Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) (4 page)

Her car was parked at the edge of the courtyard because she’d been in too much of a hurry to pull around to the garages, which were in a separate building just off the south corner of the house.

She considered going out now and moving her car, but just as she was about to, she spotted Ash’s black sedan turning onto the road.

Lord, how she hated the fact that that was all it took to kick her heart into double time. Much as she wanted to let go of that curtain rather than watch him coming, she was frozen to the spot.

His windows were tinted, so she couldn’t see him until he got out of his car.

And then all she could think was that she wished he’d have stayed away.

The man was striking. All the dignity of his proudest ancestors was there in his straight, broad shoulders. And though he was wearing a pale yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and a pair of khaki slacks, she knew well what was inside of his clothing—a hard, muscular body that could easily have gone into battle covered with not much more than war paint.

But at that moment there was nothing about him that wasn’t the modern man. Even his long black hair tied at his nape could have served a rock singer. He always wore it that way, freeing it only for ceremonial rituals, and he was easily man enough not to be feminized by it even slightly. The faint dusting of premature gray at his temples didn’t hurt anything, either. In fact it contributed a dash of maturity that was all the more enticing.

As Beth watched, he went around to the trunk of his car and opened it. But she didn’t pay much attention to the small orange crate he took from it. She was more intent in relearning his profile. She’d never seen a man with bones as beautiful—the broad, flat forehead that formed a sharp ridge for bushy eyebrows; the high cheekbones and the thin, almost hawkish nose; the razor-edged jawline. All encased in that tawny skin that made him look healthy and robust even on the rare occasions when he wasn’t.

Holding the orange crate against his hip, he slammed the trunk lid closed and took long, purposeful strides toward the house.

That managed to unfreeze Beth in a hurry. She let go of the curtain and nearly jumped back from the window so as not to be caught spying.

But she could hear his every step on the courtyard tiles and each one seemed to fall on a separate beat of her heart.

Remember you’re divorced. And for good reasons. That’s how you wanted it. That’s how he wanted it....

When he rang the doorbell, it seemed to echo all around her. Fleetingly she considered not opening it, sparing herself the effect of having him at close range. Why couldn’t he have just left well enough alone?

But Shag Heller’s daughter couldn’t be a coward, at least not more than she’d already been, and when the bell rang a second time she finally opened the right half of the door.

That was when he took off his sunglasses and she had to look up into the face that his grandfather couldn’t have sculpted to more rawboned perfection. Eyes the color of coal homed in on her and she saw a muscle along the side of his powerful neck flex and unflex, warning her that he was not happy. To say the least.

“Hello, Ash,” she greeted, as if letting him know from the get-go that she would give no quarter, even though just the initial sight of him was already awakening things inside of her that she didn’t want awakened.

He didn’t respond. He merely stood there, glaring at her.

She pretended not to notice, stepped aside and said, “Come on in.”

He folded the temples of his sunglasses by pushing them against his chest. Then he slipped them into the breast pocket of his shirt. She had a little trouble removing her gaze from that wide expanse when he’d finished.

He swung the orange crate around in front of him, and that distracted her. But appreciating the hard muscles in his forearms, and his thick wrists and big, capable hands, didn’t improve what was already thrumming in the pit of her stomach.

She forced her focus in the direction of the orange crate. “What’s all that?”

“Things you left behind,” he said, breaking the silence with a cutting tone in his deep voice. “You forgot some clothes at the cleaners and a few things that were in the extra closet.”

But some of what she could see didn’t qualify for either of those categories. They were things she’d purposely omitted from her suitcase.

She waggled a finger in that direction. “Those on top are yours. Even though I wore them, I sort of thought divorce reverted them back to you.”

“I considered them yours.”

Did that mean that once she’d used them, they were contaminated and he didn’t want them back? Or that he still wanted her to have them?

She didn’t know. And was afraid to find out. So she just said, “You can set the crate in the corner.”

While he did, she closed the door and headed for the living room, sitting on one of three couches that formed a U around the big-screen TV, hoping she looked nonchalant.

Her former husband followed her, but he stayed standing, facing her from behind the opposite sofa, watching her as if it were dangerous to take those dark, penetrating eyes off her.

He folded his arms over his chest. “Talk to me,” he ordered.

“I said everything in the letter.”

“Not everything. You failed to tell me how it is that it took five months for you to let me know you’re pregnant.”

“Oh, don’t get on your high horse about that. I didn’t know it myself until a few weeks ago.”

