Okay.
This isn’t any of your business, L.
She took a shot. Assumed this was Rhine, L. Rhine. Her name was probably Linda from her IM ID Lindabelle.
Maybe not. But I do care about you, Chad. If this marriage of yours is going to work, you need to tell her about Jack.
Catie stopped reading. Jack? Her pulse raced. Her afternoon conversation with Annie raced through her mind. Several women had come around claiming to be pregnant, trying to trap Chad.
Rhine, L.
Jack.
She got up and yanked open Chad’s filing cabinet looking for anything. Any type of clue.
Finally, it appeared. A file folder. Rhine, Linda. Inside was only one paper. The results of a DNA test naming Chad McCray as the father of Linda Rhine’s son, Jack. According to the birth date, the child was over four years old.
Ding. The IM again. Catie didn’t bother reading it. She couldn’t. Her vision was clouded with tears. She typed in a message quickly.
I have a meeting. I’ve got to go.
Then she turned away from the computer and looked down at her belly.
“Well, sweetheart,” she said aloud, gulping through sobs, “it looks like you already have a big brother.”
She needed some answers. She looked into the file folder again and found Linda Rhine’s address in Utah. About a day’s drive. Well, she had nothing better to do. No rodeo queen duties.
Nice day for a road trip.
Or night, rather. The sun was already setting.
She threw some clothes into a duffle and plugged the address into the GPS on her phone.
She’d planned to meet Harper later and talk about getting her other stock over to one of Chad’s barns this evening. That could wait a few days. Right now, she had a rival to face.
At four in the morning, Catie arrived in Podunk, Utah. Actually, Applewood, Utah, but it made Bakersville look like a thriving metropolis. Of course, it was the middle of the night. Perhaps it would look like civilization in the morning. There was only one motel in town, and they luckily had a vacancy, though she had to ring the bell ten times before someone came to help her. Finally, an older man, rubbing his sleep-filled eyes, came to the counter and booked her into a room. Sleep came as soon as her head hit the pillow, her eyes swollen from crying.
* * *
Where the hell was Catie?
Chad lay awake, Marnie snuggled by his feet. The minutes crept by on his digital clock. He’d watched two o’clock come and go, and then three, and now four. Damn. Anxiety gnawed at him. She wasn’t at home. He’d called the Bays earlier. He couldn’t call them again. He’d just worry them. She wasn’t with Dallas and Annie, and Zach and Dusty were out of town.
He got up, paced, and went down to his office. He couldn’t sleep anyway. Might as well get some work done. He took out his business account, wrote out some invoices, paid some bills, and went to settle some of his personal accounts. The grocery bill, the gas for the giant propane tank that fed his house, water, electric, septic system.
And Linda and Jack needed to be paid.
He had no legal obligation to the woman and her son, but he wanted to help them, especially after hearing what she’d gone through with her parents. He’d have to tell Catie. Where the hell was she?
He’d felt a loss when he woke up the previous morning and she wasn’t next to him. He’d pattered down the hallway and found her sleeping soundly in one of his guest rooms. That told him how she felt about him. So much for her schoolgirl crush.
Yet she responded to him today in the stable, when he’d taken her roughly like a selfish bastard. He was sorry for it. But when he’d seen Grayhawk with his hands on his woman…
His woman.
His wife.
Tonight she hadn’t come to his bed like he’d asked. Aw hell, like he’d demanded. What had he become? What was it about this one little woman that turned him into a feral beast? Well, he hadn’t exactly been nice to her about the whole baby thing. He knew she wasn’t pulling a stunt on him. Warmth crept up his skin, making it tingle. Truth be told, he wanted Catie’s baby. A little person who was part Catie and part Chad.