Читать книгу: «His Pregnant Texas Sweetheart»

For Babs Woods

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Ryan Ford signaled and pulled off Main Street into the parking lot of Jenkins’. The pub’s name was a testament to its no-nonsense atmosphere as a favorite local hangout. He might not be a drinking man, but he wasn’t abstaining from the best hot wings in Peach Leaf, Texas. After turning off his vehicle, he headed toward the door.

Walking into that pub was like taking a step into the past. The thick, delicious scent of frying chicken hit his nostrils, and the twang of country music from an ancient jukebox spilled out over heel-marred hardwood floors.

He swore not a single thing had changed, not even the barstools, which were made from salvaged tree stumps after a field nearby had caught fire a good twenty years ago. Each of the stools was carved into something unique—from horse behinds to totem poles. He couldn’t help himself. The stupid old things still made him chuckle. The only thing notably absent from the setting was a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.

Ryan smiled to himself, thinking of the ruckus it must have caused with the locals when whomever had been in charge decided to do away with smoking in bars.

The wall was still decorated with photographs of famous folks who had managed to stumble into Peach Leaf on their way to somewhere else. In snapshot after snapshot, famous arms were draped over and over again around the pub’s heavyset owner, Maude Jenkins, and her rail-thin husband, Jimmy. The couple smiled in each and every one, including the shot of Ryan and the rest of the senior varsity football team. A few of the photos were newer—ones Ryan hadn’t seen before—and the evidence that two of his favorite people were still happy after all this time made his heart dance a little two-step.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” The deep, smoky voice jolted Ryan out of his thoughts and he turned from the wall, smack into the arms of Maude. “Where in the hell have you been, boy? What’s it been? Fifty, seventy-five years since you’ve graced us with your presence?”

Ryan wrapped his arms around Maude’s broad shoulders and squeezed her into a hug. Her warm scent—a strangely comforting combination of leather and flowers—brought back memories of Friday nights after football games, when a good portion of the town had come to this same dive to celebrate wins.

“Hi, Mrs. Jenkins. How’ve you been?”

Maude flashed a huge, pink-lipsticked grin and held him out with her arms to give him a long once-over. “I’ve been fine, kid, just fine. But never mind. How the hell have you been?” She embraced him again and patted him on the back.

The woman was strong as an ox. The team had always teased her that she would make an excellent linebacker, and Maude, bless her, had never once taken offense, but rather accepted the comment as it was meant coming from clueless male teenagers—a compliment. Those pats would have knocked the wind out of a smaller man, but Ryan held his own at six-foot-two.

“Just fine, Mrs. Jenkins. Just fine,” he said, careful not to say too much.

Ryan and his father had discussed the sale of the Peach Leaf Pioneer Museum for months before they’d coordinated that morning’s face-to-face meeting with the owner and director. The museum—a centerpiece of Peach Leaf and a gold mine of West Texas history—would itself become a thing of the past in the near future, as Ryan’s architecture firm partnered with his dad’s construction company to build a cancer treatment hospital in its place. He knew and respected Mrs. Wallace’s reasons for selling her land, but the town was understandably upset about the coming change.

Arrangements were already being made for every artifact, along with the buildings, to be preserved. The university in Austin would take all of the smaller pieces, while the old settlement homes, dating back to the 1800s, were to be transferred to a similar museum just outside of Dallas.

It bothered him a little to know that the old houses wouldn’t be in their original location, but Mrs. Wallace had revealed that they were in desperate need of repair and preservation work. Her family had lovingly allowed visitors to trample through them for years, and the wear and tear had begun to take its toll. Ryan’s father, for all his faults, had worked hard to find a highly recommended specialist to handle the work, and the buildings would be well cared for at their new locale.

It was for the best.

But the town wasn’t likely to see it that way. He knew that it was only a matter of time before word got out that the museum as they’d known it would be gone, replaced by a new, very modern cancer-treatment hospital, and it wasn’t going to be pretty once word hit. The locals would see the benefit of a medical facility: plenty of much-needed new jobs, advanced health care nearby and so on...but they wouldn’t be pleased that the hospital would cost a piece of their heritage.

Ryan stopped that train of thought; it shouldn’t bother him. After all, Peach Leaf wasn’t his home anymore, and after he designed the buildings, the rest was his father’s problem. Ryan planned to be long gone by the time the news hit the fan.

