“Hey!” he called out, but she kept going. They hadn’t gone out so far that he couldn’t swim to shore. He was a strong swimmer, after all.
Eventually, she cast a glance over her shoulder to make sure he was okay, and his steady freestyle stroke assured her he was fine.
Unlike her. She was still shaking with anger. Or was it fear?
Fear, yes, maybe. Because it wasn’t West she was paddling away from so much as the suffocating idea of the future he painted.
It wasn’t her future, not by a long shot.
CHAPTER ONE
SOLEIL FREEMAN was pregnant.
Knocked up, preggo, with child, carrying a bun in the oven, in the family way, et cetera.
Five and a half months so, to be exact.
Even if this fact had not permeated every moment of every day of her waking consciousness, she would still have known it by the uncomfortable thickness in her middle and the constant, burning desire she had to eat everything in sight.
To say this development wasn’t in her plans was an understatement. For a variety of reasons-some of which would require the professional supervision of a therapist to sort out-Soleil hadn’t factored kids into her life. Certainly not single parenthood and certainly not now when running her youth program on her organic farm took every ounce of her energy. How she would even manage a baby in the mix baffled her. Especially on days like today.
It was a damp gray morning on Rainbow Farm, and Soleil was not in the mood to search for a lost goat. A lost cheeseburger, maybe, but missing livestock? This was only going to postpone lunch-provided the animal was found quickly and safely.