Baby's First Christmas. Laura Marie Altom

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СКАЧАТЬ we understand you want to be on your way.” Helen smiled around at all the ladies in the gathering. “Are you staying with Pepper and Zach?”

      “I don’t want to,” Jessie said. “Is there a hotel in town?”

      “We’ll have one in the future, I feel certain,” Helen said. “Or at least a bed-and-breakfast.”

      Jessie shook her head. “My family isn’t used to me being anything other than right on schedule.”

      They perked up. “Do tell us about your family,” Pansy said.

      “Well, my mother and father own a cosmetics company called Jessie’s Girl Stuff. I have two brothers. They’re lawyers,” Jessie said.

      “Lawyers,” Pansy said, glancing at Helen.

      Helen smiled at her. “Did you call them, dear?”

      “I let them know where I was. And I told them I’d be on time for the convention in two days.” Jessie took a deep breath. “Zach says I can’t leave, though.”

      “Until your car is fixed,” Helen said.

      “Until…” Jessie paused, not about to admit her plight.

      “Oh, my,” Pansy said, “I do believe our Zach is developing feelings for you, Jessie.”

      Jessie’s eyes went wide. “Just the opposite. He’s quite pigheaded.”

      “Aren’t they all?” Helen said with a smile. “Do you like him?”

      “No,” Jessie said. “Bossy men are not my thing.”

      “We completely understand.” Pansy nodded. “So what we want you to do is call this number.” She scribbled a number onto a tulip-printed pad and handed it to Jessie. “We have a few men in our town, very few, mind you, but the ones we have are mostly useless. I mean, useful.”

      “Yes,” Helen agreed. “Ask to speak to Bug Carmine. He’ll be more than happy to taxi you wherever you want to go. Where is this convention of yours, dear?”

      “California,” Jessie said. “Do you think it will take that long to fix my car?”

      “You could call roadside assistance,” Pansy said. “They’d probably be out here lickity-split and fix you right up.”

      Jessie straightened. Of course they would! “You ladies are marvelous! I never thought about that! I don’t know why I didn’t, except that I never hit a bull before—”

      “And Zach swept you off your feet,” Helen inserted.

      “Yes, and that’s never happened before, either. I mean, how many people hit a poor sweet animal like Brahma Bud…But roadside assistance is the perfect answer! Shame on Zach for saying you all had issues,” Jessie said. “You’re clearly as smart and capable as anyone I’ve ever met.”

      Helen sniffed, reaching for a cookie off the tray Pansy had set down. “Zach said we had issues?”

      “Oh, yes,” Jessie said, nodding. “He said I didn’t even know the meaning of the word until I’d met ‘the Gang.’”

      “Well.” Pansy smiled brightly. “Helen, dear, why don’t you hand sweet Jessie the phone so she can make her call? I’ll telephone Sheriff Duke while you’re doing that, and let him know his baby brother needs his brotherly supervision.”

      Helen grinned and gave Jessie the old-fashioned, floral-painted phone.

      “And if they can’t fix your car today,” Pansy said, “you’re welcome to stay at my house for as long as you like.” She and Helen shared a secretive and satisfied glance as Jessie dialed.

      FAR FROM BEING SUPPORTIVE and helpful, Zach learned that the Gang wasn’t going to be as conniving about him and Jessie as they’d been about Liberty and Duke. Much to his chagrin, they’d ratted him out to his brother about Jessie’s presence at the ranch, earning him a lecture on propriety and a babysitter in the form of Pepper.

      Pepper was the soul of responsibility. A hardworking student and now a much-lauded doctor, she was well respected not just in Tulips, but in the medical community. With Duke and Pepper on his case about his houseguest, Zach was certain he’d never feel the glory of Jessie’s skin again.

      But what had he expected from the Gang? They never operated the way one suspected they might. Now he understood why Duke had been so miserable as the object of their machinations.

      Secretly, he’d hoped that they would try to encourage some type of romance between he and Jessie. He’d been looking, in fact, for some matchmaking by the little old ladies, and perhaps a bolstering of his worth in Jessie’s eyes.

      Something had gone terribly wrong. Jessie was now staying with Pansy, and Helen wouldn’t speak to him. Duke was breathing down his neck, and even Molly hesitated to allow him to pet her.

      He was in the proverbial doghouse, and it was a very uncomfortable place to be.

      But a man had to stand firm. When the roadside assistance fellow came out to the Triple F ranch, Zach told him the car had been repaired and that he could leave. It was lucky he’d thought to hide Jessie’s car in one of the outlying barns on the ranch.

      “It’s hard to be the villain,” he told the chickens that were checking out the white-walled tires of Jessie’s T-bird. “Being dishonorable is not fun. But if I let that gal out of my sight, I could very well end up worse than Duke.”

      He and Duke and Pepper had grown up in a traditional family. Liberty had been raised by parents who mainly ignored her, but luckily she’d lived nearby and had been befriended by Zach—who had always looked at her as a brother would—and by his parents. But her sad upbringing had hurt her all her life. He could never do that to a child of his own.

      He sat on the bumper of Jessie’s car. “I wish I could say I shouldn’t have done it, but I liked being with her,” he told Molly as she sat beside him, her golden fur soft and reassuring under his touch. “I liked being with Jessie more than I ever liked being with a woman in my life.”

      Molly barked at him.

      “Yeah, it’s crazy.” He got off the bumper. “I just hope she’s not as fertile as she looks, because as hard as it’s been to keep her in Tulips, I’d likely never get her to the altar!”

      JESSIE PUT her carpetbag away in Pansy’s guest room, glad she always carried makeup and a change of clothes. She had a secret, one of many, only this one was a big one, and the cowboy had made her realize how much she didn’t like hiding it.

      She was afraid of settling down. She’d simply wanted a baby, and her ex-boyfriend had been the way to achieve that.

      She’d come to the unhappy realization that she’d probably never been in love with him, which probably meant she was shallow and vain. Her family was successful; she shouldn’t have needed to conjure up a relationship in order to validate her goals in life.

      Maybe she was lacking a fundamental building block in her personality, like patience or СКАЧАТЬ