The Cowboy, The Baby And The Bride-To-Be. Cara Colter

jeans and a matching cream-coloured flannel shirt with a faint green stripe. She tied her damp hair back with an elastic and made a face at herself in the smoky mirror. She wasn’t trying to make herself attractive for him, was she? She decided, perhaps a little more emphatically than necessary, that she was not. She was a guest in his home, and it was only decent that she make herself neat and presentable.

      She had long ago accepted she was not one of those women who was ever going to turn a head as she walked down the street. Construction workers did not whistle at her. Teenage boys did not crane their necks or drive their bicycles into the backs of cars to get a better look.

      She had neat and tidy features, ordinary really.

      Her university days had been largely without the rush of romance. She’d been dedicated to her studies, and quite shy. She chose the study carrels at the library rather than the open tables. She had developed some very solid friendships with both sexes, but an actual relationship evaded her.

      Her mother, who seemed to consider university a happy hunting ground for the unwed, found her lack of romantic involvement with some budding doctor or lawyer very discouraging.

      Her mother’s distress had increased when Shayla found a job where she would be working mostly out of her own apartment rather than where she would be meeting people—make that “men”—of interest.

      Did part of her actually delight in thwarting her mother’s plans for her?

      Is that why her wardrobe was minus form-hugging shirts in siren red, or lace-trimmed blouses that would make her look wonderfully feminine and alluring?