The Rancher's Expectant Christmas

“Yep.”

“Not a whole lot. Since she’s only been back for five minutes. Also, it’s none of my business. Or anyone’s.”

“True. Although I did notice there’s no wedding ring.”

He paused. “She said she and the father aren’t together. And again...none of our business.”

“Hmm.” Mom squinted out toward the Sangre de Cristo mountains, their snowy tops aglow in the early morning sun, a harbinger of the winter breathing down their necks. Then she looked back at him, a little smile tilting her lips. “I know how much it annoyed you boys, the way your father and I were always up in your business.” The smile turned into a grimace. “Especially for Levi and Colin.” Both of whom had flown as far from the family nest as they could, even though Josh’s twin, Levi, had returned several months ago. “Still,” Mom said, “seeing the obvious pain in that little girl’s eyes, that she never got to say goodbye to her father...maybe your father and I didn’t do such a bad job, after all.”

“Like I’m gonna give you that much ammunition,” Josh said, and she swatted his shoulder.

Then she frowned. “I’m guessing Granville didn’t know about the baby?”

“It would appear not.”

Looking away, Mom slowly wagged her head. “I don’t get it, I really don’t. What would make one of the most generous human beings on the face of the planet disconnect from his only child?”

Crossing his arms, Josh sneaked a peek at his son, happily banging two little cars together. A question he’d asked himself many times, though even as a child Dee’s discontent with small-town living had been obvious. As though Whispering Pines wasn’t big enough to contain all that Deanna Blake was, or wanted to be...a malaise that only increased as she got older, if her periodic bitching to him had been any indication.

And certainly Josh would’ve never been enough for her, a truth he’d thankfully realized before he’d said or done anything he would’ve most certainly regretted. So her excitedly telling him on her fifteenth birthday she was moving to DC hadn’t come as all that much of a surprise, even if he hadn’t let on how much it’d killed him. Especially since he’d known in his gut she’d never come back. Not to live, anyway.

Even so, her father’s basically giving her up...it made no sense. Then again Austin’s mother hadn’t seemed to have an issue with leaving her son behind, had she? So maybe this was simply one of those “there’s no accounting for people” things.

Josh realized his mother was giving him her What are you thinking, boy? look. A smile flicked over his mouth. “I guess we’ll never find out. About her father, I mean.”

“Guess not.” Mom glanced back at the beautiful old house, which, along with the vast acreage surrounding it, the barns and pastures and guesthouses scattered along the river farther out, had been in the Blake family since before New Mexico was a state. “I suppose this will all go to her.”

Josh’d be lying if he said her words didn’t slice through him. Yeah, by rights the Vista was Dee’s now, she could do whatever she wanted with it. But Josh had never lived anywhere else. Or wanted to. So by rights the place was his home far more than it had ever really been Dee’s.

“I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow,” he said, trying to sound neutral. “After the memorial, the lawyer said.”

“Granville’s request?”

“Apparently so.” Just as his boss had been adamant he didn’t want a funeral, or a burial, or “any of that crap.” So he was probably looking down from wherever he was, pissed as all get-out about the memorial service. No way, though, was the town gonna let his passing go without any acknowledgment. As much as the old man had done for everybody, it’d be downright disrespectful to pretend as though nothing had happened. Meaning for once Granville Blake wasn’t getting his way.

“Well,” Mom said, opening her car door, “I’d best be getting back. I’ve got a couple of mothers to check up on later, but no babies due in the next little while, thank goodness. I told Gus I’d be there early tomorrow to get started on the food for the reception. I’ll bring Austin back then.”

“You don’t have to keep him—”

“I know I don’t. But something tells me Deanna’s gonna need a friend over the next couple of days.” She paused. Squinting. “And I don’t mean Gus.”

Josh sighed. “That was a long time ago, Mom.”

“So? It won’t kill you to be nice to the girl.”

Thinking, I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Josh stood in the graveled driveway, waving to Austin as his mother backed out, taking his buffer between him and Dee with her. But when he got back inside, where she was sitting at the table inhaling the breakfast that Gus had whipped up for her in the nanosecond Josh had been gone, it wasn’t his mother’s pushy words ringing in his ears, but Granville’s.

Because two days before he’d died, his boss—the boss who’d guarded his privacy so fiercely he’d refused to discuss his illness—happened to mention his suspicion that Dee was in some kind of trouble but wouldn’t tell him what. Mutterings Josh had chalked up to the illness, frankly. Or, more likely, Granville’s own guilt and regret that he’d kept his daughter in the dark about his condition. Talk about apples not rolling far from the tree.

Except obviously the old man’s intuition had been dead to rights, resurrecting all manner of protective feelings Josh had no wish to resurrect. Especially when she lifted those huge, deep brown eyes to his, and he was sixteen again, sharing one of those soul-baring conversations they used to have when they’d tell each other their dreams and hopes and fears, knowing there’d be no teasing, no judgment...

