What a Texas Girl Dreams (Crimson Romance) (19 page)

“I don’t need to do this. Trust me. What I thought I wanted wasn’t what I really wanted.”

“You trust me. Close your eyes. Picture it. Ten years from now, when are you happiest?”

“When I’m with you.” Her breath caught. “When I’m racing.” The words were barely a whisper.

“You want it all. Me, racing, training. Don’t you?”

She nodded miserably.

“Then take what you want. Women have careers and families all the time, and it works for them.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “But if it doesn’t work, you’ll be the one who gets hurt.”

“I’m a big boy, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’m not your father or my father. And you are no one but you.”

He leaned forward and kissed her still-shut eyelids.

“Can we still be a we?”

Trick sighed. “Damn it, I hope so. If we’re not, I’m going to need to buy a new punching bag for the basement.”

“You have a punching bag in your basement?”

“Installed last summer. When you came home for Kathleen’s wedding. You flirted with me all night and then left me high and dry, holding two glasses of champagne and with a stupid grin on my face.”

“We didn’t even start … you know, until a few weeks ago.”

“Then there was the bull sale and ball in February, another event where you flirted and cajoled and danced the night away only to disappear at midnight.”

“I made you get a punching bag?”

He shrugged. “Seemed like the best alternative. I could take out my frustrations on the bag, leaving just Charming Trickett to have his way with you.”

“Charming, Trickett.”

He chuckled. “I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen.”

She nodded solemnly.

“I love you. Every corner, every annoying habit, not that I’ve seen any yet. Every facet that makes up you, I love. And I want to be with you.”

She kissed him, a gentle kiss that seemed to go on for hours.

“Trickett?”

“Yeah?” he whispered the word against her lips.

“I love you, too.”

He nibbled her lower lip and smiled. “I know.”

She grinned. “Did you know you’re going to marry me?”

He kissed her cheekbone, the tip of her nose. “Baby, I’ve known that for months.”

She drew back, watched him carefully for a minute. “Did you know we’re getting married on the Fourth of July?”

He kissed the sensitive spot behind her ear, and she scooted across the sofa to sit on his lap.

“Seems appropriate,” he said. ‘Fireworks are what really got this started, after all.”

More from This Author
(From
What a Texas Girl Needs
)

Vanessa Witte always hated stirrups. They were either too long or too short and they always came attached to very scary, large horses who blew snotballs as big as the main ranch house on the Double Diamond.

She hated these stirrups even more.

Dressed in a paper gown, legs spread into a wide V, knees bent at a forty-five degree angle, Vanessa decided she had never been in a more uncomfortable position. Okay, she had but then she’d been expecting it. Not now, when she’d come to Dr. Clark’s office because she had the flu. She stared at a small spot on the ceiling. Did she shave her legs this morning? Vanessa couldn’t remember, which probably meant she hadn’t. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time she had. From the waist down she probably looked like a female Bigfoot.

No pedicure, either. She wiggled her big toe, which had a single chip of one brightly painted, yellow flower left. Her appointments at Fredericka’s had been misplaced for the first few weeks after the divorce and then they came right out and said it: Paul’s new girlfriend — Vanessa’s ex-best friend — didn’t want her there. She should have expected it and yet …

She hadn’t protected herself. Not nearly enough. After that, she hadn’t the heart to find another nail salon.

Dr. Clark rolled his little stool away from her legs and around the side of the exam table.

“Everything looks fine — ,” fine her left foot “ — but, Vanessa, you don’t have the flu. You are
pregnant, as I suggested fifteen minutes ago. Just about twelve weeks, from what I can tell.” He pointed to a computer screen to her right. “See that little peanut shape? That’s your baby. In another week or so, we’ll hear the heartbeat but, for now, I think we can safely say your flu is going to stick around for another couple of months. It should lessen as the pregnancy progresses, but some women experience nausea, headaches, and other minor issues throughout the pregnancy.”

The world stopped moving. Pregnant? Not possible.

“I can’t be pregnant.”

“Oh, but you are, dear. The urine test confirmed it, but you didn’t want to believe us then. Now you can see for yourself.”

