“You should go!” Stella urged her. “I’ll make sure Oggie and Irene get fed. Honey, you hardly ever leave that house except to go to The Mercantile and the Stop ’n Shop. Once in a while, you’re entitled to kick up your heels and have some fun!”
“You know, Stella, you’re right.”
Sylvia clapped her hands in childlike excitement. “Go put on your sexiest clothes and tease up your hair. We’re going dancing!”
Dancing! Gwen thought as she threw on a pair of tight jeans and a red blouse with a ruffly, low-cut neckline. She was a millionaire, and tonight she was going to party, party, party.
Damn the consequences!
Chapter One
Consequences.
Seven months after her lottery win, Gwen was certainly awash in the consequences of her wild night on the town. Her obstetrician had just given her the startling news. She wasn’t just pregnant, she was carrying twins.
Dr. Sanders, an older, white-haired obstetrician who practiced in Pine Run, a larger town a few miles southwest of Jester, grinned broadly.
“Is something funny?” Gwen snapped. She wasn’t normally a moody person, but her hormones were running amok these days.
“I’m sorry, Gwendolyn,” he said. “It’s just that, when you get caught, you really get caught.”
Wasn’t that the truth. She’d spent her life living by her grandmother’s rules. Always sit up straight, eat your vegetables, wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident and never follow a man to his hotel room.
One little indiscretion—one!—and she was about to be a single mother with twins.
“I wouldn’t smile at your expense,” Dr. Sanders said, “except I know you’re secretly delighted.”
“In shock, more like it. I guess I should have known there was more than one baby in there.” She patted her stomach, which was so swollen it made her look like she was near term, though she had two months of her pregnancy to go. Then she found her own smile. “But you’re right. I was raised an only child, and I always wanted a brother or sister. My children will have each other.” She paused. “But couldn’t you have figured this out a couple of months ago when I bought all the stuff for the nursery?”
Dr. Sanders shrugged. “You wouldn’t come in for a sonogram.”
Again, he was right. She’d been trying to hide her unplanned pregnancy from her friends and neighbors for as long as possible—and that meant she couldn’t make too many unexplained trips to Pine Run. But as she’d grown bigger and bigger, she’d realized she was being foolish. It wasn’t as if she could hide the pregnancy forever. A couple of months ago, when she’d been delivering some baked goods to the Ex-Libris bookstore owned by her friend Amanda Bradley Devlin, Wyla Thorne had made some nasty comment about Gwen’s weight, and Gwen had spilled the news.
The whole town had been shocked. She’d always been the good girl, the shy one, who followed the rules and never made waves. To suddenly become a single mother was like a tsunami.
As she drove back to Jester in her ice-blue Mercedes—one of her many indulgences since she’d received her lottery winnings—the news finally sank in.
Twins. Two children. What fun. But also, what a challenge for a single mother. Not for the first time, she wished she had a husband with whom to share the joys and fears of parenthood. But she could not find Garrett, the sexy hunk she’d met at The Wild Mustang that cold January night. She’d left him her phone number, but he hadn’t called. And she didn’t know his last name or where he lived.
As she drove the familiar Route 2 toward Jester, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from migrating back to that wonderful, magical night when she and the other Main Street Millionaires—that was what the press had dubbed them—had won the lottery. She’d been riding high, floating in a surreal cloud of joy and optimism. She and Sylvia mentally spent their winnings a hundred times over on that snowy drive to Roan, North Dakota, though Gwen had put most of her money in blue-chip stocks and bonds for the future.
When they’d arrived at The Mustang, the place was rocking. As Sylvia had predicted, drunk cowboys were in abundance, and the moment they walked through the door, they had more drink offers and dance invitations than they could handle.
Gwen wasn’t that big on cowboys, drunk or otherwise. Her father, whom she’d never met, had tricked her mother into marriage by pretending to be a prosperous Montana rancher. Her mother didn’t find out the truth until too late. Willie Tanner was a con man and worse, and his “ranch” was a broken-down pig farm, heavily in debt. After eloping with Gwen’s mother, who’d been a minor heiress from Billings, he’d wasted no time cleaning out her bank accounts to pay off some rather nasty creditors—the kind who favored cement overcoats—then disappeared, leaving Gwen’s mother destitute, stranded, estranged from her family, and pregnant. She’d died shortly after Gwen’s birth.
Gwen’s paternal grandmother, Abigail Tanner, had taken in Gwen as an infant. Though she’d long ago turned her back on her no-account son, she’d willingly, lovingly, raised his daughter. One thing Grandmother had drilled into Gwen’s head was not to let any smooth-talking men talk her out of her better judgment—or her bloomers.
“What did I tell you?” Sylvia asked as she sat down to sip her beer, taking a break from the dance floor. “Wall-to-wall cowboys. Are you having fun?”
“Yeah, actually, I am.” She’d received more attention from men that night than she had in her whole life. It might have been the sexy clothes or the dark red lipstick. Or it might have been her attitude. For once in her life she felt strong, confident, powerful. She could do anything!
“You haven’t been dancing,” Sylvia pointed out.
“Dancing’s not really my thing. But I love watching. And I’ve got enough free booze to last a month.” Several eager bucks had sent drinks to Gwen’s table, but she was still nursing the same Shirley Temple she’d started with. She’d volunteered to be the evening’s designated driver.
Sylvia sighed. “What am I going to do with you? Listen, I’ve found a live one, and we want to get out of here. I’ll give you my keys, and you can drive my car home. I’ll get a room at the hotel later and find my way home in the morning.”
Gwen gasped. “You’re leaving with a complete stranger?”
“We aren’t strangers anymore.” Sylvia winked.
Far be it from Gwen to rain on Sylvia’s parade. “All right. But please, be careful.”
“I will. And you—try not being so careful for a change, huh? If you can’t find a guy in this smorgasbord, you’re doomed to a life of spinsterhood.”
That word echoed in Gwen’s mind for a long time. She wasn’t a spinster. That was a stupid word, anyway. She chose to be single.
Didn’t she?
Just then, she spotted a very good-looking man a few tables away. He wasn’t a cowboy, either. In fact, he might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “city boy.” His black hair was short, expertly cut. In his khaki slacks and tailored shirt, he looked more like a businessman of some sort. And, like her, he was on the sidelines, watching the action rather than participating. He appeared to be alone, too.
“Spinster,” Gwen muttered. “I’ll show her spinster.” With a determined toss of her head, she stood, picked up the watery Shirley Temple, and strode to his table.
He glanced over at her as she approached, and she could see that his eyes were blue, a deep, intense hue that seemed to see straight to her core. Her heart jumped unexpectedly.
No turning back now. “Hello. Mind if I sit here?” Her voice sounded like it could have been someone else’s.