“How is that possible?” he challenged. “If you’re five months gone, you were pregnant even before you filed for divorce.”

“What are you thinking? That I knew and kept it to myself until after the divorce was final?”

His silence and one raised eyebrow answered her.

“Well, that’s not how it was. I was so harried with tax season, and there was all the tension of the divorce, and you know I was never...regular...that I could skip a month or two and not have it mean anything...”

Somehow discussing the very personal issues of this subject suddenly seemed terribly awkward. She knew it was crazy. This was a man she’d shared the most intimate details of her body and its functions with for five years. But she was acutely aware of the fact that he wasn’t her husband anymore. They were just two separate people now.

Still, there was no way around it.

She cleared her throat and forged on. “You also know we were using birth control. The fact that it might have failed just didn’t occur to me until I really sat down and figured out exactly how long it had been since...I’d had a cycle. I finally went to see Cele and she ran a pregnancy test.”

“Which was when?”

“Three weeks ago. I tried to see you. I went to your office, but Miss Lightfeather couldn’t work me into your schedule.” She bit off the cutting edge in her own voice. “Then I tried calling, but she said you’d been busier than usual and had a lot on your mind, so she hadn’t relayed my messages. Your grandfather was out of town, I never seemed to be able to catch you at his house, and then Miss Lightfeather said you’d been called away, too. I was all packed by then, so—” Her voice had risen and the words tumbled out faster and faster, and Beth took a breath to slow it all down and retrieve the dignity she felt was slipping. “So I came home. I called a few more times and then just wrote,” she finished flatly.

“Miss Lightfeather and I are going to have a serious chat.”

“She’s just keeping your priorities in order.”

He ignored that comment. “Are you all right? Is the pregnancy normal? Healthy?”

“Everything is just fine. There was honestly no need for you to come here. I think I have the whole thing under control.”

But even she heard the hedging in that. To hide it, she expounded. “You know that financially I’m in good shape. Even though Shag’s will gave a quarter share to his lady friend—or whoever Ally Brooks is—what’s left for Linc, Jackson and me to split is substantial. I’ll be doing the accounting and investments for the three of us now, but that’ll be my only job, so I can work right here and be a full-time mother. I know how you felt about us having kids of our own and this doesn’t have to change anything for you. I’m willing to have and raise the baby on my own, and you don’t even have to acknowledge it.”

“As if I’d be happy to hear that!” he shouted.

It made her sit up a little straighter, a little stiffer.

“You know, sometimes you take being self-sufficient too damn far,” he said through clenched teeth.

“It isn’t a matter of being self-sufficient. It’s just that I know this isn’t what you’d planned, and I want to make it clear that it doesn’t have to interfere—”

“No matter what I wanted or planned, it doesn’t mean I don’t want this baby now that it’s on the way. Or that I’ll let you treat me like a nameless, faceless sperm donor whose part in this is finished.”

“I thought you’d be happy to be absolved of—”

“Well, you were wrong!”

She didn’t like being yelled at and she suddenly found herself out of her seat, around the back of her own sofa, faced off against him. “Don’t scream at me.”

“Screaming at you is the least of what I’d like to do,” he shouted. “You think I don’t know that you want me to just disappear? That you’d like to believe you don’t need me and you sure as hell don’t want me? But this is one thing you’re not doing on your own, damn it. This is my baby as much as it’s yours.”

“I never said it wasn’t. I’m the one who repeatedly ran up against the brick wall of your schedule trying to let you know it
is
your baby, remember?”

“And that’s as far as you figured to let it go? Tell me and then write me off while you do everything yourself—Superwoman?”

“What exactly is it that you think you can do? Carry this baby for the next four months? Give birth to it?”

That stopped him cold. For a time he merely stood there, his dark eyes boring into her, and Beth suffered a terrible warring between recognizing the pure magnificence of him and wanting him out of her life before that recognition could have too much effect on her.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he admitted. “What I do know is that for the first time this isn’t just your business or responsibility, or just my business or responsibility. It’s ours. And we’re going to work it out together.”

“There’s nothing to work out. I’m going to have the baby, and after it’s born if you want visitation—”

“You are not going to do that to me,” he said, once more through clenched teeth, stabbing one long index finger her way. “You are not going to exclude me from this.”

“What do you propose, then?” she rephrased her earlier question, feeling her own temper rise at the increasing possibility that he wouldn’t just go away and leave her alone, that he wouldn’t be satisfied with what she had in mind to keep her distance from him.

