Cowboy Love (BWWM Pregnancy Romance) Read online

  Dedicated

  To All The Readers Who Are Making My Dreams Come True

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2015 Tasha Jones. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

  WARNING: This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for sale to adults ONLY.

  Please ensure this book is stored somewhere that cannot be accessed by underage readers.

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  About Tasha Jones

  Hey,

  I'm Tasha and thank you so much for taking the time to take a read through my book. I'm a young mother of one, with a loving husband, currently living in Jacksonville, and am a big reader. I've decided to turn my love for books into something more, and have started to passionately write more and more. I recently went on a trip to Africa with my fam, and got many ideas for stories on that trip. I also love traveling and cooking and hope it shows in my writing. I really hope you enjoy my writing and I can bring just a tiny bit of joy into your day.

  Thanks,

  Tasha

  About This Book

  Tamika Davis thought she left her old life behind. When a last minute work assignment has Tamika back in the small Texas town that she grew up in her whole life ends up turning upside down.

  While seven years had passed since she left and she had moved on to much bigger and better things in the city, she couldn't help but be recognized on her return by several town folk. For them it was almost like time stood still, while for her this town brought back nothing but bad memories.

  While Tamika and her colleague Aaron were there to quickly settle the estate of a deceased client, things get much more complicated when Tamika realizes that Vanessa, the daughter of her deceased client, has been dating her first love for the last five years.

  And there he was. Noah. The man who had taken her body, her heart, and shattered them into a million pieces. He was her first love and when she saw him with Vanessa she couldn't help but feel jealous even after all those years.

  She knew him as a bad boy with a temper who was always fighting his own demons. Someone with no direction who could barely hold down a job. But something was different about him now. He owned a ranch and was a full time cowboy. But did this really change the past?

  They were young and in love, and in one night of drunken passion they ended up getting pregnant. Tamika told Noah, and he wanted nothing to do with the baby. Young, pregnant and alone she decided to leave town for good. But a few weeks after she left, she lost the baby, even more heartbreaking is Noah thought she got rid of it.

  With all their history and drama together will they be able to rekindle an old flame? Or should the past stay where it belongs?

  This hot and steamy BWWM romance is for adult audiences 18+ only

  Chapter 1 - Tamika

  I dropped my handbag on the file cabinet and opened the manila file that lay on my desk. I hadn’t left it there before the weekend.

  “Carrie, what’s this?” I asked my assistant when she appeared in my office door with my morning coffee. Her brown hair was plunked on top of her head in a bun and she wore clothes that looked dangerously like the outfit she’d worn on Friday.

  “Oh, Larry asked me to get that to you, and he wants to see you first thing.”

  I flipped through the folder, scanning the contents so I would know what he was talking about at least. It had something to do with a deceased estate, my specialty, but it didn’t all add up.

  I flipped it shut again and got up. Best not to keep Larry waiting.

  A meeting with the boss first thing in the morning – that was a way to get my week going. I took a sip of the coffee and put it on my desk. By the time Larry was done with me it would probably be cold. How many cold cups of coffee did Carrie wash down the drain?

  I knocked on the glass door with the gold lettering that stylishly said “Laurence Witmark – Vice President”.

  Larry was on the phone, but he beckoned me in and waved at one of the chairs opposite him. He scribbled something down while he listened, and I could make out the words ‘deceased’ and ‘executor’ from his scribbled upside-down handwriting. He nodded, twirling the eraser end of the pencil in the graying hair above his ear. Finally he said, “Thank you, Aaron. I’ll get back to you. I’m with Tamika, now.”

  He hung up.

  “It’s a bit early for you and Aaron to be going at it,” I said. Aaron was the lawyer that worked with Witmark Consulting on Property and Probate Law. I was the Estate Administrator so I saw him the most, and we’d become good friends.

  Larry ran a top notch auditing firm and he insisted on having attorneys at hand. Witmark Consulting and Monroe & Findley Attorneys went together like white on rice.

  “So I noticed you bombarded me with manila this morning,” I said.

  Larry laughed and stretched his arms up. The buttons on his shirt threatened to snap open. He was a big man, as wide as he was tall, and his personality kept up with his personal appearance. Larry was a big man in every way.

  “You remember Mr. Hart, don’t you?” he asked. I nodded. Mr. Hart was one of our biggest clients. He had Witmark take care of all his accounting. Hart was a business man, and no one ran a good business without a good accounting firm behind them.

  “Well, Mr. Hart passed away three days ago.”

  “What?” Hart had been a spring chicken the last time I’d seen him. A bit worn and weathered, soft around the edges, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d been upright and proud, and he’d poured himself into his enterprise.

  “What happened?”