Mrs. Jenkins chatted with him for a good half hour before finally releasing him from her grip to grab his arm and drag him over to the bar. She planted him on a stool and set to work, and before long the most decadent meal he’d had in ages was spread out in front of him like a king’s feast. He took a bite of a home-style fry and savored it before tucking into his chicken and munching with contentment while Maude chattered away about the locals.

It was early in the evening, and his only companions were Mrs. Jenkins and a few people he didn’t recognize, so if the President of the United States himself had walked in from the kitchen a moment later, it wouldn’t have surprised Ryan more than who actually did.

* * *

If there was one thing worse than getting laid off from a job you loved, it was having to ask for an old job back that you, well...didn’t.

It wasn’t that working for the Jenkinses fresh out of high school was bad; it just wasn’t what Katie had wanted to do for the rest of her life. Maude and Jimmy were wonderful employers who’d treated her the absolute best for the two years she’d worked for them, but even they had been glad when Katie had accepted the offer at the museum—they had known it would make her happy, and told her they were glad for her each time she dropped by for a Coke in the years since.

Katie lost herself for a moment, letting reality slip away briefly as she thought about how she would care for the little one growing inside of her, alone, without her work at the Peach Leaf Pioneer Museum...work she loved so much. Each morning, as most people sat down at their desks following long commutes, read their emails and planned for days full of business meetings in over-air-conditioned conference rooms, Katie was busy donning petticoats and pinning her thick, shoulder-length hair up in late-nineteenth-century Gibson Girl fashion. She couldn’t imagine ever enjoying another job as much. She loved teaching kids about her hometown’s history, demonstrating how her ancestors wove clothing, constructed rope and baked bread, and showing adult visitors how to slow down, to take a step back in time and relearn the quiet pleasure of hard work and fruitful hands...

Three months ago, a couple of weeks after her excited pregnancy announcement, her now-ex-fiancé, Bradley, had informed her that he wasn’t cut out to be a father, that he had no interest in building a family with her. Katie had been devastated...and livid. Sure, they hadn’t discussed children beyond a few casual comments here and there, and yes, the pregnancy was unplanned, but she hadn’t expected Bradley’s reaction to be so extreme. He had never expressed a serious interest in fatherhood that she could recall, but neither had he ever specifically stated that he didn’t want kids. They’d only been together for a year, and Katie always figured they would have time to discuss their hopes and dreams before planning a family. But birth control wasn’t guaranteed to work and the baby was a surprise...to Katie, an incredible, lovely surprise.

Bradley hadn’t shared her sentiment and had even made suggestions about how she should handle things that made her skin crawl. She’d made a big mistake in believing that Bradley was a better man than he’d turned out to be...but keeping their baby was not a mistake. Her sudden singleness and the pain of giving up the two-bedroom apartment she and Bradley had shared because it just didn’t feel like home without him was a lot to carry on just her own shoulders. Plus that morning’s news that in a few weeks, when the museum shut down, she would no longer have a salaried job with benefits for herself and her child. Despite all of that, and all of the other emotions churning around in her heart, Katie hadn’t felt afraid.

Until now.

She had a supportive family who would stand by her every step of the way. Her parents were as open-armed as they’d always been, and she knew they would be an amazing source of support when the baby came, but Katie didn’t want to lean too heavily on them. She wanted to be able to care for her child on her own. And her close friend June had welcomed Katie into the small but lovely cottage they’d shared ever since.

After Bradley had left, she’d pulled herself together and vowed to be the best mom she possibly could—plus some—to make up for the baby’s absent father. For a short time, everything had been okay.

But that was before the job she loved, the career she’d built over the past five years, was threatened.

Just that morning, Katie’s boss had informed her of the museum’s sale to an unknown buyer, and its subsequent pending demise. The artifacts and a few of the antique buildings would be preserved elsewhere, but the museum itself, and all of the jobs it took to run it, would be eliminated. Evidently, the Peach Leaf Historical Society simply didn’t have the budget to outbid the vast property’s potential buyer, and a state-of-the-art hospital was to replace the museum.

Peach Leaf was a small town with more people than work, so of course Katie could see the benefit of so many potential jobs...but what about the town’s history? Its culture? What about the joy the museum brought to the community through its annual fall and Christmas festivals and its children’s learning programs and senior activities?

She shoved the thought aside, unwilling to let her mind linger and build anxiety and dread over something she couldn’t control. She focused instead on the present.

