The Maverick's Thanksgiving Baby. Brenda Harlen

      Within a few minutes, his breathing had evened out, and she knew he’d fallen asleep. As her own eyes started to drift shut, she found herself thinking about his impromptu offer of marriage. Not that she intended to accept—there were too many reasons to refuse, too many barriers to a relationship between them. But she couldn’t deny that the prospect of sharing a bed with him for more than a few hours was undeniably tempting.

Chapter Four

      When Jesse woke up, he was alone.

      He could still smell Maggie’s scent on his sheets, and there was an indent on the pillow where she’d slept, so he knew she couldn’t have been gone long. He rose from his bed and moved to the window.

      He didn’t realize that his chest felt tight until he saw that her rental car was behind his truck in the driveway and the tension lessened. He’d been left with nothing more than a note on his kitchen table once before, and he didn’t want to go through that again. He hadn’t chased after Shaelyn—he’d had no interest in forcing her to stay in Rust Creek Falls when it was obvious she didn’t want to be there.

      But the situation with Maggie was different—she was carrying his baby, and that meant they had to figure out a way to work things out. If she had gone, he would have chased after her. He was glad he didn’t have to.

      He retrieved his jeans from the floor and tugged them on, then shoved his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and headed down the stairs. He found her standing at the stove, a spatula in her hand. The pressure in his chest eased a little more.

      A glance at the numeric display on the stove revealed that it was after eight o’clock. “I guess we skipped dinner.”

      She looked up and offered a shy smile. “I hope you don’t mind—I woke up hungry, and I thought you might be, too.”

      “I don’t and I am,” he told her. “French toast?”

      “Is that okay?”

      “Perfect.”

      She flipped the last piece of bread out of the frying pan and onto the plate, then carried the plate to the table, already set for two.

      As she sat down across from him, he put a couple of slices on his plate, then liberally doused them with maple syrup. She took one slice, slowly ate it, cutting neat little squares that she dipped in a tiny puddle of syrup on her plate.

      “I thought you said you were hungry.”

      “I was.” She popped the last piece of toast into her mouth, then folded her napkin and set it on top of her plate. “And now I’ve eaten.”

      “You had one piece of French toast.”

      “I had two.” One corner of her mouth tilted up in a half smile. “I ate the first one as soon as I flipped it out of the frying pan.”

      “Two whole slices?” He transferred another two to his own plate. “You must be stuffed.”

      “Don’t make fun of me—I’m just happy to be able to keep down what I’m eating these days.”

      “I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely contrite. “That must have been awful.”

      “It wasn’t fun,” she agreed.

      “You should have called me.”

      She nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

      He wanted to stay angry with her, but what was the point? Nothing could change what had happened since she left Rust Creek Falls in July, nothing could give them back the first four months of her pregnancy. But he couldn’t help but think that, if she’d told him sooner, they might be in a different place right now.

      Instead, he’d spent weeks dealing with the tangled emotions inside of him. He’d been hurt and angry and frustrated that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He’d tried to get over her—he’d even let his younger brother, Justin, set him up with a friend of the girl he was going out with. The date had been a complete bust, primarily because he couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie. But recently he’d managed to convince himself that he was starting to forget about her—right up until the minute he saw her standing outside the paddock at Traub Stables.

      “So,” he began, thinking that a change of topic was in order, “things have been busy for you at work over the past couple of months?”

      She nodded. “Busier than usual. Maybe too busy.”

      “Can you cut back on your hours?”

      “Not if I want to keep my job.”

      “Do you?”

      “Of course,” she answered immediately, automatically.

      Then her brow furrowed as she picked up her glass of water and sipped.

      “Tell me about your new job,” she finally suggested. “When I was here in the summer, you were working here, at your family’s ranch, and now you’re training horses.”

      “I still help out here, but it’s the horses that have always been my focus.”

      “I heard they call you the horse whisperer in town—what exactly does that mean?”

      “It’s not as mystical as it sounds,” he told her. “It just means that I don’t use restraints or force when I’m training.”

      “How did you end up working at Traub Stables? I thought there was some long-standing feud between the Crawfords and the Traubs.”

      “There is,” he acknowledged. “Although no one really seems sure about its origins, whether it was a business deal gone bad or a romantic rivalry. Whatever the cause, I think my sister’s marriage to Dallas Traub in February has helped build some bridges between the two families.”

      “So your family doesn’t mind that you’re working for Sutter Traub?”

      His lips curved in a wry smile. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he acknowledged. “My father saw it as a betrayal. My mother warned that I was being set up—for what, she had no idea, but she was certain it was some kind of disaster in the making.”

      “Did you take the job despite their objections—or because of them?”

      “Despite,” he said. “I’ve wanted some space from my family for a long time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love and respect them.”

      “And you don’t mind that your boss is a Traub?”

      “Sutter’s a good guy who values the animals in his care and appreciates what I bring to his stables.”

      “I read a series of books when I was a kid, about a girl who lived on a ranch and raised an orphaned foal,” she told him. “She fed it and trained it and entered riding competitions with it. After reading those books, I was desperate to experience the feeling of racing across open fields on horseback. I begged my parents to put me in a riding camp for the summer.

      “They were always encouraging us to try new experiences, so they found a local camp and signed me up. I was so excited...until the first day. I’d never seen a horse up close until then,” she confided. “And when we got to the Northbrook Riding Academy and I saw real, live horses galloping in the distance, I was terrified.”

      “What happened?” he asked, both curious about and grateful for this voluntary glimpse into her childhood.

      “I begged to go home as passionately as I’d begged for the camp, but they made me stay. My parents are very big on commitment and follow-through. I was the one who wanted the experience, and they weren’t going to let me quit.”

      “Did you ride?”

      She shook her head. “The instructors tried to help me overcome my fear of the horses, but whenever I got too close, I would actually