Mom's The Word. Roz Denny Fox

      

      Hayley Ryan was definitely going to have a baby

      That made it a thousand times more foolish for her to be out here, in Jacob Cooper’s opinion. “You’re pregnant,” he said simply. “Why didn’t you tell me that? It puts a different spin on everything. You can’t stay here!”

      Hayley wheeled away from him and extended shaking hands toward the fire. “It’s for me to say what I do, Jacob,” she said with renewed ferocity. “Go away and leave me alone.”

      “Damn, Hayley. I worried when I thought it was just you. But you and a baby…It’s craziness for a pregnant woman to be this far from a good road. You need—”

      “Thank you very much for your flattering opinion of my capabilities. But I don’t answer to you. It’s my baby. My responsibility. My decision.”

      “Oh? So the kid doesn’t have a father?”

      Hayley’s face crumpled. “He doesn’t want to be a husband or father. Besides, he forfeited all rights when he walked out on me.”

      “I didn’t mean to open old wounds. It’s just—if it was me, I’d want to know I had a baby in the works. A man deserves the chance to do right by his child.”

      A haunting smile came and went. “Not all men have your sense of responsibility, Jake.”

      Dear Reader,

      Before I moved to Tucson, I subscribed to the city’s newspaper because I wanted to find out more about the community. I read an article that intrigued me so much, I cut it out and saved it. The article concerned a woman who’d discovered blue opals on a remote site near the Mexican border. This idea kept nagging at me, insisting there was a story to be told.

      This is not Cheri Saunders’s story, although her real-life adventure is, of course, fascinating, and you might learn part of it if you visit Cheri at the Jay-R Opal Mine Art Gallery in Huachuca City, Arizona. My tale about Hayley Ryan and Jake Cooper is totally a work of fiction. I don’t even know where the Jay-R Opal Mine is located; I suspect it’s a well-kept secret.

      Any mistakes in descriptions of digging the ore and polishing or setting stones are mine alone. I did visit the wilderness ranch area around the old ghost town of Ruby. It was desolate and, in the true sense of the word, awesome. I think I know how Hayley—a pregnant woman determined to make her way alone—would feel while she camped there.

      This is really a story about love. And about how Hayley, left pregnant and destitute by a scoundrel husband, learns to trust Jake with her life and that of her child. I hope you enjoy my efforts on Hayley’s behalf.

      I love hearing from readers. You can write me at the address below or e-mail me.

      Roz Denny Fox

      P.O. Box 17480-101

      Tucson, Arizona 85731

      e-mail: [email protected]

      Mom’s the Word

      Roz Denny Fox

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For Denny. I couldn’t have written any of the previous books without your love and support. But with this one I really owe you—for driving to ghost towns where there weren’t any roads. For finding a spring that, according to the map, was supposed to exist but turned out not to be so easily located. And especially for not complaining when the water was too deep to cross and we needed to reach the highway we could see in the distance. You probably felt like leaving me there, but you still had a smile after bouncing twenty long, dusty miles over terrain that was really only accessible on horseback. Thanks, with all my heart.

      CONTENTS

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      “YOU’RE PREGNANT, Hayley.” Kindly old Dr. Gerrard looked over the top of his half glasses at the young woman seated on the examining table. “Given your circumstances, my dear, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings.”

      Hayley Ryan stopped pleating folds in the loose-fitting paper gown and gasped as she spread both hands protectively across her stomach. “But I…I’ve been losing weight. Not gaining. Are you sure your diagnosis is correct?”

      The doctor patted Hayley’s suntanned hand. “My practice here in Tombstone may be winding down, child, but I haven’t been wrong in predicting blessed events in thirty years. Why, twenty-six years ago your mama sat in this very room, asking the same question.” He chuckled. “Nine months later out you popped.”

      “I didn’t mean to imply that…that you don’t know what you’re doing.” Hayley swallowed hard to keep from crying. “It’s just that this isn’t the best time in my life to be learning I’ll soon have another mouth to feed. I’m not sure how I’ll take care of myself let alone a baby.”

      Dr. Gerrard sobered at once. “I know. Gossip’s running rampant about how your husband left town with that sassy-faced Cindy Trent from the nail-painting place.” The doctor removed his glasses and gazed with unfocused sympathy into Hayley’s turbulent eyes. “What kind of man, I’d like to know, leaves his wife while she’s still grieving from burying her grandpa? I said it before, girl, and I’ll say it again—Joe Ryan’s worse than a snake-oil salesman.”

      Hayley glanced away. She could do without having that fact driven home. A little more than a year ago, Grandpa O’Dell and many of his friends had cautioned her against marrying Joe. If she had a dime for every person in Tombstone who’d warned her Joe Ryan was the kind of guy who blew into town on his own wind and would likely blow out the same way, she wouldn’t be sitting here now, alone and worrying about how to feed herself and the baby Joe had planted before he pulled his vanishing act. “It’s easier for me to see now that Joe only married me so he could get his hands on the Silver Cloud mine,” Hayley murmured.

      “Big Ben O’Dell would turn over in his grave if he knew that four-flushing