Katie’s favorite time of year was close at hand—the Peach Leaf Pumpkin Festival—and she and her coworkers had a packed schedule of events planned for that weekend. She couldn’t wait for the upcoming hayride and campout, couldn’t wait to pile a bunch of kids into the museum’s old farm trailer and drive them the three-mile loop around the pioneer settlement, where five original homes still stood, for an afternoon of horseback riding and swimming, and a night under the stars.

Katie smiled to herself. She always made sure to pack supplies for s’mores. She knew the kids and the other staff would tease her because the treats weren’t exactly “authentic pioneer food,” but Katie didn’t care. She treasured sharing the desserts with the children and seeing their eyes light up as they made sticky messes and huddled together for ghost stories around a glowing campfire. Plus, this year, it would give her an excuse to indulge in the chocolate cravings she’d been having lately.

A giddy rush rippled through her, just like it had when she was a kid. She was practically counting down the seconds.

But the rush was closely followed by a scratchy tightness that wrapped around her heart when she realized that this would probably be the town’s last festival.

There were so many things to worry about. Aside from the most pressing issue—how to support the baby she couldn’t wait to meet—there were a million other problems... How would she continue to afford her rent or gas for her geriatric truck? How could she ever replace the job that had given her so much joy, so much to look forward to?

The museum was Katie’s past and present. She’d believed until this news that it would also be her future, as she’d planned to work her way up to director and take over from her boss one day, in time to send her kid to college.

Her mom and dad had taken Katie to the Pumpkin Festival every year since they’d moved to Peach Leaf just after Katie’s sixth birthday...right next door to Ryan Ford. The two had been best friends from the instant they met, despite Ryan’s hesitation to hang out with a girl “covered in cooties.” Like the rest of the town, the neighboring families had gathered at the festival every year, and those times were some of the best of Katie’s life. It was why she’d been so thrilled when she’d gotten this job, and it was why she put every ounce of her heart into the museum.

Katie braced herself against the sudden memories of weekends with the best friend she’d eventually grown to see in a different light, and eventually lost to someone else...someone who saw that light first and claimed it.

She shook her head, pushing Ryan Ford from her memory.

Katie sighed. It was with a leaden heart that she had stepped back into the pub that late afternoon on her way home to see if her former employers needed any help. She wasn’t alone anymore; she would soon have another person to provide for. When she’d stepped into the kitchen and Jimmy—pretending not to eye the curve of her growing belly—said she could come back anytime, even if there wasn’t any work to be done, she wasn’t sure if she should smile or cry.

She grabbed a fresh Jenkins’ T-shirt to wear on her first shift. They’d agreed she would start the first of November, and Katie had just swung through the saloon doors to make her way back to her truck when her eyes landed on Ryan Ford, eating chicken wings at the bar as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

An icy tickle ran up Katie’s spine and she stopped midstep.

“Ryan?” she called across to the bar, her voice shaky and thin. Maybe it wasn’t really him. She’d had a long, terrible day, so maybe she was just imagining him sitting there like a mirage from her past, or a ghost; she couldn’t be sure. Her feelings for Ryan Ford were so complicated, had wavered so much over the years that she couldn’t be certain what would happen if it really did turn out to be him.

She didn’t have to wonder much longer, because it only took one glance at his face—that incredible face she’d hated so hard, and loved even harder—to know that it was Ryan.

My Ryan, she thought, before instantly correcting herself.

He’s never been yours.

He stared back at her, blinking as though trying to see her clearly through a veil of fog. He didn’t say anything for a moment that stretched out like eternity. Then he set down his fork and spoke her name, the sound of those two simple syllables rolling over his tongue making her knees go weak until they were about as useless to stand on as pillars of sand.

Katie grasped at the doorframe and steadied herself, and when she looked up again, he was crossing the room toward her.

He stopped about a foot away and seemed to second-guess his decision. She immediately cast her eyes down, unwilling to glance up again, but that didn’t stop what she’d already seen. Ryan Ford had always been a pleasure to look at; there wasn’t a woman in the world who would disagree. But the man who stood before Katie was...gorgeous.

He had Ryan’s deep hazel eyes—tiger eyes, her mother had always called them—and Ryan’s russet hair, wavy and unkempt and too long, as usual. And that was Ryan’s mouth she’d seen, the bottom lip fuller than the top—lips Katie had kissed only once and wished for since. And there was Ryan’s height, towering over her...making it darn near impossible to deny the truth.

A million different things rushed through her all at once. She wanted to punch him right in the face, and she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to scream at him and tell him to go back where he came from and she wanted him to hold her. She wanted to kick him in the shins, and she wanted to feel his mouth on hers. Katie couldn’t make sense of any of it, and she was afraid of what she might do if he stood there much longer.

