The Bad Boy's Baby (Hope Springs) by Cindi Madsen Page A

made her entire week better.
    “Does the rest of the town know?” Emma lowered her voice even more. “About Cam being Zoey’s daddy?” She glanced around The Triple S, eyeing the faces for traces of knowing the secret she’d kept for so long. “Who won the pool?”
    The waitress brought their drinks before Sadie or Quinn could answer. Coors—that worked—and relief went through her at the sight of the amber-colored bottle. Sometimes Quinn ordered tequila, and history had proved that shots made Emma temporarily lose her mind. Then she went and did things like recklessly sleep with the deploying military guy she’d had a crush on since forever. Ever since that night, she’d stuck with only an occasional drink here and there. Maybe that made her boring, but she was a responsible person who usually followed the rules. No getting around it, and now that she was a mom, it was a necessity.
    As soon as they were alone again, Quinn said, “I think the town eventually rewarded the pool money to Lori Branson—she had ‘sperm donor’ down as Zoey’s father, and everyone finally agreed she was probably right.”
    Emma smiled at the joke the entire town no doubt loved, but inside she cracked a little. Of course they thought she would need a sperm donor. It’d been years since she’d given the town’s gossip a second thought—getting pregnant while unwed meant she’d had to grow a thick skin. Several of the quilting ladies had attempted to get information about the daddy out of her, and she knew a pool had been started, everyone throwing in five bucks to make their guesses. She’d thought her ex-boyfriend Ricky would be the popular choice, even though she’d forever be glad Zoey wasn’t his.
    “Ignore them all,” Sadie said, swiping a hand through the air. “As far as I know, the only people who know the truth are Quinn and me. And Royce and Heath, of course. But none of us will say a word. People will probably start to make assumptions about you and Cam spending time together, though, whether it’s guessing Zoey’s paternity or just gossip about you two possibly being an item.”
    “He’s only spending time with me so he can get to know Zoey,” she said, a hint of the dejection she felt over that fact accidentally coming out, and Sadie’s raised eyebrow made it clear she’d noticed.
    Emma dropped her elbow on the table and tucked her cheek against her chin. “I know the truth will come out eventually. I need to talk to Cam about how and what we want to say. I’m sure once word spreads, everyone in town is going to want to play twenty questions.”
    The top one would probably be how —more like how Emma had landed Cam for a night rather than asking for the exact details of how their daughter was conceived. Although with the nosy bunch of people who lived here, they might get a few of those, too.
    Which was an unkind thought most of the townsfolk didn’t deserve, especially after they’d showed up with onesies, diapers, and homemade baby blankets, not to mention provided dinners for the first few weeks after Zoey was born. Without their help, as well as Grandma Bev’s constant check-ins, she didn’t know how she would’ve made it that first month.
    Quinn patted her hand. “Aww, hon. You’ll be lucky if it’s under a hundred questions. Especially if Patsy Higgins is in charge of the inquisition.”
    The three of them snorted at that.
    “Quinn and I think she’s had CIA training,” Sadie said with a laugh. “How else would she know everything that happens in town before anyone else? The grandmotherly exterior is a genius front. No one expects it.”
    They giggled again, and the ridiculous image of Patsy Higgins with a black ski mask covering her curly gray hair and her glasses perched outside the mask popped into Emma’s mind. As silly as that image was, the girls were right. The second the woman heard the news, everyone in town would know.
    I better tell Grandma Bev, because if Patsy Higgins