A Baby on the Ranch

He paused for a second, looking for the right words, then decided just to trust his instincts. Kasey would understand. “Well, it wasn’t. After living with all that noise going on all the time, the quiet got on my nerves. I found that I kind of missed all that noise. Missed the sound of someone else living in the place besides me,” he emphasized. “Having you and Wayne staying with me will help fill up the quiet. So you see,” he concluded, “you’re really doing me a favor.

“Besides,” he continued. “What kind of a friend would I be, turning my back on you at a time like this when you really need someone?”

“A friend with a life of his own,” she answered matter-of-factly.

“You’re right,” he replied with a nod of his head. “It is my life. And that means I get to choose who I want to have in it.” He looked into his rearview mirror, angling it so that he could catch a glimpse of the sleeping infant in the backseat. “And I choose Wayne. Since he’s too little to come to stay with me by himself, I guess that means that I have to choose you, too, to carry him around until he can walk on his own power,” he concluded with a straight face.

Repositioning the mirror back to its original position, he glanced toward Kasey. She hadn’t said anything in response. And then he saw why. Was he to blame for that? “Hey, are you crying?”

Caught, she had no choice but to nod. Avoiding his eyes, she said evasively, “My hormones are all over the map right now. The doctor who delivered Wayne said it’s because I gave birth, but it’s supposed to pass eventually.”

She was lying about the cause behind the tears and he knew it. He could always tell when she was evading the truth. But for the time being, he said nothing, allowing her to have her excuse so that she could have something to hide behind. It was enough that he knew the tears she was crying were tears of relief.

Shifting and taking one hand off the steering wheel, he reached into his side pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Switching hands on the steering wheel, he silently held out the handkerchief to Kasey.

Sniffing, she took it and wiped away the telltale damp streaks from her cheeks. Eli’s offer of a place to stay had touched her. It meant a great deal. Especially in light of the fact that the man she’d loved, the man she’d placed all her faith and trust in, not to mention given access to the meager collection of jewelry her late mother had left her, had thought nothing of just taking off. Abandoning her at a point in time when she very possibly needed him the most.

And, on top of that, he’d left her and their newborn son virtually homeless.

If Eli wasn’t here…

But he was. And she knew he was someone she could always count on.

“I’ll pay you back for this,” she vowed to Eli. “I’m not sure just how right now, but once I’m a little stronger and back on my feet, I’ll get a job and—”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, cutting her off. “And if you want to pay me back, you can do it by getting healthy and taking care of that boy of yours. Besides,” he pointed out, “I’m not doing anything that extraordinary. If the tables were turned and I had no home to go to, you’d help me.” It wasn’t a question.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he continued, “that’s what friends are for. To be there for each other, not just when the going is good, but when it’s bad. Especially when it’s bad,” he emphasized. “I’ll always be here for you, Kasey.” It was a promise he meant from the bottom of his heart. “So do us both a favor and save your breath. You’re staying at my place for as long as you want to. End of discussion,” he informed her with finality.

She smiled then, focusing on his friendship rather than on Hollis’s betrayal.

“I had no idea you could be this stubborn,” she told him with a glimmer of an amused smile. “Learn something every day, I guess.”

He caught the glimmer of humor. She was coming around, Eli thought, more than a little pleased. With any luck, Hollis taking off like some selfish bat out of hell wouldn’t scar her. But then, above all else, he’d always figured that, first and foremost, Kasey was a survivor.

“There’s probably a lot about me that you don’t know,” he told her as he continued to drive along the open, desolate road that was between Pine Ridge and Forever.

“A lot?” Kasey repeated, then laughed softly as she turned the notion over in her mind. After all, they’d known each other in what felt like close to forever. “I really doubt that.”

He loved the sound of her laughter. Loved, he freely admitted, if only to himself, everything about Kasey—except for her husband. But then, he didn’t have to love Hollis. Only she did.

It was because he’d accidentally found out that she loved Hollis that he’d kept his feelings for her to himself even though he’d finally worked up the nerve to tell her exactly how he felt about her.

But that was back in high school. Back when Hollis, the school’s football hero, had attracted a ring of girls around him, all completely enamored with his charm, each and every one of them ready to do whatever it took to have him notice them.

Hollis, being Hollis, took all the adulation in stride as being his due. He took his share of worshipful girls to bed, too.

Even so, he always had his eye on Kasey because, unlike the others, while very friendly, she didn’t fawn all over him. So, naturally, she was the one he’d had to have. The one he’d wanted to conquer. She’d surprised him by holding out for commitment and a ring. And he’d surprised himself by letting her.

