered it quickly, wanting to get the issue over with, wanting to get it resolved. If it was resolvable.

She’d wiped Jordan down. Somehow he always managed to dip his fingers into the bowl and then smear the gravy all over his face. Now he was sitting in his play saucer with its activity center, bouncing a bit, manipulating the buttons on a ring on one side of the play table. There were activities the whole way around the circle. His attention span was the strongest when he was playing there. Her attention span right now was zilch.

Her heart thudded hard as she let Ty in and wondered again what he was going to say. More important, what he was going to do.

“Would you like coffee?” she asked, maybe trying to postpone the inevitable. “I don’t have any beer.”

“Coffee’s fine,” he answered, removing his hat, laying it on the table. He ran his hand through his dark brown hair and she remembered running her fingers through it. It was thick but soft and silky. His body had been all hard muscle. Her eyes glided across his shoulders. He still was. There might even be more muscle definition in his arms.

She poured two mugs and set them on the table. “Black, right?” At least that’s what she remembered from the reception.

“Right,” he said with a crisp nod as he stared down at Jordan.

She added milk to her coffee, then a little sugar. When she sat, too, Jordan’s saucer right beside her chair, she asked, “What did you decide on your walk?”

“No decisions, Marissa. I need the facts first.”

She frowned, not sure what he meant. “What facts do you mean?”

“First of all, why didn’t you tell me?”

She felt herself bristle and knew getting defensive wouldn’t do either of them any good. How to explain this so he’d understand? How to explain this without turning herself inside out? She’d start with the simpler explanation.

“You’re a rodeo cowboy, Ty. That’s all you ever wanted to be. You told me that yourself over dinner at the wedding reception.”

“Rodeo cowboys can’t be fathers?” he asked in a low, controlled voice.

“How can they be when they’re never around?”

Maybe that struck too close to home because a shadow crossed his face and his jaw tightened. “You’re generalizing.”

“You’ve asked me a question and I’m trying to answer. Maybe you should answer a couple of questions. If I had told you I was pregnant, would you have seen me through my pregnancy? Would you have come back to Fawn Grove? Would you have been here during labor and delivery? Or if that had been the weekend of a big rodeo, would you have been there bull riding? I asked myself those questions and others. Would you quit the circuit? Would you willingly settle down? I came up with a resounding no.”

“You didn’t give me the chance to make up my own mind. You just sailed right by disclosure into doing it on your own. It takes two people to make a baby, Marissa, and I deserved to know.”

She’d carried guilt from not telling Ty about the baby, sure she had. But as an unwed mother with nowhere to turn, she’d done the best she could.

“So you asked yourself about my rodeo life, and you decided that came first with me.” He studied her. “But more was going on than that, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, more was going on than that,” she said, practically spilling her coffee mug in her agitation as she plopped it down. “This certainly wasn’t a planned pregnancy. You had a life on the road and I had to find some way to make a life. What kind of parent could you have been if I’d trapped you into fatherhood? Wouldn’t you have resented me? Wouldn’t you have resented Jordan?”

Ty’s expression was almost forbidding when he asked, “What makes you think I would have resented having a son?”

That question took precedent over all the others. Although she didn’t want to delve into her past, she knew she had no choice if she wanted to make him understand.

She took a few sips of her coffee as a bracing elixir. She rarely talked about her childhood, but maybe she had to do it now to make Ty understand. She put her hand on Jordan’s head, pushed her thumb through his hair, felt the warmth of his skin on her palm. This was her baby, her child, and she loved him dearly. Could Ty come to love him, too?

“My father married my mother because she was pregnant.” The statement seemed to fall with a thud onto the table between them.

Ty’s eyes widened a bit and then he nodded and said, “Go on.”

She shouldn’t have to go on. That should be enough. But he wanted it all laid out.

“They had an unhappy marriage. They argued all the time. Dad left for days at a time and didn’t come back.” From that she’d learned to distrust men. Because of her dad’s example, she didn’t believe they could commit to loving a family or stay.

She paused for a moment and then went on. “He didn’t even care if he had a wife or a daughter, and I never felt loved. I wasn’t about to put Jordan through that type of childhood.”

Letting that go for the moment, Ty asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing monumental. But my parents split up. When my father left, I thought it was my fault. I knew they’d gotten married because of me. I’d heard the arguments, the conversations in the middle of the night. Why else would he have left, after all? No child should have to bear that burden.”

She felt tears come into her eyes, and she blinked fast and hard, not wanting Ty to see. She’d revealed more than enough.

* * *

Ty felt as though someone had clobbered him with a two-by-four. First of all, he couldn’t look across the table at Marissa without being attracted to her. He couldn’t look at her without thinking about their night together. It had been almost two years and it felt as if it had been yesterday. The chemistry that had arced between them back then hadn’t flickered out. It was still sparking now in spite of this whole emotional upheaval, in spite of the fact she’d kept something so important from him, and he didn’t know if he could ever trust her again.

Hearing her background had stirred up a locked box that he kept in a corner of his heart. It was locked because his childhood hadn’t been much better. His background made him a lousy bet for a dad. His own father hadn’t known how to handle responsibility. He hadn’t known how to stay. Maybe he simply hadn’t known how to love.

He wondered how Marissa had managed. She had been a waitress when they’d hooked up, he remembered. Had she done it on her own, or...

“Did your mom help?” he asked. “Is she helping you now?”

Marissa’s voice was almost a whisper. “I lost my mom a few months before we hooked up. Maybe that’s why that night happened. Maybe I just needed somebody to lean on.”

She’d done more than lean on him, and they both knew it. But he kind of understood what she meant. Loss could make a person reckless. Loss of his career had almost made him reckless until he’d realized his uncle needed him, until he’d realized he could turn being reckless into a little bit of risk-taking and possibly hit a jackpot.

“So what did you do during your pregnancy? You were a waitress, living on tips and minimum wage.” He motioned to the apartment. “How could you even afford this?”

