by Caro Carson
Until then, he would continue to live with her in the main house. Never again would he go seven weeks without seeing her. Sophia’s next movie would begin shooting in July, and her new manager had added contract riders to keep the future Chalmers family together. Sophia’s housing on location would accommodate the baby and a nanny, and Travis would arrive via the studio’s private jet midway through the shooting schedule. Private jets and cowboys might seem an odd combination, but Travis figured he could handle the luxury. He’d go through hell to be with Sophia. If he had to adapt to luxury instead, well, there was no law that said life always had to be hard.
He walked up behind Sophia and slipped his arms around her, above her round belly, below her breasts, which had become even more lovely with her pregnancy. “I had a different kind of gift in mind.”
“Here in the barn?” she asked, sounding like a sex goddess.
“Like that would be the first time.”
Sophia pretended to droop her shoulders in disappointment. “I’m going to have to take a raincheck on that gift. I feel as big as a house this morning.”
It was cool in the barn in December, so she wore a fluffy green sweater. Travis noticed that she rubbed her last-trimester belly in a different way today than usual, although the baby wasn’t due for three weeks. Maybe the sweater was just extra soft and touchable to her.
Maybe not.
Sophia was adamant that a home birth was the only way to keep her birthing experience private. Her midwife could reach the ranch in a little less than an hour, but Travis didn’t find that as comforting as Sophia did. He’d witnessed hundreds of animal births in his life, but Sophia was no animal, and he hoped when the contractions began, she’d change her mind and let him drive her to the hospital. She was no longer placing the baby up for adoption, so secrecy was no longer paramount. Her well-being was.
That was a discussion for next week’s appointment with the midwife. Today was Christmas Eve, and he wanted to put a smile on Sophia’s beautiful face.
“Close your eyes,” he murmured. “Don’t move.”
He went into Samson’s stall and scooped up the black-and-gray puppy he’d hidden there. The pup was four months old and probably fifteen pounds, but it was still a puppy with oversized paws and soft fur.
He placed the soft fur against Sophia’s soft sweater. “Happy Christmas Eve.”
“Oh! A puppy.” Her smile was exactly what he’d hoped for.
For about five seconds.
Then it faded in confusion. “Wait. Is this one of Patch’s puppies?”
“Yes. She was returned. I thought you might want to keep her.”
“The poor thing. Poor, poor puppy.” She buried her face in its fur and burst into tears.
Travis scratched the dog behind the ears. “Baby, the dog is happy. Why aren’t you?”
“She was returned because she wasn’t good enough, was she?”
“No, Roger just got a job offer in another state, and since he’d only had the pup for a few—”
“You don’t have to keep pretending for me.” Her tears fell as she kissed the puppy.
Having a fiancée in her final trimester had taught Travis that tears were possible over just about any topic. He wouldn’t dismiss every tear as hormones, however, not when he knew the unique challenges Sophia faced.
“Come into the office and sit. You and the puppy.” He held the desk chair for Sophia, gave her a tissue from the box he’d learned to keep on his desk now that it wasn’t just him in the barn, and then he waited to see if she would tell him what was really bothering her.
She did. “You said that everyone wanted Patch’s puppies because she’s a great cow dog, but for this litter, the father was a mystery. Now the dogs are being returned. It’s the father, isn’t it? Even with a great mother like Patch, people assume the puppies just aren’t good enough. It’s so unfair. The puppies didn’t do anything wrong.”
He crouched down in front of her. “This is the only puppy that’s come back to the ranch, and it’s because Roger got a job offer in another state. He’ll be in an office building all day. That’s it. I wouldn’t lie to you, Sophia. That puppy is desirable, I guarantee it, whether we know who the father is or not.”
“Maybe I should’ve stuck with my plan to place the baby up for adoption. No one would have known who the biological parents were. The baby would have started life with a clean slate.”
That wasn’t coming from as far out of left field as it seemed. “You saw the news today that Deezee was convicted of drug trafficking.”
She placed one hand on her belly. “That’s this poor baby’s father. Everyone knows it. Deezee made sure of that, and now he’s a felon. How can I make up for that? I’m not that great when it comes to motherhood material. Here’s Patch, this legendary cow dog, and even she can’t make up for the father. People think her sweet puppies aren’t good enough because the f-father—”
“Sophia, listen to me.”
