“You want to know who the competitive one was in the family, it’s Loren,” Cade said, studying his own hand. “He’d set his mind on somethin’, and there’d be no getting him to change it.”
“How do you mean?” she asked, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. Maybe she had a bit of the McGivern competitiveness in her, after all.
He rearranged his cards. “Only that he could take a notion into his head that the moon was made of Swiss cheese and even with evidence to the contrary starin’ him in the face, he’d still contradict you.”
Sounds like someone else I know, Sara reflected but thought better of saying as Cade went on.
“Once, when he was fourteen or so, he decided to take up breakin’ horses. Mind you, this was a kid who was all angles, with limbs like a daddy longlegs. I’ve seen newborn colts that looked less gangly. Two cards, if you please.”
She dealt him two. “Why would being gangly be a problem riding horses?”
“T’isn’t, not riding horses. But I’m talkin’ about climbing on a green horse that’s never known the feel of someone on its back. Getting bucked off comes with the territory, and it’s as important to know how to get thrown as it is to stay on. You gotta be able to tuck in tight and roll or you’ll not only break a bone but get stomped on. Anyway, Loren climbed aboard his very first one and two seconds later hit the dirt in a perfect four-point landin’. Not only that but he could only lay there, stars dancin’ around his head, so that sure enough, the horse stomped him a good one right in the kidney.”
“Ouch,” Sara said with a wince of empathy.
“You said it. After about half a dozen more such wrecks, Granddad finally told him we were a cattle outfit and he couldn’t be spared out on the range in order for him to try and kill himself at breaking horses, even though I was being allowed to spend every waking hour in the corral.”
He gave a short cough. “Loren didn’t have much to complain about, though,” he said loyally. “I’d’ve traded some of my horse sense for his way with cows—or girls, for that matter. When it came to dealin’ with them, I was the one sittin’ on the fence wonderin’ what was goin’ on.”
The confession seemed spontaneous, coming from Cade almost without thinking, for his mouth curved downward as he made a show of studying his cards.
“I guess I didn’t realize you are so close in age,” Sara said. Trying to be helpful, she added, “That would explain some of the rivalry going on between you two.”
“You gonna take any cards or should I call?” he asked abruptly.
“Oh!” She’d been so engrossed in the conversation she nearly forgot about the game. “Yes, dealer takes one.”
She discarded the three and drew one card for herself. It was a ten.
“Full house, tens and fives,” Sara crowed exultantly, laying the cards down. Leaning forward on her crossed forearms, she couldn’t keep from treating him to a roguish smile. “The saying, I believe, is read ’em and weep.”
But he seemed not to even register her hand as Cade’s gaze fixed on her mouth, then practically jerked away. “Hold on just a second there, pilgrim. I got four of a kind.”
Sara stared as he spread his cards on the table: four twos, and a three.
“Rats!” She tamped down her disappointment, determined not to be a sore loser, either. “Well, go ahead, give it to me. I can take it.”
Cade paid undue attention to gathering up the cards. “Give what to you?”
“I thought you gloated when you won.”
“That I do—when it’s fair ’n’ square.”
Sara shot up straight. “Wait a minute—you mean you stacked the deck in your favor? But that’s cheating!”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I prefer to call it a little lesson in how to make your own luck.”
Her jaw dropped. Then she laughed, and the lingering vestiges of her fear disappeared like mist from a mountaintop.
Slouching in his chair, Cade considered her, his lower lip jutting out pensively, his eyes narrowed appraisingly, and she thought he looked like nothing so much as a tiger assessing its prey.
“If it was a matter of rivalry ’tween brothers,” he continued ruefully as if there’d been no pause, “I don’t know why it mattered so much to Loren. Like I said, he was a whiz with everything cow-related. Every year at the county fair he’d draw the honors for his prize heifers. I’d come scraggling in at the bottom of the field, and my heifer was getting the same top groceries his was.”
She’d noticed that he spoke of his brother mostly in the past tense and wondered why, when he was so set on bringing Loren alive to her.
“Well,” Sara provided helpfully, “if you’re both as competitive as you say you are, and with the closeness in age, don’t you think it’s inevitable you’d have a rivalry between you for just about anything that either of you both want even a little?”
“Inevitable—you mean as in that way of just lettin’ things happen without us having any control over them?” He pushed himself to his feet, and she was aware that somehow, suddenly, he was once again on the verge of heading out the door. And leaving her alone, once again.
“No!” On sheer reflex, she came to her feet, too. She tried to hold in check her words, her thoughts, her emotions, lest they impel him away. But she couldn’t, for she was getting a sense of what Cade’s life had been like for the past seven years since Loren had left. It seemed to her Cade had put a lot of effort himself into not leaving, as if the competition between brothers continued...and the loyalty which made him never give up on someone had in some way turned, as wine sours into vinegar, to that stubbornness she’d been treated to time and again.
“I simply meant inevitable as in the way of human nature! I mean really, Cade. What stories would Loren tell me about you if he got the chance?”
