The Cowboy's Surprise Baby

“Red? You were saying?” he reminded Tessa. “Why you came over to Cup O’ Jo’s in the first place?”

“Red?” Marcus snorted and burst into laughter, but it instantly died when he was simultaneously punctured by both Cole’s and Tessa’s glares. He held up his hands in a sign of surrender.

“I was over at Emerson’s before I came here,” Tessa explained. “Edward asked me to give you a message.”

Cole relaxed his stance, rocking back on the heels of his boots. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been since Tessa had walked into the café, and all this time it had been about a feed order.

If his day could get messed up this quickly just by the sight and scent of Tessa, he didn’t have a prayer of ever truly settling down and making a life here.

“The feed’s ready?” he offered, hoping to stay within comfortable bounds of conversation.

“All loaded up in your pickup and ready to go.”

He pressed a breath from his lungs. “Thanks for the heads-up. I think poor Grayson here has had about as much doting and loving from the community as he can handle for one day.”

Grayson? Forget the baby. Cole’s head was whirling.

His gaze met Tessa’s, and he could see she was thinking the same thing.

First time out of the chute. No score.

Cole cleared his throat. “Best be getting home. It’s about Gray’s nap time.”

“Right, okay,” Tessa agreed with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I guess Marcus and I will see you later, at the meeting.”

Tessa blended into the crowd, and Cole reached for the handle of the giraffe diaper bag, slipping it onto his shoulder. Even after all these weeks, it still felt odd to him to tote around a bag that was similar to a woman’s purse. Chalk that one up to necessity—diapers, wipes, bottles, pacifiers, toys. He tried to ignore the way the bag tromped all over his masculinity.

“Are you leaving?” Jo bustled up to Cole and reached for his bicep. “Can you wait just one more moment, dear?”

Cole nodded, but he tensed when Jo made a beeline toward Tessa, who was speaking to Dr. Delia and her husband, Zach. Jo linked elbows with Tessa and drew her back in Cole’s direction.

“If I could have a quick word with the two of you?”

What now?

Tension rippled across Cole’s shoulders and down his spine. Jo Spencer was the nicest woman a man could know, but she was also a little bit scheming when it came to matchmaking. She had a bird’s-eye view from her spot behind the counter of Cup O’ Jo’s, and she tended to see what was what—or who should be with whom—far before the rest of Serendipity caught on.

Well, as long as it wasn’t matchmaking, Cole would be all right with whatever Jo had in mind.

“Alexis and I were talkin’ about the upcoming summer barbecue.”

Electricity bolted through him at Jo’s words. His gaze locked with Tessa’s. She looked every bit as shocked as he felt.

Not the June BBQ. Anything but that.

“She was telling me she’d like to see the teens get involved this year. We usually relegate them to set up and clean up, and I suggested that they might want to do something different this year—entertainment. The band we contracted with backed out on us. Slade and Samantha have pulled together some musicians for dancing, but Alexis really wanted the kids to do something special for the townsfolk, give them a little show. Do you think you two could get together and work something up for us? A scene from a musical, perhaps? The planning committee would sure appreciate your efforts, my dears.”

Was she kidding? A scene from a musical? No way was that going to happen. Cole and Tessa had first met—first kissed—performing a scene from a musical. And they had broken up at the June BBQ. The beginning and the end of their relationship.

Cole had no intention of helping those kids do anything, musical or otherwise. Working with delinquent teenagers wasn’t even in his skill set. Besides, he wasn’t going to the barbecue, much less participating in it.

“Why don’t you ask Marcus?” he suggested through gritted teeth. “He’s the boys’ counselor, after all. He ought to be the one leading this thing, don’t you think?”

Jo barked out a laugh. Even Tessa chuckled.

“Honey, that man cannot carry a tune for a second, much less an entire musical number. He’s as tone-deaf as a rock. As I recall, you have a beautiful baritone voice. Surely you’ll step up and share your talent for the good of the community—and the teenagers.”

Jo was goading him—and she was good at it. He remembered all the many times growing up when she’d set him on the right path. Part of him instinctively reacted as if he were still a child, but he was a grown man now, and he had no intention of being pushed into a situation that would be nothing but trouble for him, and for Tessa, too.

Why wasn’t she speaking up?

“We’ll see what we can do,” Tessa said.

What?

“Great! Can’t wait to see what you two come up with.” Jo scuttled away before he gave his own answer—which would have been a no. He didn’t even have the opportunity to raise another objection, not that Jo would have listened to it.

Cole leaned into Tessa’s personal space, meeting her emerald-eyed gaze square on. “What are you thinking?” he demanded. “You know as well as I do that we can’t do this.”

“I admit it’s not ideal.”

“Not ideal? It’s plain crazy.”

Tessa sighed. “We would have given in eventually. You know Jo. I just saved us having to scrap with her.”

He hated that Tessa was right. Jo would have won in the end, stubborn woman that she was. But how could they get over...everything...to work together in such a capacity? At the moment he couldn’t even go there in his mind.

“I can’t see how this is going to work,” he muttered crossly.

“That makes two of us. But it has to happen, Cole. We have to put our differences aside for the sake of the teenagers. They deserve the chance to do something good and to experience the community’s positive response to their actions.”

Honestly, his mind wasn’t on the teenagers. It was on himself and his own discomfort. Was this the Lord’s design to give him the opportunity to step out in faith—and completely out of his comfort zone? If it was, it was way, way out.

Right out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.

Chapter Three (#ulink_8c77b0d7-87d3-5a1c-845b-fd446da85dbc)

Tessa straightened her color-coordinated file folders, one for each of the incoming teenagers, and laid them atop a lavender-colored three-ring binder, in which she kept all her additional notes. At the moment, she was the only one sitting at the Haddons’ dining room table.

Early as usual.

She usually took the extra time before the meeting to pray for the incoming teenagers and quiet her heart so she would be open to whatever new challenges lay ahead, but after what had happened earlier in the day at Cup O’ Jo’s, she couldn’t get her mind or her emotions to stop buzzing around like a hive of angry wasps. Unlike bees, which stung once and died, wasps had the capacity to sting over and over again.

Cole was a single father.

While that explained a lot, it still filled her with confusion. No wonder he’d returned to Serendipity. He was bound to need the help of his family and friends to raise Grayson. She imagined it was hard to go it alone. He was blessed to have his brother Eli and sister Vee and their spouses living close by. Plenty of aunts and uncles to spoil little Grayson.

She couldn’t help but wonder how the whole single dad part of it had come to be. That wasn’t the sort of information a man shared with an ex-girlfriend, especially one with whom he’d had such a conspicuous breakup.