Pregnant With The Rancher's Baby. Kathie DeNosky

      “If you don’t mind, could you let us know what you’re having as soon as you have the ultrasound, Jessie?” Summer asked, smiling. “That way we’ll know what colors to use for decorations.”

      “And if you’ve chosen the colors for the nursery, that might be useful as well,” Heather added as her little boy, Seth, ran up to hand her a bouquet of dried weeds he’d obviously picked out of a hay bale. After she thanked him and gave him a kiss, he rejoined the other two toddlers. “T.J. gave me a bouquet of flowers the other day and Seth tries to mimic everything his daddy does.”

      “That’s so sweet.” Jessie found the little boy’s gesture very touching and she knew for certain she would be just as happy having a boy as she would having a girl.

      “It would also be helpful if you register at one of the baby boutiques in Waco as soon as you can so we can put that on the invitations,” Bria suggested, bringing the conversation back to the shower they were planning.

      “They’re using some of the most unusual combinations of colors these days,” Taylor commented as she shifted her baby son to her shoulder for a burp after he finished the bottle she had been giving him. “I hadn’t even considered the colors I used until I saw them in one of the baby boutiques.”

      “I hope you get to decorate with a lot of pink and purple for a little princess,” Mariah stated as she got up from the bale of straw she was sitting on to walk over to the three toddlers playing with the box again.

      “That’s only because she wants another excuse to argue with Jaron,” Taylor confided. She got up and picked up a diaper bag. “Time to get this little man changed and settled down for the night.”

      As Taylor walked out of the barn toward the house to get her son ready for bed, Bria explained the ongoing disagreement between Mariah and Jaron. “Whenever one of us announces that a new baby will be joining the family, Mariah insists it will be a girl and Jaron is just as determined it will be a boy.” Shaking her head, she sighed. “It’s their way of dancing around the real issue between them.”

      Jessie nodded. “Nate mentioned that Jaron and your sister have been attracted to each other for years, but he thinks he’s too old for her.”

      “When she was eighteen, a nine-year gap in their ages did make a difference in maturity and experience,” Bria said. “But now that she’s twenty-five and he’s thirty-four, Jaron is the only one who thinks it still matters.”

      “I’m twenty-six and Nate’s thirty-three. Neither of us have given the seven-year age difference a second thought. I wonder why he’s so insistent that it’s a problem?” Jessie asked, frowning.

      “If you can answer that, you will have solved one of the mysteries of the universe,” Summer stated as she hurried over to keep her daughter from trying to stand on a pumpkin.

      An hour later as she helped the women clear the refreshment table, Jessie was more envious than ever of the love and devotion they all shared. They might be a blended family, but they were closer than some people she’d seen who were related by blood.

      She sighed heavily as she thought about her own family. For whatever reason, her parents had never seemed to care if she and her older brother had a close relationship. Of course, her brother had been a junior in high school when she was born and as with most teenage boys, he thought he had better things to do than to pay attention to his baby sister.

      Unfortunately, she wasn’t really all that close to her parents either. Her mother and father were real estate brokers and when they weren’t busy selling mansions to the überrich residents of Houston, they were attending a social function at the country club to make more contacts for their agency. About the only time she could remember them paying all that much attention to her was when she told them she was going to become a registered nurse instead of earning a business degree in college. They had both been extremely disappointed with her decision and couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to follow in their footsteps like her brother had done.

      That hadn’t changed since she graduated and started her career. Sadly, she didn’t hold out a lot of hope they would react any differently when she finally told them about the baby either. They were simply too caught up in brokering real estate deals to be bothered with family. And the only reason they had more to do with her brother was because he was just as driven by the almighty dollar as they were and had joined the family business.

      “Do you have plans for Thanksgiving, Jessie?” Bria asked, bringing her back to the present. “If not, we’d love to have you spend the day with us.”