What She Saw

He’d thought about her more times than he cared to admit in the past thirty-seven days. Her quick wit. Her soft curves. Those pink lips.

Hell, he had no business appreciating those anymore. She’d been real clear on where they stood. It was most likely his bruised ego that had him thinking about her more than he knew better than to allow. Usually he was the one walking out, not the other way around.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as she tried to look around his shoulder. Did she have a boyfriend? The only thing he’d known for certain about her during their fling was that she wasn’t married. He should’ve asked about a relationship but assumed she wouldn’t have spent the week in bed with him if she’d been dating someone else.

He’d also thought about that haunted look in her eyes when she first woke from a nightmare. That, he might never forget.

She was almost a foot shorter than his six feet three inches. She had to come in at five feet six, maybe seven. Her shiny auburn hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. She had just enough curves to be a real woman, and his fingers itched to get lost on that silky skin of hers again.

“Sorry. I was just watching someone, and…” Her face twisted, and she took a step to the right in order to get a clear view of the person.

Jordan had never felt awkward with a woman before. Normally, he spent time with people who didn’t expect much in return. After a few rounds of hot sex and mutual enjoyment, they’d part ways. Neither side tried to drag out the fling or make a big deal out of walking away.

He told himself that he felt a pang of jealousy with a strong dose of heartache seeing her again because he knew Courtney, but that wasn’t completely true. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why this felt different from the many others he’d spent time with. It just did.

“Well, I should get out of your way, deputy,” he said to her. Her cheeks flushed, and her tongue darted across full pink lips. Jordan ignored the warning shot to his chest.

It didn’t matter. Courtney seemed to have no interest in him. But the week he’d spent with her had felt like a homecoming. Not since he’d lost his parents—and maybe even long before then—had Jordan felt like he belonged somewhere. Sure, he and his five siblings had taken over the family ranching business along with associated mineral rights. Their inheritance was spread across three states, with significant holdings in Texas.

No one in his family needed to work another day for a paycheck. They got up at 4:00 a.m. to face a long day of work because ranching was in their blood and they loved the land. Jordan was no different. But the ranch didn’t feel like home to him anymore.

He stepped aside.

Courtney grabbed his arm and motioned for him to scoot back over.

Well, he really was confused now. “What’s going on, Courtney?”

“I’m sorry. I was watching a possible suspect.” She glanced at Jordan, and those eyes with cinnamon-colored flecks sent a bolt of lightning straight to his heart. He needed to develop a thicker skin when it came to her, because right then he wanted to haul her against his chest and welcome her back home properly. But that ship had sailed when she’d refused to speak to him again.

Damned if she wasn’t distracted now. Sure, his ego took a hit. Most women made themselves a little too available for the youngest and only single Kent brother.

He told himself that was the reason he felt a sting in his chest and not because he had stronger feelings for Courtney.

“Don’t let me stand in the way of your job.” Hadn’t those been the words he’d used when she’d told him that their time together had been special, but she needed to focus on her work at his cousin’s office?

“I’m sorry, Jordan. It’s a case I’m working on. It’s getting inside my head a little bit,” she said by way of apology. “I should go.”

Courtney turned toward the front of the store. He should’ve walked away right then and there. It was his fool pride that had him standing his ground like it didn’t matter. His bruised ego wanted to say otherwise, but that’s all it was.

Jordan glanced down, and then he saw something in her basket that gave him pause.

Was this the reason she’d rejected him?

Evidence that she had been in another relationship stared back at him.

Chapter Two

Courtney issued another apology before ducking down the nearest aisle in order to put as much distance between her and Jordan as possible. She could only pray that he hadn’t seen the contents of her basket.

Blue Trunks had disappeared. She searched aisle after aisle with no luck. Biting back her frustration and shock at seeing Jordan in Texas again, Courtney used the self-checkout machine and stalked toward her SUV. Her situation was bad enough without running into Jordan.

