The Maverick's Thanksgiving Baby. Brenda Harlen

her explanation. “And even when it showed a positive result, I wasn’t sure I believed it. The next day, my doctor confirmed the result.”

      “This was mid-September?” he prompted.

      She nodded again.

      “So you’ve known for six weeks, and you only decided to tell me now?”

      “I didn’t know how to tell you,” she admitted. “It wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to share over the phone, and my doctor advised me not to travel until the morning sickness was under control.”

      “Did you ever think to invite me to come out to LA to see you?”

      She blinked, confirming his suspicion that she had not. That the possibility of reaching out to him had not once entered her mind. “You never showed any interest in making a trip to California.”

      “If you’d asked, if you’d said that you needed to see me, I would have come.” And he would have been glad to do so, overjoyed by the prospect of seeing her again.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never thought... And when I called to tell you that my planned visit to Rust Creek Falls was further delayed, you sounded as if you’d already written me off. And that’s okay,” she hastened to assure him. “I know neither of us expected that one night together would have such long-lasting repercussions.”

      “I didn’t think it was going to be only one night,” he told her.

      “I bet you didn’t think you’d end up having this conversation four months later, either,” she said.

      “No,” he agreed.

      “I know you’ve only had a few minutes to think about this, but I wanted you to know that I’m planning to keep the baby.”

      He scowled, because it hadn’t occurred to him that she might want to do anything else. “You thought about giving away our baby?”

      “There were a few moments—especially in the beginning—when I wasn’t sure what I would do,” she admitted. “I was stunned and scared—having a baby at this stage of my life wasn’t anywhere in my plans.”

      “You don’t just give away a baby because it wasn’t in your plans,” he told her.

      “Some people do,” she told him.

      Only then did he remember that she was adopted, given up by her sixteen-year-old birth mother when she was only a few days old.

      While he was busy trying to extract his foot from his mouth, she continued, “And not necessarily because it’s the easy choice. I don’t know whether my birth mother wanted to keep me or not—Christa and Gavin always told me that she recognized that she couldn’t give me the kind of life that I had with my parents, and I’ve always been grateful to her for that. So yes, I thought about giving up my baby, because I know that’s sometimes the best option.

      “But,” she continued before he could protest, “I don’t think it is for my baby. And maybe it’s maternal instinct or maybe it’s because I was adopted, but I felt an immediate bond with this baby who shares my DNA, and I can’t even imagine letting him or her go.”

      “The baby shares half of your DNA,” he pointed out. “The other half is mine.”

      She nodded. “And if you want to be part of our baby’s life, I’d be happy to accommodate whatever kind of visitation you—”

      “Visitation?” he interrupted, his voice dangerously soft.

      She eyed him warily. “If that’s what you want.”

      “It’s not.”

      “Oh. Okay. In that case, I’ll have papers drawn up—”

      He interrupted her again. “The only paper we’re going to need is a marriage license.”

Chapter Three

      Maggie stared at him, certain she couldn’t have heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”

      “We’re having a baby together, which means we should get married to raise that child together.” His tone was implacable.

      “You can’t be serious.”

      “Of course I’m serious. I’m not going to shirk my responsibilities.”

      “There’s a lot of ground between shirking responsibility and marriage,” she said, determined to remain calm and reasonable despite the outrageousness of his proposition.

      “I want to be a father to my child.”

      “You are the baby’s father.”

      “I want the baby to have my name.”

      She’d been so apprehensive about this meeting—worried about how he’d respond to the news of her pregnancy. Obviously she knew he’d be surprised, and she’d prepared herself for the possibility that he might deny paternity. But in all of the scenarios that she’d envisioned, she’d never once considered that he might propose marriage. And while she’d feared that he might reject both her and the baby, his grim determination to do “the right thing” was somehow worse.

      This wasn’t at all how she’d planned things to happen in her life. Yes, she wanted to get married someday. Her parents had given all of their children the wonderful example of a true partnership, and Maggie wanted to find the same forever kind of love someday. And when she did, she would get married and then have a baby. So while she hadn’t planned to get pregnant just yet, she didn’t intend to change anything aside from the order of things. She would be the best mother she could be to her child, but she wasn’t going to settle for a loveless marriage with a stubborn cowboy—even if his kisses had the power to make her lose all sense and reason.

      If Jesse had been offering her something more... If he’d given any indication that he’d been genuinely happy to see her, if he’d wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with even half of the passion and enthusiasm she knew he was capable of, she might have ignored all of her questions and doubts and followed him to the nearest wedding chapel. But the coolness of his initial response to her return to Rust Creek Falls proved that he didn’t want her—he only wanted to ensure the legitimacy of his child.

      “We don’t have to get married for your name to go on the baby’s birth certificate,” she told him. “I would never deny my child’s paternity.”

      “Our child,” he reminded her. “And it’s about more than just a name. It’s about giving our baby the family he or she deserves.”

      “What about what we deserve?” she challenged. “Don’t you want to fall in love and exchange vows with someone you really want to be with instead of someone you inadvertently got pregnant?”

      “What I want—what you want—isn’t as important as what our baby needs,” he insisted stubbornly.

      She blew out a breath. “I don’t think our baby needs to be raised by two parents trapped in a loveless marriage.”

      “You don’t have to make it sound so dire. If we want to, we can make this work.”

      “What if I don’t want to?”

      He ignored her question as if she hadn’t even spoken. “We should be able to make all of the necessary arrangements for a wedding within a couple of weeks.”

      “Did you get kicked in the head by a horse? I am not marrying you.”

      The lift of his brows was the only indication that he’d heard her this time, as he steamrollered over her protest. “We can have a quick courthouse ceremony here or a more traditional wedding in LA, if you prefer.”

      “So I do have some say in this?”

      “The details,” he