New Year's Baby (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Jodi O'Donnell

  Shock fired a path up Cade’s spine, like a burning fuse heading for a charge of dynamite. Those were Sara’s words, almost exactly!

  He must have been looking at Loren pretty dementedly, for a flush crept up his brother’s neck. “Aw listen to me, rambling on like a lovesick fool,” he said.

  He slapped his thighs, standing. “You had something else you wanted to tell me?”

  Now it was Cade who found himself flushing in confusion. How was he going to be able to tell Loren the rest of what he’d intended—that, believing Sara was his brother’s wife, Cade had still fallen in love with her, and let her fall in love with him, in that inevitable way Loren had just described? Because as filled with trust as his brother was that such kismet between two people was for the good, would Loren see what happened between him and Sara that way?

  In the final analysis, though, why did Loren need to know at all? Cade thought desperately. He hadn’t actually betrayed his brother’s trust in him, hadn’t, in all truth, betrayed anyone’s trust in him—including Sara’s. At least not yet.

  Avoiding his brother’s gaze, he crouched in front of the space heater, holding his frozen hands out to the warmth. “Actually, I was just wonderin’—if y’all come back here to live, what’ll happen to Sara?”

  “Why, she’ll be living here, too, we hope.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Cade declared, cranking like mad on another bolt. “Why should it be? You’re right. We’re all just one big happy family now. Of course we’d all want to be together, now that we’ve been allowed this particular blessin’.”

  “Cade.” Loren put his hand over Cade’s, stilling it. “I am right, aren’t I, about you and Sara Jane havin’ a certain affection for each other?”

  To put it mildly. Cade squeezed his eyes shut. “What if there is?” He flat couldn’t keep the challenge out of his voice.

  “Why, I think that’s great! Sara Jane is a wonderful woman, and any man’d be lucky to win her. Why wouldn’t you think so?”

  Cade sighed impatiently. “She’s got a husband.”

  “No, she doesn’t—”

  “A husband she doesn’t remember!” He turned on his brother. “A husband she loved so much she couldn’t stand contemplatin’ life without him—and so she hitched her feelings to the first man who came along after she wiped all memory of that husband from her mind. And I let it happen, Loren!” Cade gazed at his brother, stricken. “No, let’s be truthful here—I made it happen, couldn’t stop myself from doing it, even when I believed she was your wife.”

  His confession reverberated in the cavernous barn. Loren let go of his hand, and

  Cade’s arm fell to his side as he dropped the wrench with a clatter and faced his brother squarely. He’d have liked to avoid this particular moment of reckoning, but it was best it had finally arrived, no matter what the consequences were. It would have eaten him alive, otherwise.

  “So,” Loren said quietly, “you and Sara Jane thought she was my wife, and still the feelings between you grew.”

  He paused, eyes shadowed under the brim of his Stetson hat, and as the seconds ticked by, Cade saw the rest of his life flash before his eyes—a life without Loren, without family. Without Sara. And in that instant, he’d have done anything to avoid such a fate.

  “Yes,” he answered without equivocation.

  “Well,” his brother said dryly, “she’s obviously not my wife, so unless you tell me next you’ve got designs on Sarah Ann, then I’ve got no beef with you, Cade.”

  “You don’t?” Cade asked, flabbergasted, wondering how he’d once again been able to avoid disaster. “I mean, even after what happened with Marlene...”

  Loren groaned. “Have you not heard a word I’ve said?”

  He bent to pick up the wrench. “Steady the drive shaft for me,” he instructed Cade.

  Still in a state of disbelief, Cade gripped the tractor’s shaft, close to the bolt, as Loren yanked on it with both hands on the wrench.

  “It’s what I’ve been tellin’ you, Cade,” he said in between grunts of effort, “if I hadn’t left the ranch with Marlene and moved to Albuquerque, I never would’ve become a paramedic and had to work with the nurses at the hospital. And I’d never have met Sarah. In my mind, how we got together couldn’t have happened any other way—just like it couldn’t have happened any other way for you and Sara Jane.”

