The Cowboy on Her Trail Read online

  “Are you pregnant?”

  Blaire gasped. Her face turned ashen. “What?”

  “I asked—”

  “I heard you.” Blaire closed her eyes and turned around, then leaned back against her car.

  “So it’s true,” Justin said, his voice going husky. “I’m the father, aren’t I?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “So this is why you’ve been avoiding me. You weren’t going to tell me at all, were you?”

  “Justin, I’m sorry. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I’m still not sure.”

  “Look, Blaire, this has taken us both by surprise, but we need to talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. We spent a wonderful night together, but you don’t owe me anything. I don’t plan to make demands of you. Don’t trouble yourself about me one little bit. I’ll be just fine. Now if you’ll move your truck. I’d like to get back to work.”

  Justin stood there for a long moment, unable to move. He was going to be a father. Blaire Harding carried his child. And she wanted nothing to do with him….

  Dear Reader,

  Well, the lazy days of summer are winding to an end, so what better way to celebrate those last long beach afternoons than with a good book? We here at Silhouette Special Edition are always happy to oblige! We begin with Diamonds and Deceptions by Marie Ferrarella, the next in our continuity series, THE PARKS EMPIRE. When a mesmerizing man walks into her father’s bookstore, sheltered Brooke Moss believes he’s her dream come true. But he’s about to challenge everything she thought she knew about her own family.

  Victoria Pade continues her NORTHBRIDGE NUPTIALS with Wedding Willies, in which a runaway bride with an aversion to both small towns and matrimony finds herself falling for both, along with Northbridge’s most eligible bachelor! In Patricia Kay’s Man of the Hour, a woman finds her gratitude to the detective who found her missing child turning quickly to…love. In Charlie’s Angels by Cheryl St. John, a single father is stymied when his little girl is convinced that finding a new mommy is as simple as having an angel sprinkle him with her “miracle dust”—until he meets the beautiful blonde who drives a rig called “Silver Angel.” In It Takes Three by Teresa Southwick, a pregnant caterer sets her sights on the handsome single dad who swears his fatherhood days are behind him. Sure they are! And the MEN OF THE CHEROKEE ROSE series by Janis Reams Hudson concludes with The Cowboy on Her Trail, in which one night of passion with the man she’s always wanted results in a baby on the way. Can marriage be far behind?

  Enjoy all six of these wonderful novels, and please do come back next month for six more new selections, only from Silhouette Special Edition.

  Gail Chasan

  Senior Editor

  The Cowboy on Her Trail

  JANIS REAMS HUDSON

  Books by Janis Reams Hudson

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Resist Me if You Can #1037

  The Mother of His Son #1095

  His Daughter’s Laughter #1105

  Until You #1210

  *Their Other Mother #1267

  *The Price of Honor #1332

  *A Child on the Way #1349

  *Daughter on His Doorstep #1434

  *The Last Wilder #1474

  †The Daddy Survey #1619

  †The Other Brother #1626

  †The Cowboy on Her Trail #1632

  JANIS REAMS HUDSON

  was born in California, grew up in Colorado, lived in Texas for a few years and now calls central Oklahoma home. She is the author of more than twenty-five novels, both contemporary and historical romances. Her books have appeared on the Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and BookRak bestseller lists and earned numerous awards, including the National Reader’s Choice Award and Reviewer’s Choice awards from Romantic Times. She is a three-time finalist for the coveted RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America and is a past president of RWA.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Somewhere, sometime in his life, Justin Chisholm figured he must have done something incredibly right, and this night was his reward. He couldn’t fathom any other reason why he should be so lucky as to finally end up with Blaire Harding in his bed.

  He knew she was in his bed because they had just made sweet, hot love together, and he was just now drifting down from a peak higher than he’d ever known.

  The fact that it was the motel’s bed rather than his own didn’t faze him a bit. He was paying for the bed, so that made it his, right?

  When a man lived in his family home with his grandmother, his brother, sister-in-law and two young nieces, not to mention the housekeeper, her husband, and their baby, he didn’t take a woman home to his own personal bed. Not if he expected any privacy. Not if he had any respect for his family and the woman, and this was a woman for whom he had plenty of respect.

  He didn’t need to open his eyes to see the shape of her, sleek and curved in all the right places, lean where she should be, round where it counted. Behind his closed lids he could still see her dark blond hair, her golden brown eyes. The cute way the tip of her nose turned slightly upward, which she thought made her look like a Pekingese and he thought made her look adorably kissable.

  He couldn’t remember a time in the past several months since she’d moved back to town when he hadn’t wanted her. She’d made him wait, she’d put him off, she’d kept him at arm’s length all that time.

  But gradually she had let him get closer. A conversation or two. A developing friendship. Eventually, a ride to get her car fixed. A lunch with a bunch of their mutual friends. A dance or two at the local watering hole. Then another dance, and another, until finally she had agreed to go out to dinner with him. Then dinner and a movie.