She didn’t ask him why he’d done what he had done, why he’d never once contacted her after he’d driven out of town in that rusty old piece-of-junk truck—that stupid old thing Ryan had worked his ass off for just so he wouldn’t have to use his dad’s money—and never looked back. Why he’d refused to answer her that night when she’d asked him if he felt the same way she did. And...why he’d let her fall right out of his life, as though she’d never been important enough to hold on to.

The thoughts wouldn’t stop swirling around in her head, and Katie felt as if she was going to be sick. Ryan was still standing there staring at her, his face an unreadable mask, when she sucked in the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and pulled herself together. Before she had a chance to do anything stupid—before she had a chance to make her day even worse than the epic disaster it already was—Katie did what Ryan had done all those years ago.

She slipped past him and walked away.

Chapter Two

Footsteps crunched over the gravel behind her as Katie raced through the parking lot toward her truck, and she couldn’t help but wonder if they belonged to Ryan.

Jeez. Is that what I wanted? For him to follow me?

Once, a long time ago, it would have been a resounding yes, but now...now her world was so completely backward that she wasn’t sure.

Could this day get any worse?

“Katie,” Ryan’s voice rang out behind her.

So that was him following her. Her head and heart were in such a jumble that she didn’t know how to react, so she just kept walking, digging through her purse for her keys so she would have them ready when she got to her truck. Maybe there was still a chance that the whole day had been just one big nightmare. There was still a chance—a slim one, she knew, but she would take it—that she could wake up from this and find herself back in her normal life, where each day was wonderfully similar to the one before it and where things made sense. She wanted to go back to that life, because having Ryan Ford show up in town after eight years...that did not make sense.

“Katie, stop!” Ryan called out, his voice somehow gentle and firm at the same time, the sound pouring over her like rain, tempting the dried-up place inside her heart—the place she’d given to Ryan when she’d been just a teenager.

And dammit if she didn’t obey.

Katie halted and turned around, her pulse thumping, still reeling from the surprise of seeing him in the pub, of having him so close to her body, and from the strange mix of anger and sorrow that always welled up at his memory...and now his presence.

She’d imagined this moment before...had always envisioned herself coming face-to-face with her past love in such a way, only to meet him with poise and apathy. A single person shouldn’t be allowed to turn another into mush just by his presence, yet that was exactly what he did to her. Years of time passing, of Katie maturing into a hardworking adult and now a parent-to-be, and still the sound of his voice made her want to fall into his arms.

She took a deep breath. Just because he made her feel that way didn’t mean he had to know it.

“What in the world are you doing here, Ryan?”

There, she’d said his name. It tasted bittersweet on her tongue and felt raw coming out of her throat, but there it was. And it hadn’t killed her.

He stopped walking a few feet away from her, the distance more comfortable to Katie than his nearness inside the bar. As long as he stayed over there, she would be fine. As long as she maintained their current proximity—as long as she couldn’t smell the lemon-and-mint soap he still apparently used, and if she couldn’t hear him breathing—she would be okay. She couldn’t allow him to come any closer, even as she cursed herself for wanting nothing more.

“Katie, it’s so good to—” He moved a foot in her direction, and she matched it with one step backward. “It’s good to see you,” Ryan said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I know you don’t want to see me, but it’s good to see you.”

Katie met his eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t.

She watched as his attention moved down to the roundness of her midsection. His eyes grew wide and he swallowed before his lips formed a thin, straight line.

He lingered there for a moment before he looked back up at her. There was softness in his gaze, along with a...hopefulness...that she couldn’t have prepared herself for.

Eight years had done nothing to temper what she’d felt the night of Ryan’s graduation. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the way his features had shifted when, after several long moments of standing silently in front of her, he’d finally understood what she’d been trying to say.

It had taken over a year for Katie to work up the courage to confront him...to force herself to face what she’d been feeling for far longer than she’d been able to admit, and muster enough bravery to share it with Ryan.

She loved him. Not as the best friend he’d been since childhood, but far more. Even at sixteen, she’d known something then that hadn’t changed since: he was her true love...her person. No matter how hard she tried in the coming years, he would not be replaced.

At the time, she’d been naive enough to believe that loving him was enough to make him hers.

She found out soon enough that other things could come first...that other things could matter more. Things like the baby his girlfriend, Sarah, had been carrying—the baby Ryan had found out about only moments before Katie pulled him aside.

