Cowboy's Baby

“Buck up,” she ordered her reflection as she ran a brush through her chin-length, riotously curly brown hair pulled back with a headband.

Then she applied a light shade of lipstick and massaged some lotion into her hands and up her arms to her elbows in hopes that that would help alleviate some of the skin-prickling tension that was still attacking her.

“You have to go out there,” she told her image in the mirror as she did. “You don’t have a choice.”

But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, she tried to convince herself, picturing in her mind how the next several hours were likely to play out.

She would slip into the living room and say a simple hello from the sidelines—which was also where she would stay.

Brady would be involved with Matt, catching up, trading stories. He would probably hardly know she was anywhere around. He definitely wouldn’t whip out the divorce papers in the middle of her whole family and demand that she sign them on the spot.

They would all have dinner and she’d keep herself as busy in the kitchen as she could so she wouldn’t have to spend too much time in the same room with Brady. Then the evening would end and he’d go off to his rooms and she’d go off to hers and that would be that. He probably wouldn’t even have a thought about their rash wedding or what had followed it.

And he also wouldn’t have the slightest inkling of what she’d found out only four days earlier.

That the consequence of their single night of abandon was that at this very moment she was pregnant with his baby.

Chapter Two

Everyone in the living room was laughing when Kate finally ventured back there. She was only guessing, but she assumed they were laughing at something Brady had said. He could tell a joke as well as any professional comedian, which had made him the life of the party the whole time they’d all been in Las Vegas two months before.

Her family was so caught up in him, in fact, that no one noticed her standing in the arched entry from the foyer, and it gave her a chance to take a look at him.

How could he be more handsome than she remembered?

But he was.

He was as tall as her brothers—at least six foot three. A tower of long legs, narrow hips, flat stomach, wide chest, broad shoulders and big biceps.

There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, but there were muscles galore. Muscles his clothes couldn’t hide. Especially since he was wearing jeans tight enough to show off his great thighs, and a long-sleeved knit shirt that hugged his perfectly veed torso like shrink-wrap.

And as if the body wasn’t enough to give her heart palpitations, he had a face to die for, too.

He had swarthy good looks. His hair was the color of French roast coffee beans—not quite coal-black but close. He wore it just a touch long and combed it with a hint of a part on the right side, sweeping all of it casually away from his face.

His skin had a natural tan to it, a golden glow that would brown up in the summer but merely gave him the look of robust health and vitality now.

And there were his features to top it all off.

Oh, he was gorgeous!

But not pretty-boy cute. He had a masculine, rugged, almost craggy kind of beauty that said he was born that way and didn’t do anything to accentuate it.

His chin was strong and well defined, his lips turned up at the corners as if he were in perpetual good humor. His nose was straight and perfect, his eyebrows slightly full, and his eyes were a pale blue-gray beneath long lashes.

And when he smiled the way he did right then, there were creases that animated his face. Creases that hammocked his chin from dimples in his cheeks, creases that crinkled the corners of those eyes that glimmered with vibrancy, creases that bracketed that lissome mouth full of blindingly white teeth.

It all made for a powerful package. Powerful enough not to help the muddle Kate was already in and making something flutter inside her that had nothing to do with the baby she was carrying and everything to do with that baby’s daddy and the pure animal magnetism he exuded.

A magnetism that made her step farther into the room even as another part of her wanted to run in the opposite direction just so she could get things under control.

“There she is!” Matt said from the center of the group when he spotted her. “We thought you’d gotten lost.”

She had. For a moment. In the sight of Brady Brown.

But now she struggled to find her way back to some semblance of normalcy so she could play the charade she needed to play to keep her secrets.

“Say hello to Brady,” her brother urged.

“Hello, Brady,” she parroted, trying to make a joke out of the obvious return of Matt’s overt matchmaking attempts.

But there was no joke in that first moment Brady’s eyes rested on her.

Her heart started to beat double time, she felt her face flush, and although her skin still felt prickly, it didn’t seem to originate in tension anymore but in something entirely different.

“Hi, Kate,” Brady said in the lush baritone voice she’d forgotten about. His tone was edged with formality, though. A formality she thought might indicate he was leery of her.

But then why wouldn’t he be leery of her after the way she’d treated him New Year’s morning?

“Brady was just telling us about being stranded in a one-runway airport in the middle of nowhere for the past twenty-four hours,” Matt said to update Kate.

“Which is why I need a shower before keepin’ company with civilized people,” Brady added, directing the comment at Kate. “How ’bout you show me where you folks want me to bunk? Let me clean up some?”

Kate’s pulse redoubled at the prospect, even as she wondered why he didn’t have Matt show him to his rooms.

But she couldn’t be rude and deny a guest his request, so she forced a small smile she hoped looked better than it felt and said, “Sure.”

Brady poked his chin in the direction of the front door. “My bags are there. Just let me grab ’em, and you can lead the way.”

Kate saw Matt nudge her other brother Ry with an elbow and knew Matt was feeling pleased with himself, thinking that he was in the midst of a second chance at getting Kate and Brady together.

If only you knew how much trouble you’ve caused, Kate thought. But she turned and retraced her steps out of the living room rather than saying anything.

Brady followed behind as Matt called after them. “We thought we’d put ’im in the rooms next to yours, Kate. Junebug got ’em all ready.”

Terrific. This just gets better and better.

The house had two wings on either side of the central portion where the living room, dining room and kitchen were lined up. Both wings contained bedroom suites that allowed for privacy no matter how many of the McDermots were in residence.

The suites all had their own bedroom, bathroom and sitting room, complete with fireplaces, wet bars and French doors that allowed entrance from or exit onto the porch that wrapped around the front and sides of the place.

There was also a den and a recreation room, but Kate didn’t want to prolong her time with Brady enough to give him the whole tour, so she merely took him down the hall to the right of the entrance. She went past her own door to the one beside it without saying a word, until they’d reached the entrance to the guest room Brady would be using.

“There you go,” she said simply, opening the door for him but not stepping inside.

Brady craned his neck just enough to peer through the opening before he tossed in his duffel bag and slid his suitcase after it. Then he turned toward Kate, but his gaze didn’t drop to her face until after he’d glanced over her head, as if to be certain they were alone in the hallway.

“I wanted to have a minute with you right away to let you know I’ll be discreet about everything,” he said then. “In case you were worried that I might blurt out something.”