One Bride for Four Ranchers

It’s stupid, but I want to talk to him. Maybe to prove to myself that I didn’t actually just have the first one-night stand of my life. Maybe because I want just want to hear his sexy cowboy voice one more time. Maybe I just want to prove that he was real.

I take a quick shower to wake up. He was real, all right. My breasts ache—my whole body feels rough and raw and, amazingly, sated. Still wearing the hotel’s terrycloth robe, I call the front desk.

“Good morning, how can I help you, Ms. Long?” The front desk person sounds far too perky. My eyes slide to the alarm clock by the desk—half past ten. Holy cow. I have to get packed up in half an hour if I don’t want to miss my check out.

“Hello, can you please tell me which room Xander…” Crap, crap, crap. “Hall!” The word rushes out of me. Hall, I was pretty sure that’s what he’d said. I try to calm my voice, sound more professional. “Xander Hall, I mean. Can you tell me what room he’s in, please?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Long. We can’t give room information out on other guests.” Still freaking perky.

This is so not a conversation I want to have over the phone, but so be it. “I understand. Can you please transfer me to his line, then?”

“One moment, please.” Clicking noises come from the background as she searches for his room. “I’m sorry, but we don’t seem to have a Xander Hall staying with us.”

Dread swirls in my stomach. “Can you try Alexander, please?”

Her voice is kinder this time. “I’m sorry. But there’s no one registered by that name either.”

I glance at the sunshine streaming in. He’s probably checked out already. Dammit.

“Will there be anything else, Ms. Long?” Perky and professional is back.

“No, nothing else. Thank you.” I slam the phone down

No. I am not going to crucify myself for this. One-night stands happen—just not, normally, to me. The sex was amazing, unplanned, but world-shaking good.

No regrets.

Chapter 1

Jessa

Eight weeks later...

The room spins around me, and I hop out of my bed with a jolt of desperate energy. Two seconds later, I’m tossing my cookies into the toilet. My cell phone is going off, but have to ignore it for the moment.

“Gross,” I mutter. I drag my butt to the sink and rinse out my mouth. Muttering curses under my breath, I grab my purple toothbrush and clean my teeth angrily. I’m wishing I could assume this is a stomach bug, but I know exactly what’s wrong with me.

I’m pregnant.

Panic bubbles up inside my chest, and I swallow it down with some water. A baby isn’t in my life plan, not right now. I’m twenty-six years old and unmarried. I’m supposed to be focusing on my career for a few more years before I find the perfect man to marry and we settle down. Then we’ll have two kids, spaced exactly two years apart, and we’ll send them to the best schools in a nice suburb somewhere.

So much for the plan.

I eye the large room where I live. My small desk sits in one corner, books and papers piled on high on one side. It’s an antique roll-top. So pretty, and so uncomfortable for modern computing. But I don’t care, I love it. The desk sits opposite the tiny kitchen where the whole of my cooking skill amounts to reheating take-out in the microwave. My studio apartment outside of Boston has been my home for nearly six years—ever since I graduated college. It’s cute. It’s in a good neighborhood. And it’s small. Too small for a baby, and barely big enough for just me.

How am I going to do this all alone?

Panic makes me short of breath, and gripping the counter, I force myself to take in a few slow inhalations.

I almost ignore my phone and tromp right back to bed—both because of the morning sickness and because I’m just not up to facing all this quite yet. But there’s another rule of working freelance—you never ignore your phone.

I grab my cell from my nightstand and roll back into bed, still feeling a little nauseous and dizzy. My editor. Of course, it would be a call I can’t ignore.

“McCoin,” my editor barks, instead of ‘hello.’.

“Hey Argus, it’s Jessa,” I croak. “What’s up?”

“You sound like hell,” he says. That’s Argus. The man couldn’t figure out tact if his life depended on it.