Pregnant With The Rancher's Baby

For the past few months, she’d been torn over what to do and she still wasn’t certain she had made the right choice in telling him about the baby. For one thing, she was beyond tired of being Nate’s puppet. In the past, he would give her a call and talk her into rekindling their relationship, then when everything seemed to be going great between them, he’d find a reason they should stop seeing each other for a while. And for another, she wasn’t sure he deserved to have equal custody of the baby. How good of a father would he be, given his inclination for coming and going the way he’d done in the past?

The last time he decided to pull his vanishing act, she’d told him not to bother getting in touch with her again. It had broken her heart, but she refused to allow him to control the course of their relationship any longer. Shortly after that she had discovered she was pregnant. And even though she felt it was only right to let a man know he had fathered a child, her main concern was whether or not Nate would always be there for the baby. It was one thing to disappoint her. It was something else entirely if he disappointed their child.

Unsettled by the thought, she threw back the covers to sit up on the side of the bed. That’s when she realized just how exhausted she’d been. She had not only slept the rest of yesterday and last night, she was still fully dressed.

Jessie quickly made the bed and headed downstairs. She had the next two nights off and she needed to get home. There were several things she needed to get done this weekend and she still had an hour’s drive just to get back to Waco.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she sighed heavily when Nate came out of the office. So much for avoiding him on her way out.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said cheerfully.

Why did the man have to look so darned good to her? She didn’t want to notice how his straight light brown hair stylishly brushed the collar of his chambray shirt or the way his blue eyes twinkled when he smiled at her. She was still angry with him and resented the way he thought he could come and go in her life without a second thought to the effect it had on her—how much it hurt her emotionally.

“You should have awakened me,” she said, noticing the grandfather clock in the foyer indicated it was already midmorning.

“You were tired.” His smile turned to a grin. “Besides, I thought you’d probably want to be fully rested for the party tonight.”

“I’m not attending your party,” she said, stepping down onto the cream-colored marble tile floor of the foyer. “I told you that yesterday.”

He shook his head as he walked over to her. “No, you didn’t.”

“It was implied and you know it,” she stated. “When you insisted that I had to get some sleep before I drove home, I told you I intended to leave as soon as I woke up from a nap. That was a strong indication that I had no intention of attending your family gathering.”

He reached out to lightly run his finger along her jaw, causing her skin to tingle where he touched her. “Now that you’ve had some rest, would you like a cup of coffee or something to eat?” he asked, ignoring her argument against staying for his party. “I don’t know all that much about pregnancy, but when they were expecting, all of my sisters-in-law ate like ranch hands once they got past being sick.”

“I cut out caffeine when I discovered I was pregnant, but a muffin or bagel and a glass of milk would be appreciated,” she answered, knowing just what the women had gone through.

In the early weeks of her pregnancy, just the thought of food was enough to make her sick. But now that the morning sickness had cleared up, it seemed she was hungry all of the time.

“Why don’t you have a seat in my office and I’ll go tell my housekeeper to fix a tray for you,” he said, placing his hand to her back to guide her toward the doorway.

“Why don’t I eat in the kitchen and then just go out the back door to my car when I’m done?” she countered, starting to turn in the opposite direction of the office.

“We have to talk,” he insisted, bringing his arm up to wrap around her shoulders and steer her back toward his office.

“Nate, it would be better to let the lawyers—”

“Do you really want strangers calling the shots on how we go about raising our kid?” he interrupted.

Jessie stared at him as she tried to decide what to do. He had a point about attorneys sitting across a conference table making the important decisions about their child. It really did seem impersonal and detached from the situation. But she had wanted to avoid spending any more time with him than she had to. For the past two and a half years Nate Rafferty had been her biggest weakness and she needed to stay strong in order to resist his charming appeal.

“I only have two nights off and I have things I want to accomplish,” she hedged. She had intended to start cleaning out the second bedroom in her apartment to turn it into a nursery.

“This is the future of our baby, Jessie.” The earnest expression on his handsome face made her feel guilty and she found herself nodding in agreement in spite of her need to put distance between them.

Fifteen minutes later, Jessie stared at the small bowl of fresh fruit, a honey-wheat bagel with cream cheese, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, a glass of orange juice and a tall glass of milk sitting on a tray on the edge of Nate’s desk. “Whose army were you intending to feed?” she asked. “I can’t eat all of this.”

