The Rancher and the Redhead

For my parents,
Gordon and Lynn Nelson

“C
urly, get your fanny over here pronto! I need you.”

Sam Preston's ominous words echoed in her head as Roni Daniels floored the accelerator of her aging Jeep and bounced over the cattle gap leading into the Lazy Diamond Ranch. Gravel spewed, and she grappled white-knuckled at the steering wheel, trying to focus sleep-blurred eyes on the narrow track. The cool April air of a Texas midnight blew her dark curls into a wild tangle, and she cursed the rancher for jarring her out of a sound sleep, for making her forget her usual hair clip and for hanging up before explaining what disaster prompted his preemptory phone call.

But in this part of Texas, when a neighbor hollered in the middle of the night, a real friend didn't stop to ask questions. A real friend came a-running.
Pronto.

Roni braked to a stop in front of the once-grand Preston ranch house. Her headlights revealed the peeling paint on the weathered siding, the sagging boards on the rambling porches. By contrast, all the outbuildings and barns were shipshape and letter perfect. But then, ever since his wife had left him five years earlier, Sam had cared more about the Brahma cattle he raised than his own comfort.

Vaulting from her seat, Roni raced up the front steps, her overactive artist's imagination conjuring visions of bloody mayhem, severe bodily injury or—at the very least—alien invaders. It took something dire and desperate to make self-sufficient Sam Preston yell for help!

“Sam!” Roni flung open the screen door and skidded into the lamplit front parlor. She'd been coming in and out of the Preston place for most of her thirty-four years, tagging along after Sam and his older brother Kenny since she was “knee-high to a grasshopper,” as old Doc Hazelton liked to say. Now she looked askance at the explosion of boxes and suitcases and unidentifiable paraphernalia that turned the perennially tidy room into a combat zone.

Called out of town a few days ago, Sam had missed their usual Friday night with the other regulars down at Rosie's Café. But the life of a struggling cattleman and aspiring rodeo stock supplier was erratic, and Roni hadn't thought his absence anything unusual.

Apparently she'd been wrong. Very, very wrong.

“Sam, where are—”

A strident mewling from the rear of the house interrupted Roni's call and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Heart thudding, she hurried down the hall to the master bedroom, then cautiously pushed open the door.

She'd expected ectoplasmic demons or chain-saw killers. What she found was even more alarming—Sam Preston, dripping wet and wearing only a towel. Sun-bleached blond hair plastered the brow of his familiar, craggy face, but it was the unexpected glimpse of bare, well-muscled chest and lean horseman's thighs that made Roni suck in a tiny involuntary breath. Then he swung to face her, and the struggling bundle he cradled in his brawny arms made Roni stop breathing altogether.

“Curly! Thank Jehoshaphat. Here!”

Sam thrust the squalling infant into Roni's grasp and made a grab for the towel sliding dangerously south of his navel. Dumbfounded, Roni had no choice but to juggle the kicking, red-faced baby. The child—female by the pink color of her gown—was about a year old and sported the most extraordinary mop of russet-colored curls Roni had ever seen. She was also enraged, and heavy and strong enough to make holding her steady a struggle.

“Oh my God!” Roni automatically propped the baby against her shoulder, too astonished to give more than cursory notice to the dampness that immediately began to seep through her T-shirt. Startled by a new voice, the child broke off her caterwauling, unscrewed her rosebud face and looked solemnly up at Roni...with Sam's very own bluebonnet eyes.

Shock slammed into the center of Roni's chest, a piercing pain that was part dismay, part hurt mortification. How could he have kept something like this from her, from his very best friend in the world?

“Turn your back, Curly, so I can get on my skivvies.” As Roni automatically looked away, Sam rummaged in an old pine dresser for underwear, muttering, “Hellfire and damnation! All I wanted was a shower. After a two-hundred-mile drive with a screaming young'un was that too much to ask?”

Suddenly unsure of this new stranger, the little girl's mouth quivered. Latching plump baby fingers into Roni's curls, she buried her face in the disheveled mass and renewed her howls. Awkwardly, Roni patted the infant's back while a lump of empathy thickened her throat. She felt as adrift and isolated and scared as the baby, but she had to know one thing.

“Is she yours?”

