LITMIR.BIZ

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done that. She guessed she’d done it because that night she hadn’t wanted to be Olivia Hamilton, daughter of Buckmaster Hamilton. And future bride of Cooper Barnett.

      Apparently she’d been more angry with Cooper than she’d realized.

      When she’d gotten the first note, she’d wondered how the man had found out the truth until she realized how easy it would have been for him to check her driver’s license while she was asleep. Or knocked out.

      As if suddenly too exhausted to stand, Cooper lowered himself into a chair. He looked defeated. She watched him drop his head to his hands for a moment before he looked up at her. She couldn’t bear the pain in his eyes. “You didn’t trust me to help you. Livie,” he said with a shake of his head.

      The way he said her name was a knife to her heart. No matter what he thought right now, she loved him and couldn’t imagine a life without him.

      “How could you be so naive?” Cooper sighed. “Give me the blackmail note.”

      She reached into her clutch and handed him the envelope.

      He opened it carefully as if to not get any more fingerprints on it than was necessary. His gaze flew up to hers when he saw the amount her blackmailer was now demanding. “Fifty thousand dollars? When did you get this?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer, as if he’d already read the answer on her face. “Today. That’s why you had to tell me the night of our engagement party.”

      “I didn’t tell you because I hated that I’d been duped like that. All this is my fault. I wanted to fix it myself. Also I was afraid you would never forgive me.”

      He pocketed the blackmail note and stood as if to leave.

      “What are you going to do?” she asked, suddenly scared.

      “I’ll take the blackmail demand to the sheriff in the morning and let him handle this.”

      “You can’t do that.”

      He turned back to her, his eyes narrowing again. “Why is that? Wait,” he said. “Because of the bad publicity for your father, right? Can’t have any of that for our next president.”

      “It’s not just that.” Being the daughter of a senator, she knew what bad publicity would do to her father’s political career. But right now it wasn’t her father she was worried about.

      She had to tell Cooper everything, but her heart broke at the thought of dealing him the final blow. She didn’t know what he would do. Or what she would do. “I’m pregnant.”

      Cooper looked as if she’d hit him with a sledgehammer. “But we were being so careful.” His features suddenly softened as if he’d dreamed of the day when she would be pregnant with his baby. Then he froze, his face transforming into a mask of shock and disbelief as he realized what she was telling him. “His baby?”

      Her words fell like stones. “I can’t be sure.”

      Cooper let out an inhuman sound that tore at her heart. She reached for him again, but he sidestepped to avoid her touch.

      “Please, don’t walk away,” she pleaded. “You have to understand—”

      “I do understand. If it wasn’t for the blackmail, you would never have told me any of this.” He let out a curse. “You would have let me believe it was my baby.”

      “No, I wouldn’t have. You have to know me better than that.”

      He shook his head, his look saying he didn’t know her at all.

      “I’m so sorry,” she said, crying again. “I’m so sorry.”

      As he walked away, the echo of his footfalls sounded like a death knell. She’d destroyed everything. When the door slammed, she feared she’d never see him again.

      * * *

      COOPER STUMBLED OUTSIDE, blind with pain. He hadn’t known where he was going. Even when he reached the corrals, he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Out here with the horses was where he’d always been at home so it didn’t surprise him this is where his footsteps had led him.

      He fought to catch his breath, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the chest by one of his wild horses. He could still hear music coming from behind the house, the engagement party continuing even without the future bride and groom. The future bride and groom. The thought threatened to rip out his heart.

      It all felt like a bad dream. He felt poleaxed, incapable of rational thought or even movement. He stood, his face turned up to the billions of stars twinkling in the vast sky overhead and yet he saw nothing. This wasn’t happening.

      Olivia’s confession had knocked him down. He’d known something was wrong, but he’d never imagined...

      He cursed himself for falling in love with his boss’s daughter. All his life he’d kept his distance from women like the Hamilton girls. Everyone in the county knew about them, beautiful but pampered and protected by their doting father, the great Buckmaster Hamilton. No man would ever be good enough for his daughters.

      While Cooper had known all this, Livie had gotten under his skin. No matter how hard he’d tried to keep her at a distance, she’d still gotten to him. The rancher’s daughter and the hired hand. What made it even worse was his family background. He’d worked so hard to prove that he was not only his own man, but that he wasn’t like his family. That he was worthy. But worthy enough to marry a Hamilton?

      He let out a bitter laugh at the thought.

      To make matters worse, no one here even knew about his family and yet they all thought he was marrying Olivia for her father’s money. It infuriated him. He’d turned down Buckmaster’s gifts not just to prove everyone wrong, but also because he didn’t want to be indebted to the man.

      Now he wasn’t sure which part of Livie’s devastating news hurt the most. The bottom line was that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him the truth when it had happened or even later when she’d gotten the first blackmail note and decided to take care of it herself rather than come to him.

      But the pregnancy... He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. From the moment he’d fallen in love with Livie, he’d dreamed of the day they would have children. He’d seen himself with his hand on her swollen belly, imagined the feel of their child moving beneath it... Their child.

      Not a blackmailer’s and possible rapist’s.

      Now the bastard was demanding fifty thousand dollars? Cooper sure as hell didn’t have it—as if he would ever consider paying it even if he did. Buckmaster would pay, though. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even miss that amount. But Livie would ask her father for the money and pay the blackmailer over Cooper’s dead body. He’d take care of the blackmailer himself.

      But the baby... The ache in his chest made it impossible to breathe at even the thought of her carrying someone else’s child.

      At a sound behind him, he turned, expecting it would be Livie, the last person he wanted to see right now. Didn’t she know him well enough to know that now wasn’t the time?

      “There you are,” Delia Rollins said as she materialized out of the darkness. “I wondered where you’d gone off to. You promised me one last dan—” The rest of her words died on her lips when she saw his face. “What’s happened?”

      There was both worry and hope in those words. Delia had been his friend from the first time they’d met at the lumberyard. He’d liked her, sensing that they shared a similar background even before he’d heard about her family. Everyone in town said that the lumberyard would have gone under years ago if it hadn’t been for Delia taking it over.

      “Cooper? What’s wrong?” she said, grabbing at him as he turned away. She caught the hem of his jacket. He didn’t see the blackmail note fall from his pocket as he turned his back on her. Delia was the last thing he needed right now because it would

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