The Cowboy's Secret Baby: BWWM Cowboy Pregnancy Romance (Young Adult First Time Billionaire Steamy African American) by Christin Jensen Page B

epidural if the pain got too intense.  What really worried her was confronting Farris.  How would he feel, after she had kept him at arm’s length all these months?  He knew she needed to heal – and certainly she had to solve her own ‘Mother’ problem.
    Marion Saxe was a constant, dull threat in the background.  Clarice felt she’d freed herself of her mother’s presence in her own head, but she still expected unpleasant scenes at the hospital or afterward.
    Clarice had hesitantly approached John Pirtle some months before with her fears about Marion’s continued solvency.  John had heaved a deep sigh.  “Clarice, your mother has a genius for making everybody hate her, but she’s always managed to keep going on a shoestring even when she can’t extort funds from anybody else. – I’m keeping watch her finances, and I’ll shore her up to solvency if necessary – for your sake.  I also have Farris Croxton’s word that he’ll contribute to the cause for the sake of his own son. – Sometimes that’s just the easiest way to handle an impossible person.”
    “Well, if my art career doesn’t stagnate, you can count on my help, too,” Clarice told him.  “I just don’t want to have anything to do with her.”
    “The tabloid paparazzi look tame compared to what she can do,” John agreed sourly. – “You know, she could be a decent person if she’d ever agree to therapy,” he added wistfully, “but she never will.  Marion has always been out for herself, and the devil take everybody else.”
    Three weeks before Clarice’s due date, Farris Croxton dreamed.  In his dream, he and Clarice were in that bed in the guest house.  His arm was around her shoulders; the other stroked her sweet belly.  She was looking up at him with soft, brown eyes and kissing him with those gentle lips he had at first thought were too thin.  The wind was blowing the pale blue curtains in the open window; it was a balmy night.  As he always had, Farris felt that the whole scene must be a dream.  It was simply too wonderful to be true.
    Suddenly, the wind had snatched Clarice away from him and blown up her body the way it appeared in those tabloid pictures.  She still reached out for him, but menacing clouds with human features he couldn’t make out continued to pull her away.  He tried to stand up on the bed and follow her, but she was vanishing even as he tottered on the soft mattress.  Then she was gone.
    The next morning, Farris Croxton’s hands were shaking when he opened the FedEx package from Nashville.  He had recognized the handwriting on the label, and it was all he could do to follow the company’s standard opening instructions.
    What he eventually slid from the packet was a beautifully framed sketch under glass – the drawing of his secret face while he looked at Courier.  There was a small card stuck inside the frame, and tears flooded Farris’ eyes as he read the little note.  “Come to Nashville when the baby is born”.
     
     

Chapter 13
     
    Farris Croxton took a commercial flight to Nashville two days before his son was due to be born.  Once at the local airport, he rented a car with GPS and air conditioning, a useful commodity even in May this far south.  Then he checked into a cheap motel in the general area of St. Thomas Hospital to await the phone call he expected. – Farris was not picky about his accommodation, and money, after all, didn’t grow on trees.
    The next morning, he received the expected call from his beloved’s natural father.  (Some traits seemed to run in families, but Farris planned to make damn certain the illegitimacy business stopped with him.)  Following his reliable GPS, Farris successfully navigated the hospital’s parking system and made his way by elevator to the Maternity Ward.
    “The fashion nowadays is to keep the infant in a crib in the mother’s room.”  Angus Pirtle, Clarice Saxe’s half-brother, peeled himself off the wall.  “It was a