The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (11 page)

Henry threw back his head and roared. Joshua cooed and giggled at him rather than
crying at the sudden noise. “God, I wish I’d have been here to see that. Old Crankston
hates them goats, but his wife makes fancy yarn out of the wool and his grandson names
every one of them.”

***

On Thursday morning, just like Henry predicted, the sun came out bright and shiny.
By midmorning the crackle of melting ice filled the countryside. Natalie bundled Joshua
up and took him out for a walk so he could hear the noises.

“This is your first ice storm. You won’t remember it, but I want you to hear what
the sun can do to the ice. See how warm it is on your face. It’s that warmth that
melts the ice.”

Lucas rounded the corner of the house and said, “He’s pretty young for a science lesson.
You can tell that you are a teacher.”

“A child is never too young to talk to. If you don’t start early, then how do you
expect them to understand your tones and voice?”

Lucas stopped so close to her that she got a whiff of his aftershave. “Aren’t you
afraid you’ll make him sick bringing him outside in the weather?”

She shook her head slightly. “It’s good for him.”

Two raging fires burned within her. Newly acquired motherhood complete with all the
mood swings took first place. But the second blaze belonged to Lucas, and the idea
of him putting it out was both exhilarating and scary.

Sunlight created deep blue highlights in his jet-black hair, and his jeans stacked
up over his old rough work boots. His jacket was unzipped and hanging open. Her fingers
longed to unbutton his shirt like Sonia had done and run her hands up the toned and
rippled chest underneath.

She’d never been so physically attracted to anyone in her entire life. And there was
every possibility that he was still in love with Sonia—immature or not. The heart
wanted what it wanted. It didn’t matter if her heart wanted Lucas. If his heart wanted
Sonia, then they could never be happy together. Lord, what a tangled mess life could
get to be.

“How do you know so much about babies?” he asked.

“I had three younger brothers.”

“Walk with me out to the barn. I want to show you and Josh the new calf that was born
this morning.”

His legs were long but her stride matched his well enough that they could walk beside
each other without one slowing down or the other speeding up. A breeze had picked
up and coming off all the ice, it was cool in spite of the sun’s warmth.

“Has he seen a new baby calf yet?” Lucas asked.

“No. Calves are born in the spring, not December.”

“You got that right, but a couple of our prize heifers went visiting the bull pen
at the wrong season. We had no idea they were in heat until it was too late to do
anything about it. We aren’t even sure which bull bred them.”

“Which means this one goes with the calf crop to the sale next fall, right?” she asked.

He chuckled.

“What in the hell is so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just never knew a woman who knew so much about ranchin’. I thought you
were a basketball coach.”

“Well, I was a rancher before I was a coach. I can grow cotton or pull a calf just
as well as I can take a basketball team to state play-offs. And I can do it with a
baby on my hip,” she smarted off.

“Kind of like Gretchen Wilson’s ‘Redneck Woman’?”

“That’s right. Oh, Joshua, would you look at that pretty baby? He’s beautiful, Lucas.
Which bulls were in the pen? Can’t you tell by lookin’ at him who his daddy is?” she
asked.

Lucas shrugged. “They were both Angus. One is my best bull and the other one is a
good bull but not prize stock. I use him for sale calves.”

He looked like a cowboy out of an old Western movie with a shoulder propped against
the doorjamb. She could picture him costarring in something about rustlers or maybe
range wars with Tom Selleck or Sam Elliott.

The calf came over to the stall door, and she squatted so that Joshua could see it
better. He cooed and the new baby stuck out his tongue and licked Joshua on the hand.

She shook her head to erase the vision and said, “I want to buy that calf from you,
Lucas.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the first baby calf Joshua has seen and he needs to own him. Instead
of a paycheck for this month’s work, I want that calf. By the time I leave he’ll be
old enough that I can finish raising him with a bucket.”

“Okay, but that’s pretty cheap work for a whole month,” Lucas said.

“Depends on how you look at it. Could be that his bloodline is good and he’ll throw
some of the best calves we’ve seen out in Silverton. Now it’s time to get back in
the house. Henry asked for cinnamon rolls for dinner and the dough is probably ready
to roll out.”

Lucas reached out and wrapped his fingers around her arm. He ran a gloved hand down
the length of her jawbone and she could feel the heat building from deep inside her
through the leather of his gloves. Instinctively, she looked up and their eyes locked
over the top of the baby in the sling between them. He bent his broad chest around
Joshua and kissed her gently, then deepened it into more and more. His tongue rimmed
her upper lip and eased its way inside her mouth to do a slow, easy country waltz
with hers.

