Page 1 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

JOLENE

B y the time I was within a month of my due date, I couldn’t hide it from Pa anymore.

Oh, I’d tried, and had been successful up until that point.

Layering bigger and baggier clothing to cover my expanding stomach.

Blaming bouts of first trimester morning sickness on too many whisky sours from Sal’s, even though I hadn’t touched a drop since the night I drunkenly got pregnant in the first place.

Though, it was likely that the success of keeping my pregnancy a secret from him so far was less to do with my own efforts and more to do with Pa’s apathy when it came to me.

He’d never been good at looking me in the eye.

Was never really one for squinting too hard at anything that might involve my thoughts or feelings.

He’d raised me for the past twenty-three years – housed me on his ranch and fed me – since my mother’s death immediately after my birth.

But it was more out of duty than devotion.

If Mama were still here, if my birth hadn’t been part of the process of her death, he may have been a different man to me.

A father more than a begrudging guardian who fell in love with a young, pregnant widow and married her, only to lose her hours after her first husband’s baby popped out.

That baby being me.

But for better or worse, Pa was here and he was all I had. It was time to tell him the truth so that he could be as prepared as I was.

Which didn’t really feel very prepared at all, to be honest.

I found him in the stables, where our last remaining horse, a gorgeous chestnut mare the same age as me, was kept.

Except she wasn’t there.

Only Pa was.

“Where’s Glory?” I asked, tugging the hem of my sweatshirt down, a nervous habit I’d developed that apparently wouldn’t quit just yet.

I had printouts of Baby Girl’s most recent ultrasound scan in my large front pocket to show Pa.

I shoved my hands into the pocket, fingering the edges of the prints that I’d gone to collect this afternoon.

Pa had his back to me, surveying Glory’s empty stall. Without turning around, he grunted, “Buyer came to pick her up this afternoon.”

In a rush, the morning sickness I thought I’d left behind months ago came roaring violently back. Nausea gripped me. My heart plummeted to my stomach then right back up, overshooting its mark to lodge in my throat. My fingertips against the paper in my pocket went numb.

“What buyer?” I croaked.

“Some son of a bitch with more money than sense. Offered me twice as much as a horse as old as Glory is worth. He made his fortune on Elora Station and now he wants to come play at being a cowboy, live out some rich station boy’s fantasy of a N’Alberta life.”

Pa’s voice hit a bitter note at that last bit.

Because the New Alberta life was hard, and it could cost you in blood and sweat just as surely as credits.

And some rich idiot putting on a cowboy hat and buying up the land and the horses – and probably just paying other people to take care of those things while he pranced around in his pageantry – would never really understand it.

But, goddamnit, it was a life. It was our life. Glory’s life.

“Glory was my horse!” My voice cracked. I fought tears, grinding my molars together.

I’d never been much of a crier. I’d always tried to be a glass-half-full kind of girl.

It was why I’d charged headlong into this pregnancy, resolving to be the best mother I could to a kid I had never planned on.

But pregnancy had made me much more prone to weeping.

And getting pissed off.

But I guessed Pa was pissed, too. Because he finally turned around, harsh lines carved into his face.

“Did you pay for Glory?” he snapped.

“Well, no, of course not. I-”

“I bought that horse for Caroline.”

He gave his head a vicious jerk, like he was trying to dislodge the pain of old memories, the way a dog might shake water from its coat.

Pa had bought Glory as a gift for Mama. Her beautiful chestnut coat had reminded him of Mama’s auburn hair.

Glory arrived here the day after I was born.

The day after Mama died.

And now she was gone.

“I can’t afford her upkeep anymore, Jolene. Besides,” Pa went on, putting his hands in the pockets of his worn denim pants. “You haven’t even been riding her.”

Haven’t even been riding her.

Guilt plunged into me, grabbing onto my grief and twisting it.

He was right.

“Well, there’s a reason for that!” I cried. I pulled the ultrasound pictures from my pocket and threw them angrily down on the ground between us. “I’m fucking pregnant!”

Pa’s eyes went to the images strewn about in the dirt. The colour rushed from his face, as if all his body’s blood was suddenly required in his boots.

Maybe I was a bitch for bringing it up this way. To announce my pregnancy on the heels of him mentioning my riding – or lack thereof.

Mama was thrown from a horse late in her pregnancy with me. She laboured – then hemorrhaged – alone in the fields until Pa found her and she was rushed into an emergency C-section that came just in time for me but too late for her.

