The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (4 page)

BOOK: The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby
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His face registered that he was still on Kuwait time. Over there it would be getting
on toward evening. She blinked and looked away before they made eye contact.

“Jet lag,” he answered before anyone asked. He poured a cup of coffee and added a
heaping teaspoon of instant coffee granules to it.

“Like it a little strong, do you?” Natalie asked.

“I’ll need it to get through this day,” he answered. He looked at Jack. “Heard from
Gramps this morning?”

“He says wild horses or wild women couldn’t drag his old bones out in this kind of
weather. Not even for a look at Natalie or to eat her good cookin’. Says he don’t
reckon you’ll be going anywhere, so he’ll see you when this thaws or when you drive
back to his place.” Jack chuckled.

Natalie pulled biscuits from the oven. “Y’all want this on the table or you want to
serve yourselves off the bar?”

“Bar is fine,” Jack said.

Lucas’s jaw set so tight that it was a wonder it didn’t pop out of place. Evidently
he didn’t like breakfast on the bar. Then she looked at Jack, who was shifting his
eyes from Lucas to her, and a cold shiver chased down her spine. Her father did that
when he wanted one of his children to do something without saying it.

Jack and Grady were both waiting, plates in hand, when she set the bowl of gravy and
the biscuits on the bar. When she turned around to get the scrambled eggs and bacon,
Lucas cleared his throat.

“Hazel says I’m supposed to convince you to stay on the ranch until Christmas,” he
said.

“You don’t have to convince me of jack shit, cowboy. I’m staying. I made up my mind,
but it’s not for you. It’s for the guys and for Hazel. I can endure you for a month
to make them all happy,” she said.

“I’ll pay you good,” Lucas said.

“Yes, you will,” she said.

Drew’s voice popped into her head again.
One
month
won’t kill you or Joshua, and evidently these folks really want you to stay. Don’t
slam the door of opportunity, Nat.

She wasn’t used to looking up at a man. She stood five feet ten inches in her stocking
feet, and lots of men she’d dated had been shorter. She cocked her head to one side
and thought of those gorgeous red three-inch high-heeled shoes that she’d bought last
Christmas.

“How much is this going to cost me?” Lucas asked.

“Sorry. I was woolgathering. Minimum wage,” she said.

A grin tickled the corners of his mouth.

“At twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” she said.

He groaned.

Jack threw back his head and laughed. “We’ll be getting a bargain, son. Sign her on.”

“God Almighty, Dad!” Lucas said.

“Yep, He is Almighty, but He ain’t your dad,” Grady said. “Sounds like you’ve met
your match, Lucas, my boy.”

“Okay, okay, but it’ll break the bank,” Lucas said.

“Hell if it will.” Jack laughed harder. “Only man in the north part of Texas that’s
richer than you is Colton Nelson and that’s because he won the damn lottery.”

Lucas would not be a good poker player. His expression gave away what he was thinking
and right then it wasn’t showing good things. Evidently, he thought she was out to
take him for a financial roller coaster ride. Hell, she came from a spread that was
bigger than Cedar Hill, so she knew it took money to run a ranch.

“Can’t none of us cook. Grady would burn water if he tried to make oatmeal,” Jack
said.

Grady motioned toward Jack. “And Jack can’t even make coffee with the directions written
on the pot. I tell you we’ll all three starve if you don’t stay on the ranch and cook
for us.”

“You can’t leave anyway for a couple of days because the roads are too bad. The ice
ain’t melting until the temperatures rise above freezin’, which won’t happen for a
while. The storm has stalled out right above us and it’ll be days before the roads
are cleared off. In this part of the world, as you know, snow and sleet cripple us,”
Lucas said.

She thought of her father and her brothers and she couldn’t say no. Lord, they couldn’t
even make a bologna and cheese sandwich. And they’d run around in God only knew what
color underbritches if they had to do laundry.

“I told Hazel last night that I’d stay and she’s already called four times this morning
to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind,” she said.

“Thank you, sweet Jesus!” Grady looked toward the ceiling. “This ain’t our last decent
meal, Jack!”

“Hey, I know how to make toast, and Jesus didn’t have a thing to do with Natalie staying
or going,” Lucas protested.

