New Year's Baby (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Jodi O'Donnell

  Cade was so caught up in her story it wasn’t until a tear had slid down her cheek that he realized how difficult this effort was for Sara. Still, she pressed on, and he had to admire her for it. “Because I was fighting another feeling that, until I did get here, I was a-alone. So terribly...terribly alone.” She swallowed painfully. “At times, I thought...it would consume me. And somehow I’d be lost forever.”

  Man, Cade thought. It was the one thing she could have said to pull him in yet again. Her feelings of aloneness simply resounded in him, canyon-deep, as nothing else ever had or could.

  Except that raging river of attraction he’d experienced that ran as deeply and fiercely.

  And that was why, even in full view of Doc, Cade couldn’t have stopped himself from responding to her. He eased down on the opposite side of the bed and reached out to take Sara’s hand in his in an attempt to reestablish that connection between them that had been so vital in pulling her through. In pulling them both through.

  At the pressure of his fingers, her mouth trembled and she clung to his hand, but no more tears escaped from under her lids.

  “Are you sayin’ you didn’t have a pocketbook or anything else in the car to tell you what was goin’ on?” Doc asked.

  She swallowed with difficulty. “No.”

  “Huh.” He scratched his chin in puzzlement. “I’m just tryin’ to feature how a woman would leave her house, much less start on a cross-state trip, without money or credit cards or ID.”

  Sara blinked open her eyes, then looked at him. “I didn’t,” she said abruptly. “Somehow, I do know that.”

  “Know what?” Cade asked.

  “I had a purse at one point, and...then it was gone. No—stolen, and I didn’t realize it till later.” Her fingers clenched around his. “Th-that was part of what made me feel so desperate.”

  “But how could that be?” Cade thought about not pressing the subject when Sara was so obviously upset, but he had to know. “I mean, hang me for bein’ an ignorant cowboy, Doc, but how can she know what happened with some things—like getting’ her purse stolen, and not others?” Like her own husband?

  “Well, that wouldn’t be that unusual in some types of amnesia. Of course it’s rare,” Doc said slowly, “but sometimes amnesia doesn’t have a physical cause.”

  “What do you mean?” Sara asked, more dread than ever in her voice.

  “Meanin’ sometimes somethin’ happens in your life that’s hard to get your head around, so you tuck it away for the time being. If that’s what the situation is with you, Sara, the likelihood is your memory’ll come back all at once, although it could also trickle back in bits and pieces.” He hesitated. “Or, in some very rare cases, not at all.”

  “You mean she might never remember her past?” Cade asked.

  Chin down, Doc tugged on one end of his mustache ruminatively. “Depending on the person, different events affect us differently. I knew a gal once who said she didn’t remember the whole year after her mama and daddy got divorced when she was about eight. She just blocked it out, even though she was still goin’ to school and for all appearances leadin’ a normal life. She never did remember that period of time.”

  The doctor glanced up at them both. “Like I said, it’s sorta like the mind has to put a particularly tryin’ event away for a while until it can deal with it. The trouble is, in the process a person can lose a sense of everything else that’s goin’ on in their lives during that time.”

  Again, Cade had to ask the question, squeezing Sara’s hand even harder, regardless of the doctor’s presence. “Are you saying maybe somethin’ happened to Sara that she couldn’t deal with?”

  But Doc had eyes only for Sara at this moment. “Or happened to someone she cared for very much,” he said gently.

  At the doctor’s words, Cade’s stomach crashed to his toes. He stared at Sara. “Loren?”

  She stared back at him, and he could see in her eyes she was experiencing the same kind of mortal fear that was eating the life out of him even as he spoke his brother’s name.

  Fear—and guilt.

  In shock, he dropped Sara’s hand like a hot potato. “What happened to Loren?” he demanded.

  Mutely, she shook her head, clutching her son close to her breast.

  “What happened to my brother?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The baby started to cry.

  “Now, Cade,” Doc said, “we can’t know for sure that anything’s happened—”

  “You tell me, what’s not to know?” he interrupted, springing to his feet and taking two steps away from them, his mind whirling. “What else would keep Loren from bein’ here with his wife when his firstborn was comin’ into the world than if something dire happened to him?”

  He drove both hands through his hair. “And here I stand not doin’ a thing, not a thing, to find out what that is!”

  Suddenly, he wanted to be gone from there in the worst way, wanted to jump into his dually and drive straight through to Albuquerque, find his brother’s house and break into it if he had to. Ransack it top to bottom, whatever it took to find Loren and prove to him...

  Prove what to him? That he was the dutiful brother who never quit a person even after they’d quit him? Who’d practically made it his life’s mission over the past seven years to show Loren that he could never, ever play his brother falsely?

  Because look where it’d gotten him.

  Cade pivoted and found Sara with his gaze. Yes, look where it had gotten him: even worse off than where he started. For he realized then, in a fool’s rush of hindsight, that he should have seen this situation with Sara coming. After what happened with Marlene, he should have known, because, in another flash of recognition, Cade remembered—there had been signs of Marlene’s attraction to him that he’d literally blocked from his mind: the way she’d brush up against him on her way past him in the hall. The flirty way she said his name when he answered the phone and she was on the other end of the line. How she had watched him while he and Loren played cards of an evening, all the while a come-hither gleam in her eye—and aimed straight at him.

