Aiming for the Cowboy. Mary Leo

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      “It’s a precaution. In the meantime, eat ginger for your nausea, get plenty of rest and increase your calorie intake. You might want to consider eating smaller meals. Sometimes that helps. Start taking prenatal vitamins—you can get them just about anywhere—and try to add plenty of calcium to your diet. Make an appointment with an ob-gyn when you get home.”

      “This is happening too fast. It changes everything. I don’t like change. It throws off my equilibrium.”

      The doctor hesitated for a beat. “There are other options if you don’t want this baby.”

      Her words hit Helen like a shock wave, taking her breath away.

      When she was able to breathe again, she protested, “Who said anything about options? Of course I want this baby. I’d be crazy not to...wouldn’t I?” She paused as the thought of other options settled in her mind.

      She shook her head. “I’m pregnant, and I’m staying that way, at least for the next seven months anyway.” Her heart skipped a beat. “I’m pregnant!”

      The enormity of her condition began to sink in. The idea of motherhood scared her silly. Yes, she loved kids, as long as they belonged to someone else, and yes, she sometimes liked Colt’s boys, when they weren’t dropping frogs in her drink or using the latticework in her backyard as target practice with her spring fruit. She didn’t have to discipline them or worry if they were eating their veggies or tormenting their teachers. But most of all, she didn’t have to be responsible for anyone but herself.

      She’d always prided herself on her freedom. Her independence. She could join the rodeo circuit and be gone for months at a time. Pursue her dreams. Be a free spirit. Make love with no strings attached.

      Suddenly that flimsy string had turned into a rope, a thick rope that tied her to Colt Granger, a rope made out of ten-gauge steel that could never be cut.

      Never, no matter what.

      She shivered at the thought, or was it simply cold in the office? Truth be told, she didn’t know much of anything at the moment. Her brain was in a state of shock. Thinking was not part of its current function.

      “Great. Then congratulations, Helen Shaw. You’re going to be a mom.” A warm smile spread across the doctor’s face as a tsunami of nausea drenched Helen in warm sweat.

      “I’m glad somebody thinks so,” Helen mumbled while trying to get control over her roiling stomach.

      Now all she had to do was figure out a way to tell Colt, a man who most certainly did not want another child. A man who could barely handle the kids he already had, let alone one more. A man she’d tried her best to steer clear of, knowing full well he represented everything she didn’t want. She had known better not to sleep with him.

      They were merely friends.

      Nothing more.

      But she’d done it anyway.

      Now what?

      “Cheer up. At least you’re not dying,” the doctor said on her way out the door.

      Helen nodded, smiled and decided dying might have been the better option.

      And as if the universe was angry at her for thinking such a horrible thought, nausea overtook her and she vomited in the tiny trash can right on top of Doctor Joyce’s latex gloves.

      * * *

      FOUR-YEAR-OLD JOEY GRANGER sat up on the edge of the red slate roof of the two-story barn swinging his legs, looking as happy as a fly on a honey pie. It was his birthday, and Dodge, his gramps, had invited half the town of Briggs, Idaho, for the annual spring barbecue on the Granger family ranch, a sprawling homestead that encompassed enough land for a sizable commercial potato crop, a hundred head of cattle, three ranch houses, a couple stables, several outbuildings and enough open range for deer and elk to call it home. The ranch landscape included grassy hills and valleys, acres of flat land and an assortment of towering trees. Dodge lived in the main house, along with Colt’s brother Doc Blake, a pediatric dentist who had transformed half of the house into his dental office, his young daughter, Scout, and his wife, Maggie. The house had a view of the Teton mountain range to the east, and a sky that wouldn’t quit to the west.

      Travis, the youngest of the three brothers, had built his own house as soon as he was old enough to live on his own on the northeast corner of the land, closer to the town of Briggs itself, about a fifteen minute drive from the main house. Then there was Colt’s place, which he built on a bend in the Snake River, which ran through the property. Colt figured it to be the perfect location for raising three spirited boys, Joey being his youngest.

      Unfortunately for Colt, most of the townsfolk and their kids had decided to attend the birthday celebration, including Jenny Pickens, Colt’s latest match-up courtesy of his brother Travis, who had assured him this girl would be the perfect fit. A fine gesture if he was at all interested in another woman, but ever since he’d slept with Helen Shaw the search had come to a grinding halt. Problem was he knew darn well that capturing Helen’s heart seemed as probable as his trying to catch a raindrop in a thunderstorm. The girl had already planned out her life, and it didn’t include raising three strong-willed boys on a potato ranch in Briggs, Idaho.

      Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

      The heck if he hadn’t struggled to get her out of his head. But she lingered on him like the scent of cherry blossoms in spring. It should never have happened. They were good friends and he had aimed to keep it that way, hadn’t meant for it to go any further, never planned to take the friendship to the bedroom. But he’d given her that dang necklace as a going-away present, which seemed to warrant a goodbye kiss at her front door, and before he knew what hit him, that innocent kiss exploded into a night of pure firehouse passion.

      Not that he would go back and change anything, he wouldn’t. He simply needed to stop thinking about it and comparing Helen to other women.

      Like, say for instance, Jenny Pickens, who could talk a rutting bull to sleep. Which accounted for why Colt hadn’t seen his boys move the trampoline closer to the barn and why when he eventually spotted Joey up on the roof through the kitchen window, after listening to Jenny drone on about her bunion removal ordeal, he near about died right there over Joey’s strawberries and cream birthday cake.

      “What the—” Colt said as he ran out the back door, past Jenny, who yammered on about the causes of bunions.

      Joey’s two older brothers, Buddy, who was going on eight years old, and Gavin, who’d recently turned six, along with several other children on the ground goaded him to jump down onto the large trampoline they’d managed to move closer to the barn. Colt didn’t share their enthusiasm for the jump and did a record-breaking sprint toward the barn to try and stop what was sure to be a horrible miscalculation of a kid’s innocent prank.

      “Don’t you dare!” Colt yelled as he came closer. “Joseph Dodge Granger, you better not jump or there’ll be hell to pay!”

      But Joey apparently couldn’t hear him and instead prepared himself for the leap of faith.

      He twisted himself around and stood on the edge of the roof, ignoring his father’s plea.

      Colt screamed louder this time. “Don’t do it, son!”

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