And Cowboy Makes Three (Cowboys To The Rescue 2)

Read And Cowboy Makes Three (Cowboys To The Rescue 2) Online

Authors: Martha Shields

Tags: #Contemporary, #Romance, #Fiction, #Forever Love, #Adult, #Bachelor, #Single Woman, #Sensual, #Hearts Desire, #Harlequin Treasury, #Series, #Cowboys, #Rescue, #Family Life, #Western, #Millionaire, #Groom, #Wyoming, #Rancher, #Marriage, #Deceptive, #Tycoon, #Relationships, #Marriage Minded, #General Romance, #Silhouette, #1990's

BOOK: And Cowboy Makes Three (Cowboys To The Rescue 2)
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COMING NEXT MONTH
 
#1300 SWEET BRIDE OF REVENGE—Suzanne Carey
Virgin Brides/June Brides
Nora Braet would do anything for the family business—including marry the man threatening to take it over! She thought theirs would be a marriage in name only—until her new husband decided to claim her as his true wife, making Nora dream of a love that seemed impossible....
#1301 MAN, WIFE AND LITTLE WONDER—
Robin Nicholas
Buntlles of Joy/June Brides
When childhood crush Johnny Tremont asked her to marry him, Grace Greene thought her fantasy had come true. But the former bad boy said he needed only a temporary Mrs. to keep his little niece. So why was he looking at Grace like a man in love?
#1302 WHO’S THE FATHER OF JENNY’S BABY?—
Donna Clayton
Mother & Child/June Brides
Jenny Prentice awoke, only to learn two mcn claimed to be the father of her unborn child. One man knows he is Jenny’s true love, and that the other is merely out for revenge. But will the truth be revealed in time?
#1303 GRANTED: WILD WEST BRIDE—Carol Grace
Best-Kept Wishes/June Brides
Rancher Josh Gentry had given up on happily-ever-after, until pretty Bridget McCloud came along and made his little boy smile again—and this cowboy’s heart beat faster. Had the brooding loner finally found the wife he once wished for?
#1304 WIFE ON HIS DOORSTEP—Alice Sharpe
June Brides
When beautiful runaway bride Megan Morison literally landed in his arms, riverboat captain John Vermont discovered unaccustomed feelings of a very matrimonial kind. But this confirmed bachelor doesn’t want to take the plunge into love...unless Megan can anchor his heart to hers.
#1305 HIS TOMBOY BRIDE—Leanna Wilson
June Brides
Marriage-shy Nick Latham was supposed to give away his best friend’s sister at her wedding. But one look at all-grown-up Billie Rae Gunther made Nick think about keeping the bride for himself! Could he ever persuade her to walk down the aisle to
him?
AND COWBOY MAKES THREE
 
Martha Shields
 
“I want to thank you for the incredible gift you gave me,”
 
Jake murmured to Claire.
 
She regarded him warily. “What gift?”
 
He gently ran a finger along her jawline. “Your virginity. I guess you can’t understand how a man feels when his wife comes to him pure, untouched by any other man.” He slipped an arm around her waist and drew her closer.
 
“You’re talking like some medieval lord.” Then she added suspiciously, “And even more like a cowboy.”
 
His lips twisted. “You have to remember that though I don’t much resemble one now, I was raised a cowboy.”
 
“Thank heaven you grew out of it,” Claire muttered. “You did, didn’t you?”
 
Jake just smiled.
To Larry,
my very own hero for over twenty years
Books by Martha Shields
 
Silhouette Romance
 
*
Home Is Where Hank Is
#1287
*And Cowboy Makes Three
#1317
 
*Cowboys to the Rescue
MARTHA SHIELDS
grew up telling stories to her sister to pass time on the long drives to their grandparents’ house. Since she’s never been able to stop dreaming up characters, she’s thrilled to share her stories with a wider audience. Martha lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband, teenage daughter and a Cairn “Terror” who can’t believe he’s not in Kansas anymore. Martha has a master’s degree in journalism and works at a local university.
Chapter One
 
