New Year's Baby (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Jodi O'Donnell

  Still, Cade didn’t mind. The activity got him out of the house from sunup to sundown, and the exertion put another layer of exhaustion between him and his thoughts—about Sara.

  He’d promised not to leave her, but there was just so close he trusted himself to get.

  And they were coming up on another evening—alone.

  Which was why exiting the stable he perked up at the sight of Doc Barclay’s familiar dark-blue dually pickup lumbering up the road.

  Cade went to greet him.

  “So you got a genuine new year’s baby in the house!” Doc called out his open window, looking like a modern-day Mark Twain with his wavy white hair, horn-rimmed glasses and bushy mustache.

  “Not quite,” Cade answered, tramping across the yard toward the doctor, his boots crunching on the packed snow. “If he’d’ve taken about a minute longer to be born, he would be, though. He and his mama seem to be doin’ fine, but I appreciate your comin’ out to give ’em a once-over.”

  Actually, Cade was relieved that the doctor was here. Sara had been able to talk with Doc Barclay yesterday, and she’d had nothing of immediate concern to report from the conversation. Cade didn’t want to leave anything to chance, however. He’d never forgive himself if he did. Wouldn’t blame Loren, either, for not forgiving him—this time.

  Because there was Sara’s amnesia, too.

  He got to the truck just as Doc was pulling out a worn and raggedy medical bag, along with a couple of brown paper grocery sacks. He handed them to Cade before removing his glasses to polish the fog off the lenses. “Figured you’d need some supplies till you could get into town.”

  Peering inside, Cade saw milk, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables—and a big box of diapers for newborns.

  “Sara will sure be glad to see these,” he said, adding as he heard footsteps behind him, “Or maybe I should say I am. Virg has taken it on as a personal crusade to keep the young’un dry. I came downstairs this mornin’ to find him rooting through my clean laundry for materials to make more diapers out of. I nearly lost my best pair of longies to the cause.”

  “Well, if ya’s fold ’em up proper when they come out of the wash insteada leavin’ ’em throwed over the door, I never would’ve thought of ’em!” the old hand retorted.

  Doc laughed. “Well, they don’t make much of a baby gift, but I thought they’d come in handy even if her kin showed up with a bunch of ’em. You know what the story is there yet?”

  “Yes.” The late-afternoon sun reflecting off the snow was so bright Cade felt his face might freeze in a permanent squint. “She’s Loren’s wife.”

  “No! Loren’s here and no one mentioned it?” Doc glanced toward the house in surprise as they approached the back door. “Whyn’t you tell me that and spare me a few days’ worry? I got the impression you were havin’ to deliver the baby by yourself, Cade. Your brother always had a knack for handlin’ himself in an emergency.”

  His gaze swung around the ranch yard. “Pret’near could take care of any veterinary need y’all had out here. I used to think he’d’ve made a pretty fair doctor if he hadn’t had ranching so thoroughly in his blood. And it must be, if he’d drive in weather like it was on New Year’s Eve to make sure his boy was born here on the family homestead, just like him and his daddy was, and his daddy afore him.”

  The doctor beamed at them. “Y’all must be tickled to have him back where he belongs. I’m curious to know how he ever coulda left here in the first place.”

  Cade had no immediate comment, making the moment more uncomfortable than it already was. Virg even took to shuffling his feet.

  No one knew why Loren had left the ranch, for Cade had kept the particulars to himself. Even Virg had only what amounted to sketchy details of the situation.

  But the ranch hand knew the brothers better than anyone, and Cade assumed Virg had figured out what had happened, or close to it. For that reason, Cade knew he’d best have his wits about him if he was going to keep a lid on the real state of affairs.

  Which, when it came right down to it, was the same as before with Marlene: nothing. As he’d told Sara, there was nothing between them beyond that brief moment they’d shared.

  “Loren’s not with her,” Cade finally said. “But that’s not the biggest news. I wanted to wait to tell you in person—Sara didn’t know she was Loren’s wife.”

