The Convenient Cowboy Read online

  She clamped her mouth closed, barely moving her lips when she said, “I married you for the money. You said this wouldn’t be a real marriage. I’m holding you to that, lawyer boy.”

  He tightened his hands on the wheel and glared hard at the white SUV in front of them to stop himself from blurting out something he’d have to apologize for later. Why was he so annoyed that she didn’t want to be near his child? That was what he wanted. He didn’t want Calvin to think of her as a new mommy.

  “If,” he emphasized, “I’m granted a visit, maybe you could go stay with your family. You and he wouldn’t need to meet.” Had he overplayed his hand? He glanced sideways to gauge her annoyance, noticing the sharpness of her jaw. Had she lost weight? What words was she holding back? How the hell had things gotten so complicated? For maybe the first time in his life, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

  “I told you I don’t have the mothering gene.” She sucked in a breath, her face paling. “It is my ranch, so why do I have to leave?”

  The way she talked about her sister, he was pretty sure she did have a mothering gene. But that didn’t matter now, because he was stuck. He’d let the lease go on his apartment—his crappy apartment—and he wouldn’t have the funds to pay for her sister’s tuition and the apartment anyway. He also had to pay his attorney. Spence had represented himself before, and it’d been a disaster. The case was too emotional. His attorney had let him slide on his bills before, but that had come to an end last month.

  He knew how to negotiate. He’d drop the argument, change the subject and let her think that she’d won for now, then come back later and work on her. “I got us a room at the Ritz-Carlton at Dove Mountain, outside Tucson. The honeymoon suite.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked in a tone that suggested that she wanted to eviscerate him.

  “I don’t want anyone to think this marriage isn’t real. They might understand that we can’t immediately go on a big honeymoon, but we have to take at least one night. I’ll have the receipts.”

  “Great. You can stay at the hotel. I’ve got animals to see to.”

  “Someone is going out to the ranch to care for the stock tonight, too.”

  “You have a stranger at my place, without my permission?”

  “It’s my ranch, too.”

  She made a sound that could have come from an arched-backed, bushy-tailed cat. Once again, his mouth had worked faster than his brain.

  “Do you want me to divorce you before this farce starts? I can do it. Nonconsummation.”

  Any other woman would have been thrilled that he’d taken care of everything. “I apologize,” he said, with little feeling. He felt her glare. “Even you have to admit that it’d look weird if we didn’t have one night to celebrate. We told everybody that we were so in love that we done run off and got married.” He could feel her anger, her annoyance... He wasn’t sure what. Being the good ol’ boy usually relaxed his clients.

  “Cut the crap. You’re not a cowboy.” She paused for a moment, and with a smoother tone asked, “You really think someone is going to ask for receipts?”

  “My ex’s lawyers will. I would, if she was my client.”

  She snorted. “Convenient that you know what a lawyer would do.”

  “The reservations are made.”

  “You got two beds, right?”

  Obviously, she saw the logic of his argument. “I doubt it. It’s the honeymoon suite, but I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “Damn right, you will,” she said. “We’ve got to stop at the ranch, no matter what. I don’t have anything with me for an overnight stay.”

  “There’s a bag in the back—”

  “You went through my stuff?” she said, her voice rising.

  “I stopped at the drugstore and picked up what I thought you’d need. You’d be amazed what they have.”

  He glanced over and noted her stiff posture, along with the small frown line between her dark brows that made the tilt of her eyes even more catlike.

  “You can order anything you like from room service,” he wheedled, using the voice that he’d perfected while married to Missy, the one that calmed cranky women. He resented having to placate her, but that was where he was if he wanted this balancing act to net him custody of his son.

  “Don’t patronize me,” she snapped. “I will do this tonight because it’ll make this marriage—” she spit out the word “—appear real. You pull crap like this again, and I’ll invoke the you-need-me-as-much-as-I-need-you clause.” She stared at him hard before she went on, “I’m an adult woman and expect to be consulted when you make decisions. This is not a dictatorship. I might not have a degree or a fancy address, but I know when I’m being played.”

  “Duly noted,” he said, his grip relaxing just a fraction. How was he going to get through this marriage? The same way he’d made it through the first four years of Calvin’s life, protecting him from his increasingly addicted mother—one day at a time and using every trick he’d learned in the courtroom.

  “Also, make a note to yourself to stay out of my personal life.”

  “It won’t be so bad, darlin’.” He tried his hearty, cajoling voice again. “You know there are people who think I’m plumb charmin’.”

  “Yeah, well, people said the same thing about Hannibal Lecter.”

  Her last words came out as a gulping sound, the kind Calvin made just before he hurled. He turned to her. “You okay?”

  “It’s your crappy cologne. It’s enough to make anyone want to toss her cookies.”

  “Did you eat anything today? Maybe we should stop.”

  “Pull over.”

  “I didn’t mean now.”

  “Pull over, or I’m puking all over your pretty truck. Right now.” She swallowed again, and he saw the sheen of sweat on her forehead. He swerved to the far right, ignoring the horns, skidding onto the gravel. Olympia pushed open the door before the truck came to a full stop and vomited into the dust at the side of the road.

