by Helen Lacey
“The baby’s moving,” she said quietly.
Mitch’s chest tightened. “For real?”
She nodded and pressed his hand firmer. “Well, it is probably more like fluttering, but it feels...it feels... I guess it feels exactly liked I’d hoped it would.”
Mitch stilled, his palm burning where it lay against her rounded belly, and experienced an acute and riveting connection to the woman he’d loved and lost.
“I can feel it,” he said softly, looking into her face and regsitering how her eyes glistened.
“We’ve never had this moment before.”
“I know,” he whispered and smoothed his palm over her stomach. “It’s amazing.”
“I want this baby so much, Mitch. I’ve tried not to worry...not to think about the babies we’ve lost...but sometimes I can’t help it. If anything were to happen...”
“It won’t,” he assured her when her words trailed off. “You said yourself that this time feels different.”
“It does,” she said and sighed. “But I still—”
“Stop worrying,” he said gently, cutting her off. “Let me worry instead. Let me do that for you, at least.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Everything will work out, Tess, I promise,” he assured her, feeling the need to offer her whatever comfort he could. So much had transpired between them, so much loss and anguish and despair. But in that moment, as her hand pressed firmly over his, all he felt was a surge of something so intense, so real, he could barely draw a breath.
Hope.
And he knew he’d never really gotten over her.
Then he wondered what the hell he could do about it.
Chapter Five
Tess removed her hand and stared directly ahead. The last thing she wanted was to get caught up in a tender moment with her ex-husband. She had to keep her head. To remember that he had an agenda and would do whatever he had to in order to get what he wanted. And Tess wasn’t about to be manipulated into marriage or cohabiting with him...not under any circumstances.
He must have sensed the shift in her mood because he removed his hand and turned in his seat, sighing heavily as he started the vehicle. Tess glanced at him, noticing his hands were tight on the steering wheel, loathing the feelings that were churning inside her. During their years apart, she’d tucked away the memories of how strong and comforting his hands were, how easily her head had fit into the crook of his shoulder, how safe she had felt in his arms. In the small confines of the truck cab, her skin still tingling where his hand had laid against her belly, the intimacy between them had never seemed more real or raw.
She knew she had to stop remembering, stop thinking...stop overthinking.
“How long do you think it will be before Leola lets the whole town know I’m back?” she asked, trying to sound casual as they followed the other woman’s vehicle as it pulled away from the sidewalk.
“Hours,” he replied. “She’ll tell Alice from the bakery, Alice will tell old man Radici from the pizza parlor, he’ll tell Shirley from the museum and soon it will be old news. So, relax.”
“I don’t care about a little gossip. People are naturally curious and you’re one of the most popular guys around this town,” she said, not liking the way that made her feel. Mitch was well-known...and well respected. No doubt she’d become the villain when she divorced him. In fact, she was surprised that the single women in town hadn’t started circling the moment she left.
“What?” he asked.
“Huh?” she responded, and glanced at him.
“You huffed.”
Tess’s skin prickled. “I did not.”
“You did. Something on your mind?”
Tess remained silent for about ten seconds. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
He eased the truck into the midmorning traffic. “A girlfriend?”
“Partner, lover, significant other,” she said with emphasis and turning hot all over. “You know, a woman in your life.”
He glanced sideways for a moment, checking out her belly, his mouth tightening. “It would be a little crowded at the moment, don’t you think?”
Tess tensed as unwanted emotions flared through her blood. Guilt. Regret. And more feeling than she wanted to acknowledge. “I don’t want to be the reason that you don’t share your life with someone.”
“That’s not your call, is it?” he shot back, and took a left turn off Main Street.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that relationships are messy and can’t be made to order. It means that I wasn’t in any fit state to be with anyone else after you left, and now it’s all moot because you’re here and you’re having my baby, and we have to work out a way to try and not screw this up for our child’s sake.” He turned into Reed Street and pulled up behind Leola’s Subaru. “We’re here.”
He was out of the truck in seconds and came around to her side. Tess got out and met Leola by the gate.
“Since you’re looking for a a rental, I suppose you’re not moving into the Culhane ranch?” Leola asked, brows raised inquisitively.
“That’s correct. But I’m happy to take a short-term lease,” she added, trying to avoid giving the other woman too much information. “Who knows what the future will hold.”
Leola offered a nervy kind of laugh and nodded, standing back to let them pass through the gate as Mitch came up behind her and gently guided her by the elbow. Tess relaxed a little, finding a familiar comfort in his closeness.
The house was old and small, but the yard was neat and fully fenced. Leola opened the front door and invited them inside.
“This is a dump,” he said bluntly, once they were inside and walking down the narrow hallway.
“Mitch,” she chastised, keeping her voice low. “Be nice.”
True, it wasn’t a palace, but if she ignored the peeling wallpaper, shabby decor and musty smell, it had good bones and would look much better with some fresh paint. “It’s not that bad.”
“Ah... I’ll just leave you alone while you look around,” Leola said and walked toward the front door.
