THE MAVERICK'S THANKSGIVING BABY Page 6

  “Obviously it’s a relationship that needs some work.”

  Her lips curved, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I don’t want to give anyone—including you—the wrong idea about us.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “But this isn’t LA, and I think people around here will have an easier time accepting the fact that you’re having my baby if they believe we were involved in a real relationship—even if it didn’t work out.”

  “Is that the story you want to go with?”

  “I’d rather give the real relationship part a chance—to see if we can make it work.”

  “Jesse—”

  “Don’t say no, Maggie. Not yet.”

  She sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll pick you up around ten.”

  “Actually, I have an appointment with Lissa in the morning,” she told him. “Can I meet you here again?”

  “Sure.” He brushed a quick kiss over her lips. “Drive safe.”

  * * *

  “I was about to send out the sheriff,” Lissa said, when Maggie walked into the house twenty minutes later.

  The sheriff was currently lounging on the sofa in front of the television, so Maggie waved to him. “Hi, Gage.”

  He lifted his hand to return the greeting. “I told you she wasn’t eaten by bears,” he admonished his wife.

  “As if that was all I was worried about,” Lissa muttered.

  “Well, you can see that I’m safe and all in one piece,” Maggie said.

  “Hmm.” Her cousin’s gaze narrowed, as if she wasn’t entirely convinced. “How did it go?”

  “Better and worse than I expected.”

  “What’s the ‘better’?”

  “He’s not disputing that the baby’s his.”

  “I should think not,” Lissa said indignantly.

  Maggie shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since July—he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t ask questions.”

  “And the ‘worse’?” her cousin prompted.

  “He thinks we should get married.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Lissa jumped up and hugged her. “This is sooo great.”

  “Obviously you got kicked in the head by the same horse that he did.”

  Gage chuckled; Lissa scowled at him.

  “You don’t think it would be great if Maggie married Jesse and moved to Rust Creek Falls?” she said to her husband.

  “I think your cousin has a life—and a job—in LA that need to be taken into consideration,” he countered reasonably.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said to him.

  “But you could get a job here,” Lissa implored. “Unlike LA, Rust Creek Falls isn’t plagued by an abundance of lawyers.”

  “Now you sound like Jesse,” Maggie grumbled.

  “Just think about it,” her cousin suggested.

  “I will.” The problem was, she really couldn’t think straight when she was around Jesse. When she was with him, she wanted to believe that they could defy both the odds and geography and somehow make a relationship work.

  But that had been the plan when she’d gone back to SoCal after the night they spent together in July. They were going to keep in touch and see one another whenever possible. Except that complications—in the form of her job and then her pregnancy—hadn’t allowed it to be possible, and Jesse had grown tired of her excuses and the distance and stopped communicating with her.

  Of course, there was more incentive now to make it work. But their baby wasn’t a magical glue that could bond them together, nor should they expect him or her to be.

  And if she was ever going to say yes to a marriage proposal, she wanted to be in love with the man who was asking. She just wasn’t ready to admit to anyone—even her cousin and best friend—that she already was.

  Chapter Five

  “There’s been a little snag to our plans,” Jesse said, when Maggie showed up at his house just after 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

  “What kind of snag?” she asked curiously.

  He stepped away from the door so she could enter. When she did, she saw a baby girl standing at the coffee table.

  The child had wispy blond hair, big blue eyes and was dressed in a pair of pink overalls. And there was something about her—the shape of her eyes, the tilt of her chin—that launched her stomach into her throat.

  She swallowed, and managed to find her voice. “You already have a baby?”

  “What? No.” The shock in his voice was real. “This is Noelle—my niece.”

  “Oh.” She exhaled an audible sigh of relief.

  Jesse scrubbed a hand over his face as he let out a nervous laugh. “Don’t you think I would have told you something like that?”

  She would have thought so, but she really didn’t know him that well. If she had, she might have known that he had a niece. “I just saw the baby and my mind started spinning,” she admitted.

  “I would have warned you—if I’d had any warning myself,” he told her. “Dallas took the boys to Kalispell to see a movie and Nina had to fill in at the store at the last minute. Usually she would take the baby with her, but Noelle’s teething and cranky and Nina was afraid she’d scare off the customers.”

  “She doesn’t look cranky to me.”

  “Give her a few minutes,” Jesse said drily, hanging Maggie’s coat on a hook.

  “Do you babysit very often?”

  “No. Nina can usually handle everything on her own, and when she does need help, there’s a lineup of volunteers, including her husband, stepsons, grandparents on both sides and numerous aunts and uncles. But no one else was available today, so Noelle was dumped in my lap.”

  Maggie sat on the storage bench by the door and untied her boots. “So this wasn’t part of your plan? Because I have to admit—this kind of feels like a test.”

  “A test?”

  “To see how badly I’m going to screw up as a mother.”

  “It’s not a test,” he assured her. “And you’re not going to screw up.”