The rustle of denim and the rasp of a zipper accompanied Sam's deep voice. “Thought I could handle one night on my own. How the hell was I supposed to know—”

“Sam!” Pivoting on her boot heel, Roni held the child protectively against her heart and glared at him. “Is she yours?”

“What?” The sharpness of her voice froze him in the process of snapping his jeans, and he frowned, puzzled. Then his blue eyes widened. “Hell, no! I mean, well—yes, I guess you could say that.”

“Make up your mind!” The baby's wails fired Roni's indignation. “I never thought you were the kind of man to cat around with no thought to the consequences, Sam Preston. Honestly, how could you be so irresponsible?”

A deep flush crept up beneath Sam's tan, starting at his bronzed nipples and racing all the way to his earlobes. He snapped his jeans, his square jaw working. “Don't you go flying off the handle at me, Veronica Jean! She's not mine.”

Roni's hands tightened reflexively around the sobbing baby as if to defend her against his callous repudiation. “She has your eyes,” she accused hotly. “And you just said—”

“My cousin Roy from Abilene—the one who was killed last year on the oil rig—Jessie's his daughter.”

An instantaneous spurt of disgraceful relief filled Roni, quickly masked by total confusion. “Then what, why—?”

“Jessie's mother, Alicia, had a toxic reaction to some medication last week. She went into shock, and there was nothing they could do.”

Roni stared at him in blank horror, the baby's cries filling her ears. “She...she's dead?”

At his curt nod, Roni sat down heavily on the side of the unmade king-size bed. Sympathy welled within her, and she instinctively rocked her body in time with little Jessie's hiccuping breaths. “Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry!”

His expression softened into lines of weary sadness, and he cupped his large palm over the infant's soft burgundy-red curls in an attitude of tender protectiveness. “I made the arrangements. The funeral was Saturday. The neighbors were keeping Jessie, but there's no other family except me, so I...well, I'm taking her.”

“Oh, Sam!”

His wide mouth tightened with belligerence. “What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, Sam, you lunkhead! You misunderstand me.” Roni caught his hand. “Of course you have to take her. I wouldn't have expected less.”

He hesitated, then sat down beside Roni and gave her fingers a grateful squeeze. “You don't think I'm addled?”

“Hardly. We've been friends since before I could walk, and if there's one thing I know, it's that Sam Preston can be counted on to do the right thing.”

“My judgment might be a bit cloudy right now.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, lines of fatigue making him look much older than his thirty-seven years. For the first time Roni saw how tired he really was. “It's been a hell of a week.”

“I can imagine.” Roni stroked Jessie's damp forehead, crooning. “Poor little thing. Poor Jessie. And poor Sam.”

“I'm okay.”

“Remember who you're talking to, buckaroo?” Roni's coffee-brown eyes were gentle. “You may come across tough as old rawhide to the rest of the world, but I know your heart is made of molasses taffy. So you want to be a father, do you?”

His mouth twisted. “Seems I got no choice. But I swear I had no idea you had to be Dr. Spock, Mother Teresa and an octopus all rolled together to take care of one little baby girl! And if I don't get out there first thing in the morning and help Angel load those bulls for the Ferguson shipment, the Lazy Diamond is really going to be up the creek.”

Roni nodded, fully aware that the life on a working ranch never ceased. Angel Morales, Sam's cow boss, ran the day-to-day care of the herds. Angel gave the cowboys who lived in the handful of cottages and trailer homes scattered around the Lazy Diamond their daily riding orders while his wife, Maria, cooked for the hands, but it was Sam who had to meet the demands of owner, general manager and ranch foreman every day.

Sam ran a hand through his damp hair and turned pleading eyes to Roni. “I'm telling you, Curly, I'm frazzled. You gotta help me!”

“Me? In case you forgot, I don't know any more about babies than you do.”

Roni couldn't prevent a grimace at the memory of her on-again, off-again relationship with filmmaker Jackson Dial. It had been an eight-year, coast-to-coast stint in self-inflicted misery, which she'd finally put to an end two years earlier when she'd returned to her little hometown of Flat Fork to lick her wounds and pursue her career as a free-lance illustrator. Thanks to Jackson's no-commitment policy, she was single, childless and well on her way to becoming an old maid. Although Sam had listened to her cry in her beer about all of that on innumerable occasions, apparently desperation had made him forget she was as limited in the parental experience department as he was.

