The Cowboy and the New Year's Baby Read Online Free PDF Page A

prospect of marriage than she had been. He’d just been too much in awe of her father—or her father’s fortune, more likely—not to go along with Bryce’s plans for the two of them.
    Very methodically she had gone about quietly selling her business to a friend who’d expressed interest in it. She’d put her furniture in storage and slipped out of Houston. She’d been heading west to start the new year and a new life…someplace, when she’d gone into labor. The fact that her daughter had arrived early did not alter her determination to move ahead with her plans, and they definitely did not include Jack or any of the Delacourts.
    The baby was her responsibility, and she was going to do right by her. That started with giving her a name she could be proud of, honoring someone who deserved it. Certainly not Jack. Certainly notanyone in her own family, since they’d all been far more concerned about convention than about her well-being or the baby’s. Assuming that the marriage was a foregone conclusion, her mother had pleaded with her more than once to rush the wedding so that her pregnancy wouldn’t show. When Trish had made it plain that there was to be no wedding despite her father’s wishes, her mother had been appalled.
    “What will we tell people?” she had demanded.
    “That your daughter had better sense than to marry a man she didn’t love.”
    “What does love have to do with it?” her mother had asked, genuinely perplexed. “I thought the two of you got along well enough. Jack is suitable. You’ve known him for years now. He has a place in your father’s company, the promise of a vice presidency after the wedding.”
    That, of course, had been Jack’s incentive. She’d had none, not any longer. “I’ve only known the side of him he wanted me—wanted us—to see. I certainly didn’t know about the other women.”
    Ironically, her mother hadn’t seemed nearly as surprised or dismayed about that as Trish had been. “You knew, didn’t you?” Trish had charged, stunned that her mother would keep something like that from her.
    “There were rumors,” her mother admitted, then waved them off as unimportant. “You know how it is. A handsome man will always have women chasing after him. It’s something you get used to, something you just accept.”
    “True,” Trish agreed. “The difference is an honorable man, a man who actually cares about his fiancée, doesn’t let them catch him.”
    “You’re being too hard on him, don’t you think? He was just having a little premarital fling.”
    “Or two,” Trish said, wondering for the first time whether her father’s behavior was responsible for her mother’s jaded view of marriage. As far as she’d known, her father had never strayed, but maybe she’d been blind to it.
    “Never mind,” Trish had said finally. “It’s clear we don’t see eye-to-eye on this. Bottom line, hell will freeze over before I marry Jack. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to get used to the disgrace of it, Mother.”
    Of course she hadn’t. Straight through until Christmas Day, with Trish’s due date just around the corner, Helen Delacourt had remained fiercely dedicated to seeing Trish and Jack married. Without informing Trish, she had even included him on the guest list for the family’s holiday dinner. When he’d arrived, Trish had promptly developed a throbbing headache and excused herself. Even as she went to her room, she could hear her mother apologizing for her. If she hadn’t already been planning to leave town, overhearing her mother’s pitiful attempts to placate the louse would have spurred her to take off.
    “Hey, where’d you go?” the doctor asked gently.
    Back to a place she hoped never to set foot in again, Trish thought to herself. “Sorry. I guess my mind wandered for a minute. What were we talking about?”
    “Naming your baby.”
    “Of course.” She thought of the man who’d helped her. He might have been caught off guard.