  Doc fetched up short of the back door. “She what?”

  “We pieced it together from a note Loren had written, sending her to my care while he apparently went off on some trip, and a letter I got from him just this week,” Cade explained. “Here’s the thing, though, Doc. Even though she knows now she’s Sara McGivern, she still doesn’t know it, not in the way you or I know who we are. Seems she lost her memory somewhere on the way to or from Albuquerque, where she and Loren live.”

  Doc frankly stared. “Did she suffer some kind of head trauma?”

  “Not that I can tell, although she’ll rub her forehead now and then, like it hurts. She’s held on to her learnin’—you know, reading, geography and the like. And she remembers bits and pieces of people and conversations.” He felt his explanation fell far short of dispelling the doctor’s confusion, because said out loud, the story sounded as improbable as it had yesterday when he’d given Virg the rundown. “But she seems to’ve forgotten near to everything having to do with her past. Includin’ Loren.”

  “She’s the sweetest li’l thing you’d ever want to meet, Doc,” Virg, for some reason, felt compelled to offer. “Eyes blue as cornflowers and a smile that’ll like to break yer heart. And when it comes to Loren’s baby, she’s as devoted as a mother can be. No doubt about it, that boy is her whole world right now.”

  Doc’s eyebrows rose over the rims of his glasses. “Well, let’s get on inside and see what we can do for them both. It sure sounds like it was one memorable New Year’s, Cade.”

  He shook his head slowly. “You have all the luck, startin’ the new year off with a bang while the rest of us were shut up tighter ’n ticks in town.”

  “I got that knack, for sure,” Cade agreed grimly, stamping his feet as he followed the doctor inside, Virg trailing behind.

  The three men entered the kitchen a few minutes later to find Sara stirring a pot on the stove.

  “Sara! You shouldn’t be doin’ that!” Cade said, depositing the paper sacks on the counter and nearly snatching the spoon from her hand. What would Doc think, him letting his brother’s wife slave over a stove within days of giving birth!

  Of course, if he’d been here with her, as he’d promised he would be, then she wouldn’t have had to.

  “I was just heating up a can of soup,” she protested. “I know, I’ve been putting away enough food to feed a camp of lumberjacks, but all of a sudden I was starving, and I wasn’t sure when you and Virg would be coming in for supper.”

  “What d’ya think I gave you that red bandanna for but to get Virg’s attention when he’s out in the yard?” he pointed out curtly.

  He became immediately contrite when she looked up at him with stricken eyes. Immediately sorry, too, for not being more careful, for his move had put him close enough to her that the effect of those blue eyes on him was as powerful as it had been the first time, drawing him in, drawing him under with that tidelike force that wouldn’t be denied, completely negating hours of effort he’d spent doing just that.

  Heart pounding in his ears, Cade took a step back, and it did him no good to see Sara’s gaze turn even more stricken—and hurt. But he had to keep some distance between them, for both their good!

  Except the long and short of it was, that distance was of necessity growing wider and wider. At this pace, he’d be bunking in the stable with Destiny come nightfall.

  “So you’re the new mother,” Doc said from behind him.

  Cade swung around, h
is hand making a hurried journey over his face, as if to wipe away any trace of his thoughts. “Sorry, yes. Doc, this is Sara...Loren’s wife.”

  “Oh!” Sara grasped the older man’s hand in both of hers. “Doctor, I’m so glad you’re here! I mean, I know we talked about the baby and he seems fine, thankfully, but I won’t rest easy till you’ve checked him over. I’ve just had this nagging sense he was born on the early side.”

  She shot Cade a quick look. “I—I don’t know for sure, you see, when my due date was.”

  “That’s what Cade was tellin’ me,” Doc replied calmly, taking her arm. “Well, let’s take a look at both of you. And once it’s heated, Cade can bring up a bowl of that soup on a tray for you to eat while I’m examining the baby. You put some of them carrot sticks with it, son, and pour her a big glass of that milk, too.”

  “You bet.”

