right for him at full speed, calling his name, looking all proud of himself. “Papa! Papa! Did you see me?” He ran smack into Colt as he swooped up his boy in his arms, giving him a tight squeeze, thankful there were no broken bones.
“You had me scared as a jackrabbit with a fox on its trail. Never do that again. You hear me, son? Never.”
Joey’s face went all serious. His blue eyes instantly lost their sparkle. “But, Papa, it’s my fourth birthday and Gramps said you jumped off the roof when you were four. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?”
“Sounds about right to me,” Helen said as Colt’s other two boys grabbed hold of her with tight hugs. Colt knew how much his boys liked Helen, but he also knew they were a handful when they tackled her like they were doing now.
“Boys, give her some breathing room.”
They let go and tackled Colt instead, knocking him to the ground, where they wrestled and tickled him. “Wait!” Colt yelled over their laughter and squeals. “You boys almost gave me a heart attack. What the heck were you thinking?”
They stopped attacking Colt and Joey got all serious. “Did you have a heart attack, Papa? Should I call nine-one-one?”
“No, I’m fine, but that’s beside the point.”
“You didn’t have a heart attack and I jumped off the roof. That makes me happy. Are you happy?”
Colt sat up and looked Joey in the eyes. “Promise me you’ll never, ever do that again.”
“Why would I do it again? I could hurt myself.”
Helen let out a little laugh. Colt shot her a look. “This is serious.” He turned back to his boy. “That’s right, son. You could break some bones or worse.”
“Of course he could, that’s why we moved the trampoline over,” Buddy, his oldest, said.
“We’re not stupid, Daddy,” Gavin chimed in.
“Yeah, Daddy,” Helen added.
Colt tried to keep a straight face, but was having a difficult time of it.
“I didn’t want to jump into the manure pile like you did,” Joey said. “That stinks and I might have missed and landed on the ground. I could crack my head open and die on my birthday. I don’t want to die on my birthday. That’s no fun. I’d miss out on all the presents and cake. Can we cut my cake now?”
Colt grinned at Joey, unable to stay angry at his youngest for more than five seconds. “Yes. Cake sounds like a good idea.” He stood, and his boys stood, as well. “You run and tell your aunt Maggie it’s time. She made the cake especially for you.”
“It’s a real cake, right? She didn’t let Aunt Kitty make it out of broccoli or anything healthy, did she? I won’t have to pretend I like it, will I?”
Kitty, Maggie’s sister, was an honorary aunt who tended to overdo “green.”
“Nope, your aunt Maggie told me it’s pure sugar and flour.”
“Yay!” Joey yelled and the three boys took off to look for their aunt Maggie, while Colt shook off any lingering tension that had encompassed his body.
“How the heck do parents do it with a whole houseful of kids? Three boys are enough to keep me up all night worrying about what crazy shenanigans they might come up with next. I never even considered a planned jump off the barn roof. If I had any more kids, I’d probably go insane.”
He felt thankful he’d had the wherewithal to take care of that possibility years ago.
Besides, when his beautiful wife died in childbirth with Joey, he’d decided then and there he never, ever wanted to be responsible for another pregnancy as long as he lived.
He turned to Helen. “Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
Chapter Two
It had taken Helen three days to drive to Briggs, Idaho, from Vegas, and on the way she’d taken four home pregnancy tests, gone through three boxes of tissue and arrived on the Granger ranch puffy-eyed, solidly pregnant and homeless. She had leased out her little house for six months to a family of four, who had happily settled in.
The drive had been grueling due to all the stops she’d made not only to pee a million times, but because she could barely see the road through her tears. She had cried almost the entire drive back, not so much over the pregnancy itself but more about the stifling fear she felt over being someone’s mom. Heck, even though she had recently turned twenty-eight years old, she could barely take care of herself, let alone a whole other person.
Helen decided that telling Colt he had fathered baby number four after he about had a coronary when his youngest jumped off the barn roof might have been the wrong moment to break the news. Then there was always his date, a woman totally wrong for Colt, who seemed a tad bit overly protective, and clingy.
Not exactly the optimum time to tell a cowboy who had taken the radical step to ensure he would never father another child that he had indeed impregnated another woman.
So instead, Helen made her excuses and abruptly left the party right after Jenny Pickens sashayed back to Colt and draped her scrawny little arm around his shoulder.
That was more than four months ago.
Since that day, Helen had secured Tater at M & M Riding School in Briggs, where she had boarded him for the past couple of years when she wasn’t on the road, then driven to her parents’ house in Jackson, Wyoming, less than an hour away. She’d spent the majority of her time allowing her friends and family to shamelessly dote on her every whim while she adjusted to her new life.
Apparently she’d needed all that doting, because only in the past few weeks had she finally reached the total-acceptance stage. She was good with her pregnancy now, had gone through the five stages of mourning over her old, carefully planned life and was looking forward to all that motherhood had to offer...at least on her good days.
Her sweet and affectionate stepmom, Janet, had provided her with an e-reader and loaded it up with every conceivable book related to pregnancy and the baby’s first year. Some of it soothed Helen’s concerns, while others she’d read, especially details of the delivery, gave her night sweats. She dreaded getting a tooth filled; how on earth was she ever going to push out an entire baby?
The concept crippled her. So instead, she put the e-reader in a drawer and told herself she’d deal with it later.
Her logical electronic engineer dad had helped get her finances in order, and had generously contributed to her dwindling bank account so she no longer had to worry about funds. Her cousins, aunts, uncles and benevolent friends had all rallied around her with support and nonstop love. Helen felt truly blessed.
Now all she had to do was tell Colt Granger he was the father, a fact that everyone in her circle kept nudging her to do, but she kept resisting. Each time she had screwed up enough courage to tell him, she found a hundred reasons why she couldn’t make the phone call or drive that long hour to Briggs. Add to that an element that he might not believe her, and it was everything Helen could do to even think about how she would broach the subject.