“Come on, Curly,” Sam begged. “You've got to know something—you're a woman!”

Roni snorted. “Glad you finally noticed.”

“Aw, hell, you know what I mean.” Sam shoved fingers through his hair again and scrubbed a palm down his beard-stubbled face.

“I know you're a chauvinist at heart.” Roni couldn't hide a wry smile at his obvious distress. Then she took pity on him. “Well, to start with, she's soaking wet.”

“What—again?”

Roni shifted the baby, now snubbing sibilantly, and plucked at her own sodden shirt. “And she's done a fair job of drenching me, too.”

“Damn,” he groaned, reaching for the child. “I'm sorry, Curly.”

“Take it easy, cowboy. No use both of us getting wet. Find me a diaper and a dry shirt or something for her, will you?”

Nodding, Sam reached for a bulging diaper bag decorated with yellow ducks while Roni laid Jessie on the bed. Worn-out from crying, too tired to even crawl, the baby flailed halfheartedly, her fingers still tangled in Roni's whiskey-colored locks.

But when Roni attempted to detach Jessie's hold, the child would have none of it, whimpering pitifully. It occurred to Roni that Jessie's mother must have had long hair, and the baby was finding some comfort in the familiar scent and texture. Her heart melted.

“All right, sweetie, you can hold on.” Ignoring the discomfort of pulled hair, Roni began stripping off the soaked gown and diaper, still talking softly. “Aunt Roni's going to fix you up.”

“Here.” Sam tossed a clean sleeper on the bed and thrust a disposable diaper at her. “Maybe you can figure out how to keep the damn thing on.”

“I've changed Krystal's youngest a time or two,” she admitted. Krystal Harrison was another longtime friend from high school. She and her husband, Bud, and their three little boys had welcomed Roni back to Flat Fork with open arms.

“I knew you'd been holding out on me,” Sam muttered. He watched uncertainly as Roni smoothed the diaper's adhesive tabs into place. “Think she's hungry again?”

“Tired mostly, but a bottle of something might help soothe her.”

Sam nodded again. “Okay. Be right back.”

By the time Roni pulled the dry sleeper onto Jessie's sturdy little body, Sam had returned with a plastic baby bottle.

“It's juice. Apple, I think. Mrs. Newton, the lady who was keeping Jessie, fixed a bunch of bottles and stuff to tide me over.”

“That was thoughtful of her.”

“Yeah. She and her husband have five kids of their own. It tore them up about Alicia, and they're real attached to Jessie. Told me they'd keep her as long as I needed, but they aren't well-off, and I couldn't let Jessie be a burden on them. Besides, I felt it was important to get her settled here as soon as possible.”

Seating herself in an old platform rocker whose threadbare upholstery had seen better days, Roni offered the baby the juice. Jessie latched on to the nipple with a sigh, and her fine lashes drifted down against her plump cheeks, one hand still tightly clutching Roni's hair. Roni set the rocker in motion, then looked up at the tall man watching her.

“Seriously, Sam, what do you mean to do? Taking on a baby is a pretty tall order for a bachelor.”

Jamming his hands into his front pockets, he bowed his head and stared at the floor a long moment. Roni saw his Adam's apple bob revealingly. “When Roy died, I promised Alicia I'd always look out for her and the baby. I promised.”

At that simple, yet all-encompassing and life-changing statement, Roni's heart turned over with both admiration and compassion. Simultaneously, a part of her couldn't help but notice his casual, all-male stance. The way his lean hip cocked, stretching the denim of his jeans provocatively, might have made a more susceptible female's libido jump into high gear. The thing about Sam was that he truly didn't understand how potent he could be to the opposite sex. It was one of his more endearing qualities.

He looked up. “I'll hire a housekeeper, I guess, though where I'll get the extra money right now I don't know. Maybe if I can beat Travis King out of that Wichita Rodeo contract...”

He trailed off at the mention of his rival. There was bad blood between them. Though Sam never spoke of it, Roni knew it was due to King's involvement in the auto accident that had taken Sam's brother's life more than a decade earlier. Now he shook his head, as if to clear it of painful memories, continuing with the subject at hand.