“I didn’t have anyone to count on during my pregnancy. But I attended a free clinic and Dr. Kaitlyn Foster, Kaitlyn Preston now, took care of me. I found out about The Mommy Club. It’s a volunteer organization, and the women help parents in need. Sara Cramer, the physical therapist I was talking to when I saw you, is a member of The Mommy Club, too. They helped her.”

“I don’t get it. You didn’t have to pay them?”

“There’s no membership fee or anything like that. For example, Sara’s house burned down. Jase Cramer offered her and her child his guest cottage until she got back on her feet. The Mommy Club helped provide clothes and furniture and anything else they needed. It’s what the organization does. They help parents who can’t make it on their own. I know this apartment isn’t the greatest, but they found it for me. I can afford the rent. I’ve made it cheerful and upbeat for Jordan. I’m hoping to ask for a raise and look for a new place soon. But The Mommy Club made this life I have with him possible. They even have a day care set up. The fees are arranged on a sliding scale according to what you can afford to pay. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

So Marissa didn’t know what she’d do without The Mommy Club. He didn’t like the idea of her depending on strangers. He didn’t like the idea of someone else doing what was best for his child. She had done a nice job of prettying up the apartment, but it was what it was, and he wanted them living somewhere nicer. He wasn’t exactly sure what he should do next.

Then suddenly he knew. “Can I hold Jordan?”

Marissa gave him an odd look, and he was about to spout the fact that he was the dad and had rights, when she explained, “He has a lot of energy and won’t stay still very long. Let me get him out of his saucer and then we’ll go from there.”

Ty had to acquiesce to her wishes. After all, she knew her son. Their son.

Jordan wasn’t happy when Marissa picked him up. The baby seemed fascinated with a blue elephant attached to the saucer. He squealed and kicked his legs until Marissa jiggled him, lifted him high up in the air and looked him straight in the eyes.

“I want you to meet somebody, big boy. Let’s not show off how contrary you can be right now, okay?”

Jordan reacted to the sound of her voice, stopped kicking and stared at her face, then he broke into a wide smile and cooed.

Ty was entranced.

He’d never really watched a baby’s antics before, and he was captivated, not only by Jordan but by the look on Marissa’s face. Clearly she was devoted to this baby. With her dark brown curls tumbling around her face, her eyes sparkling with the joys of motherhood, she was absolutely beautiful. Beautiful in a way he hadn’t recognized before. Did motherhood do that to a woman?

Now that Jordan was quieter, Marissa brought him into the crook of her arm again and approached Ty. She did not tell the little boy This is your dad.

Rather, she said, “I have somebody new I want you to meet.” Marissa explained to Ty, “He’s not usually shy about meeting new people. I think being at day care has done that. He just doesn’t like to stay in one place for too long.”

Her gaze met Ty’s and held. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Like father like son? Up until a few months ago, that had certainly been true.

He might as well admit his nervousness. “I’ve never held a baby before.”

Her lips quirked up and there was amusement in her eyes. “It’s sort of the same as holding a baby calf. They’re squiggly and want to get away.”

That analogy brought an unexpected chuckle from him. “Okay.” He’d held on to baby calves before.

Jordan was wearing a red shirt and denim overalls. One of the straps had slipped down his shoulder. Ty slipped his forefinger under it and straightened it.

Marissa was close enough that he caught the scent of her shampoo. Oh, how he remembered that scent. The night he’d made love to her, her hair had smelled like flowers, and that’s the scent he caught now. It triggered a response in his body that was totally inappropriate for this situation. He willed himself to block off any attraction to Marissa. He knew how to concentrate. He’d had to focus hard when he got up on those bulls. Now he focused hard on Jordan.

“How’d you pick his name?” Ty asked to fill the air with more than the vibrations between the two of them.

“I liked it,” she said simply.

He remembered again, no mom, no family, just The Mommy Club helping her, strangers helping her, and she was making a life for herself. Marissa Lopez was stronger than he ever imagined.

Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak, he slid his large hands under Jordan’s little arms. Then he lifted the little boy from Marissa’s hold. Jordan went perfectly still as Ty didn’t know what to do with him once he had him. Then he remembered how Marissa had tucked him into the crook of her arm. So he tried that. His little boy’s body was solid and warm.

His little boy.

Ty’s chest constricted and his throat tightened. Just what in the blue blazes was happening to him?

Jordan looked up at him, seemingly mesmerized by Ty’s face, and Ty was just as mesmerized with his son. Jordan reached out his hand and his fingers touched Ty’s jaw. Ty now wished he’d shaved this morning. Would that little hand get scratched by beard stubble? His hand covered Jordan’s to make sure it wouldn’t.

Jordan smiled at him, the baby’s eyes bright with the discovery of something new to do.

However, the quiet didn’t last long. Jordan pulled his hand away and began squiggling, kicking his legs, rocking to and fro. Ty had to be quick to hold him securely.

“He’s an armful,” he mumbled.

“Especially when he wants to be somewhere else,” Marissa confessed. “You can put him down.”

“He can walk?”

“He has been since August. He was a fast crawler, but now he gets around even faster. Some days I think he can move like lightning.”

Not wanting Jordan to be unhappy in his high perch, or squiggling away and falling, Ty said, “Whoa, little guy. I’ll put you down.” But Ty realized that wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He would have liked to keep holding the baby for a while, studying the face that seemed to be a mixture of his and Marissa’s. Jordan definitely had her eyes, deep dark chocolate brown. But the mouth? That could have been Ty’s.

Jordan toddled over to a laundry basket filled with toys. He lifted out a plastic bucket and threw it to the kitchen floor. Then he pulled out a stuffed dog and that landed next to the bucket.

“Will he empty the basket?” Ty asked, fascinated now by the baby’s behavior.

“He’ll empty it until he finds what he wants, or he’ll empty it just because he wants to. I’m trying to teach him to put everything back in again, but you know how that goes.”

“No, I don’t.”

Marissa blushed. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I just meant—” She threw up her hands. “Oh, never mind.”

“You meant that teaching him how to put toys away is hard. I get it, Marissa. But now I would like you to understand something. Jordan is my son, and I want to be his father. No, I’m not sure how that’s going to play out yet, but I do know I want to spend time with him.”