“A
baby!” Claire Eden’s back stiffened until she couldn’t tell it from the back of the leather-bound chair. “You’re telling me I need to have a baby?”
Across the expanse of the mahogany desk in her office, Dr. Ann Freeman spread slender hands. “Are you planning to have children at all?”
“Well, sure, someday, but...”
“If that someday isn’t in the next year, you can probably forget it.”
Claire’s jaw dropped, and a huge biological clock loomed before her. She’d heard tales about the proverbial timepiece, but she’d never heard it ticking. Until now. It boomed as loud as thunder.
She shifted wide eyes to the rain dripping down the windows of her doctor’s twenty-seventh-floor office and shook the vision away with relief. The noise really was thunder. How could she have forgotten about the dark clouds that had been rolling over the Rocky Mountains as she’d watched her car being towed away? The cold rain had begun on the cab ride downtown, soaking her leather athletic shoes and the hem of her blue-jean skirt as she ran into the building, fighting through office workers leaving at the end of the day. Luckily Dr. Freeman knew how worried she was about the test she’d had several days before and stayed late to see her.
“Your condition will only get worse, Claire,” the doctor stated.
Frankness was one of the things Claire liked about her gynecologist. Along with being a woman and just a few years older, she gave it to you straight. “Aren’t there pills or something? I thought you’d write me a prescription and make the pain go away. I didn’t think you were going to hand me a time bomb.”
“An apt description. And yes, there are pills I’m going to prescribe, but there’s no guarantee with them. Pregnancy, on the other hand, would fix everything. It would give you the baby you want and, in most cases like yours, it significantly reduces the endometrial tissue.”
“Yes, well, ‘Have a baby’ is easy for you to say. You’ve got a husband and three kids already. I’m not married. Not even dating anyone.”
“No prospects on the horizon?”
Claire shook her head.
“There’s artificial insemination.”
“That costs how many thousands of dollars for each attempt? And I can just imagine my brothers’ reaction if I got pregnant without being married. They’d be in Denver on the next plane with shotguns primed—only to find that the object of their wrath is a test tube.” Claire released a frustrated sigh, then asked softly, “So where does that leave me?”
Dr. Freeman leaned back in her chair with a sympathetic smile. “With a very tough decision.”
 
“‘And to my friend and partner, Jacob Henry Anderson, I give my residuary estate, including full ownership of the Rocking T Ranch and all profits from investments outstanding at the time of my death. If Jacob Anderson does not survive me, I give—’”
Thunder drowned out the lawyer’s voice, drumming the words into Jake Anderson’s brain. He now owned the Rocking T.
The lawyer droned on, but Jake didn’t listen. He knew what the rest of Alan’s will said. It was a duplicate of his own. He just hadn’t realized until this instant what Alan’s death meant. His considerable wealth had just doubled, but he didn’t give a damn about the money. What ripped through his soul was the realization that he owned Alan’s ranch.
His eyes shifted to the window, seeking the Rocking T through the rain drowning Denver’s afternoon rush hour. Though the ranch lay a hundred miles northeast of this downtown office building, just a few miles south of the Nebraska state line, he could see it as clearly as if the grassy acres lay directly beneath his thirty-three-floor vantage point.
The Rocking T ran alongside his own ranch, the Bar Hanging Seven. Five generations of Townsends and Andersons had run cattle on the ranches until Alan and Jake were forced to become corporate wranglers, bulldogging spreadsheets and roping investments in order to save their homes.
An aneurysm. What the hell kind of way was that to die? Alan had been on one of his wild weekends with his babe
du jour
and just keeled over dead. No warning. No opportunity to get his life in order. No chance to...to what? Grow a family so the Rocking T would stay Townsend land? So there would be more than one person who gave a damn that he was gone?
Jake had been the only person at the funeral to whom Alan meant more than money. The only one who truly mourned.
Who would mourn if I died? What would happen to the Bar Hanging Seven?
Thunder cracked through the office as lightning bleached the sky.
He and Alan had been so busy making money that they’d lost sight of why they were doing it. They’d become moguls, when all they’d ever wanted to be were cowboys.
 
