The Cowboy's Secret Son. Trish Milburn

him to be scared of everything, but a little healthy, self-preserving fear would be nice.”

       Nathan looked over at Grace’s golden blond hair. When he’d known her before, it’d been long and straight down her back. Now, she had it cut in a shorter, wavy style that suited her. “Well, it doesn’t look like he’s caused you to go gray yet.”

       Grace lifted her hand to her hair, and he noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “No, not yet.”

       A little girl in pink cowgirl boots, a pink shirt with fringe and a pink cowgirl hat climbed up on the fence next to Evan and started petting Dolly, too. She struck up a conversation with Evan, unintelligible at this distance.

       “Hey, we’ve got two kids who actually like the horses. This week might work out yet.”

       “Do you usually have lots of kids afraid of the horses?”

       Nathan shrugged. “Don’t know. This is the first time we’ve done the camp. Maybe the last.”

       Grace didn’t respond. Despite looking tired, she didn’t seem terribly relaxed. In fact, her back was as straight as if she was tied to a fence post. She clasped her hands together in her lap so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

       “You sure you’re okay? Can I get you something to drink?”

       “He’s yours.”

       Her quick response made no sense. “What?”

       Grace turned her head slowly, met his gaze. “Evan. He’s your son.”

      Chapter Two

      All the breathable oxygen disappeared from around Nathan. At least it felt that way.

       “What?” He stared at Grace, thinking he couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly.

       Grace clasped her hands into a tight ball in her lap and took a deep breath. “Evan is your son.”

       “That’s not possible.”

       She looked up at him. “I assure you it is.”

       Nathan snatched his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. He took a couple of steps away from Grace, away from the words she’d spoken. The boy she claimed was his son was now feeding the horse a carrot with Simon’s help. A wild storm of denial and curiosity whirled within him.

       “You got pregnant that night at the party?” he asked without turning back toward Grace.

       “Yes.”

       Heat rushed through him. “And instead of telling me then, you decided to run away?”

       “I didn’t have a choice.”

       She said it so matter-of-factly that an unusual anger roared inside him. He spun back toward her, met her gaze. “You always have a choice.”

       “Maybe you did, when you decided to pretend nothing had happened between us.”

       Despite his anger, he winced at the sharpness of that truth.

       Grace shifted her gaze toward the stand of trees opposite where she sat. “But I didn’t when my parents literally dragged me away in the middle of the night in shame.”

       He’d met her parents once, and could all too easily imagine them doing such a thing. But he didn’t want to feel sorry for her. Six years had passed since then, years in which she’d cheated him by keeping the existence of a son from him. If Evan was his. Maybe she was mistaken.

       “How do you know he’s mine?”

       She laughed, but it wasn’t the type of laugh born of amusement. “You’re really asking me that question?”

       He crossed his arms and stared at her, every muscle in his body tense. “Yes. You show up here unannounced and tell me some boy I’ve never seen is my son, and I’m supposed to just believe that?”

       Grace shifted on the bench so that she more fully faced him. “Think about it. Do you remember me having guys lining up to sleep with me back in high school?”

       “I don’t know what you did. You could have met someone after you left here.”

       She shook her head, and something about her expression made him feel as if she thought him the most clueless man in the world. “I pretty much lived under lock and key when I lived here, and it only got worse after we left, after my parents discovered I was pregnant. I had to sneak out a window to come to that party.”

       “Why did you?”

       She didn’t immediately answer. Instead, she seemed to think about it as she let her gaze fall away from him. “Because I liked you. And I thought maybe you liked me.”

       He didn’t know what to say to that. The silence stretched to an uncomfortable length. He plopped the hat back on his head and shoved his hands in his jean’s pockets. “I don’t know how to react or what to say. I feel like I just got hit with a cattle prod and a stampede all at once.”

       “You don’t have to do anything, at least not now.”

       He glanced at her, trying to read this woman he didn’t even know anymore. Had he ever? She was no more the girl who’d helped him raise his algebra grade so he could play football than one of the fence posts around the corral. That girl had barely been able to meet his eyes, even on that night he’d made love to her.

       This woman marched onto his ranch and pronounced him the father of her little cowboy wannabe.

       Man, he felt as if his head was going to explode.

       “What does that mean, not now?”

       “I’m not looking for money, or even your help in raising him. I’m doing fine on my own.”

       “Then, why tell me at all?”

       “Because I’m all he has, and if something ever happens to me, I want him to have somewhere to go.”

       The way she sounded as though he was nothing more than a back-up plan caused his anger to swell. “And you thought of the sperm donor?”

       She gasped, and her eyes went wide. “Nathan, that’s not how I think of you.”

       “It’s not?”

       “No.”

       “Could have fooled me. What if nothing happens to you, Grace? I get nothing? I’m just supposed to forget you dropped this little bombshell on my head?”

       “Of course not.” She appeared flustered, as if she hadn’t anticipated him putting up a fuss. “I just wanted you to know.”

       He looked toward the corral when he heard youthful giggles. Evan and the little pink girl were laughing, at what he couldn’t tell. “Why now? I’m assuming you didn’t just leave your parents’ house.”

       “I…I just finally got up the nerve. I realized it wasn’t responsible to be a single parent and not make plans in case something happened to me.”

       He shook his head and shifted his eyes back to her. “You could have called. Hell, written a letter or something.”

       “I thought about it, picked up the phone I don’t know how many times.”

       “And you decided just dropping by was better?”

       “I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know if I could go through with it. I almost turned around half a dozen times.”

       “Good to know I could still be in the bloody dark about having a kid.”

       This time, she winced. “Telling you wasn’t as easy as you obviously think it should have been.”

       He shifted from one foot to the other, cursing himself for the fool he’d been that long-ago night. One more idiot kid who couldn’t keep his pants