“What kind of time?” she asked, a bit shakily.

“I don’t know. I want to think about it. Can I have numbers where I can reach you?”

After giving him a good long look, apparently deciding whether she wanted to acquiesce or not, she opened a drawer and took out a pad of paper and a pen.

Then she said, “I’ll give you my cell number and my work number.”

“Are you still waitressing at the diner?”

“Oh, no,” she said, her pen stopping midnumber. “The Mommy Club helped me there, too. I needed a job with good insurance benefits. They hooked me up with Raintree Winery. Jase Cramer needed an assistant.”

Jase Cramer was almost a celebrity in town. Ty read about him once when he’d accessed the local newspaper online. Cramer had been a photojournalist who’d won a Pulitzer. But he’d been shot while he was doing work in Kenya, and he’d come home to become general manager of Raintree Winery.

“Sara, his wife, is a physical therapist. You saw her talking to me,” Marissa explained.

He thought how fortuitous it was to run into her at the facility. “Would you have ignored me if I hadn’t called you over?” Ty couldn’t help wondering just how long she would have kept his son from him.

“I don’t know,” Marissa said honestly. “I never expected to see you there. I never expected to see you back in Fawn Grove.”

“So you don’t know if you would have ended up on my doorstep with Jordan once the Cozy C is up and running? Certainly you would have heard I was back by then.”

“I don’t know, Ty. I can’t tell you what I would have done and when.” She hesitated a moment, then continued. “I didn’t know you were back. Nobody knows that we’re...connected in any way. No one but Sara and Kaitlyn, and they’re as busy as I am and don’t have time for gossip.”

So she had two confidantes now. “They’re close friends?” he asked.

“The best.”

“And all three of you are involved in The Mommy Club?”

“We are.”

Jordan banged a spatula he’d found in the wash basket against his bucket. As Ty tried to wrap his mind around Marissa’s life, Marissa finished jotting down the numbers, and then she handed him the slip of paper so he could input them into his cell phone contacts. Their fingertips touched and Ty felt the electricity all over again—the quickening of his blood that had told him one night with this woman wasn’t enough. But one night had led to a baby. Jordan had to be his main concern now. Not the chemistry he and Marissa might have.

When he stepped back, she seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Because he was leaving?

“You might have kept me out of your life for two years, Marissa, but that’s not how it’s going to go now. I’m going to think about all this, then we can have a real discussion about what we’re going to do next.”

He crossed to Jordan and bent down to him. “Hey, little guy. I’m going to see you again soon.”

Jordan studied him for a moment, then went back to slapping the spatula against the bucket. Maybe he was going to be a drummer.

Ty straightened and tucked Marissa’s numbers into his shirt pocket. Then he crossed to the door and left.

His head was spinning as he stood outside Marissa’s door feeling like the outsider he was. But that wouldn’t be true for long. Nope. He was going to be Jordan’s father. He just had to figure out how to do it.

* * *

As soon as Ty closed the door behind him, and Marissa heard his boots descending the steps, she scooped up Jordan and held him close. Tears came to her eyes because she didn’t know what was going to happen next. What lengths would Ty go to in order to spend time with his son? Was he going to upset the steady balance she’d found?

Besides all that was the pull she still felt toward Ty Conroy. When they made eye contact, it was so hard for her to look away. It was so hard for her not to feel breathless, as if they’d started something they’d never finished.

Jordan had had enough of being held. He wiggled and squirmed until Marissa once more set him on the floor. Then he dug into that toy basket for something on the bottom.

Marissa needed advice and calm reason. Since Sara already knew Ty was back, she picked up her cell phone that was charging on the counter and speed-dialed Sara. When Sara answered, Marissa asked, “Are you busy?”

“We just finished dinner. Jase is playing a game with Amy on his tablet. What’s up?”

Sara had been a widow and single mother when she’d met Jase. Now her little girl, Amy, adored him. He wasn’t a stepfather. He was a real father.

“Ty came over. He put two and two together and came up with Jordan. His uncle knew I wasn’t married and had a baby, so Ty filled in the blanks.”

“Didn’t you expect this to happen someday?” Sara asked reasonably.

“Denial’s a wonderful thing, Sara. Knowing Ty’s attitude and lifestyle, I just never expected I’d have to face it. So anytime I thought about Ty, I just pushed those thoughts away. I was living in a fool’s paradise, I guess. Now it all crashed around me.”

“What did he say?”

“His bull riding days are over. He and his uncle are turning the Cozy C into a vacation ranch. That’s going to save the ranch for his uncle and give Ty employment.”

“So he’s staying in Fawn Grove.”

“I guess. He’s so used to being on the road, so used to traveling from place to place I just can’t see him settled down. I can see him staying to get the ranch going, but then he could always find a general manager to run it if he found something else he wanted to do.”

“Maybe he’s grown wiser in the last two years,” Sara suggested.

“You’re the forever optimist, aren’t you? But even if that’s true, what does it mean if he stays? I don’t know what he’s going to want from me...from Jordan.”

“Was he angry that you kept Jordan from him?”

“I think the anger was there, but it was underneath something else. I’m not sure what. I think he felt more disappointment than anything. But I explained why I didn’t tell him and that seemed to help.”

“So he’s a reasonable man.”

“I hope so. But to tell you the truth, Sara, I’m just concerned about what he might do next.”

“How can I help?”

“No one can help. I’m just going to take this day by day and see what happens next.”

“If you want Jase to step in—”

“No!” Marissa blurted out. “I know he’s protective of me and Jordan, but I have to handle this on my own.”

“Not on your own, Marissa. We’re here for you—remember that.”

Yes, they were here for her. But when Marissa examined her heart, she knew she and Ty had to come to terms with his fatherhood on their own.

Marissa gazed down at Jordan again and knew she didn’t want to share him. She didn’t want to lose any time with him. She didn’t want to turn any part of his welfare—or her heart—over to a cowboy who might leave again.

Chapter Three

Ty drove for a while—not any place in particular, just on the back roads, circling the Cozy C. He was used to driving long distances from rodeo to rodeo. He was used to a lot of things.

