The Virgin Cowboy Billionaire's Secret Baby

By Lauren Gallagher

After retiring at thirty-five, billionaire Matt Coolidge should have it made. Instead, he’s got chronic migraines and high blood pressure. Oh, and during his workaholic years, he completely forgot to have a love life. Now he’s just trying to relax in between arguing with his mother about the fate of the family farm, not to mention his lack of a family of his own.

Then Matt’s childhood best friend, Dara Marley, rolls back into town. Ten years after a stupid argument ended a longtime friendship, they’ve both matured, and it’s time to let bygones be bygones.

Especially since they’re having a baby together.

Thanks to frozen embryos from years ago, Dara’s pregnant… and alone after her husband walked out. She wants her child to have a father, so she’s turning to the most logical place—the biological father, and the man she’s always regretted falling out with.

But with two judgmental families who can’t stand each other, and both Matt and Dara just trying to find their footing, they agree to keep the pregnancy quiet for now. Because somehow, he doesn’t think this flavor of “having a family” will appease his mother…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094420899

Lauren Gallagher

Lauren Gallagher is an abnormal romance writer currently living in the wilds of Omaha, Nebraska. She and her husband, along with a coyote-iguana hybrid and two and a half cats, are thought to be in hiding from the Polynesian Mafia and a debt collector in search of a fine for an overdue book from the Library of Alexandria. Lauren continues to skillfully, if somewhat clumsily, elude them, but continues to have run-ins with her arch nemesis, M/M erotic romance author L. A. Witt. The implementation of Operation: I Don't Think So is expected to resolve that problem soon enough.

Book preview

Chapter One

Matt Coolidge had been riding his dapple-gray mare, Brandy, through the hills for the past two hours, and he couldn’t relax. The tension between his shoulders was still creeping up the back of his neck, steadily clawing its way toward the base of his skull.

That wasn’t good. He needed to calm down, or he’d be paying for it tonight and likely into tomorrow.

He guided Brandy along the fence line to the thick forest near the back end of the family’s hundred acres. Checking posts and boards had given him something to do, but that was done now, so he was just riding aimlessly. And there were few things more relaxing than loping over the rolling hills of the sprawling property. He and his sister used to race out here, back when they were kids. They’d ride far enough that their parents couldn’t see them anymore, and then let their horses run like hell. Neither of his horses had ever been any match for her multi-world-titled barrel racer, but damn, it was fun.

Despite the tension in his neck, the memory made him smile.

Still, it didn’t take his mind completely off the argument that had triggered this tension in the first place. That tired, bullshit argument that happened every time his mother decided to lord the will—and the property—over his and his sister’s heads.

So, pretty much once a week. Because he and Beth needed that.

He rubbed his eyes behind his sunglasses. This had to stop. He was no stranger to stress, but ten years of hundred-plus-hour weeks had taken a heavy toll on his health, and he’d recovered too much to backslide now.

Last year, at thirty-five, he’d retired as a self-made billionaire from the high-tech corporation he’d cofounded. For his trouble, he’d walked away with dangerously high blood pressure, chronic insomnia and the odd panic attack, not to mention a propensity for terrible migraines. At his doctor’s urging, he’d opted for the quiet life in his hometown, at least until his health recovered.

You don’t need to work like this, she’d told him. "What you need is to de-stress and for once in your life, take care of yourself before your body gives out. You’re a ticking time bomb, Matt. Keep going at this rate, and I can almost promise you a stroke or a heart attack by the time you’re forty." He’d been on the verge of a mental breakdown anyway, so he’d heeded her advice.

For the past year, he’d been doing everything he could to eliminate the stress in his life. He hadn’t even started designing the house he eventually wanted to build. Not when just thinking about simple things like staircase designs and roofing styles could trigger one of those damned panic attacks. After dealing with so much stress for so long, he’d reached a point where he could barely deal with any of it.

At least he didn’t have to worry about money. Ever since he’d settled back into Aspen Mill, renting a three-bedroom house a few miles from his childhood home, he’d spent most of his time helping his sister run the farm. The Coolidges had been breeding and training quarter horses for three generations here, and it was good to be back in the saddle. Literally. He and Beth had even started competing in the local rodeos again, and that alone had done more for him than any medication ever could. Nothing cleared the mind like running barrels or chasing cattle.

His health had definitely improved, especially over the last six months. His blood pressure was coming down. He could sleep at night and focus during the day, and the panic attacks were becoming a distant memory.

The migraines, though. Jesus. They were getting better, but they were taking their sweet time about it, so he had to watch his stress levels like a fucking hawk.

So after yet another spat with his mother this morning, he’d spent the afternoon out riding, trying to lose himself in the squeak of the saddle and the sway of Brandy’s plodding stride. Following the trails in the undeveloped chunk of the property used to have a calming effect on him, but lately, it was only making him worry more. And making him grind his teeth and fight the urge to gallop back, go right past the barn and to the house his folks had moved into a couple of miles down the road, and give his mother a piece of his mind.