  “Heart attack.” Larry sighed. “These things happen to the best of us, it seems. I can’t believe it.” He chewed on one of the temple tips of his glasses before he put them back on his face.

  We both kept quiet for a moment, respect for the recently deceased.

  “Anyway,” Larry said in his business voice again. “He had a ranch in Texas. He had us check the books for it a couple of months ago.

  “Texas?”

  “He has a step-daughter that lives there, and he was planning on retiring close to her. It looks like it’s a…” He squinted at the page in front of him, pushing his glasses up his nose. “A tourist ranch. Aaron was in court on Friday and they appointed Witmark because we did the books,
and we have you.”

  “The step-daughter can’t?” I asked. Larry shook his head. “Unrelated and out of state. The court doesn’t want it.”

  “Where in Texas is this ranch, exactly?” I asked.

  “Ingram.”

  I stilled. I’d hoped that in my life I would never have to see Ingram again.

  “Does it have to be me?” I asked.

  Larry looked up at me, over his glasses. “I can’t see why it shouldn’t. You’re from there, aren’t you?”

  I nodded slowly, clenching my jaw. My fingers were curled around the armrests.

  “Well then, you’ll be right at home. I’m sending Aaron with you. I have a feeling this one is going to be messy. There’s no executor.”

  “Didn’t Hart appoint one in his will?”

  “He never drafted one. In his mind, he had more than enough time left for that. Never too early to draft a will.”

  “Sir, respectfully I decline—“

  “Nonsense, Tamika. You’re the best this company has. I want you on this. No better time than the present to impress the guys upstairs, eh?” He chuckled. By ‘the guys upstairs’ he meant himself.

  I knew what he was trying to say. Larry wasn’t hard to decrypt, he had messages written all over his forehead. If I pulled it off I could get that raise I’d been longing after.

  If I managed to escape Ingram alive. I shuddered and left the office.

  Aaron waited for me at the airport. He was tall and broad, with wide shoulders and slightly tan skin. I thought maybe had had Mexican influence somewhere in his bloodline, but he definitely still looked very Caucasian. His thick black hair was a mess and he had stubble on his chin. His clothes were a little shaggy and creased, definitely not how I knew him.

  “I thought lawyers didn’t sleep,” I said with a smile. He shrugged.

  “We’re still people, contrary to popular belief,” he said. “Besides, you’re wearing sweats. I didn’t know you owned anything besides pencil skirts. I thought you liked to dress up.”

  “I may be urban, but I’m allowed a day off.” I looked down at my clothes, tugging at the hem of my sweater.

  “Don’t look so nervous, you’ll do brilliantly, as usual,” Aaron said, tipping my face up so I looked him in the eye. “This is going to be fun.” If only my nerves were as simple and straightforward as being worried about my job performance.

  We were on the five-thirty flight from Lafayette, Louisiana to San Antonio, Texas. Aaron slept most of the way, but I couldn’t. It felt like I was being transported in time, back to a life that was colored in black and laced with pain. I didn’t want to go back to Ingram. I didn’t want to drive around the cowboy country I’d once loved so much. I wanted to stay in Lafayette, the city I’d made home. It was the exact opposite of Ingram, and that was why I’d chosen it. It was big and busy and there was never enough peace and quiet to allow bad memories to creep in. I’d fought for the past seven years to erase every trace of country girl in me.

  When we stepped out of the airport, hot dry air swirled around us. I’d forgotten how hard the climate could be here.

  “Looks like Larry booked us a rental,” Aaron said, inspecting a slip he’d gotten at the counter.

  I followed him to the parking lot, and we found a beat up red Toyota Corolla.

  “You’d think that with what the company’s worth he could have gotten us something better,” Aaron said, pulling a face.

  “You haven’t seen Ingram. It’s not the kind of place you want to take your BMW, especially not if we’re going to ranches.” I had to give it to him though, Larry could at least have given us something with decent shocks and air-con.

  “I thought you said this was going to be fun.”

  ‘No, you said it.” I play-punched Aaron and we loaded our luggage.

  The drive to Ingram wasn’t exactly smooth, it couldn’t be in a Corolla, but the scenery was beautiful. I had my window rolled all the way down and I breathed in the hot air. It smelled like summer, the traces of a storm hanging in the air, almost drowned out by the distinct pinch of dust. I’d forgotten how much I loved Texas. It was lush and green despite the dryness in the air, and the country was dotted with green trees and shrubs that grew out of rolling fields covered in beige knee-high grass.

  “So, why are you so serious? You don’t seem very excited about this trip, and you usually love to travel for business. It happens so seldom.”

  I shrugged. “Ingram just isn’t my favorite place,” I said. “People love the small-town vibe, but you can get sick of it.”