He planted his hands on the table, bending closer. “Are you rememberin’ anything?” he asked.
No. The answer was on her lips as she gazed across at him, brown eyes glowing like molten gold, the sinew and brawn over his arms, stretched taut with the urgency of holding his own emotions in check. His thick chestnut hair begged for a hand to smooth through it, to soothe over this soul, so long alone itself.
No, how could she remember anything of the past when the here and now that was Cade McGivern kept reaching out to her, holding her here? Nothing about Loren stirred her innermost feelings—not of happiness, or even fear or sadness. Or love.
Whereas with Cade...oh, he frightened and fascinated her in such opposing ways, like that coin spinning in the air. She was almost forced to respond to him as quickly, from the very bottom of her heart.
As he had responded to her at first. Had it only been a few days ago? How she wanted to go back to that moment when her baby was born, when it had seemed as if all the forces in the universe had brought the two of them together to do what neither of them could have done alone.
She couldn’t go back to that night, even if she could neither go back to before it—to when she had not known this man.
Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, for Cade’s gaze darkened and turned liquid. Then his eyes shifted lower of a sudden, and as if in slow motion, Sara lifted her hand to her throat. For she knew what he looked at: that thin, gold band hanging upon a chain around her neck.
Yet another action had already been set into motion as Sara swayed forward as if drawn by a tide. And Cade never hesitated, moved by the same force as he, too, tilted toward her...
From her room came a cry that started out wavering and becoming an all-out wail before either of them could move. With a shake of his head, Cade straightened.
“It’s the baby,” he said inanely.
“Y-yes. I’d better see what’s wrong.”
Turning, Sara fled down the hall, her heart drumming and guilt
nipping at her heels. Flicking on the hall light before hurrying into the room, she scooped Baby Cade up and into her arms, where he continued at full blast.
“Sweetheart, what is it?” she asked, cuddling him against her, his sobs wetting her neck and sending another stab of guilt through her.
“It must’ve been us talkin’ so loud,” Cade said, hovering behind her. She hadn’t been aware he’d followed her. “I’m sorry, Sara.”
“I don’t think it’s that. We were clear down the hall.” She checked his diaper. “He’s not wet.”
“Could he be hungry?”
“I fed him not an hour ago.”
“Maybe it’s a little gas, like last night.”
“But I’ve been making sure to burp him regularly.” She held the baby against her shoulder, swaying and patting his back, just in case. It didn’t seem to help.
She hated this part of mothering, not knowing what was wrong with her child or how to make things better, and not knowing what to do to find out.
The story of my life, she thought with uncharacteristic rancor. Cade was apparently rubbing off on her.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said stiffly, now anxious to have him away and not a witness to her shortcomings. “I can handle it.”
“He might just be a little colicky,” Cade observed, not budging an inch toward the door.
Sara stopped in her tracks. “What’s that?”
He scraped the edge of an index finger across his shadowed jawline. “It’s sorta like scours in a calf. Sometimes, a mama cow’ll eat a certain kind of forage that agitates her gut. And if it doesn’t agree with her, chances are it won’t agree with her calf.”
Her hand stilled on her son’s back. “You think Baby Cade’s crying because of something I ate? Like what?”
“Who knows? Although if I had to lay a wager, I’m guessing it was Virg’s chili you packed away at dinner like you were afraid Pancho Villa was riding up from the Rio Grande.”
“Cade!” Sara exclaimed in dismay. “Why didn’t you tell me the baby could get colic from what I ate?”
“Don’t blame me,” he drawled, the glint returning to his eyes. “If you’ll be for rememberin’, I don’t know what you know and what you don’t.”
She could have cheerfully wrung his neck! Even if he had a point, she was in no mood to give it to him.
With a huff, she returned to her pacing. Yet after several minutes with no letting up on the baby’s part, Cade said, “Here, let me take a turn.”
Somewhat sulkily, Sara handed him the baby. Let him try to soothe the infant!
“Hush now. You’re all right,” Cade murmured in low, rumbling tones. “What’s the fuss about? Y’all’d think we were holdin’ something out on you. Is it the new digs? They’re the best in the house, but if they don’t suit, they don’t suit and that’s all there is to it. Right, darlin’?”
Her heart thumped as he called her by that name, but then she realized he was talking to Baby Cade.
Wait a second, Sara thought. Darlin’—that was his name for her.
Yet he said it again, asking the baby, “What’s it you want, darlin’? Whatever it is, it’s yours.”
He cradled the baby’s head in one palm, the child’s bottom in the other, holding the newborn before him as he bent over the little one, and Sara was abruptly taken back to when he’d first held her son in those large, capable hands, to when he’d been the Cade who’d given himself over to her and her needs.
So what would he do, if not for her, then for her child? she wondered, crossing her arms.
“I’ve found that singing helps calm him,” Sara said innocently.
Cade’s face went slack. “Singin’?”
She hid her smile with a little cough. “Yes.”
“Like...what?” he asked in total bafflement.
She leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Well, the only lullaby I could remember was ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ He really likes it.”