But it wouldn’t do any good. And all it would do was accelerate the arrival of that migraine he was trying to fend off.

Though he listened hard to the sounds of Brandy making her way through the trees, and the rustling leaves and chirping birds, he couldn’t help hearing that damned conversation over and over in his mind.

I’m not asking for the world, his mother had told him as they’d faced off in the barn’s office. "This property is going to stay in the family, which means it’s going to someone who has a family."

Beside him, Beth had flinched. God knew the woman desperately wanted a family, but as Matt had also found out, pouring your heart, soul and time into a business had a way of interfering with all those other plans.

"We don’t have families yet, Mom, Beth had replied. And if it’s that important to keep the property in the family, why don’t you have a problem with Adam turning it into—"

I trust Adam because he has his priorities straight, Mom had snapped back. If having a family was a priority for either of you, then—

I’m done. Beth threw up her hands, and her voice cracked as she added, I’m out. Then she’d stormed out of the office.

Matt watched her go, grimacing. Mom, that’s a touchy subject for her.

As well it should be. And as for you, Matthew, there isn’t a woman in Aspen Mill who wouldn’t be thrilled to be the next Mrs. Coolidge.

He barely resisted rolling his eyes. So should I just go offer a random woman some money so she’ll marry me?

Of course not.

Then...what?

Her lips tightened like they always did when she was pushed to her limit. "Listen, I’m not dictating how you two run your lives. You’re both free to do what you will. But I’m not obligated to leave the family’s property to someone who’s chosen not to have a family."

He knew damn well she wasn’t just playing games either. Her own brother had been cut out of their parents’ will until the day he’d married, which hadn’t been until he was almost forty. And though the farm had belonged to the Coolidge side of the family, Dad hadn’t had a lot of interest in continuing his parents’ farm, so Mom had taken the reins, as it were, and he’d happily given her control over the whole thing. He wanted no part of anything, including the current power struggle.

Mom had pushed Matt to his limit this morning, and there was no point in arguing with her—there’d be time to do that next time she brought all this up—so he’d let the subject drop. After his mother left, Matt had stayed in the office for a few minutes, but he’d needed to decompress as quickly as possible to ward off a stress migraine. A Mom migraine, as his sister had dubbed them. He couldn’t argue with that description.

When he’d left the office, Beth was already in the arena with a client, so he’d go back and check up on her when she was free. She was a champ at shaking off Mom’s relentless pressure to marry herself off and dutifully procreate, but he knew it hurt. For the moment, though, she was giving a lesson in the arena, so he didn’t want to bother her.

Instead he’d grabbed his baseball cap and sunglasses out of the truck, thrown a saddle on Brandy and gone riding.

And two hours later, his teeth were still grinding.

This was getting old fast, but their mother refused to let the issue go. When she’d figured out a few years back that neither Beth nor Matt was hurting for money, and that they didn’t care—and had never cared—about her money, she’d changed her tactics. For the past year, she’d been threatening to give Adam his inheritance early, which would give him carte blanche to bulldoze the property and start his development while Beth scrambled for a new barn to set up shop.

Matt didn’t care about the money. He had more of that now than he could ever spend. And he wasn’t even that sentimental about the family’s farm. This wasn’t about him at all—it was about his sister and his hometown.

Beth could get a job as a trainer anywhere. Her name was well-known throughout the region, and her clients would follow her anywhere, but she’d built Coolidge Stables from the ground up. Or rather, coaxed it from the ashes of their family’s three-generation-old farm that had nearly crumbled under the weight of a few too many hard-hitting recessions. The farm had just kept itself afloat in its best years, and teetered precariously on the brink of foreclosure during the worst. She was solely responsible for all its success over the last five or six years.

Even before Matt made his own fortune, he’d implored their parents to will the property to Beth. It was still in the family because of her, and she deserved the right to continue with her own thriving business.

But thanks to their mother, who’d lorded her will over all three kids ever since they were teenagers, there was an increasingly good chance the property was going to Adam, their younger brother.

No amount of money could persuade their parents or Adam to sell the property to her either. The only way they were keeping it was if the property was willed to Beth or divided among the three of them. In that case, Adam wouldn’t have much choice but to either keep his stake or let his siblings buy him out. Turning the place into a shopping mall would no longer be an option.

For the time being, though, the will stated that Adam would inherit everything. And that wasn’t changing until some wedding rings and babies came along. The fact that Beth and Matt had spent their twenties and thirties getting businesses off the ground didn’t matter to their mother. She wanted grandchildren, and so far, Adam was the only one who’d obliged.

He has a family, she’d told Matt and his sister thousands of times, so he gets the family’s farm.

