Willow in Bloom. Victoria Pade

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СКАЧАТЬ of rest and relaxation, with no brothers looking over her shoulder every minute. That’s all it was supposed to be. That’s all it was.

      Until Friday.

      Friday night when she knew her week was at an end and she had to go back to Black Arrow, back to four brothers who couldn’t leave her alone.

      Just the thought of that had left her feeling the need to go a little wild. To cut loose one last time before she went back. To get out and do something she wouldn’t do at home. To be someone besides a person with four brothers who seemed to need to keep her in a velvet cage.

      So, on their way home from an afternoon at the rodeo that was passing through Tulsa at the time, Willow had confided her feelings to Becky.

      Becky had embraced the idea with a vengeance. A night on the town. Just the two of them. Kicking up their heels.

      Becky had reveled in the free hand to make Willow over. To doll her up in a way Willow never got dolled up. To transform her into a new woman.

      No jeans.

      No T-shirts or flannels.

      No practical shoes.

      No braided hair.

      Becky had loaned Willow a slinky, strapless red dress that fit every inch of the few inches it covered like a second skin.

      Spike-heeled shoes had gone with it, but Becky hadn’t stopped at merely outfitting Willow. She’d also played beauty shop with Willow’s hair, with makeup Willow never wore, with perfume and lipstick that were the finishing touches that turned everyday Willow Colton into exotic Wyla and made her feel truly like a different person.

      Out on the town.

      Nightclubbing.

      And that’s where Willow had met Tyler Chadwick. At a blues club.

      She and Becky had recognized him from the rodeo earlier in the evening. He was one of the bronco riders. The drop-dead gorgeous bronco rider with the derriere to die for. The one who had won.

      By that time, Becky had had enough champagne to lower all her inhibitions, and she’d suggested they invite him to join them.

      Willow, who had been feeling no pain herself, hadn’t put up too much of a fight.

      “Just don’t let him know we know who he is,” Becky had whispered to Willow before leaving their table. “He’ll get a swelled head if he thinks we think he’s somebody.”

      And that’s how it had happened.

      Tyler Chadwick had taken them up on the offer and joined them.

      But from the minute he sat down, his focus had been on Willow.

      Or actually, on Wyla.

      Becky hadn’t minded. Not long after it had become clear that Tyler Chadwick preferred Willow, another man had begun to show an interest in Becky, and she’d gone to sit at the bar with him, leaving Willow and Tyler alone.

      Wyla and Tyler.

      Which was when Willow had discovered that her new Wyla persona could be quite a flirt.

      And not only that, she could be coy and cute and coquettish, too.

      She could even be sexy.

      It had all seemed innocent enough. It had been Wyla doing it, not her. Wyla who was laughing that high-pitched laugh. Wyla who was putting her hand on Tyler’s arm. Wyla who was drinking so much champagne…

      It wasn’t completely clear in Willow’s mind how she’d gone from that innocent flirtation in the bar to Tyler Chadwick’s room in the hotel next door. But that was where she’d ended up. In the suite he and his brother were sharing, because of some glitch in their reservation that had upgraded them.

      Which meant that he had a bedroom to himself.

      A bedroom in which he and Willow—Wyla—had had a wild night of passion.

      Mindless passion, as Willow’s head had been filled only with thoughts of Tyler Chadwick and all he was doing to her that made her feel so, so good.

      So, so unlike herself.

      So unlike herself that after a second round of love-making just after the sun had come up, when Tyler had fallen asleep again, she hadn’t been able to believe what she’d done.

      It wasn’t merely uncharacteristic behavior. It was complete insanity.

      And while Tyler still slept, Willow—and she had been Willow again by then—had dressed at record speed and slipped out of that hotel room, out of that hotel and into a cab, putting that night and Tyler Chadwick behind her.

      Which was exactly where she intended to leave them. Forever.

      Then she’d missed her period.

      At first she’d thought it was just stress, but when she’d begun to have some very odd symptoms that couldn’t have been stress-related she’d had to entertain the possibility that something else was going on.

      Pregnancy.

      She’d actually passed out cold in the doctor’s office when her worst fear was confirmed.

      And then she’d come to and cried. Sobbed. Right in front of the doctor.

      That had caused the doctor to talk about alternatives if she didn’t want the child, which had made Willow cry all the harder.

      “Alternatives? I don’t have any alternatives,” she’d wailed.

      But by the time she’d returned to Black Arrow that night she’d thought about the alternatives the doctor had laid out for her and she’d known she couldn’t choose any of them. This was her baby and she was going to have it, raise it, love it.

      She just didn’t know anything else.

      She didn’t know how she was going to have and raise a child alone.

      She didn’t know how she was going to tell her brothers.

      She didn’t know what they were going to do when she did.

      She didn’t know whether or not she should find Tyler Chadwick and tell him.

      Only now he’d found her.

      He just didn’t know it.

      Willow slumped in her desk chair like a wilting flower.

      The father of her baby was a man who obviously had had so many one-night stands with so many different women that he didn’t even remember the women he’d had them with.

      It kept coming back to that.

      Back to what Willow had thought the previous day—that he was the worst kind of creep.

      But he hadn’t seemed like a creep that night СКАЧАТЬ