Joshua squirmed and whimpered when Lucas’s arms drew her closer.

“Oops. Sorry about that, feller. I got carried away. Did I squish you too badly?”
Lucas asked.

“I’ll see you at dinner.” Natalie blushed.

She spun around and hurried across the yard.

She expected Drew to spout off something in her conscience and was disappointed when
he didn’t say a single word.

“Shit!” she said when she was in the kitchen. “Don’t you repeat that word when you
get older, Joshua.”

“Good grief, Lucas has been my ‘dear diary,’ and I didn’t even realize it,” she told
Joshua as she changed him from pajamas into clothes for the day.

The baby kicked his legs and waved his arms about, cooing the whole time at his mother’s
voice. As fast as he was growing, it wouldn’t be long until he could control those
arms and legs and his cooing would become real words. She wondered what his first
word would be.

“You are a boy, so you won’t ever have a little pink diary to write all your secrets
in. Boys don’t do that. But I did until I was about thirteen and then I just told
Drew everything and forgot about my diary. When he was gone, I shifted my diary mode
over to Lucas. I wonder if you can even buy them anymore. I’ll need one to start the
year off if we are back in Silverton.”

Joshua looked up at her and drew his eyes down in a frown.

“Okay, enough talk about the future. But let’s get something straight about tonight.
There’ll be strangers in and out all day and a big party tonight. Don’t you get too
friendly with them, and other than Henry, Jack, and Grady, you aren’t to smile at
them. Those are my smiles, and I’m not sharing your precious smiles with anyone.”

Natalie kissed him between the eyes. “Yes, you can smile at Lucas, but that’s the
whole list.”

She carried him to the kitchen, settled him into the swing, and was busy winding it
up before she realized that the smell of coffee filled the kitchen. She quickly looked
around and there was Henry, pouring two cups full.

“Good mornin’,” he said brightly.

“What are you doing up and about so early?” Natalie asked.

“It’s party weekend. Ella Jo, that would be my wife and the other half of my heart,
loved Christmas and her spirit comes back the month of December every year to visit
with me. Folks probably think I’m crazy, but I can hear her voice in my head and she
talks to me,” he said.

“I don’t think you are a bit crazy.”

Henry flashed his brightest smile. “I don’t want to miss a minute of time with her.”
He handed Natalie a mug. “If I get here early today and tomorrow, I get to look at
the tree a little while with her before all the noise starts. She tells me if I need
to change an ornament, and we visit about the old days when we first settled on this
ranch. Is that an old man losing his mind?”

Natalie shook her head. “That is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“She said I was an old hopeless romantic. When we first bought this ranch back in
the forties we started off in a one-room cabin. I promised her a decent house and
a yard full of kids. She lived to see the house, but she only got Jack before she
died. I miss her even after fifty years. I told her about Josh this morning and I
could feel her smiling.”

Natalie swallowed twice before she got the lump out of her throat. “What did Ella
Jo make for breakfast on party day?”

Henry smiled. “Sausage gravy and biscuits. She only got to have one party in the house
before she died. I remember our first Christmas together though in the little cabin.
We went out in the woods and I chopped down a cedar tree. We strung cranberries and
popcorn in the evenings to put on that tree, and the ornaments were made out of paper
and what few I could carve out of scrap wood. They looked more like Easter eggs than
ornaments, but we thought they were beautiful. I made a star for the top out of an
old pie pan that had a hole in the bottom.”

Natalie crumbled sausage into a skillet. When that finished browning, she pulled a
bowl down from the cabinet and sifted flour into it.

“It sounds beautiful,” she said.

“It was. I thought she was going to throw me out in the barn for cutting up that tin
pan though. She said that if she made the crust thick enough that the hole didn’t
matter.” Henry chuckled. “Look! Josh likes that story. He’s smiling. Let me tell you,
feller, a man can know everything in the world about ranchin’ and cattle, but that
don’t mean jack squat when it comes to understandin’ a woman. When I put that star
up on the tree, Ella Jo just stood there and cried. And I never did hear another word
about cuttin’ up her pie pan.”

“Where is the topper now?” Natalie asked.