She could see. Sort of. She saw the shape on the screen, a void with what looked like snow all around. Still, she didn’t want to believe. Vanessa didn’t have the slightest idea how to be pregnant. How to be a mother. For God’s sake, she was currently living in a hotel suite because she was afraid to go home because every memory she had in that house had to do with Paul-the-Rat-Bastard. Every floorboard replaced, every floral arrangement made, every historical relic purchased had been because of or with him. Their home was the jewel of the King William District in San Antonio. The one prize she won in the divorce.

She couldn’t bring herself to drive into the garage.

Now she was supposed to take a baby there?

Nu-uh. Not happening.

“This isn’t possible. I have the flu.”

Dr. Clark nodded. “A mild case, probably brought on by your general fatigue, but I promise you, pregnancy is happening.”

“But, how?”

Concern shimmered from his big, brown eyes. The older man patted her gently on the arm and smiled. “This probably isn’t the best timing, but you are pregnant.”

Vanessa did a little mental math in her head. Twelve weeks. Her older sister, Kathleen’s, wedding. Oh, God. She sagged back into the table. Kathleen’s gorgeous, country wedding, less than six months after finding her college crush, Jackson Taylor in Puerto Vallarta. Three months post-Paul and she’d still been so stung over his spectacular divorce request she’d spent most of the wedding sulking and the rest in Grandfather’s hayloft with Matias Barnes, the ranch foreman. She couldn’t stand to be alone, not that night. Not in that sea of celebration.

Twelve weeks. But they’d been protected. She was on the pill. He used a condom.

“Unless you don’t want the baby. There are … things that can be done, but only for a few more weeks … ” Dr. Clark trailed off. Things. No. She wasn’t doing
things
, not to this baby.

Vanessa’s hand went instinctively to her belly. “No.”

He nodded, the movement sending a shock of snow white hair over his high forehead. “Good. Then I’ll have the office set up a scheduling calendar for your appointments.”

Dr. Clark closed the door quietly behind him. Vanessa lay her head against the foam pillow. Single and pregnant.

God, her life went from bad to worse to — what was worse than worse? And what was she going to do now?

Paul left her, her friends dropped her before the divorce papers were even signed. Her family didn’t like her. She could just hear her mother. Pregnancy wasn’t something Gillian celebrated; Vanessa heard that enough growing up. Pregnancy, babies, children were to be used to better one’s own situation.

“Everything I have in this life is because of you, Vanessa,” her mother’s voice echoed in Vanessa’s mind. “Call your father to tell him about these grades. They should be good enough for some new granite in the kitchen. And get me a vodka on the rocks.”

Nathaniel Witte paid. He always paid because paying meant he didn’t have to deal with Vanessa — or her mother — in person. At least she wouldn’t have to use her child for money. Matias didn’t have any, and even if he did, she wouldn’t take it. She had the quarterly stipends, she winced, thinking of the ridiculous scene in Grandfather’s study just before Kathleen’s birthday party.

Demanding money, making a fool of herself. Giving Grandfather even more reason to look at her with condescension. Putting another barrier between her and the family and why? Because to her so-called friends, money and status were everything. A little more expendable cash and maybe she’d have kept the friends, the fancy appointments with Fredericka. The life Vanessa thought she wanted.

If necessary, she could sell the house because she and her baby would be dependent on no one.

In fact, she should. It was hers, after all, and she didn’t see herself living inside it in this century.

Step one: Call a real estate agent.

Vanessa straightened her shoulders and the paper on the exam table crackled. This pregnancy wasn’t about money. She didn’t know what, exactly, it was about, but not money. She swallowed and exhaled a deep breath.

Time to figure things out.

She got dressed, wondering why her clothes still fit perfectly. The new Stella McCartney dress pulled just right across her chest, the leather belt emphasized her small waist. Gillian once told her that PV — pre-Vanessa — she could wear size six shoes. AV, she insisted, she couldn’t wear anything smaller than an eight. Would she have to buy maternity shoes as well as clothes?

A few minutes later, Vanessa, appointment schedule in hand, sped across San Antonio to the hotel. There was no logical reason for what she was about to do. She didn’t need those people when Gillian shipped Vanessa off to Texas for her junior and senior years in high school. Didn’t need them when Gillian took the familiar Miami penthouse away because her latest boyfriend wanted Vanessa in his bed. Instead of dumping the guy, Gillian dumped her daughter on the Double Diamond Ranch in a house filled with the family Vanessa hadn’t known and with whom she didn’t fit in. She didn’t need them when Paul decided her ex-best-friend was better trophy wife material. When every person on her contacts list blocked her calls.

