Fifty Ways To Say I'm Pregnant

She was looking right at him. And that warm current inside him was going molten hot. “Nothing to be sorry about. Iced tea, maybe?”

He led her back to the kitchen and poured her the cold tea.

“Thanks. Maybe you’ll sit out on the porch with me while I drink this?”

“Be glad to.”

As soon as they got out there, before they even had a chance to sit down, she was pointing to the stand of cottonwoods and willows fifty yards or so away on the north side of the house. “Is that a creek over there?”

He had his hat, collected from the rack by the door on the way out. He beat it lightly against his thigh and slid it onto his head. “More like a big ditch. Feeds into the pond in the back pasture.”

She sipped from the tall, already sweat-frosted glass. “Umm. This is just what I needed. Thank you.”

“Welcome.” He looked at her soft red mouth. He could still recall, like it was yesterday, the tender, hungry feel of that mouth under his. She had the longest, blackest eyelashes of any woman he’d ever seen. He watched as they swept down and then up again.

“It’s a nice day,” she remarked. “A little hot.” Oh, yeah, he thought. Hot. That’s the right word. “We could just stroll on over there—to that ditch, I mean. I’ll bet it’s cool under the trees.”

“Sure.”

She wore Wranglers and good, serviceable boots and a plain white shirt with short sleeves, tucked in. No slice of bare belly to tempt him today. Once, in one of their brief stolen times together, she’d confessed she had one of those navel rings—and a tattoo in a place where only the right man was ever going to see it.

The other night, he hadn’t noticed any navel ring. Maybe she didn’t wear it anymore.

Then again, he hadn’t caught a glimpse of her navel, now had he? That red, one-shoulder shirt had stayed low enough to safely shield it from his hungry eyes.

She was halfway down the steps. He needed no encouragement to follow.

In the trees, it was cool, just as she’d predicted. They sat on the grassy slope that led down to the cheerfully bubbling stream and she sipped her tea. “Nice,” she said with happy sigh.

He leaned back on an elbow, picked a small blue flower that grew in the grass, and twirled it by the stem for a second or two before tossing it out into the rushing water. It bobbed away, a spot of blue, until the current sucked it under.

She said, “Oh, I almost forgot…” The ice cubes clinked in her half-empty glass as she found a level place to set it. She reached into her back pocket and came out with that notebook and pen he’d seen earlier. “I was hoping to get a few quotes from you about how Mr. Hart’s recovery is progressing.”

“For the Clarion?”

“Uh-huh.” She flipped open the notebook, held her pen poised.

He grinned. “Quotes from the foreman?”

She was close enough to reach out and give his arm a tap with that pen. “Well, you are Mr. Hart’s top hand, aren’t you?”

“Considering I’m his only full-time, year-round hand, I guess saying I’m top hand wouldn’t be that far wrong.” He watched her silky black lashes sweep down and up again. Then he challenged, “It was you, wasn’t it—you told Jerry Esponda to put me down as Daniel’s foreman?”

She stuck out her chin at him. “So what if I did? Are you demanding a retraction?”

He leaned just a fraction closer to her and got an intoxicating whiff of jasmine for his pains. “I’m demanding nothing. You can relax.”

She leaned closer still. “That is such a relief….”

He looked from her eyes to her mouth and back again. She was doing it, too—that violet gaze tracking: Eyes. Lips. Eyes. Lips…

He wanted to kiss her so bad that his need had a taste—like honey, but with a bitter edge.

There had been other women in his life. Not that many. A few. He was a man, after all. But no matter how many other women he flirted with or kissed or took to bed, there would always be this woman, somewhere back in a yearning, hopeful corner of his heart.

Beau knew what he was, and what he would never be. Yet somehow, inevitably, in the last moments of loving, when need swallowed him whole, he would close his eyes and see Starr’s face.

Carefully, he canted back away from her. With mingled regret and relief, he watched her do the same.

She sat up straight and made a few scratches at the pad with her pen. “So. He’s recovering quickly…”

Beau found another flower, picked it, twirled it, tossed it away. “Yeah. He’d be out stringing fence right now if Althea wasn’t holding him down.”

“Hmm. May I quote you on that?”

He gave a snort of laughter. “‘Recovering quickly’ sounds better, I think—and you know, you surprised the heck outta me when you came rolling up in that old Suburban.”

She granted him a pert glance. “I happen to love that SUV.”

“What about that little sports car you used to drive way back when?”

Something changed in her face. Maybe she was remembering the bold-seeming, unhappy girl she’d been once. “Sold it. It wasn’t much use in a Wyoming winter—let alone against all the ruts in the dirt roads on the Rising Sun.” Her expression went teasing again. “And is that all you have to tell me about Mr. Hart’s improving health?”

“That is the sum total of what I have to report. ‘Mr. Hart is recovering quickly,’ ranch foreman Beau Tisdale said. Put that in the paper—and you can add that bit about prayers and good wishes. Those never hurt.”

“Hah. So you did like being called the foreman.”

What he liked was the sound of her voice, the jasmine scent of her, the way the dapples of sun made blue lights in her hair. “Yeah,” he said, his voice a little huskier than he should have allowed it to be. “I liked it fine. And it didn’t seem to bother Daniel any when he saw it in the paper.” He’d been a little nervous that Daniel would assume he’d told Jerry he was ranch foreman, that Daniel might think he’d over-stepped himself. But that was yesterday, when the Clarion came out. Yesterday he hadn’t understood the extent of Daniel’s regard for him.

Hell. He still wasn’t sure he could believe what Daniel had said an hour ago….

“First of all, I need to tell you now, so the chance doesn’t slip away from me, that you are the son I never had….”

“Beau?” Starr was looking at him sideways, a soft smile on that unforgettable mouth. He cocked an eyebrow at her. Her smile widened. “What’s on your mind? You got the funniest look just now.”

Damned if he didn’t want to tell her. Strange. He wasn’t a man who shared his triumphs—or his hurts. But it was all so new. It almost didn’t seem real.

And he found that he wanted to talk about it, to say right out how his life was so suddenly and unbelievably changed. It would make it more real, to tell someone.

Not just anyone, though.

He wanted to tell Starr and only Starr. In a way, it was like some dream, that she was here now, at this moment, so soon after Daniel had told him.

It was also like a dream that all the old bad feelings between them seemed gone at last, that he was talking to her so casually, like they were good friends. Six years ago, it had amazed him how easy she was to talk to. And here she was after all this time and that ease between them was back, like it had always been there, waiting for her to understand and forgive him for what he’d done that day in the yard at the Rising Sun….

“Beau?” She was looking at him so hopefully. She wanted to hear whatever he had on his mind.

He kind of edged into it, giving her a grin. “You got to promise you won’t go putting it in the paper….”