He slanted her a quelling glance. Unfortunately, Baby Cade was still squalling, harder than ever, and showing no signs of stopping.
Cade cleared his throat—and started singing. “‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are...’”
He had a fine baritone, but Baby Cade was oblivious to its quality. In fact, Cade’s singing only made him howl even louder, his face screwed up in a prune, his tiny fists waving about in fury.
Cade momentarily left off singing to mutter the observance, “He looks like a tomato that’s sprouted black hair.”
To her horror, Sara felt a bubble of laughter start in her chest and fight its way upward. Setting one forearm across her middle, she propped her elbow on her wrist and pressed her knuckles against her lips to keep from coming out with a giggle.
Cade, however, evidently caught the glimmer she was unable to erase from the bland look she gave him.
“What’s so amusing? I might not have the kind of voice that makes the ladies throw their underwear up on the stage, but I’m not that bad. You sure he likes singin’?”
“It always works for me.” She waved him on, trying to keep a straight face. “Keep going. It might take a while.”
He gamely crooned another few verses, to no avail. Baby Cade only cried harder, which made Cade sing that much louder, which only made her want to laugh even more.
He broke off again, simply staring at the squalling infant in his hands. “Sara, is this normal? He’s gonna blow a tonsil any minute. And just what is so funny?”
She clapped her hand over her mouth, but her laughter spilled out from between her fingers. “You! Both of you. You’ve obviously met your match in your nephew, Cade McGivern.”
He gave her a glance of supreme tolerance. “It’s that stupid kiddy song you got me singin’ him. I’d beller like an orphan calf, too, if I had to go to sleep to that hooey.”
He hitched the baby up on his shoulder. “What’s needed here is a lullaby just for him.”
Sara extended her hand. “Be my guest.”
He thought a moment, then started singing a song that was lilting and lyric and did seem ready-made for Baby Cade. Or for Big Cade, apparently, for it was about a cowboy who lived on the range, with only his horse and cattle for companions.
And it sounded...familiar to Sara, as well. She listened closely, catching the drift of lyrics—of December snows and the songs you sang on the highway, of moonlight ladies and homes in the sky—over the sound of the baby’s cries.
Yet the infant, to her amazement, was quieting, making only little snuffling noises into the crook of Cade’s neck by the time he ended on “Rock-a-bye, sweet Baby Cade.”
Her breath caught. It was the first time he had called her son by his name—by Cade’s name. Yes, there was a difference from the other lullaby and this one. This song was one Cade obviously knew and loved, for he gave himself over to it.
And in the process, he also did as she’d wondered whether he would, and gave himself over, completely, to making her baby happy.
So she hadn’t been wrong before about what she’d experienced with him the night Baby Cade was born, when he’d seen how much she needed him, what she needed from him, and he had given his all to her. Or was it simply that do-or-die determination of his that allowed no room for defeat, even when it meant coming up with a song especially for this child, her “sweet Baby Cade.”
But...there wasn’t actually a song by that name, was there?
“I know,” Sara said excitedly, “that’s a James Taylor song, isn’t it? ‘Sweet Baby James.’”
She sang the chorus herself, the words coming to her spontaneously, as if up from a deep well, as well as another image, a new one: of swinging gently in a hammock, the stars glittering above her in the night sky—and contentment surrounding her
like a warm, much beloved blanket.
Tears welled in her eyes as relief rocked through her, though she couldn’t have said why. Perhaps it was because she feared as her memory returned it would reveal to her bad things—things she didn’t want to know, about her life and even about herself.
But maybe now, she thought, it wouldn’t necessarily happen that way. Of course there would have been good things to remember, such as songs, and enthusiasms, and good feelings for the people she had loved, still did love and always would....
As if coming to from a faint, her vision sharpened and cleared, and when it did, it was resting on Cade standing in front of her, her son dwarfed in his hands as he supported the newborn against his shoulder.
“So you remember this song?” he asked tersely.
She focused on him. His own expression seemed anything but happy. “Yes—I remember singing it, or hearing it sung. Why, was it a favorite of Loren’s?”
“Couldn’t say, but it’s been a favorite of mine from way back.” He gently patted the baby, who was by now nearly asleep. “The tape was in the cassette player of the pickup when he took off in it.”
He crossed to the cradle and eased the baby into it. He straightened slowly and turned to take in the whole of her as she stood at the doorway. His scrutiny sent another of those abrupt flushes sweeping over her.
“Th-thank you, Cade,” she murmured, trying to fill the silence, “for helping me with Baby Cade.”
“It’s nothin’,” he answered with his usual depreciation of his efforts. “After all, I did give you my word, but even if I hadn’t, I have the responsibility right now to take care of my brother’s wife and son. And I always live up to my responsibilities.”
She reared back as if slapped in the face. “You mean as you feel I haven’t?”
He said nothing but headed for the door. Sara budged not an inch to let him past her. “Is that what you mean?” she persisted. “Because I think I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.”
New Year's Baby (Harlequin Heartwarming) Page 10