Daddy in the Making

Still, the doubts stayed with her, even as she heard footsteps outside the kitchen door. She put on her “boss face,” straightening up, swiping at her cheeks and finding a few stray tears, then walked toward the entrance to the tea room, just as Margery Wilmore busted through the hallway door.

She had a plump chest and was motherly and gray-haired. “How’s my Rita doing?”

“Right as rain.” Rita glanced at her watch. “Tea prep already?”

“Like clockwork.” The older woman sent Rita a concerned look. “You okay, honey?”

Rita nodded. Margery was a carryover from the days when Rita’s mom used to run the hotel, back before she and Dad had passed on. When Rita had taken over at the age of twenty-three, Margery had “kindly” tried to offer all kinds of advice, even though Rita had been working at the hotel since she was old enough to carry out orders, raised to take over operations one day. Now, ten years later, Margery still hovered, casting a suspicious eye at Rita’s tummy when she’d started showing recently.

But didn’t everyone hover in their own ways? After Kevin, Rita had sort of become St. Valentine’s pet project. The town screwup who’d been saving up to go to college for years after graduation—and wouldn’t you know it? She’d actually earned a business scholarship but had given it up when she’d gotten preggers.

A pregnancy had been out of character for her, the straight-? student. And, even more off-putting to a lot of folks around here, after Kevin had left her and she had proudly set out to be a single parent, she had refused interference or unwanted advice from everyone who “knew better” in a town where traditional family values ruled.

Now, she was going for another round of out-of-wedlock parenthood.

“You’re running yourself ragged,” Margery said, resting a hand on Rita’s cheek to test her temperature.

Rita deftly shied away. “I’m just fine.”

The older woman clucked her tongue. “You and your stubbornness. Someday it’s all going to catch up to you, especially raising Kristy alone.”

That’s right—Margery knew best. How could Rita have forgotten?

Her cell phone rang, and gratefully, she went into the empty hallway and answered, not caring who was on the other end. When she heard the voice of her best friend, Violet, she almost cheered.

Too bad Vi’s actual words didn’t have the same effect on her.

“Is it true?” she asked.

Rita wouldn’t play dumb. “You already heard?”

“Small town. Grapevine. Newspaper reporter. Go figure.”

Gossip traveled at the speed of light in St. Valentine, but it wasn’t as if Rita had never been its subject before.

“He just showed up, Vi. Out of nowhere.”

“Want to talk about it over some lunch?”

They agreed to meet in ten minutes at the Queen of Hearts Saloon, which belonged to Vi’s family. Rita went to the lobby, taking care to scan it before she entered.

No sign of the cowboy.

Relieved—was that the word she was looking for?—she crossed the lobby, telling her desk clerk that she was going on lunch break, then feeling the girl’s eyes on her. And why not, when Janelle had probably seen Conn Flannigan in here with the necklace and heard some of their conversation while she’d been straightening the brochures?

Head held high, Rita tried her best not to feel like the town screwup once again as she left the hotel, wondering if Conn Flannigan was outside.

Wondering if she was going to be able to avoid telling him just who the father of her unborn baby was.

Chapter Two

“I wish he’d just stayed away,” Rita told Vi as she sat across from her at the Queen of Hearts in an out-of-the-way corner booth where the low-volume country songs on the jukebox were even more muted. The wagon wheel light fixtures hovered overhead, and a bunch of regulars ate burgers and drank beer at the bar, surrounded by sepia-hued pictures of the town during its early days.

“It sounds to me like he really does have amnesia.” Vi’s brown eyes reflected sympathy. Even though she was on lunch break from the small-town-reporter’s desk, she had an iPad next to her, ready to catch any breaking news should it come their way. “It’d be a good reason for him to come back here, retracing his steps before his accident. And he’d have no idea how ticked off you’d be. Besides, who goes around telling stories like that unless they’re true?”

Rita hadn’t touched her chef’s salad yet, but Vi was munching away on her fries. She’d been there for the morning after when Rita had still been on cloud nine after her night with Conn. But Vi had also seen the aftermath and how it’d decimated a newfound confidence for Rita that had lasted less than twenty-four hours before she’d felt the shame of supposedly being lied to and left behind once again.

“So what’re you going to do?” Vi asked, dipping a fry in catsup.

“What can I do?” Rita jabbed at a piece of ham with her fork. “I shouldn’t have done anything in the first place—except for running straight out of here when he bellied up to my table that night. I should’ve known—”

“Hey, you couldn’t have known.” As Vi leaned forward to rest a hand over Rita’s free one, her shoulder-length, dark red hair swung forward. “You were ready to move on after years of hating yourself for what happened with Kevin.”

“You weren’t happy when I told you about Conn after our … night.”

“I was being protective. But now there’s a baby involved, and that changes everything.”

Rita cradled her slightly curved tummy with her free hand. “That night, I should’ve just thought more about what it felt like when Kevin left. That would’ve stopped me from giving in to Conn.”

But she hadn’t been able to think about anything or anyone … except for the cowboy at her table, his eyes sparkling with fun, drawing her into their depths with “why not?” allure.

But, as she’d waited for him the day and night afterward, she’d found out “why not.” The minutes had ticked by to one hour … two … then to midnight. And still no Conn. The next morning had come, then passed, then the next and the next.

By that time, she knew she’d been had, and she’d closed up her heart tighter than ever, knowing that she was the only one she could depend on.

And then she’d missed her period, although Rita couldn’t and wouldn’t regret getting pregnant.

Maybe that was what life had in store for her. Always a great mother to the children she loved more than anything, but never a wife.

“You know what the most embarrassing part is?” Rita finally asked.

Violet swallowed her bite of burger. “What?”

A wounded laugh escaped. “There was something that kept needling at me, telling me that there was a really good reason he didn’t come back.”

“And there ended up being a good reason. Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that he didn’t reject you? That it had everything to do with circumstances beyond his control?”

Vi was wearing one of those looks filled with optimism. And why shouldn’t she? This weekend, she was going to marry millionaire Davis Jackson, her star-crossed lover from high school. They had been run through the gauntlet after Vi had come back to town after having lost her job on a city newspaper and returned to St. Valentine to lick her wounds. Davis had always loved her—the girl from the wrong side of the tracks—but Vi hadn’t been sure he was pursuing her again because of that or to get payback for how she had broken his heart. Now, though, everything was wedding marches and roses for her.

No, Rita didn’t feel nearly as positive as Vi.

“I’m just considering myself lucky to have escaped this one,” she said. “Conn is my cautionary tale.”

“For what could happen if you should ever let your guard down again and someone crushes you for real. I get it, Rita.”

“I mean, he didn’t return to St. Valentine to request my forgiveness or to sweep me off my feet again, right? And if he saw my stomach, he probably flipped.”

“You don’t know if he saw it?”