But he wasn’t used to holding a baby in his arms. His baby.

As daylight grew dimmer, he arrived back at the ranch, parked on the gravel lot near the house, then went in the kitchen door. In a hurry, he let the screen door slam behind him.

His uncle was at the stove, frying eggs. “I thought I’d go on and eat. You didn’t tell me if you’d be back for supper.”

He hadn’t known when he’d be back. “I’m not hungry,” Ty mumbled.

His uncle gave him one of those looks like the ones he’d given him when he was a teenager and he’d been out too late. “You’re always hungry. If you ain’t got no appetite, then something’s wrong. Spill it, boy.”

Searching for the right words, Ty started with, “We have to make the Cozy C vacation ranch work.” He paced the kitchen. “We can make sure the word gets out about it from Sacramento to San Diego. The best strategy is to make sure those cabins are what people want to live in for two days or a week. We can’t just sit here and hope people find us. We have to spread the word somehow, just like a rodeo promoter does. In fact, maybe that’s the route we should go. I have a lot of rodeo contacts who would recommend the Cozy C.”

His uncle made sure his sunny-side up eggs were just right. “So what put a burr in your jeans now? We’re not even finished with the cabins yet.”

“We will be by Thanksgiving. I want to be open for business by January 1.”

Eli glanced toward Ty’s knee. “Are you sure you’re going to be ready for that, especially if you intend to take out trail rides?”

“Another six weeks and I’ll be as strong as I ever was.” He pulled out a chair but didn’t sit. Instead, he went to stand beside his uncle. “You’ve told me before that the Cozy C is my legacy. Well, I just found out tonight I have a son, and I want it to be his legacy, too.”

Ty often saw his uncle silent, but never speechless. Now the older man looked shell-shocked as if he’d witnessed an explosion and didn’t know what to do about it.

“Let’s get your eggs and bacon on a dish and I’ll tell you about it,” Ty offered.

When they were seated at the table, after Ty had made himself a bacon-and-tomato sandwich, he began to bring his uncle up to speed. “Remember I told you I ran into Marissa Lopez?”

“Yeah. And I told you to stay away from her.”

“Too late for that,” Ty said matter-of-factly. “Two years ago after a wedding, she and I—” He slashed his hand through the air. “You know. Anyway, that baby you told me about? It turns out he’s mine.”

His uncle dipped his toast into the second egg, breaking the yolk. “I guess since you’re telling me about it, since you’re thinking about the Cozy C as an inheritance, you want to do something about being a dad.”

“I held him for the first time tonight, Unc. I never felt anything quite like that. He’s my flesh and blood. I have to make a future, not only for myself but for him, too.”

His uncle swiped up more yolk with the crust of his toast. “How does the young’un’s mom fit into this plan?”

Pushing his plate away, Ty shook his head. “I don’t know how any of it fits together yet. She seems pretty self-reliant. She’s working for Jase Cramer at Raintree Winery. Her momma died and she’s got no family left, but The Mommy Club helped her.”

Ty laid out what Marissa had told him about the organization.

“I’ve heard of it,” Eli said. “They’ve had some goings-on in town. A Thanksgiving food drive is coming up. Lots of people talking about it. That’s a good thing.”

It was, and it seemed Marissa might be as involved as her friends because she felt she had to give back. He understood that, but he still didn’t understand why she hadn’t told him about Jordan.

“When are you going to see her again?” Eli asked.

“I’m not sure. I want to think about all of it.”

“Apparently you’ve been thinking about the Cozy C, but not about what you’re going to do with your son.”

Maybe that was true. Maybe Ty felt if he planned for his own future, he’d be planning for his son’s, and somehow Jordan would fit into his life.

“I want to try to work out visitation with her first. If we can’t come to terms, then I guess I’ll have to see a lawyer.”

“You don’t want to bring a lawyer into it if you don’t have to,” Eli agreed. “No better way to get two people on opposite sides of the fence.”

Would Marissa work with him to decide what was best for Jordan?

“When am I going to meet my nephew?” Eli asked in a tone that said he wanted an answer now.

“I promise you’ll meet him soon.” Ty meant every word. He never broke a promise.

His uncle nodded because he knew that was true.

Ty’s dad had broken too many promises, and his uncle realized Ty was determined to be a different kind of man than his father ever was.

* * *

On Saturday, Ty fully expected Marissa to be at home. But when he stopped at her apartment, he found no one was there. Sure, he should have called first, but he didn’t want her avoiding him when she saw his name on caller ID. Did he really think she’d do that? Well, for two years she hadn’t told him he had a son. He wasn’t sure what she’d do.

Standing outside the door to her apartment, he dialed her cell phone number, fully expecting to get a message. But she answered on the second ring, and of course, she had seen who was calling.

“Ty? I’m at work. Can I call you back later?”

For some reason he didn’t want to wait till later. He’d already missed too much time with his son. He wanted to make plans as soon as he could.

“How about if I come there and we can talk for a few minutes? I won’t take up much of your time.”

When she hesitated, he asked, “Where’s Jordan?”

“He’s with a friend, Kaitlyn Preston.”

Kaitlyn Preston. He’d seen the name somewhere. Suddenly a doctor’s shingle came to mind. Dr. Kaitlyn Preston had an office in the same building as his orthopedist. Then he remembered something else. Marissa had mentioned Kaitlyn in association with The Mommy Club.

Raintree Winery was about a mile out of town toward the hills. There was a rumor there was even a hot spring on the property. Hot springs. Marissa. A kiss. A touch. He shook the thoughts out of his head.

“I’ll be there in less than ten minutes,” he said.

And he was.

Driving down the lane into the winery, he passed scenery more manicured than the Cozy C’s. There were rows and rows of trellises covered with grape vines as well as purple, white and yellow chrysanthemums blooming everywhere. He’d heard the vineyard was coming to be known for its gardens as much as for its grapes and wines. Visitors who stopped to taste Raintree wines also toured the beds of roses and native flowers and shrubs. The vineyard’s property line on the western edge touched the Cozy C’s north pasture.