  On the table in front of the sofa was a small plastic bowl containing a few cereal O’s, with more scattered on the table and the carpet. When Maggie sat down, the little girl shuffled sideways toward her, holding on to the table as she went. Then she looked up at Maggie with a wide, droolly smile that revealed four tiny white teeth.

  “She’s adorable.”

  “She is pretty cute,” he agreed. “But don’t tell my sister I said so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Noelle looks just like Nina when she was a baby.” He sat on the floor and began to stack up the wooden blocks that were scattered around.

  Noelle put her hand on Maggie’s thigh and uncurled her fist to reveal a crumbly cereal O. She left it on Maggie’s pants, like a present, before she plopped down on the floor and crawled over to see what her uncle was doing.

  Jesse was on the fourth level of blocks when his niece reached out with both hands and pushed them over.

  “Oopsie,” he said, and the little girl clapped her hands and laughed gleefully.

  Maggie watched them play the same game for several minutes, amused by the easy interaction between them. “You’re so natural with her.”

  “She makes it easy,” Jesse told her. “She’s a good baby.”

  “I don’t have a lot of experience with kids,” she admitted.

  “That will change fast,” he told her.

  Noelle moved from the blocks to a ball that lit up and played music when it was rolled. When she gave up on the toys and went back to her cereal, Jesse decided it was time to make lunch, and he left Maggie supervising the baby.

  She decided that she could stack blocks, too, and she sat down on the floor to do so. But Noelle w
asn’t overly interested in the structure Maggie was building. Instead, she was scouring the carpet for lost pieces of cereal. Only when she’d found them all did she crawl over to investigate Maggie’s construction efforts. Of course, the house tumbled down and Noelle laughed and clapped. Then she picked up one of the blocks and shoved one corner of it into her droolly mouth.

  “I don’t know if you’re supposed to be eating that,” Maggie said dubiously.

  The little girl continued to gnaw on the corner of the wood.

  “I know you’re probably hungry, but Uncle Jesse’s getting your lunch ready so you might want to save your appetite.”

  Noelle kept her gaze fixed on Maggie, as if fascinated by what she was saying. Her lips curved in recognition of Uncle Jesse, but she continued to chew on the block.

  “Why don’t you give me that?” Maggie suggested, reaching for the square of wood. “Then we can use it to build a castle for—”

  That was as far as she got, because when she managed to gently pry the block from the little girl’s hand, Noelle started to scream like a banshee.

  Panicked, Maggie immediately gave the piece of wood back to her. The little girl snatched the cube from her hand and threw it—bouncing it off Maggie’s cheekbone and bringing tears to her eyes.

  “What the heck—?” Jesse asked, appearing from the other side of the couch.

  “I took her block away,” Maggie admitted.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve read stuff...about lead paint and chemicals in children’s toys, and I didn’t think she should be chewing on the blocks.”

  “There’s no paint on those blocks,” Jesse pointed out. “They were handmade by my grandfather for Nina when she was a baby.” Then he seemed to notice the red welt on Maggie’s cheek and winced. “She’s got a good arm, doesn’t she?”

  Maggie just nodded.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  Noelle, having recovered her favorite wooden cube, was gnawing happily again, her explosive outburst apparently forgotten.

  Jesse returned a minute later with a baggie filled with frozen peas and laid it gently against Maggie’s cheekbone. “How’s that feel?”

  “Cold.”

  He smiled. “How do you feel?”

  “Ridiculous,” she admitted.

  “Hungry?” he prompted.

  “Sure.”

  Lunch was remarkably uneventful. Jesse had made grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries for everyone. He cut the little girl’s sandwich into bite-size pieces, gave her a few fries and added a spoonful of corn niblets to her plate.

  “Because her mother doesn’t consider potatoes in fried form to be a real vegetable,” he explained to Maggie.

  Before the meal was done, Noelle was yawning and rubbing her eyes with a fist.

  “Someone looks ready for her bottle,” Jesse noted.

  “Ba-ba,” his niece confirmed.

  “Why don’t you give Noelle her bottle and I’ll clean up the kitchen?” Maggie suggested.

  “KP being the lesser of two evils?” Jesse teased.

  She felt her cheeks flush. “It just seems fair, since you cooked, that I do the cleanup.”

  “In that case, I’ll take you up on your offer,” he said, scooping up the baby with his free arm. “But I think diaper change before bottle, because this little princess looks ready for a nap.”

  While Jesse tackled the diaper change—no way was Maggie ready for that challenge—she filled the sink with soapy water.

  As she washed up and then dried the dishes, she could hear Jesse talking to the baby while she drank her bottle, his tone quiet and soothing. But as she put the dishes away, she realized he’d been silent for a while now, and she suspected that the little girl had probably fallen asleep.

  She folded the towel over the handle of the oven and wandered into the living room.

  She was right—the baby was asleep. So was Jesse.

