Aiming for the Cowboy. Mary Leo

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      Chapter Two

      It had taken Helen three days to drive to Briggs, Idaho, from Vegas, and on the way she’d taken four home pregnancy tests, gone through three boxes of tissue and arrived on the Granger ranch puffy-eyed, solidly pregnant and homeless. She had leased out her little house for six months to a family of four, who had happily settled in.

      The drive had been grueling due to all the stops she’d made not only to pee a million times, but because she could barely see the road through her tears. She had cried almost the entire drive back, not so much over the pregnancy itself but more about the stifling fear she felt over being someone’s mom. Heck, even though she had recently turned twenty-eight years old, she could barely take care of herself, let alone a whole other person.

      Helen decided that telling Colt he had fathered baby number four after he about had a coronary when his youngest jumped off the barn roof might have been the wrong moment to break the news. Then there was always his date, a woman totally wrong for Colt, who seemed a tad bit overly protective, and clingy.

      Not exactly the optimum time to tell a cowboy who had taken the radical step to ensure he would never father another child that he had indeed impregnated another woman.

      So instead, Helen made her excuses and abruptly left the party right after Jenny Pickens sashayed back to Colt and draped her scrawny little arm around his shoulder.

      That was more than four months ago.

      Since that day, Helen had secured Tater at M & M Riding School in Briggs, where she had boarded him for the past couple of years when she wasn’t on the road, then driven to her parents’ house in Jackson, Wyoming, less than an hour away. She’d spent the majority of her time allowing her friends and family to shamelessly dote on her every whim while she adjusted to her new life.

      Apparently she’d needed all that doting, because only in the past few weeks had she finally reached the total-acceptance stage. She was good with her pregnancy now, had gone through the five stages of mourning over her old, carefully planned life and was looking forward to all that motherhood had to offer...at least on her good days.

      Her sweet and affectionate stepmom, Janet, had provided her with an e-reader and loaded it up with every conceivable book related to pregnancy and the baby’s first year. Some of it soothed Helen’s concerns, while others she’d read, especially details of the delivery, gave her night sweats. She dreaded getting a tooth filled; how on earth was she ever going to push out an entire baby?

      The concept crippled her. So instead, she put the e-reader in a drawer and told herself she’d deal with it later.

      Her logical electronic engineer dad had helped get her finances in order, and had generously contributed to her dwindling bank account so she no longer had to worry about funds. Her cousins, aunts, uncles and benevolent friends had all rallied around her with support and nonstop love. Helen felt truly blessed.

      Now all she had to do was tell Colt Granger he was the father, a fact that everyone in her circle kept nudging her to do, but she kept resisting. Each time she had screwed up enough courage to tell him, she found a hundred reasons why she couldn’t make the phone call or drive that long hour to Briggs. Add to that an element that he might not believe her, and it was everything Helen could do to even think about how she would broach the subject.