“If anybody needs me,” he said to the room at large, “I’ll be out working that new cutter I bought.”

Then he got his butt out of there before those wayward thoughts derailed what little common sense he had left.

Chapter Two (#ulink_6cc725f5-c167-5aa3-aa42-35200282e12b)

Apparently, pregnancy made her nostalgic. At least, that’s what Deanna was going with as she waddled outside after breakfast, bundled up against a morning chill laced with the scents of her childhood—fireplace smoke and horseflesh, the sweet breath of piñon overlaying the slightly musty tang of hoof-churned earth. It was always a shock, how clear the air was at this altitude, how the cloudless sky seemed to caress you, make you feel almost weightless. Even when you were hauling around thirty extra pounds that could never quite decide how to distribute itself.

A dog she didn’t recognize trotted toward her, something with a lot of Aussie shepherd in him. “And aren’t you a handsome boy?” she said softly, and the pooch dissolved into a wriggling mass of speckled love, dancing over to give her hand a cursory lick before trotting off again—Sorry, can’t dawdle, work to do, beasts to herd.

Other than the dog, little had changed that she could tell. The old, original barn still stood in all its dignified, if slightly battered, glory not far from the house, even though it’d been decades since any actual livestock had been sheltered there. She smiled, remembering the July Fourth barn dances her father had sponsored every year for the entire community, the cookout and potluck that had always preceded them. The fireworks, down by the pond. How much she’d loved all the hoopla as a child, even if she’d grown to dread it after her mother died of a particularly aggressive brain tumor when she was fourteen, when she’d never felt up to being the gracious hostess Mom had been. A role far more suited to someone...else.

Although most of the fencing around the property had been long since converted to wire, the pasture nearest the house was still bordered in good old-fashioned white post and rail...another bane of her existence when she was a kid and Dad had insisted she help repaint it whenever the need arose. Which had seemed like every five minutes at the time. She let her cold fingers skim the top rail, smiling when a nearby pregnant mare softly nickered, then separated herself from a half-dozen or so compadres and plodded over, almost as though she recognized Deanna. And damned if the jagged white blaze on her mahogany face wasn’t startlingly familiar.

“You’re Starlight’s, aren’t you?” she said gently, and the horse came close enough for her to sweep her fingers across her sleek muzzle, for the mare to “kiss” her hair. Same sweet nature as her mama, too, Deanna thought, chuckling for a moment before releasing another sigh.

It hadn’t been all bad, living out here. Boring, yes. Stifling, definitely. But as quickly as she’d acclimated to—and embraced—living back east, there’d been more than the occasional bout of feeling displaced, too. Even if she’d never admitted it. She’d missed riding, and the sky, and the deep, precious silence of a snowy night. Greasy nachos at the rodeo every fall. The way the mountains seemed to watch over the plains and everything that lived on them. The way everyone kept an eye out for everyone else.

Josh.

She spotted him, working a sleek chestnut gelding in the distance, as homesickness spiked through her, so sharp she lost her breath.

Homesickness, and regret. Choking, humiliating, taunting regret.

Shivering, Deanna wrapped up more tightly in the giant shawl she’d scored for ten bucks at that thrift store near her apartment—

Crap. She had no idea where she belonged anymore, although here certainly wasn’t it. Here was her past, which she’d long since outgrown. But her life there, in DC, had collapsed like a house of cards, hadn’t it? All she knew was that she’d better figure something out, and soon, before this little person made her appearance. Kinda hard to bring a baby home if you weren’t sure where home was.

Still caressing the mare’s sun-warmed coat, Deanna looked out toward the other horses grazing the frosted grass, their coats gleaming in the strengthening morning sun as bursts of filmy white puffed from their nostrils. Then she started as she realized Josh was headed her way. His own breath clouding his face, he came up beside her, digging into his pocket for a piece of carrot for the mare.

“I see you two have already met.”

Deanna drew back her hand, wrapping up more tightly in the shawl. “She’s Starlight’s, isn’t she?”

“Yep.”

“What’s her name?”

“Starfire. One of the best cutters I’ve ever ridden. Her babies should fetch a pretty penny. This one’s already spoken for, in fact.”

“When’s she due?”

“Late January or thereabouts.”

After a moment, Deanna said, “So she actually gets to carry her foal to term?” and Josh softly chuckled. She knew many “serious” breeders only used their prize mares to jumpstart an embryo, then transplanted them into surrogates. She supposed in some ways it was less stressful on the mare that way, but it’d always seemed to her so...callous. Like the horses were only things to be used.

“Not to worry. Your daddy would’ve killed me, for one thing. Not to mention my daddy. No, we do things the old-fashioned way around here,” he said, stroking the mare’s shiny neck. “Don’t we, sweetheart?”