Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) (10 page)

“That you didn’t tell me about it when we were married.”

“Talking was not what we did best together,” he reminded her, in a voice with a husky, sensuous intonation that alluded to what they
had
been good at.

But that Beth knew all too well. Their sexual attraction to each other had been so intense right from the start that apparently they’d skipped a lot of important aspects that normally happened early in a relationship—such as just plain getting to know each other.

“This earthier side of you—it’s nice—for a change,” she ventured.

Only one corner of his mouth tilted upward. “Is this Beth Heller trying to say there’s something she might actually
like
about me?”

“It’s just good to know what went into making you the man you are.”

“Is it?” he asked, but in a way that made it seem more than an offhand comment. A way that seemed to wonder, just as she did, if there were more good things happening between them at that moment, for the air seemed charged with a new closeness that hadn’t been there before.

A closeness that weakened her resistance to him.

His eyes were holding hers, searching them in the dimness of dashboard light, maybe for signs of what was going on here.

But he couldn’t have found an answer, because Beth didn’t know herself.

She knew only that she wanted more than anything for this man, who had just revealed such personal things to her, to close the gap between his arm and her shoulders, to pull her to him, to—

And then he did.

He leaned forward, wrapping his arm around her and bringing her to him so that he could cover her mouth with his in a kiss that held considerably more heat than the one they’d shared the previous night.

His lips parted over hers and his tongue traced the uneven edge of her teeth just before coming inside to play, to assert himself.

And Beth welcomed him. Welcomed the mingling of his breath with hers, the circling of their tongues, the thrust and parry.

His arm tightened around her, bringing her up against his chest, forcing her to circle the breadth of his shoulders with her own arms and giving her the opportunity to splay her hands against that hard back. Visions of those muscles working just beneath the taut, sweat-dampened skin she’d watched most of the afternoon danced through her mind and lit new sparks inside of her.

She had feelings for this man that she shouldn’t have. That she didn’t want to have.

And the longer that kiss went on, the more they sprang to life, until they scared her nearly to death and shoved her out of his embrace.

“I don’t want this to happen!” she told him in a near panic.

And if she’d struck a blow earlier in the evening with her comment about his not being like Robert, she saw that she’d struck a much greater one with this.

Ash drew away as far as he could go, leaning his back against the door, taking his glorious arms with him.

“Then it won’t,” he said, in a tone she hated, for it told her he’d given his word and once he’d given his word, he didn’t break it.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall against the window on her side as she fought the urge to make him take it back right then, to fling herself into his arms again and show him she didn’t mean it.

But she did mean it.

She had to mean it.

She dropped her chin and opened her eyes to look at his again. “This is what we did when we met. We let ourselves get carried away and we never really got to know each other. So of course the marriage failed. But we’re not married anymore. And the relationship we need to form now certainly can’t be like this. If you’re going to stick around—even for just a little while—we have to try to be friends, or at least courteous acquaintances, for the baby’s sake. But we can’t do this.”

For a moment he just stared at her, and she thought that he really must have wanted to strangle her, because his eyes were so cold, so hard.

But then he nodded. “You’re right.”

“Good,” she said, though she hadn’t intended it to sound as halfhearted or as disappointed as it did, any more than she had intended to
feel
as disappointed as she did.

But once again she tamped down on it. “I have to go in.”

He repeated his slow, solemn nod.

“Good night,” she said, opening the door.

Once more his only response was the nod.

But she couldn’t wonder about it, wonder what was going through his mind, wonder if he was mad at her because she’d stopped the kiss or mad at himself for starting it. She had to just get away from him before she began it all over again.

She closed the car door after herself and went up to the house, feeling his eyes boring into her as if they were laser beams. But she let herself in without so much as glancing back at him.

And once she was inside and the door closed her off from him, she fell against it as if the starch had gone out of her.

Hormones, she told herself. Crazy, intense hormones—that was the reason tears were flooding her eyes.

It didn’t have anything to do with Ash.

Or wishes that, somewhere along the way, things could have been different between them.

