Daddy in the Making

“This is going to sound odd,” he said. How did a guy get around to telling a woman something that amounted to the lamest excuse in the world? Why would she even believe him?

But what else was he going to say?

He was still holding her necklace. “I’d really like your help in … Well, first off, I need to know when we …”

“Did it? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

All right. That was one way of getting over the awkwardness. She was just as forthright as his brothers.

“I wish I were kidding,” he said. “I had some business at the Hervy Ranch about a half hour away in July—”

“I know. You were dealing with livestock. You told me that right before you talked me into …”

She pressed her lips together, color rising in her cheeks. A buzz skimmed his belly at just the mention of what had gone on between them, even though this wasn’t the time or place for it.

The important thing was that he’d done more than just had sex with her. She was someone he’d talked to around the time of his accident, although he didn’t know how long they had chatted before getting to the bedroom. If she could just give him more details about their time together, maybe that would kick-start his brain and he could piece together more of what had happened before and just after the accident.

She shot him a slanted look. “Why the hell wouldn’t you know when we …” She lowered her voice, glancing around. Discovering that the lobby had emptied, she added, “Were together?”

Here it went.

“When I left St. Valentine,” he said, “I got in an accident on the way to my appointment. Enough of one to send me in an ambulance to the hospital.”

She raised her eyebrows. On her face he saw shock … until her gaze softened for a vulnerable moment.

“An accident?” she asked.

“That’s right. And afterward I didn’t remember where I was, who I was … My brothers and mom were there to help me put things together. Most things, anyway. I’ve got holes right where a lot of my memory used to be.”

She just kept watching him, her gaze finally going from soft and gray to unreadable and cool.

Then she laughed softly, and it wasn’t a funny laugh. Her gaze was sad now.

“This is a joke, right?” she asked.

“No.” What kind of psychotic would approach her again just to lay a line like this on her?

“Whatever it is, it’s not funny at all.”

Conn started to assure her that he was deadly serious, but she had already abandoned her stack of papers and rounded the desk corner, her body fully revealed now.

As he laid eyes on her slightly swelling stomach pressing against her skirt, he froze, unable to follow her.

Rita Niles never looked back at him. She just blindly headed for the hallway, then the closed door to the tearoom, hoping he wouldn’t see where she’d gone.

Conn Flannigan, the man she’d put so much hope in, even after one night. Dumbly, naively, regretfully.

She calmly opened the door, but as soon as she was in the empty kitchen, she leaned on a stainless-steel counter, dizzy, her pulse so loud in her ears, so wild in her chest, that she almost slumped to the floor.

But not quite, because she’d promised herself that nobody was ever going to do this to her again. Not after what her ex-fiancé, Kevin, had done to her. And definitely not after she’d dropped her guard during a wonderful night of seduction with this cowboy, finally believing that she’d been wrong about love all these years.

She rubbed the curve of her belly, fighting the tears.

Conn Flannigan.

When she’d seen him in the lobby today, it’d shocked her right down to her toes, her body tingling in places that should’ve been smart enough to go numb after she thought she’d been left high and dry by him. But, with him standing there, with his thick, black hair that curled up at the ends, with his shining blue eyes, with every inch of lean, tall cowboy in a Western shirt, jeans and boots, she’d come alive in very dangerous ways.

And it was happening now, too, as that night filtered back to her.

She’d been sitting in the Queen of Hearts Saloon, resigned to hours of drudge work ahead of her at the hotel. She’d been in threadbare jeans, an untucked blouse, with her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail, yet when he’d walked in, she was the only one he’d looked at.

And that look … Even now, she shivered from the intensity of what it’d done to her—breathing fire under and over her skin, sizzling through her until it consumed every inch. She could’ve even sworn that time had stopped for both of them, could’ve sworn that every one of his cells was vibrating just as hard as hers were.

If she had the capacity to believe in love at first sight, she might have said that she fell in love with him then and there. Maybe, in those first few crazy moments she’d gotten the closest to love she would ever get again.

He’d ambled right over, offering to buy Rita dinner, sweet-talking her until her knees went to jelly. She’d never clicked so quickly with anyone, flirted so easily, not even with Kevin, who’d taken the slow route with her during days of high school dances and after-graduation dates. But Conn?

That night—that damned magic night—it’d felt as if Conn had been the man she should’ve held out for all along.

He’d walked her back to the hotel, and much to her surprise, she’d found herself forgetting every lesson she’d learned. Her body overtaking her mind, she’d invited him in, first to the lobby. Then, when she’d resigned herself to ditching her all-night work shift, she’d clandestinely invited him to an empty room a floor below her own quarters in the hotel.

She’d been lost in him so deeply that she’d thought …

Well, she’d thought that things could be different this time. Thought that she’d somehow wonderfully crossed a line she’d drawn years ago after Kevin had left her and their daughter.

It’d been that good with Conn, and that was why she hated him—because he’d seemed to be the answer for her. Because he’d made her body and soul agonize for so many nights afterward.

Now, Rita rested her hand on the baby growing inside of her. Ridiculous. She’d been ridiculous to think that one night might change everything, especially for a person who’d spent a long while shuttering herself away, slat by slat, until she looked at the world only through the cracks.

But …

For one night, it really had been that good.

He hadn’t checked in to the hotel, so she’d never gotten his contact information. Besides, he’d told her he was going to be back, so she hadn’t asked for a phone number, an address. He’d taken her necklace in a playful moment, saying he would return it to her that night when he returned for more, almost as if it were a vow.

She’d believed in him.

Believed and been abandoned.

But, she thought, he’d had amnesia.

She started to laugh—a crazy, cracked-at-the-edges laugh that trailed into the threat of more tears as she leaned her head down on her arms, which still rested on the kitchen counter.

Amnesia. How stupid did he think she was?

As she stifled another sob, doubt crept into her. What if …

No. Amnesia was so far out of the question that she shouldn’t believe it.