  No woman before her had ever made him work so hard to please her. But he wanted to please her, in every way he could.

  Tonight she’d finally agreed to let them please each other.

  With a low moan, he inhaled the fragrance of wildflowers in her hair. “You smell so good.”

  Curled up warmly against his chest, Blaire Harding smiled and sighed. “Glad you approve.”

  “Oh, I do.” He nuzzled his face against her hair. Then, when she expected something deeply romantic, or maybe a sweet word or two, or even a comfortable silence, he snorted in her ear.

  Blaire burst out laughing and rolled away from him with a shriek. “Where’d he go? Where’d he go?”

  “Where’d who go?” He sat up in bed and looked quickly around the room.

  “Justin Chisholm,” she cried. “He was here just a minute ago, then all of a sudden there was a pig snorting in my ear.”

  “Oh, ha-ha.” He pulled her back against his chest. “I don’t know how to coo like a turtledove, or whatever.”

  “So you snorted?”

  He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. “Maybe that was an allergic reaction.”

  “To what, me?”

  “To wildflowers.”

  Blaire squinted and tried to duck away from the glare. “Egad, that’s bright. What wildflowers?”

  “The ones I smell in your hair.”

  “You said it smelled good.”

  “It does.”

  “But it makes you snort?”

  “Maybe.”

  She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. �
�I think you were just trying to be funny. And it worked, I guess, because it made me laugh.”

  They lay nestled together, still feeling the afterglow of two thorough rounds of intense lovemaking. After several minutes Justin shifted and groaned.

  “Uh, Blaire,” he said, “believe me, this is the absolute last thing on earth I want to say to you right now…”

  Blaire’s stomach tightened. After months of denying herself the pleasure of accepting any of his numerous invitations, she had finally given in and spent the most incredible night of her life with a man she’d had a secret crush on forever, and he was going to tell her he didn’t want to see her again. She just knew it.

  But Blaire knew how to be practical. Better to get the bad news over with and get on with her life. She pulled her arms from around his neck. She moved to push away from him, but he held her close.

  “But you’re going to say it anyway,” she said tensely.

  “Only because of an overdeveloped sense of honesty, which I often wish my grandmother had never drummed into me.”

  She couldn’t look him in the face. Not if he was going to tell her he didn’t want to see her again. “Honesty’s never a bad thing. Why don’t you just spit it out and get it over with?”

  “Okay.” He lowered his forehead to rest against hers. “You said you wanted to be home by two. It’s one-thirty.”

  A wave of relief swept through her and left her limp in his arms. “Oh,” she managed.

  Justin sensed that something wasn’t quite right. He frowned. “What did you think I was going to say?”

  She turned her face away and shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Blaire? What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” She managed a smile and rolled over to sit on the side of the bed with her back to him. “What could be wrong?” Holding a corner of the sheet over her breasts, which was a ridiculous attempt at belated modesty considering what they’d been doing to and with each other for the past couple of hours, she smiled at him over her shoulder. “It feels silly to say I had a great time, but I did.”

  He sat up behind her and kissed her bare shoulder.

  A shiver of remembered passion raced through her.

  “It doesn’t sound silly to me,” he said.

  Blaire noted the time on the clock on the cheap dresser across the room, 1:35 a.m.

  When they’d made their date the other day she’d told him she wanted to be home by 2:00 a.m. and made him promise he would not try to get her to change her mind. She was pleased that he was sticking to that.

  She had no pressing reason for getting home by two, except she wouldn’t have the luxury of sleeping late in the morning. Her father always opened the feed store at seven every morning, Monday through Saturday, and tomorrow was Saturday. Her job was to man the office, so she had to be there during business hours.

  Without thought she glanced down at her wrist-watch—the only thing she was wearing.

  How odd, she thought with irritation. Her watch had stopped at 11:30 p.m. It had lasted through their first round of lovemaking, but not the second.

  The implications suddenly struck her. She bolted upright. It couldn’t be. This had to be a coincidence.

  “What’s wrong?” Justin asked, his lips moving over the back of her neck. “You’re all of a sudden stiff as a board.” He ran his hands up and down her arms. “I told you I’d get you home on time.”

  “It’s not that. It’s nothing.” Her mind scrambled for something to say that would make sense and justify her sudden stiffness, which she could not deny. “Just a cramp in my foot.”

  “Ouch. I hate it when that happens. Here.” He slid from behind her and knelt—naked—at her feet. “Which foot?”

  He sure was pretty to look at, in all his naked glory. Flat stomach, hard, lean muscles, light bronze skin speaking of his Cherokee ancestry, with his face, neck and hands several shades darker from working outdoors all year on his ranch. Then there were those parts of him that declared he was a man. All man.

  “Blaire?”

  “Hmm? Oh. This one.” She lifted her right foot, ashamed of herself for lying, but what was a girl to do?