Yet now all she could think about was the Double Diamond.

Going home. Even if, growing up, the ranch seemed more like the home of the dysfunctional Ewing family than
The Brady Bunch.

• • •

A few hours later, Vanessa stood at a gas pump, looking over the roof of her Porsche at Lockhardt, Texas. A few cars stopped at the single stoplight before continuing on their way. The Cattle Café was quiet at two in the afternoon, no stragglers finishing up a heart attack on a plate. She would bet her last twenty Mrs. Gillespie stood to the side of the front window, watching the gas station carefully as was her custom. She had a need to feed the gossip mill and was probably on the phone with Mr. Yoder at the drugstore across the street, wondering why Vanessa was in town so early this year.

For the first time in her life, she had no urge to run for the bright lights of the city, and she wasn’t quite sure why. Even before Paul swept her off her stilettos, she’d longed for more than Lockhardt could offer. More than a single stoplight, barn dances and rodeos. Now, when the bright lights would drown out her loneliness, why was she coming back here where the nightly cicada calls would only prove how alone she was? Her phone bleeped inside the car. Think of the devil. Paul’s picture grinned at her from the screen, notifying her of a new text. Vanessa’s fingers itched to paint red horns, an ugly goatee, and red pitchfork over his face. But that would be childish.

“We should talk. Dinner tomorrow?”

She sighed. Talk? She had nothing to say to him. He would keep texting until she answered, though.

“Busy. Maybe when hell freezes over?”

Vanessa clicked off the notifications for her phone — she didn’t want to see his reply — and topped off the tank.

Gillian was right. Paul hadn’t loved her when they got married, she was just a way to his trust fund. No one in Lockhardt used her. Most considered her a nuisance, but at least she wouldn’t get the pitying looks here. She wouldn’t be alone, living in a hotel room because she couldn’t face the house she’d shared with Paul.

Of course staying meant coming clean with Matias, and she needed to do it soon. Working on the ranch, he’d see the changes in her body before long.

Vern hustled around the car to check the total on the pump. He wrote the numbers down in his little book.

“I’ll take the bill, Vern,” she said, holding out her hand. It was about time she started paying her own way. One tank of gas wouldn’t exactly repay the family, but it was a start. Added bonus, paying her own bills might help overhaul the character she’d found so seriously lacking in the last few months.

“It’s easier for ol’ Mitch to keep his records if I just add it to the ranch total.”

“I’m not a ranch employee. This isn’t a ranch vehicle. I’ll take the bill.” Vanessa couldn’t remember ever paying for a tank of gas here. Come to think of it, unless she was trying to impress someone, she had rarely paid for anything to this point in her life.

Vern handed her the receipt. Fifty bucks? Holy crap, how much did gas cost?
Stupid question, Van, obviously it costs fifty dollars.
She reached into her bag for her credit card and then remembered that was part and parcel of the Witte upbringing. Paying with Grandfather’s credit card? Not character building. She pawed through the baby blue Coach bag but only came up with two twenties and some loose change.

Damn.

“Just charge it to the ranch, Vern.” Mat Barnes’s voice echoed under the station’s overhang, chilling Vanessa. “The Double Diamond will cover it.” We always cover her bills, his tone implied.

Vanessa squeezed her eyes closed and swallowed. Her fingers closed over another bill. Please let it be a twenty. Or a ten. She opened her eyes.

Three twenties. Triumph!

“I’ve got it, Mr. Barnes, thank you,” she said, chilling her voice as she handed the cash to Vern. He looked from Mat to Vanessa, obviously confused over what was going on between them. Vanessa held his gaze for a moment. Vern took the cash and hurried inside.

“I think we’re past the ‘Mr. Barnes’ stage, don’t you?” Mat watched her from beneath the tipped-low brim on his cowboy hat, his coal-black eyes boring straight to her soul. Yes, they were past the Mr. or Miss stage, technically, but not calling him Mat helped her keep her distance.