Wyoming Cowboy Sniper. Nicole Helm

if I didn’t tell you, you’d figure it out and assume. So I’m telling you. You don’t need to worry or do anything. I’ll keep your part in this a secret and raise this baby myself.” Her hands squeezed harder, and he couldn’t seem to bring himself to lift his gaze from them to meet hers.

      “Yourself,” he repeated stupidly.

      “Yes. I’m capable. Maybe I don’t look like the most maternal—”

      “I’m not challenging you, Vanessa,” he snapped, looking away from her hands. Her eyes were storms of a million things. Things he didn’t want to consider.

      But she was pregnant with his child. His child.

      Hell.

      “Regardless,” she said, sounding surprisingly prim. “I wanted to be clear that I’ll be taking care of everything. As long as you don’t yap, we’ll be fine.”

      “Fine,” he echoed. Fine. This was not fine.

      She began to stand.

      “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

      She raised her eyebrows. “Home. I told you what I had to say and—”

      “And you think I’d just step back and ignore the fact I have a child? You honestly thought you’d make your little announcement and that would be it?”

      Her eyes went cool, the nervousness in her clutched hands gone as they came to rest on the arms of the chair. “Obviously, I considered you’d be obnoxious, but I held out hope you’d understand that yes, that’s it. Because it’s a Carson child.”

      He stood, pressing his hands to the shiny surface of his desk in an effort to center himself and leash his anger. “Half Delaney.”

      She folded her arms across her chest and gave him one of those patented Vanessa Carson, you-are-a-bug-to-be-scraped-off-my-boot looks. “Are you suggesting we cut the baby in half?” she asked dryly.

      “I’m not suggesting anything. You’re not giving me time to suggest anything. You’ve dropped your bomb and now seem to think you’re going to waltz out of here and leave me to deal with the fallout.”

      “I believe that’s usually how bombs are dropped,” she replied. She was back to herself. Sharp, dismissive and oh so sure she was better than him.

      But she hadn’t been for a few minutes, and she was carrying his baby. His child.

      A living, breathing human being.

      He sat back down. The weight of it floored him. “I can’t... How long? It’d be...” He did the math. “You’ve been sitting on this for a while.”

      She shrugged. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Heavy black boots. Even with her tattoos covered, she looked like trouble. She always had. He didn’t know why he’d think pregnancy would change it.

      He focused on her. On the gleaming silver skull ring on her thumb. The way her hair seemed all that much blacker against the fair, freckled skin of her cheeks. Sharp edges with surprising hints of vulnerability.

      And she was carrying his child.

      She sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t know what you think sitting there staring at me is going to accomplish, but this is how things are going to be. I have the kid, tell people the father’s some random out-of-towner. I live my life and you live yours.”

      “Knowing your child is mine.”

      “Consider yourself a sperm donor.”

      “I will not,” he said, managing to keep his voice as even as hers. It was a hard-won thing. “I don’t know if you’re trying to be difficult or if it just comes naturally, but this is not a small thing. It’s a huge, bomb-sized thing.”

      “You seem pretty calm and collected to me,” she muttered.

      “Years of practice,” he said through clenched teeth. The lies he’d told and the things he’d seen. Yes, he’d had years of practice in how to appear calm when he was anything but. In control of a world that would not bend to his will—here in Bent or out there where he’d lived his secret life.

      Now this. He wanted to be angry, but every time it spurted up, this strange weight settled over him. Calm wasn’t the right word for it. There was something like a flash of her, from that night. Something he should remember and couldn’t. A softness. A rightness.

      He shook it away, but he couldn’t shake away the realization he didn’t have a choice here. She thought he could walk away, turn his back on his own child, and he wouldn’t in a million years.

      Which meant he had to find common ground with the one person in this whole town—and possibly world—he wasn’t sure he could.

      There had to be common ground here though, whether he liked it or not. They had to find a compromise.

      Something had changed that night, and not just the life it had created. The animosity between him and Vanessa had dulled. Or maybe it was watching Laurel and Grady these past few months. No matter how much grief they got from the town or Dad, they laughed and smiled and...didn’t care. Something had changed inside of them so they didn’t care.

      Dylan had made a child. It was time to not care. “Vanessa.”

      The distinct sound of a gun being fired jolted them both. It had come from the front. Dylan was on his feet in seconds.

      “Stay here,” he ordered.

      “Stay here?” Vanessa repeated incredulously. “You can’t... Was that a gun?”

      But he was already striding out of his office. He made it not even halfway down the hall before he heard footsteps behind him.

      He whirled on Vanessa. “I told you—”

      “Was that a gun? We should call someone! Why are you running toward it?”

      He didn’t have time to explain, but she could call. “Go back to my office, lock the door from the inside and dial 911. Tell them you heard two shots fired in the lobby. One employee inside, not sure about customers. Go.”

      He nudged her back toward the office.

      “Aren’t you coming with me?”

      “I have to make sure Adele—”

      Two masked men slammed through the door from the bank lobby. It was a robbery. Possibly the stupidest of all crimes in this day and age. Surely Adele had hit the alarm and these two men would be caught before they even tried to leave.

      Dylan glanced down at the assault rifles they each carried. Unless they’d shot her first. He felt the horror move through him, but quickly pushed it aside. Compartmentalized and assessed the situation.

      Two armed robbers in front of him. The Carson woman, pregnant with his baby, behind him.

      And he’d thought it was going to be your average Monday.

       Chapter Two

      Vanessa tried to think, but unfamiliar panic tickled the back of her throat. Masked men with guns. She’d faced a lot of bad crap in her life, but this was a first. Fear had turned her body to lead.

      “Office,” Dylan said under his breath. He didn’t look back at her, just ordered her to move.

      But she couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot by a mind-numbing panic that barely allowed her to suck in a breath. The guns. She wasn’t usually rendered useless by the sight of guns. She’d shot her fair share, sometimes even carried one, and had been in the presence of them her whole life.

      But these were so big, and they looked more military than recreational. She was sure she and