  He got out and raced to her. It might not be a real marriage, but she was a human being. She dry heaved for a moment and moaned in misery. He pulled open the door to the king cab and rooted for a bottle of water.

  “Drink this.”

  “I’ll just throw up again.”

  “Rinse out your mouth.” He didn’t let her refuse. She took a long swig and handed him the bottle. He went back into the cab for paper towels, wet one and put it on her neck. “Do you think it’s the flu or something?”

  She shook her head and leaned over, eyes squeezed shut. “It must have been something I ate.”

  “You didn’t eat anything this morning.”

  “That’s probably it.” She sucked in a breath. “I’m so dizzy. This is the fourth day in a row.”

  “Fourth day?” Spence asked, his quick lawyer’s mind putting together the facts into a new pattern.

  “Yeah,” she said, pursing her lips as a breath gusted out.

  “Oh, Christ.” He sagged a little against the door. No. No way. “When was your last period?”

  “None of your damned business,” she said and then leaned over again, although there was nothing left in her stomach.

  He had to be wrong. It was the flu. It was the dreaded Hantavirus. It was... Dear Lord, three months ago in a Phoenix motel room, there’d been that broken condom.

  “Olympia,” he started, cleared his throat and tried again before all his words dried up. “Could you be pregnant?”

  Chapter Two

  Olympia’s hand shook as she tried to pee on the stick for the superfast pregnancy results, which had to be negative. She could not be pregnant. She would not be pregnant. She had plans that didn’t include kids, because babies led to living in a trailer hand-to-mouth like her mama and grammy. She’d worked hard to make su
re she and her sisters wouldn’t end up there, too. Agreeing to the proposal had gotten her youngest sister, Rickie, set for college. That meant that it was Olympia’s turn to do what she wanted without worrying about someone else first...like a baby. How many more seconds? Too many.

  She wanted to throw up again. Her stomach flipped just below her breastbone. That couldn’t be morning sickness because it had passed noon hours ago.

  “It’s been ten minutes,” Spence said through the door. He’d almost carried her to the honeymoon suite after a quick stop at the drugstore. She’d made him go in and buy the stupid test that would prove she wasn’t pregnant. She had her life mapped out. She’d go on the road with the rodeo, working with stock until she had enough money for the kind of horse that could be a star barrel racer, unlike the two horses at her ranch—rescues no one else wanted.

  She didn’t answer Spence. What a coward she was. Not very cowgirl of her. Pony up and read the damned stick.

  Spence said louder, “What’s going on? Did you pass out?”

  “I... It’s a few more minutes.”

  “I told you to drink more.”

  She wanted to moan in embarrassment and frustration. Not normally squeamish or girlie, talking with a near stranger about her bodily functions made her want to squirm. “Drinking a bunch of water after puking is not a good idea.”

  “I told you that I’d get you ginger ale.”

  She didn’t think the ginger ale would stay down any better. “Go stand somewhere else.”

  “When Missy was pregnant with Calvin, she was only sick until the end of her fourth month, then she was fine.”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “The condom broke, Olympia.”

  “So? Do you know what the chances are of getting pregnant?”

  “Really good when the condom breaks.”

  Didn’t he get it? Being pregnant would be a disaster. James women were born without maternal instinct but with a knack for picking men who made even worse fathers. Olympia, named for the beer her mother blamed her conception on—as if any kid wanted that kind of detail about their making—had barely known her father. The only good thing he’d done for her had been leaving her the ranch. Broken-down and not much more than scrub and sand, but it was still hers—if she could deal with the back taxes, the current taxes and all the other bills.

  Like her mama, who she’d vowed she’d never be like, Olympia now stood in a bathroom, waiting to find out if another James baby was on the way, this one to a pretend cowboy with a kid and a crazy ex. The kind of country-and-western song she didn’t want her life to be. Olympia’s eyes burned with tears. She wanted to sob and wail, but she couldn’t do any of that because she had to hold it together. A stranger stood on the other side of that door. A man she’d met at a friend’s wedding and who should have been a pleasant memory. Maybe when she was ninety and needed help getting things from the high shelf, she’d want to be tied down to a man. Until then, she’d follow the rodeo.

  “It’s way past time.”

  Olympia started, and the stick skittered across the bathroom tile.

  “You okay?”

  She crawled on the floor. The doorknob rattled. Her head swam. She stopped all movement, not sure whether she was going to pass out, throw up or just die of fear.

  “Olympia, open the damned door.”

  A giggle burst from her, the sound echoing in the gigantic bathroom, which would fit two of her bathrooms at the ranch.

  “I’m going to break down the door if you don’t stop laughing.”

  “Drama queen...wait...guess that’s drama king.” Her hysterical giggles escalated. The door handle jiggled violently. She sat against the vanity, ignoring the stick half a bathroom away. If she didn’t look, then it would go away. Even as that thought flashed through her head, she knew it was infantile, but her brain just wouldn’t accept that she could be pregnant. Not after all her vows and precautions and all the times she’d told her mama that she’d never have kids.

