The Convenient Cowboy by Heidi Hormel Read Free Book Online Page B

slapped a heavy coat of sunny-yellow paint on it, which had turned it into a blinding rectangle rather than a “sunny accent.” Maybe she should start buying women’s magazines rather than
Barrel Racer News
and
Ranchers Monthly
. The place still needed those homey touches that seemed beyond her. On the other hand, she had zero dollars to make it any better. On the third hand, she’d always lived with zero dollars. Would that ever change? She swallowed hard, heartburn adding to her misery. How could she even have heartburn when she’d eaten nothing?
    “What?” Spence asked staring at her hard from where he stood at the cupboard.
    “TUMS. I need TUMS.”
    “Stay there. I’ll get them.”
    Olympia fought to keep her head up so she wouldn’t knock it against the table, weeping. Because she felt like crap...all the damn—darn—time...and because her rodeo dreams and freedom from her never-ending, crushing responsibilities felt further and further away. Worse, she’d gotten harnessed to a man who would leave as soon as he got his son, no matter what he said about family. She knew how this story would end, with her holding a baby and watching him walk away—like every other man in her life.
    He stood above her holding out the plastic container of TUMS. His dusty-blue eyes were marred by a shadow of worry and something she couldn’t quite name. She took the bottle, careful to not touch him. She’d learned in their weeks together that even brushing up against him made her shivery and hot. It had to be the pregnancy that had turned her into a heap of exposed nerve endings.
    He produced a yellow legal pad from somewhere. She never imagined that lawyers actually used them.
    “The current agreement is clear about how we’ll dissolve the marriage, but it didn’t take into account—” he hesitated “—a pregnancy, as you know.”
    “I didn’t imagine being pregnant.”
    “I know. That’s what we’re trying to address.”
    She nodded and stopped as her head swam. Women actually wanted to get pregnant? Her mama had done this four times! If she’d had a different relationship—really, any relationship—with her mother, she’d call and ask when the sickness went away. Jessie had been pregnant once and was trying again, but because she’d lost the first baby, the subject was too sensitive to ask her for advice or even sympathy. “What did you say?”
    “I said I want you to sign over full custody of the baby to me in utero.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I want it to be clear that the baby is mine since its conception.”
    “There you go again, getting all puffed up about your damned...darned swimmers.”
    “No,” he said, his eyes glued on the notepad. “I just want to make sure that no matter what happens over the next few months, my interests in the baby are clear.”
    “You know that the baby is a human being, not a truck?”
    “I know better than you what it means to have a baby.”
    “Because you got some other woman pregnant? She’s trying to keep you from that kid. Doesn’t seem as if you know much.” She didn’t even know what words were coming out of her mouth. Was she trying to wound him? She looked across the crappy table at her attorney “husband” with his cowboy pearl-snap shirt and Piaget watch. She flushed with annoyance at his cowboy fakery and the whole danged situation.
    “You’ve said you don’t want the baby. I’m ensuring that it is clear that custody has been transferred to me. What do you care, as long as you’re not responsible, darlin’?” His mouth held no hint of a good-time-cowboy smile, and his eyes—definitely sharky now—were flat and opaque.
    His attitude and tone elevated her heartburn from two-alarm to five. She dug another TUMS out of the bottle. “I want to give the baby up for adoption, to a family that will...well... She doesn’t want me as a mother anyway, and how exactly are you going to keep her from knowing who I am when—”
    “If that’s all