The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (10 page)

Natalie was twenty-six years old. She was a grown woman who could make her own decisions,
but cold chills chased down her spine as if someone had filled her shirt with sleet.
Debra could yell, rant, and cuss, but when she whispered, the devil covered his ears
and whimpered.

“Mother, I have been talking to him every night for almost a year. I know him as well
as I knew Drew. And I know Hazel, Henry, Jack, and Grady as well as I know Lawton
Pierce and Widow Presley. They’ve become my friends, and I’m not going to a motel.”

“The hell you do! The folks around here are real. Those people could be fakes. He
could have told you anything over that damn computer. I read every day where some
woman goes to meet a man she met on one of those dating sites and is never seen again.
You go pack your things back in that truck and get to the nearest motel right now.
And call me as soon as you check in.”

“Momma, I’m going to hang up, but I want you to look at the pictures I just sent you.
You’ll see that Henry Allen is not a serial killer and that Lucas Allen is just a
cowboy on a ranch. It’s just candid shots of them while we were decorating the tree
this morning. Call me back as soon as you look at them.”

“Shit!” Debra yelled as Natalie hit the end button.

Natalie watched the second hand inch its way around the clock three times before her
phone rang. She answered on the first ring.

“Well?”

“Shit!” Debra said again.

“Does that mean you don’t think they’re going to steal Joshua and sell me into slavery?”

“It means that I know those folks. My dad and Henry were friends a long, long time
ago. They were in the Lone Star Angus Association together when I was a little girl.
He and his wife came to Goodnight and bought a bull from my dad just about the time
that I got engaged. I remember showing my ring to his wife. After your dad and I married,
we joined the Panhandle Angus Association, so I didn’t see Henry again. I recognized
him by that mop of white hair. I’m not afraid of that family, but I damn sure don’t
have to like the idea of you being there.”

“Small world, ain’t it?”

“Hell, no! It’s a huge world and a bigger state when I think about you and Joshua
that far away. Girl, you will be home for the New Year’s Eve party. You can bring
your Internet boyfriend with you, but by damn you will be here,” Debra said. “I ought
to make you tell your dad.”

“But Momma,” she whined.

“Oh, hush! I’ll tell him because I can ease into it gently. He’d have a heart attack
if you told him like you did me.”

Joshua was still sleeping soundly when Natalie finished talking to her mother, so
she called her Aunt Leah to tell her that the fan was turned on high speed, and if
she didn’t want to get covered up, she should duck.

“Hmmmph,” Natalie all but snorted. “I thought you were turning off your phone, Aunt
Leah!”

A few snowflakes had survived Joshua’s warm little cheeks by sticking to his thick
dark eyelashes while he snuggled down in the sling around Natalie’s body. He’d fallen
asleep as she’d gathered eggs that morning, which was unusual. Most of the time, she
could set her clock by when he wanted a bottle and when he took his nap. Natalie hoped
he wasn’t coming down with something. She tiptoed into the house, set the basket of
eggs on the counter, and held her breath all the way to the bedroom.

She carefully laid the baby in the middle of the bed, unzipped his bunting, and removed
it. His body was toasty but his face was still cold from the trip to the chicken house.
He didn’t look like he had a fever, but just to be sure she got out the thermometer
and gently rolled it across his forehead.

“Normal,” she whispered after a few seconds.

He made sucking noises in his sleep but didn’t open his eyes when she transferred
him from bed to crib. She touched his mouth with his favorite pacifier and he latched
right on to it.

She was tiptoeing down the hall when she heard a ruckus out in the front yard. She
rushed to the front door, threw it open, and stepped out on the porch.

A tall, lanky man with a rim of brown hair circling a bald head had a shotgun trained
on Lucas’s chest. “I swear to God, Lucas, you better not…”

“And I swear to God, Mr. Crankston, that I don’t want these damned goats. They’ve
already eaten my blown-up Santa Claus, and Gramps is going to have a fit when he sees
what they’ve done to Frosty the Snowman. So shoot ’em or take ’em home.”

“I’ll shoot your sorry ass instead. My grandson will whine and carry on like a little
girl if one of them is hurt. And my wife will have a fit and burn my biscuits for
the rest of my life. I didn’t know I was going to have to keep every damn goat born
for five years when I bought that old ram and them two females. So they are yours,”
Mr. Crankston said. “I’ll tell them that they ran off and I couldn’t find the sorry
critters.”

The puppies came dashing around the house, falling over their feet and yelping at
each other. Natalie sighed. She should have shot those damn dogs and kissed the coyote
right on his sharp nose.

She whistled for the dogs and they looked her way but only momentarily. They took
off after the goats, nipping at all that gorgeous winter wool on their underbellies.
One goat ran right through Frosty, hooking one of its horns in the thin fabric that
was filled with a warm air pump inside the thing. The torn black and white material
flew out behind the goat like Batman’s cape. One of the puppies grabbed it and hung
on with his teeth, the goat pulling him along on the slick surface like the hound
dog was skiing.

