Page 66 of The Christmas Cowboy

The day followingher confrontation with Trent, Val woke up with a heavy heart. She’d had a hard time sleeping the night before. She kept remembering what Trent had said and worrying that he really was going to try to share custody. If he’d been a decent man, she would have agreed. But he wasn’t.

She knew people who’d been through custody battles. They didn’t always turn out the way they should. Even though Trent was scum, he probably wouldn’t be in the eyes of the court. From everything she’d heard, family court tended to favor the biological parents. Both of them.

She knew what she had to do. Trent would never have even thought about her or her baby again if she hadn’t married Liam. But because he was jealous of Liam he was striking out. He didn’t care that he hurt her too. He didn’t care about what was best for the baby. He only wanted to stick it to Liam. And he was doing it.

She stewed about it all day in between taking care of her chores. But she only saw one solution and it was one she hated. Divorce. And then Trent would be out of their lives for good.

And Liam would be out of hers. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it. She loved him more now than she ever had. Leaving him now would kill her. Two days before Christmas. She should be excited, thinking about giving Liam his presents and being with him on Christmas morning.

“Logan and Cici and Connor are coming over after church tomorrow night,” Liam said, walking into the bedroom. “Do you want to go to the five o’clock service with them?”

“All right.” She loved the Christmas Eve candlelight service. She didn’t make it to church as often as she’d have liked but for her, Christmas Eve was a must.

Liam started stripping off his shirt. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m about to take a shower. Can you talk to me while I do?”

Oh, right. She was going to tell him they needed to break up while he was naked in the shower. She could predict how that would go and breaking up was not the direction.

“No, I’ll wait.”

“Are you sure? You look upset.”

“It will keep.”

She spent the time while he showered rehearsing what she was going to say. And trying, mostly unsuccessfully, not to think about joining him in that shower.

He came out with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Okay, I’m listening.”

Great. Now she had to look at his bare chest, which always distracted her. The man had muscles for days. Not surprising given his work. Wrangling horses, taking care of the cows, fixing the fences, and doing myriad other chores that had to do with ranching made a man tough. She should know. She’d been a lot tougher herself until her pregnancy.

She still worked but every time Liam caught her doing something he thought she shouldn’t do he made her stop and did it himself. Like lifting anything heavy. Climbing up into the loft—which as far as she was concerned was ridiculous, but Liam was adamant that she didn’t need to do it. As for horseback riding, since she was an experienced rider, the doctor had okayed riding during the first trimester. At a walk. And now that she was nearly twelve weeks she’d have to stop even that any day now. The doctor had told her she’d prefer she not ride at all but there were a lot of ranches and a lot of cowgirls in Marietta, so she knew that was a foolish hope.

“Val? What did you want to talk about?”

“Trent.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “I thought we decided not to worry about him.”

“We did but I can’t help worrying anyway. You know he hates you and that’s why he’s making trouble. He doesn’t care about the baby. Or he only cares about it because he knows it will hurt you if he gets partial custody. He knows you intend to be a father to the baby, and he’s set on not letting that happen.”

“I don’t know that there’s anything we can do, Val. At least until you have the baby, and we explore the options. There’s bound to be a way to prove he’d be unfit to take care of the baby. Maybe we could limit it to visitation with one of us present.”

“Maybe. But I can’t bet on that. There’s one other thing we could do. One thing he said would change his mind about giving up his rights.”

“Are you talking about breaking up?” His tone was incredulous.

“Yes.”

He stared at her. “No. Hell, no. We aren’t breaking up. What would that solve? Other than to make both of us miserable. Or at least, I’d be miserable.”

So would she. “Think about it, Liam. He hates you. He wants to stick it to you. What better way to do that than to cause us to break up? And then you wouldn’t have access to the baby either. Or at least, that’s what we’d tell him.”

“A, we are absolutely not breaking up. B, even if we divorced, I’d still be the baby’s legal father at least until he could prove paternity. And if he does prove paternity then he’ll have to pay child support. My bet is he’ll get tired of this long before you actually have the baby.”

“I don’t know. He said he’d give up his rights if we divorced.”

“And what if he doesn’t? You can’t trust anything he says. What if he continues to harass you? We’d have gotten divorced for no reason.”

---