Baby Makes a Match. Arlene James

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СКАЧАТЬ their standings year by year and had hoped that this year they might make the national finals in team roping, which was why Chandler was alarmed and somewhat irritated by Kreger’s failure to show up in Georgia this past weekend.

      The Fourth of July holiday offered up some of the richest rodeos of the summer, and Kreger should have been there, but he hadn’t showed, and his phone went straight to voice mail every time Chandler called. No one Chandler had spoken to had any idea where Kreger might be, and that was decidedly odd, for Pat was a particularly sociable fellow. Chandler supposed that his partner could be ill and holed up in the little house they shared on the small ranch that they co-owned, but it was more likely that he’d merely given in to some wild impulse and hared off in a different direction. It had happened before, though not often.

      If his sister Kaylie, a nurse, had been in town instead of gallivanting around Europe on her honeymoon, Chandler would have asked her to go out to the ranch and check. As it was, he could only hope and pray that Kreger was well and could offer up some clever excuse.

      “So you’re a rodeo cowboy, are you?” Bethany Willows asked, pulling his thoughts back to the moment.

      “That’s right.”

      “What events?”

      “Tie-down roping, steer wrestling, team roping.”

      “No bull riding or bronc busting?”

      Chandler grimaced mentally. Those were the glamorous events. Bull riders and bronc busters were tough, skillful hombres, but the most successful ones were compact men with low centers of gravity. Chandler’s size and skill set partly dictated the events in which he competed, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He loved working with a rope. Still, he wanted to impress this woman, silly as that seemed.

      “Nope, and no barrel racing, either,” he answered flippantly.

      She laughed at that, barrel racing usually being a female event, and he cut her a glance that became a stare when he caught sight of that beaming smile. It knocked the breath right out of him and left his chest hurting. He stared until she lifted her burger in both hands and nipped off a small bite with her even, white teeth. Freshly jolted, he jerked his gaze back to the highway and gobbled down the last of his own meal. Wadding up the wrapper, he dropped the paper into the bag standing open on the console between the seats, doing his best to forget what he’d seen. Or rather, what he had not seen.

      He had not seen a wedding ring on her long, tapered, slender finger.

      Chapter Two

      “So where can I drop you?” the cowboy asked, carefully checking both of his sideview mirrors as he clicked on the rig’s right signal.

      They had driven in silence for the better part of the trip, though he had stopped when she’d asked him to, without complaint. The silence had been protracted during this last leg of the journey, however, so much so that Bethany had closed her eyes and pretended to sleep for part of the time. Now, she waited to reply until the truck and trailer had exited the highway.

      She gave him the address. He gaped at her, his reddish-brown eyes popping wide.

      “That’s Chatam House!”

      “Yes, do you know it?”

      He studied her as if trying to decide whether she was serious. “How do you know it?”

      “Oh, I grew up around here,” she answered airily, not about to tell him the whole of that story.

      He gave her an odd look. “That makes two of us. Actually, I still live here, and I almost always have, except for when I was away at college. I have a little ranch out west of town now.”

      “I left Buffalo Creek as soon as I graduated high school,” she said. She had literally walked out of the graduation ceremony, gotten into Jay Carter’s car and driven straight to the airport, where they’d hopped on a plane to Vegas. Two days later, he’d carried her over the threshold of the house in Humble and left her there while he raced off on business.

      “That’s probably part of it,” the cowboy mused. “What year was that?”

      She told him, and he nodded. “I graduated from college that same year. That would make you about twenty-four. Right?”

      “Exactly twenty-four.”

      “I’m twenty-nine. Guess we just moved in different circles back then. My sister Kaylie’s about your age, though.”

      Bethany shook her head, trying to remember any Chandlers she might have known. “I don’t recall her.” That wasn’t surprising. She hadn’t had many friends. Her stepfather hadn’t liked anyone coming around the house to witness his abusive behavior.

      “I guess Buffalo Creek’s not as small as it feels sometimes,” Chandler murmured.

      “What is it, about thirty thousand people now?”

      “Something like that,” he said, nodding. He made a careful left turn and eased over a pair of railroad tracks.

      Those old tracks, leftover from the days when Buffalo Creek had been a major transportation center for the cotton growers in the area, crisscrossed the town. The cotton was long gone now, but the trains still rattled through town several times a day. Oddly enough, Bethany had missed them when she’d first moved to Humble. The trains were all she had missed, though. Garrett had already been sent to prison, and their mother had been a different person by then. After their mother’s death, Bethany would never have considered coming back if Garrett had not returned here. She still didn’t understand why he had, really. Maybe the parole board had dictated where he had to go.

      As the city rolled past, one graceful street after another, excitement built in Bethany. Her hands skimmed over her belly. Her pregnancy was going to be a shock to Garrett. She probably should have told him, but they’d been out of touch when she’d first realized that she was pregnant. He’d just gotten out of prison, and she’d had no idea where he was headed or how to reach him. Then her world had begun to dissolve, and she’d judged it wiser, all things considered, not to tell her brother about it.

      She’d never dreamed how it would all turn out. How could she?

      Obviously, Chandler mused, he needed a refresher course in the basics of introductions. Somehow, he hadn’t managed to get his last name out there at the diner, and Bethany had apparently assumed that his given name was his surname. Or had she? He tried to remember if she had glanced at his driver’s license as it had lain there on the counter, but he just didn’t know.

      Thinking of that bare ring finger on her left hand, Chandler took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her pretty face, and a shiver of something crawled right up his spine to the top of his head.

      What, he had to ask himself, were the odds that he’d just accidentally run into a pregnant stranger on the side of the road who was headed not only for his hometown of Buffalo Creek, Texas, but right to his family home? The aunties, no doubt, had something to do with this.

      His aunts, maiden triplets in their seventies, might be a tad on the eccentric side, but they were good women. Even more than his retired minister father, they epitomized Christianity for Chandler. They lived to serve a greater cause, dedicating their time, talent, money and even their home, the antebellum mansion СКАЧАТЬ