As she tossed the bag onto the passenger seat, she saw Blue Trunks moving through cars.

She closed the door to her SUV and hit the auto lock on her key ring. She stuffed the keys inside her pocket before resting her hand on the butt of her weapon. The sun was high in the sky, and it was cold enough to require a coat. She wore a deputy jacket, which essentially was like a billboard. She didn’t mind as she doubled her stride so that she could get a look at Blue Trunks’s face.

He stopped at his vehicle, an older-model pickup, which was not uncommon in these parts. He glanced around, and her blood chilled. She was still too far away to make out the details of his face.

“Excuse me, sir,” she shouted, but his head dipped, disappearing before he acknowledged her.

She might not have been close enough to get a description of the color of his eyes, but he’d heard her. She’d bet money on the fact. Didn’t that send another chill racing up her spine?

It meant he was guilty of something. The pickup jutted forward as she got closer, and then it disappeared before she could get a look at the plate. There were enough cars moving in and out of the busy lot to block her view.

Running to catch up to Blue Trunks caused her to be winded, which wasn’t normally a problem for her. She’d been athletic growing up and had easily passed the department’s physical fitness requirements, a stumbling block for many applicants. She woke every morning at 5:00 a.m. to run. It was a habit she’d picked up after playing high school sports.

Courtney’s mother had disappeared with her baby brother when Courtney was ten years old. Her brother, Cord, had been supposed to start kindergarten that year. With a mother who could walk away from a ten-year-old child and a father who had no problem with lengthy punishments, what chance did Courtney have at being a decent parent? She’d asked her ob-gyn to shut off the possibility of parenthood permanently, but he’d said she was too young to make a lifelong commitment to that decision. Courtney had other ideas. A wave of panic washed over her, and she needed to talk herself down as she realized her hands were shaking.

A wave of panic slammed into Courtney at the thought of being pregnant. What if parenting skills were inherited?

There was a strong possibility that she wasn’t, she reminded herself. As she turned to make the walk back to her vehicle, she chewed on a few facts. She and Jordan had used protection every single time. She would’ve been on the pill except that it had been a waste of money after the cop she’d been dating seriously enough to have sex with had been killed practically in front of her eyes. Since sex had been the last thing on her mind when thinking about returning to her childhood hometown, she hadn’t bothered to get a new prescription. Plus, she would be changing doctors once she got settled.

A wave of nausea struck like a physical blow. She pushed through and kept walking.

Back at her vehicle, Courtney opened the passenger door and held on for dear life. She took in a few deep breaths, reminding herself to blow them out her nose slowly in order to calm her racing heart and churning stomach.

The overwhelming feeling of panic crushed her ribs.

“Are you all right?” She’d recognize Jordan’s voice anywhere. It had that deep timbre that wrapped around her. That man could make reading the ingredients of a soup can sound sexy.

“Yeah. Got a hold of something at a potluck that isn’t agreeing with me.” She tried to wave him off.

“Can I get you some water?” There was genuine concern in his tone, and it caused her heart to squeeze.

As much as she didn’t want to come off as a jerk, she couldn’t afford to let him stick around. Especially with the way her body reacted when he was close. Muscle memory had her wanting to feel his hands on her, rough from working outside. For having such rough hands, his touch had been surprisingly soft. And those were more things she couldn’t afford to think about.

The pregnancy test should be safely tucked inside the bag, but she’d tossed that onto the passenger seat before she’d turned away. She didn’t want Jordan seeing something he shouldn’t or asking questions she didn’t have answers to.

Courtney took in a deep, fortifying breath. “I’m okay. Thanks for offering, though.”

A stomach cramp doubled her over. She turned away in time to empty the contents onto the parking lot. So much for being fine.

The next thing she knew, Jordan was next to her, comforting her. His hand on her back caused a whole different kind of reaction in her body. One that was totally out of place under the circumstances.