  “That’s right, I heard you used to live here.” Office gossip was tried and true. There were no secrets among the staff of Witmark and Monroe & Findley.

  “I grew up here, actually,” I said, and Aaron pulled up his eyebrows. It made his dark eyes look bigger. He looked around, leaning forward to look up at the sky through the windshield.

  “I can see the appeal. Why did you leave?”

  I sighed. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? This world got a little too small for me, I guess. I was in the same schools all my life, with the same friends and the same guy, and my parents were proud of me because I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life. I studied finance at the Community College in Kerrville and I had my eye on a two-man accounting company on the edge of the industrial area. But this world doesn’t move along with the real world. It stays frozen in time. It’s almost like Brigadoon.”

  “Like what?”

  “Brigadoon. You know, that village that only appears once every hundred years for a day somewhere on earth, but to the people who live there every day just follows the other.”

  Aaron shrugged. “Okay… so you left because you were getting too big for the place?”

  “Something like that.” I looked out the window at the passing scenery.

  “So what happened to the guy?”

  “What guy?” I turned to look at Aaron.

  “The one you were with for so long.”

  “Oh,” I said. The guy that had stolen my heart. The one I’d wanted to spend the rest of my life with, because I couldn’t see a future without him in it. My chest constricted and I forced myself to breathe. This place reminded me how empty I felt. Dreams lived and died in this place. Dreams, futures, hope. “He decided to stay behind.”

  Aaron shook his head. “Some people are born to be small-town forever.”

  “Something like that,” I said again.

  We drove on in silence. I closed my eyes, letting the hum of the car lull me into a doze. The sun that fell through the window colored the insides of my eyelids orange. Somewhere ahead of us, my past was lurking, waiting to pop its ugly head over the horizon and welcome me home. I shuddered. If I was lucky Noah wasn’t there anymore. I knew he’d wanted to leave his drunk of a father and find a better life. God knew he’d needed it. Noah wouldn’t have stayed. And what were the chances of me running into him? We were there on business. Just a night or two, and I could leave it all behind again.

  This wasn’t going to be a problem. I breathed in deeply, ignoring the fistful of nerves that knotted together in my stomach.

  The afternoon sun hung low enough to be in our eyes when we heard a clanging sound somewhere under the hood of the car.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I said. Aaron looked in the rearview mirror like it would hold an answer. “There’s nowhere out here where we can stop. Last stop’s Ingram but we’re almost half an hour out, I think.”

  “Well, let’s hope we don’t break down, then,” I said.

  We almost made it. I saw the first buildings of the town against the sky when the clanking sound suddenly got louder, and then the engine cut. Aaron tried to start the car again, but it whined and sputtered and almost looked like it would catch, but then gave up. Aaron tried two or three times, before giving up too.

  “I don’t think this is going to go anywhere,” he said. “We better call someone.”

  “I’ll deal with it,” I sai
d and pulled out my phone. I dialed the hotel that was expecting us, and tried to explain where we were.

  “They’re sending someone,” I said when I finally got the reception on the same page as me. “I don’t know how long, though.”

  The sun was well on its way toward the horizon, splashing the world with strokes of red, orange and pinks. I would have loved it in different circumstances, but my stomach bothered me – I hadn’t eaten since we’d arrived at the airport, and I really needed to pee.

  “Here’s someone, now,” Aaron said, getting up from the hood he was leaning against. I stepped out of the car. The truck approaching us was evergreen, polished until there wasn’t a spot of dust on it. The man behind the wheel wore a white cowboy hat. When he stepped out I noticed his faded jeans with worn leather chaps over them, and cowboy boots like you would see in any western movie. He wore a checkered collar shirt that looked a bit rumpled. He introduced himself to Aaron, shaking his hand. There was something familiar about his walk. Fluid and confident. Pure cowboy, rough and rugged. Handsome as anything.

  My taste in men hadn’t changed. But something was off. My skin broke out in goosebumps and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. The blond hair curling out from underneath the cowboy hat was a shade too familiar. So was the stroll towards Aaron, and the firm handshake.

  When he turned to me, my brain finally added up what my body had known all along. It was Noah. And his soft sea-green eyes fell on me, holding my own gaze for what felt like forever. I prayed the earth would open up and swallow me whole. Or that I would faint. Or something. Anything that would take me away from this. From him.

  He had been my version of the American dream. The handsome cowboy that I’d wished my children would look like one day. And then once the unthinkable had happened, and the idea of children had become a hard reality, the friend I’d seen in those eyes had turned into the enemy.

  None of my children could end up the way he’d chosen to be. Not the ones I would have with the right man one day, because this time I’d have a choice.