A Baby on the Ranch

For now.

“Now,” she knew, had an exceptionally short life expectancy. As Eli had said, rumors being what they were, she had a feeling that everyone in town would know that Hollis had taken off before the week was out—if not sooner.

It was a very bitter pill for her to swallow.

But she had no other choice.

Chapter Three

“I guess you’re right. No point in pretending I can hide this,” Kasey finally said with a sigh. “People’ll talk.”

“They always do,” he agreed. “It’s just a fact of life.”

Fact of life or not, the idea just didn’t sit well with her. She wasn’t a person who craved attention or wanted her fifteen minutes of fame in the spotlight. She was perfectly content just to quietly go about the business of living.

“I don’t want to be the newest topic people talk about over breakfast,” she said, upset.

“If they do talk about you, it’ll be because they’re on your side. Fact of the matter is, Hollis more or less wore out that crown of his. People don’t think of him as that golden boy he once was,” Eli assured her. Over the years, he’d become acutely aware of Hollis’s flaws, flaws that the man seemed to cultivate rather than try to conquer. “Not to mention that he owes more than one person around here money.”

Kasey looked at him, startled. Her mouth dropped open.

Maybe he’d said too much, Eli thought. “You didn’t know that,” he guessed.

Kasey’s throat felt horribly dry, as if she’d been eating sand for the past half hour.

“No,” she answered, her voice barely above a shaken whisper. “I didn’t know that.”

If she didn’t know about that, it was a pretty safe bet that she certainly didn’t know about her husband’s dalliances with other women during the years that they were married, Eli thought.

Hollis, you were and are a damn fool. A damn, stupid, self-centered fool.

He could feel his anger growing, but there was no point in letting it fester like this. It wasn’t going to help Kasey and her baby, and they were the only two who really mattered in this sordid mess.

“Are you sure?” Kasey asked. She’d turned her face toward him and placed a supplicating hand on his upper arm, silently begging him to say he was mistaken.

It was as if someone had jabbed his heart with a hot poker. He hated that this was happening to her. She didn’t deserve this on top of what she’d already gone through. All of his life, he’d wanted nothing more than to make life better for her, to protect her. But right now, he was doing everything he could. Like taking her to his ranch.

Dammit, Hollis, how could you do this to her? She thought you were going to be her savior, her hero.

The house that Kasey had grown up in had been completely devoid of love. Her father worked hard, but never got anywhere and it made him bitter. Especially when he drank to ease the pain of what he viewed as his dead-end life. Carter Hale had been an abusive drunk not the least bit shy about lashing out with his tongue or the back of his hand.

He’d seen the marks left on Kasey’s mother and had worried that Kasey might get in the way of her father’s wrath next. But Kasey had strong survival instincts and had known enough to keep well out of her father’s way when he went on one of his benders, which was often.

Looking back, Eli realized that was the reason why she’d run off with Hollis right after high school graduation. Hollis was exciting, charming, and fairly reeked of sensuality. More than that, he had a feeling that to Kasey, Hollis represented, in an odd twist, freedom and at the same time, security. Marrying Hollis meant that she never had to go home again. Never had to worry about staying out of her father’s long reach again.

But in Hollis’s case, “freedom” was just another way of saying no plans for the future. And if “security” meant the security of not having to worry about money, then Hollis failed to deliver on that promise, as well.

Eli had strong suspicions that Kasey was beginning to admit to herself that marrying Hollis had been a huge mistake. That he wasn’t going to save her but take her to hell via another route.

Most likely, knowing Kasey, when she’d discovered that she was pregnant, she had clung to the hope that this would finally make Hollis buckle down, work hard and grow up.

Eli blew out a short breath. He could have told her that Hollis wasn’t about to change his way of thinking, and saved her a great deal of grief. But lessons, he supposed, couldn’t be spoon-fed. The student could only learn if he or she wanted to, and he had a feeling that Kasey would have resisted any attempts to show her that Hollis wasn’t what she so desperately wanted him to be.

Eli tried to appear as sympathetic as possible. As sympathetic as he felt toward her. This couldn’t be easy for her. None of it.

