A Baby on the Ranch

He looked at her over his shoulder, puzzled. “About what?”

“About being so short with you.” He was being nothing but good to her. He didn’t deserve to have her snapping at him.

“Can’t help being the height you are,” he answered wryly.

“I meant—”

He didn’t want her beating herself up about this. God knew she had reason to be upset and short-tempered.

“I know what you meant,” he told her, stepping back from the Jeep and then straightening. Holding Wayne securely in his arms, he changed the subject. “I can’t get over how little he is. It’s like holding a box of sugar. A wiggling box of sugar,” he amended as the baby twisted slightly.

He saw that the infant’s lips were moving. “Rooting,” he thought the nurse had called it on one of his visits to hospital. It was what babies did when they were hungry and searching for their mother’s breast.

“I think your son is trying to order an early dinner,” he told her. Wayne had latched on to his shirt and was sucking on it. Very gently, he extracted the material from the infant’s mouth.

Wayne whimpered.

Eli was right, Kasey realized. The nurse had brought her son to her for a feeding approximately four hours ago. She needed to feed him.

Kasey took the baby from Eli and Wayne turned his little head so that his face was now against her breast. As before, he began questing and a frustrated little noise emerged from his small, rosebud mouth.

“I think you’re right,” she said to Eli, never taking her eyes off her son.

She still wasn’t used to Wayne or the concept that she was actually a mother. Right now, she was in awe of this small, perfect little human being who had come into her life. Holding him was like holding a small piece of heaven, she thought.

That her best friend seemed so attuned to her son made her feel both happy and sad. Happy because she had someone to share this wondrous experience with and sad because as good and kind as Eli was, she was supposed to be sharing this with Hollis. Her husband was supposed to be standing beside her. He should be the one holding their son and marveling about how perfect he was.

Instead, Eli was saying all those things while Hollis was out there somewhere, heading for the hills. Or possibly for a good time. And it was Hollis who had gambled their home right out from under them and then hadn’t been man enough to face her with the news. He’d sent in Eli to take his place.

What kind of man did that to the woman he loved—unless he didn’t love her anymore, she suddenly thought. Was that it? Had he just woken up one morning to find that he’d fallen out of love with her? The thought stung her heart, but she had a feeling that she was right.

Meanwhile, Wayne was growing progressively insistent and more frustrated that there was nothing to be suckled from his mother’s blouse. All that was happening was that he was leaving a circular wet spot.

Glancing toward the protesting infant, Eli abandoned the suitcase he was about to take out.

“I’d better get you inside and settled in before Wayne decides to make a meal out of your blouse,” he said. Nodding at the suitcase, he told her, “This other stuff can wait.”

With that, he hurried over to the front door and unlocked it. Like most of the people in and around Forever, he usually left the front door unlocked during the daytime. But knowing he was going to be gone for a while, he’d thought it was more prudent to lock up before he’d left this morning.

Not that he actually had anything worth stealing, but he figured that coming into a house that had just been ransacked would have been an unsettling experience for Kasey, and he’d wanted everything to be as perfect as possible for her.

Despite their friendship, coming here wasn’t going to be easy for her. Kasey had her pride—at times, that was all she had and she’d clung to it—and her pride would have been compromised twice over if she’d had to stay in a recently robbed house. If nothing else, it would have made her exceedingly uneasy about the baby’s safety, not to mention her own.

She had more than enough to worry about as it was. He wanted to make this transition to his house as painless, hell, as easy as possible for her. That meant no surprises when he opened the front door to his house.

“Don’t expect much,” he told her as he pushed the front door open. “I’m still just settling in and getting the hang of this place. It’ll look a lot better once I get a chance to get some new things in here and spruce the place up a bit.”

Walking in ahead of him, Kasey looked around slowly, taking everything in. She knew that Eli had bought the ranch in the past couple of months. Though she’d wanted to, she hadn’t had the opportunity to come by to visit. It wasn’t so much that she’d been too busy to spare the time, but that she’d had a feeling, deep down, Hollis hadn’t wanted her to come over. That was why, she surmised, he’d kept coming up with excuses about why he wasn’t able to bring her over and he’d been completely adamant about her not going anywhere alone in “her condition,” as if her pregnancy had drained all of her intelligence from her, rendering her incapacitated.