I should have ridden Glory more.

Glory had always been a docile, gentle, obedient horse. Whenever tourists showed up, looking for a little slice of that authentic New Alberta experience, she was the one I trotted out to let the nervous kids ride on. She wouldn’t have thrown me. Would never have hurt me.

And now I’d fucking lost her. I’d gotten scared, and that fear took her away from me as surely as the rich Elora Station buyer.

As surely as Pa did.

“Who’s the father?” Pa sounded like he just took a hoof to the windpipe.

“One of the tourists who came through last year,” I said flatly. I barely remembered Paul’s face at this point. All I remembered was blond hair, a loud laugh, breath that smelled like beer. “I contacted him after he left Terratribe II to let him know the news, but he blocked me.”

Pa breathed out and dragged his hand through his greying hair.

“Impulsive,” he said. “Reckless. You always have been, Jolene. You never fucking think!”

“I thought my pulse treatment was effective for another few weeks! And-”

“If you’re keeping that baby,” he cut me off with a voice like a blade of ice, “then you’re not doing it here.”

The nausea was back. I reached out shakily, grasping onto a wooden post framing an empty stall for support.

“What?” I gasped. Why was it so suddenly hard to breathe? Baby Girl wiggled. But I barely registered it.

“You heard me,” Pa said. He wrenched his gaze away from the ultrasound images, away from me, away from everything.

He stared out the open stable doors, glaring into the setting sun.

“You’re twenty-three years old. You want to make grown-ass decisions, raise this baby on your own?

Then you can do it in your own damn house. Not under my roof.”

“Raise this baby on my own?” Tears stung my eyes and heated my cheeks. I violently slapped them away. “I didn’t think I’d be doing it on my own! I thought I’d be doing it with you!”

When Pa spoke again next, he didn’t sound angry. He just sounded fucking empty.

“I already raised one baby that wasn’t mine,” he said in a hollow voice. “I’m not doing it again.”

His reply hit me as hard as a punch. I couldn’t speak.

There were no words and too many all at once.

I almost walked right out of the stables then, but I couldn’t bear to leave the pictures of Baby Girl lying there abandoned in the dirt.

Because even though she wasn’t planned, even though she’d changed everything, she was mine.

My quietly, constantly growing little secret over the past months. My tiny kicking horse. My daughter.

I already loved her. And if Pa wouldn’t, then there was nothing else for it. I refused to raise her where she wasn’t wanted. Where she would be a burden instead of a blessing. I’d already had more than twenty years of that and I was fucking through.

A cooling resolve worked its way through my limbs, numbing the tears.

I could be strong for her even if I couldn’t be strong for myself.

Unfortunately, some of the dignity in that new emotion was erased by the truly heinous measures I had to engage in simply to get myself down to the ground with my big belly and loosey-goosey hip joints.

Grunting, down on one knee, I clutched the pictures of Baby Girl, now dusty, in my hands.

I took a moment to breathe before I steeled myself to begin the laborious process of getting back up.

In the end, Pa was the one who left the stables first.

Later that evening, once the Terratribe II sun had set, I found myself with one packed bag and very little money at Sal’s.

Sal’s was a bar technically called Ol’ Bison , as proclaimed by the hanging wooden sign with the big horns outside the front door.

But only the tourists called it that. To locals, it was always just Sal’s, a drinking joint with lots of wood accents and photos of Old-Earth Alberta – Banff, ranches, and the Calgary Stampede – framed on all the walls.

“Jesus, Jolene,” Sal said from behind the bar as I sat my sorry butt down on one of the stools. “I haven’t seen you in…”

“Nine months?” I grumbled.

“Yeah, probably. What can I get for you? Whisky sour?”

Good God, if ever a day called for whisky, it was this one.

“I’ve been laying off the sauce,” I told him with a shake of my head, not willing to offer up more info just yet.

My belly was hidden by the bar. I’d already gotten my pregnant ass handed to me – at least in the emotions department – by one gruff old New Alberta man today.

I wasn’t sure I was recovered enough to risk it with another.

Sal’s bushy eyebrows rose, and I supposed I couldn’t blame him. I was known around here as a work hard, play hard kind of girl. I busted my ass on the ranch, and at the end of a long day I could drink most of the tourist boys who came through here under the table.