Betting on Hope (5 page)

Her quick recovery and the way she’d joked on-camera about her clumsiness had saved the interview from going south like a runaway bronc.

But her anger at him became evident when the camera stopped rolling and she tossed those shoes off and stalked barefoot across the rough rock to her car. That had to have bruised the bottoms of her feet, but she was obviously too angry to notice, and that made him feel more of a jerk than he already did.

He’d deserved it. He’d taken over that interview and left her no alternative but to go along with him.

But what could he do now?

He drove through the gate of the Four of Hearts and was still trying to find a solution as he drove past his Pops’s house, then the barn, and stopped in front of his place. A long, stretched-out single-story house with a low-slung roof and a wide porch in the back. Growing up, this had been the foreman’s house. Nothing fancy, but it suited Tru just fine.

One day, if he married, he’d build something bigger, something more suited to a woman, but there was a big “if” on the end of that thought. An “if” he was hoping to find an answer to in a couple of weeks after he heard from his oncologist. But right now, he had a ranch to run and a reputation to build for him and his horse program. A program he planned would last long after this time spent competing for championships that would keep sponsors knocking at his door and paychecks coming in.

He was on the road a lot, and he’d seen what that kind of life did to many families. And he’d been thinking about family a whole lot lately. Not that he could do anything about it right now with all these responsibilities to the ranch and his sponsors.

For now, his Pops’s ranch being safe from foreclosure or takeover was priority.

“How’d it go?” Bo, his little brother by a year, asked, leading a bay horse out of the barn.

Tru closed the door of his truck and met him at the round pen. “It was interesting.”

Bo shot him an appraising look. “Not the answer I was expecting. You hate interviews.”

“Still do, but—” Maggie holding her skirt in a tornado of wind, her blonde hair and interview pages whirling about her. She’d looked about as put out when he’d driven up as anyone could have been staggering about in those red high heels. He smiled thinking of that first sight. Those fancy shoes were more worthless on that chunky white rock than a pair of spurs without boots. Though he had to admit her legs looked amazing in them.

“But what?”

Tru scrubbed his jaw. “My interviewer wasn’t a reporter. She got roped in to doing it when the real reporter called in sick. She was different.”

“How so?”

“I have to admit it was the first interview I actually enjoyed.” He told Bo what had happened and how she was a mess asking the questions until he got her riled up on camera and she started asking her own. Bo threw his head back and laughed when Tru told him about his stupid remarks. And her challenge. He didn’t say anything about her falling. The odds of the town not finding out after the local ladies told the tale were low, but it wouldn’t be because he repeated it. He knew the station would delete that portion from the interview, along with much more—like him taking over asking the questions. They’d salvage what they could and hope for the best.

“A bet? Not your smartest move ever,” Bo said, having stopped grinning the instant Tru mentioned it.

“Don’t I know it. You should have seen her, though. She was flustered so much I felt bad for her. And then she tossed out that ‘you wanna bet’ line and I just reacted.”

“I can already see the camera crews following y’all around,” Bo teased.

Tru’s smile turned into a scowl. “That’s not happening. They’ll cut all of that. The station won’t want their reporter falling apart on camera, and that was exactly how Maggie looked.”

“Maggie, huh? Did you get her number?”

“You don’t let up, do you? She lives in Houston. And she’s a writer for some column in the
Tribune
. I did not get her number. Despite not being a TV reporter, she’s still in the journalism profession.”

Bo’s left brow cocked. “A column, huh? Hey, maybe she’d write a column on you, big brother. Make you famous again.”

“Funny.” Tru knew his brother was ribbing him about his stupid move of the year, dating a high-strung actress that he’d met at a charity fund-raiser of one of his sponsors. He’d ended up on the tabloids more times than he’d wanted, and the last time it had been a big mess. One that he could only blame on himself. What had he expected from a media-hungry starlet?

It had ended badly when he’d tried to end the relationship, taught him a big lesson, and made him more grateful for his home than ever. He was glad to be back where he belonged for a little while; here on his ranch, on the soft disked earth of his arena with his horses.

He didn’t make mistakes with horses.

That wasn’t always the case with people.

As he’d proven once more with Maggie Hope.

The truck slowed, bumped roughly from the pavement, and came to a halt.

Jenna waited beneath the tarp, holding her breath. When she heard the truck doors slam, she prayed the cowboys wouldn’t need anything from beneath the tarp. Seconds ticked by that felt like minutes.

She was cramped from being in the rough truck bed balled up like she was, but she was farther down the road and that was all that mattered. The voices faded away as the cowboys walked away from the truck, and after a few minutes, she knew she had to take a chance and see where they were. Slowly, she eased the tarp from over her face. All was clear, no sounds anywhere near. Groaning involuntarily with stiffness—being curled up for more than two hours would do that—she eased up and peeked over the edge of the truck. It was a good thing the roads they’d traveled had been in good shape because rough roads hurt like a son of a gun.

They’d stopped at a gas station and it was pretty deserted. She didn’t have a clue where they were but, thanks to her little baby, Jenna’s bladder was about to explode. She had to go.