“I’m sure,” he finally told her, taking no joy in the fact that he was cutting Hollis down.

Kasey shook her head. She felt stricken. “I didn’t have a clue,” she finally admitted, wondering how she could have been so blind. Wondering how Hollis could have duped her like this. “What’s wrong with me, Eli? Am I that stupid?”

“No, you’re not stupid at all,” he said with feeling. “What you are is loyal, and there’s nothing wrong with you.” To him, she’d always been perfect. Even when she’d fallen in love with Hollis, he hadn’t been able to find it in his heart to take her to task for loving, in his opinion, the wrong man. He’d just accepted it. “Hollis is the one who’s got something wrong with him. You’ve got to believe that,” he told her firmly.

Kasey lifted her slender shoulders in a helpless shrug and then sighed again. It was obvious that she really didn’t want to find fault with the man who’d fathered her child. The man whom she’d loved for almost a decade. “He was just trying to get some money together to make a better life for us,” she said defensively.

The only one whose lot Hollis had ever wanted to improve was his own, Eli thought grudgingly, but he knew that to say so out loud would only hurt Kasey, so he kept the words to himself.

After pulling up in front of his ranch house, he turned off the engine and looked at her. “Until you’re ready, until you have a place to go to and want to go there,” he added, “this is your home, Kasey. Yours and Wayne’s. What’s mine is yours,” he told her. “You know that.”

He saw her biting her lower lip and knew she was waging an internal war with herself. Kasey hated the idea of being in anyone’s debt, but he wasn’t just anyone, he silently argued. They were friends. Best friends. And he had been part of her life almost from the time they began forming memories. There was no way he was about to abandon her now. And no way was he going to place her in a position where she felt she “owed” him anything other than seeing her smile again.

“Don’t make me have to hog-tie you to make you stay put,” he warned.

The so-called threat finally brought a smile to her lips. “All right, I won’t.”

Feeling rather pleased with himself, at least for the moment, Eli unfolded his lanky frame out of the Jeep and then hurried over to Kasey’s side of the vehicle to help her out. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have even thought of it. She’d always been exceedingly independent around him, which made her being with Hollis doubly difficult for him to take. Kasey couldn’t be independent around Hollis.

Hollis enjoyed being in control and letting Kasey know that he was in control. That in turn meant that he expected her submission. Because she loved him, she’d lived down to his expectations.

Unlike Hollis, he was proud of the fact that Kasey could take care of herself. And also unlike Hollis, he liked her independent streak. But at the moment, that had to take a backseat to reality. It was obvious that her body was having a bit of difficulty getting back in sync after giving birth only a few days ago. Eli just wanted to let her know that he was there for her. Whether it meant giving her a hand up or a shoulder to cry on, she could always rely on him.

She knew he meant well, but it didn’t help her frame of mind. “I don’t like feeling like this,” she murmured, tamping down her frustration.

Eli took her hand and eased her to her feet. “It’ll pass soon and you can go back to being Super Kasey,” he quipped affectionately.

Just as she emerged from the passenger side, the tiny passenger in the backseat began to cry.

“Sounds like someone’s warming up to start wailing,” Eli commented, opening the rear door. “You okay?” he asked Kasey before he started freeing Wayne from all his tethers.

She nodded. “I’m fine.” A sliver of guilt shot through her as she watched Eli at work. “I should be doing that,” she said, clearly annoyed with herself. “He’s my responsibility.”

“Hey, you can’t have all the fun,” he told her good-naturedly, noting that she sounded almost testy. He took no offense, sensing that she was frustrated with herself—and Hollis—not him.

The baby was looking at him, wide-eyed, and for a moment he had stopped crying. Eli took that to be a good sign.

“Hi, fella. Let’s get you out of all those belts and buckles and into the daylight,” he said in a low, gentle voice meant to further soothe the little passenger.

In response, the baby just stared at him as if he was completely fascinated by the sound of his voice. Eli smiled to himself, undoing one belt after another as quickly as possible.

Behind him, he heard Kasey say, “I’m sorry, Eli.”