The Bull Rider's Baby

“Keeton, she’s sick.” Sophie grabbed a role of paper towels off the shelf and ripped them open. “Here, sweetie. Oh, that’s awful stuff.”

Keeton West and a baby. She tried to connect dots and couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine him with a child. And yet… She wiped the baby’s chin. The infant had his nose. She had his brother Kade’s nose. The thought ached deep down inside Sophie, in a place that had been broken and empty for a long time. It was the part of her heart that still missed Kade. Or what they might have had.

Pudgy baby arms reached for her and big eyes overflowed with tears that trickled down the little girl’s pink cheeks. Keeton held tight and Sophie put on a smile that said none of this hurt, none of it mattered. She had survived. She’d gotten past the pain of losing Kade. She was whole.

“Thank you.” Keeton’s voice was low and husky, his eyes sought hers. And she couldn’t look at him, not without seeing Kade. The resemblance shook her. The dark hair. The lean, suntanned features. The dark eyes that danced with laughter or smoldered with emotion. Ugh, she was so not able to deal with this.

When she looked at Keeton she remembered the night he pulled the bull rope for Kade. It was just one of the memories they shared. Common ground that she didn’t want to be on today.

“You’re welcome.” She stood there with a handful of smelly paper towels and nowhere to run to. “What are you doing back in town?”

“I’m here to get our land back.”

Oh. Well, she didn’t quite know what to say to that. “I didn’t know you had a baby.”

He grinned, and the ornery leaked back into his brown eyes.

“Yeah, neither did I until a few days ago. Long story but I divorced her mother about a year ago. Or her mother divorced me. And we didn’t see each other again until she showed up on my doorstep with what she called a ‘surprise.’”

“And where’s her mother?”

“On her way to South America with a bull rider she met a few months ago.”

“I’m sorry.” What else could she say? “What’s her name?”

“Lucy Monroe West.” He smiled down at the little girl. “And I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do with her.”

“You do what you’re doing. Hold her. Feed her. Love her.”

“And what do I feed her?” He shrugged a little and looked from Sophie to the baby. “I mean, food? Milk?”

“Formula.” Sophie reached for a box. “She’s little, Keeton. No food. Not yet.”

“Right, formula in a bottle.” He juggled the baby and the stuff he’d picked up, putting baby food back on the shelf.

Sophie wanted to take the baby. And she didn’t want to take her. She couldn’t get involved, not with Keeton. That would be a mistake. It would be stepping back into the past. She was thirty-five. She didn’t have time for the past.

She had a present to worry about. Her life today filled with too many matchmakers, not enough single men, work and her own projects. Life.

“I should go.”

“Right, and maybe we can catch up later.”

He smiled when he said it, because he didn’t mean it. Neither of them wanted to get together, to relive, to catch up.

“Well, it was good seeing you again.” She smiled and moved to slide past him.

“Yeah, it was.” He stepped back, the baby in one arm, a teddy bear diaper bag slung over the other and a loaf of bread balancing on top of the package of diapers he had managed to pick up.

The baby watched her, tears in watery blue eyes. For years Sophie had lied to herself. She tried to convince herself that growing up a Cooper, with a dozen siblings and an array of foster children in the home, she could live without babies. She’d had enough.

And it wasn’t true. She wanted a baby of her own. She wanted to hold the baby in Keeton West’s arms.

She grabbed a cola from the cooler section. Next to her, Keeton jostled the baby in his arms and nearly lost his hold on her.

Instinct took over. Sophie reached, the baby grabbed. Suddenly Sophie had the spit-up-covered baby in her arms and Keeton moved the diapers to his free hand.

“Don’t get too comfortable. You have to take her back,” Sophie warned. But the baby held tight to her shirt and whimpered. Sophie kissed the little forehead.

Keeton grinned. “But she looks perfect in your arms. Look at the red in her hair. You’re a match.”

“This isn’t…”

He winked then. “Yeah, I know it isn’t.”

She looked down at the tiny creature in her arms. Lucy smelled positively awful. And she was wet clean through. “You could have warned me.”

She held the baby out to him and he looked perplexed. And he looked as if he’d just rode in off the range with his faded Levis, washed-out blue, button-up shirt and dusty boots. Surprise, surprise, he didn’t have on chaps, or a gun in a holster on his belt. That would have been a little too Old West, even for Keeton.

“Sorry.” He didn’t look it. “Do me a favor, hold her for a second. Just give me a chance to get this to the counter.”

“You know I will.”

She spotted toaster pastries with blueberry filling and knew exactly what she’d be having for breakfast. With the baby in one hand she grabbed the box and tried to pretend she wasn’t a grown woman buying breakfast food that came in a box and contained more sugar than most cookies.

“On a health-food kick?” Keeton grabbed a container of baby wipes. “Let me pay and I’ll take her back.”

“Why is it I think you’d hit that door running if I gave you half a chance?” Sophie followed him to the cash register and almost parked herself between him and the door. “I go first.”

She put her breakfast on the counter and with her free hand dug in her purse for cash. Keeton dumped his groceries next to hers. He also took the roll of paper towels, and the used ones still wadded up in her hands. Those he tossed behind the counter into a waste basket.

“I’m buying.” He grinned. “I always told you I’d take you to dinner someday. Looks like I’m buying your breakfast today.”

“You really don’t have to.”

“I owe you.” He nodded at the front of her jacket, now soaked and with a trail of spit-up down the front.

The baby turned into her shoulder and started crying. She rubbed her face back and forth on Sophie’s collar. Baby slime. And goo. And she didn’t have time to go home and change.

“Keeton West, you never answered.” Trish grinned at the infant. “Where’d you get that pretty baby?”

He grinned, and Sophie applauded his silence. If he said anything it would be all over town by the end of the day. Or by lunch.

Trish came around the counter, maternal and an obvious choice to hold the squalling infant clinging to Sophie’s collar.

“It’s a long story.” Keeton dug his wallet out of his pocket and tossed a couple of bills on the counter.

“Well, we’ve got time for long stories, don’t we, Jimmy?” Trish touched the baby’s back. “My goodness, she stinks.”