  And something about the image of the big strong man with the beautiful baby girl in his arms made her heart completely melt. There was absolutely no doubt that he loved his sister’s child—or that he was going to be a fabulous father to their baby. She only wished she could be half as confident about her own parenting abilities.

  Maggie touched a hand to her belly and thought of the tiny life growing inside her womb, suddenly assailed with doubts about her ability to meet all of her baby’s needs, to be the mother her child deserved.

  Noelle’s mother worked full-time, but she was able to take her baby to work with her and she had family who were willing and able to help out with the baby as needed. Those same options weren’t available to Maggie. Even if there was room in her shared office for a playpen—and there wasn’t—she couldn’t imagine the partners would ever approve that arrangement.

  As for her family, she knew her parents would help in any way that they could, but they both had demanding careers of their own. And because she was at the start of hers, Maggie worked an average of ten hours a day, six days a week. Who would take care of her baby for all of that time?

  Despite the size of the firm, there was no on-site day care at Alliston & Blake. Of course, most of the female lawyers on staff were primarily focused on their careers. She knew a few of them had children: Deirdre McNichol had three kids, but she also had a husband who was a playwright and able to work at home with their children; Lynda Simmons had invited her mother to move in so that she could look after her grandchild while Lynda was working; and Candace Hartman had a nanny—of course, she was a partner, so she could afford to pay someone to come into her house to take care of her child. Obviously none of those options was viable for Maggie, so she’d have to figure out something that was.

  But first, she had to face dinner with Jesse’s parents.

  * * *

  Dinner at the Crawfords’ was always an experience—and probably not one that Jesse should have subjected Maggie to just yet. And definitely not while he was still hoping to convince her to marry him.

  No one had ever accused his parents of being subtle, and as soon as Maggie sat down across from Jesse at the dinner table, the interrogation began. From “Where do you live in California?” and “What brings you to Rust Creek Falls this weekend?” to “How did you meet Jesse?” and everything in between.

  No subject was off-limits, as his father proved when he asked, “What do you think about a woman planning to have a baby out of wedlock?”

  Not surprisingly, the question made Maggie choke on her water.

  “Really, Todd,” his wife chided. “That’s hardly appropriate dinner conversation.” Which suggested that she at least had some boundaries, although Jesse didn’t really believe it.

  In an effort to divert the focus away from Maggie, he chimed in. “There are a lot of women who pursue nontraditional options to satisfy their desire for a family,” he said, in a direct quote of the explanation his sister had once given to him.

  “Nontraditional options,” his father sputtered. “Nina got knocked up by some stranger through a turkey baster.”

  “Now she has a beautiful baby girl,” his wife said soothingly. “And a husband.”

  “And three more kids she didn’t plan on having,” Todd noted.

  “Three wonderful boys, who are now our grandchildren, too,” Laura agreed. “And if we’re lucky, Nate and Callie won’t wait too much longer to give us even more.”

  “Give them time,” her husband urged. “They’re not even married yet.”

  “But they’re so perfectly suited,” Laura said. Then she turned to Maggie and said, in a confidential tone, “I had some concerns at first. There was a whole group of women who came here after the big flood last year, each one of them looking to hook up with a cowboy, and when Callie set her sights on Nate—as she did from the get-go—I w
as afraid she was just like them. Some of those women don’t understand the life of a rancher—it isn’t nearly as romantic as it looks in books and movies.”

  “Nothing ever is,” Maggie agreed.

  “But the important thing is that Callie and Nate are happy together.” Laura paused to glance at her son. “We just hope Jesse will find someone who suits him so perfectly someday.”

  The implication being, of course, that Maggie couldn’t be that someone. And though she kept a polite smile on her face, Jesse knew that his mother’s remark had not been lost on her.

  But still his mother had to hammer the point home, as she did when she asked, “So when are you going back to California?”

  “Tomorrow,” Maggie admitted.

  “Well, I hope you’ll stop by again the next time you’re in town. Whenever that might be.”

  It was a dismissal—and not even a polite one. But he should have realized that Maggie wasn’t the type of woman to let herself be dismissed, and while he was trying to figure out what he could say to clarify the situation, she responded.

  “I’m sure it will be soon,” Maggie said, matching his mother’s cool tone. “We’ve got a lot to figure out before the baby comes.”

  Laura’s fake smile froze on her face.

  Todd turned to Maggie, his thick brows drawn together in a thunderous scowl. “You’re pregnant?”

  She nodded. “But don’t worry—there were no turkey basters involved. I got knocked up the old-fashioned way.”

  * * *

  Jesse hadn’t intended to share the news of his impending parenthood with his own parents just yet, because he knew what they would expect him to do—it was the same thing he expected of himself: to marry the mother-to-be and give their child a family. And while he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Maggie’s pregnancy a secret for much longer, he hadn’t been anxious to go another round with his parents.

  Their relationship had hit a serious snag when he’d told his mom and dad that he’d been offered a job at Traub Stables and they’d forbidden him to accept it. Forbidden him—as if he was a teenager rather than a twenty-nine-year-old man.