The Convenient Cowboy. Heidi Hormel

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 sure 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 СКАЧАТЬ