Travis hated the son of a bitch who had just been convicted. He wasn’t just a drug dealer who’d come to this ranch waving around a gun that could have injured Sophia, but he was the man who’d messed with Sophia’s head, too. The fact that she’d once considered herself in love with Deezee still undermined her confidence in herself.
“You are going to be a great mother. I know this from the bottom of my soul. The fact that you are worried whether or not you’ll be good enough for this baby proves that the baby is getting a mom who cares.”
He’d tell her that as many times as it took. Deezee had told her crap for five months. Travis was going to tell her truths for the rest of her life. Travis was going to win.
She let go of the puppy with one hand and placed her palm on her belly in that same low place.
Travis covered her hand with his. “No one is ever going to look at this child and think he or she isn’t good enough. Deezee chose to sell drugs for money. That’s not DNA. That was a choice. Anyone from any parent could make the same choice, or not. Deezee’s not going to be around to teach this baby about bad choices. I’m going to be.”
He had to stop and clear his throat. Then he thought better of it. Let Sophia see how much he cared.
He looked up at her, and he knew she saw the unshed tears, because she looked a little bit blurry. “I cannot wait to hold this baby. This is the most exciting thing in my world. I may not have contributed any DNA, but I’m going to be part of this child, too. I’m going to teach ’em when to say ‘gid-yap’ and ‘whoa’ and not to let their horse step on their reins and to eat their zucchini and to love their mama. That’s you.”
Sophia’s tears subsided. Her breathing was steady and the puppy in her arm was calm. Travis knew their future was bright. Just when Travis had relaxed, Sophia slayed him. “There are a million reasons I’m going to love this baby, Travis, but here’s one of the biggest. If it hadn’t been for this baby, I would never have come to your ranch. I would never have met you. For that, I will always owe the baby one.”
Travis had to bow his head and clear his throat.
“Me, too, Sophia. Me, too.”
Under their hands, he felt her stomach draw tight. She wasn’t livestock, not at all, but Travis had felt that same kind of contraction in horses and cows. It could pass and not start again for another three weeks. It could be nothing.
“I don’t like the look of the weather out there,” he said. “Let’s put this puppy back in her hay and head back to the house.”
* * *
Sophia was suddenly keenly interested in rearranging all the ornaments on the Christmas tree.
Travis ran a ranch. He was a big believer that Mother Nature knew what she was doing, but as far as nesting instincts went, this one wasn’t particularly useful.
“I’m gonna call the midwife,” he said.
Sophia stopped in the middle of switching the locations of a sequined ball and a glass ball. “Why? I feel fine.”
Travis nodded. “That’s good, baby. Glad to hear it.” He dialed the phone.
Outside, the rain turned to sleet.
The radio announced the highways were closed. Travis imagined that children all around Austin were afraid that Santa wasn’t going to be able to get his sled through the bad weather tonight. He was afraid the midwife wouldn’t.
He was right, damn it all to hell.
In the end, for all the times he’d insisted to Sophia that she wasn’t a beast, he was grateful that there were similarities. It made the whole process a little less bewildering. They’d decided ahead of time which bed to use and had plastic coverings and extra sheets prepared. But as Sophia walked around the house rearranging Christmas decorations, he noticed she kept going into the master bathroom, a room he hadn’t seen her use once in the four months since he’d begun living with her. It reminded him of a cow who’d kept returning to stand under a particular tree, or a mother cat who’d decided to leave her nice box for a treacherous rafter at the last minute.
He picked up the supplies the midwife had left last week and carried them into the master bathroom.
“I think I’ll take a bath,” Sophia said. “Then maybe we can watch a Christmas movie on TV.”
She got undressed and sat in the tub, but she never turned the water on. She wasn’t having any painful contractions for him to time, and the midwife kept telling him on the phone that a first labor could take twelve hours, easily, if Sophia really was in labor. By then, the roads would surely be open.
So Sophia sat in the dry bathtub and Travis pretended that was normal. Then the first painful contraction hit, and poor Sophia went from nothing to full-out labor in no time.
“I don’t think this is right,” she said, panting to catch her breath.
“Everything is working just like it should.”
The pain was scaring her. “But it doesn’t always work out. You lose calves every year. We almost lost that kitten—”
But another contraction hit her before the last one ended, and she started trying to do her hee hee hee breaths like the online course had taught them.
