The Convenient Cowboy

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“Come on. What can I make you? Toast?”

The door swung open, and he stepped back from Olympia’s white and angry face. “I’m not hungry. If I eat anything, I’ll throw up. I do not like throwing up, so I’m not eating. I might not be a smart attorney, but I can figure that out on my own.”

“You might be nauseated because you haven’t eaten. Everything I’ve read indicates that having frequent small amounts of food will stop the queasy feeling.” She clenched her fists, and his internal voice said, You had to prove that you’re smarter, didn’t you?

“Do you want me to kill you?”

He backed away. “If you don’t want supper, we still need to talk.” She didn’t move. “Um, I’ve addressed your concerns with the...” He motioned to her midsection.

“Adoption, like I asked?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t walk away from my children.” She glared at him as color flooded her unnaturally pale cheeks. He went on, “The document makes it clear that you won’t be responsible for the child.”

“Fine. But I don’t want a bunch of legalese crap. I don’t have the money for a lawyer to check on you.” She gulped in a breath.

“Are you going to be sick?”

“Probably.” She closed her eyes, and any color she’d gained disappeared.

He reached out to touch her but let his hand hover. They didn’t have that kind of relationship. He really didn’t have the right to comfort her. But he couldn’t stop feeling that he should hold her until she felt like her usual sassy, drive-him-to-drink self. “We can do this later if you need to lie down.” His fingers landed lightly on her forearm. He could feel the warmth of her skin under his fingertips and the slight tremor. He aimed her toward the twin bed shoved against the wall. What the hell? She hadn’t let him into the spare room she’d taken when he moved in. It was so tiny. Why had she insisted he take the master bedroom and its big bed? “Come on. Get in. I’ll finish the draft and leave it for you to read on your own. It’s about protecting you, too.” He worried when she dropped onto the bed, letting her head hang forward.

“If you say so,” she whispered.

“I say so.” He knelt in front of her and pulled off her sneakers. He liked the boots better. He’d like to see her in nothing but those boots. Whoa. That was not what he wanted and definitely not what they needed. What was wrong with him? She was sick. She wasn’t really his wife. More important, she didn’t even like him.

When her shoes were off, she curled into a ball on the bed. “Go away. I want to die on my own.”

“You won’t die,” he said softly. “It’s morning sickness. It’ll go away.”

“Is it morning?”

“Just a turn of phrase. The nausea can happen at any time of day. Researchers believe that it’s a warning system. That usually the illness is triggered by foods that could cause the baby harm.”

“Toast? Toast is harmful?”

“It’s not a perfect system.” He smiled at her tousled hair. He wanted to smooth the strands to comfort her, except the other feelings that had him shifting on his feet had nothing to do with tenderness. Stop it, you perv. “It’ll get better. It always does.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

He stood for another moment, imagining their baby...his baby. Good Lord, he was going to be a father again. He hurried out of the room, so he didn’t do something stupid like cry or give her a hug.

* * *

THE SOUND OF Olympia being sick on the other side of the door ratcheted up Spence’s worry. They’d been at the ranch for three weeks, and Olympia had been sick nearly 24/7...although that hadn’t stopped her from going out to the barn or looking for more horses to board and train.

Fear sweat gathered in his armpits. Could a woman die from morning sickness? He’d looked it up on Google. He pulled out his phone. Hey, he had a doctor in the family. He dialed Payson. Where was his brother, Arizona or Philadelphia?

“What?” Payson asked, sounding harried and annoyed.

“Olympia is pregnant and has been throwing up constantly,” Spence spewed out, the fear choking his voice a little as Olympia moaned in distress. “Do I need to take her to the emergency room?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do I need to take Olympia to the ER?”

“I can’t get past pregnant. Your phony wife is pregnant?”

“Yes,” Spence said, realizing this had been a huge mistake. He’d called on instinct, not with the thinking part of his brain. “I’ll just take her to one of those clinics. Never mind.”

“Don’t hang up,” Payson said. “Olympia is having a baby. I thought you said this wasn’t a real marriage?”

“Pregnancy and marriage are not correlated.”

“I know that, but—”

“It’s your fault. Well, yours and Jessie’s.”

“I don’t see how. You might be a lawyer, but even you’ve got to understand basic anatomy—”

“Ha-ha. Very funny. She’s sick constantly. I swear she’s lost twenty pounds.”

“I doubt she’s lost that much weight. I want to understand how she got pregnant when you’ve been married for less than a month.”

“We met at your wedding.”

“You hooked up at our wedding? Were you so drunk that you didn’t—”

“The condom broke.”

“You’re sure it’s your baby? It seems awfully convenient that you offer her a marriage proposal with money... I assume you offered her money, since you told me you might have to sell that damned truck, which you love better than any man should.”

“The baby is mine.” Spence made himself loosen his grip on the phone. Olympia wasn’t that kind of woman, which he’d known even before she’d punched him. She lived by a cowgirl code like his sister-in-law’s. No matter what she might say about walking away from the baby and her family, she was the one who’d stepped in when her youngest sister lost her scholarship. “I didn’t call you for a lecture. I called you for medical advice. Second, Olympia didn’t know she was pregnant when Elvis married us.”

“Really? An adult woman didn’t put together that she’d had sex, then didn’t have her period? Pregnancy never came to mind?”