“All I know is that I’m going to be a part of this. From this minute on, any way I can. We made this baby together, we’re going to have it together, and one way or another, we’re going to at least collaborate to raise it together.”

“Collaborate,” she repeated. “Let me guess, you’re going to have Miss Lightfeather fax me instructions on breast feeding.”

His eyes narrowed at her and though it didn’t seem possible, they grew even darker. “For now I’m not leaving Elk Creek. I’ll take today to do what I need to to free up some time and then I’m dogging your every step until you and I have hashed through this and I’m satisfied with what my place in this baby’s life will be.”

Beth’s initial reaction was to argue. She didn’t want him within a hundred miles of her, let alone
dogging
her every step. It was too easy for old feelings to be rekindled, for her to lose sight of why they’d divorced, and fall under the spell of the attraction that had put them together to begin with.

But then she realized she was being foolish.

He wouldn’t stick around long, no matter what he said. For the entire time she’d known him, something had been coming up to take him away. She had only to wait him out. Before she knew it, there would be a meeting he couldn’t reschedule or a problem he couldn’t ignore, and he’d be gone.

“Suit yourself,” she said with complete confidence.

He continued to study her, as if he were suspicious of her agreement. But after a moment he merely said, “I’ll be back. And don’t even think about running out like you did last night, because I’ll find you if it takes every dime I have.”

“It won’t be me who leaves,” she said caustically and somewhat under her breath.

If he heard it, he chose not to address it. Instead, after another moment of piercing her with his heated glare, he turned and walked out the way he’d come in.

Beth hated that her gaze followed along, slipping down the expanse of his shoulders to the sharp narrowing of his waist, feasting on the sight of a derriere to die for. But follow along it did.

Only when he went through the front door and shut it behind him did she close her eyes and set her teeth together in determination.

He had a right to the baby and she wouldn’t deny him that right.

But she’d be damned if she’d let him get to her. She’d ignore him. She’d go on about her business as if he weren’t around. She’d find a way to keep herself removed from him, emotionally if not logistically.

And if, deep down, there was a tiny flicker of relief, that she might not be as alone in this as she’d thought?

She didn’t want to admit it.

Not even to herself.

A
s Ash showered and dressed early the next morning, he told himself to get a grip. Being mad at Beth didn’t serve any purpose, and arguing with her, shouting at her, upsetting her, couldn’t be good for the baby.

It was just that he was so damn frustrated!

He knew her, knew she’d go to any lengths to do this alone. Hadn’t she sat there smugly and challenged him to tell her just what he thought he could do to be a part of things right now?

Of course he hadn’t an answer. Pregnancy was a woman’s domain. But he knew for certain that if he didn’t make a stand now, if he didn’t get involved in whatever way he could, then he’d never be a part of the baby’s life once it was born, either.

But how long would it take to make his stand, to be truly involved? he asked himself. The baby wouldn’t be born for four months. And there was no way he could put everything on hold with the foundation for that long.

Still, he could manage it for a little while. At least until he felt he’d established with Beth that he’d accept nothing short of his full role as father to this child.

And even then, when he went back to the reservation, he’d still have to find some way to keep in close contact with her, because he wanted to be in on this whole thing. It aggravated him that he’d already missed five months.

Although that aggravation couldn’t have surprised him more.

Beth was right. He hadn’t wanted them to have kids of their own. The days when there were a surplus of babies in the world to adopt might be all in the past, but there were still those who were hard to find homes for—babies born with handicaps, with fetal alcohol syndrome or drug addictions. The Native American community had many such children, who often had to be placed with families outside the culture.

Ash was among those who didn’t like to see that happen, both because he believed Indian children should be raised knowing their heritage, and because recent programs attempting to reclaim children already outside that circle struck him as painful business for everyone involved. So he’d decided that when the time came for him to become a parent he wanted to do what he could to keep at least a few of those kids from being adopted out to non-Indian parents in the first place.

But that didn’t mean he was going to turn his back on his own child. Beth was out of her mind to think he might. It was more than just doing the right thing.

This was
his child.

There was something incredible about that. About the fact that he’d created a human being. Before, when he’d made his decision to build his family through adoption, he hadn’t considered it any big deal to have a child of his own.

But he’d been wrong. It was a very big deal.

He was bowled over by the pure wonder of it. This child was
his....

Would it look like him? Would it look like Beth? Would it have his paternal grandfather’s artistic talent and give the world more that was beautiful and meaningful? Would it have his maternal grandfather’s wisdom and kindness and irrepressible sense of humor?