Ty followed the visitors sign that led to the winery offices. There was another driveway leading to the wine tasting center. He passed a guest cottage on the left and the main house on the right. That house was huge, more like a mansion compared to the ranch house on the Cozy C. Right past it he found the Raintree office complex, pulled into the designated parking area and switched off his ignition.

This was some place.

Ty walked up the path to the office, pulled open the heavy glass door and stepped inside. He didn’t know what he expected, maybe to see Marissa sitting at a desk, welcoming any visitors who might come in.

But that wasn’t the way it was. He spotted her through a glass partition. She was standing by a huge mahogany desk focused on a state-of-the-art computer monitor. He could tell by its size and sleek design. She wore tailored russet-brown slacks and a crisp pale peach blouse. She’d clipped her hair away from her face, but that didn’t keep the curls from tumbling forward.

He felt the old attraction, and he attempted to ignore it.

She wasn’t alone in her office. A man about as tall as Ty stood there with her, handing her some kind of printout. He was well built with black hair. He wore a white oxford dress shirt and navy suit trousers. Ty recognized him. Jase Cramer’s photo had appeared online and in newspapers with his articles about children in African refugee camps.

Ty hadn’t been oblivious to the world outside the rodeo circuit. After all, a Pulitzer Prize winner made headlines.

He strode toward the office. Marissa glanced up, and the glass walls seemed to drop away. It was just the two of them, staring at each other, wondering what the future was going to bring.

She had stopped midsentence apparently and Jase looked from her to Ty and then back again.

“This is the man you were expecting?” he heard Jase ask her through the open door.

She motioned him in. “Jase Cramer, meet Ty Conroy. Ty, this is my boss.”

As Ty shook Jase Cramer’s hand, he was sizing him up, and Jase was doing the same thing to Ty.

Jase turned to Marissa. “Would you like to go someplace more private than this?”

Marissa’s cheeks pinkened. “No, this is fine. Thanks.”

“We’re almost there, Marissa. You’ve done a terrific job planning the Christmas-week celebration. You’ve managed to get great vendors on board, and the publicity you generated is acquiring lots of interest. We’re good. Don’t let the odds and ends tie you up in knots, okay?”

She nodded.

After a last smile for Marissa and a nod to Ty, Cramer left the office. Just outside the door, he said, “I’ll be in the wine tasting room if you need me for anything.”

Again Marissa nodded and then she laid the papers on her desk.

“The Christmas celebration,” Ty mused aloud. “That’s a big event at Raintree. A big event in the area. Visitors go hopping from one winery to the next. You have to plan it?”

“I planned it,” she said proudly, “consulting with Jase and Sara, of course, and the other wineries in the area. That’s one of the things I do here, Ty. I plan the events.”

He must have made a sound of surprise or looked surprised because Marissa’s shoulders went back and she stood a little straighter. “Did you think I’d stay a waitress in a diner all my life?”

He realized he’d underestimated Marissa. Apparently becoming pregnant and having a baby had made a huge difference in her life.

“Girls in Fawn Grove who start out as waitresses usually end up as waitresses. I really didn’t know what your life goals were. We didn’t talk about that.”

She seemed to relax a bit. “No, we didn’t. The ironic thing is I took this job for the insurance benefits. And when I started, I was basically Jase’s secretary.” She motioned to the office beyond hers. “That’s where he works. But as the months went on, I handled more and more responsibility, and he saw that I really seemed suited for everything that goes on here, from setting up the wine tasting schedule to incorporating holiday themes in the gardens, to planning everything from an ice-cream festival to a music fair. I quickly moved up. I like the work I do here, and even more than that, I like the people I work with.”

Ty nodded. “That’s important. One of my friends from the rodeo circuit who wants to retire is going to hire on with us at the Cozy C. Clint and I have known each other since my first rodeo. He’s good with horses and anything else that needs to be done.”

“I guess you have a lot on your plate right now, too,” she said, “getting ready for the opening.”

“It’s coming together. Uncle Eli wasn’t 100 percent on board at the beginning, but I think that’s changing. I sure hope it is.”

“So your uncle doesn’t want to turn the Cozy C into a dude ranch?” she asked with an amused smile.

“We’re calling it a vacation ranch,” Ty corrected her with a wink.

“I see.” She was still looking a bit amused and her eyes were twinkling.

She was so darn pretty. But he wasn’t here to talk about the ranch, and he wasn’t here to flirt. “I won’t hold you up. I know you’re busy.”

Now that twinkle was gone from her eyes. In fact, he thought he could see fear there. What was she afraid of?

“Uncle Eli wants to meet Jordan, and I want to spend some time with him. How about coming to the ranch for dinner tonight?”

* * *

As Marissa drove her six-year-old small sedan down the winding road that led to the Cozy C, she noticed the fresh-laid stones crunching under her tires. She also spotted new fence posts along the fence line that ran by the side of the road.

Jordan rattled the plastic play keys that were attached to his car seat.

“We’re almost there, buddy.”

Those butterflies in her stomach seemed to be doing the salsa the closer she got to the ranch. She’d known she had to attend this dinner tonight. It was only fair. But what was going to happen next? That’s what those butterflies were all about.

Ty had said he wanted to spend time with his son. Did he mean just tonight? Or was he talking more long-term than that? Just the thought of seeing him again made her palms sweat. She took a couple of deep breaths warning herself to calm down. She wouldn’t want to hyperventilate in front of his uncle—or in front of Ty for that matter.

The lodgepole pines, fir trees and aspens gave the ranch a look similar to Raintree Winery. She’d never had wide-open spaces around when she was a kid. She’d been unaware of what gardens could do for a property or how wildflowers just made one want to sigh and relax. She was fortunate to work at Raintree, and she realized how fortunate Ty was that he could renovate the Cozy C with his uncle. He had family that mattered and a place that mattered. Did he realize how important that was?

Spotting a truckload of lumber covered loosely by a tarp, she realized some construction was still going on here. Just when would the Cozy C open for guests?