Matt rubbed his eyes under his sunglasses again and swore into the stillness. Beneath him, Brandy snorted as she kept plodding down the well-worn trail.

He patted her neck. You have no idea how lucky you are. Though now that he thought about it, Brandy’s dam was the type to make her opinion known to the rest of the herd, usually by way of a piercing squeal or a solid kick. Just as well horses couldn’t own property, he supposed.

Even that couldn’t make him laugh. He patted her again, and they continued through the trees toward the south pastures where the broodmares were peacefully grazing. A couple of this year’s foals were glued to their moms’ sides. One was sprawled out so flat, she almost disappeared in the clover. Three more mares were ready to foal any day now—he made a mental note to come by and check on Whiskey and Lady this afternoon. Whiskey could not possibly get any bigger, and Lady was due any second. In fact, after he put Brandy away after their ride, maybe he’d come out and bring those two mares into the barn. Just in case.

Despite his baseball cap and sunglasses, the light was starting to bother his eyes, so he turned Brandy around and headed back into the woods. The auras and throbbing hadn’t started yet, so maybe he could still fend off this bastard migraine—the light sensitivity was a bad sign, but it wasn’t a point of no return.

He closed his eyes, letting Brandy navigate, and took some slow breaths. The kind his therapist had taught him to take when the stress got out of control. They didn’t help much, but it was something to focus on besides...

Fuck. Why do I let Mom get under my skin?

Well, that answer was simple enough—because she knew which nerves to pluck to make her son and daughter toe the line. She knew this was one area where she had total control over them, and no amount of money in Matt’s bank account or reputation on Beth’s résumé could negate that.

Matt would happily buy his sister an even bigger and more state-of-the-art property if it came down to it. Or she’d work for another breeder in the area. If they lost the property to their brother, they’d make it work.

What worried them both was what Adam intended to do with the property once it was his. He was a property developer, and Goldmount, the small town where he and his wife lived fifty miles up the interstate, had exploded into a bustling city over the last several years. No small part of that explosion had come from Adam buying up family farms and turning them into an asphalt jungle of endless strip malls.

He looked around at the trees, and, just beyond them, the neat white fences sectioning off pastures full of horses between here and the facility—a newly renovated barn, a covered arena and just out of his sight, a dressage arena. The thought of all this turning into parking lots and big-box stores was nauseating.

Aspen Mill didn’t need that. It didn’t need to mutate into a glass-and-pavement wasteland. The place wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t need to become Chicago, where Matt had spent too many years of his life. This was one of those small towns that still had more gossips than stoplights. Divorces were still scandals, and it didn’t take much to become a social pariah. That had always bugged Matt, and it still did, but it had some renewed charm after he’d spent a decade in a place where you could die on today’s front page and be forgotten by tomorrow.

The people here didn’t want it to change either. For better or worse, they liked it this way. Those who didn’t had left a long time ago. Some, like Matt, had returned when they realized how much they preferred this life after all, and those who hadn’t come back had been replaced by the families who’d trickled in from bigger cities. This lifestyle was one they guarded jealously—there were even people who’d given him the evil eye when he’d come back to town last year. They were convinced he’d brought his money here from Chicago and had plans to turn this place into a gleaming metropolis.

Far from it. He hoped never to see a skyscraper again as long as he lived.

He adjusted his baseball cap and sighed. Aspen Mill was a long way from skyscrapers, but it wouldn’t take much to turn it into concrete and glass. And that would be a goddamned shame.

Riding was apparently not going to help much today, and he did want to make sure Beth was okay after some of Mom’s more pointed barbs. So he steered Brandy down one of the trails that would lead back toward the barn and rolled his tense shoulders as she headed for home.

As he approached the barn, he noticed a white Mercedes parked in the gravel lot in front of the office, and he swore it hadn’t been there before. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d never seen it. Probably a new client.

He pursed his lips. Beth really needed to take a page from his book and stop overworking herself. Her client list was already a mile long, with people bringing their horses and kids to her from six different counties. She didn’t need another one, for God’s sake.

But she knew her limits, and if it made her happy...

At the barn’s entrance, he brought Brandy to a gentle halt, swung his leg over and dropped onto the concrete. He patted Brandy’s neck again, and as they started into the barn, he hooked his sunglasses in his collar.

The place wasn’t terribly busy yet. A few clients and boarders were grooming their horses or heading into the arena, but it was still early on a weekday. Tonight and on the weekend, there wouldn’t be a vacant set of cross ties in the whole place. When it was like that, Matt just tied his horse in her stall and groomed and saddled her there.

Today, though, he had his choice of cross ties, and took the one closest to her stall. After he’d taken off her bridle—when she finally let go of the bit, since she liked playing with it—he clipped the ties to either side of her halter and started on the saddle.