One night, not long after graduation, drunk on far more than just her proximity, Hollis had given her both a commitment and a ring, as well as a whirlwind wedding ceremony in a run-down, out-of-the-way chapel that specialized in them, with no questions asked other than if the hundred-dollar bill—paid up-front—was real.

And just like that, Eli recalled, the bottom had dropped out of his world. Not that he felt he had a prayer of winning her heart while Hollis was busy sniffing around her. But Eli had honestly thought that if he bided his time and waited Hollis out, he’d be there when Kasey needed someone.

And he was.

It had taken eight years, far longer than he’d thought Hollis would actually last in the role of husband. More than anything, Eli wanted to be there for her. He’d take her gratitude—if that was all she had to offer—in place of her love.

At least it was something, and besides, he knew that unless he was dead, there was no way he wouldn’t be there for Kasey.

He heard her sigh. This was all weighing heavily on her, not that he could blame her. In her place, he’d feel the same way.

“I want you to know that I really appreciate this and that I promise Wayne and I won’t put you out for long.”

“Oh, good,” he quipped drily, “because I’ll need the room back by the end of the week.”

His words stopped her dead. Eli spared her a look, one that was a little long in length since he was fairly confident that there was nothing to accidentally hit on this stretch of lonely highway.

“I’m only going to say this one more time, Kasey. You’re not putting me out. I want to do this. I’m your friend and I always have been and this is what friends do, they have each other’s backs. Now, unless you really want to make me strangle you, please stop apologizing, please stop telling me that you’re going to leave as soon as possible. And please stop telling me that you feel you’re putting me out. Because you’re not. It makes me feel good to help you.

“Now, I don’t want to hear anything more about this. My home is your home for as long as you need a place to stay—and maybe for a little bit longer than that.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Understood?”

“Understood,” she murmured. Then, a bit more loudly and with feeling, she promised, “But I will make it up to you.”

“Good, I’m looking forward to it,” he told her crisply. “Now, moving on,” he said deliberately. “You have a choice of bedrooms. There are two to choose from, pretty much the same size,” he told her, then stopped when a thought occurred to him. “Maybe I should let you have the master bedroom. We can put the crib in that room, so you can have Wayne right there—unless you’d rather have him stay in his own room, at which point you can take one of the bedrooms and place him in the other.”

Kasey felt as if she was still stuck in first gear, her brain fixated on something he’d said to start with. “The crib?”

Why did she look so surprised? he wondered. “Well, Wayne’s got to sleep in something, and I thought a crib was better than that portable whatchamacallit that you had at your place. Or a dresser drawer,” he added, recalling stories his father told him about his being so small to begin with, they had tucked him into the bottom drawer of a dresser, lined with blankets and converted into a minicrib. He’d slept there for a month.

Kasey pounced on something he’d only mentioned in passing. “You were there?” she asked eagerly. “At our ranch?” The our in this case referred to her and Hollis. When he nodded, her mind took off, fully armed to the teeth. “So that means that I can still go over there and get—”

He shook his head. The man who had won the ranch from Hollis had made it very clear that he considered everything on the premises his. Still, if she had something of sentimental value that she wanted retrieved, he would be there in less than a heartbeat to get it for her. The new owner would just have to understand—or be made to understand.

“The guy who won the ranch from Hollis is living there,” he told her. “I had to talk him into letting me come in and get some of your things. Actually—” never one to take any undue credit, he felt he needed to tell her “—having Rick and Alma with me kind of gave me the leverage I needed to convince the guy to release your things so I could bring them to you.”

“Rick and Alma,” she repeated as that piece of information sank in with less than stellar results. “So they know? About Hollis leaving me?” she asked in a small, troubled voice.

He knew that she would have rather kept the fact that Hollis had walked out on her a secret, but secrets had a way of spreading in a small town the size of Forever. And besides, the sympathy would all be on her side for reasons beyond the fact that she was a new mother with an infant to care for. Everyone in and around the town liked her.

That couldn’t be said of Hollis.

“They know,” Eli told her quietly. “I figured they—especially Rick, since he’s the sheriff—should hear it from me so that they’d know fact from fiction, rumors being what they are in this town,” he added.

Kasey felt as if there was a lead weight lying across her chest. There was a very private, shy woman beneath the bravado. A woman who wanted her secrets to remain secrets.

“How many other people know?” she asked him.

“For now, just Rick and the deputies.”