Page 49 of His First Baby Rodeo

Pregnant.

She couldn’t be pregnant… but it hadn’t even occurred to her that thatdidexplain all her symptoms. She’d been so eager to write the way she was feeling off to depression, but now she realized that she wasn’t actually depressed. She was sad, yes. She was disappointed that what had happened with Mac hadn’t amounted to anything more — it had felt as if it could.

But depressed? No. She didn’t even regret it.

Which meant that her nausea and exhaustion had to have some physiological reason for existing… and suddenly she was doing math in her head, counting the days since her last period, and her hands were shaking.

“Are you all right?” Marilyn asked. “You look like a ghost floated over your grave.”

“I… yeah,” El said. She couldn’t confide in anyone about this. Not until she knew for sure. And even then, if it was true, she would have a lot of thinking to do before she would be ready to tell anyone what was going on. “I’m going to run into town,” she said. “Do you need anything from the drugstore?”

“The drugstore?” Marilyn frowned. “We’ve got a pretty stocked medicine cabinet. If you’re looking for something to settle your stomach, we probably have it.”

“No, that isn’t it.” El grasped for a believable lie. “I just remembered I’m out of my immune-boosting vitamins. I meant to pick some more up. Plus, I finished my sudoku book.” She cringed inwardly. It was a pathetic lie — surely Marilyn would see right through it.

Marilyn looked at her for several moments, searching her face, and El couldn’t help feeling as if her sister-in-law knew every last one of her secrets.

But if Marilyn suspected anything, she didn’t say it. “Could you bring back a pack of batteries?” she asked. “I think the ones in the TV remote are dead. The kids have been watching too much of that cartoon with the dogs.”

“Yeah sure,” El said. “Batteries. You got it.”

She was hardly listening. It was just good fortune that she walked by a display of batteries and remembered to grab a pack — the whole errand made her feel as if she was moving through a fog that obscured all her senses. She took the pregnancy test on autopilot, unable to think about what she was doing and the implications it might have. And when the plus sign appeared on the stick, she sat staring at it for several moments, unable to fully take it in. It didn’t seem real.

She was pregnant.

She was pregnant with Mac’s baby.

This was so far beyond anything they had ever discussed, anything she had allowed for in her wildest imaginings. She was in over her head and she knew it.

And yet, even now, she couldn’t feel regret.

Perhaps they had been irresponsible. Certainly this was going to be complicated — there were massive decisions that needed to be made, and El had no idea what she was going to do. But she did know one thing.

She had always dreamed of having a family. This might not be conventional, but she was expecting a child — a child she very much wanted — and she intended to keep it.

She would figure everything else out later. But through her fear and intimidation, she felt a powerful surge of joy.

I’m going to be a mother.

She just had to decide what she was going to say to Mac.

CHAPTER22

MAC

Having the first stop of the tour be in Oklahoma City was messing with Mac’s head. He knew that El wasn’t far away — assuming she hadn’t gone back to Seattle, of course, but he was willing to bet that she was still with Jeff. If she was, it would be easy to take an afternoon and drive out to see her. They were staying in Oklahoma City all week, and Jeff’s ranch was only an hour and a half away.

It would be easy to do — but it would be impossible to explain. Neither Jeff nor El would understand why he was there.

Besides, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see her. She’d been so sweet about telling him that he should stick with his rodeo career, but he imagined that was easier for her to say when she’d believed he had a long recovery ahead of him. It was impossible to ignore the fact that she had failed at the first test. As soon as she’d found out he was hoping to get back into the ring, she had completely reversed her position on the whole affair, and he couldn’t get past that. Not yet.

He sat on a bale of hay, knowing he wasn’t really supposed to be there. The hay wasn’t for the horses, either — it was decorative. Being here on the Classic tour had caused a little bit of the shine to come off the whole thing. It was a plastic version of what a rodeo really was. It was obvious that the whole thing was only here for the sake of performance.

Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be challenging. He flexed his arm, wishing he’d had a little more time in the gym before tonight. It was going to be his very first time riding — the first show since he’d joined the Classic — and now that he was here, he felt acutely aware of the fact that his arm wasn’t fully healed. His muscles were tight on that side, he didn’t have his usual range of motion, and he did feel a little weaker on the right than he did on the left.

It isn’t going to matter. I’m as good as anyone else even with a weakened arm.

But he had been at full strength when he had been thrown…

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