Rodeo Bride Read Free

bright blue playpen in the living room. Where had all these things come from?
    As if she’d read his mind, she moved toward him. “We need to talk,” she said.
    “My thoughts exactly.”
    “We have about thirty minutes before Toby wakes up in earnest. He’s like clockwork and then he’ll want to be fed.” She ushered Dillon toward the living room, where she perched on a chair that had a lot more years on it than anything in the nursery. Dillon sat down on a tired old sofa.
    With the playpen taking up a lot of the space, the room seemed small, tight, not quite big enough for two adults. Dillon looked at Colleen, and now, without the foil of Toby to concentrate on, she looked nervous, rubbing her palms over her jeans.
    Dillon’s gaze followed her hands down her legs. He ordered himself to think of the business at hand, not what Colleen Applegate’s long legs looked like when they weren’t encased in denim. There were important issues to deal with here. “Did Lisa give you money to take care of Toby?”
    “Why would you think that?”
    “Babies cost money. They take time.”
    “I haven’t even had any contact with her since the day she dropped him here. He was only a week old. She didn’t want him. I didn’t even think of asking for payment. He was a baby with no one to love him.”
    “But you’ve obviously spent a fair amount of money. You’ll be compensated.”
    She glared at him. “I don’t want it. That would be like selling him.” Those strong, sturdy hands were opening and closing now.
    “All right. I won’t insult you by offering again. Just tell me this. Why you? I’d never even heard of you before. Lisa never spoke of you. Were you good friends?”
    Colleen shook her head, those messy curls brushing her cheeks. “We grew up in the same town and we went to school together, but no, we weren’t friends at all. As for why, she seemed frantic, trapped and, well, this is a small town and everyone here knows me. It’s no secret that I’ve always wanted children, but…”
    “But you don’t have any.”
    “No. I don’t.” It was clear that there was more to this part of the story than she was saying, but Dillon had no right to ask more. She had given him a valid answer.
    “Lisa said that she couldn’t be a mother to Toby,” Colleen continued, “and she didn’t say much more. She didn’t stay long, and she seemed worried at what your reaction was going to be, as if she wanted to be gone before you got here.”
    “Which is why you have a number of questions of your own,” he said.
    “Partly, yes.”
    “Those questions you were asking earlier…you think I abused my wife or that I would once I knew that she had cheated on me?”
    “I don’t know you. I know there are men who can be abusive, with or without a reason. And even when abuse doesn’t involve hitting it can be brutal and harmful.” Something about the tone of her voice, the way she looked away when all along she’d been facing him head-on, led Dillon to believe that Colleen had had personal experience of suchmen. Something shifted inside him. Anger at his own kind filled him.
    “I’m not a perfect man, Colleen, but I’ve never intentionally harmed a woman or a child, and I wouldn’t.”
    She studied him as if trying to read his mind to see if he spoke the truth. Her eyes were dark and unhappy but she sucked in her lip, blinked and gave a hard nod. “Okay,” she whispered. “I mean, I don’t have a choice do I, but…”
    Suddenly she leaned forward and opened a drawer on the end table next to the chair. She pulled out a sheaf of papers. Pages and pages of papers.
    “These are things you need to know. Routines. Details on what went on during his first few months. His preferences, his quirks, his fears. Medical things. He was jaundiced when Lisa brought him here, and until recently, he was colicky, but if I wrapped him up tight in a blanket and rocked with him, eventually he would go to sleep. He takes a nap in the