The Texas Tycoon's Baby(16)

Great.

But whether things worked out with him or not, he was always going to be a part of Mina’s life. Maybe they wouldn’t end up married—God, Mina hoped that wasn’t true—but he was her child’s father, no buts about it.

Mina sighed. It was time to take baby steps with her family, too, introducing them to the father of her child, no matter how they might receive him.

“I’m meeting with my boss,” Mina said, swiveling her computer so it would fully capture Chet on the screen. “Say hi,” she said to him.

“Hi.” He lifted a baffled brow at the sight of Katie on the computer.

Without any more ado, Mina turned the camera back on her. That’s all Katie would get for now.

“Have fun at that open house tonight,” Mina said, making it clear that Katie needed to keep any more comments to herself.

Her sister had the sort of perceptive look on her face that told Mina she suspected something was being kept from her. Mina was just too jumpy not to arouse suspicion. Heck, her own expression—lovestruck and dumb, no doubt—probably gave her away full force.

“We’ll talk later?” her sister said.

Mina ignored her. “Love ya! Bye!”

And she signed off.

Before she could ask why Chet was here instead of the offices, he said, “I was antsy to get on with those ranch appointments, so here I am. Someone in administration said that they’d seen you go to your cabin. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” As efficient as always, she held out her hand for some papers that Chet was carrying.

But her heart was still beating from his entrance, as well as the gander Katie had gotten at the father of Mina’s child.

“You know,” she said, “you didn’t have to print these memos out in hard copy. There’re these newfangled things called computers that hold all this information.”

He chuckled and took a seat in a chair next to the couch. “I don’t like to stare at a screen all day.”

“Right. You’re an old-fashioned manly man.” Her heart was beating so loudly that it overwhelmed the splash of the fountain.

She liked how old-fashioned Chet was—he was the type who would be all about slow walks through the country, slow summer nights as the crickets chirped, a slow hand…

He had found her iPad on the coffee table. “I’m not sure how my life would be much improved with all the doodads you carry around.”

“Someone in your office has to be comfortable with the digital age.”

“Better you than me.”

Somehow, he managed to turn the “doodad” on. Mina didn’t mind. He was already in her cabin, her personal space, and what she kept on her computer screens wasn’t nearly as intimate.

But she changed her mind when he pressed a particular icon.

“Well, look here,” he said, holding up the screen so she could see what he’d found.

It was her photo file, and it was showing a picture she’d taken about a year ago, soon after the breakup with Michael. She’d decided to take some vacation time—a rare occurrence—and go on a trip to clear her mind. She’d ended up in Savannah, Georgia, with her sister Amy, who wasn’t just six years younger, she also looked more like their dark-haired dad than either Katie or Mina, the daughters who took after their redheaded mom.

This photo presented Amy, who’d been engaged to get married at the time, mugging on a park bench in one of the town squares.

“That’s my baby sis on the Forrest Gump bench,” Mina said. “They filmed some of the movie there in Savannah.”

Chet lingered on the picture for only a moment, seeming just as unimpressed with the Hollywood trivia as he was with the doodad.

Mina tossed him a smart-aleck grin. “I don’t have pictures of cattle drives or Montana wildlife on there, so I’m not sure there’s much for you to get excited about.”

Nonetheless, he was going from one picture to the next. And, wouldn’t you know it—he stopped on a photo that Mina had meant to delete a while ago.

It was an image of him. A reflective moment she’d captured with her phone when he hadn’t been aware of it. Before the scandal had hit and before all his family’s skeletons had tumbled out of the closet.

He was leaning back in his office chair, one booted ankle propped on his knee as he gazed out his wide office window at the dusk-awakened lights of San Antonio. He’d almost seemed excited about his new life, the chances he might have to get to know the father who’d called him down from Montana so they might mend their fences.

Now, Chet turned off the computer screen as if he could turn off the memory of those days, too—the times when he’d been unprotected from a truth that had beaten him down not long afterward.