The Baby Truth Read Free Page A

it’s comfortable. And I think the solitude is just what you need. Besides, if you decide to faint again I want to be around to catch you.”
    For some reason, his show of concern brought another rush of moisture to her eyes. She blinked it away and swallowed hard. “I’m not going to faint again,” she said flatly.
    “How do you know? Your face still looks like a bowl of flour.”
    “As soon as I get to my hotel room I’ll lie down and rest,” she argued. “And if I need help, I’ll have my phone with me.”
    “How are you going to use the phone if you’re lying on the floor in a dead faint? No,” he said emphatically, “it’s decided. You’re coming with me.”
    “But—”
    “Look, if you’re worried about being alone in the house with a man you’ve just met, forget it. My older sister lives with me.”
    “Oh.”
    He looked at her and grinned. “I’ll take that as a word of disappointment.”
    Straightening her shoulders, she settled back in her seat. “It was nothing of the sort. That was a word of confusion. My head is so mixed up right now it feels like it’s going to burst.”
    He pressed on the accelerator and positioned the truck in a faster-moving lane of traffic. “That’s what a good lawyer is for. To help a person who’s confused and in need.”
    She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. There didn’t appear to be a tense muscle in his body and somehow that helped to calm her racing mind.
    “I don’t know if you’re a good, bad or otherwise lawyer.”
    He chuckled again. “Guess you’ll have to find that out for yourself.”
    She wasn’t here in Carson City to bandy words with a sexy cowboy parading as a lawyer, or vice versa, she thought. She was here to meet the Calhouns and hopefully find some sort of clue to her past, her parentage and perhaps even her future.
    Ignoring his last remark, she stared out the windshield at the passing shops and busy traffic. The desert town was totally different from the New Mexico mountains where she’d lived all of her life.
    “Why are you going to all this bother?” she asked after a moment. “I’m not your problem. And you don’t have to pretend. It’s clear you think I’m chasing rainbows.”
    “Like I said, you’re not a problem—yet. But now that I’ve met you in person, I get the feeling you’re going to stir up a pot of trouble whenever the Calhouns get sight of you.”
    Turning her head, she stared uneasily at his rugged profile. “Why would the sight of me cause trouble?”
    “Because you are a dead ringer for Finn Calhoun. Only a sight prettier, of course.”
    Sassy gripped the armrest. Jett’s remark was almost exactly what Barry had said to her a few months ago. In fact, her resemblance to his friend Finn was the reason Barry had struck up a conversation with Sassy in the first place. Now Jett Sundell was implying the same thing.
    Not wanting to let her hopes run wild, she said after a moment, “It’s just a coincidence.”
    “Probably so. But it’s going to be fun to see all their faces when you walk through the door.”
    Right now Sassy didn’t want to walk through any door. She wanted to run as hard and fast as she could. Away from this sexy, provocative man, away from the news of her pregnancy and the fact that her life was taking as many turns as a wild roller coaster.
    But Sassy wasn’t a coward. She’d never run from a problem; she’d always faced them head-on. And she was going to prove to Jett Sundell and the powerful Calhoun family that she was more than a pitiful orphan without a direction.

Chapter Two
    J ett’s ranch, the J Bar S, turned out to be more than just a little spread. Ten miles north of town they turned off the main highway and onto a red dirt road, where they passed beneath a rustic entrance made of rough cedar posts. Once the truck rattled over a wide cattle guard, the flat land covered with shrubby chaparral stretched toward the east as far as the eye could see. To the west,