Maisy hesitated for only a second before she told the truth. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t have sex with Sawyer.”
“What?” Dixie stared at her in shock. “You’re talking in circles, Maisy, and it’s making me dizzy. How can you be pregnant if you didn’t have sex with Sawyer?” she gasped. “Oh, Lord, you had sex with someone else and are trying to pin it on Sawyer. Here I thought you were this sweet innocent little cowgirl and you’ve been playing the field like a one-girl soccer team.”
“No! I haven’t been playing the field. I haven’t had sex since high school when Tommy Lee and I fumbled around in the back of his Ford pickup. But I’m not innocent. And I’m certainly not sweet. I’m a big ol’ trickster like my daddy. I lied about having sex with Sawyer.”
Dixie pulled into a parking space right next to Maisy’s truck and turned off the engine. “You’ve lost me. You better start from the beginning.” She unsnapped her seatbelt and turned to face Maisy. “And I mean the very beginning. When did you first start liking Sawyer?”
Maisy didn’t have to think hard to figure out when her infatuation started. “The first time I ever saw him ride, I was pretty much enamored,” she said. “The man can sit a saddle.”
Dixie grinned. “And he’s not too hard on the eyes either.”
“No, but he’s not all full of himself like most bronc riders. He’s nice. At your wedding, I was feeling a little nervous about being a bridesmaid and tripping over my long dress as I walked down the aisle. He teased and joked with me until I forgot all about being nervous. Then right before it was our turn, he winked at me and said, ‘If we can stay on a wild bronc for eight seconds, we can get down this aisle without falling.’ Suddenly, I felt like we were a team. That’s how he treated me at the reception. Like we were a couple. And it felt nice. I guess because for most of my life I’ve been a single. I had my mama for a while, but then she remarried and I felt like a third wheel. At your wedding, I didn’t feel like I was an extra part. I felt . . . like I belonged.”
“Oh, honey.” Dixie took her hand and squeezed it. “You aren’t an extra part. You’re my best friend and you belong with me. And I know everyone in Simple feels the same way. As Miss Gertie said, you’re our ‘rodeo gal’ and we’re all proud of you.”
“I know. But I still get lonely at times. I guess that’s why I latched onto Sawyer.”
“So did anything happen between you two at the wedding?”
Maisy shook her head. “One minute, he was showing me some rodeo riding moves and the next he just disappeared from the reception. After that, whenever I saw him at a rodeo, he avoided me. He was nice, but after a few pleasantries, he would make up some excuse for why he had to leave. Except when I stumbled upon him in the hotel bar in Houston. I should’ve known he was drunk when he didn’t seem in any hurry to get away from me.”
Dixie squeezed her hand again. “Alcohol only gives you the ability to do what you really want to do, but don’t have the courage to do when you’re sober.”
Maisy nodded. “Tequila definitely gave me the courage to do what I’d wanted to do ever since meeting Sawyer. Unfortunately, once we got to his hotel room, he passed out cold before we could even get naked.” She stared out the windshield. “I should’ve put him to bed and left. That would’ve been the right thing to do. Instead, I cuddled up next to him like some needy stray dog, hoping he’d give me a scrap of attention in the morning when he woke up. Instead, when he found me there, he totally freaked out like he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. My ego was hurt and I wanted to get back at him so I acted like we’d had sex and it wasn’t that great. I planned to tell him later at the rodeo, but then he showed up all bossy and arrogant and asking if I was on birth control. And I sorta continued the hoax and teased him about naming our baby June Bug.”
She thought Dixie would be completely disgusted by her prank. Instead, her friend burst out laughing. She laughed so hard tears ran down her face.
Maisy stared at her. “It’s not funny, Dixie Leigh. He jumped into the arena and suffered a concussion trying to save me because he thought I could be pregnant. I’m part of the reason he has to leave saddle bronc riding.”
Dixie sobered and brushed the tears off her cheeks. “You can’t really believe that, Maisy. The reason Sawyer has to leave bronc riding is because of the other concussions he’s gotten that had nothing to do with you. And if it hadn’t happened and you hadn’t been in the room with him to hear the doctor, Sawyer would already be back on the circuit by now.”
Put that way, it sounded like Maisy had done him a favor. Although she knew Sawyer wouldn’t feel the same. “He’s going to hate me when he finds out the truth.”
Dixie released Maisy’s hand and sat back in her seat. She stared straight ahead and her fingernails tapped on the steering wheel as if she were contemplating something. Finally, she stopped tapping and turned to Maisy. “Then we just have to make sure he never finds out the truth.”
“What? I have to tell him, Dixie. Especially after he made that sweet speech about not leaving me.” As a woman who had major abandonment issues, Maisy found her heart melted by his words.
“That was a sweet speech,” Dixie said. “And it made me realize that God has sent us the perfect solution to our problem of how to keep Sawyer from going back to the rodeo. I, for one, do not think we should ignore a miracle.”
As the truth of what Dixie was implying dawn on Maisy, she shook her head. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. I am not going to fake a pregnancy.”
“Of course you’re not going to fake being pregnant. You’re just not going to tell him that you didn’t have sex with him.”
“I don’t think I can do that. The guilt is eating me up.”
Dixie lifted her eyebrows. “Not even to save a man’s life? Did you know that CTE can kill you? Well, I know because Lincoln has been researching it on the Internet ever since you told him about what the doctor said. He’s worried sick about his best friend. And with good reason. We can’t let Sawyer go back to the rodeo. We have to make him see how dangerous that would be to his life. We need to have an intervention.”
“An intervention?”
Dixie nodded. “We did it for my uncle who drank like a fish. When anyone tried to talk to him about his drinking, he would laugh it off and say he only drank at parties. But the man partied every day. It took the entire family and two AA counselors to make him realize what he was doing to himself. Sawyer needs the same circle of love to make him see the truth. I know if the Double Diamond boys get together, they can talk Sawyer out of going back to bronc riding.”
Maisy figured if anyone could talk Sawyer out of returning to saddle bronc riding it would his friends. “We need to do it as soon as possible so Sawyer isn’t stressed out about being a father.”
“I totally agree. I’m going to try and pull it together as quickly as I can. In the meantime, all you have to do is keep one little secret.”
“It’s not a little secret.”
Dixie shrugged. “Okay. One big secret.”