  The bolt came loose. Loren stepped over to set it and the wrench on the workbench as Cade concentrated unduly on cleaning his thoroughly greasy palms with the shop rag.

  “The thing is,” Cade finally said in a muted voice, “while I sure enough can’t change what’s already happened between us, I don’t see the good to be had in letting feelings between us grow. Not when Sara’s obviously so grieved by the loss of her husband she’s shut out the memory of him rather than face life without him.”

  His brother held out his hand for the rag, which Cade tossed to him. “It’s your choice, of course,” Loren said. “You gotta do what you think is best. Whatever actions you take, though, just remember—you’re not alone any longer.”

  At the phrase, Cade shot Loren a probing glance. “Meanin’?”

  “Meanin’ whether you want it or not, you’ve got the responsibility of others’ happiness to think of now, too.”

  With that, Loren left him to wrestle not only with the broken tractor but with his thoughts.

  And wrestle with them Cade did. No, he couldn’t change the chain of events leading up to now. But as he’d told Sara the evening she’d learned of her real fate, they still had a choice in how to deal with those events. That was good to remember.

  Loren was right, however, in that such choices would have their own consequences, which would ripple outward from the center to affect the people around him who cared for him, and for whom he so greatly cared. Look at how Loren’s choices had affected Cade’s life, bringing Sara into it, for better or worse. He also knew, however, the choices he had made that had affected Loren—and Sara. For better or worse.

  By the time he left the barn for the comfort of a hot shower and warm bed, Cade still didn’t know what to do. All he’d been able to come up with was that, whatever it was, he had to do what was right for Sara and her baby and their future happiness. And he had to believe. As long as he kept that in the forefront of his mind, it’d all come out right for everyone in the end.

  This time, though, he didn’t dare let himself even contemplate the hope that he might be a part of that future.

  * * *

  “HEY.”

  Sara looked up from the computer screen. Cade leaned against the doorjamb of her bedroom in that way he had, hip shot and wide shoulders hunched just a bit, the fingers of one hand tucked into the front pockets of his jeans, the other ruminatively scrubbing that spiky chestnut hair of his.

  She wondered if his mere presence would ever cease to thrill her.

  “Hey,” she said softly, trying not to be quite so glad to see him here in her room for the first time in ten days. Ever since they’d discovered the truth about her identity, he’d been noticeably distant from her, both physically and emotionally. And as wary as ever.

  Sure, at first she’d taken the withdrawal of his support pretty hard, but now she understood why. She was feeling more than a little wary herself, but in her case it was of herself. Something told her it went the same way with Cade. She didn’t know about him, but it wore her out having to be so watchful of her own subconscious and what it might spring on her next.

  “You look pretty busy there,” Cade said with a nod toward her computer.

  She maneuvered the mouse around on its pad, pointing and clicking to close the current window. “I’ve been trying to see how much of my graphic design skills I remember.”

  He shoved off of the doorjamb. “How’s it goin’?”


  She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Truthfully? Not too well. I’ve been reviewing some of the work I’ve already done for clients, and while I do get a sense of why I put a bit of text where I did or gave it the emphasis I did, the thought of trying to start from scratch on an idea from the conceptual stage...frankly, it terrifies me.”

  Fingers still stuck in his pockets, Cade bent on a level with her to peer at the computer screen. He shook his head. “Wish I could be of more help.”

  “I’m not especially looking for someone to bail me out,” Sara said with some impatience.

  He cut her a sidelong glance. “That’s good, ’cause what I know about computers you could fit on the head of a tack and still have room for a flea hoedown.”

  Where usually Cade’s figures of speech brought a smile to her face, Sara couldn’t find one in her this afternoon. She pushed her chair away from the makeshift desk Loren had set her computer up on, bumping Cade in the knee. Where the small bedroom had been a little cramped before, now even with just her computer and a few other items she had the movers ship from storage, it was so crowded it threatened that dreaded claustrophobia of before.

