The Baby: The Bride Series Read online

  The Baby

  The Bride Series

  S Doyle

  Copyright © 2017 by S Doyle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  See more books in the series

  The Bride

  The Wife

  The Lover

  And coming soon

  The Homecoming

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Also by S Doyle

  Excerpt from the Homecoming

  1

  Ellie

  June

  You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here sitting on the toilet. No, no, nothing gross or anything. I’m just taking a test. You know… to see if I’m preggers or not.

  I’m not going to lie… I’m freaking out about it.

  Quick recap.

  My dad died when I was almost seventeen, leaving me an orphan. I fake-married Jake, a longtime family friend and our ranch foreman, so I could continue to live and work on my cattle ranch in Montana. Then I fell in love with him. Then he kissed me. Then… Carol happened. Still can’t stand the name Carol to this day. Then I divorced his ass. Not because of Carol really, but because I was still in love with him. But then he fell in love with me. Sort of.

  Then I got pregnant.

  And there were those five minutes when I thought about not being pregnant. About making myself not pregnant.

  I didn’t do it. Looking back on it, I know I could never have done it. Not to Jake’s baby.

  I lost the baby. I’d thought it was all my fault. I thought I had lost Jake too, but it turned out he just had serious mommy issues. With good reason. The bitch left him when he was eleven years old and never looked back.

  Fortunately he was able to work through those, and we found a way to be together.

  Then we got married for real. It really was a beautiful wedding.

  That was three years ago.

  Being married to Jake ever since has been the best. I mean it was like a nonstop sex fest there in the beginning, which was fun. We were nearly gross with how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

  People called us the Starbucks Unicorn couple because we were so freaking sweet. (Not that many people here in Riverbend, Montana have ever been to a Starbucks, but they see stuff on the internet.)

  Things were great. We had a successful cattle ranch, which we could expand because of the addition of Talley land. We added goats because I always wanted goats. (Don’t get Jake started on the goats!)

  Most of all we had each other, and it was more than enough.

  Then Christmas happened, and we started talking about what we wanted our future Christmases to look like. You know, with kids running around screaming with anticipation and writing letters to Santa Claus. Christmas cookies and stockings. Getting us up at three a.m. because of how excited they were, and then tearing into gifts in minutes.

  We decided we were ready to talk about the future.

  Did we want kids?

  Definitely.

  How many, if we were fortunate enough to have them?

  Still up in the air.

  After a couple of weeks of haggling, we took the plunge. I tossed the birth control pills. Jake kept on doing what he did best, which was to fill me up in the best sort of ways.

  Now six months later I’m sitting on the toilet, seat down, waiting to see if it worked.

  I’m afraid it did. I’m afraid it didn’t. I’m afraid if I am pregnant I might lose the baby again. Because let me tell you, that day ranks as one of the shittiest days of my life. And I’ve had a lot of bad ones.

  Jake says I shouldn’t be afraid. That it was just one of those things.

  Jake has never had a miscarriage.

  I think I’m ready to handle this. No matter what happens. Except there really is no way to tell what a person can handle until something does actually happen.

  I looked over at the counter, where my phone was ticking down on the timer. The white plastic pee stick sitting there waiting to define my life. Of course I had to drive to Jefferson again. No chance that I could casually pick up one of those bad boys in town without everyone knowing what Jake and I were doing.

  Were trying.

  It was the same person behind the counter as last time. I’m pretty sure he didn’t recognize me from three years ago. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a bad omen.

  My phone dinged and I practically fell off the seat. My heart was pounding as I stood and picked up the stick.

  Positive.

  Pregnant.

  PREGNANT.

  HOLY SHIT PREGNANT!

  There it was. I sat back down on the lid and tried to take deep, calming breaths. Then I thought about what to tell Jake.

  All I knew was that this time had to be different. Last time, it was like I was giving him the worst news ever. He understood. He knew it was because I was afraid he was going to want to get married… again, which he did, without me knowing if he really loved me. Because back then he hadn’t been able to say it.

  Now I knew he really loved me. That fear was completely gone.

  It was just the other fear. The fear that maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I could get pregnant, but I couldn’t carry a baby full term. That because… in those few moments of wondering if I should undo the last pregnancy… I had cursed myself forever.

  Which was ridiculous of course. It’s not like I actually believed in curses.

  Much.

  I didn’t have to tell him right now. I had time to come up with a plan. Maybe a nice dinner. Something different and special. With that in mind I put the test back in the cardboard box, then I put it in the trash and took the bag out of the small pail and tied it off.

  I ran downstairs, even though I knew I was in the house alone, and stuffed the small bag of trash in the main kitchen trash and covered it with a bunch of towels. Now it was my secret.