E
lk Creek’s medical facility was across the street from the park square at the north end of town. Originally it had been the old Molner mansion—a three-level, red brick, Georgian-style building, its flat front interrupted by a big whitewashed porch.

The first floor was divided into a reception and waiting area, offices and examining rooms. The second floor was a small hospital, complete with two surgical suites for minor procedures and three rooms for inpatients, though it was rare that anyone stayed over. And the third floor held a lab, X-ray equipment and a rudimentary physical therapy section.

The entire staff was comprised of a doctor, a dentist—a coup for the small town—one nurse, one dental assistant, and Janet Gaultbien, who was receptionist, bookkeeper and administrator and just generally ran the whole shebang.

Beth’s appointment with the doctor was at nine o’clock. She’d changed it since Ash had arrived and begun following her around, thinking that if she chose the earliest one, it would allow her to go before he showed up to tag along.

But Ash, Jackson and Linc were roofing the honky-tonk today and had begun at dawn, so she needn’t have worried.

And as she climbed the porch steps, she wished she’d kept her afternoon appointment so she could be in bed still, catching up on the sleep she’d missed during the night. She promised herself that when she’d finished here she’d go home to her nice, air-conditioned house and take a nap.

That was what she was thinking about as she went in the front door, expecting to find the receptionist alone in the waiting room.

But the tall, boxy woman was not the only one there. Ash was, too, intent on a book Janet was showing him while she explained the development of the fetus at five months. Neither of them looked up.

“What are you doing here?” Beth blurted out, forgetting her vow to be nicer to her former husband.

He was leaning on the counter, his rear end jutting out at her from inside a pair of Jackson’s oldest, rattiest jeans. His biceps bulged from the ragged armholes of a work shirt that had had sleeves once upon a time, before her brother had ripped them out, and he bore absolutely no resemblance to a businessman.

Her question drew Janet’s attention, but it was a moment before Ash slowly straightened up and turned to look at her.

“I saw the note for your appointment on the calendar next to the phone in the kitchen yesterday. I didn’t want to miss it.”

“I think it’s just wonderful to see a father-to-be so interested and supportive,” Janet defended him.

And once again Beth felt like the bad guy. She tried to curb her tone of voice. “I thought you were busy roofing the honky-tonk today.”

“We hoisted everything up and I showed Linc and Jackson how to get started. I’ll go back as soon as we’re finished here.”

We?
Well, terrific. Get this man into a set of stirrups on the double.

“When I wanted him around, he was too busy. Now I can’t get away from him,” she muttered to herself. Then, to him, she said, “I think we better talk about this.”

“I’ll tell Ramona you’re here,” Janet suggested tactfully.

When they were alone, Ash’s eyes bored into her with the coldness that said he was angry with her. Already. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt for you to be a hair less independent and let me help you with just one thing. For a change.”

Beth reminded herself to be civil. “I know you’re going to say something about our already having been intimate enough to get me here, but this is the first time I’ve seen this doctor and he’ll want to do a full exam. And a pelvic is bad enough without an ex-husband as an audience. You can’t come in. You’ve wasted your time being here.”

His bushy brows drew together in a frown. “Actually, I hadn’t planned to go in with you during the exam. I just wanted to be here with you. To be here
for
you,” he answered through clenched teeth.

“Oh.” Beth cleared her throat, again feeling chagrined.

He pointed his chin in the direction Janet had gone. “The receptionist said I could come in before and hear the heartbeat, but I won’t even do that if it bothers you.”

Great. He’d already discussed it with Janet. Janet, who thought his interest was wonderful. And who would turn around and repeat to the entire population of Elk Creek—by way of the small-town grapevine—either that, in spite of being divorced, they were acting like civilized adults and sharing this experience; or that Beth had turned her nose up at Ash’s wanting to hear his baby’s heartbeat.

Maybe coming back to Elk Creek hadn’t been a good idea after all, Beth thought.

“Forget it,” he said suddenly into the silence that she’d left while she thought about this. “I’ll go back to work.”