Hoisting her considerable bulk over the tailgate, she hurried to climb to the ground then ducked behind the trailer out of sight of the windows of the convenience store. She wanted to go find the cowboys and just ask them straight up if they’d give her a ride to the home for pregnant girls, but she hadn’t been having much luck on this trip. The men she’d run into were not hero material. Her life in a nutshell.

Her stomach growled and she tried to remember when she’d last eaten. She’d managed to swipe a piece of uneaten toast and a strip of bacon off a plate of leftovers at the truck stop the night before, before the tired waitress had gotten around to clearing the table near her. But other than that, she hadn’t eaten anything for at least twenty-four hours. Before catching this ride, she’d hidden in the back of a hay hauler and slept curled up between the bales when the truck had stopped at the truck stop for the night. It had been a pure stroke of luck that she’d overheard that the cowboys were heading this way.

Though Jenna had strained something in her side when she’d swung that plunger, the sharp pains had subsided and she no longer feared that she might be in labor.

Or at least she hoped she wasn’t.

Easing down the length of the cattle trailer, she kept her head down, stuffed her hands in the pockets of the bulky sweatshirt she wore, and walked from the protection of the trailer toward the building. Hopefully, if anyone saw her, they would assume she had walked up—from where she wasn’t sure, since the ragged station and convenience store looked to be out here alone at the crossroads.

Jenna followed the sidewalk along the side of the building hoping the restrooms were on the outside. The old store looked like it had been converted from a gas station way before her time, so maybe . . . yes. There was the tiny one-room restroom and it wasn’t locked. Relieved, she slipped inside and slid the bolt on the door. To her surprise, the place, despite appearing rustic on the outside, was clean—sparkled, in fact.

It was like heaven.

Jenna knew her chances of sneaking back into the bed of that truck were not good. She’d just have to figure something else out later. Right now she couldn’t resist the chance to scrub some grime off of her face and body. She sniffed the soap and closed her eyes—pure bliss . . . especially when the soap dispenser was full of that pink soap that smelled like bubble gum.

And the paper towel bin was full.

If there was one thing Jenna had learned, it was to take advantage of the good things when they came along. Because more than likely it would be a long stretch of the bad before “Mr. Goodlife” showed his head and anything good happened to her again.

Turning on the hot water, Jenna sighed with pleasure, stripped off her shirt, and draped it over the doorknob, then she filled her hand full of the bubblegum scented soap.

This was definitely one of the better things in life.

At least her life so far. She wanted more for her baby than what she had to offer, and finding the ad in the newspaper for Over the Rainbow had been exactly the miracle she’d been praying for. When she’d gone to the library and looked it up on the Internet she’d known this was where she could find help for her baby.

It
had
to be a good place. It just had to be.

She couldn’t believe anything else.

Jenna held tight to the idea that if she could just get to the home at Wishing Springs everything was going to be okay. She just needed to get there.

Two miles from the Bull Barn, Maggie was still seething over the interview when she spotted a teenage girl walking slowly, haltingly, down the shoulder of the road. She was small and wore a bulky sweatshirt, but something about the way she walked, kind of a waddle, had Maggie believing that the girl was pregnant. The kid’s face was beet red and she held one hand pressed to her side, like she had a catch in it.

What was the girl doing all the way out here?

As she drove by the girl, Maggie continued to watch her in the rearview. Saw her turn as if to watch Maggie pass her by with a look so lost and alone that icy fingers of the past grasped Maggie’s heart, squeezing tight, sending a chilling ache through her. Maggie had once been a teenage girl lost and alone needing help. Her foot had already stepped to the brake, when suddenly the girl bent forward, then crumpled into herself and sank to the ground.

Maggie’s foot slammed hard on the brake, tires screeching. Images of herself alone, in trouble, and in need crashed into her with the force of her foot on the brake. Spinning the car around in a sharp U-turn, her heart racing, Maggie pulled to a halt on the shoulder not far from the young woman.

The girl had not passed out, and was watching her from where she sat. It crossed Maggie’s mind that this could easily be a setup, a scam, but she couldn’t think about that right now. Her gut told her this kid needed help.

“Hi,” Maggie called, jumping out of the car and hurrying toward the girl. Thankfully there was no quartz gravel anywhere to be seen, and so she could actually move without breaking her leg. “Can I help you?”

The girl had curly brown hair, the kind of curls that were big and loopy and sprang out haphazardly around her face. Her eyes, huge pools of green, looked dull with pain. She couldn’t be more than sixteen—seventeen at the most. Maggie was thankful she’d stopped.

“I’d tell you that I didn’t need any help, but that would be a lie, and I’m trying to cut back on them.”

Her dry wit made Maggie smile. “Then I’m here to help. I’m Maggie,” she said, crouching down beside the kid.

“Jenna,” the teen managed and gritted her teeth at the same time.

“Where do you hurt, Jenna? You’re pregnant, right?”

Jenna nodded. “I’m not having contractions, I don’t think.” She closed her eyes, her soft brown brows meeting in the middle as she fought off the pain before looking back at Maggie. “I’ve had a long twenty-four hours.”

There was defeat in Jenna’s voice and Maggie got the feeling this girl didn’t often let strangers or anyone see this side of her. That had Maggie all the more determined to help her.

“Here, let’s get you in the car. I’m taking you to the hospital.”