“Not without burnin’ the hell out of it, and the way you’ve been acting, it took intervention
by Jesus Himself to get her to stay,” Grady argued.

Joshua’s whimpers came through the monitor on the cabinet and all three men stopped
arguing and stared at the equipment as if it were a real baby. Natalie quickly turned
off all the burners and the oven and made Joshua a bottle. On her way out of the kitchen
she snagged a biscuit. She’d signed on to cook and clean and last time she checked,
the hired help didn’t eat with the ranch owners.

Whimpers had turned into demands by the time she reached the bedroom. He was chewing
on his fist and kicking his legs in protest.

“Mommy is here, baby boy,” Natalie crooned as she picked him up out of the portable
crib. “Do you feel like you are in prison in that thing? Well, it’s only for a few
weeks, sweet baby boy.”

She unzipped the footed pajamas and changed his diaper. “Your granny would have a
fit if she knew we are on a ranch with four men, so we aren’t going to tell her. Now
be still and let me get your feet back inside this thing.”

Joshua smiled at her for the first time and her heart went all gushy inside her chest.
“Would you look at that? You remind me of your daddy with a grin like that.”

She picked up the phone on her way to the rocking chair and called home. When her
mother, Debra, answered she squealed. “Joshua just smiled and I’m sure it wasn’t gas
this time. I could see it in his eyes. They twinkled just like Shawn’s do when he’s
about to get into big trouble.”

Debra sighed. “And I missed it. Did Leah see it? She’ll gloat and brag and carry on
awful if she saw him do something before I did.”

“Aunt Leah didn’t see it. We’re in the bedroom and he’s having his breakfast bottle
right now,” Natalie said. “Aha! There it is again. He’s grinning around the bottle
nipple. He’s going to charm the boots right off all the cowgirls in Texas.”

“You got to keep him on the ranch if he’s going to be a cowboy. And a cowgirl won’t
fall for anything other than a real, bona fide cowboy, so bring him home where he
belongs. He can’t grow up to be a cowboy at Leah’s place. Lord, that yard ain’t no
bigger than a postage stamp. If you aren’t home by Christmas, I’m sending your brothers
to get you,” Debra said.

They said a few more things about the baby and then Natalie snapped her phone shut
and laid it aside. Being raised on a ranch did not necessarily produce a cowboy. Drew
was proof of that. He hated cotton farming, hated cattle raisin’, and most of all
he hated Silverton. That’s why he joined the army in December of their senior hear
of high school. Two days after they’d graduated he was on a bus headed for Lawton,
Oklahoma. He finished basic training the same week that she started college.

She looked down at the two-month-old baby in her arms. “Granny says you are going
to be a cowboy. I hope so, Joshua. I don’t want you to be a soldier. The war took
my best friend and your daddy. I couldn’t bear for it to take you away from me.” She
hugged him close and hummed an old country music tune. The clock said that it was
time for the morning sunrise, which was her favorite part of the day, but the view
out the bedroom window presented a solid gray sky spitting sleet, snow, and freezing
rain.

Not totally unlike the feeling in her heart.

She carried him up the hall in one arm with his infant seat in the other hand. Lucas
ignored the baby and made his way across the kitchen to the utility room. He pulled
on a work coat, removed the gloves from the pockets, and shoved his hands down into
them.

“I’m going to see Hazel,” he said.

He opened the door and three puppies bounded into the room, stuck their noses to the
ground like they were following the scent of a coyote or a coon, and headed straight
for Joshua. The runt of the litter even threw back his head and howled at the ceiling
when they found the baby. The biggest one licked the baby’s cheek and Joshua smiled
like he had in the bedroom. The runt crawled right up in the carrier with him and
laid down, head on the baby’s lap. Joshua wiggled his legs and smiled even bigger.
The middle-sized hound settled down on one side of the carrier as if he was guarding
Joshua.

“Well, would you look at that? Guess they’re afraid that a coyote might get at him,”
Jack said.

“Bluetick hounds don’t belong in the house.” Lucas gathered them up, but the runt
squirmed out of his arms and took off running down the hall.

“Help me,” he said.

“I’m still eating,” Jack said. “You was big enough to fight a war and you can’t control
three little old hounds?”