Once the other woman was out of range, he flicked a little peeling paint off the wall. “I won’t allow—”
“Allow?” Tess jerked her hands to her hip. “Can you actually hear yourself when you speak?”
He managed to look apologetic. “I’d prefer our child didn’t live in a place like this. I don’t mean to be—”
“Sure you do,” she said, cutting him off again. “I’ll give you some latitude, Mitch, but I won’t be told what I can do, or where I can do it.”
He nodded agreeably. “Okay. But there are mold spores in the ceiling. It’s not safe.”
She glanced up, squinting to see if she could spot the spores, and couldn’t. Still, the more she looked around, the less the shabby house appealed to her. “Okay, we’ll go to the next place.”
The next home, one about five streets away, was larger and two stories. Too dangerous, Mitch said, for her to try to maneuver a stroller up and down a flight of stairs. The third house was no better, in his exalted opinion. There were bars on the windows, which he informed her made the place a firetrap. And was totally unsuitable for their child.
“The previous owners were a little paranoid about security,” Leola explained when Tess asked about the bars. “I have suggested to the current owner that they be removed to make the place more appealing. I can find out for you if you like?”
Tess nodded. “Sure, thank you.”
“Is there anything else?” Mitch asked as they walked back to their vehicles.
“Not today,” Leola replied, her lips pressed together. “I’ll be in touch. Where can I contact you?”
Tess gave Leola her cell number and they remained by the truck as the Realtor got into her car and drove off. O
nce the vehicle was out of sight, Tess turned her attention to her ex-husband.
“Could you have been any more painful?”
“What did I say?” he asked, looking innocent.
Tess huffed. “Seriously? Mold spores? Firetrap? You weren’t exactly looking to like.”
“I only want you and the baby to be safe.”
It was a nice story, but she didn’t completely believe it. “Maybe that’s a part of it, but the other part is you trying to control things, and we both know it.”
“Okay,” he said, suddenly infuriatingly agreeable. “How about we go back to the ranch and you can check out which room you’d like me to set up as a nursery?” He paused for a moment, clearly waiting on her reaction. “For when the baby stays with me, of course.”
Oh, he was clever. “Of course,” she said stiffly.
“Is that a yes?”
She shrugged, thinking she should probably go directly back to her sister’s place, but knew that Mitch would be relentless. And it would give her another chance, if need be, to make her plans abundantly clear. Not that she wanted to rehash the same old argument, but Mitch wasn’t a man to be easily swayed by her refusals. She knew that from experience. “Sure, let’s go. I’d like to see Dolly’s foal again.”
They were back on the road a few moments later. The weather was overcast, and Mitch commented that they were predicting an early snowfall for the coming season.
“Annie was saying they’d opened up the recreational park below Kegg’s Mountain again for the tourists,” she said casually, keen to steer the conversation away from anything to do with her finding somewhere to live, even though she knew Mitch wouldn’t let up on the idea of her moving back to the ranch.
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a few months since they’ve allowed tourists and campers into the park. Too many landslides,” he added. “The mountain keeps rumbling and several of the old copper mines have become unstable. Seems okay now, though.”
“Do you still volunteer for the emergency services?”
Mitch was renowned for being one of the best trackers in the district and was often called out to help search for lost tourists in the busy holiday season.
“When they need me. I haven’t had to go out for a while, which is good. And Shanook is getting a little old for it now. I might have to train a new dog if I keep at it.”
She knew he and the old wolfhound were an amazing search-and-rescue team. “Do you hear much from Jake?” she asked.
He shrugged. “He calls every couple of months. You know Jake... He’s never been one for keeping in touch.”
She did know it. She also knew Mitch missed his brother. “He’s out of the military now?”
“Yes. He’s working in security with a buddy of his from the army...high-end computer stuff. It all goes over my head,” he said, and grinned. “I can barely use a smart phone.”
Tess chuckled, recalling that Mitch wasn’t one for technology. Oh, he was smart, sometimes infuriatingly so, but he was also very much a hands-on kind of man, more at home in the corral than sitting behind a desk. He could certainly negotiate a deal and did his fair share of admin work for the ranch, but being out with the horses and cattle was where he was the happiest. Not that she wanted to think about Mitch being happy. She didn’t care one iota. Caring would mean feeling, and she had experienced enough feelings to do with Mitch to last her a lifetime. All she wanted was for them to be able to be parents in a way that was best for their child.
“Does Grant visit regularly?” she enquired, remembering his youngest brother fondly. It had been challenging for him when his teacher also became his sister-in-law, but Grant was good-natured and likable and got along with most people.
“Every couple of weeks,” Mitch replied. “He’s busy with his new job. Ellie has seen him more than I do in the last couple of years, since she was doing a course at the technical college in Rapid City and would spend a couple of nights at Grant’s apartment when she had to be there for classes. She’s doing her last few semesters online, so she can be more hands on at the ranch. You know Ellie—horses are in her DNA.”
