The Cowboy and His Wayward Bride. Sherryl Woods

       Chapter One

      Pure, gut-deep exhaustion had settled over country-music superstar Laurie Jensen weeks earlier, and now it seemed she was walking around in a haze from dawn to dusk. A new baby who didn’t know the meaning of a full night’s sleep, a concert tour, publicity demands and the burden of keeping a secret from the one person in the world with whom she had always been totally, brutally honest—all of it had combined to take a terrible emotional toll.

      She sat in her fancy dressing room long after her concert had ended and the fans had drifted away. With the sleeping baby nestled in her arms, her own eyes drifting shut, she relished the momentary silence, welcoming it just as she had the applause earlier.

      Bliss, she thought. The quiet was absolute bliss.

      Of course, it didn’t last.

      â€œLaurie, you ready?” her assistant called out in a hushed tone with an accompanying rap on the door. “The limo’s outside to take us back to the hotel.”

      Even the soft tap and whispered reminder were enough noise to wake the always restless baby, who began to fuss, then settled into a full-throated yowling that gave Laurie a splitting headache.

      â€œShh, sweetheart. Everything’s okay. Mama’s here,” she soothed, gathering up her purse and easing toward the door.

      As the baby quieted and finally began to gurgle contentedly, Laurie did a quick survey of the room to be sure she’d left nothing behind, thankful once again for Val’s efficiency. Her assistant handled everything from toting diaper bags to making complex travel arrangements with total aplomb. She’d even been known to tuck Amy Lynn into the crook of her arm and feed her while answering Laurie’s fan mail with her free hand.

      Often, observing her whirlwind assistant at work, Laurie wished she were half so competent, even a quarter so adept with the multiple demands facing her. There were times—and tonight was one of them—when she felt thoroughly overwhelmed, when she wanted nothing more than to run straight back to Texas and into Harlan Patrick’s waiting arms. Assuming he was still waiting for her after all this time and after she’d made it clear that her singing career was what she wanted most in this world.

      What was wrong with her? Was she completely out of her mind trying to tackle the demands of motherhood and a singing career all on her own? Especially when she knew with absolute certainty that the baby’s father would have flown to her side in a heartbeat if only she’d told him about Amy Lynn?

      But that was the trouble, of course. Harlan Patrick Adams would have taken the news that he was a daddy as reason enough to demand that she marry him at once, return to Los Piños, Texas, and be a rancher’s wife. There would have been no ifs, ands or buts about it.

      She’d known the man since she was in kindergarten. She knew how he operated. A bulldozer did gentle nudging by comparison. Oh, she knew Harlan Patrick, all right. They’d exchanged birthday presents at five, their first awkward dance at thirteen, their first real kiss at fifteen.

      Harlan Patrick had flirted with typical Adams abandon with every girl in town, but there’d never been a doubt in anyone’s mind that Laurie was the one he loved. With single-minded determination, he’d been asking her to marry him for years now. And she’d been saying no, while practically everyone in the universe told her she’d lost her mind.

      Unlike the music business, Harlan Patrick Adams and his love were a sure thing, her mother had told her repeatedly. His family was the richest and most powerful in Los Piños, practically in all of Texas. He could give her stability, the kind of rock-solid future most women dreamed of, the kind her mother had always craved.

      Unfortunately, Laurie’s dreams tended toward a world that no one, not even an Adams, could guarantee. From the time she’d learned the words to an old Patsy Cline hit, she’d wanted to be a country-music sensation. God had blessed her with the voice for it. Whether it was the church choir or the school chorus, Laurie had always been the star soloist. The applause had been wonderful, but she would have sung for the sheer joy of it. And maybe, at one time, she would have been content with that.

      But over the years Harlan Patrick had unwittingly fed her obsession by seeing to it that she saw concerts by every country superstar who appeared anywhere in Texas. He’d even wrangled a backstage meeting with a few. Laurie had discovered her destiny.

      Somehow, though, he’d never taken seriously her desire to be up there on the stage, earning her own applause.