The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (5 page)

Willa Ruth poked her head in the door. “Well, look who is here to see us off this
morning. Doctor just released Momma and by the time the nurses get the paperwork all
done, the plane will be here to take us home.”

“You’ll be ready to bring her back in two days. A hurt hip didn’t take a bit of the
cantankerous out of her.” He chuckled.

Hazel narrowed her eyes at him. “Natalie leaves the ranch and I won’t come back, not
even for Christmas, and me and you only missed one Christmas together in your life.
And that was because you wouldn’t listen to me. I told you not to join that shit.”

“She hasn’t changed a bit, has she?” Lucas teased.

“And I ain’t plannin’ on changing. You remember the rule.” Hazel raised a hand and
pointed at him.

“What Hazel says is the law,” he said.

“That’s right! Did you bring everything Willa Ruth told you to put in my suitcase?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said.

“Okay, then you get on out of here and drive slow on the way home. The roads are slick.”

Lucas shook the legs of his jeans down over his boots when he stood up. He kissed
Hazel on the forehead once more and hugged Willa Ruth. When he reached the door, he
looked over his shoulder and said, “See you around, crocodile.”

Hazel smiled. “Later, gator.”

They’d never said good-bye in their lives. Not his first day of school when she put
him on the bus and waved from the porch. Not when he left to go to college or when
he went to Kuwait.

Hazel hated good-byes.

Besides, this wasn’t good-bye. It was just until Christmas. Hazel wouldn’t be away
from the ranch at the holidays. Lucas just had to be patient.

The chickens had enough sense in their pea-sized brains to stay inside the coop and
not venture out into the sleet and cold wind. But somehow the eggs wouldn’t grow legs
and walk up to the back door, and Natalie needed an even dozen to make a pound cake
for dinner. There were four in the egg basket inside the refrigerator. She could make
a chocolate sheet cake instead, but Lucas liked almond cream cheese pound cake.

She shouldn’t want to make his favorite food after the way he’d acted, but Hazel had
called earlier that morning and told her exactly what she was going to cook for dinner
the first day he was home. Roast, cooked long and slow in the oven, not the Crock-Pot.
Noodles made in the beef broth instead of potatoes. Lima beans, which were in the
freezer in the utility room. Hot yeast bread and almond cream cheese pound cake for
dessert. She could also thaw out a container of frozen peaches to serve with it.

“And how is he adjusting now that he’s had time to sleep on the idea of a baby in
the house?” Hazel asked.

“Slowly,” Natalie had answered.

She put on her mustard-colored canvas work coat and bundled Joshua up in a thick bunting
with a snug-fitting hood. He gave her a big toothless grin when she slipped him into
the sling that had been his home-away-from-home since the day he was born.

“You like going outside, don’t you? Rain, sleet, hail, or boiling hot sunshine, a
rancher has to take care of business, right, son?”

He cooed and wiggled deeper into the folds of the sling.

She picked up a galvanized milk bucket from the back porch, tossed the sleet pebbles
out of it onto the ground, and started toward the hen house. Henry had taken her and
Joshua on a very short walking tour of the backyard, pointing out the hen house, the
dog pens, and the nearest barn after Jack left to follow the ambulance to the hospital.
It wasn’t set up so very different than the farm she’d grown up on south of Silverton.
There were more trees in north central Texas and fewer crops and more Black Angus
cattle, but ranchin’ was pretty much the same no matter where it was located.

“I’ll hurry so you don’t turn into a Popsicle,” she told Joshua.

The bitter north wind stung her face, and her boots made a crunching sound with each
step. The trees were covered in a thick layer of ice, and there wasn’t a single peep
coming from the chicken house. Yes, sir, she should have made the sheet cake and not
taken her baby boy out in the horrible weather. If he came down with a cold, she was
going to blame Hazel.

The door squeaked in protest when she opened it and a dozen beady little eyes looked
up to see who the intruder was. Thank God they hadn’t all frozen to death. Two old
speckled hens tucked their heads back under their wings when they realized it was
a human and not a coyote.

She removed a leather glove and tucked it up under her arm. The first hen didn’t even
cluck when she shoved her hand under the warm feathers and found two eggs. The second
one didn’t appreciate a cold hand and let out a high-pitched squeak.

“Sorry, old girl, but thank you for the egg.” Natalie giggled.

She had thirteen eggs in the bucket when she left the hen house and hurried across
the yard. She was more than halfway back to the house when Lucas rounded the end of
the house, stopped in his tracks, and crossed his arms over his chest. She stopped
just as fast and almost dropped the bucket with the eggs inside.