  She glanced at her watch again. It hadn’t advanced a second. She noticed Justin’s watch lying on the nightstand. Desperate to prove to herself that her watch stopping at this particular time was merely a coincidence, she grabbed his and strapped it onto her wrist just above her watch. It was an old-fashioned watch with a face and a second hand, the kind of watch you had to wind. On the tightest notch of the brown leather strap it fit her like a large, loose bracelet.

  “That’s a little big for you.”

  “Mmm.”

  She didn’t have a cramp in her foot, but his hands still felt like magic as they worked her instep. “Mmm.”

  The smile he gave her, kneeling there at her feet without a stitch of clothing on, was pure devil. “Like that, do you?”

  She smiled back. “What do you think?”

  “I think if you keep looking at me like that, you’re gonna get mad at me for making you miss that two o’clock deadline you set for yourself.”

  Blaire let out a sigh. “You just ruined the mood.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “Damn my hide.”

  The clock on the dresser said it was 1:45 a.m.

  Her watch still said 11:30 p.m.

  His watch, which a few minutes ago had read the same as the clock on the dresser, now read 1:42 a.m. The second hand was not moving. It had stopped, apparently, the moment she put it on.

  Blaire swallowed. Hard. A fine trembling started in her shoulders and raced down her arms to leave her hands unsteady. She unbuckled the leather band and placed his watch back on the bedside table. She stared at it, and as if by her will alone, the second hand resumed ticking its way around the face.

  Cold sweat broke out along Blaine’s spine.

  Don’t panic. Stay calm. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a family myth. A silly coincidence. There’s no way—

  “Blaire?”

  She jumped as if shot. “What?”

  “Babe, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “What? Oh. Sorry. I…I must be coming down with something.” She pulled her foot from his grasp and bunched the sheet around herself as she scooted off the bed and started grabbing her clothes from the floor. “I’ve got to get home.”

  What good she thought getting herself home was going to do was beyond her. If the family myth about watches not working turned out to be true, she was screwed. In more ways than one.

  Justin watched her as she scrambled into her clothes as if her life depended on it. By the time she’d finished dressing, so had he. He grabbed his watch from the bedside table and strapped it on, frowning to note that it seemed to be slow when compared to the two dollar, digital alarm clock bolted to the dresser. He could have sworn they’d been in sync a couple of hours ago.

  As he followed Blaire to the door he glanced around the cheap motel room and cringed. Maybe what Blaire was suffering from was a bad case of second thoughts. The room was clean, with fairly new although cheap furnishings, but there was no disguising it from the motel room it was.

  She deserved better than this dinky room. They both did. But she hadn’t invited him to her place, and he didn’t have a “place.” Hell, he didn’t even have a back seat; he drove a pickup.

  With her overcoat on to shield her from the chilly December wind, she reached for the doorknob, but he put his hand over hers and paused. “You going to be able to make it home? Do you need a doctor or something?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.” She gave him a small smile. “I’ll be fine once I get home. Please.” She removed her hand from the doorknob and placed it on his arm. “Please don’t worry. I had a wonderful night, and now it’s time for me to go home. That’s all.”

  He studied her closely. Her color seemed more normal now than it had a few minutes ago. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m
sure.”

  “Come on, then.” He opened the door and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get you home.”

  Chapter One

  It was a chilly February night on the Cherokee Rose ranch in Central Oklahoma. Cherokee Rose Chisholm took a well-earned rest in her recliner before the big screen TV in the living room.

  She could take the time to relax because she’d been in the saddle most of the day, and at the desk working on the ranch records and books half the evening.

  Thank God, she thought, for Maria, who’d stepped into the position of housekeeper when Earline retired last month, and for Emily, who loved to oversee the house and meals and added a much-needed feminine touch to the house. Between those two women, they took a load of responsibility off Rose’s shoulders. And their daughters—six-year-old Libby and eight-year-old Janie, Rose’s new granddaughters, plus Rosa, Maria’s new baby, who was named for the ranch on which she was born. Rose had feared having a newborn in the house would wear them all out. At seventy-eight, Rose was quite certain that she was not up to sharing her home with a newborn.

  But Maria was so good with the baby, and Emily helped her a great deal, that all Rose had to do was hold the baby and coo over her when she was sleepy and sweet-smelling.

  With her two oldest grandsons married now, that left only Justin, and Rose was getting concerned about him. She’d thought he’d found someone special a couple of months ago, but lately he’d been moping around a lot, and moping was simply not in Justin’s nature.

  If he didn’t snap out of it soon, she would just have to stick her nose in. She couldn’t bear to see one of her boys unhappy.

  “Hi, this is Blaire. I can’t come to the phone right now. If you want me to call you back, leave a message.”

  Justin resisted the urge to pound his head against the wall. He hung up without leaving a message. If he left any more messages he’d end up getting arrested as a stalker.