She would never forget the way he looked at her when he told her why he had to go and “do the right thing” by Sarah. Even as he’d told her that it was what he wanted, Katie could see the truth in his eyes.

For a second, a single second, she’d seen what she’d known all along. He loved her the same way—the way she wanted him to. He left that night without another word, the expression in his sad, determined eyes seared into her brain...but she knew. She wished she didn’t—perhaps his leaving would have hurt less—but she knew.

When Ryan drove away that night, Sarah by his side in the cab of his old truck, along with the couple’s few possessions and a jar full of cash Ryan had been saving for college, a piece of Katie went along with him.

She had cried and holed up in her room for two days, wrapped in Ryan’s favorite old sweatshirt with Peach Leaf Panthers emblazoned across the front, but when the last tear had fallen, Katie let it drop, and she’d made a vow to let him go. Ryan was a wonderful childhood best friend and an amazing person, but she wasn’t going to let his memory take away the life ahead of her. He’d taken a piece of her heart with him, but he couldn’t have the rest of her, and she would make her own happiness in the world.

Even if the men she loved kept leaving her.

Katie pushed out the breath she’d been holding.

Yeah, she wanted more. She wanted a family. She wanted a husband to share her life with, and she wanted the baby inside of her. She wanted to re-create the joy that had filled her childhood home. But she was a patient woman, and she was willing to wait for those things as long as she needed to. In the meantime, she’d found a way to create a kind of makeshift happiness, and she’d found a way to embrace the parts of the past that she wanted to keep by working at the museum.

So how was it that, in one day, the world she’d built so carefully was falling down around her? And the last piece to hit the ground was Ryan Ford, who stood staring at her, waiting for her to say something.

“Ryan, I don’t... I mean, I never expected to see you again,” she choked out before clearing her throat. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back here.”

He nodded and his shoulders slumped, and Katie felt herself melt into the molten pools of gold and brown inside his eyes.

“I didn’t know you still lived here, Katie. I didn’t think I’d run into you like this. I’m sorry I freaked you out back there. That wasn’t my intention.”

Hearing him apologize tugged at Katie’s heart. Why had she bolted from him? It wasn’t like her to be so impolite, so unkind. And it wasn’t as though he didn’t have the right to visit his own hometown.

She didn’t have to like him, and she didn’t have to spend more than a few more seconds with him, but that didn’t mean she had a right to be rude.

“No, it’s okay. I’m the one who should apologize for brushing you off. Seeing you just...caught me by surprise, I suppose.” She reached up and tugged at a strand of hair that had come loose from her hairdo.

Oh, God.

She still had her hair up in the Gibson Girl. She must look like a complete idiot.

And why did she care, anyway?

It was Ryan. Ryan Ford, who used to spend every weekend and afternoon at her house because he preferred it to the tumultuous atmosphere his parents’ incessant fighting caused inside his own. Sweet Ryan, who used to call her Katydid like the bug, a nickname no one had used since, one which she secretly missed tremendously.

Ryan, whom she’d loved in a way she’d always known she could never find twice in a lifetime. Anger swelled inside her and Katie was grateful for its presence. It was much easier to handle than the myriad of other emotions she shoved aside.

Stupid Ryan Ford.

“Look, Katie, I—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “You don’t have to say anything else.” She dropped her arm to her side and before she had a chance to do anything to prevent it, his steps had eaten up all the distance between them and there he was...right there in front of her.

Her breath caught in her throat when he opened up his arms and wrapped them around her tightly. She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to, and the worst part was...she wasn’t sure she did.

When she could finally breathe again, his familiar smell washed over her and brought hundreds of memories with it...most of them happy, which startled her. His chest was firm and wide, and Katie resisted the urge to dissolve into him. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she gave in, about how hard it would be to let go.

He must have sensed her tension because he pulled back abruptly, balling his hands into fists at his sides as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them. They stood staring at each other, the air between them a silent pool of chaos, filled with all the things they weren’t able or willing to say.

And what was there to say, really? Yes, she’d had a crush on him growing up...more than a crush. But what he’d done that night—or rather hadn’t done—had erased any chance of whatever unspoken feelings had been between them. The bottom line was, she couldn’t trust Ryan. Couldn’t trust him to be there for her and couldn’t trust him with her heart.

“Look, Katie. You don’t have to talk to me, and you don’t have to stay. I understand if you want to get away from me. I just want you to know that I don’t feel the same way.”