Her Bull Rider's Baby

  HER BULL RIDER’S BABY

  Can one wild night in Vegas become a lifetime of domestic bliss?

  Up-and-coming bull rider Adriano Silva has been careful to avoid entanglements. The money’s great, the fame fun, and the ladies enticing, but once he’s won a championship, he’s heading home to Brazil. Then a one-night stand with a woman he can’t forget leads to something he never expected…

  Liliana Merrill is too busy fighting her way to the top of the rodeo stock operations world to settle down, not even after a sexy bull rider gives her the ride of her life in Vegas. But one pregnancy test later, she discovers that what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there…

  Adriano and Lil readjust their plans and find that their temporary chemistry is very permanent. He’s determined to show Lil he’s got what it takes to tame her—if she doesn’t tame him first…

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Genevieve Turner

  Digital Version 1.0

  Cover photographs © Illustrated Romance | illustratedromance.com and Eduard Kyslynskyy | shutterstock.com

  All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Liliana Merrill stared at the plastic stick sitting on her toilet lid, her brain not quite believing what her eyes were telling her.

  It wasn’t real. She wouldn’t let it be real.

  Bea would confirm that this was all a terrible dream. Lil wrenched open the bathroom door and called to her cousin in the other room. “What does two stripes mean again?”

  Beatriz shuffled to the bathroom door but didn’t peep in. “You know exactly what two stripes mean,” she called back. “Are you done?”

  Liliana didn’t let the edge of irritation in Beatriz’s voice upset her. It had been kind of a dumb question, and Bea had little patience for those. In Lil’s defense, finding out she was pregnant was scrambling her thoughts.

  Pregnant. Now she got why people said a pause was pregnant—this was some heavy, chest-flattening stuff. She sucked in a breath, looked again at the stick. Still two stripes. Damn.

  “I’m done.” I’m toast.

  Beatriz propped herself in the doorway, her razored bob as stick straight as the rest of her and as dark as her stylish clothes.

  Liliana waved the stick under her nose. “Can you double-check that there are two lines? Look closely.” Maybe she was seeing double? Definitely better to have something wrong with her eyesight than to be pregnant.

  “I’m not handling your pee stick.” Bea leaned as far away as she could without falling over backward. “And yes, there’re two.”

  Someone other than Liliana would have found her cousin’s attitude off-putting. Not platitudes, no assurances that everything would be okay, no nonsense—only simple practicality. Lil actually found it comforting. She needed to cling to Bea’s calmness or else she’d freak out.

  Bea had seen two lines too. Okay. Oookay.

  “Two lines,” Lil said weakly, holding tighter to her illusion of being totally cool. A baby. She was going to have a baby.

  She tossed the stick into the trash. No need for that anymore—those two lines were burned into her retinas. She sank down onto the closed toilet, putting her head in her hands. The denim of her jeans was suddenly unbearably scratchy, her ropers too heavy for her feet. Her coolness was rapidly melting under the realization that it was really real.

  A baby. A real live baby.

  “Hey, Lil.” Bea’s tone was gentler but still brisk. “Lots of people have babies. It’s not the end of the world.”

  In other words: Buck up, little camper.

  Bea was right, but Lil kind of wanted to pretend like the world was ending if only for a few moments. “I can’t have a baby. I have a job. A career.” She raised her arms to the heavens, toward the uncaring Fates who’d done this to her.

  Her cousin rolled her eyes behind the heavy black frames of her glasses. “Pregnant women work in labs all the time. I saw one yesterday.”

  “I’m not a scientist. I don’t work in a lab.” Lil flicked her ponytail over her shoulder—even her hair was annoying her. “I run a stock operation, and I’m trying to breed bucking bulls. How many pregnant women work with over a thousand pounds of testosterone-soaked bull, purposefully trying to piss him off so he’ll buck?”

  Bea might be the smart one in the family, but suggesting that Lil keep on with the bull program she was setting up wasn’t a genius move.

  “You won’t be pregnant forever. Put the bull-breeding stuff on hold and focus on the stock operations until the baby comes.” Bea’s tone was smugly self-assured.

  What her cousin suggested made perfect sense. Yet… Lil didn’t want to heed the advice. The stock operations were an inherited duty, passed down from Merrill to Merrill for over a century, and now it was Lil’s turn to run them. She had to keep the operations going in order to hand them off to the next generation.

  There was more than enough work in running them to keep anyone busy. But Lil just had to make things harder for herself. So she’d decided to start a bull-breeding operation. Something new, something all hers, not passed down from anyone. It was going to be Liliana’s baby.

  “We’re already building the facility. The lab, the barn, the training pen and chutes—I don’t want to let it sit for months. This bull program… It was going to be all mine. I wasn’t going to be just another Merrill taking over what her daddy gave her. I’m building something all my own.”

  When she’d taken over the stock operations of the family ranch, the rodeo world had been grudgingly accepting. The old-timers might have preferred to keep working with her father, but Lil was William Merrill’s little girl, and keeping things in the family was always best. Her party-girl reputation didn’t help matters, but she was young and she worked hard during the day—she deserved to blow off steam come nightfall. The older crowd might frown about it, but they’d never chided her openly.

