The Cowboy's Sweetheart. Brenda Minton

      “It’s okay.” Etta stepped closer, her arm going around Andie’s waist.

      “No, it isn’t. I messed up. I really messed up. This is something I can’t take back.”

      “So you went to church?”

      “Not just because of this. I went because I had to go. As much as I’ve always claimed I was strong, every time I was at the end of my rope, it was God that I turned to. I’ve always prayed. And that Sunday morning, I wanted to be in church.”

      “Andie, did you use…”

      Andie’s face flamed and she shook her head.

      “Do you think you might be…”

      They were playing fill-in-the-blank. Andie wanted option C, not A. She wanted the answer to be sick with a stomach virus. They didn’t want to say the hard words, or face the difficult answers. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old kid. Funny, but until now she had controlled herself. She hadn’t made these choices. She hadn’t gotten herself into a situation like this.

      She was trying to connect it all: her mistake, her relationship with God, and her friendship with Ryder. How could she put it all together and make it okay?

      “Maybe it’s a virus. Joy’s kids had a stomach virus.”

      “It could be.” Etta patted her back. “It really could be.”

      And then a truck turned into the drive. Ryder’s truck. And he was pulling a trailer. Andie closed her eyes and Etta hugged her close.

      “You’re going to have to tell him.”

      “I don’t know anything, not yet. I don’t know if I can face this. I’m trying so hard to get my act together and I can’t pull Ryder into this.”

      “Soon.” Etta kissed her cheek.

      “When I know for sure.”

      Ryder was out of his truck. And he was dressed for roping, in his faded jeans, a black T-shirt and nearly worn-out roper boots.

      “You going with me?” He tossed the question before he reached the barn. His grin was big, and he was acting as if there was nothing wrong between them. Andie wished she could do the same.

      “I don’t know.”

      Etta’s brows went up and she shrugged. “I’m going in the house. I have a roast on and it needs potatoes.”

      Andie watched her grandmother walk away and then she turned her attention back to Ryder. He scratched his chin and waited. And she didn’t know what he wanted to hear.

      “Come on, Andie, we’ve always roped on Sunday evenings.”

      It was what they’d done, as best friends. And they hadn’t minded separating from time to time. She’d go out with James or one of the other guys. She’d watch, without jealousy, when he helped Vicki Summers into his truck. No jealousy at all.

      Because they’d been best friends.

      But today nausea rolled in her stomach and she couldn’t think about leaving with him, or him leaving with Vicki afterward. And that wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.

      “I can’t go, not tonight.”

      “I don’t want to lose you.” He took off his white cowboy hat and held it at his side. “I wish we could go back and…”

      “Think a little more clearly? Take time to breathe deep and walk away?” She shook her head. “We can’t. We made a choice and now we have the consequences of that choice.”

      “Consequences? What consequences? You’re the one acting like we can’t even talk. It’s simple. Just get in the truck and go with me.”

      “I can’t.” She tossed the brush into a bucket and the clang of wood hitting metal made Babe jump to the side.

      Andie whispered to the mare and reached to untie the lead rope from the hook on the wall. “I can’t go with you, Ryder. I’m sick. My mom is here. I’m going to go inside and spend time with Etta.”

      “Fine.” He walked to the door. “I’m going to be pretty busy in the next few weeks. Wyatt and the girls are going to need me.”

      “I know.” She watched him walk away, but it wasn’t easy. She’d never wanted to run after a guy the way she wanted to run after him, to tell him they could forget. They could go back to being friends, to being comfortable around each other. But she couldn’t go after him and they couldn’t go back.

      She stood at the gate and watched as he climbed into his truck and slammed the door.

      Ryder jumped into his truck and shifted hard into first gear. He started to stomp on it, and then remembered his horse in the trailer. Man, it would have felt good to let gravel fly. If only he could be sixteen again, not dealing with losing his best friend to a one-night mistake.

      Why couldn’t she just get over it and go with him? This was what they did, they went roping together. They hunted together. They got over things together.

      As he eased onto the road he let his mind drift back, to the night in Phoenix. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. They’d both been hurting. He’d been upset by Wyatt’s situation. She’d been hurting because her twin sister had arrived in town, bringing back the pain of being a kid rejected by her mother.

      And then his thoughts made a big U-turn, shifting his memory back to the Mad Cow and Andie’s pale face.

      He was an idiot. An absolute idiot.

      Consequences. He caught himself in time to keep from slamming on the brakes. He eased to the side of the road and stopped the truck. He sat there for a long minute thinking back, thinking ahead. Thinking this really couldn’t be happening to him.

      He leaned back in his seat and thought about it, and thought about his next move. A truck drove past and honked. He raised a hand in a half wave.

      Glancing over his shoulder he checked the road in both directions and backed the trailer up, this time heading the way he’d come from, to Etta’s and to Andie.

      As he turned into the driveway, she was coming out of the barn. She stopped in the doorway, light against the dark interior of the barn, her blond hair blowing a little in the wind. She sighed, he could see her shoulders rise and fall and then she walked toward him. And he wondered what she would say.

      He parked and got out of the truck, waiting because he didn’t know what questions to ask or how to face the consequences of that night. It would have been easier to keep running. But this would have caught up with him eventually. It wasn’t as if he could run from it.

      When she reached him, they stared at each other. The wind was blowing a little harder and clouds, low and heavy with rain, covered the sun. Shadows drifted across the brown, autumn grass.

      “You’re back a little quicker than I expected.” She smiled, and for a minute he thought it might have been his imagination, her pale skin, the nausea.

      He rubbed his face and tried to think of how a man asked a woman, a friend, this question.

      “I came back because I have to ask you something.”

      “Go ahead.” She slipped her hands into her front pockets.

      His gaze slipped to her belly and he didn’t even mean for that to happen. It was flat, perfectly flat. She cleared her throat. He glanced up and her eyebrows shot up.

      “I have a question.” Man, he felt like a fifteen-year-old kid. “Are you, um, are you having a baby?”

      Chapter Four

      The question she hadn’t even wanted to ask herself. Ryder, her best friend for as long as she could remember, was peering down at her with toffee-brown eyes that had never been more serious. He wasn’t a boy anymore. She wasn’t a kid.