“That must’ve been some potluck,” he commented.

She didn’t respond.

“I saw the test in your basket, Courtney,” he said flatly. “Are you pregnant?”

COURTNEY STOPPED THROWING UP. Jordan expected a response to his question. He waited. Because if she was pregnant, that meant she’d been in a relationship with someone else during their brief fling. Jordan might have the reputation of a playboy, but there were lines he never crossed and that was one of them. “Courtney—”

She stood up straight and stepped away from him.

“Take this.” He handed her a bottle of water, which she took and then used to rinse out her mouth.

“Are you planning to answer me?” This whole scenario was off. He couldn’t imagine she would use him to cheat on someone else. He didn’t normally misread people or their intentions.

Courtney locked gazes with him. “If I knew the answer to your question, I wouldn’t need the test, now would I?”

“Why didn’t you say something about being in a relationship?” he pressed.

She issued a grunt and twisted up her face with a how dare you look. She was offended?

“Is that what you think? I could—” she made eyes at him “—with you while two-timing my real boyfriend?”

Jordan started to speak but was cut off.

“Because if that’s the kind of person you think I am, this conversation is over.”

What exactly was she saying?

Jordan had to stop a second to let her words sink in. The gears in his head started grinding. The realization struck him like lightning on a sunny day, fast and out of the blue. He was the father. If she was pregnant, a struggling little voice in the back of his mind called out.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a murder investigation to get back to.” She walked past him, and her shoulder bumped him as she passed by on her way to the driver’s side of her vehicle.

Ignoring the intentional snub and the rockets of electricity from contact, he turned and caught her by the elbow. “Hold on. You’re not getting away that easy.”

“Neither one of us is if the test comes back positive,” she retorted.

“I didn’t ask for the easy road, but I deserve to know the outcome as much as you do.” He held his ground. He got it—Courtney was scared, and she didn’t do weak. The brave front she put up could be equated to a bull in a china shop, but she seemed to be clinging to hope, so he didn’t call her out on it. He could tell that she was forcing her strength by the way her chin jutted out. Knowing her since they were kids had its advantages—being able to read her was one of them. And even though she’d annoyed him in his teen years, he’d noticed quite a few of her little quirks. They’d been damn adorable then—a fact he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge in high school—and had turned straight-up sexy as an adult.

He almost laughed out loud. Courtney Foster would balk at being described as adorable.

The tension in her shoulders released like a balloon letting out air. Now it made sense why she was out here shopping on the outskirts of town when there were plenty of stores in Jacobstown. She didn’t want to take the chance that anyone would see her buying a pregnancy test. He got it. Everyone in town knew each other, and people talked. Having a baby would be a big story. The news that Courtney Foster had come home after living in Dallas for the past decade had just died down after a month of hitting the gossip rounds, according to his sister Amber. She’d said there’d been talk for weeks. It was a main topic of conversation and had given the townsfolk a break from chewing on the other big news in Jacobstown—the Hacker and the possibility he would strike again soon.

“I have one stop to make, and then I’m on my lunch break. You can come if you want. It was never my intention to hide anything from you, Jordan. There might not even be anything to discuss.” The hope in her voice at the end of her sentence made him realize this had taken her by surprise as much it had him.

“We were careful,” he reassured. “It’ll be fine.”

“It was probably the potluck,” she added, and the hopefulness in her voice struck him again.

“I’ll bring my truck around to follow you.” He didn’t know where she lived. After their tryst, he’d gone back to Idaho. This was his first time back to Jacobstown since.

“What kind of family business brings you to town, anyway?” she asked.

“I already told you. Family business.”

She used the contents of the water bottle to wash the concrete instead of pressing for a better answer.

A few minutes later, he was behind her on the road.

Jordan hadn’t given much thought to becoming a father. His brothers and sister had all found happiness in the past few years with children and spouses. The Kent brood as a whole had grown exponentially, and that was good for them.