  That all changed when she announced her intention to start breeding and training bulls—the disapproval had been open and vocal. William Merrill’s little girl had no business messing with bucking bulls, and people weren’t afraid to tell her that to her face, to tell her no repeatedly.

  Being pregnant while messing with bucking bulls? The disapproval would create a cloud of smog bigger than the one covering LA. If she lost all her goodwill in the rodeo community, her bull operation would be sunk.

  She tugged on her ponytail. All that money she was spending on this bull-breeding facility, telling her brothers she was so certain the program would start to pay off… She chewed on her lip. If things kept on as they had, she’d have nothing to show for her work except a pile of debt. She had to turn the breeding program around.

  “It will still be all your own in a few months.” Bea leaned into the bathroom, a frown pinching her brow. “But you could… well, you know.”

  Lil knew. That possibility sat at the back of her mind. She’d always wanted children someday. Someday—but not today.

  She had so many plans for the stock operations, things she wanted accomplished before settling down. How many of her dreams would she have to give up for the baby?

  She set her hands to her belly. There was another life in there, growing and changing within her. An entirely new person.

  Her head spun. The baby was within her, yet was already something completely outside her. It almost sounded like a… a miracle.

  Lil blinked, took a sharp breath. This was the next generation she had to pass the ranch to. This baby inside he
r—this was a new Merrill. Lil had an almost sacred duty to raise this baby in the ranching lifestyle, to prepare it for when it would take over whatever part of the ranch he or she was called to. That was what the Merrills and Morenos and even the Spencers did.

  They ran the Ranch.

  Lil shook her head, sat up straighter. “No. I couldn’t.”

  It would be easier to do that, but she couldn’t. Lil sighed. She always had to make things harder for herself, didn’t she?

  Bea raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Once you decide, there’s no undoing it.”

  Easy for Bea to say; that wasn’t her pee stick in the trash. “You can’t even say the word,” Lil said. “What makes you think I could do it?”

  “Okay, that option’s out.” Bea crossed her arms. “Congratulations then. You’re going to have a baby.”

  Lil let her head fall forward. There was that weight again, flattening the sense of wonder and miraculousness. Pregnant. “Thanks.” About as glum and ungracious as a thank-you could get. It might be a miracle, but it sure was an inconvenient one. Of all the times for her to get knocked up…

  “The bull-breeding operation isn’t going quite as well as I might have made it sound,” she admitted to her cousin.

  “How is that? Bull meets cow, they fall in love, and make a calf. Simple.”

  “Not quite.” Lil rubbed at her jeans. “I sent the selection committee videos of two of our best bulls last week. Really, really great bulls. And they said no. Wouldn’t even consider them for the junior rodeo circuit.” Her voice was flat, but her temper when she’d gotten the refusal had been anything but. She’d ranted and raged because she knew it was just a bullshit excuse to keep those bulls out of the rodeo—a way to get back at her for daring to do what they considered unladylike.

  She’d written five scathing e-mails, then deleted them all. Pissing off the committee wasn’t going to win this fight. But it had been damn hard to hit that Delete key instead of the Send button.

  “Well, I am very sorry,” Bea said, although it was clear from her tone she didn’t quite know what that meant. “But you can try again, right?”

  “Yeah.” Lil didn’t get into the specifics. It was going to take more than trying again—it was going to take a bull that even they couldn’t ignore. She could breed that bull, she just knew it. She’d prove them all wrong in the end. She only had to get to that end.

  Bea took a deep breath, as if hesitant, which was weird because her cousin considered herself to always be one hundred percent correct. “Do you know who the father is?”

  Lil snapped up off the toilet seat, her boot heels clattering against the floor. “Of course I do.”

  He has tiger eyes. Eyes that had gleamed with a predator’s golden intent…

  Bea was not going to be impressed by that.

  “You don’t have a boyfriend,” Bea pointed out. “It’s not as if there’s a likely suspect.”

  True. Lil didn’t have time to date. Men were for fun, for spending reckless, sweaty nights with. Not for messing about with during the day doing relationship stuff. She had a business to run—she didn’t have time for that.

  But she hadn’t slept with anyone since Vegas. Which was how she knew exactly who the father was.

  “So,” Bea prompted with mockery shading her tone, “who is it?”

  Liliana rubbed her forehead. “We met in Vegas.”

  “Wait.” Bea’s mouth fell open. “Is this… tiger eyes?”

  Heat crawled into Liliana’s cheeks. Bea had been talking to their other cousin Penny then.

  When she’d called him Tiger Eyes, she’d meant the gemstone because it captured his eyes perfectly—deep brown banded with lush stripes of gold, a color that had taken her breath away.

  The nickname had been funny when he’d been an encounter in Vegas, a story to sigh over as she shared beers with Penny.

  But now he was the father of her baby.

  He’d always been much more than an encounter. He’d consumed her nights and her days during that heady weekend. Which was why she hadn’t been interested in anyone else since. Not that she advertised that.