“You scared the bejesus out of me,” she snapped.

“Well, you damn sure didn’t do anything for my blood pressure either,” he shot right
back.

He’d been sexy as hell as a soldier, but as a cowboy—Lord, women would stand in line
just to get to gawk at him for five minutes. They’d pay good money for the privilege
of touching the merchandise. Hell, she could probably get a thousand dollars a night
from any blue-blooded woman if she could shuck her clothes and crawl into bed with
him.

***

Lucas wanted to take another step toward her, but his feet were glued to the ground
just as surely as if every drop of sleet was coated in superglue. He opened his mouth
to say something but then clamped it shut.

He could see eggs in the galvanized bucket, but what was inside that plaid thing around
her neck? Surely to God she didn’t carry around a baby in that thing. And why in the
hell would she go gather eggs with a pink pistol strapped to one of her long, long
legs?

“What?” she asked without breaking stride.

“Why would you take a pistol to the hen house?”

“Varmints. Things like coyotes or snakes or rats the size of house cats. I don’t take
too kindly to any of those things messin’ around the hen house.”

He pointed to the sling. “What is that thing?”

“It’s a baby. He is not a thing. He’s a tiny human being. His name is Joshua and he’s
two months old. And before you ask, there are thirteen eggs in the basket, the hens
are all doing well, and there is a roast in the oven for dinner.”

She breezed past him, leaving him still stuck to the ground.

Warm air filled with the aroma of food in the oven, bread rising on the counter, and
a crackling blaze in the fireplace met him when he opened the back door. He stomped
the sleet from his boots, hung his hat and coat on hooks, and scanned the kitchen.
The bucket of eggs was on the counter, but Natalie had disappeared. He poured a mug
of coffee and held it in his hands to warm them.

He had just taken the first sip when she was back in the kitchen. She wore a sweatshirt
with Santa Claus riding a bull on the front, faded jeans, socks but no shoes or boots,
and her hair was braided in two ropes that hung to her shoulders.

He had to swallow fast to keep from spewing coffee all over the place. The hot liquid
burned all the way from throat to stomach, but it wasn’t steaming coffee that set
him on fire. It was the sexual attraction he’d had for Natalie from the first time
he’d laid eyes on her smiling face on the computer screen.

She’d put that ridiculous sling away and now the baby was in a conventional baby carrier.
He looked cute in a green sweat suit with a basketball hoop on the front of the shirt.
If he grew up to be as tall as his momma, he would probably make a good basketball
player. With her coaching savvy, he might even go on to play some college ball.

“I appreciate you sticking around until Hazel gets settled in Memphis. Once she’s
there she won’t know if you are here or not,” he said.

“You got more nerve than I’ve got if you are plannin’ to lie to Hazel. I told her
that I’d stay until Christmas. You offered me a job and I set a price. You can’t fire
me because if you do, I’m calling her.” She set the bucket on the kitchen table and
talked to the baby. “There you go. You practice that new smile and I’ll get the pound
cake in the oven.” She touched Joshua’s cheek and he graced her with his most brilliant
grin yet.

“He’s a good-lookin’ kid. Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant and seeing someone
else?” Lucas asked.

“I couldn’t. I wasn’t seeing anyone else,” she stammered.

He sat down in a kitchen chair and looked at the baby. He looked vaguely familiar,
but he couldn’t put a finger on why. “You want to explain that?”

Natalie busied herself at the kitchen bar, measuring flour and then sugar, and putting
ingredients into Hazel’s big crock mixing bowl. He thought she didn’t hear him and
had his mouth open to ask again when she started to talk.

“Drew and I were best friends before we could even remember. His daddy worked for
my father on the ranch. They lived in one of the trailers out at the back of the property
that Daddy brought in for hired help families. He was the baby and the only son after
four daughters. They were all grown and married and had kids of their own when Drew
was born. Looking back, I think his mother must have been over forty that year that
he was born. I was the oldest with three little brothers. He was used to being bossed
around with all those older sisters and his mom and dad and I was used to bossing.”
She added baking powder to the stuff in the bowl and then brought out a sifter. It
made a scratchy noise as she ran all the dry ingredients through it several times,
from one bowl to the other.

“I didn’t ask for your life story. I asked why you didn’t tell me you were sleeping
with someone while we were talking online.” Lucas stuck his finger in the palm of
Joshua’s hand and the baby grasped it tightly.

“That’s what I’m telling you right now if you’ll be patient.”

“You are bossy, aren’t you? Drew said that you were a firecracker, but I didn’t see
that side of you this past year.”

