A Baby in the Bunkhouse. Cathy Thacker Gillen

cozy. “What does any of that have to do with me?” he snapped.

      Her eyes moist, she stepped closer. “You hurt your father’s feelings.”

      “I did not.”

      “Yes,” she enunciated plainly. “You did.”

      Rafferty tensed. “He said that?”

      Ignoring the damage it was doing to her shoes and clothes, she waded through waist-high brush. “He didn’t have to. I saw his disappointment when you didn’t show up and your place at the table went empty.”

      “First of all—” Rafferty set the torch down once again “—a place for me should never have been set. The men should have told you that.”

      She tilted her face up. “They did.”

      He scowled at her. “Then why did you set one?”

      Color blushed her cheeks. “Because I figured you wouldn’t be that much of a jerk. But then…I didn’t know about Angelica.”

      Once again, Rafferty was caught off guard. Once again, he put his emotions in a box. “No one told you about that. They wouldn’t dare.”

      “Really. Then how do I know her name?”

       Good question.

      Jacey stepped closer yet. “I get that she broke your heart.”

      Rafferty’s gut twisted. Once again, he found himself defending the indefensible. “My wife didn’t get thrown from a horse and lose our baby on purpose.”

      “You were married?” Jacey interrupted, stunned.

      “What’s so odd about that? Yes. I was married,” Rafferty growled. “And furthermore, I thought you knew all about Angelica.” Damn it. She’d been bluffing. And he’d fallen for it.

      “I gathered she meant a lot to you, that she was your girlfriend. No one said anything about you actually being married.”

      “Well. I was.” For better or worse, and mostly, worse.

      Jacey made a face that indicated she was struggling to understand. “And she was horseback riding when she was pregnant?” Jacey spoke as if that was the dumbest thing on this earth.

      And it had been.

      As well as the saddest.

      Figuring he might as well answer a few questions—otherwise he’d never hear the end of it—Rafferty said, “She wasn’t supposed to be. But Angelica was not the kind of woman who liked to be told no.”

      “Even when she was carrying your baby?” Jacey said, aghast.

      Rafferty shrugged, weary of trying to make sense of the insensible himself. “She thought it’d be okay. She was a natural athlete, an accomplished equestrian, and she’d done it before early in the pregnancy, snuck out to ride, and nothing had happened. So even though the doctor told her not to do it, and I forbid it, she kept saddling up every time no one else was around. And that happened from time to time.”