Page 25 of Samuel

“We had a great working relationship, or at least, I thought we did. He was always so nice to me. Friendly. Never anything more. He would walk me to my car at the end of the day when we were the last two in the office to make sure I was safe.”

She plucked a few blades of grass and let them blow away in the breeze as the rush of memories came flooding back. “Things changed. He was more flirty. More pushy. When I was first pregnant with Jellybean, he tried to ask me out on a date, but I turned him down. It was inappropriate, and I just wasn’t ever attracted to him. Sure, I thought we were friends, but there wasn’t ever that spark. I guess he decided he wasn’t okay with that, because he started harassing me about my performance, questioning my work ethic. And when I finally had the courage to share about the baby, he accused me the next day of stealing funds from his business. There was a really big investigation, my name was even leaked to a local news agency who thought it would be a good idea to print a story without all the facts. I was able to prove I was innocent, but they let me go. Ten years of my life, the stability for Jellybean, all gone in the blink of an eye.”

“Christ, Evie.”

“I just want you to know, Sam, I am being one hundred percent truthful with you. I never took anything from thatcompany except for my paycheck. I would never do anything like what they accused me of.”

“Why come to Texas? Isn’t the father of your baby worried about you being so far from home?”

He’d held out much longer than she thought he would. Of course, everyone on the ranch was probably very interested in why a pregnant woman would uproot her life and do so without the father of her baby. She couldn’t fault him for wondering. It seemed like that was all people wanted to know in her old life, too. Where was the baby’s father? How would she manage doing things on her own? Did she really think that just having a mother was good for a child?

“There isn’t one.”

Sam couldn’t have heard her correctly. No father? Had something happened to her? That was the only thing he could think of. That she was somehow attacked and the father of her baby was the man who…

“Are you okay?”

Sam lifted his eyes from her belly, meeting a sea of concern. If she’d known about his heart, it would have been rightfully placed. He’d gotten so worried about what could have happened to her that his chest felt funny, in all the wrong ways.

“I’m fine,” he grumbled, pushing his hand into the muscle over his heart that was aching something fierce. “Are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“Please tell me that something didn’t… I mean, you weren’t…”

She looked confused at first, but he recognized the second she understood what he wasworried about.

“God, no, Sam. Nothing bad happened.” Evie shook her head frantically and his chest loosened just a little bit. He hadn’t been very concerned with the chance of being shocked by the device in his chest since his surgery, but damn, it felt like a real possibility just then.

“I mean, I didn’t conceive this baby the normal way. There is a biological father, obviously, but I just know him as number one-sixty-seven.”

She fucking used a sperm donor. She really was all on her own.

“You decided to have a baby by yourself?”

Her shoulders squared as if she was ready to face some sort of judgment. But there wouldn’t be any from him.

“I did. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and there just wasn’t ever a man in my life who I could see starting a family with. My career was stable at the time, I had a beautiful apartment and a group of friends I thought would support me, so when I turned thirty, I went for it.”

“Turning thirty isn’t growing old though. You had time.”

“Did I? I watched everyone I knew moving forward with their lives. My friends all dated. Got engaged. Threw big weddings where I stood by their side and smiled through my pain at being the perpetually single friend. They began having babies and I couldn’t just wait. I’d still be just waiting, Sam. I’d still be the one all alone, waiting to be chosen. I couldn’t do that to myself anymore.”

“You’re incredibly brave, Evie.”

She looked shocked that those were the words he chose to share after everything she’d said, but it was true. Evie was going to make sure her dreams came true no matter what. That was inspiring to him. If he hadn’t had to put his dreams on hold for his own family…

“I don’t know about that, Cowboy. A lot of people might call me selfish. Actually, a lot of peoplehave.”

“Yeah, well, those people need to get a reality check. How does your family feel about you doing this on your own? Hell, they can’t be too happy about you coming all the way down to Texas.”

“My mom and dad died in a plane crash when I was seventeen.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Evie smiled before taking a drink from her water bottle while he took another bite of his cookie. “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time when I found out about Jellybean.”

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