Henry cleared his throat and blushed. “When she died, I planted a cedar at the foot
of her grave and every year I decorate it and put that pie pan on the top. It’s gettin’
rusty, but so am I.”

“Bullshit!” Lucas said from the doorway. “You could work circles around any of the
young hired hands on the ranch. Ain’t nothing rusty about you.”

“That’s because I get up and around in the mornin’. I don’t sleep until noon,” Henry
said.

Lucas brushed against Natalie’s thigh as he crossed the kitchen floor. “Noon! The
sun isn’t even up and the rooster hasn’t started crowing.”

“You might check the back porch. He might be waitin’ to do his crowin’ in the house.”
Henry chuckled.

Natalie inhaled sharply.

Lucas was damn sure more than a “dear diary” because she’d had a little pink diary
as a child. It even had a lock on it, and she wrote all kinds of things about her
brothers and her friends. Not one time had that diary made her want to throw her dough-covered
hands around it and kiss it with so much passion that it would melt all the snow in
north Texas.

***

Lucas held the mug of coffee tightly in his hands to steady them. Just touching her
hip had stirred him into semi-arousal. A man would have to be stone-cold dead not
to be affected by Natalie Clark. She was more than just a tall, beautiful woman. So
much sexual energy surrounded her when she walked into a room that even Sonia, who
had always been the prettiest girl in Savoy, was relegated to the backseat.

It wasn’t right to compare the two women, but he couldn’t help it. Sonia had been
the love of his life for so many years that she was the yardstick to measure all women.
Short, vivacious, always ready for a good time, every man’s dream of a trophy wife,
and Natalie was none of those things. She was beautiful, could talk basketball and
cows in the same evening, run a house with a baby on her hip, and killed coyotes with
her own pink pistol.

“What’s got your mind wrapped up in barbed wire this morning? Thoughts of seeing all
your old buddies?” Henry asked.

Lucas heard his grandfather’s voice, but it didn’t register until Henry yelled, “Lucas,
are you awake?”

He nodded. “Barely. I’m sorry. What did you ask me?”

“I asked you what had your brain all wrapped up in barbed wire. It’s plain as day
that you was way off thinkin’ about something that put a frown on your face. That
stuff over there still on your mind at times?”

Lucas carried a cup of coffee to the table. “It was a big cultural shock when I got
to Kuwait, but Drew helped me settle in. He’d been there two times already, so he
knew the ropes.”

“Talk to me about it,” Henry said.

Lucas shrugged. “Drew had the upper bunk and I had the bottom one in the tent where
we were assigned. He taught me how to hang sheets over the sides and my wet towels
over the end for some privacy. He showed me where the phone room was so I could call
y’all and talk when we didn’t use the computer. Twenty-five men in one tent. Bathroom
outside in a portable toilet. Showers in another building. Everything is a luxury
here and sometimes I think about the guys still over there. Or those on their way.”
He paused.

Henry waited.

“Just being home doesn’t knock the place out of your head. You wake up in a cold sweat
not knowing where you are and the dead silence is scary. It feels like the middle
of a tornado. Like a vacuum that will disappear any minute and be replaced by chaos,”
Natalie said.

Henry looked away from Joshua at her.

Lucas raised an eyebrow. “How did you know that?”

She went on as she put a pan of biscuits in the oven. “Then you realize you are home
and you worry about those you left over there. The friendships you make in those times
are even deeper than the ones you’ve made your whole life at home. That’s because
you are so dependent on each other for your lives.”

“You been over there, Natalie?” Henry asked.

“No, but Drew told me about it. We’d be watching a movie in the living room at my
folks’ place and he’d drift off only to wake up with a jerk and a crazy look in his
eyes. I’d make him talk about it, so I know what you are saying, Lucas,” she answered.
“I can’t imagine the shock of that place. Just the physical heat and sand in everything
would drive me insane. Then you come home in the middle of winter with snow falling
and utter quiet at night with none of the noise of twenty-five other men in the same
tent with you. It’s got to be tough.”

“It is,” Lucas said hoarsely.

“Drew said it takes a couple of weeks before you adjust. You want eggs with your sausage
gravy and biscuits?” she asked.

“Omelet?” he asked.

Natalie nodded. “Henry?”

“Honey, I’ll eat anything you put on this table. I love a big breakfast. That kind
of food sticks to the ribs so a man can work all morning without listenin’ to a grumblin’
stomach. How about you, Josh? You want an omelet this morning?” Henry said.