  Thud. “Damn,” muttered Spence. He really was going to break down the door. Afraid to stand on her noodly legs, Olympia crawled to the door, then just stared at the handle as it forcefully shook.

  “Open the door, Olympia,” Spence said in a new voice, neither authoritative nor wheedling. “We’ll take care of this.”

  He said that now, but... She reached up and unlocked the door, catching a glimpse of the stick. In that moment her whole life passed before her eyes. Who was the drama queen now? She scooted away and sat again with her back pressed into the vanity, her head on her knees, gulping down the nausea and dizziness. Was this how Mama had felt the first time she’d gotten pregnant? Sick, scared and, crazily enough, hungry for animal crackers with hot sauce? Olympia stifled another moan of misery and embarrassment.

  * * *

  SPENCE OPENED THE door slowly, not sure what he’d find in the bathroom. He hadn’t heard anything that sounded like Olympia tearing up the room, but his ex-wife, Missy, had taught him destruction could take place in complete silence.

  “Did you look?” he asked softly, kneeling beside her. She gulped hard. He didn’t move, trying to decide what the sound meant, then he saw the stick on the floor beyond her. Three feet away. He could reach out and touch it. Not that he really needed to see it. He knew. He heard a mouse-quiet “No, no, no” coming from Olympia. He stood, took a breath and reached for the stick. Pregnant. Written as clear as day, as clear as the type on their prenuptial contract. Olympia was going to have his baby.

  The caveman part of his brain did a fist pump. This woman was carrying his baby. Wait. They’d been together one night. Who knew what had happened in the months since then? He remembered again the broken condom, and his sister-in-law, Jessie, telling him that she’d been surprised to see Olympia and him paired up. Jessie’d told him how her friend was nearly a nun, usually too busy with siblings and scraping together money. That didn’t mean that Olympia hadn’t done the two-step with another cowboy, though.

  “Olympia,” he said, laying his hand gently on her back, like he would Calvin after a bad dream. “It’s positive.”

  She shook her head.

  “Now, I’ve got to ask. Is the baby mine?”

  He never saw the punch that came at him sideways and smacked into his throat.

  “I’m not a slut,” Olympia said low and fiercely.

  He swallowed hard around the pain. “It’s a reasonable question. I only met you at the wedding, and you slept with me.”

  Her head snapped up from where she’d let it drop onto her knees. Her slanted eyes narrowed further, the tabby-brown darkening to near black. “So I’m the slut, and you’re what, just a stud? How do I know you’re not a serial impregnator? You said the broken condom was an accident, but was it?”

  “‘Serial impregnator’? That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Maybe you get some kind of sick thrill out of being a baby daddy and abandoning your children. Men are like that.”

  Now she was starting to piss him off. “I have one child. I guess now I’ll have two. That’s it. And the reason I’m with you is because I want custody of my son.”

  “Probably for the child support,” she muttered.

  Hostile witness. Think of her as a hostile witness. He took a deep mental breath and worked on moving his features into a friendly smile, something that crossed good old boy with beta male. “Come on, darlin’, the floor in here is cold, and we’ve got some heavy-duty jawin’ to do. Let’s go sit on the couch so we can figure all this out.”

  She pulled away from the fingers he’d laid on her shoulder. “That really works on people?” She clasped her hands together until her knuckles went white. “The test could be wrong. It says so in the fine print...”

  “Darlin’—”

  “Don’t call me that. I am not y
our darlin’, and you are not a cowpoke or whatever the hell you’re pretending to be.” Her chin came up, matching the flat annoyance in her eyes.

  New tactic. He dropped the drawl and went for reasonable attorney. “Do you really think you’re not pregnant? You’ve been throwing up. You haven’t had your period, right? And the condom broke. How likely is it that the test is wrong?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Take another one,” he said, holding on to his reasonable tone by the last thread of his patience. “I got three different ones.”

  He hesitated a moment, then moved out of the bathroom to give her time for the news to sink in. He needed a few minutes, too. As an attorney, he knew how to look calm, cool and collected, even when he wasn’t. He went to the bucket with its celebratory bottle of champagne. No. He hated the stuff, plus this called for something stronger. Cracking open the minibar, he got out the two tiny bottles of whiskey and gulped down the liquor in the first one without bothering to find a glass. He enjoyed the warmth as it hit his stomach and spread out from there, thawing the cold ball of dread...and excitement...that had lodged in his gut. For the second bottle, he found a glass and left the room quietly for ice.

  “Oh, my God,” he said to himself as he walked the corridor. A wife and a baby. That had not been how he’d imagined this day ending. Actually, his hope had been to convince her that there was no reason they shouldn’t enjoy each other again. They were married, after all, and had proved that night they were compatible sexually—more than once. The night, apparently. He stopped in the middle of the hall with the ice bucket, trying to take in the fact that he was going to be a father again. Maybe a little girl this time?

  When he got back to their room, she’d closed the bathroom door again. He poured his whiskey on the rocks, went to the window and stared out over the golf course below them. Lifting his glass to take a drink, he stopped when he saw his reflection in the window, a silly grin splitting his face. Maybe this wasn’t exactly how he’d wanted things to go, but having another child, making a family would never be a bad thing.