Page 7 of Rocky Mountain Home

“Strawberry shortcake?”

“The girls’ favourite—of course.”

“We’ll eat at five, but if you can come over for three, I’d appreciate it. Caleb said Uncle Frank’s sending a group of new hands from the south, and he’s not sure when he’ll be done the ranch tour. I promised to be around when the girls get off the bus in case he’s not done.”

She was Auntie Dare in name only, but she didn’t mind one bit. Those two little girls of Caleb’s were the cutest things. “Sure, I can come help with the rug rats. It’s good practice.”

Ginny got to her feet, giving her a hug before stealing the mug back and heading to the main house. “You don’t need practice. You’re going to be a great mom.”

Dare didn’t say anything—it was one thing to have a baby on the way, but it was another to imagine successfully raising the kid all the way to adulthood when she had no mom to turn to for help.

Panic is not an option, she told herself for the millionth time.

She waved goodbye then headed inside the small two-bedroom cottage that had been her home forever. Growing up, she’d shared a room with her sister, then after the accident she’d eventually returned to make the place her own, the ghosts of her past slowly fading into memories.

Her childhood room was now her office, twinned computer screens set up over the desk, a small single bed pushed against the opposite wall.

Not that she had many visitors. Everyone she liked enough to have over lived right there on the Silver Stone ranch. Family by choice if not family by blood.

Dare forced herself to move. She’d been staring out the window again, which wasn’t a terrible thing, except daydreaming was for daydreaming hours, not for when she had work to get done.

While she’d made light of it to Ginny, the morning sickness had been spectacularly rough. She was just starting to feel human on a regular basis, so keeping ahead of the game with prescheduled blog posts was important.

She closed the blinds to block out the distraction of the sun sparkling on the lake, and turned back to the computer and her list of upcoming features.

Little Ranch on the Prairie. Her recovery journal turned online diary turned blog.

Drove the Stone boys up the wall that she made money from sitting behind a computer, but at least they didn’t deny the amount of work she put in. Even when morning sickness had hit, she’d managed to post once a day, although she’d scrambled at times to make it more than “Ugh, I feel shitty. Here, have an LOLcat.”

She laid a hand over the slowly growing bump in her belly. “One good thing, Buckaroo. Mommy’s going to be able to stay at home with you. I need to get my butt in gear, though. Think I should start that kid’s section. What should we call it?”

No response yet. She didn’t expect there to be—although according to the baby books she and Ginny had peeked at, it could be anytime now she’d feel the baby move. “Buckaroo Roundup. My Little Buckaroo? Ranching With Buckaroo? They’re all so cheesy, but then again, I don’t mind cheesy—it makes good copy.”

She punched the ideas into a search engine to see how many other blogs out there dealt with the topic.

She’d put her own slant on it, of course, but raising kids on a ranch was common enough for a portion of the population to get a kick out of her everyday comments, and just fantasy enough for others that she could possibly make this work.

Dare rested her hand on her belly, then laughed. “I know my first post, because I never used to touch my stomach, and now I can’t seem to let go.”

Her rising baby bump would be noticed in town, and she was pretty much ready for it. With her foster brothers looking after her, she wouldn’t have to put up with too many in-her-face comments, but they’d still be there.

Single moms might be a lot more common these days, but being daddy-less in a small town was enough to make tongues wag.

She jotted down a couple of ideas for an extended section for raising kids on the ranch then opened her email.

The daily analytics from her blog opened, and Dare’s heart rate jumped a notch. “Holy moly. That’s not normal.”

She hurried to her blog to double-check. Views had skyrocketed, and she traced it back to a post she’d popped up in a daze while sick as a dog, when Buckaroo was just making his presence known in her life.

Cowboy Back-bacon Biscuits. An innocent enough recipe.

She clicked through to the blog post and grinned. “Well, hello, Mr. Sexy Cowboy.”

Okay, she didn’t remember specifically picking that picture. It wasn’t one of her paid stock photos, but an off-the-cuff shot she’d taken with her phone of the one responsible for putting Buckaroo in her belly. Normally she would never have used the picture, but obviously nausea-brain made for less-than-stellar choices.

“I hope you’re doing great wherever you are, Jesse. If I could track you down, I would.”

Posts going viral were good for her hit and advertising count, though, and hey—if it brought her cowboy out of the woodwork, so much the better. He’d been a decent guy, even though he’d obviously had something to drink about that night as well.