Page 69 of Caught By A Cowboy

“Does that mean I’m forgiven?” he calls after me.

“Not yet, but we can work on that moving forward. I’m giving you a chance; don’t make me regret it.” I leave him standing in the yard and head inside so I can try and find a way to explain this to Maddison.

MADDISON

“And you didn’t think to tell me about any of this when you came in last night?” I stare at him in shock as he pulls on his jeans and buckles up his belt.

“You were sleepin’, sleep is good for you in the third trimester.” He shrugs his shoulders as if learning that his uncle is his real father is no big deal.

“So how do you feel about it all?” I ask, maneuvering myself so I can get out of bed. Jace sees me struggling, and he comes and takes my hand.

“I don’t know how to feel about it.” He stops putting on a front and sighs. Once I’m up on my feet, he sits on the end of the bed and grabs my hips. “Right now, I just want to focus on you two.” He rolls his hand over my belly. “I’m gonna get started on the nursery today.”

“And what about dinner? Will your uncle… I mean your da–”

“Don’t call him that.” He shakes his head and looks hurt. “Keith Sullivan was the man who raised me, DNA don’t change that.”

“Of course, it doesn’t but youaregoing to have to consider that Jamie is going to want a more active role in your life now. He is this little one's grandad.” I stretch my hand over the baggytee I’m wearing so it tightens around my stomach and shows off how big I am. I’m getting more and more uncomfortable by the day and starting to really want this to be over.

“Jamie was with my mom the night her car went off the road.” His face is stern and serious as his hand delicately strokes me.

“Do you think they were still…”

“I don’t know. But that night he called her into the city because he wanted her to tell me the truth.”

I have no idea what to say back to that, so I drape my hands over his shoulders and do my best to comfort him.

“Me and Mom argued that night before she left the house. She told me she was going to see Billy McGee and I was mad because I knew he was bad for her.” He tenses his jaw. “The last memory she had of me would have been of me yelling at her.” He looks up at me, his eyes brimming with tears.

“Don’t think like that, she would have known you were just being concerned.”

“Jamie blames himself, but I think it was my fault too. Somewhere between leaving me and getting to him, she’d got herself drunk. She shouldn't have been behind the wheel.”

“Jace, you can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I don’t understand it, when we got the coroner report there was nothing in it that said anything about her being drunk.” He shakes his head and looks confused.

“Did you get the report from your uncle, by any chance?” I chew on my lip and wait for him to catch up with what I’m getting at.

“Yeah. What are you sayin’?” He’s got so much going through his head, I guess he’s not thinking straight.

“That, maybe, your uncle was trying to protect you from having to hear that,” I suggest.

“Then why not hide the fact that she had defensive wounds on her body? It’s what's been driving me crazy,” he admits. “It was him she was fightin’. He was pushing her to come clean and she was determined to keep it a secret. She wanted it to stay buried so badly that she attacked him while she was drivin’.”

“Jamie was obviously trying to protect your mother’s reputation, not his own.” I shrug.

“She was gonna keep me in the dark my whole life, Mads. She could have lost me everything. This place…you.”

“Me?” I look down at him in shock.

“My dad may have loved me but he had a duty to do what was right. He had no idea what was happening between Mom and Uncle Jamie, as far as he was concerned my father was a stranger. When I was sixteen, he changed his will and left this place to my uncle.” I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that he’s devastated.

“Wait…so your uncle owns this ranch?”

“Right at this moment, yeah.” He nods.

“Wow.” I sit down beside him and try to imagine how awful hearing all this must have been for him. It’s so much to take in

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