Natalie’s soft laugh sounded like tinkling Christmas bells in Lucas’s ears. It was
honest and real, totally unlike Sonia’s high-pitched giggle. There he went comparing
apples and oranges again.

“I don’t think Joshua is ready for an omelet. Baby rice cereal is his buffet of choice
for a few more weeks. Momma says on Christmas morning he can have a jar of baby food
bananas or pears. He gets to choose,” she said.

Henry turned his attention back to Joshua. “Well, son, next Christmas I promise you
can have an omelet. You’ll be a full year old by then, and we’ll sit right up here
at this table and we’ll have us an omelet and bites of biscuit. By then you’ll have
a mouth full of teeth. Way you are slobbering I’d say the first two are already on
their way.”

“Really?” Natalie asked.

“Oh, yeah. Probably have them by Christmas. Reminds me of that old song about all
I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Josh here, he just might get two by then.”
Henry chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Lucas asked.

“Your granny always said that when a baby cuts teeth early then the next one is on
the way,” Henry answered.

“Bite your tongue,” Natalie raised her voice.

Lucas opened his mouth to tell his grandfather that by the next Christmas, Josh would
be back in Silverton, but he clamped it shut. Arguing with the old fellow wouldn’t
accomplish a thing, and upsetting him during the holidays was just plain wrong. He
looked forward to their Christmas party kicking off the whole season in and around
Savoy. No way in hell would Lucas ever ruin one bit of the holidays for Henry. He
lived and breathed Christmas because that’s when he felt closer to his precious Ella
Jo’s spirit and felt as though she came back to visit with him every year.

The ring tone of his cell phone said that Hazel was calling. Lucas fished it out of
his shirt pocket and said, “You need to be home, not laid up in a bed playing sick.”

“I can plan that party from here, so don’t give me none of your sass,” Hazel said.

Lucas shook his head. “Always did say that you barked orders like a five star general.
I’m putting you on speaker so everyone can hear you including the baby, so watch your
language.”

“The hell I will,” she said. “I didn’t watch my language with your dad or you and
I’ll be damned if I watch it with another generation on the ranch. Now Lucas, you
and Jack, make sure all the lights are working right. If one of them old bulbs is
shot, it’ll throw the whole line out of whack.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said.

“Grady will oversee moving the furniture out to the barn, and there’d better not be
one scratch on it. And Henry’s job is to take care of the crew bringing in the tables
and party ware. You got that?” Hazel asked.

“I do,” Henry said.

“Who else is in the room?” Hazel asked.

“Natalie, me, Gramps, and the baby,” Lucas said.

“And what’s my job?” Natalie asked.

“You are to make cookies all morning and keep the coffeepot and tea pitcher filled
for the folks who are working at setting up. Fix sandwiches for dinner, and tonight
those men are taking you out to eat because the kitchen belongs to the catering crew
in the middle of the afternoon,” Hazel said.

“It’s snowing again,” Henry said. “We might not be able to get out to be going to
a café, and besides, Natalie’s cookin’ is better’n what they’d serve up anyway. The
caterers can just move over and give her some room or hell, she can cook at my place
and we’ll all eat there.”

“If the caterers can get in, you can get out. Lucas, you make reservations over at
the Red Lobster in Sherman,” Hazel said.

“Why there? Maybe we want to go to a steak house like Texas Roadhouse,” Lucas said.

“Don’t you argue with me. You can eat steak any day of the week, and besides, they
serve steak and lobster specials over there all the time. Do you like seafood, Natalie?”
she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Love it,” Natalie said.

“Then that’s where you are going tonight for all your hard work, cooking and putting
up with them cantankerous old farts while I’m laid up. You’ll take lots of pictures
and send them to me over this computer thing that Willa Ruth has set up, right? Jack
has her address for it,” Hazel said.

“I’ll be sure you have some by morning,” Natalie answered.

“Then it’s all covered. Y’all have fun. I got to go. Willa Ruth has my breakfast ready.
It tastes like shit, but she says it doesn’t have too much fat or carbohydrates in
it, whatever to hell that last thing is. I tell her to let me eat what I want and
die when I’m supposed to. Seems like in this house if it tastes like shit, it goes
on the table and if it tastes good, it stays in the grocery store. Bye now.”

The line went quiet. Lucas picked up his phone and shoved it back into his shirt pocket.
“She ain’t changed any at all.”