Second Chance Cowboy

“How far along are you?” the woman asked, studying her.

“Eight months.” The lie came so naturally. “You?”

“Seven. So how close are your contractions?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Not that close.”

“Your first baby?”

Charlotte nodded and felt the woman looking at her ring finger. “I’m separated from the father.” That was actually kind of true. “I’m older than I look.” Another lie.

“Must be difficult. Having a baby all by yourself.”

She had her mother and her worthless brother, but she didn’t mention that. She knew how pathetic it would sound. Even more pathetic if the woman knew the half of it.

“You can understand why I need to get into town to the doctor,” Charlotte said.

“Yes. We definitely need to see to you. But I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. Just pop behind the wheel and try to start the engine. This should at least allow us to get the car out of the way if nothing else. Neither of us is up to pushing it.”

The woman had a point. Although arguing was second nature to Charlotte, who’d been arguing for years. With her older sister. With her mother. With her brother. With herself.

But she wasn’t up to it right now, and the woman was right. She didn’t want to have to push the SUV out of the way and she doubted she could get past it anyway, as steep and unstable as the edge of the road was.

She opened the door of the pricey SUV and, with great effort, pulled herself up to slide behind the wheel. Her feet were a mile from the gas pedal.

“I need to move the seat forward,” she called as she bent over as best she could to look for a handle.

She felt the cool metal the moment it was jammed against her throat.

The pregnant thirtysomething driver of the SUV held a gun in her hand. It was so incongruous: this obviously wealthy pregnant woman with the expensive clothes, salon haircut and freshly manicured nails beneath latex gloves holding a gun on her.

It made no sense. That was probably why it didn’t register that she was in serious trouble until it was too late.

Chapter Two

Friday, 3:15 p.m.

At the Whitehorse Sewing Circle, the women gathered around the quilting frame were unusually quiet on this hot summer afternoon.

Normally they would have been abuzz with chatter. Instead they were sipping lemonade, eating the dainty little cookies Laci Cavanaugh had sent over, and smiling a lot—while busting at the seams to share the latest gossip the moment Pearl Cavanaugh left.

Pearl, whose mother had started the group too many years ago for most to remember, had a strict rule about gossip.

But Pearl hadn’t been coming for months since her stroke, and the group had taken to gossiping and quilting with a relish. Pearl had been living at the nursing home until recently. Now that she was better and mobile in her wheelchair, Titus had brought her home to stay.

She hadn’t quite gotten the knack of sewing with her left hand, but she tried hard. And there wasn’t anyone in the group who was going to say she couldn’t sew if she wanted to.

To a lot of people Pearl and Titus Cavanaugh were Old Town Whitehorse royalty. Both were feared—if not respected.

“Well, isn’t Pearl looking well,” said Alice Miller the moment Titus had wheeled his wife out the door.

It wasn’t until they heard the crunch of gravel as Titus left with his wife that Helene Merchant gave out a relieved sigh accompanied by a laugh and said, “I thought we were never going to get to visit.”

A few of the women laughed with her. Alice Miller, who always sided against gossip, pursed her lips but said nothing. She had tried since Pearl left to keep the women in line, but she was ninety and had given up, saving her energy for quilting.

The problem was, in Old Town Whitehorse there was always something to talk about. Even on a slow day there was always the Evans family.

Old Town was the site of the original Whitehorse. But when the railroad came through five miles to the north, by the Milk River, the town had moved and taken the name with it.

Some of the more hearty homesteaders had stayed in what was now called Old Town. They’d kept the original Whitehorse Cemetery—the name forged in a wrought-iron arch over the entrance—where many of their kin rested for eternity.

The Whitehorse Community Center, the one-room schoolhouse and a few houses were all that was left of the town. Titus Cavanaugh, Pearl’s husband, still performed church services at the center on Sundays and took care of hiring a schoolteacher for the school. He was as close to a mayor as Old Town had.

“Have you heard any more about Violet Evans?” Pamela Chambers asked in a whisper, as if the walls had ears.

“That crazy place she’s in gave her a job,” Helene said. “She’s working at a nurses’ station. The word is they’re going to let her out of the nuthouse and back on the streets. Doctors.”

“It scares me,” Muriel Brown said. “We all know how dangerous she is. Remember the summer all the cats disappeared? Violet always had that look in her eye from the time she was little.”

Even Alice Miller couldn’t argue the point.

“The other daughter—Charlotte? She’s about to have a baby any day,” Corky Mathews said. “How old is she anyway?”

“Eighteen, nineteen at the oldest,” Helene said. “Anyone heard who was responsible for fathering the baby?”

There was a general shake of heads. This had been a popular topic for months. “Could be anyone,” Helene said. “But you know what I heard at the Cut and Curl?”

The women all leaned in. Except for Alice Miller, who sometimes wished her hearing wasn’t as good as it was.

“It was some older man from out of town.” Helene nodded and went back to her stitching.

“Poor Arlene. You have to feel for her,” Muriel said. “Look how her children have turned out. Violet crazy, Charlotte in the family way and Bo, well, is he the most worthless young man you’ve ever seen? I wonder if Arlene will ever come back to the group.”

Looks were exchanged around the table, along with shrugs. Arlene did always have the latest gossip, but with Pearl returning now…

“Eve Bailey’s marrying the sheriff,” Alice Miller threw in, hoping to give the poor Evans family a break.

The conversation turned to weddings and the possibility of more babies. The Whitehorse Sewing Circle was famous for its quilts. For years the circle had made a quilt for every newborn.

“I saw the cutest pattern,” Pamela said, and the afternoon passed in a blur of talk of quilt patterns, material and—always a good standby—food and the latest recipe one of them had tried, as the group stitched away just as it had done for years.

Friday, 6:38 p.m.

ARLENE EVANS STARED at the image in the mirror and felt like crying. She’d changed clothes four times already. If she didn’t make up her mind and quickly, she was going to be late. Why had she accepted a date in the first place? She was too old to date.

When Hank Monroe had asked her out, she’d been so excited and surprised she hadn’t thought about the actual date part. But the reality set in the moment she went to buy something to wear.

For years she hadn’t given a thought to the way she looked. No one else had, either. Floyd, her former husband of too many years to count, had hardly given her a sideways glance. So she’d worn what any working ranch woman wore: an oversize long-sleeved Western shirt, jeans and boots. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a dress—and she’d bet neither could anyone else in the county.