  Cade watched them disappear around the corner before turning to fetch a bowl. He came practically nose to nose with Virgil.

  “You wanna tell me what was goin’ on here a second ago?” the hand asked.

  Cade pushed past him to open the cupboard. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Virg.”

  “Bull-loney. The tension was so thick ’tween you two I coulda sliced off a slab and fried it up in a skillet. It’s been the same way since when I first come in and found you and Sara together.”

  Cade gave the older man a long look, counting to ten, before saying pointedly, “Now that I’m back, you might want to take a trip out to the barn to see how that mama cow I brought in with a couple of frozen teats is doin’.” He reached into a drawer for a spoon. “Unless you think you’ve got the picture already, given your new occupation as a professional know-it-all.”

  “Using that rusty bobwire tongue of yours on me don’t get you nowhere, and you know it.”

  When Cade silently continued to assemble a tray for Sara, Virg set a grizzled paw on the counter next to him, effectively boxing him in, even if Virg was a good half-foot shorter.

  Cade raised his eyebrows in mild warning, but Virg wasn’t budging an inch.

  “I ain’t accusing you of nothin’, Cade,” the hand said.

  “Then what are you doin’, Virg?” Cade asked, deadly quiet.

  “I dunno.” The older man blew a huff out of the sides of his mouth, raising the ends of his tobacco-stained mustache. “Y’know, I never asked what happened those years ago. Figured it was between you brothers. I got eyes in my head, though, and I’ve seen how you’ve taken care of this ranch for the past half-dozen years when I knew your heart weren’t entirely in it. And when Loren finally does come home, he’ll see that. Maybe he’ll see a lot of things, if he hasn’t already figured ’em out on his own.”

  He shook his head. “All I know is that whatever—or whoever—it was that came between you and Loren before, it weren’t worth it. But now...”

  His sentence trailed off, Virg obviously not knowing what exactly he was concerned about or how to express it. But he was right about one thing: Marlene Lane hadn’t been worth setting brother against brother, and not because nothing had happened. That had always been the worst part of it.

  But now...now there was Sara—soft, sweet Sara with her big blue eyes and heartbreaking smile—to come between them.

  Yet she wouldn’t. Cade simply wouldn’t let it happen.

  He set one hand on the older man’s shoulder. “You’re right, Virg. What came between Loren and me before wasn’t worth it. And you have been here the past seven years to help me hold the ranch in trust so that if Loren returned he could take over what’s always been his.”

  Cade gave Virg’s shoulder a squeeze, looking directly into the hand’s faded brown eyes. “I’m tellin’ you nothing’s changed in that aim, Virg.”

  “Nothin’?”

  “I got the chisel if you got the stone,” Cade averred.

  Yet even as he watched the relief flood Virg’s eyes, he realized it was the second time in two days that he’d made a solemn, heartfelt vow. And that both vows went completely counter to the other.

  Well, he had the chance right now to make good on at least one promise. Sara was hungry as a grizzly in springtime, and she needed to keep her strength up to nurse his brother’s son.

  When he entered the bedroom, Doc had apparently finished up examining both Sara and the baby, for he was perched on the edge of the bed admiring the little one in her arms.

  “I gotta say, that’s one healthy-lookin’ baby there,” he remarked, setting his clasped hands on one crossed knee. “You must live under some kind of lucky star, young lady.”

  “I must,” she murmured, glancing gratefully at Cade as he set the tray on the nightstand next to her. “A lucky star that led me to the one person who could help me with my baby.”

  He kept his face carefully blank, but couldn’t help pausing, struck as he was, yet again, by the peculiarity of this woman in his house, in his bedroom.

  Today she was dressed in a maternity smock of blue-and-black plaid flannel and a pair of black woolen leggings, clothes evidently from the small suitcase Virg had found in the trunk of her car when he’d dug it out and moved it yesterday morning. With her hair back in a braid and not a speck of makeup on her pale-white skin, she looked about twenty years old.