  She was fun-loving, wild Liliana. She couldn’t be tied down. Getting hung up on a bull rider she’d met at the National Finals Rodeo? Totally not her style.

  Now she was pregnant. Talk about getting hung up.

  “But wait…” Bea’s brow furrowed, and Lil could see her doing the math. “Vegas was three months ago. And you’re only now taking the test?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t miss my period until last week.” Lil rubbed her forehead. Of course her body had to be one in a million and have a period while she pregnant. She just had to make things harder for herself.

  “Then how do you know Tiger Eyes is the dad?” No censure from Bea, only puzzlement.

  “Because I haven’t slept with anyone since.” He’d kind of ruined men for her after that wild weekend. She gave a soft laugh. And now she was about to ruin all kinds of things for him.

  “Ah. Does he have a name, or should I keep calling him Tiger Eyes?”

  “His real name is Adriano,” Lil confessed.

  Bea’s brow furrowed. “A bull rider named Adriano?” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. Lil, he’s so famous even I’ve heard of him.”

  “Yep.”

  Adriano Silva. Young, Brazilian, and the most famous up-and-coming bull rider in America.

  And father to a baby he didn’t even know about. How was he going to feel about that?

  “He was in Style Magazine.” Bea actually flapped her hands she was so excited.

  Liliana clamped hers together because she was most definitely not excited. “Style? That doesn’t really seem like his style.” She winced at the unintentional joke.

  Adriano had seemed completely focused on bull riding and none of the other trappings that came with it. No interviews, no excessive rumors of him with buckle bunnies, no late-night carousing.

  But when their eyes had locked across the arena, he’d been completely focused on her. And she on him.

  But Vegas was Vegas, and real life was real life. When those days of crazy hot sex had been over, she hadn’t tried to call him. There’d been no call from him. They’d both gone back to reality.

  Bea grabbed her hand, pulled her out of the bathroom. “Come on. We can’t keep discussing this while you’re less than a foot from the toilet.”

  Because being ten feet away from it would somehow make all this better? But she followed Bea into the living room and let her cousin settle her onto the couch.

  Lil stared at the coffee table. She still had to tell her family.

  Oh God. She rubbed at her suddenly sour belly. Her parents would likely be happy—ever since they’d retired, they’d been subtly hinting that their children needed to settle down and make some grandbabies. But they hadn’t meant for Lil do it like this.

  And her brothers… Luke would come around. Probably. She was pretty good at convincing him about stuff.

  Benedict—Benedict wasn’t so easily swayed. Being the eldest, he took his role as leader of the family seriously. As seriously as he took his role as leader of the family ranching business. Although maybe now that he was with Pilar, he’d ease up. Maybe.

  And Josh… Josh wasn’t getting out of prison for another six months, right around when the baby was due. That would be quite the welcome-home surprise.

  From there, the news would spread throughout all Cabrillo. People she’d known since she was in diapers would be whispering about Liliana Merrill having a baby out of wedlock.

  The rodeo circuit would be ablaze with it as well. Getting knocked up by a bull rider would do wonders for her reputation, which was already on shaky ground.

  Lil pushed out a gusty sigh. No, she definitely didn’t want to tell her family just yet. She had some more wallowing to do. She’d made her bed and she was going to lie in it, but she wanted to flail about in the sheets a while longer.

  Bea set her hands on h
er hips. “Aren’t you on the pill?”

  That was the biggest joke of all. “I am. And we used condoms. That’s like a…” Lil calculated in her head. “Like a less than one hundredth percent of a chance.” She pinched her thumb and forefinger together, held them up. “Like, this big of a chance.”

  Bea shrugged, clearly unimpressed. “Well, it can happen.”

  “Why did it have to happen to me?” Even Lil was kind of disgusted with how pathetic she sounded. But getting all that wallowing out also felt kind of good.

  “Well, you could keep wailing.” Bea rolled her eyes to let Lil know what she thought of that plan. “Or you could do something about it.” She slapped Lil’s phone into her hand, a rectangle of heavy chill. “You could call him.”

  Lil stared at the phone, the screen black, half of her face reflected in it. God, she looked sad.

  Call him. She’d flirted with the idea since Vegas but hadn’t actually done it. Normally she wasn’t a bit shy with men. But Adriano… she was irrationally afraid of any rejection from him. He’d been the most intense sexual partner of her life—she didn’t want to find out she’d only ever been an okay fling to him.

  What would he even say when she told him the news?

  A terrible thought occurred to her. “What if I just don’t tell him?”

  “What?” Even Bea—modern, single, feminist Bea—was shocked.

  “I mean, the baby’s going to be with me most of the time anyway, I don’t need his money to support us, and he probably doesn’t want a baby in the first place. I’d be saving us both a lot of grief.”

  It made so much sense. And sounded horribly wrong.

  Bea just stared.

  “Okay,” Lil allowed. “Not letting the baby knows its father is wrong.”

  Bea raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, really wrong. But—”

  Bea raised the other eyebrow.