The second goat tried to climb Mrs. Claus, knocking the hot air right out of her and
making her collapse in a heap in the snow.

“Damn Pashmina varmints. I wish I’d never bought a damn one of them. I planned to
shoot every one that had jumped the fence, but I couldn’t when I got here. My wife
would leave me for sure.” Mr. Crankston yelled as he chased goats around the yard
behind Lucas who was busy chasing puppies.

The noise woke Joshua and he set up a howl that Natalie could hear even without the
monitor. She rushed back in the house, picked him up, and threw a blanket around his
little body. When she got back to the porch, the scene hadn’t changed much. Men were
still cussing. Dogs were still running after goats, and goats were trying to climb
anything in sight to get away from the dogs.

But wait. There were three goats and now there were only two. She heard a noise above
her and stepped out into the yard and looked up. Evidently goats could climb ladders
because that’s the only way that critter could have gotten up there and he was feasting
upon the Christmas bunting that Grady had hung.

What did roasted goat taste like? Was it pretty good with barbecue or did she need
to cook it in a soy-based sauce and serve it with rice?

“Hey, Lucas,” she yelled.

When he looked back over his shoulder, she pointed up.

He threw up his hands and sat down on the porch step. “You should have shot the dogs
instead of the coyote,” he huffed.

“I already thought of that.”

Mr. Crankston fired into the air and the puppies stopped in their tracks, peed in
the snow, and slunk over to Lucas. Then they saw Natalie, bounded up the stairs, and
pawed at her legs until she stooped down. One of them grabbed the edge of the baby
blanket and the others licked Joshua’s hands.

The goat on the roof came down the ladder in a flash and all three goats—one with
red and green bunting still hanging from his mouth, one with a limp cape, and the
last one with a bit of Mrs. Claus’s apron fabric stuck to his horns—cowered on the
porch with the puppies.

Mr. Crankston looped a rope around each of them and led them to his truck. “I’ll have
to remember to fire next time before they tear up everything in sight. I’ll be replacing
those before the party, but I swear, Lucas, I’m going to hold a grudge against you
for not taking these critters off my hands. Clearly they like it over here.”

Natalie almost offered to trade the puppies for the goats, but puppies couldn’t climb
ladders.

***

Lucas put the pups back again, but he could not find the place where they were digging
under the fence. He’d had an acute case of severe conscience all day and he’d decided
it was time to tell her his secret. It wasn’t going to be easy after the fit he thrown
there at first over Joshua, but better he tell her than it slip from one of the old
guys’ lips over supper sometime.

He pushed into the kitchen and said quickly before he changed his mind, “Hey, I have
a confession.”

“What? Did you let those mutts out again? If Josh is cranky all day because he didn’t
get a nap, it’s going to be your fault.”

“I have a secret, but it’s a hell of a lot bigger than those damn pups. I believe
that they could crawl their way up from hell if I shot them and buried them ten feet
deep,” he said.

“Oh, ho! So you kept something from me, did you? You aren’t as innocent as you pretended.
Well, I’m not so sure I want to know your secret.”

Their gaze met in the middle of the living room. Sparks hit the walls and fizzled
out as they landed on the hardwood floor. The sizzle sounded like fireworks and the
heat put a crimson glow on her cheeks.

He leaned against the kitchen cabinets. “I’m going to explain whether you like it
or not.”

It took several seconds before he spoke, and when he did, it came out in a hoarse
drawl. “I had a girlfriend, actually a very serious girlfriend, before I went to Kuwait,
but a year over there can clear up the mind real good.”

He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “We split up for several reasons. One
was that I was going to Kuwait. The second was that she was determined we would not
live on the ranch. And the third is my confession. She has a brother with a mental
disorder and we went for genetic testing before we set a date. She was fine but I…”
He paused.

God, it was hard to say the words out loud even after a year.

“What?” Natalie asked.

“I can’t have children. Well, maybe that’s not the way I should say it. There’s a
one chance in ten million, the doctor said, that I could make a baby. I just thought
you should know.”

“So you could have adopted if you’d really loved each other,” Natalie said.

“She didn’t want any children at all and that’s what really split us up,” he said.

Natalie busied herself cutting shortening into flour for piecrusts.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Her name is Sonia and she’s engaged now to
one of our ranch hands, Noah. She is very high-maintenance and she will be at the
party. You should know the background.”

Natalie stopped what she was doing. “Will Noah be here too?”

He sighed. “Yes, he will.”

“Well, then I guess we’ll worry with that when the time comes. We’ve got to tell Henry
about those things the goats ate before we have to worry about that.”

“I was devastated because I’ve always wanted children. Gramps built this house for
a dozen. I wouldn’t care if I had that many.”

Natalie stopped what she was doing and sat down at the table with him.

She covered his hand with hers. “I’m so sorry. That had to have been a shock.”

The sound of her voice was soothing and her blue eyes floated in tears. Finally, one
got loose and rolled down her cheeks. He brushed it away with his free hand.

