Rock-A-Bye Bride. Tracy Madison

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СКАЧАТЬ was an awful lot to take in. Anna had never planned on entering motherhood as a single parent. Her mother had died when Anna was young, still in grade school, and the pain of that loss hadn’t fully dissipated. How could it? Everything had changed so fast for Anna and her two sisters—one younger, one older—without Ruby Rockwood’s calming presence in their lives.

      Seemingly overnight, their father became a harsher, stricter, angrier caricature of himself, leaving little room for so much as a grain of happiness. All that remained was a series of increasingly tough days in which the girls did their best to stay as quiet and invisible as possible.

      Thank God for Aunt Lola.

      It had taken years for their maternal aunt to learn the truth of their home life, but once she had, she’d fought for and won guardianship. By then, Anna’s older sister, Elise, had become an adult and had left Steamboat Springs, Colorado, behind. But Lola had given Anna and her younger sister, Laurel, a home that was once again filled with warmth and joy.

      Anna was grateful to her aunt for every last thing she’d provided, but the juxtaposition of her childhood—going from the mostly sweet, pure years from before her mother’s death to the painful, difficult years with her drastically changed father as the sole caregiver—had cemented Anna’s beliefs on parenting, and she wouldn’t have purposely chosen to raise a child on her own.

      Okay, she wouldn’t be completely on her own. Aunt Lola would offer love and support. But even so, Anna couldn’t pretend this situation was ideal or what she had wanted for herself or the children she would someday have. It wasn’t. Simple as that.

      What Anna had wanted, what she’d wished for, was the traditional family unit. Two parents, preferably who loved and respected each other, raising their child as partners.

      Naturally, there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about that now. One night—her first night back in Steamboat Springs after living in Texas for years—that included too many drinks, a handsome cowboy and absolutely no willpower to speak of had altered her life forever.

      It had been a terrific night. She couldn’t deny that, nor would she want to. She hadn’t planned on a baby, but that night with Logan was exactly what she’d needed at that point in her life. She’d moved to Austin shortly after finishing culinary school, following her then-boyfriend and his dreams, and for a long while, they’d made a decent go at being together. But they weren’t right for each other—a fact that became clearer and clearer as time went on.

      They’d gone their separate ways relationship-wise close to two years ago, and suddenly one morning on her way to work, she’d realized that she had no desire to remain in Austin. Coming back here, though, to live with her aunt hadn’t been an easy decision. She’d felt out-of-sorts, dislocated, and had stopped in at a local bar before heading to Lola’s.

      She’d met Logan. They’d clicked. Laughed and had more fun than Anna had experienced in a while. And before she even realized what she was doing, she’d followed him to his hotel, and they’d had...well, a lot more fun. Fortunately, she’d had enough wits about her to text her aunt. She’d let her know she was behind schedule, was safe and sound and spending the night at a hotel—that much was the truth, anyway—and would see her the next day.

      But yes, when she discovered she was pregnant, she’d given herself some space to come to terms with her new reality, the future that awaited her and her child. Once the shock had abated from a raging boil to a roiling simmer, she decided to keep her secret a little longer. Smarter, really, to get through her first trimester safely before breaking the news.

      She’d crossed the three-month threshold several weeks ago, and just the other day, she had finally told her aunt. It hadn’t taken much sleuthing to discover where Logan was living. As it turned out, his brother, Gavin, was married to Haley Foster, and Anna’s aunt was close friends with the Foster matriarch, Margaret. Her aunt had got Logan’s address, and now...here Anna was. And despite her nerves or her fears, she had to take the next step.

      She had to tell Logan.

      Sighing, feeling every ounce of what she was about to do, Anna braked at a stop sign and flipped on her right-hand turn signal. This time, she’d pull into Logan’s driveway and get out of the car. She’d gather the frayed strands of her courage and walk to his front door and knock.

      And somehow, though she hadn’t quite figured out how, she’d find the words to tell him that their one-night stand had resulted in a baby. He deserved to know. That was his right, and whatever his reaction, she’d at least be able to start making plans.

      Whether those plans would include an involved and loving father for her child...well, she supposed that was up to Logan. Oh, she’d give him the space and time he’d likely require to wrap his head around his new reality, because that was only fair. But she wouldn’t wait forever.

      Before this baby—their baby—was born, Anna needed to know if Logan Daugherty was in or out.

      * * *

      Something in his world was going to have to bend real soon, because dividing his time between the Bur Oak Ranch—his family’s four-thousand-acre cattle ranch on the outskirts of Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he’d grown up—and here—Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where his half brother, Gavin, lived—was starting to take a definite toll.

      Yawning, Logan towel-dried his fresh-from-the-shower wet hair before pulling on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He was tired, true enough, but the three-hour-plus commute from here to Wyoming one week and back again the next wasn’t the issue.

      He had responsibilities at the ranch, people who counted on him and a slew of expectations to fulfill. As the only child of the eldest child, he had been groomed from almost day one to take over the family’s ranching business when his granddad retired. Zeke Cordero might disagree, because he was a stubborn old coot, but after a near heart attack and his mule-headed refusal to slow down, that day wasn’t all that far in the distance.

      What he should do was pack up and permanently return to his family and his duty. He hadn’t meant to stick around Steamboat Springs for months on end. But learning of his half brother’s existence, and then actually meeting Gavin, had changed just about every last thing.

      Logan’s recollections of his father were less than sketchy. Made sense, as he hadn’t yet celebrated his third birthday when Denny Daugherty had driven his motorcycle over a cliff. To this day, no one knew if the man had taken his own life or if he’d tragically miscalculated his abilities and a combination of speed and rain-slick roads had caused him to lose control.

      Maybe it shouldn’t matter which was the truth—after all, dead was dead—but to Logan, it mattered a helluva lot.

      If it weren’t for the few photographs his mother had saved, Logan wouldn’t know what his father looked like. And he couldn’t even claim any true, solid memories of the man, just wisps of images and sounds and the oddball scent that would hit him out of nowhere.

      Peppermint, of all possible scents, seemed to be his strongest memory link to the man who’d sired him. The reason for that, along with many other answers, remained unknown.

      For most of his life, his mother hadn’t offered many details about Denny, in an effort to protect Logan. But just over a year ago, on the tail of Logan deciding to conduct his own search for information, she’d finally given in and opened up.

      That was when he’d learned the details of his father’s accident, along with the fact that СКАЧАТЬ