It was just so damned amazing.

And he hated this feeling he had of being on the outside looking in.

There was no doubt about it, he was determined to be a force in this child’s life. A presence as strong as Beth’s. Even though he wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to do that when he was divorced from the baby’s mother and living on the other side of the state.

But he’d find a way, he vowed to himself. He would definitely find a way.

“Not through anger and confrontations like yesterday’s, you won’t,” he told himself.

He knew he needed to forget that he’d already lost five months of this pregnancy. He needed to forget that Beth was doing her usual best to make him incidental. He needed to stop thinking that maybe if she had paid enough attention to what was happening in her own body and realized before the divorce was final that they were going to have a child, they might not have gone through with it in the first place....

But regrets about the divorce were useless. Hadn’t he been telling himself that since the day it was final?

He’d be, more or less, a single father. And he’d just have to make every precious moment with his child count.

And yet, there was something very lonely about that idea. So lonely it was like a fist in his gut.

The picture his mind should have been conjuring up was of Beth and him standing together over the crib. Or of both of them watching the baby splashing in the tub. Or of their taking turns rocking it or walking the floors with it through the night...

“Well, that’s not how it is. Or how it’s going to be, so get over it,” he ordered himself, trying to shake off the anger and those regrets he’d been fighting.

It wasn’t easy, though. Nobody could get to him the way Beth could.

Good and bad.

And it didn’t help that some of the good was still there.

Even in the midst of his rage at her yesterday, he’d still been drawn to her.

He’d watched her walk into the living room ahead of him and his hand had itched to reach out and touch her.

He’d remained standing behind the couch, hoping that distance and the barrier would keep things in perspective for him, when his damn brain had suddenly kicked in with images of what she looked like after they’d made love—all soft and warm and heavy lidded; of what she tasted like when he kissed her naked shoulder and found her slightly salty from the mingling of his sweat and hers from the heat of the moments just before; of what it felt like to be inside of her, to have her hold on tight to him, wrap her legs around him, cry out his name...

How the hell could he be so mad at her and hungry for her at the same time?

But he had been.

He was.

Wanting her didn’t change anything, though, and he knew he had to keep himself focused on the future, not on the past.

The baby was all he needed to think about. And carving out his place with it.

He had no business at all thinking about his wife.

His ex-wife.

And that distinction was something he’d better not forget.

* * *

Beth had a lot planned for that day, but she was having a hard time getting herself going. She’d made it as far as into her bathrobe and downstairs to fix herself a cup of tea, but that was it. Here it was, late in the morning, and she was back in bed, still sitting propped on her pillows, staring into space.

Well, not exactly into space.

She was staring at that orange crate Ash had left the day before. She’d carted it upstairs after he’d gone and set it on the floor in the corner.

She might have just put the whole crate in the trash except that she knew the things she’d forgotten at the dry cleaners were some of her best. The trouble was, to get to them, she had to go through those items that really belonged to Ash.

Why hadn’t he just kept them? Or thrown them out, if he hadn’t wanted them back? Surely leaving them behind had made it clear she didn’t want them.

Except that she sort of did.

It was just the memories that went with them that she didn’t want.

But neither the crate nor the memories were going away, and she’d been sitting there much too long willing them to. She knew she was being silly. And silliness was another of those things that Shag would never have allowed in this house.

“Just pull out the stuff that’s yours and then put the crate and the rest of it in the trash out back,” she told herself as if there were nothing to it.

Pretending that that was the truth, she got out of bed, crossed the room, knelt down beside the offending box in the corner and quickly took the four top items off, setting them aside without more than a cursory glance at them.

“See? You were making a mountain out of a molehill.”

What was left in the crate was a silk suit and a blazer still in the cleaner’s plastic. She took them out and hung them in her closet. Then there were several items of winter clothing she’d kept in the bedroom of the house on the reservation that would have been the nursery. Those she stuffed into the bottom drawers of the bureau that faced the bed.

And that was that. She had only to toss those first few articles back into the crate, get rid of it, and she could be done with this whole business.

But was she sure she really wanted to just throw those things away? her traitorous mind asked her as she bent over to pick them up.

There was a great big, plaid cashmere bathrobe that was so old and worn around the edges that it wasn’t even fit to give to charity. And yet when her hands clasped the downy softness, she couldn’t resist fingering it, rubbing her palms against it, finally slipping it on, smoothing the ragged lapels over her chest.