Behind him, he heard his sister laugh. I just can’t believe how long it’s been!

The response stopped his hands in midair.

I know, an all too familiar female voice said. Time really does fly, doesn’t it?

Matt’s mouth went dry. No way.

Matt? his sister said. You’ve got a visitor.

He cleared his throat. Then he turned around slowly, and his heart stopped.

Standing beside his sister, blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail and only a handful of years added to her face since the last time he’d seen her, his childhood best friend smiled back at him. It had been, what, a decade since he’d seen her? Since that stupid argument and the slammed door? And in all that time, she’d barely changed at all. A few more lines here and there, but she wore them as well as she wore that half-zipped leather jacket.

He finally managed to choke out, Dara?

Hi, Matt. She smiled. It’s been a while.

Chapter Two

Dara wasn’t surprised that Matt looked good. She just hadn’t been prepared for how good. Sure, he’d long ago morphed from a gangly kid into a guy who could’ve modeled his way through college, but he wore his thirties better than he had any right to. And she’d been in Los Angeles for the past ten years—she’d seen her share of attractive men.

She shook herself. Was she really ogling Matt? Of course she was. She’d never even entertained the idea of being more than friends with him, but right now, checking him out was easier than watching his expression, because she wasn’t entirely sure how this was going to play out. If he’d talk to her, or if he was a breath away from a get the fuck out of here. And if he talked to her, she had some news—and a question—that might yet bring out that get the fuck out of here.

Beside her, Beth cleared her throat. I’ll, um, let you two catch up. Gesturing at the horse, she added, Do you want me to put her away for you?

He glanced at the dapple gray as if he’d forgotten the horse was there at all. Um... I...

I’ll try not to keep you too long, Dara said. There’s something I need to talk to you about. And I figured it would be best to do it in person.

His eyes widened a little further. Oh. Um. He glanced at his horse. I should really—

I’ve got her. Go. Beth gestured at other end of the barn. You’re welcome to use my office.

Matt hesitated. Sure. Thanks. He took a step toward Dara, but paused. To his sister, he said, I think we need to bring Whiskey and Lady in. They both look like they’re going to foal any minute.

Beth nodded. I’ll take care of them too. Go.

What about—

"Go."

Matt glanced at the horse, then nodded and gestured for Dara to come with him.

As they walked, she checked out their surroundings. The barn was bigger now—the loft was new, and Dara could’ve sworn the aisle hadn’t been quite that long before. There definitely hadn’t been quite so many stalls. For that matter, the aisle had been packed dirt before, and it was smooth concrete now, and lined with gleaming metal-edged white cedar doors. No bars on the doors, of course—neither Matt nor Beth would’ve allowed that.

This place had changed so much, and yet in a lot of ways, it still felt the same. Just being here screwed with her balance. She’d been back in Aspen Mill for two weeks, staying with her parents in her childhood home until she’d moved into a rental house across town, but it was this place that took her breath away. Coming back to the Coolidge farm was, more than anyplace else she’d been recently, like coming home. It was like she’d never left, and at the same time, like she’d been away for far too long.

Which may have had less to do with the building and more to do with the man walking silently beside her.

It shouldn’t have felt this surreal to walk next to Matt. They’d been friends since they were little kids. And it wouldn’t have felt this surreal if ten years hadn’t passed since they’d last seen each other, and that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been a goddamned idiot back then.

But she had been, and she couldn’t change it. All she could do now was hope to God he wasn’t just being polite.

At the end of the barn, he stopped in front of a door marked Private. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door, then gestured for her to go inside.

Wasn’t this place a blast from the past? She’d been in here plenty of times as a kid, and like the rest of the barn, it was both radically different and exactly the same.

Two walls were covered from floor to ceiling by awards. The trophy case she remembered—a small china cabinet with a modest collection of local trophies—had been replaced by a much bigger one, and it was exploding with silver cups and platters, as well as glass and acrylic awards.

The desk was the same, though the ratty chairs had been replaced with much nicer ones. Behind the desk, there was a huge photo on the wall that had been there for years. It was a little faded now, with some dust on the glass and the frame, but it had aged well. It must’ve been taken when Matt was four or five. Definitely no older than six. He and his two siblings sat in a row on the back of their grandfather’s prized stallion, all gap-toothed grins and bowl-cut hair on top of that elegant coal-black horse.

Behind them, Matt shut the door with a quiet click. Dara steeled herself, her heart pounding and her palms sweating—she’d been dreading this conversation ever since she came back to Aspen Mill, and now there was no escaping. Willing her stomach to stay where it belonged, she faced him.

Matt took off his baseball cap, revealing some silver at his temples. He was a little young to be going that gray, but wow.

Staring at her, he swallowed. I still can’t... Is that...is that really you?

She smiled, trying like hell not to get her hopes up. "In the