The Rancher's Dream

He almost asked her where her car was parked—but he remembered in the nick of time. She didn’t have a car anymore. They’d towed it to the junk lot down by Mark’s garage on the south side of town, waiting to be crushed, no doubt.

And suddenly, like a tsunami, all the practical details of this mess rushed into his head. None of it had seemed to matter earlier, when he’d been focused on Kevin’s condition and on persuading the doctors to let him go home.

But it mattered now. Thanks to that fool tourist, who had been texting when he should have been watching the road, Crimson was in a fix—and so was he.

What was he going to do with Molly? He couldn’t tend to a baby with only one good hand.

He couldn’t tend to a baby. Period.

“Hell.” He frowned, getting a sudden glimpse of the long list of things he wasn’t going to be able to do one-handed. It stretched from the profoundly important, like grooming, feeding and training his horses, to the ridiculously trivial, like buttoning his jeans and squeezing toothpaste onto his own toothbrush. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?”

His cell phone chose that moment to buzz at him. Clumsily, he dug around in his pocket with his left hand, barely managing to extricate the thing before it was too late.

He answered without looking at the caller ID, because he didn’t have time. Just his luck. It was Ginny.

And apparently, she’d heard about the accident.

“Honey, are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” He wondered why they were back to honey. He’d been so relieved when she broke up with him. Surely she wasn’t going to try to patch things up now.

Crimson was staring at him, her face set as if she feared it might be bad news, so he smiled a little and shook his head to set her mind at ease. “My arm’s broken,” he explained into the phone, “and I’m on some serious painkillers, but I’m alive.”

He winced when he heard himself say that. I’m alive, but Kevin...

“Are you still at the hospital? Let me come get you. You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

Instinctively, he began to protest. “No, really. I’m fine. I know you decided we should take a break, and just because I’ve had an accident, you shouldn’t—”

“I want to! You know I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch!”

“Listen, Ginny.” He was suddenly so tired he wasn’t sure how much longer he could string words together. “I’m fine. I don’t need any help.”

“What about the baby? If your arm is broken, you’ll need someone to help with the baby, surely. Diapers? Feeding?”

She was right, of course. He would desperately need help with all that. But he’d learn to change diapers with his toes before he’d put Molly in the Ginny’s care. The breakup over late-night wailing was only the last in a long line of small indications that Ginny wasn’t fond of babies.

He glanced at Crimson. Maybe something in his face alerted her to the problem. Or maybe she had just put two and two together from his end of the conversation.

She raised her eyebrows and tapped her index finger against her collarbone. “Me,” she mouthed. She held her elbows out, cupped one hand behind the other and mimicked rocking a baby. “Me.”

He nodded. Yes. Oh, hell, yes. He didn’t have to think twice. Even his muddy brain could see how perfect that solution was. Crimson was capable, kind and newly unemployed. She loved Molly, and the baby had clearly bonded with her.

“I’ve already got the help I need,” he said into the phone, though he kept his gaze on Crimson, who was smiling her approval. She was extraordinarily beautiful, he thought suddenly, and then pulled back from the thought. Was that the painkillers talking? He didn’t concern himself with the beauty of women who belonged to other men.

Maybe it was just that, at the moment, she looked like his guardian angel. He hadn’t even realized how daunted he’d felt at the prospect of handling things alone until he didn’t have to. She was the perfect candidate.

Honestly, he couldn’t think of anyone else he could stand to have living at the ranch right now.

“What do you mean, you’ve already got help?” Ginny sounded suspicious. “You’ve been in the hospital all afternoon. What did you do, hire a nurse straight out of the ER?”

“Better than a nurse,” he said. “Crimson’s offered to move in till Kevin wakes up.”

* * *

“I’VE GOTTA TELL YOU, pumpkin, you’re cute, but you’re exhausting.”

Crimson dropped a kiss on Molly’s head as she spoke, as if to offset any implied criticism. But it was true. She was dog-tired. And she’d only been a substitute mother for about—she glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand by Kevin’s bed—about three hours now.

Three hours out of...how many? How many days, weeks, months, even, would it be before Kevin was well enough to come back to his infant daughter?

If he ever was.

She shivered, even though this bedroom, one of the few completely renovated rooms in Grant’s comfortable ranch house, was cozy warm. She could see a peaceful spring dawn rising over the greening mountains through the window.

About half an hour ago, the rain had finally stopped—and Molly had woken up. Maybe the sudden silence was the problem. Maybe the deep drumming of water against the roof had provided a lullaby of white noise. Or, heck, maybe waking at 5:00 a.m. was normal for Molly. Crimson had never been intimate enough with Kevin to learn such things.

She’d never spent the night in this bedroom. Not until tonight.

She looked at the baby, who looked back, wide-eyed and curious.

What had she gotten herself into? Was it really just yesterday she’d been saying she needed to get the heck out of Silverdell? She should have listened to her gut. She should have gone straight to her car and...

As if Molly sensed Crimson’s distress, she frowned. She puckered up and inhaled, clearly prepared to wail.

“Shhh...no, no, we have to let Uncle Grant sleep.” Crimson patted the baby’s back, wondering what on earth to try next.

Clean diaper? Well, she wasn’t an idiot. She’d taken care of that first. She’d also offered a bottle of formula. Kevin had cleverly turned this guest bedroom into a self-contained baby-tending unit, with a small refrigerator on the dresser, and an electric bottle warmer conveniently situated on the end table.

After Molly had eaten, Crimson had patted her back until she burped. Serenading her softly, she’d walked her around the room.

And around. And around.

She’d been pacing a cramped circle through this small space for half an hour now. From the crib, down around the foot of the bed, over to the window, past the armoire and back to the bed. Every time, the minute Molly saw the crib, she started to fret, so Crimson would start the loop all over again.

But still Molly rode her shoulder with her head erect, her body tense, her feet kicking slightly. She was 100 percent wide-awake.

“Hush now, pumpkin. Hush.”

But Molly was clearly not in the mood to be hushed. Jiggling the baby with one arm, Crimson snatched up her long bathrobe with the other and made her way out the door, worming her arm into the sleeve awkwardly.

She still had only one arm in by the time she hit the staircase, and the robe dangled from her shoulder. Gingerly, she made her way down the beautiful Australian cypress treads, being careful not to trip on the untied belt, which dragged beside her like a snake.

The staircase seemed to fascinate Molly, who instantly went silent. She gripped the neck of Crimson’s nightshirt in one fist to steady herself and used her other hand to push upright so she could gaze at the big house with her liquid blue eyes.

She smacked her lips, and then she made a noise that sounded a lot like a kitten purring. Crimson had to chuckle. It was undoubtedly an expression of approval, as if saying that Crimson had been a little slow on the uptake, but she’d finally gotten it right.

“I hear you, girlfriend,” Crimson said, kissing the warm, silky head again as they made it to the bottom of the stairs. “A lady’s gotta have space. A lady’s gotta have a little excitement.”