“Do I need to take her somewhere?” Spence asked, listening intently at the bathroom door. Silence. Had she passed out?

“If you think she’s dehydrated, yes. Otherwise, make an appointment as soon as possible.” Payson’s voice was coldly clinical. “You know it’s not your job to save her, right?”

“That’s your thing, Payson. I have a prenup contract with her, and it’s all about keeping Calvin safe. I’ll do whatever it takes. Right now, I’m married, and my wife is pregnant.”

“Not your wife, the woman who you talked into acting as your wife. Remember that.”

Spence hung up and stared at the closed door. He raised his hand, letting it hover there for a moment before tapping lightly. “Olympia, you okay?”

A choked “Fine” came through the closed door.

“Open up, so I know for sure.”

“No,” Olympia said, her voice stronger. Water ran in the sink, making the old-as-dirt pipes clatter. The house had been built by someone with enthusiasm but a definite lack of skill. Nothing worked well, and everything needed to be updated, including the bathroom.

“Let me get you some—”

The door opened, and Olympia stood there, swaying just a little, dark circles under her eyes, her lips bloodless. “I’m fine.”

“If by fine, you mean that you could audition to be one of the walking dead...” His heart beat hard in his chest. “We’re going to the ER.”

“Absolutely not,” she said, her knuckles white as her hand gripped the jamb, her jaw thrust forward. They’d been living together long enough for him to know what that meant. A boulder would be easier to move. A stupid part of him admired her grit. “You’re going to the doctor tomorrow.”

“I have an appointment.”

“For next week. That’s too far away. I’ll call from the office, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll get Payson to call them.”

Olympia had just opened her mouth when crickets sounded from her pocket. She pulled out the phone and narrowed her tabby-cat eyes at him in an obvious this-conversation-is-not-done look. “Hey, Jessie, what’s up?” She took a small step from the door. He didn’t walk away. Her paleness worried him. He didn’t want to leave her alone until she was in bed or sitting on the couch. “Payson told you what?”

Apparently, doctor-patient privacy didn’t count when it was your brother.

“Yeah. That night. I can’t talk about it now. I’ve got to go.” Olympia shoved the phone into her jeans’ pocket and turned slowly to him. “You told your brother? We decided to keep it quiet until we worked everything out.”

“I called him for medical advice. I wanted to know about morning sickness.”

“Get that damned agreement out now because we’re going to hammer this out. I don’t want any more surprises.”

“You do know that eventually everyone will know you’re pregnant.”

“We’d better be divorced before then.”

He opened his mouth to tell her that if anyone really looked at her now, they’d know. He glanced down where her shirt stretched across her breasts. The generous curves had swelled to... She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. He said hastily, “I’ll get you toast and soda, then we’ll talk about the prenup.”

“I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_ff66ab68-7985-5c18-a5d5-93d2da5b549f)

Pausing their discussion and moving to the kitchen had gotten rid of any sense of emotional connection, Olympia decided. She sat on the mismatched chair at the table she’d salvaged from a pile of trash left on the side of the road. She’d slapped a heavy coat of sunny-yellow paint on it, which had turned it into a blinding rectangle rather than a “sunny accent.” Maybe she should start buying women’s magazines rather than Barrel Racer News and Ranchers Monthly. The place still needed those homey touches that seemed beyond her. On the other hand, she had zero dollars to make it any better. On the third hand, she’d always lived with zero dollars. Would that ever change? She swallowed hard, heartburn adding to her misery. How could she even have heartburn when she’d eaten nothing?

“What?” Spence asked staring at her hard from where he stood at the cupboard.

“TUMS. I need TUMS.”

“Stay there. I’ll get them.”

Olympia fought to keep her head up so she wouldn’t knock it against the table, weeping. Because she felt like crap...all the damn—darn—time...and because her rodeo dreams and freedom from her never-ending, crushing responsibilities felt further and further away. Worse, she’d gotten harnessed to a man who would leave as soon as he got his son, no matter what he said about family. She knew how this story would end, with her holding a baby and watching him walk away—like every other man in her life.

He stood above her holding out the plastic container of TUMS. His dusty-blue eyes were marred by a shadow of worry and something she couldn’t quite name. She took the bottle, careful to not touch him. She’d learned in their weeks together that even brushing up against him made her shivery and hot. It had to be the pregnancy that had turned her into a heap of exposed nerve endings.

He produced a yellow legal pad from somewhere. She never imagined that lawyers actually used them.

“The current agreement is clear about how we’ll dissolve the marriage, but it didn’t take into account—” he hesitated “—a pregnancy, as you know.”

“I didn’t imagine being pregnant.”

“I know. That’s what we’re trying to address.”

She nodded and stopped as her head swam. Women actually wanted to get pregnant? Her mama had done this four times! If she’d had a different relationship—really, any relationship—with her mother, she’d call and ask when the sickness went away. Jessie had been pregnant once and was trying again, but because she’d lost the first baby, the subject was too sensitive to ask her for advice or even sympathy. “What did you say?”

“I said I want you to sign over full custody of the baby to me in utero.”

“Excuse me?”

“I want it to be clear that the baby is mine since its conception.”

“There you go again, getting all puffed up about your damned...darned swimmers.”