Claire pressed the elevator call button and leaned her throbbing forehead against the cool marble wall. There was no one around to see. If any of the hundreds of office workers who occupied the building during the day were still there, they weren’t on the twenty-seventh floor.
What a day. What a lousy, awful day. First her car breaking down on the way to the doctor. Then getting soaked as she ran from the cab into the building. Now this. A baby. What a kick in the pants.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want a baby. She did—very much. In fact, if her life had gone according to schedule, she would’ve had a loving husband by now and been working on two point eight kids. She would’ve been financially comfortable—if not independently wealthy—by the time she was thirty.
She was now almost twenty-eight.
She didn’t even have to wonder where the years had gone. She knew. Instead of getting a job as a high-paying corporate accountant—which is what she’d majored in at the University of Wyoming—she’d accepted a job with a small family-owned accounting firm in Denver. Mostly to worm her way out from under her brothers’ thumbs.
When she’d accepted the job, she’d seen it as the first rung on the ladder to success. But once there, she found she liked the small accounting firm because her clients were people, not corporations. She got a kick out of seeing the expressions of joy when she told someone how large a tax refund they were going to get, or the relief on the face of a small business owner when she showed them how to survive another year.
She also liked the working environment. The people at Whitaker and Associates were all friendly and helpful, and she could wear blue jeans to work if she wanted. How many corporate accountants could say that?
The trouble was, the job didn’t pay much. Not nearly what she’d make at some corporation. And as for having a baby—her present insurance wouldn’t pay for artificial insemination, and new insurance probably wouldn’t cover a preexisting condition.
The lights flickered. Claire stiffened, then sighed in relief when the power stayed on. She couldn’t handle darkness, not right now.
Noticing that the elevator button was no longer illuminated, she pushed it again.
She’d discovered over the past six years that she wasn’t a three-piece-suit kind of worker. But that would have to change if she was going to have a family.
Though she’d scoffed at the doctor’s suggestion of in vitro fertilization, what other option did she have? Marry one of the cowboys her brothers found for her, just to get pregnant? Not in this lifetime.
Pick up some guy at a bar and take him home for a night of unbridled passion? Claire shuddered at the notion. Maybe if she had more experience in that area... But she’d never quite gotten around to experiencing unbridled passion—or passion of any sort. It wasn’t that she was saving herself. She just hadn’t found a man she wanted to be intimate with. Besides, if she picked up some guy at a bar, who knew what kind of gene pool she’d be diving into? No, she wouldn’t do that to her baby.
The only other option—giving up on having children—she didn’t consider for more than a second. Family was important to her, even though her brothers drove her crazy with their smothering protectiveness. Seeing how happy having a family made her oldest brother, Hank, how each of his three children made him richer, how his wife, Alex, believed he personally put the planets in orbit, made Claire want the same thing.
So as long as it was possible, she had to try to get pregnant—by whatever means available. And she had to do it soon. Considering her options, in vitro was the only solution.
She could just imagine what her old-fashioned brothers would say about a test-tube baby, but they’d just have to get over it Having a child was too important to worry about the niceties of how it was conceived.
The problem was, she didn’t have enough money for the expensive procedure. Not yet. If she could land a top-paying corporate job, however, she should be able to save what she needed in about six months.
She hated the idea of giving up her job at Whitaker and Associates, but she needed the money, and the only way to get it quickly was with a corporation.
With a ding, the chrome elevator doors slid open.
As she moved to step in Claire stopped abruptly, her eyes widening. The car wasn’t empty. A man with hair and eyes as dark as night stood in the middle. His broad shoulders filled out a dark gray business suit that screamed “custom-tailored.” He stood with legs apart, as if braced against the elements. His expression was as hard and cold as the marble walls.
Though she’d never seen him in person, she recognized him instantly from photographs in a recent local magazine.
Jacob Anderson.
He owned Pawnee Investments with his partner Alan Townsend. The magazine article had actually been a “most eligible bachelor” piece on Mr. Townsend, an incredibly handsome man that the other female accountants at Whitaker and Associates had drooled over for weeks. Claire had absolutely no interest in Mr. Townsend after seeing the sexy picture of him dressed in jeans, boots and a Stetson.
Her interest
had
been caught by the few pictures in the spread of Jacob Anderson. Though not nearly as good-looking as his partner, there’d been something in Jacob Anderson’s eyes that seemed almost...lonely. She’d fantasized about chasing away his loneliness, but not seriously. This incredibly wealthy man was as unobtainable to her as Tom Cruise.
However...
A job in his company might not be.
Talk about opportunity landing right in your lap. Or right in your elevator, as the case may be.
Pawnee wasn’t a large corporation, around fifty or so employees. But because the only thing they handled was money, half of those employees were accountants. According to the article, Jacob Anderson made the money, and Alan Townsend oversaw the accounting side. of the firm.
The most important thing Claire remembered, however, was that Pawnee accountants were the highest paid in Denver.
As she stood immobile and gaping, the window of opportunity—along with the elevator doors—began closing in her face.
His arm shot out to stop them, and one black brow rose sharply. “Going down?”
His voice made reality come crashing around her ears, and Claire mentally shook herself. Any other day she would commit murder for an elevator ride with this man. Now she briefly considered catching the next car. She wasn’t dressed to go begging for a job. Her shoes squeaked with rainwater, her hair was falling out of its French braid, and her makeup was probably smeared, if she still had any on at all. Not exactly a winning first impression. What she needed was a nice wool suit.
A suit. Dem. She was going to have to start wearing suits. The thought nearly made her step back and wave Jacob Anderson goodbye.
Then she thought about her nieces and nephews, and her own unborn children. Wasn’t having a baby worth wearing a suit?
This opportunity was too providential to pass up. If she could impress this partner, perhaps he’d put in a good word with Alan Townsend, who hired accountants for the firm.
Murmuring a quick thank you, Claire stepped onto the elevator. As she turned to face forward, she glanced sideways. He was better looking than the pictures in the magazine, though not handsome in a classical sense. His face was a bit long, and the slightly hooked nose, high cheekbones and shallow cleft in his chin gave him a predatory look—like the hawks that flew over the Wyoming ranch where she’d grown up.
The elevator began its descent.
The man next to her exuded a sense of power that filled the small space and sent a shiver down her spine. Her heart raced like her adding machine under her fingers. Just nerves, surely. Dread at the thought of what she had to do. It couldn’t possibly be the square cut of his jaw or the shoulders as wide as the Continental Div—
“Level-one parking?”
His deep voice startled her. “Pardon me?”
He indicated the rows of buttons, one of which was lit.
“No, the lobby, please.” Claire felt heat creeping into her cheeks. Caught checking out Jacob Anderson’s body. What was wrong with her? She didn’t do things like that.
What a wonderful impression she was making—and she might never have the chance to make another. Should she introduce herself now and make a complete fool of herself, or should she wait and hope for the best with Mr. Townsend, assuming she could get an interview?

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