“I’ve accepted it. The line ends with me. Don’t cry.”

She pulled her hand back and wiped away the free flow of tears dripping off her cheekbone.
“I never cry, not even when I’m angry or sad, but I’ve gotten emotional since Joshua’s
birth.”

“I got the news about Kuwait the same day we got the test results. She said she wasn’t
giving up a year of her life to wait for me to come home and that she wasn’t ever
going to live out in the boonies with bawling cows, anyway,” he said.

Natalie stood up and went back to the pie dough. “If she’s going to marry Noah, then
I guess she might be living on a ranch whether she likes it or not.”

“Maybe so. Are all our secrets covered now?” he asked.

“I don’t have any more. Do you?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know if it’s a secret, but a bunch of guys will show up
at the party that I played basketball with in high school. Some of them kind of got
stuck in that era, so I’m forewarning you.”

“And Sonia’s cheerleader friends?” Natalie asked.

“They’ll all be here too. It’s a small community. Most of them didn’t stray far from
the place where they were raised,” he answered with a shrug. “How did you know she
was a cheerleader?”

“I came from a small town too. I bet she was the head cheerleader, wasn’t she? And
you were the star basketball player,” Natalie answered.

Baby sounds came from the monitor sitting on the cabinet.

She wiped her hands on a towel and hurried down the hallway.

***

When she returned with Joshua, Lucas was gone.

She pulled the baby’s swing into the kitchen and put him in it. “There we go, cowboy.
Now you ride this pony all the way to the back forty and back while I make a pecan
pie and a peach cobbler. Tonight you get rice cereal. Your granny said that you are
ready for it and that’s why you are fussy at night. You aren’t full. So yum-yum. Get
ready for something brand-new.”

Joshua looked intently at her, as if he was waiting for her to say something more.

“The books say you aren’t supposed to laugh out loud for another month. You be working
on that for my Christmas present. I want to hear a big baby belly laugh on Christmas
morning,” she said.

He cooed and waved one chubby hand in the air.

“Aha, you’re going to be a bronc buster, are you? One hand on the rope and one in
the air.”

“Who’s going to be a bronc rider? I told Lucas that he’s a rancher, not one of them
rodeo cowboys.” Henry hung his coat and hat on the rack beside the back door and slipped
his boots off, leaving them on the rug. “Snowin’ still, but it won’t last long. Big
flakes like that are just for show. It’s them little ones that don’t swirl around
that you got to be fearful of. It’ll be sunny and thawin’ out come morning.”

“You heard the weather, did you?” Natalie stirred up the filling for the pecan pie,
filled the shell, and put it in the oven.

Henry warmed his hands with the escaping heat. “No, I can tell by looking at the sky.
And I’m gettin’ Jack’s gun from the safe in his room and shootin’ any horse that steals
that pie away from me.”

Natalie shut the oven and went to work layering the peach cobbler. “We missed you
at breakfast.”

“Went up to the doughnut shop and had coffee with the guys this morning. Sonia, Lucas’s
old girlfriend, came in. She’s goin’ to come to the party. Just thought I’d tell you
about that before she gets here.” Henry blew on his hands to finish the job. “Got
to get them warm. Can’t touch Josh’s cheeks if they’re cold.”

Natalie finished the cobbler and shoved it in the oven with the pie.

“Why do you call him that? His name is Joshua,” she said.

“Cowboys all have nicknames. Joshua sounds like a preacher, not a cowboy. Now Josh,
that sounds like a bull ridin’, calf ropin’, ranchin’ man with a swagger in his walk.
Even Lucas had a nickname, darlin’.”

“What was it?” she asked.

“Hoss. Boy could ride that stick horse a million miles a day before he put him in
the barn at night. And I mean in the barn. He’d take the horse out there and put him
in a stable before suppertime, put a few oats in a bag that Hazel made special, and
right after breakfast, he’d go get the horse out again.” Henry chuckled.

Natalie bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud.

“So?” Henry asked.

“What?” Natalie asked.

“I just told you that Lucas’s old girlfriend was at the doughnut shop, and you didn’t
even flinch. I thought maybe you liked him enough to get a little jealous.” Henry
grinned.

Natalie poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “We all have a past, Henry. I
have a son and no husband or boyfriend either one. I’m not innocent, so I can’t be
throwing stones.”

He wrapped his hands around the mug. “You are a good woman, Natalie Clark.”

She leaned in and whispered, “He told me about her today, and I have to admit I was
a little jealous.”

He set the coffee on the table and reached out to touch the baby’s cheek. He got a
grin for his efforts and the snort quickly turned to a chuckle.

“And now maybe I’d better tell you about your neighbor’s goats and how they’ve destroyed
the hot-air decorations. But Mr. Crankston said that he’d replace them by the party
time on Saturday night, so don’t worry. But I expect Grady better find one more piece
of that bunting for around the house because one crawled up on the ladder and ate
it,” she said.