  That was why he’d been ridden with guilt when Loren had accused him of cheating with Marlene behind his back. Subconsciously, Cade had seen the signs of her attraction to him and ignored them or pretended they weren’t there.

  Or, even worse, had subconsciously been encouraging her.

  Or was it simply his own lousy fate that he come between his brother and the woman he loved, again and again?

  No! Cade thought vehemently. He was not at the mercy of some force, either from within or without. Where Sara was concerned, he did have control. Control over his feelings for her.

  Except he obviously didn’t. How else could he have justified letting himself waste precious hours that he could have been using to locate Loren, who might be who knew where and in what condition?

  He came back to the present with a start as he realized Sara was voicing the very rationalization he’d been telling himself.

  “Cade, whatever has happened, how could you be to blame? How could either of us be to blame?” she said desperately, holding out her hand to him, a gesture, it seemed to him, to reestablish that connection, just as he’d given her.

  It was the last thing he wanted right now.

  He made a short sound of pure disgust. “Oh, but I do blame myself. I should’ve got on the phone to Texas State Police to retrace your route and see if Loren was stuck out in that blizzard somewhere along the way.”

  “But in my dream, he was going on a different trip, not one with me.”

  “Yes, in your dream, which could be a real memory or just another symptom of your delusion.”

  Doc frowned at his sarcastic tone. “Now, see here, Cade—”

  He held up a hand in apology. �
��All right. That doesn’t change the fact that the least I could have done was get in touch with the authorities in Albuquerque the minute I found out you were Loren’s wife, have them track him down. I mean, it was an emergency. Still is, with you obviously havin’ gone through some kind of awful event!”

  “Cade,” Doc repeated. The infant started to cry in earnest, his face flushing and arms waving about, and Doc seemed to be wanting to set a calmer tone, for he came around the end of the bed to clap Cade affectionately on the shoulder. “Just take a minute to think about it rationally, son. You were stuck here in a blizzard, still are for all intents and purposes, with your hands full. A lot of things have been out of your control—”

  “A lot aren’t, too.” Cade lowered his voice, but it tempered not a whit the force behind his words, as dead set as he had been the other night to state the unvarnished truth as he saw it. “I know, sometimes bad things happen you can’t control, like a blizzard. A lot, though, you can prevent, or take some action to cut the damage. And I didn’t.”

  “Well, if that’s true, then it stands to reason there’re a lot of good things that happen you can’t control, too!”

  This, to Cade’s surprise, had come from Sara. Her blue eyes crackled with a conviction he’d never seen in her before. She’d always seemed to him to want nothing more than to avoid friction.

  “Fine, I’ll grant you that.” Cade moved out from under the doctor’s arm to stand next to the bed. Sara had to crane her neck back to hold his gaze, but she never let hers waver. “But if a man isn’t smart enough to take charge of the happenings, either way, that he can control in his life, then he deserves the kind of luck they bring with ’em.”

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  He could see the dread in her eyes at what his answer might be, but he was determined to be ruthlessly honest with her—and himself—to the last.

  “There’s a time for waitin’, and there’s a time for taking action,” he explained. “Waitin’ for things to take their natural course, for people—and I’m not necessarily talkin’ about you here—to come to their senses. I’ve sure enough come to mine, even if it’s taken me seven years. And my time for waitin’ is through. From now on, even if I can’t control a particular circumstance, I can at least not be a victim of it.”

  He saw a flush spread across her creamy skin, as she seemed yet again to hold her emotions in check.

  But no, he was wrong.

  “Well, all I know, Cade,” she said, shifting her crying son to one arm while she grabbed up the bath towel she used as a nursing blanket, “is that there’s no way you can convince me we didn’t have every bit of the new year’s fortune guiding us all when this baby was born, whether you wanted it to or not!”

  Obviously out of patience with him, she flung the towel over her shoulder, draping it over the baby’s head, before fumbling with her clothing underneath it. Too late she seemed to recall his and the doctor’s presence in the room.

  The towel covered her more than adequately, but Cade knew what she was remembering as her gaze collided with his.

  And despite the doctor standing there, despite his seconds-old resolve, Cade was instantly immersed in the memory of Sara, her perfection in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, of the little one he’d taken from her body only a few moments before questing instinctively for the nipple that would provide him all sustenance.

  Of the look in her eyes, like twin flames of pure blue fire answering the emotions rising up from deep within his soul that would not be denied.

  Even if it betrayed his brother.

  He wouldn’t give in to it! He couldn’t, and not just for himself or for Loren.

  Yet Cade couldn’t conceal the bleakness in his voice when he said, “Me, fortunate? You must be confusing me with my brother, Sara. Loren’s the one with all the luck.”

  He turned to go. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some phone calls to make.”