Fatherhood was not a job that Jordan had ever craved. If Courtney was pregnant, there was no doubt that he’d do the right thing by her, by his child. But that didn’t mean he had to be in a relationship with Courtney to be there for his child.

They could start as friends, because they’d need common ground in order to co-parent.

And that’s where Jordan stopped himself. Co-parenting and babies and entanglements weren’t on the schedule for him. Besides, the two of them had been careful to use a condom every time. This was probably nothing more than a scare.

Half an hour later, Courtney pulled up in front of a small ranch-style house with crisscross wire fencing.

His eyebrow shot up as she approached his vehicle.

“Do you mind waiting for me at the gas station a block away?” she asked.

“No problem.” He forced his gaze away from her sweet backside as she walked toward the home’s front door. He pulled away thinking that he was probably seeing things, but he could’ve sworn she had a different look, a glow. And maybe a few more curves that looked damn good on her, but he reminded himself how easy it had been for her to shut down any budding feelings and force him out of her life.

That was the last kind of person he needed to be around. Damn, if she was pregnant, both of their lives were going to change. He thought about the baby boom happening at the ranch. The fact that he couldn’t stick around too long in one place without going a little crazy. He loved his nieces and nephews. But he’d always been the outsider in the family. He’d always chosen the lone path of living far away from Jacobstown, out of Texas.

True to Courtney’s word, she didn’t take long. She didn’t circle back to talk this time as she pulled up beside him. She navigated onto the two-lane highway that led to Jacobstown. He could only assume they were heading to her house. Jordan had no idea where she lived. They’d stayed at her uncle’s abandoned fishing cabin, and then he’d left town at the end of the week.

A baby? What in hell’s name had they done to their lives?

Jordan pulled in behind her at a small bungalow-style house on Acorn Street. She parked and then motioned for him to follow her inside. The place sat on what looked to be a quarter of an acre, in his best estimation. The house was made of white siding and had wood shutters. There were decorative flower pots on a small porch. It looked like something out of one of those home-decorating shows. Jordan had been subject to a few episodes while dining at small eateries on the road back and forth from Texas to Idaho.

Reality was a gut punch as he caught sight of the bag in Courtney’s hand.

In a few minutes, he’d learn if he was a father. He couldn’t even contemplate the ways in which his life would change. He stopped her at the door before she opened it.

A question had been churning over and over in his mind on the ride over.

“Was there even a potluck?”

Chapter Three

“Technically, yes. But, no, I didn’t eat anything,” Courtney admitted. Ever since she’d gotten food poisoning her rookie year at her department’s potluck, she’d skipped the line. She always brought her own food. She’d been so sick that she didn’t even risk eating raw vegetables. That’s how freaked out she was by them.

The best way to avoid eating the food without raising any eyebrows was to get a plate, excuse herself from line by saying she needed to take a call and then put her own food on the plate before returning to her table.

Later, she’d go along with saying Tony’s meatballs were perfection and Angela’s pasta melted in her mouth. She couldn’t think about work without thinking about her old crew. The memory of her dead coworkers crashed down hard on her, squeezing air out of her lungs. The scene. The mob. The blood.

She looked up at Jordan, who’d gone sheet white. “Let’s get this over with.”

He nodded. His sunglasses hooded his eyes, and his expression was impossible for her to read. He’d been clear about never wanting kids even when they were young. She hoped that she wasn’t about to cause his hopes and dreams to crash down around him.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m totally freaked out by the remote possibility of having a baby,” she said, pushing the door open. She didn’t bother to check his reaction. He seemed pretty freaked out by how much his life might change. She’d just started a new job. Jacobstown was supposed to be a fresh start for her. A baby was nowhere in the plans. Besides, she wasn’t in the right emotional place to bring a life into this world.

But if that’s what she was dealing with, she needed to know now.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said to Jordan. He’d removed his hat and sunglasses, and he was pretty damn devastating-looking standing in her living room.

