Donna Alward - The Texan's Baby

There she was, pushing him away again.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to go with you?” Chris asked.

“People will get the wrong idea.”

“So what? Eventually they’re going to know we had sex. You said it yourself. Showing up together makes it look as if there was more to it than a one-nighter. Unless there’s another reason why you don’t want me around?”

Lizzie blushed.

“Is there another reason, Lizzie?”

“Like what?” She lifted her chin and he saw the spark of defiance in her eyes. He liked it. Liked her when she got a little fired up. She’d been this way before, too. A little on edge. Exciting.

He moved closer, saw her pupils widen, and that’s when he knew. The cool, calm demeanor wasn’t completely real. Oh, he had no doubt that she wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Another step put him directly in front of her, close enough that he could smell the light floral scent of her shampoo, see the way her pulse beat heavily at her throat.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Shh,” he ordered as he contemplated his next move.

The Texan’s Baby

Donna Alward

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A busy wife and mother of three (two daughters and the family dog), DONNA ALWARDbelieves hers is the best job in the world: a combination of stay-at-home mom and romance novelist. An avid reader since childhood, Donna has always made up her own stories. She completed her arts degree in English literature in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that she penned her first full-length novel and found herself hooked on writing romance. In 2006 she sold her first manuscript, and now writes warm, emotional stories for Mills & Boon.

In her new home office in Nova Scotia, Donna loves being back on the east coast of Canada after nearly twelve years in Alberta, where her career began, writing about cowboys and the West. Donna’s debut romance, Hired by the Cowboy , was awarded a Booksellers’ Best Award in 2008 for Best Traditional Romance.

With the Atlantic Ocean only minutes from her doorstep, Donna has found a fresh take on life and promises even more great romances in the near future!

Donna loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through her website, www.donnaalward.com, or follow @DonnaAlwardon Twitter.

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To Trish, Barbara, Pamela, Cathy, and Tanya—

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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 Sixteen

Extract

Chapter One

Two minutes and thirty-three seconds to go.

Lizzie Baron stared at her watch with dismay. It had only been twenty-seven seconds since she started the timer on her watch. She refused to look until the full three minutes was up. Instead she checked her reflection in the mirror of the executive bathroom of the Baron Energies offices. She brushed a flake of mascara off the crest of her cheek and tucked a strand of rebellious hair behind her ear. She smoothed her skirt—a straight, businesslike skirt in boring charcoal-gray that ended just a shade above her knee, and checked the buttons of her matching fitted jacket for stray threads.

Perfect.

One minute, seventeen seconds.

Three minutes had never, ever in the history of the world, been this long. She was sure of it.

Her stomach churned uneasily but she told herself it was just nerves. Stress. She worked long hours at her job and didn’t get much downtime. Everyone at Baron was on edge since they had recently lost a major contract in the Gulf. The tension level in the downtown Dallas office could be cut with a knife most days. Stress could definitely have caused her period to be late, right?

Except, a little voice inside her head reminded her, your period was due before that particular piece of bad news, remember?

Twenty-six seconds.

She breathed in and out. She was not pregnant. It wasn’t possible. Well, it was. Technically. But highly improbable. She didn’t have time for this. And a one-night stand with a rodeo bum...well, how often did people get pregnant from one night?

She smiled grimly at the reflection of her face, her skin oddly pale under the unflattering fluorescent lighting. The answer to that was simple. It always only took one time for someone to get pregnant. Granted, the chances went up with frequency of... She swallowed. They hadn’t exactly slept a lot that night.

Zero seconds.

Lizzie took a deep breath. Putting off looking wouldn’t change the result. She reached for the stick and stared at the little window.

A plus sign.

She was pregnant.

Just flipping wonderful.

* * *

LIZZIE GOT OUT of her car, blinking in the brightness of the San Antonio sun. She’d used the almost four-hour drive to prepare, to work out what she was going to say. The first thing she’d done after taking the home test was visit the doctor, where her pregnancy had been confirmed. Lizzie hadn’t wanted to say anything to anyone until she was 100 percent sure the first test hadn’t been a false positive. Her mind was still reeling with the news, and she was trying to sort out how she was going to tell her family....

They were going to seriously freak. And be disappointed. Who, in this day and age, went around having sex with strangers? She bit down on her lip. She was a joke. A statistic. A casualty of the 1 percent of condoms that failed at a crucial moment.

She’d always felt like the responsible one. When Delia Baron left her kids, Brock had been on his own, and Lizzie had stepped in and mothered her younger siblings. Then her dad had married Peggy and adopted her boys, Jacob and Daniel. Those years had been pretty good. They’d all lived together out at Roughneck Ranch—the name a deliberate hat-tip to the oil industry that had put the Baron name on the map. Lizzie had cared for Peggy a lot, which meant Peggy’s death had been especially hard to take.

Now her father was married again, this time to a much younger wife. Lizzie might have resented Julieta, who was only ten years older than herself, except Lizzie had found an unexpected friend and support in her stepmother.

Telling her would probably be the easiest of the family. Julieta never judged. She was always after Lizzie to get out and enjoy life more. Lizzie was fairly sure, though, that this wasn’t what Julieta meant.

For one night only she’d allowed herself to cut loose. What a fool she’d been for thinking she could work out her frustrations by being so self-indulgent, that she could be irresponsible without repercussions and consequences. It was totally out of character.

But sometimes she felt as though she was the one who took on all the heavy lifting in the family, was the rock for all her brothers and sisters when they went through stuff. She was tired of being Lizzie who never made mistakes, Lizzie who did everything right. Lizzie, Brock Baron’s firstborn.

Yeah, Jacob was pretty much the same age as she was, but he was her stepbrother. Lizzie was the oldest and her brother Jet was the baby. Sometimes she wished they were reversed in the birth order, because Brock wouldn’t give up the idea that Jet would take over Baron Energies one day. Problem was Jet wasn’t remotely interested.