“Rosemary said you needed the protein and fruit as well as the calcium in the milk and vitamin C from the orange juice,” he said, shrugging as he lowered himself into the armchair beside her. “She said it would be good for both you and the baby.”

Jessie’s eyes widened. “You told your housekeeper I’m pregnant?”

He nodded. “She has six kids and fifteen grandkids. They’re all healthy and I figured if anyone would know what your nutritional needs are now that you’re pregnant, she would.”

While she appreciated his thoughtfulness, Jessie wasn’t entirely certain she was comfortable with him telling others about the baby until they had worked out an agreement they could both live with. But she wasn’t going to argue with him about it now. They had bigger issues to settle.

“You said you wanted to work out custody and visitation?” she asked, picking up the fork on the tray to take a bite of the fluffy scrambled eggs.

He shook his head, then took a deep breath as if what he was about to say was extremely difficult for him. “None of that will be necessary once we’re married.”

She stopped with the fork halfway to her mouth. “Excuse me?”

“We’ll do the right thing and get married,” he repeated as if it was the answer to all of their problems.

Her appetite deserting her, Jessie slowly placed the fork full of eggs back on the plate and shook her head. “No, we won’t.”

“Sure we will,” he said, reaching to take her hand in his. “I’ve already qualified for the National Finals. I’ll skip the rodeo this coming weekend and we can have the wedding here. Or if you prefer, we can fly to Vegas and have a reception for family and friends at a later date.”

Jerking her hand from his, she stood up to pace the length of the room. “Have you lost your ever-loving mind? I’m not going to marry you.”

He rose to his feet and, walking over to her, placed his hands on her shoulders to stare down at her from his much taller height. “I didn’t mean to upset you, darlin’. I’m pretty sure it’s not good for you or the baby.”

“How would you know?” she demanded, glaring up into his incredible blue eyes. “How many times have you been pregnant?”

He gave her a sheepish grin. “This is a first for both of us.”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t get the point, even if I explained it to you.” She shook her head. “I didn’t come here to tell you that I’m having a baby because I wanted you to marry me. I simply thought you should know that you’d fathered a child. Period. If you want to be part of the baby’s life, I won’t try to stop you. But I’m not part of the deal, Nate. We can work something out so that we’re both involved with raising this baby, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be involved with each other.”

He took a deep breath. “I realize that’s what we could do, Jessie. But making you my wife is what I want.”

“No, it’s not, Nate.” She had hoped to hear him say those words for over two years, but she knew better than to believe he really wanted to get married. He’d broken up with her too many times for her to believe any such thing. “You might think that now. But we both know you’ll lose interest within a few weeks and then you’d not only resent me and the baby for trapping you into doing something you didn’t want to do, we’d be facing the heartbreak of a divorce.”

“That’s not going to happen, Jessie. When I make that commitment, it’s for life.” He ran his hand through his thick, straight hair. “I know I’ve let you down before, but—”

“Stop right there,” she said, holding up her hand. “That’s something else we need to get straight right here and now. I’m a big girl and I have no one else to blame but myself for allowing you to come and go in my life the way you’ve done. But the stakes are higher now, Nate. Disappointing me is one thing, but I refuse to allow you to upset our son or daughter. This is our child—my child—we’re discussing and I swear I’ll fight you with everything that’s in me if you don’t grow up and be there when he or she needs you. Being a parent isn’t a game or something you run from whenever you get tired of playing the devoted daddy. It means you’re there twenty-four/seven, no matter how tough it gets. If you can’t handle that, then I’d rather you don’t even bother.”

“Jessie, I give you my word that from now on, you and the baby are my top priority,” he said, sounding sincere. He slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms to catch her hands in his. “I want us to get married and be a family. And I swear I will never cause you another minute of heartache.”

“Then why did you make it sound as if you were going to be accepting responsibility for a crime instead of asking me to marry you?” she asked bluntly. “Did you even listen to yourself?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking bewildered.

“No woman wants to enter into a marriage with a man knowing that she was ‘the right thing’ for him to do,” she said, shaking her head. “Besides, you had to take a deep breath before you could even get out that you want to make me your wife.”

He stared at her for several long seconds before he finally spoke again. “Just give us a chance—give me a chance—darlin’. This is all new to me.”

“Nate, I’ve already given you more chances than you deserve,” she said, refusing to believe that this time would be any different than the others. He was only offering marriage because of the baby, not because he loved her and wanted them to build a life together.

“Do you have some vacation time you can take?” he asked suddenly.