Not wanting to be drawn into yet another futile, pointless argument, she’d figured it was easier just to go along with what Hollis was saying. In her heart, she knew that Eli would understand.

Eli always understood, she thought now, wondering why she’d been such a blind fool when it came to Hollis. There were times, she had to reluctantly admit, when Hollis could be as shallow as a wading pool.

At other times…

There were no other times. If he’d had a moment of kindness, of understanding, those points were all wiped out by what he’d done now. A man who’d walked out on his family had no redeeming qualities.

She forced herself to push all thoughts of Hollis from her mind. She couldn’t deal with that right now. Instead she focused on Eli’s house.

“It’s cozy,” she finally commented with a nod, and hoped that she sounded convincing.

He went around, turning on lights even though it was still afternoon. The sun, he’d noticed shortly after buying the ranch, danced through the house early in the morning. By the time midafternoon came, the tour was finished and the sun had moved on to another part of the ranch, leaving the house bathed in shadows. It didn’t bother him, but he didn’t want to take the chance that it might add to Kasey’s justifiably dark mood.

“By ‘cozy’ you mean ‘little,’” he corrected with a laugh. He took no offense. By local standards, his ranch was considered small. But everything had to start somewhere. “I figure I can always build on to it once I get a little bit of time set aside,” he told her.

She nodded. “I’m sure your brothers would be willing to help you build.”

“And Alma,” he reminded her. “Don’t forget about Alma.”

His sister, the youngest in their family and currently one of the sheriff’s three deputies, was always the first to have her hand up, the first to volunteer for anything. She was, and always had been, highly competitive. At times he had the feeling that the very act of breathing was some sort of a competition for Alma, if it meant that she could do it faster than the rest of them.

His sister had slowed down some, he thought—and they were all grateful for that—now that Cash was in the picture. The one-time resident of Forever had gone on to become a highly sought-after criminal lawyer, but he was giving it all up to marry Alma and settle down in Forever again. He knew they all had Cash to thank for this calmer, gentler version of Alma. Eli could only hope that Alma was going to continue on this less frantic route indefinitely.

“Nobody ever forgets Alma,” Kasey said fondly. Wayne, his cries getting louder, was now mewling like a neglected, hungry kitten. She began to rock him against her chest, trying to soothe him for a minute longer. “Um, could you show me where we’ll be staying?”

Because Hollis had caught him by surprise, he hadn’t had time to do much of anything by way of getting her room ready for her—or, for that matter, make up his mind about which room might be better suited to her and the baby. He was pretty much winging it. Stopping to buy the infant seat, as well as bringing over the baby’s crib, was just about all he’d had time for before driving to the hospital.

“For now, why don’t you just go into the back bedroom and use that?” he suggested. When she continued looking at him quizzically, he realized that she didn’t know what room he was talking about. “C’mon—” he beckoned “—I’ll show you.”

Turning, Eli led the way to the only bedroom located on the first floor. Luckily for him—and Kasey—the room did have a bed in it. It, along with the rest of the furnishings, had come with the house. The previous owner had sold him the house on the one condition that he wasn’t going to have to move out his furniture. That, the old widower had told him, would be one big hassle for him, especially since he was flying to Los Angeles to live with his daughter and her family.

Eli, who hadn’t had a stick of furniture to his name, had readily agreed. For both it had been a win-win situation.

Opening the bedroom door, he turned on the overhead light and then gestured toward the full-size bed against the wall. It faced a bureau made of dark wood. The pieces matched and both were oppressively massive-looking.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Eli urged. Stepping to the side, he added, “I’m going to go out and get your suitcase. Holler if you need anything.”

And with that, he turned and left the room.

Kasey watched him walk away. With each step that took him farther away from her, she could feel her uneasiness growing.

I’m hollering, Eli. I’m hollering, she silently told him.

You’re not the only one in the room, she reminded herself.

Smiling down at Wayne, she turned her attention toward quelling her son’s mounting, ever-louder cries of distress.

Chapter Four