Kennedy took a step backward, moving slowly. Maybe if she reached her car before he came back, she could pretend this never happened. Another step, still no Brendon. She took two more, moving a little faster. Glancing over her shoulder she noticed she wasn’t that far away. She could make a break for it and no one would be the wiser.
The doors burst open and a round of cheering erupted from the inside, spilling out into the night.
“Come on, we gotta hurry!” Brendon hollered, jumping off the porch and skidding on the gravel before coming to a stop directly in front of her.
She looked up in time to see Braydon do the exact same thing. And then she was standing there with two huge, eerily similar-looking cowboys grinning down at her as if she’d agreed to mud-wrestle naked while they brought their friends to watch.
“Why’re we goin’ to the hospital?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“To see the football, why else?” Brendon announced happily. “Come on, woman. Let’s get goin’.”
“Football?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Braydon replied. “Travis’s football finally arrived.”
“What the hell are y’all talkin’ about?” she asked, extremely confused.
Football?
“Kylie. Pregnant. Baby on the way. Come on, woman. Where the hell you been for the last nine months?” Brendon asked, tugging on her arm.
Oh, crap. Travis’s wife was having a baby, wasn’t she? But how the heck had Kennedy been assigned the job of designated driver? More importantly, what the hell did it have to do with football?
“Why can’t someone come pick you up?” she asked, knowing the answer probably wasn’t going to really matter. Brendon had already steered her toward her car and was opening the door for her after she hit the button on the key fob.
“’Cause they’re on their way to the hospital. Good grief,” Brendon glanced back at Braydon. “I coulda swore she was smarter than this.”
Kennedy laughed. She couldn’t help it.
“Fine. But both of you can get in the backseat,” she told them, sliding into the driver’s seat quickly and pulling her legs in before Brendon closed them in the door. It was a close call, but she managed to get behind the wheel and they managed to cram their tall, broad bodies into the backseat. Less than a minute later, the three of them were on their way.
“Which hospital?” she asked, stopping at the only stop sign in town.
“Round Rock,” Braydon offered. He didn’t sound quite as drunk as Brendon, but he couldn’t have been that far off.
“I assume you’re talkin’ about the one on 620?” she asked, taking a left. Round Rock wasn’t the actual name of the hospital—that was the city it was in—but considering it was the closest to Coyote Ridge, she figured it was the one they were referring to.
“Yep. Now, if you don’t mind, maybe you could drive a little faster if you didn’t talk so much,” Brendon stated.
Kennedy chuckled, glancing at the two of them in her rearview mirror.
She did as they wished, keeping her mouth closed for most of the twenty-minute drive while they chatted away in the backseat like a couple of women. According to Braydon, Jessie was catching a ride with Jared. Curtis and Lorrie had been out having dinner, so they were on their way from the restaurant. Gage was driving Kylie because Travis was somewhat of a basket case. Their words.
Kennedy wasn’t sure “somewhat” was an apt description, especially since they had referred to the kid as Travis’s football on more than one occasion.
“Why do y’all keep callin’ the baby a football?” Kennedy asked.
She glanced in the mirror again, noticing they were looking at each other as though she was the one who’d lost her mind. She had news for them . . .
“’Cause he’s been hoverin’ over her for the last few weeks, ready to catch that baby when it came shootin’ out.”
Great visual.
“We were startin’ to think the kid was hidin’ from Travis the same way we usually do,” Braydon said, laughing as he looked out the window.
“I wouldn’t blame him if he did,” Brendon tacked on.
“So it’s a boy?” Kennedy asked, slowing down as she exited the highway.
“Don’t know,” Braydon answered. “They didn’t find out.”
“So, who’s the father?” Kennedy asked. She knew it was the million-dollar question, one that had received a tremendous amount of speculation in Coyote Ridge.
Coming from a small town and owning a vet practice in that same town, gossip ran like wildfire through her office. It had been pretty big news when Travis had announced he was tying the knot. Well, actually, at first it had been news that he was already married and that his wife had returned to Coyote Ridge to find him. Kennedy really didn’t know which story was true—either Kylie had returned to serve him with divorce papers or she had returned to tell him she’d married Gage. Either way, Kennedy knew that Travis was now married to both Kylie and Gage.