The Cowboy and the New Year's Baby by Sherryl Woods Page A

was only one of the women being treated to such attention.” She made a face. “I’ve never been fond of being part of a crowd, especially when I’m the one wearing an engagement ring. I made a rather public scene and broke it off the same day I found out I was pregnant.”
    “Lousy timing,” he observed.
    “I don’t suppose there’s any good time to make a discovery like that, but in a way I’m glad it happened when it did. What if I’d actually married the jerk and then found out? Bottom line, Laura and I are both better off without him.”
    “But your folks don’t see it that way?”
    “Oh, no. They had visions of us being one bighappy family. Still do. The more distance I keep between us until they accept my decision, the better. My father tends to bulldoze over any decision he finds inconvenient. He found my decision to dump Jack extremely inconvenient. It’s left him with a gap in his executive staff. He can’t very well make Jack a vice president when all of Houston society knows what happened between him and me. The whole country club witnessed me dropping my engagement ring down the overexposed cleavage of one of his girlfriends.”
    Hardy laughed, which earned him a scowl.
    “It wasn’t funny,” she chided.
    “I’m sure it wasn’t at the time, but you have to admit it made quite a statement. I’m impressed.”
    Her lips twitched ever so slightly. “Yes, I suppose it did. I always wondered, though, which of them retrieved it. Jack, probably. The diamond was worth a fortune, and she didn’t strike me as a keeper.”
    “So you packed up and took off?”
    “Not right away. I had to plan for it. I had to sell my business, close up my apartment and do it all without my father getting suspicious. He would have locked me in my room at the family mansion if he’d guessed what my intentions were.”
    “Being cut off from your family must be difficult. Obviously he loves you or he wouldn’t have stirred up such a ruckus when he realized you were missing.”
    She shrugged. “He does love me, in his way. So does my mother. But they’re both more concernedabout how what I do reflects on them than whether or not I’m happy. They hated my bookstore. It wasn’t in the right neighborhood. It didn’t cater to the right clientele. My father referred to it as my little hobby. It drove him crazy that it operated in the black and I didn’t have to keep running to him for money to prop it up. He’d be shocked to find out what I got for it when I sold it.”
    Hardy saw an opportunity to slow down her rush to open a bookstore in Los Piños. “Then you don’t have to go back to work right away? You could stay home with Laura for a while?”
    “Not immediately, no, but I can’t live off the money forever. I have to use it to start over.”
    They finally hit the outskirts of town and her gaze was promptly drawn to the main street of Los Piños. Hardy tried to see it through her eyes. Compared to the high-rise splendor of Houston, it must seem like a shabby distant cousin. Not that the storefronts were dilapidated. In fact, most of them had been spruced up, but they were small, family-owned restaurants and practical businesses designed for the local residents. There wasn’t an expensive boutique or a fancy café among them.
    “Oh, it’s charming,” she declared, her eyes shining. “I feel as if I’ve stepped into the middle of Our Town. It’s like something from another era. Which shop is the one Kelly said is available? She said it was next to someplace called Dolan’s.”
    Hardy pointed out the drugstore. “Dolan’s is owned by Kelly’s niece, Sharon Lynn. Her mother used to run the lunch counter inside and then SharonLynn followed in her footsteps. When old man Dolan decided to retire, Sharon Lynn bought him out. She’s modernized it some, but it’s still basically the same way it’s been since back in the thirties, a real old-fashioned drugstore and soda fountain.”
    “And there’s the