Another contraction. God, they were coming hard. Fast. His poor Sophia.
Travis kissed her temple, wet as it was from pain and the effort to handle the pain. He knelt next to the tub and kept his arm around her shoulders. He felt so utterly useless.
The contractions left her limp. He could only support her with his arm.
“That calf,” she panted. “Mother Nature would have taken that calf and the mother with it if you hadn’t been there to help.”
“No, baby. You’re remembering that wrong.”
“You had those straps.”
“I didn’t have to use them, remember? I just watched and waited, and that baby was born just fine. Your baby is going to be born just fine. It hurts like hell—” and God, he wished he could do something about that “—but it’s going just fine.”
The contraction started building again, the pain rolling over her as she gripped his hand and tried to breathe.
“That heifer almost died. She couldn’t move. She was so tired.” Panic was in her voice. She was losing it, the pain was winning, and Travis thought his own heart was going to break a rib, it was beating so hard. She looked too much like her pioneer movie character, the one that had died onscreen.
Help wasn’t coming, not until the sleet stopped. Travis couldn’t control the weather. He couldn’t control Sophia’s labor. This was the most important event of his life, the one thing in his life he absolutely had to get right, and he was powerless.
Sophia lifted her head and started panting. Hee hee hee.
God bless her. She was still at it. She didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t quit.
He couldn’t, either.
He shoved the fear and the images from that damned movie out of his head as he shifted his position a bit, leaning over the edge of the tub and adjusting his arm to hold Sophia even closer. Her fingers loosened on his as the wave receded.
She plopped her head back onto his arm. “I can’t do it. This can’t be Mother Nature.”
“Listen to me. You are doing everything right.”
But she wasted her precious energy to roll her head on his arm, no, no, no. “That calf would have died. You had to drag her over to that heifer.”
Travis hadn’t realized how heavily that still weighed on Sophia. They’d never talked about it before now. This was a heck of a time to talk about anything, but he didn’t want her worrying about what could go wrong.
He kissed her temple again. “Everything is going to be okay. When you saw me drag that newborn calf over to the mama, I was just being helpful. She was tired, so I just brought that baby up close to her so she could take care of it. And you know what? When your little baby is born, if you’re too tired to move, that’ll be okay, too. I’m gonna scoop up that little baby and hold her right here for you.” He brought his other arm across her breasts and completed a circle around her, keeping the woman he loved in his arms. “And it’s gonna be you and me and that brand new baby, and the three of us are gonna be just fine.”
“I’m sorry. This is...just...” She still looked a little unfocused, but not so panicky.
He could feel her body going under the contraction. “You’re doing great.”
“...just not how we planned it.”
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“I love you.”
He thought he’d never heard the words uttered in a better way. They pierced his soul. “I love you, too.”
She let go of his hand and gripped the edge of the tub. The last of that dazed and confused expression lifted as she frowned fiercely. “I think—I feel like I should push. It hasn’t been long enough, has it? What time is it? Ohmigod, I’m not kidding. I need to push. Am I supposed to push?”
Travis nodded. “If you think it’s time to push, then you should push. I know you’re right.”
“Okay. Then I’m going to have a baby now.”
He dropped one more kiss on her head. “You do that, Sophia. You do that.”
And she did.
In record time, in a bathtub on the River Mack ranch on Christmas Eve, Noelle Jackson Chalmers was born, healthy and loved.
Travis wept. No one had ever been given a better Christmas gift.
* * * * *
And don’t miss the next book in Caro Carson’s TEXAS RESCUE miniseries, coming soon from Harlequin Special Edition.
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE COWBOY’S CHRISTMAS LULLABY by Stella Bagwell.
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The Cowboy's Christmas Lullaby
by Stella Bagwell
Chapter One
“Mom, somebody has come to our rescue!”
“Ain’t so, Harry! It’s a Halloween goblin come to steal our candy!”
Ignoring the shouts of her two sons sitting in the backseat of the car, Marcella Grayson glanced up from the black dashboard to the flash of headlights in the rearview mirror.
When her car had suddenly died, she’d attempted to steer it to the side of the rural graveled road. Instead, the vehicle had rolled to a complete stop before she could manage to make that happen. Now the rear end of the car was partially blocking the path of the driver behind her.