She let thoughts like that occupy her as she approached the ranch house. It was three stories, but judging by the small windows in the two dormers, that third story could be an attic, she supposed. A wide porch surrounded the first floor on three sides. The banisters were freshly painted white. The light gray siding and black shutters also looked new. Even the steps leading up to the porch were a shiny gray. The landscaping around the steps looked as if it was in the process of a makeover, though young shrubs were positioned along the home’s foundation, and the beds appeared newly mulched. She just caught a glimpse of the pasture beyond and a few horses running there.

“Horses, buddy. What do you think of that?” Marissa asked her son.

His answer was “Mmm, momma momma momma.”

She smiled as she parked.

It was time to pretend she was confident, self-assured and totally self-reliant. She climbed out of the car, unhooked Jordan from his car seat and hiked him into her arms. Then she managed to snag the diaper bag, which went with her everywhere. After she ran up the porch steps, she rang the doorbell. She could smell the newly painted wood.

When the door opened, she expected to see Ty. But instead an older man with a weathered face appeared. Eli Conroy, she assumed. His hair receded from his forehead and gray laced the brown there as it did on his beard. He wore overalls and a plaid shirt and didn’t look any too happy to see her.

“I guess you’re Marissa,” he said. “You’re early.”

Automatically she glanced at her watch. She couldn’t be more than ten minutes early.

“I never know how long it will take to get Jordan and his necessities together. So I always try to start out sooner than I need to.”

Eli Conroy looked her up and down, then his expression seemed to gentle as his eyes fell on Jordan.

“Come on in.” He beckoned her through the living room into the kitchen. “Ty should be here any minute. He got tied up with a problem at one of the guest cabins and is getting a shower.”

All of a sudden Marissa heard movement beyond the archway on the left side of the kitchen. Then she heard Ty’s voice. “That new shower works great, Unc. Don’t tell me you don’t like to just be able to step in there and—”

“She’s here early,” Eli said, motioning to Marissa.

Marissa felt totally dumbfounded. Not because Ty had appeared in the kitchen, but because he’d appeared in the kitchen shirtless with his hair still wet and with a few drops of water clinging to his curling chest hair. She knew her eyes were glued to him, but she couldn’t seem to look away. When she did manage to avert her gaze, her eyes collided with his and caught. Two years rolled back. She recalled running her fingers through that chest hair, inhaling deep breaths of his masculine scent, melding with him until she didn’t know where she began or he ended.

Eli cleared his throat, took a step forward and held his arms out to Jordan.

“Will you come to me?” he asked gruffly.

Memories of Ty and their night together scattered as all of her concern focused on Jordan. Eli was a stranger to him. Would her son cry?

But he didn’t cry. He leaned forward and Eli took him. Jordan reached for Eli’s beard and took it in his fist, giggling.

Eli chuckled, too.

Ty’s eyebrows quirked up and he grinned. “Not just anybody takes to Uncle Eli. Jordan must be a good judge of character.”

Eli harrumphed. “I can take Jordan on a little tour of the porch. Maybe you should show Marissa here that old high chair and see if it’s suitable for this young’un.”

“I can do that,” Ty agreed. He touched her elbow. “It’s upstairs. I pulled it down from the attic and cleaned it up last night.”

Marissa was about to say that she could unfasten Jordan’s car seat and bring that in for him to sit in, but there was something in Ty’s look that said he wanted her to see this high chair.

She followed him through the living room to the staircase there. Even barefoot Ty was still a good six inches taller than she was. She glanced over her shoulder at her son and saw he was babbling to Eli. That was a good sign, she supposed.

As she climbed the steps behind Ty, her gaze kept wandering to his broad back, his strong spine, his muscled arms. It seemed awkward, this silence between her and Ty. So she asked, “Did you say your uncle has a new shower?”

At the top of the stairs, Ty turned toward her to wait until she reached the landing.

“When we decided to make renovations, I wanted Uncle Eli to have a bedroom and shower downstairs so when his arthritis was bothering him, he didn’t have to climb the steps. That little suite seems to be the one thing he likes about this whole Cozy C makeover. It’s convenient for him and I don’t have to worry about him falling on the stairs.”

“That sounds like a great idea. Jase and his father did something similar. That way he and Sara have an apartment on the second floor.”

“You’re close to them?” Ty asked.

“They’re good friends.”

He gave her a long studying look and led her down the hardwood floors of the hallway to the last bedroom on the left.

“This is sort of a storage room, so don’t expect a lot of order. One of the neighbors, Hannah Johnson, comes in, cleans and leaves casseroles in the freezer for Eli. He grumbles about it because she only takes a pittance. But she’s a widow and says she needs something to do since her husband died.”

“That’s kind of her,” Marissa said, but she wondered if there was more behind it. Maybe this Hannah was sweet on Eli?

When Ty opened the door to the room, a stale smell wafted out. Apparently they didn’t open the windows much in here. There wasn’t a bed. Boxes were stacked here and there, and in the corner by the closet, she spotted the high chair.

“It’s solid maple,” Ty explained. “Eli made it for me when I was a baby. Apparently my mother would bring me to visit him a few weeks in the summer.”

“Eli used to do woodworking?”

“A long time back. Arthritis in his hands has kept him from it for the past decade.”

Crossing to the high chair, she ran her hands over the smooth, glossy wood. It had a beautiful grain. Even the tray was wood. It smelled of lemon polish.

“It’s beautiful, Ty. It seems to be a perfect size for Jordan.”

They were standing very close, Ty’s bare arm brushing hers. He said, “I don’t have much ready for my son yet, but I will.”

“Babies have a lot of paraphernalia, but they really don’t need much,” she murmured.

“You’ll have to tell me what kind of food to buy, what kind of diapers, that kind of thing,” Ty said in a low voice, not taking his eyes from her face.

She couldn’t seem to look away from him, either. “Why do you think you’ll need all that?” she asked, her heart beating very fast. Just what did he have in mind?

“When I bring Jordan here to stay—”

She cut him off. “I can’t be away from him for long periods of time. As it is, he’s in day care all day. If you just visit him at my apartment, won’t that be enough?” After all, this was Ty Conroy. When he wasn’t rodeoing, he met his friends for a beer in a sports bar like the Black Boot.