  I looked over at my scales. Jake and I had had yet another fight about the goats last night, so I had willfully moved the disks to seven on the right.

  Jake’s mission in life was to keep me at a nine and above on the scale of one to ten of happiness. But when he threatened to murder Gary the Goat, that was obviously not going to make me happy.

  I couldn’t move them to ten now. He would know something was up. I would wait. Until we both knew that we were going to have a baby.

  I tried not to be afraid. I really really tried.

  * * *

  It was morning and time to see about the business of running a cattle ranch. As my dad always said, a ranch can’t run itself.

  I was heading to the barn when I saw Cody head in the same direction from the bunk house.

  I lifted my hand in greeting. “Hey Cody.”

  “Bosslady,” he said with a nod.

  That’s what he called me. That or ma’am. Every time. “You know you can call me Ellie.” Which is what I said to him every time back.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I shook my head. “Where’s your dad?”

  Cody was Rich’s only child. Jake and I hadn’t known Rich even had a kid until last year when Cody showed up.

  Rich wasn’t much of a talker. It had been easy to see on his weathered face when we had hired him that he’d had a harder life than some. He nev
er talked about an ex-wife or kids. Then one day Cody showed up at the ranch, and Rich was asking if he could work alongside him. Suddenly there was this whole life Rich had that Jake and I had no clue about.

  The good news was, we needed the help. We had just gotten to the point where we were big enough that another full time hand was needed. Cody never really explained why he’d chosen to visit his father when he did. Or what his mother thought about it. Jake and I didn’t feel comfortable asking.

  Cody wasn’t much of a talker either.

  What we did know about Cody was that he was a former rodeo rider, or as he liked to call himself, a recovering rodeo addict. He didn’t talk too much about what he did in the circuit, but Jake and I had looked him up at one point and saw that he’d been pretty highly ranked before a bad fall took him out of commission.

  Rodeo was a big deal in Montana, and as highly ranked as he was, he probably made a pretty good living at it, but it was hell on a cowboy’s body. I didn’t ask him about the accident, because it wasn’t my business, but it must have been enough to stop him from going back.

  What I did know was that he worked hard. He did his job. He seemed okay living with his father in the bunk house.

  Not to mention he was pretty easy on the eyes.

  Small under-exaggeration. The truth was, he was smoking hot. I could only imagine the attention he got from the rodeo fan girls.

  Hey, just because a woman is married doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy some decent eye candy. And while yes, as a feminist, I realize the objectification of any person based solely on their appearance is wrong, I feel in the thousands of years men have been doing it to women, we need some time to balance the scales.

  Not that I explained any of that to Jake. I didn’t think he would be jealous if he knew I thought Cody was hot. He would be too confident in how much I loved him. Still, we fought enough about the goats, I figured there was no reason to add any fuel to that fire.

  Cody said, “Uh… Dad is out riding north. Checking fence.”

  “Oh. I thought he was going on a hay run. We need some to hold us over until our next delivery.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m on that now.”

  “Seriously, Cody. You’re like three years older than I am. You know you freak me out when you call me ma’am.”

  Cody smiled. “My momma raised me to be respectful. You’re my employer, I call you ma’am or Bosslady.”

  “What century were you born in?”

  He laughed then and I thought it was good to hear. Cody was always so serious whenever I saw him. As if nothing was ever fun or funny to him. Which didn’t seem right for someone his age.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” I told him as I made my way over to the barn, but then because I couldn’t resist, I changed course and headed out back to the goat pen.

  “God DAMNIT!”

  I cringed. Apparently Jake and Gary the Goat were at it again. I turned the corner and watched as Jake climbed up and over the fence just as Gary rammed the post. Safe on the other side from the ram, Jake glared at him.

  “You are the devil. Don’t think I don’t know it,” he told it.

  “Jake, stop calling Gary the devil.”

  Jake whirled on me and I knew what was coming next. “You! This is all your fault.”

  “Look at those does over there,” I said, pointing to where the female goats were prancing about. “They are so cute!”

  They were. When we’d gotten the kids they danced and pranced around, providing endless entertainment. Until they started jumping out of the pen Jake had built and we were constantly chasing them down.

  No easy thing to catch a goat.

  So Jake had to keep building the fence in a way they couldn’t escape. Then we needed Gary to impregnate them so we could get milk. Because…

  “Not one ounce of goat cheese,” Jake shouted. “This was all about how you were going to become an expert in making goat cheese. And we were going to have goat cheese pizza and shit. Nothing. Instead you come out here and play with them like they’re pets.”

  Right. Because they were so cute. Well, maybe not Gary. He was a little ornery. He also seemed to have a special loathing for Jake.