She’d replaced it for Ash their first Christmas together, but when she’d been about to throw it out the next day she hadn’t been able to. It had occurred to her that if she got rid of it she wouldn’t have it to wear on cold Sunday mornings when she was padding around in her pajamas and stocking feet, or to pull over her when she was sick and lying on the couch.

There was something comforting about it in a way her own robe didn’t match. It wasn’t just that it was warm or soft or broken in; it always made her feel as if Ash himself were wrapped around her.

Just like now...

“This has to go,” she said firmly, shrugging out of it as if it made her itch and tossing it into the crate.

Then there was his college sweatshirt.

She thought he would have wanted that back for sure. After all, it was a memento of his fraternity.

For Beth, on the other hand, it was a memento of something else.

The first time she’d worn it had been during a game of Boat.

Boat was something she’d heard a therapist on the radio suggest to a caller with marital problems. Beth hadn’t considered what was happening in her own marriage a problem at that point—after all, it had only been a month since their wedding. But the game had seemed like a way to lure Ash home from doing paperwork at his office on a Sunday afternoon.

The instructions were to gather special foods and wine and maybe some body oils or lotions in a basket. Thus equipped, the basket was then to be taken to the bed, which was designated as a boat in the middle of the ocean, and, for a time, they couldn’t leave it for any reason.

Ash had been only too happy to go along with the idea. He’d undressed her and flung her clothes far out into their imaginary sea. After they’d put the lotions and oils to good use, the only article of clothing she could reach when she’d wanted to dress again before their picnic had been his college sweatshirt.

That sweatshirt had become a part of the Boat basket from then on.

Unfortunately Boat had lost more and more of its power to bring Ash home as the years had gone on, until Beth had given up trying. Still, the memory of that first time was so sweet it hurt.

She folded the sweatshirt and set it in the crate with the robe.

A white dress shirt was the third item lying on her bedroom floor at that moment. It had become hers during a long business trip Ash had taken early in their marriage. He’d left it for her to launder. But when she’d tried to do that, the scent of it had reached out to her. Ash’s scent. That mingling of his clean, spicy after-shave and the masculine smell of his skin.

She’d ended up not washing it at all, but wearing it around the house to stave off the loneliness.

It surprised her a little that he’d known to bring it to her. It was a plain white shirt, like so many of his others, except that it had a tiny flaw in the weave of the cuff. From that trip on, she’d kept the shirt, laundering it only when she knew he was about to leave again and slipping it in with his other shirts so that he’d wear it just before, infuse it with his scent, and then she’d have it after he’d gone.

“He knew all along,” she whispered, embarrassed that he had realized what she was doing.

He’d never let on that he was aware the shirt appeared in his drawer only periodically before disappearing again. But obviously he’d known that she’d considered it
her
shirt.

On their own, her hands brought it up to her nose and she breathed in the faint lingering of what had comforted her before. But there was no comfort in it now. There was only a terrible pang for what was lost.

She folded it with the care of a soldier folding a burial flag and set it in the crate.

That left the pajama top. Ash’s pajama top.

From the beginning of their marriage he’d worn the bottoms and she’d worn the tops of every pair he’d owned during their years together.

Technically, she thought, they were as much her pajamas as his. He’d never worn this half.

Yet somehow, the day the divorce was final, she’d decided to put away that portion of the pajamas they’d shared along with the life they’d shared. So when she’d taken off her wedding ring, she’d also removed these pajama tops from her drawer and set them in one of his.

Unfortunately, since then she’d been trying to find something else she liked as well to wear to bed.

Women’s pajamas, T-shirts, nightgowns, nightshirts. She’d even tried sleeping in the nude. But nothing was as comfortable as the silk pajama top she held in her hands at that moment.

“I bought them,” she said. “Think of it as him wearing the bottoms of
my
pajamas.”

But she wasn’t sure she could.

And yet she also couldn’t seem to make herself put them into the orange crate.

Lord, what was wrong with her? She’d never been so indecisive, so sentimental, so emotional.

And then it occurred to her that maybe more than her appearance could be under the influence of pregnancy hormones.

Of course, that was all it was, she told herself. The roller coaster emotions were caused by the increased hormones in her body. She even remembered reading something about that very thing.

But could they turn her into a different person? For here she was, Shag Heller’s daughter, crying over a pair of pajamas, of all things.

Well, regardless of the cause, she could fight it, she decided. She
had
to fight it. She wasn’t so weak willed that it could get the best of her.