The Rancher's Lullaby. Leigh Duncan

on one that made her ill. She tilted her head. “Clyde, what do you know?”

      “Nothing for certain,” the lawyer protested, though the red that crept up his neck and onto his face said he did.

      “She’s pregnant?” Despite her efforts, Lisa’s voice rose.

      On the other side of counter, Clyde’s color deepened to crimson. The man studied his toes. “Four months, according to Jessie’s Facebook page.”

      Lisa’s stomach churned, and she swallowed bile. Her attorney had warned her away from social media until the divorce was final. Apparently Brad and Jessie hadn’t received the same message. She clutched the display case, her fingers leaving damp, sweaty prints on the glass. “Pregnant,” she whispered.

      “Unexplained infertility” was the best diagnosis the doctors could offer her to explain five long years of trying, and failing, to get pregnant. When they suggested stress might be the culprit, she’d come off the road, spent a year writing songs and living a quiet life, but that hadn’t worked any better than the vile herbal tonics her sister, the health nut, had suggested. IVF had been her last hope. They’d tried one round. But in reality she was the only one trying by that point. Brad had given up months earlier, complaining that no child was worth the hell the hormones put her body through. Or the outrageous expense, though he hadn’t contributed one dime toward the cost. Tens of thousands of dollars later, all she’d had to show for her efforts were a busted marriage and a bucket of tears. Through it all, she’d clung to the faint hope that her body wasn’t to blame. That some day, some way, she’d be able to conceive.

      But Jessie’s pregnancy changed things. It proved Brad wasn’t the one with the problem. And that—well, that left only her. She had to face the fact that she was barren. She’d never conceive, never give birth, never hold a baby of her own in her arms.

      Sucker-punched by the news, Lisa doubled over. Every cubic inch of air seeped out of her. Slowly she sank onto the chair behind the counter. The room spun. She lowered her head to her knees.

      “Lisa? Lisa? Are you all right?” Clyde asked. “I know the end of a marriage is never easy, but it’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?”

      Not exactly. She waved a hand at him. “Give me a minute,” she whispered, blinking. The dam had burst, but she’d spent her whole life performing. She’d learned early on to hide emotional turmoil behind a stage presence. She rose on unsteady feet. “You have the paperwork?”

      “You sure you feel up to this?” Concern showed in Clyde’s beefy face.

      “Nothing’s changed, right? This is the agreement we already worked out?”

      “Exactly the same.” He pulled an official-looking document from his briefcase. Lisa grabbed a pen from the cup beside the cash register. She scrawled her name in the blank marked with a red sticker and initialed all the places Clyde indicated. Sighing, she pushed the paperwork back across the glass to him.

      “When do we go to court?” she asked as he carefully placed the thick stack of papers back inside a leather case. In order for the divorce to be final, she and Brad had to appear before a judge.

      Clyde checked his watch. “Brad asked for a special hearing this afternoon at four.”

      “Today?” Despite herself, she gasped. “I can’t go to Fort Pierce today.” Getting behind the wheel of a car while the implications of Jessie’s pregnancy were so fresh and raw—yeah, that definitely ranked in the top ten of bad ideas.

      “Relax,” Clyde said. “As your legal representative, I’ll attend in your stead. Trust me. You’ll be a free woman by five o’clock this afternoon.”

      Lisa swallowed. A free woman. But one who’d never, ever, have the one thing she wanted most in life. A baby.

      Later, she wasn’t sure how she had managed to show Clyde out the door. She certainly didn’t remember locking it or turning the Open sign to Closed. She couldn’t recall heading up the stairs. She did, though. She even made it as far as her bed before her tears fell. As they soaked her pillow, she curled into a fetal position, cradling the stomach that would never swell with a baby, and cried.