  Chapter Five

  AFTER THE GRANDFATHER clock’s chime of twelve had come and gone, Sara finally gave up trying to sleep.

  Throwing back the covers, she rose, feeling for her robe at the foot of the twin bed before going to the window to pull back the curtain and let the moonlight in, rather than turn on a lamp. It had been difficult to get the baby to sleep after his last feeding. The last thing she wanted to do was disturb him.

  Still, she couldn’t prevent herself from drifting over to the beautifully carved cradle Cade had brought in to place a hand on that small, downy head and listen for the reassuring sound of her son’s breathing. Even with the doctor’s assurance that the baby seemed to be full-term and was fit as a fiddle, she couldn’t set aside that nagging worry of him being early—much too early.

  Yet she could feel rather than hear the soft in-out, in-out of tiny sighs, even a little grunt of contentment. Her child was fine.

  Giving a sigh herself, Sara straightened, wrapping the velour robe tighter around her, resigning herself to being up until the next feeding. Too bad she wasn’t hungry. The kitchen was now right around the corner, as Cade and Virg had moved her into this room on the ground floor earlier in the evening. It had apparently once been a side parlor, but had been outfitted as a bedroom for Cade’s grandfather when he’d grown stiff with arthritis, limiting his mobility. That had pretty much been the reason for moving her there, too—Cade felt she’d have it easier on the ground floor, where she wouldn’t have to descend stairs to get to the kitchen if she wanted a bite. There was even a full bathroom conveniently around the corner that she had all to herself.

  She glanced around at her new lodgings. The bed with its fifties-era maple headboard had been shoved against one wall to make the most of what space was available. A bookcase full of tattered Louis L’Amour and Will James novels sat kitty-corner to it. Backed into one corner was a worn wooden rocker. An equally worn but authentic-looking Indian rug kept the harshest chill of the wood floor from soaking into her soles.

  Everything, right down to the snout on the stuffed creature—an armadillo, it came to her—who stared out at her from the top shelf of the bookcase, was covered with a layer of fine red dust.

  Sara didn’t need full use of her faculties to figure out there hadn’t been a woman living on the ranch for several years.

  Strangely, though, she felt right at home, even if she missed the familiarity of the bedroom where Baby Cade had been born. And where his uncle now slept.

  Turning slowly, she brushed a lock of hair back from her eyes, unable to stop herself from remembering when Cade had done so—in that very bedroom above her.

  Yes, that she remembered—and more. She hadn’t been completely truthful with the doctor today. There were bits and pieces of...impressions, more than actual memories, that she hadn’t told him or Cade about. Impressions of the man who must be Loren.

  She’d dreamed of him again last night. A dream filled with busyness: things to do, details to see to, arrangements to be made. Only this time, she was the one preparing for a journey.

  And, as she also hadn’t revealed today, she felt she was leaving someplace or...someone. She’d been doing so with that same mingling of flip-side emotions as in her first dream, like she was a coin spinning in the air: regret mixing with relief. Yearning turning to retreat and back again. Dread going head-to-head with hope.

  Shivering abruptly, Sara peered out at the stark, snow-covered landscape. The most disturbing episode by far had been when Cade had burst into the kitchen this afternoon to scold her for not taking better care of herself, for not calling on him to help her, and she’d had another flash of déjà vu—or something very like it. This time it wasn’t an event that she’d experienced with Loren being played again. More, it was as if the situation between her and Cade was similar to one between her and that faceless, nameless someone she’d been leaving behind. Or tryin
g to.

  The creak of footfall on the stairs was like the crack of a whip in the silence, and Sara gasped in terror. Catching her breath, she realized who it must be. Cade.

  Down the steps she heard him come, ever so slowly and quietly, but even a mouse would have caused the ancient floorboards to pop and snap.

  At the bottom of the stairs he paused, and her breath suspended again as she waited for...for what? What did she want to happen? What didn’t she want to take responsibility for letting happen—again?

  But when the footsteps started up again, it was away from her bedroom and into the kitchen. Then...no sound at all.

  Crossing her arms, Sara determinedly stayed put. He’d barely said a word to her since that scene in his bedroom earlier today, and those he had said to her at supper had been only because of Dr. Barclay’s presence. Afterward, when the doctor had been making out the birth certificate for the baby, she’d been half-tempted to tell him to put the baby’s name down as Homer or Buford or even Clementine, anything, just to see if she could get another rise out of Cade.

  But getting a rise out of him wasn’t her intent, hadn’t been her intent when she’d spoken up this afternoon. She was beginning to see how it worked with him, however: challenge Cade, and he turned into that remote, cynical man she had come to dread encountering. Yet whenever she tried to push herself to go closer to the bottomless abyss that contained her memory somewhere within it, he was right there with her, changing back to the Cade who’d seen her through her baby’s birth, taking her hand, giving her his all and holding back nothing.

  So which would she encounter tonight if she ventured into the kitchen? And at what cost to herself?

  When several minutes passed with no further sound, Sara couldn’t stand it. She made her way down the hallway to the kitchen.