The Cowboys pregnant fiance

When Sherilyn Jane saw the dark cowboy walk into the diner her heart rate nearly spiked through the roof.

And it wasn't only because he was a tall drink of water, dressed all in black from his worn boots to his jeans to the belt with the skinny rodeo championship buckle to his western shirt and hat that tilted over his brow.

No, even though the enigmatic Cody Tyler was enough to put steam into any woman's steps, Sherilyn had been waiting for the man to stop by for his frequent early lunches because oddly enough she had come across something she was  sure he was going to want.

She smiled at her only customers as she finished checking on them. "Just let me know when your ready to pay up.". Then she headed for the counter and ultimately the back room before Cody could sit in his usual stool by the glass domed pies.

"Fancy seeing you here, she said lightly passing right by him.

When his dark eyed gaze lit on her, her pulse gave a brutal jerk. But she stilled it as she always did.

It wasn't like she had much of a choice not if she wanted to keep a sense of privacy and stay as further under the radar as shed been doing these past months.

He gave her one of those lop sided grins of his a boom that not many others in Panama city ever saw, probably because Sherilyn never got into the quiet cowboys business or asked him too many questions about why he stayed around panama city for so long.

She could appreciate a person with secrets she thought. After all she had more than enough herself.

"I'd thought I would surprise everyone by varying  my lunch routine." he said. " I'm impulsive that way,"

She laughed at his facetiousness, and he did to. His hat was still low giving a slight shadow to the rest of his face, but she could tell that he was running a look over her. The slow brush of tingles down her body don't lie.

Before she could stop herself she rested her hand over her belly which she had been trying to hide with a baggier waitress uniform.

She was seven months along her belly just now popping and she was trying so hard to keep anyone from knowing. Not yet, at least because that was when people would start asking about the father.

Had Cody  been looking hard enough at her to notice the weight gain? Was he about to ask a million questions that she'd been avoiding ever since she had come to this town months ago, dirt flying out from under her tires, and her wedding dress crumpled in a heap in the trunk of her Mercedes?

If her pulse had been jogging before it was defiantly racing now as she kept waiting for Cody  to say something.

Anything.

Somewhere in the back of her mind Sherilyn heard the fifties flavored valentines inspired music playing low over the ceiling speakers heard her only other customers telling her that they'd left cash for their bill and her tip on the table, then the dinging bell as they excited the diner.

Absently she lifted a hand in goodbye to them then turned her attention back to Cody .

But all he did was reach for the nearby heart decorated tin bucket that held all the napkin wrapped silverware.

If their was anyone else in Panama city who understood how precious privacy could be it was Cody Tyler. He had proved it time and again while keeping to himself after wandering into town shortly before she had, just as much of a cipher as she tried to be then turning his back on anyone who tried to poke into his reasons for being here.

Even though everyone did have a good idea just why Cody had stuck around.

Her gaze wondered to the hand drawn pictures hanging above the service window renderings playfully showing the towns past in the late 1920's and the stoic faces of the townspeople including one who was a dead ringer for the cowboy sitting in front of her.