  She couldn’t let it affect her.

  “I’m sorry, Cade,” she said, meaning both bumping him and her impatience. She seemed to be apologizing so much these days. Actually, it was the frustration of this endless not remembering that was getting to her. Plus her head hadn’t stopped hurting for a week, ever since Loren and her cousin had arrived, which was when things had changed between her and Cade.

  She’d have taken that as a sign she was getting closer to recovering her past if it didn’t make her nearly weep with sheer hopelessness.

  Cade gave a shrug of absolution. “Maybe it’ll take really getting back in the saddle again, so to speak, to give you the oomph you need. Y’know, have a real project to work on that’ll challenge you.”

  “Well, it seems that might be a ways in the offing.” She indicated the file boxes stacked in one corner. “From what I can tell, I retained only the few clients I could work with from a distance. It looks as if I must have been planning to build up my business in Albuquerque, but now that I’m going to be living here, at least for the time being, I’m not sure how to proceed.”

  She stared resolutely at the computer screen. “But I need to find a way to support myself and the baby. I need to start making a future for us, even without knowing what the past is. Sarah and Loren have been so supportive, saying this is my home now. Loren said he knows some businesspeople in Amarillo who might need some graphic design work done, or at least could get me an interview with some firms there.”

  Cade scrutinized her. “What if you get a job where you have to do the conceptual stuff you’ve been findin’ so scary?”

  “Then I’ll either soldier on through and do it or I won’t,” Sara retorted. “I can’t worry about that right now.”

  Cade straightened, lower lip jutted out in thought. After a few moments he said gently, “Sara. We need to talk.”

  Both her heart and her head started pounding at his words. “Talk? About what?”

  He glanced around at the cramped quarters, not answering her question. From the kitchen came the sound of Sarah Ann “getting her nesting instinct out of her system,” as she put it, by baking bread while she cleaned out cupboards. Sara had heard Loren tell her a few hours ago that he and Virgil were going out to replace a T-post on some fence in the east section and wouldn’t be back until suppertime.

  “Take a walk outside with me?” Cade asked. Then, with a lift of his eyebrow he added, “I only make the offer ’cause it’s a pretty safe bet those new snow boots I spied on the mud porch are yours, and you won’t be forced to clop around like a Shetland pony in a Clydesdale’s shoes.”

  Now that Sara laughed at, hoping both the jest and gesture meant she was wrong about the portent she’d heard in his voice.

  They fetched their coats from the mud porch, Sara asking her cousin on her way through the kitchen to listen for the baby, and were soon outside in the cold, clear air.

  Sara drew it in deeply, feeling her head clear a bit as they strolled down the ranch lane, its surface still snow-packed. She wondered suddenly if the snow would ever melt, the ground turn from brown to green. It just seemed she’d lived all her life with this cold, stark landscape surrounding her, and it occurred to her that, actually, she had. At least, the life she could remember. Perhaps when the spring thaw came it would thaw her mind, frozen in some sort of suspended animation, as well.

  Would that it were that simple, Sara thought ruefully, something telling her it wasn’t going to be. She needed to continue, however, to have the faith and trust that such a transformation wouldn’t devastate her, either.

  “This was a good idea,” she told Cade. “Thanks for suggesting it.”

  She thought she’d get his usual, depreciating, “It’s nothing,” but instead he responded with a quiet, “You’re welcome.”

  Another good sign, she figured, enough of one so that she could screw up her courage and ask, “You wanted to talk?”

  Walking beside her, shoulders hunched in his brown suede jacket and Stetson pulled low on his brow, he looked distinctly glacial himself. “Yes—about a couple of things.”

  Eyes narrowed, he gazed off into the distance. “Y’know, I haven’t been completely truthful with you, Sara, because I can understand how or why a person might block things from their mind—just completely forget, or choose to forget—something happening that you didn’t want to face up to, or—or recognize in others.”

  He hesitated, then admitted, “Or yourself.”