“Look, Marissa, my life has changed drastically. Now Jordan’s going to be a part of it. We’ll work this out. But he’s going to spend time here with me and Uncle Eli. The Cozy C could be his someday.”

She knew she made a little sound of surprise.

“We have to think ahead now,” he said. “Maybe you’ve just been living day to day, but that’s going to change.”

Confusion stole through Marissa’s heart. She liked to think of herself as flexible. But when it came to Jordan, she didn’t know how flexible she could be.

Ty pushed a few curls away from her cheek. “I’m going to learn how to become a father, Marissa, so I’d like you to try and get used to that idea.”

His callused fingers on her cheek made her insides quiver and her knees even felt a little weak. Or maybe that was because everything was happening so fast. Maybe because seeing Ty in a father’s role wasn’t something she ever expected to do.

Ty stepped back and she felt relieved. When he was that close she had trouble fighting her attraction to him. When he was that close anything could happen.

He hefted up the high chair and nodded to the doorway. She crossed to it, eager to go downstairs and get dinner over with, eager to go back to her apartment with Jordan.

Ty put a shirt on before he came to the table, but all through dinner she couldn’t keep her gaze from flitting to him. Just as she felt his eyes on her. She kept herself busy feeding Jordan. She’d brought along food for him, but also fed him bits of broccoli and the boiled potatoes with butter Eli had made.

After he’d eaten, she started on the barbecued ribs. In between bites, she asked, “What did you use on these? They’re delicious.”

“I make my own rub,” Eli said. “And I do them slow in the oven, basting them often. Ty’s talking about getting one of those smokers, thinks guests might like it. But I like the way I do it.”

“I make my own barbecue sauce,” Marissa said. “Is your rub a secret?”

Eli chuckled. “Not so secret. I can jot it down for you.”

When Ty put dessert on the table, Marissa remarked to Eli, “You’re serving a feast.”

“I can’t take credit for the cherry crumble,” Eli told her. “A neighbor made that for us.”

Jordan had smeared his supper from one end of his mouth to the other and got some on his cheek and his nose. She reached out to clean him, but Ty stopped her. “Do you think he’ll let me wipe him?”

“You can try. He doesn’t even let me wipe his face sometimes.”

Ty went to the counter and wet a paper towel. Moments later he was back, making a game of it with Jordan, wiping one cheek and tickling his tummy. Then he wiped the other, making a noise like an airplane while he did it.

Eli leaned close to Marissa. “Sometimes dads have the magic touch.”

She felt as if Ty and Eli were tag-teaming her, trying to convince her of something. She wasn’t sure what that was. That Ty would be a good father? Only time would tell that. Only time and Ty’s commitment to his son.

As she looked at him, she still saw the rakish cowboy who flitted from town to town as if he’d never belonged anywhere.

Could Ty Conroy make a commitment?

That was the question she had to answer before she could let him fully into her son’s life.

Chapter Four

After supper, Ty and his uncle stepped into the living room for a few minutes while Marissa washed Jordan’s hands. Their voices were low and their discussion made her nervous. Were they talking about her and Jordan?

Neither seemed ruffled when they returned to the kitchen. Eli was even smiling.

Ty glanced at her, then ruffled his son’s hair. “Let me take you on a tour of the ranch.”

Supper had gone well, Marissa decided. She didn’t know if she wanted to push her time here further. Yet watching Ty act like a father to his son was fulfilling to witness—his gentleness, his concern, his caring.

She motioned to the dirty dishes. “We should clean up.”

Without hesitation, Eli stepped into the argument. “No need. Since Ty got me that fancy new dishwasher, everything practically cleans itself. Go on. When you get back, you can let me know if anybody would come here for a vacation.”

Ty was already gathering Jordan from the high chair.

“I have his collapsible stroller in the car,” Marissa said. She took it everywhere. Forethought was a mom’s friend.

“We’ll be fine,” Ty assured her, jiggling Jordan a little and making him giggle.

As they walked out onto the porch, he said, “He’s a happy baby, isn’t he?”

“Most of the time. Especially when he gets his way.”

Ty chuckled and descended the steps. As they crossed to the barn, Marissa asked, “How’s your knee?”

He shot her a glance. “I won’t trip and fall with Jordan,” he remarked with a bit of an edge.

“That wasn’t my concern,” she said softly.

He looked away toward the hills in the distance as if he was imagining riding there. “Sometimes I work it too hard,” he admitted. “And that puts me back to using a cane. But there’s so much I want to get finished by the end of the year.”

Seeing that talking about his knee made him uncomfortable, she motioned toward the barn. “It looks good. It’s a wonder what a new coat of paint will do.”

“I wanted to have it sided or something more permanent, but Unc wouldn’t hear of that.”

“Did you say you won the biggest purse of your life the night of the accident?”

“Accident is a nice way of putting it,” he said wryly. “But yes, I did, and most of the other winnings I’d socked away in the bank. After all, I didn’t have many expenses on the road, or much I wanted to buy. When I was recuperating, I put most of it into building up the Cozy C and paying back taxes. Unc didn’t tell me he was in trouble before that, or I would have helped sooner. He can be stubborn.”

She cleared her throat. “And his nephew didn’t inherit that fine quality.”

Now Ty laughed and reached to open the barn door.

When she passed by him up the step into the barn, Jordan reached out and grabbed her cotton blouse. His little fist clamped on her sleeve. Her hand reached for Jordan’s at the same time Ty’s did. As their skin touched, Marissa felt a tremble the whole way through her body. Something about Ty Conroy shook her up, attracted her, made her feel so much like a woman.

She dropped her hand as Ty gently pried Jordan’s fingers away from her sleeve.

“He likes me close by,” she commented, trying to hide her reaction to Ty.

“He’s not the only one.” Ty’s voice was low, almost a thought rather than a statement. He went on to say, “You always smell so good.”

She tried not to take in his scent along with the smells of new wood, hay and horses. She didn’t know what to say so she said nothing and moved forward.