  “I’m working on it,” I said defensively. “Goat cheese doesn’t just happen, Jake.”

  I had no clue really. I looked it up online, and you needed cultures and cheesecloths, and it seemed like more of a bother than I thought. But at some point I was going to have to feed this man some goat cheese, otherwise I might have a goat mutiny on my hands.

  He was grumbling something under his breath, and I heard another goat cheese comment and smiled. Jake was without a doubt the hottest man I knew. Yes, even hotter than Cody, but that was probably because I loved him. But when he was all riled up, that just made my heart flutter.

  I made my way toward him and started to snuggle into him. He resisted at first—because I could tell he wanted to be mad at me because we had four does, one devilish ram, and no goat cheese—but at the end of the day Jake didn’t have it in him to hold a grudge. Not against me.

  I kissed his chin, then his cheek.

  “Don’t think this argument is over,” he said gruffly.

  “Not even a little bit. I promise, I’ll read up on it again. At least the milk isn’t going to waste.”

  “Yeah, you know why? Because Frank at the diner is making goat cheese.”

  I smiled as soon as his arms came around me. For a second I just basked in the glow of thinking how lucky we were. It was him and me and…

  Maybe I should have told him then. That he was going to be a dad. He’d been so excited the last time…

  Which of course made me freeze up. Because as excited as he’d been was as devastated he’d been when we lost it.

  “Ellie? What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said tightly. Of course it was something, but not something I was ready to share.

  “Ellie…” Jake said in the way he did when he knew I was stuck in my head.

  I shook him off. “Really, I’m good. Just a bad thought is all. I’m going to round up some eggs.”

  Jake nodded. One of the five thousand things I loved about him was that he knew when to push me and when to back off.

  “Hey, put some together for Rich and Cody. We’ve already got more than we can eat in the fridge.”

  “Yep.” I gave him another kiss on the cheek and stopped by the goat pen to say hello to my cuties. Then I went about my chores, the whole time wondering how exactly I was going to tell him.

  2

  Jake

  Ellie was acting funny. I knew it, and for a few days I backed off and gave her space, but now she was officially worrying me.

  “Are you mad?” she asked me as we lay together in bed.

  “Am I mad because you don’t want to have sex with me? No, Ellie. Of course not.”

  It was late, we had gone to bed at our normal time. I usually went up first because I got up earlier than she did. But not long after me, she’d come upstairs and had changed into her pajama bottoms and yoga tank. I was still up, in more ways then one, but then she’d turned her back on me and said she wasn’t feeling it tonight.

  Then she asked me if I was mad about that, which was ridiculous. That wasn’t something a man should ever get mad about.

  No, I wasn’t mad so much as I was… confused. A little-known fact I do not share with anyone… my wife is a horn dog. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much. She liked sex and she liked it often.

  Yes. I realized this classified me as the luckiest man alive.

  However, for the past few nights she’d been putting me off. If it was her period, she would usually tell me, but these past few nights it was more of an I don’t feel like it vibe.

  The idea of Ellie suddenly no longer being into me like that was a little jarring and quite frankly worrying. This was our marriage. This was for life. What if I was the one who had stopped pleasing her? What if I was boring her in bed? I thought
our sex life was hotter than a volcano, but what if she… didn’t?

  I had been doing this married stuff for three years, and I can tell you it does not get any easier. Because no matter how much you know someone, no matter how much you think you can predict what they are going to do and say in any given moment, you can’t actually read their mind.

  Fortunately I didn’t have to read Ellie’s mind. Because this was something we could talk about. Ellie and I were talkers.

  “Ellie… if something is wrong with… I mean if I’m not doing something you… need…”

  That had her turning back to me. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes were wide and on mine. I thought how incredibly beautiful she was to me. So fucking pretty. Did she still see me the same way? Was I handsome to her?

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying if things are getting routine for you… in bed. And you need me to… I don’t know… do something else… you could talk to me about that. Is all I’m saying.”

  She smiled. “Jake, the tips of your ears right now are flaming red. So no, I don’t think I can talk to you about kinky sex stuff.”

  “Look, I know it’s not easy for me to talk about this…”

  “Because you’re a prude,” she interrupted.

  “Will you stop saying that? I’m not a prude. I can get… creative. I just don’t see the need to talk about it. I would rather do it.”

  She leaned up on her elbow. “Jake, me not wanting to have sex isn’t about me wanting you to get all kinky on me. But I would love to know what you’re thinking about in that area… Are we talking toys? Handcuffs? Threesomes?”

  I growled at that and she laughed.

  “Trust me when I tell you no one else is ever getting in this bed with us,” I said.

  She pushed herself up and kissed my cheek. “Good, because I would never share you with anyone.”