With a pup under each arm, Lucas set his jaw and headed down the hall. He stopped
at the open bedroom door. That was Natalie’s private space as long as she stayed at
the ranch, and he hadn’t been invited inside. Still yet, there was that pesky pup,
chewing on one of the baby’s teething rings.

Natalie brushed past him and picked up the puppy. “You can keep it, sweetheart. You
need something to teethe on too.”

When they reached the kitchen, Grady held out his arms. “I’ll take him and help Lucas
shore up the pen. You don’t need to be gettin’ out in the cold unless you have to.”

***

Hazel looked up from the hospital bed and held out both arms.

Lucas crossed the room in a few long, easy strides and hugged her. “I missed you most
of all this past year,” he whispered.

“Bullshit!” Hazel laughed.

He kissed her on the forehead and sat down in a chair beside her bed. “I did! Why
are you laid up in this bed anyway? If that hip ain’t broke, then you could hobble
around in the kitchen and rustle up food.”

Her black eyes twinkled. “I told you not to join that reserve shit. I told you that
the wars would just keep coming. Now you got three choices. You can cook in my kitchen,
which means you’ll all four starve to death. You can go out to the bunkhouse and eat
with the hired hands, which means you’ll bitch yourselves to death. Or you can keep
that woman you been flirtin’ with all year.”

She was just over five feet tall and her dark hair had just begun to sport a sprinkling
of gray. Her eyes were black as coal and set into a round face that did not look like
it could have been barking out orders for more than sixty years. She was eighty-five
on her last birthday and she’d helped raise Jack and Grady along with Willa Ruth and
her son that had died in Vietnam. When it came to Lucas there was one rule and he
could recite it from the time he was three years old: what Gramps or Jack said was
to be obeyed without question, but what Hazel said was the law.

That was the year that his mother left the ranch in her rearview mirror and never
returned. Hazel stepped into the maternal role and they’d formed a bond made of pure
steel. The world would have come to an end if she hadn’t met him on the porch every
day when he got out of the school bus. Joining the Army Reserve unit had been their
compromise. He’d wanted a few years off the ranch right out of high school and had
talked to a recruiter. Hazel threw a hissy. She’d given one son to the damned war
and she wasn’t giving up another one. So he’d joined the reserves and gone to vet
school.

“So did you talk her into staying on, or did you take one look at that baby and start
backpedaling?” Hazel asked.

“Did you know she had a baby?”

“Hell, no! I only knew what you told me. I was so happy when she come bringing that
baby in that I almost did a dance right there in front of God and everyone. It was
like buying a heifer at the sale and finding out when you got her home that a calf
came with her.”

“Natalie is not a cow,” he protested.

“I didn’t say she was.” Hazel giggled.

“That child can’t be very old, which means she was pregnant most of the time we were
getting to know each other,” he said.

“So?”

“She should have told me.”

Hazel reached through the bars on the side of the bed and touched his arm. “Tell me
about your first impression of her. What did you feel when you first laid eyes on
her for real?”

His forehead drew down in a frown as he told Hazel about the dead coyote, the pups,
and the pink gun. “She saved those three pups by shooting the coyote, I’m sure, but
there she was with a baby in her arms. How much of what we shared was lies and what
was the truth?”

“You aren’t stupid, Lucas. You did intelligence work for the guards.”

“What’s that got to do with Natalie and that baby?”

“Can you tell if one of them prisoners is lying?”

He nodded.

“Do I have to spell it out for you? You wouldn’t have fallen for her if she’d been
a lyin’ bitch, now would you?”

Lucas’s first knee-jerk reaction was to take up for Natalie and tell Hazel not to
call her a bitch or a cow. Then he realized that Hazel had played him into the position
where she wanted him.

“But why didn’t she tell me?”

“She’s got her reasons. Get to know her for real. Damned old computers anyway. They’ll
be the death of the country, I swear they will. Some things is private but them damned
things has opened up the lives of everyone to the whole damned world. Internet dating.
Don’t even get me started on that shit. Man needs to go out in the world and find
a wife, not look at some picture on the Internet and fall in love.”

“I’m not in love. I just wanted to meet her in person,” he protested.

BOOK: The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby
8.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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