The barn was part new, part old. Some of the stall doors were new lumber. Others were worn, dark and well grained. She noticed an enclosure that appeared new. The door stood open and she glimpsed tack inside.

“It looks as if you’ve done a lot of repairs and made some changes.”

“We never had a tack room before, but we need one now if we’re going to take parties out on trail rides. I have to go into town or to an auction and pick up new saddles.”

“So many details.”

“You bet. The guest cabins are almost finished. I mostly have just staining to do there.”

She motioned around the barn. “Did you do some of this work yourself?”

“I did. I often worked construction jobs in between rodeo gigs when there was a time lag.”

Marissa thought about how long Ty had been bull riding, the places he’d seen and the people he’d met. She tried not to think about the women he’d met.

“You’ve been all over the country, and I’ve never been out of California,” she mused aloud.

“Do you want to get out of California?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

She had once dreamed of visiting faraway places. But that was before she’d become a mom. “I like Fawn Grove. It’s always been my home. But I would like to see some sights other than photos on my smartphone.”

Jordan was leaning toward the horses, and Ty walked over to one of the stalls. “I imagine you’d like Jordan to see them, too.”

“Of course. I want him to see the world. But not too soon,” she added in a teasing tone.

When Ty let Jordan get close to the horse, Marissa was concerned. Glancing at her, he must have seen that.

“Goldie is gentle,” he assured her. “She doesn’t move suddenly and not much rattles her. It will be safe for him to touch her.”

“What kind of horse is she?”

“A Tennessee walker. A gaited horse. That makes riding easier for me. She and I have gotten along like best friends since I brought her here.”

Marissa stepped up beside Ty, not knowing what to expect from a horse, either. “Are you sure she won’t bite or anything?”

She could tell Ty was trying to keep from laughing. “She won’t bite,” he assured her. “I guess you haven’t been around horses much, either.”

“Never been around them.” They really were magnificent creatures, but so magnificent they scared her.

“We don’t want Jordan to be afraid of them, right?”

“Right,” she agreed, but without much enthusiasm. A little fear could be a healthy thing.

Ty took Jordan’s little hand and guided it toward Goldie’s nose. When the boy’s fingers smoothed over the softness, he giggled and gave an excited sound of glee.

“Try it again,” Ty said. “Anything that causes that reaction should be tried more than once.”

Marissa’s quick glance at him made her breath catch. There was something in Ty’s eyes that said he remembered their night together as vividly as she did. Was there some message in what he’d said to Jordan?

“Now your turn,” Ty told her. “Just run your hand down her nose and pat her neck. She likes that.”

He made it all sound so sensual, like so much more than learning to know a horse.

When she reached out her hand, Ty advised her, “Slowly. Never move too fast around them. They’re just like people, really. They don’t like to be startled.”

As she moved her hand over Goldie’s nose, she could see why Jordan had giggled. It was a kind of softness she hadn’t felt before.

Remembering what Ty had said, she slipped her hand around to the horse’s neck. Her coat was coarse but pleasant to the touch. Her mane was silkier than the rest of her coat as it fell over Marissa’s hand.

Although the horse had fascinated Jordan when they’d begun, now he was tired of being held and tired of touching Goldie’s nose. He began shifting away from Ty.

“Is it okay if I put him down over near those hay bales? There’s nothing he can get into and nothing that will hurt him there.”

“Unless he starts eating the hay,” Marissa said wryly.

Ty lowered Jordan to the floor.

The toddler looked around as if he’d just been placed in a whole new world. Then he staggered toward a hay bale, eager to touch it.

As they stood at the stall together, Ty’s elbow brushed Marissa’s. That quickening in her breath was back. He was so tall, so elementally male.

As they watched Jordan hold on to one bale and then toddle to another, Ty said, “That apartment building you’re living in is getting run-down. What happens when you need a repair?”

Marissa wrinkled her nose. “It takes a couple of weeks till the landlord gets around to it. I had a leaky sink and Kaitlyn’s husband, Adam, fixed it for me. I either do it myself or find a way around it.”

“A child needs some space to move around, needs to see something other than the inside of an apartment, don’t you think?”

Uh-oh. She should have left before the tour. “What are you getting at, Ty?”

He set his hat back farther on his head. “The Cozy C has always been a refuge to me. When I was a kid and things weren’t going right, I could come out here to the horses. I could take walks through the fields. I could go on a hike through the hills.”

The anxiety Marissa had felt driving out here became palpable, tightening a fist around her heart, making it hard to swallow. But she managed to say, “If you think I’m going to let Jordan come here and live with you, you’re wrong. He’s my son, Ty. He needs me.”

“Calm down,” Ty assured her gently. “Of course he does. I’m not suggesting Jordan come live here. I’m suggesting the two of you come live here. Think about it. It certainly would help you with expenses. You could save money for Jordan’s future.”

She was already shaking her head.

He cupped her shoulders so she’d look at him. “You kept Jordan’s birth from me. I’ve lost fourteen months with him. Don’t you see I want to know Jordan in a real way, not just sometimes, now and then, here and there?”

Looking deep into Ty’s blue eyes, she tried to see the truth. Although Ty’s rodeo days were over, would he really stay? Yes, he was committed to revamping the Cozy C. He seemed committed to his uncle. But could she trust him? Could she trust him to be the dad he wanted to be? Could she trust him not to just run off again, chasing some other dream?

“I was going to ask Jase for a raise and find a new place,” she admitted.

“Ask him for a raise. I’m sure you deserve it. But as far as finding a new place... Think about the Cozy C. We have plenty of room here.”

“Once you start taking on guests, everything will change.”

“Sure, there might be people around,” he said. “But the nature of the ranch won’t change. Wouldn’t it be good for Jordan to meet people from all walks of life? Wouldn’t it be good for him to have me and Uncle Eli around him? We’re family, Marissa, whether you like the idea or not.”

Did she like the idea? “Your uncle might not want us around.”

“You seem to get along with him. That’s a feat in itself. He has his own set of rooms. He can be private when he wants to be private. I talked to him about it before we came out here. He’s open to it, Marissa. I want you to be open to it, too.”

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