“Do you want to hear this story or not? And believe me, Drew knew me better than anyone
in this world ever did or ever will. If he said I was a firecracker, he was paying
me a compliment. I’m more like an overloaded stick of dynamite.”

Lucas pulled his finger away from Joshua when the baby tried to put it in his mouth.
“Go on.”

“Drew and I made a vow in junior high school that we would never ever date. We were
best friends and we didn’t want to ruin that.”

Lucas nodded. “He told us that when we teased him about being stupid for not dating
you.”

She stopped sifting and their gaze met in the middle of the kitchen. “You did?”

“Sure we did. Damn, Natalie! You looked like a million bucks on that computer and
he declared that you were just his best friend. We wondered for a while there if he
was straight.”

Her laughter didn’t belong to a full-grown woman but a little girl and sounded so
innocent that he jerked his head around to see if there was another child in the kitchen.

“Why is that so funny?”

“Drew never had a bit of problem finding a woman. Another day, you remind me to tell
you the story of the quilt he carried in the trunk of his car,” she said.

“We found that out pretty quick. They flocked to him like starved women lookin’ at
an all-you-can-eat buffet. Tell me about the quilt now,” Lucas said.

She set the sifter aside and picked up the mixer. “Not today. I’ve got another story
to tell you right now. I cried my eyes out the first time he was deployed. It wasn’t
so rough the second time because we talked every night no matter where he was. At
least it was night in my world. In Drew’s he was just waking up. The third time we
had a party and…”

He waited.

And waited some more.

“Well? You had a party and what?” he asked.

“We drank too much. Way, way too much. The drunker we got, the crazier we got. I made
him promise that he’d come home again just like he had the past two times he’d been
deployed. He made me promise that I wouldn’t get married while he was gone.”

“Why?”

“Because Drew was my person. The one I went to for advice on relationships and who
told me I was bitchy when I was and who told me when a man was a bastard and I shouldn’t
be dating him.”

“And you listened to him?”

“Most of the time. When I didn’t and my relationships went sour, he crowed around
like a rooster and told me ‘I told you so’ until I wanted to use that pistol in my
room and shoot him.”

“But you did get into a relationship without him knowing, didn’t you? And that’s why…”

Natalie held up both palms. “Let me finish. We were throwing back tequila shots and
then the clock struck two in the morning and we had to leave because the bar was shutting
down. He drove me home and I kissed him good-bye. Remember I said that we were very
drunk. Well, he kissed back and it wasn’t like a best friend kiss. And the next morning
we woke up in my bed. We’d broken our vow and we were both miserable. Hangovers. Headaches.
And I felt like I’d just slept with my brother, which was nauseating as hell. I loved
Drew but I damn sure did not intend to have sex with him. He apologized a dozen times,
got dressed, and had barely driven away when Momma knocked on my door to tell me to
get up for church.”

“Bet that was the last place you wanted to be that morning,” Lucas said.

“They sang louder than they’d ever sang before and every coin that dropped into that
silver offering plate sounded like a rock band in my head,” she said.

Lucas looked back at Joshua. It was the cleft in the chin that looked so much like
Drew.

“Did he know?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know until two months after his funeral. Thought my
body was messed up from all the stress of losing him.”

“You could have told me.”

“I couldn’t even tell my mother. I was past six months pregnant when she figured it
out on her own. When the news hit the gossip queens in Silverton, it was awful. How
could I have ever let myself get mixed up with that horrible bad boy? My mother should
have put a stop to our friendship years before, and so forth and so on. I held my
head up, but even going to the café was a chore. Thank goodness school was out for
the summer or they’d have probably fired me on the spot.”

“Drew was a good man and a great soldier. They shouldn’t have held grudges against
him. He was over there protecting their right to gossip,” Lucas said.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you, but I’m not sorry that I have Joshua. A little
piece of my best friend lives on in him. Now your turn… what secrets did you keep
from me?”

Lucas brushed imaginary dirt from the legs of his jeans. “What makes you think I have
any secrets? I told you all about Hazel raising me after my mother left, my dad and
Grady being cousins, and Gramps.”

“Is that a picture of your dad and mother on the dresser in the room where I’m staying?”

He nodded. “Yes, it is. The only one ever taken, probably. I’ve never seen any other
ones. Granny died when Daddy was a little boy. Hazel was already keeping house and
working on the ranch, so she finished helping Gramps raise him. Dad waited until he
was almost thirty to get married, but age doesn’t seem to matter much. He married
my mother and she hated country life so bad that when I was two she left it and me
both, so Hazel raised another kid for the ranch. Our luck ain’t too good when it comes
to women in this family.”