  Cade wondered how old she actually was, and guessed that was another one of those things that would remain a mystery until she regained her memory—or until Loren showed up.

  He didn’t know which he least looked forward to.

  “I didn’t do much other than help nature take its course,” he said bluntly. “Nothin’ to get up a ticker-tape parade for, to be sure.”

  Sara tried to brush down the shock of downy black hair on the baby’s crown, her gaze glowing. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I sure think Baby Cade is worth at least that much of a celebration.”

  The doctor gave her a look over the top of his glasses. “Baby Cade, is it?”

  “Yes. I named him after his uncle,” she said with soft defiance, as she had the other night, and Cade wondered what Doc would make of it, if he would get the same impression Virg had. “I know Loren would approve. I know he would. I mean, what father wouldn’t approve of naming his child after the man who brought him into this world?”

  “None that I know of,” Doc agreed. He turned to Cade. “Seems you handled the situation pretty well, son, Loren or no. I don’t want to scare either of you, but there’s any number of things that could have gone wrong, even when you’re deliverin’ a normal, full-term baby.”

  Leaning against the bedpost, Cade only shrugged, but the praise put a little of the shine back on his tarnished trust in his abilities.

  “So Baby Cade’s not premature?” Sara asked the doctor after she’d eaten half her soup and downed the entire glass of milk.

  “Course I don’t know for sure, but he looks close to full-term to me, from the size of him.”

  “Then...where did I get the idea he wasn’t ready to be born?” She gazed down at her child in bewilderment. “It just seemed so...so direly important that he not come yet. I mean, I was so scared I nearly lost my mind....”

  She must have realized, as both Cade and the doctor did, what she’d said.

  “Well, let’s talk about that for a sec,” Doc said. “Your vitals are good, eyes are clear. I don’t see any outward evidence of head trauma, but we won’t know for sure till we can get you into Amarillo for a head CT and an EEG.”

  “Virg and I took a good look at her car after we dug it out,” Cade provided, “and we didn’t find any sign of an accident. Not even a dented bumper.”

  “And you haven’t had any other disorientation, no seizures,” Doc asked Sara. She shook her head.

  The doctor pursed his lips, thinking. “Do you have any problem remembering what’s happened since yo
u got here?”

  She shook her head again, and Cade noticed that the action didn’t seem to cause her pain as it had before. “No. I could tell you minute by minute everything that’s happened.”

  “But you don’t remember much from before then.”

  “Right. I just seem to have blanked it out before a certain point.”

  The doctor flashed Cade a covert look of dubiousness, and he was hard-pressed not to give an equally skeptical glance in return.

  Yet Sara must have sensed their doubt. “Look, I know it sounds improbable at best, but that’s all I remember! Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew more?”

  “Of course you would—” the doctor began placatingly.

  “Don’t you think I want to know more about what’s going on with me?”

  Her gaze shifted imploringly between the two of them, and Cade could see she was getting upset—just as she had before when he’d pressed her for information.

  “Start at what you do remember then, Sara,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She clasped the baby close, as if afraid he’d be taken from her, even now. “Well, it’s not like it was a definite moment. I just sort of became aware that I was driving. The wind was blowing hard. It seemed to be coming at me from every direction, buffeting the car and making it difficult to keep it on the narrow road.”

  “You weren’t on the interstate at that point?” Cade asked.

  “No. When I sort of ‘came to,’ I was on a side road. All I knew, or seemed to know, was that I had...someone to get to.”

  She ducked her head, and Cade knew it was to avoid looking at him—the someone she thought she’d been running to.

  “Do you remember much else about what was goin’ on with you when you realized you had amnesia?” Doc prompted.

  “I remember...oh, I remember feelings more than what happened. Like the desperate fear that the baby was too early to be born yet, even though I wasn’t having contractions.”

  She had closed her eyes and spoke as if in a trance. “No matter what, though, overriding my fears was the feeling that I’d be all right if I could just get here. But maybe...maybe that was because I had nothing else to go on, nothing else to hold on to but that one thought.”