The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby Read Online Free

could fight that until Hazel came back home.
    He shut his eyes. Damn, that woman was a spitfire!
    “Overwhelmed?” Grady asked from the doorway.
    “Yes,” he said softly.
    ***
    Natalie curled up in a ball on the bed and wept into a pillow. She needed Drew to
     tell her what to do and he wasn’t there. He was buried at Arlington and his oldest
     sister had gotten the medal they gave him posthumously.
    Lucas had filled the boots Drew left behind. Lucas had been the one whom she told
     about her basketball team winning the regional tournament. He’d been the one that
     she whined to that spring after the first track meet, and he’d laughed at her sunburn
     around Hollywood-type sunglasses. Lucas had been there for her when the school did
     not renew her contract late in the summer. He’d listened to her talk about weariness
     after long hours of supervising the cotton crew that fall. He’d been out on a weeklong
     mission when she had Joshua and she meant to tell him about the baby, but down deep
     she must’ve known that he would react just the way he did. She’d wanted to see him
     in person so badly, then Hazel called and swore that he’d be fine with the baby.
    Now it was all gone.
    Her contract to coach and teach science at the high school in Silverton had not been
     renewed. They’d said it was because they were combining the girls and boys coaching
     duties and hiring a full-time science teacher for the junior high and high school.
     That was just to cover their asses. They weren’t hiring her because she was pregnant
     with Drew Camp’s baby, but they damn sure didn’t want a lawsuit brought against them
     if they admitted it. Drew Camp had gotten the title of resident bad boy after they’d
     gotten to high school. That was the year that her parents did everything including
     telling her that she couldn’t hang out with him anymore, but the bond between them
     was so strong that it hadn’t worked. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. But
     at least she had Lucas to keep her from going crazy and now he was gone, too.
    For the first time in her life, she was totally alone and it hurt so bad that she
     thought she’d die.
    “What would Drew tell me to do?” she whispered.
    He would tell you that you’d whined enough. Get up and wash your face and quit that carrying on. He’d tell
     you that come light of day, things just might look a helluva lot different , the inner voice reminded her softly.
    She threw the pillow against the far wall and wiped her eyes dry with the tail of
     her shirt. She was a strong woman. She’d lived through the vicious gossip in Silverton
     when folks figured out she was pregnant. She’d held her head up when she told her
     folks and her three younger brothers that the baby belonged to Drew and she was keeping
     it. She’d settled down on the back of the cotton farm in her single-wide trailer house
     and worked for her father, taking only minimum wage like the rest of the hired hands.
     Two weeks after Joshua was born she helped bring in the cotton crop with him settled
     into a sling like a little Indian papoose.
    She could endure Lucas’s rejection even if it did hurt like hell. But it would take
     a miracle to change things come daybreak. Some things couldn’t be changed and Lucas
     would never accept Joshua, which meant that she wouldn’t accept Lucas.
    Joshua made sucking noises in his sleep. She gently touched his chubby cheeks with
     her fingertips. There was no denying that those dark brown eyes and thick lashes had
     come from the Camp side of the family. She wanted to pick him up and hug him close
     to her chest, but if he woke up, it would take a band of angels to get him back to
     sleep.

Chapter 2
    Jack popped the handle on the side of the recliner and leaned back. His salt-and-pepper-colored
     hair was too long again, but he only went to the barber once a month no matter how
     shaggy it got. His eyes were brown but not as dark as Lucas’s. He was