  “You can?” she asked, surprised—and heartened again by his changed perspective. Oh, maybe he did mean to end this awful distance between them!

  “Sure. And I also said before it was up to Loren to tell you this, but seein’ as how you’re not his wife, I guess it’s not exactly privileged information anymore.”

  His ears had turned red, and Sara didn’t think it was because of the cold. “I’m not of a mind to get into much detail,” he said, “but seven years ago Loren was engaged to a woman, not your cousin. Her name was Marlene Lane, someone he’d met in Amarillo, which is where all the cowboys went to do their serious drinkin’. And girl chasin’. Anyway, Loren fell for Marlene like a ton of bricks. First woman he ever really loved, he told me then. They’d hardly dated a month before they got engaged, and he had her out to the ranch meet his kin. Meanin’ me.”

  They had reached the end of the lane, and Cade turned around almost automatically. Sara followed suit, curious. This certainly wasn’t the discussion she’d thought he had in mind when he asked to talk to her.

  “Anyway, from the first Marlene flirted with me, kind of low-key stuff like throwing me meaningful looks when Loren’s head was turned. Then it got to be even when he was lookin’. I’m sure it sounds pretty ignorant, but I just thought she was bein’ friendly. Or I chose to see it that way.

  “One day, I was out in the stable, and in she comes, big smile on her face and an innocent look in her eye. She sits herself down on a bale of hay and says seeing as how Loren had to ride out to the north section to help Virg with a bunch of cows that broke through a hole in the fence, she had an idea to use this time get to know her future brother-in-law a bit better. I said sure, whatever, even asked if she wanted to see how to rig up a leather halter. So she came on over to where I was working, and started leanin’ on me, hand on my shoulder, askin’ me why was I doin’ this or that. Then she made to hand me a pair of needle-nosed pliers and got a smear of edge dye on the front of her blouse—”

  Blushing, Cade made a swipe over his left pectoral. “Right here. I started stammerin’ and apologizin’ and trying to rub the dye off with a rag, if you can believe it. And she was acting all dismayed, sayin’ how this was her best blouse and she didn’t know
what she’d do if I couldn’t get the stain off of it, all the while stepping closer as I kept backing up till the back of my legs hit that hay bale and I sort of fell back on it, her on top of me.”

  He closed his eyes, jaw clenched. “Man, I was so stupid. But I knew what was happening, deep down. And deep down, Sara, I gotta confess—I wanted something to happen, something to confirm in my mind that I had some of the ability Loren had to attract a woman. But I obviously didn’t know how to handle one once I caught her, because then—then Marlene wrapped her arms around my neck and planted a big one on me.”

  For some reason Sara could see the scene with perfect clarity, at least what Cade must have looked like then: young and earnest, without a clue as to his effect on women or the power in his presence.

  “I just froze,” he stated. “It was like someone had gotten me with the business end of a cattle prod. Whatever I’d been aiming for, I knew for sure I didn’t want this happening. But I knew I’d encouraged it, too, of my own free will. I had my hands on her waist, trying to get her off of me. When Loren walked in to find his fiancée and his brother in one pretty damning situation. I knew how in love Loren was with Marlene, so I took the blame. He left the next day, taking her with him—and believin’ his brother had betrayed him.”

  He reached out then, and took her mittened hand, tucking it in the crook of his elbow and holding it there with his own gloved one. At his touch, warmth spread through Sara like melting butter. Why had she been so worried?

  “At least I understand now why you were so shocked, thinking I was Loren’s wife.” She slanted him an empathetic glance. “And cynical about things working out for the better.”

  His laugh was short and sardonic. “I thought I’d hit the mother lode of bad luck. But the reason I’m tellin’ you all this is because, for a long time, I denied to myself that it wasn’t bad luck at all. I’d set myself and Marlene up for that encounter happening. I sure enough felt guilty, even if I couldn’t figure out why. It was only recently that I realized I’d seen the signs of Marlene’s attraction and had literally put them out of my mind—along with the competitive urge in me to see if I could attract her.”