“No,” she grumbled as he headed for the door. “I suppose I can stand for you to see my fat belly. But that’s all.”

He turned to her again, his gaze dropping to her middle as if he’d overlooked something before. But the bulge of her stomach was well concealed behind the oversize shirt she wore. “If it makes you uncomfortable—”

“It’s all right.” She didn’t know if Janet had been secretly listening, but at that moment the receptionist reappeared to usher them both into one of the examining rooms without so much as questioning whether or not Ash would be allowed to go.

There was a bathroom connected to it and Beth was handed a gown and told to undress there while Ash was awarded a chair in which to wait for her.

She wasn’t thrilled about going back into that room after she’d changed. A thin hospital gown with a single tie at the back of the neck was hardly a confidence booster. But she didn’t have much choice.

Holding the gown closed behind her, she took a deep breath and tried to hide her real feelings about this, all the while wondering how she’d ever gotten herself into it.

The nurse was there by then and Beth was glad to see her, if only as a buffer between her and Ash.

Having Beth sit on the doctor’s stool, Ramona took her blood pressure and pulse, finding both slightly elevated but accepting Beth’s explanation of doctor’s-visit nerves. Then she asked her to get on the table and lie down.

No mean feat, that. At least not while retaining her dignity and trying not to flash bare buns. But once Beth was there, Ramona helped out by covering her lower half with a paper sheet before pulling up the gown to reveal her stomach.

“Come on, Dad. You won’t be able to hear from over there,” the nurse urged.

Beth could feel her cheeks heat as Ash stepped to her side, standing just off her shoulder while Ramona squeezed a mound of jellylike ointment onto the small mesa of her naked middle. Then the nurse put an odd-looking stethoscope she called a Doptone into her own ears and slid the other end through the gel like a spatula spreading frosting until she found what she was searching for.

Beth and Ash both looked on as Ramona checked her watch, counting the beats before she held the business end of the stethoscope in place and handed Beth the binaurals. “Mom first.”

Beth had heard the baby’s heartbeat once before, at Cele’s office, but it still gave her goose bumps as she listened while the nurse explained to Ash what it would sound like.

When Beth finally relinquished the device to him, he wasted no time bending low enough to fit the tips into his ears.

She could tell by his immediate frown that he wasn’t sure he was hearing what he was supposed to. But as she watched, his eyes lit up and widened, his brows took flight nearly to his hairline and his lips parted.

And then, as she studied the pure wonder in his expression, Beth saw his eyes fill.

He caught up her left hand in his right, holding it tight and pulling it to press the back to his chest, just over his heart, in a gesture that joined their tiny family, that cherished her and their baby and brought hot tears to her own eyes.

And then she felt the baby skitter away, as if it had had enough of being eavesdropped on, and the moment passed.

Ash blinked the moisture out of his eyes, squeezed her hand one last time and let it go so he could pull the stethoscope out of his ears and give it back to the nurse.

But it was to Beth he said a quiet, sincere thank-you that made her rue ever thinking to refuse him this.

“I won’t hang around,” he told her then, as if giving a compromise of his own in appreciation. “Unless you want me to...”

She did want him to. She wanted him there with her—not through the pelvic exam—but to wait for the doctor, to talk about the baby, about hearing the heartbeat, about the nurse’s guess that it was a boy.

But she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“You have a lot of work to do today. You’d better get back.”

He nodded, just once, and if his smile seemed a little tight-lipped, she didn’t understand why.

Then he left, along with the nurse, and she was alone in that room. Alone with the baby.

And wishing she wasn’t.

* * *

Linc and Jackson were busy with the roofing when Ash got back to the honky-tonk. He climbed the ladder and pitched in without any of them saying much, and for the remainder of the morning that’s how the time passed, leaving Ash free to think.

Hearing the baby’s heartbeat had given him a new sense of connection to it. He could have stood there all day long listening to that tiny pulse beating its rapid rhythm through the rush of amniotic fluid.

And as he worked, it occurred to him that if he’d been loath to end that, how was he ever going to leave the baby behind once it was born? For even if he had custody half the time, that would still leave the other half the time that he’d be away from it.