His white-knuckle grip on his hat belied his calm exterior.

He shot her a look that said her comment didn’t make him feel any better. “What do you need to do?”

“I take this into the bathroom with me, do what I have to and then we wait.” She held up the plastic bag in her hand.

“May as well put all this behind us,” he said.

Courtney couldn’t agree more. She peeled off her jacket and then disappeared down the hall. She returned a minute later holding the white stick that had the power to change both of their lives forever. She placed it on her coffee table on top of a magazine and stared at the little window. “Two lines will show up in there if I’m pregnant.”

If Courtney hadn’t already thrown up the contents of her stomach, she would be now.

Three minutes had never taken so long. Neither spoke. Then the stick test yielded a positive reading.

Jordan took a few steps toward the front window and stared out it. If he was waiting for her to speak, he’d be waiting one hell of a long time, because there were no words for what she was currently feeling.

She feared that he might be concocting a plan to ask her to marry him. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“What?” He finally found his voice after a few beats of silence.

“Propose.” Her heart squeezed, which made it a total traitor. Courtney had no plans to get married. Especially not because she’d gotten pregnant. That hadn’t worked out so well for her parents. Being in a loveless marriage had to be the worst sentence, and she understood why her mother had taken off when Courtney was barely ten years old. What she could never understand was why the woman took Courtney’s baby brother but not her.

And she’d never know, because her mother and brother had died in a car crash on a Texas highway a month later. She’d never had the chance to ask why her own mother didn’t love her enough to take her away from the father who’d abused all of them.

“I wasn’t going to.” Jordan raked his fingers through his hair. He turned around to face her, and his expression was granite. The sharp angles and hard planes made for one seriously gorgeous man. But he gave away nothing of what he was thinking.

He was a Kent, and that name meant something. Her family might’ve been a hot mess, but there was honor in being a Kent.

“This is a lot to take in all at once,” she said, unable to read his thoughts.

“It’s simple to me. I have every intention of stepping up to be a father, Courtney. You should know that off the bat,” he started.

She tried to interrupt him, but he brought his hand up to shush her.

“Looks like both of us are thrown off by the news, but that doesn’t change the fact that a baby is coming, and it deserves the best from both of us.” She couldn’t agree more about that part, and when she regained her bearings she figured that she would be saying the same thing. It was foreign to her to hear that from the opposite sex, but then, she’d never been in this situation with her boyfriend and fellow officer Bradley Decks. He’d had a nine-year-old son from a marriage that had ended badly, a boy he never saw. Decks had no plans to marry or have more children. That had most likely been the cause of her initial attraction to him when she really thought about it. He’d been safe.

“I never thought about becoming a mother,” she admitted in a moment of weakness. “I mean, I never thought it was a job I’d ever want.”

The expression Jordan wore told her that he felt the same way about fatherhood. “But here we are.”

“Are you saying that you’re not upset that having this baby is the only option for me?” she asked.

“Did I mention anything about that?” he asked, and she saw the first crack in his calm facade. Good—that meant he wouldn’t try to pressure her into doing something she couldn’t. For a brief second, she thought about adoption. But she’d always worry if her child was being treated the way she’d been.

“No.” She’d just put a down payment on a new car. The house was a rental, and she didn’t exactly have stores of money in the bank after using her personal savings to set up a college fund for her former boyfriend’s kid before her move to Jacobstown. It only seemed the right thing to do considering Becks had lost his life on the job. Babies cost money. This unexpected turn of events definitely threw a wrench in her future plans.

“Good. Because we got into this situation together, and I’ll see it through with you.” The out-of-the-blue news had clearly caught them both off guard. She had no idea what that meant, but the determination in his eyes had her reaching for her purse.

“I have to get back to work,” she said.

“No, you don’t. Not after dropping that bomb. You don’t get to run away so fast this time.”