“She’s had a good role model,” Tess remarked, and meant it. The truth was, Mitch has been an amazing guardian to his siblings for the last sixteen years and deserved the acknowledgment. Plus, she knew it meant he would be an amazing father to their child. Suddenly she was compelled to ask him the question that had been churning inside her for the last twenty-four hours. “Are you really happy about the baby, Mitch?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Honestly, after everything that happened between us, Tess, I’m delighted that we can share this little miracle.”
“You don’t regret not going ahead with the vasectomy?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t think I would have done it,” he said, and glanced at her. “I only said it to...to...”
“To control the situation?” she said when his words trailed.
“I know it probably seemed that way at the time. But honestly, I think I’d hoped it would somehow help you heal,” he said softly. “You were hurting. I didn’t know what to say or do. And we were so far apart... I don’t know... Maybe I thought an ultimatum would bring you back to me. In hindsight, it was a reckless thing to say and if I had known what the consequence would be, I like to think I would have done things differently.”
“That’s not what you said yesterday,” she reminded him.
“Yesterday I was in shock,” he said candidly. “The last person I expected to turn up at my door was you. After what happened in Sioux Falls, I believed we were done for good. You left so quickly I didn’t have a chance to process what it meant.”
“I didn’t think I would get pregnant,” she said, hearing a veiled accusation in his tone. She knew Mitch was peeved by the way she had practically bolted from his hotel room all those months ago. “And I didn’t want a postmortem. You know very well that I don’t do that casually and—”
“Neither do I,” he added quickly, cutting her off.
“I haven’t been with anyone since we separated,” she admitted, and then wished she hadn’t, because she didn’t want him reading too much into what her behavior meant. “Can you say the same thing?”
“Would it matter?” he fired back.
“You’re a free agent,” she said, wishing they would hurry and reach their destination soon. “You can do what you like.”
“I haven’t been engraving notches on my bedpost, if that’s what you’re inferring.”
She shrugged as heat crawled up her neck. “I’m not interested in—”
“You seem interested,” he said. “But I wasn’t a player before you, or after you, Tess. Like you, I prefer sex to mean something. Even if, at the time, I thought it was simply goodbye.”
She swallowed the sudden burning in her throat. To be reminded of their time in Sioux Falls was painful. Because he obviously had believed it would be the last time they would be together...like a catharsis...a way of purging her from his system. But for Tess—she had been abruptly dragged back into her safe place, to his arms, to the memory of all they had once been to one another.
Thankfully, they had arrived at the Triple C and Tess took the chance to change the subject again.
“So, you’ll get to keep Dolly’s colt?”
“Yes,” he replied. “That was the deal. The ranch needs a new stallion and Alvarez will get the initial option on the first of this colt’s progeny.”
“Ellie doesn’t like him,” she remarked as they drove up the driveway.
“Ramon Alvarez is a tough businessman, and he’s not the easiest guy to get along with. But this deal will be good for Triple C. You know there are half a dozen ranches offering exactly what we offer here, but with Volcán’s proven bloodline, we can be a step ahead of the competition. He’s a champion reining horse and his offspring sell for big money.�
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“Is the ranch in financial trouble?” she asked.
“No,” he replied as they pulled up outside the house. “But over the last few years I’ve watched as several spreads in the area went under or have been sold off. I won’t allow that for the Triple C. This place belongs to my family and now to my child,” he said, and glanced at her stomach. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep it safe.”
Tess nodded. Whatever Mitch’s faults, he had an unwavering loyalty to his home and family. She opened the door, and Mitch was out of the vehicle within seconds and around the passenger side to help her out.
Once they were inside, she followed him up the stairs, taking a moment to reacquaint herself with the wall of photographs. She’d never met Mitch’s parents, but had heard countless stories about his grandparents, Henry and Aurora Culhane. Of course, she knew the whole story about Billie-Jack. All the memories, all the tragedy that the Culhanes had endured had somehow made them stronger and more resilient, and she admired them for their ability to push past the challenges and get on with things. Like Hank had, enduring countless surgeries after the accident and still becoming one of the nicest and most generous people she had ever known. Or Joss, who was raising his young daughters alone since his wife’s death. Or Ellie—losing her mother and being left by her father—and still finding a way to become a strong and fiercely independent women with her brother’s guidance.
“I thought this room would make the best nursery,” Mitch said when she reached the top of the stairs. He pointed to the second door on the left. “Grant’s old room. A coat of paint and some baby furniture and I think it will do the job.”
Tess didn’t dare look in the direction of the master suite. It was the room they’d shared as husband and wife. The room where they’d whispered words of love countless times. The room where she’d told him she was leaving the ranch—and him—for good.
“I’m sure the room will be fine,” she said, and hovered in the doorway. The room was empty, except for a bed, dresser and chair in the corner. The posters and trophies adorning the walls and shelves were now gone. No doubt stored away alongside the belongings from Jake, Joss and Hank’s old rooms.