But what was his alternative?

His mind wandered to one—if he and Beth got married again, he could take her and the baby back home....

But that idea was too farfetched to even consider. Beth could barely be civil to him. Even in front of the receptionist this morning, she’d nearly bitten his head off just for being there.

She’d mellowed, though...

Lying on that examining table, she’d let him take her hand. More than that, she’d held his in return, squeezed it back, hung on as if—for only a moment—she’d liked having him there.

He was probably just imagining it. Hadn’t she basically shooed him away after that? Even when he’d offered to wait?

But there had been that moment, that one, brief moment, when they’d shared something very special. When they’d shared their baby. And that had been good.

Maybe good enough to build on...

Beth had a soft spot where the baby was concerned. No matter how tough she wanted him to think she was, how strong and resilient and capable of doing this on her own, the baby itself was her Achilles’ heel....

But her feelings for Ash didn’t seem even lukewarm.

And there was no denying the problems they’d had in their marriage. Could they be overcome? Could he and Beth fix them and try again so they could be together in parenting this child? He honestly didn’t know. But he had to explore the possibility.

For the baby’s sake.

For his sake.

As a father.

And as a man who still had feelings for his ex-wife...

Did
he have feelings for Beth? Maybe. But he didn’t know what they were. One minute he wanted to wring her neck. The next he wanted to take her to bed.

How could remarrying her possibly be a good idea under those circumstances? Assuming he could even get Beth to consider the idea?

“Shall we break for lunch?” Linc suggested into his preoccupation.

Ash hadn’t realized how late it was. Or how hot. “Sounds good to me,” he agreed, all too willing to put aside what suddenly seemed like crazy ramblings.

He and Beth getting remarried? Maybe he was on the verge of sunstroke or heat prostration, because surely he was out of his mind to even consider such a thing.

Jackson put down his hammer, too, and they all headed for the ladder. Once on the ground, they went inside the honky-tonk long enough to douse themselves liberally with cool water, then met under the shade of a huge oak tree alongside the building to share the sandwiches Linc and Jackson had packed for the three of them.

“How’d the doctor’s appointment go?” Linc asked.

“Fine. At least it went fine for as long as I was there. Beth didn’t want me hanging around,” Ash answered, watching a train come in at the station across the street.

“What’s going on between the two of you, anyway?” Jackson demanded unceremoniously.

Ash glanced at him and then at Linc. “Should I be guarding my jaw?” he only half joked.

“I’m not sure,” Linc answered, swiveling his gaze to his brother. “Are you askin’ what his intentions are?”

“I guess I am. I caught Beth cryin’ last night.”

That took the humor out of Ash. “You must have needed to use the bathroom,” he muttered, more to himself than to his former brother-in-law.

“I was just headed to bed after havin’ a midnight snack. She had her back against the front door and big tears running down her face. I guess she didn’t expect anyone else to be up, because she got plenty mad at me for catching her at it.”

“That’s Beth,” Ash confirmed.

“Did you two fight after you left Kansas’s place?” This from Linc.

“No, in fact, things went pretty well. For the most part. At least until the end.”

“What’d you do then?” Jackson asked as if he were interrogating a criminal.

“Maybe you ought to mind your own business,” Linc suggested.

Ash decided that confiding in her brothers might allow him some insight and answered Jackson anyway. “I kissed her.”

Linc gave a hoot and a holler of a laugh. Jackson stayed as sober as Ash did.

“Guess she didn’t want you to, huh?” Jackson said.

“Seemed like she did. Then all of a sudden she pushed me away and said she didn’t. But she was dry-eyed when she got out of the car.”

Linc chuckled. “When Virgie was pregnant with Danny she was like that. Crazy. One minute she’d be happy as a lark, the next I’d find her bawling her eyes out. It’s hormones.”

“You sure about that?” Jackson asked dubiously. “That doesn’t sound like Beth. Beth’s not a cryer. Shag fixed that when she was a just a little girl.”