Brenda Harlen - The Maverick's Thanksgiving Baby

“I thought you said you were hungry.”

“I was.” She popped the last piece of toast into her mouth, then folded her napkin and set it on top of her plate. “And now I’ve eaten.”

“You had one piece of French toast.”

“I had two.” One corner of her mouth tilted up in a half smile. “I ate the first one as soon as I flipped it out of the frying pan.”

“Two whole slices?” He transferred another two to his own plate. “You must be stuffed.”

“Don’t make fun of me—I’m just happy to be able to keep down what I’m eating these days.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely contrite. “That must have been awful.”

“It wasn’t fun,” she agreed.

“You should have called me.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

He wanted to stay angry with her, but what was the point? Nothing could change what had happened since she left Rust Creek Falls in July, nothing could give them back the first four months of her pregnancy. But he couldn’t help but think that, if she’d told him sooner, they might be in a different place right now.

Instead, he’d spent weeks dealing with the tangled emotions inside of him. He’d been hurt and angry and frustrated that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He’d tried to get over her—he’d even let his younger brother, Justin, set him up with a friend of the girl he was going out with. The date had been a complete bust, primarily because he couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie. But recently he’d managed to convince himself that he was starting to forget about her—right up until the minute he saw her standing outside the paddock at Traub Stables.

“So,” he began, thinking that a change of topic was in order, “things have been busy for you at work over the past couple of months?”

She nodded. “Busier than usual. Maybe too busy.”

“Can you cut back on your hours?”

“Not if I want to keep my job.”

“Do you?”

“Of course,” she answered immediately, automatically.

Then her brow furrowed as she picked up her glass of water and sipped.

“Tell me about your new job,” she finally suggested. “When I was here in the summer, you were working here, at your family’s ranch, and now you’re training horses.”

“I still help out here, but it’s the horses that have always been my focus.”

“I heard they call you the horse whisperer in town—what exactly does that mean?”

“It’s not as mystical as it sounds,” he told her. “It just means that I don’t use restraints or force when I’m training.”

“How did you end up working at Traub Stables? I thought there was some long-standing feud between the Crawfords and the Traubs.”

“There is,” he acknowledged. “Although no one really seems sure about its origins, whether it was a business deal gone bad or a romantic rivalry. Whatever the cause, I think my sister’s marriage to Dallas Traub in February has helped build some bridges between the two families.”

“So your family doesn’t mind that you’re working for Sutter Traub?”

His lips curved in a wry smile. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he acknowledged. “My father saw it as a betrayal. My mother warned that I was being set up—for what, she had no idea, but she was certain it was some kind of disaster in the making.”

“Did you take the job despite their objections—or because of them?”

“Despite,” he said. “I’ve wanted some space from my family for a long time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love and respect them.”

“And you don’t mind that your boss is a Traub?”

“Sutter’s a good guy who values the animals in his care and appreciates what I bring to his stables.”

“I read a series of books when I was a kid, about a girl who lived on a ranch and raised an orphaned foal,” she told him. “She fed it and trained it and entered riding competitions with it. After reading those books, I was desperate to experience the feeling of racing across open fields on horseback. I begged my parents to put me in a riding camp for the summer.

“They were always encouraging us to try new experiences, so they found a local camp and signed me up. I was so excited...until the first day. I’d never seen a horse up close until then,” she confided. “And when we got to the Northbrook Riding Academy and I saw real, live horses galloping in the distance, I was terrified.”

“What happened?” he asked, both curious about and grateful for this voluntary glimpse into her childhood.

“I begged to go home as passionately as I’d begged for the camp, but they made me stay. My parents are very big on commitment and follow-through. I was the one who wanted the experience, and they weren’t going to let me quit.”

“Did you ride?”

She shook her head. “The instructors tried to help me overcome my fear of the horses, but whenever I got too close, I would actually start to hyperventilate. Of course, the other kids made fun of me, which made the whole experience that much worse.

“Then I met Dolly. She was a white Shetland pony who was too old and lame to do much of anything, but she had the softest, kindest eyes.

“I spent most of the week with her. I brushed her and fed her and led her around her paddock. At the end of the week, I still hadn’t been on the back of a horse, but I’d fallen in love with Dolly. For the next six months, I went back to Northbrook once a week just to visit her.”

He didn’t need to ask what had happened after six months. Considering that the pony had been old and lame, he was certain he knew. Instead he said, “Did you ever get over your fear of horses?”

“I haven’t been around them much since that summer.”

He pushed away from the table. “Get your coat and boots on.”

“What? Why?”

“I want to introduce you to someone.”

She shook her head. “I got over my childhood fascination with horses—I’m good now.”

“Not if you’re still afraid,” he told her.

“I wouldn’t say afraid ,” she denied. “More...cautious.”

He took her coat from the hook, brought it over to her.

“I need to clean up the kitchen.”

“The dishes will wait.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re pushy?”

He took her hand and guided it into the sleeve of her coat. “Not pushy—persuasive.”

“I’m not feeling persuaded,” she told him, but she put her other arm in her other sleeve. “My boots are still, um, upstairs.”

In his bedroom, where he’d taken them off her along with the rest of her clothing before he’d made love with her.

“I’ll get them,” he said.

When he came back down, she had her coat zipped up to her chin, a hat on her head and a scarf wrapped around her throat.

He held back a smile as he knelt at her feet and helped her on with the boots. To someone who had lived her whole life in Southern California, Montana in November—even the first of November—was undoubtedly cold, but he knew it would be a lot colder in December, January and February.

He hoped she would be there to experience it.

* * *

Maggie could tell that Jesse was amused by her efforts to bundle up against the climate. As she carefully tucked her hands into woolen mittens, he stuffed his feet into his boots and tugged on a jacket, not even bothering to button it.

She stepped outside and gasped as the cold slapped her in the face and stole the breath from her lungs.

“It was seventy-two degrees when I left Los Angeles,” she told him.

He slid an arm across her shoulders, holding her close to share body heat—of which he seemed to have an abundance. “The weather takes some getting used to for a lot of people.”