A Cold Creek Baby

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She avoided his gaze and sipped at her own coffee. “You know how it is around here,” she finally said. “When could you find a good time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe November twenty-first for roughly a three-hour window.”

  She laughed. “Make it two and you might have a deal.”

  There wasn’t really a slow season on an Idaho cattle ranch. He knew that well. Winter was long and hard and usually bitter cold and busy since they calved in late January. Spring was planting season, a time of growth and new life. Summer meant moving the cattle to the high-country grazing range, when the nights were crisp but the days were glorious. Fall, of course, meant the crop harvest and rounding up the cattle and taking them to market. Hectic and crazy and fun.

  The steady rhythm of it had been a wonder and a comfort to a kid who had spent so much of his life in uncertainty.

  When he first came to the ranch, he hadn’t known how to handle staying in one place for longer than a few weeks at a time. Winter had completely freaked him out. Migrant farmworkers and their families tended not to have a lot of experience with snow, since they usually moved on when the harvest is over.

  Here he had found a home. Jo and Guff had opened their hearts and their lives to him and he never forgot what a blessing that had been.

  He had come to love them both—and Quinn and Brant, whom he considered brothers in every possible way.

  None of them had it easy before they came to the ranch. When Quinn moved in with the Winders, he had been angry and bitter and had taken a long time to deal with the murder-suicide of his parents. He hadn’t trusted anyone and had been certain the Winders would betray him, just like everyone close to him had done.

  Brant had turned inward and become even more serious and dependable as he worked to prove to everyone in town he wasn’t his deadbeat, abusive father.

  As for Cisco, he had become adept at pretending to become whatever anybody else needed him to be.

  A chameleon. With Jo and Guff, he was grateful, hardworking, eager to please. At school, he had charmed all the teachers with his ready smile and quick wit. He’d had plenty of friends because he was always coming up with new, exciting schemes to break the monotony of school and the quiet steadiness of life in a small town.

  He had loved Winder Ranch and the people around Cold Creek Canyon and would forever be grateful for the turn his life had taken when the Winders offered him a home.

  Without Jo and Guff, he probably would have turned to drugs like so many other troubled kids did and then a life of crime to support his habit.

  Not that what he did now was so very different.

  He hadn’t realized he had sighed until Easton touched his shoulder, then quickly moved her hand away. “You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

  “Why would you say that?” He did his best to ignore the sparks that brief, comforting touch sent coursing through him.

  “You always get this distant sort of look in your eyes when you’re trying to hide your emotions.”

  “Do I?” he asked, surprised. He had a reputation for coolness, even callousness. Could she really see through the mask?

  She sipped at her own coffee. “Everybody always thought you were so cheerful all the time. Always laughing, playing pranks, always up for the next joke. But I could tell when it was just an act.”

  He didn’t want to think about just how her insight into his psyche had always terrified him.

  “In this case, you’re wrong. I’m really fine,” he lied. “Is there something Belle and I can help you do around the ranch today to help pay for our room and board?”

  She frowned. “Sure. I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you go back to bed and let me take care of Belle?”

  He ignored her suggestion. “Any errands you need run in town? Anything we could pick up at the feed store for you? I’m pretty sure I can still work a tractor, though it’s been a few years. I can put her in her car seat and take her along.”

  “Do you really think I would send you out to drive heavy farm machinery in your condition? Jake told me to make sure you take it easy for the next few days and that’s just what you’re going to do.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Easton.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Her stare turned as cold as Winder Lake in January. “How many thirty-three-year-old men are still running around getting in bar fights in some greasy Colombian cantina?”

  “Only the lucky few.” He tried for an insouciant smile, although it was difficult. He knew he shouldn’t allow her obviously poor opinion of him to sting like a hundred hornets. It was his own fault she had that view of him, one he had cultivated for the last decade, of a shiftless wanderer.

  He could always tell her the truth about his injury, about Soqui’s death, about what he was really doing when he left the ranch. But he had been warned early in the game by more than one agent to keep those he cared about out of the loop about his activities, for their own protection. John and Soqui were perfect examples. John had let Soqui into their dark and twisted world and she had died as a result.

  Since Easton topped the list of people he cared about, he just had to endure her poor opinion and let it wash over him.

  This time didn’t seem as easy as usual and apparently she wasn’t done gouging out his heart.

  “When are you going to finally grow up, Cisco?” Even though her words were harsh, her voice was soft and sad. “Why don’t you do something real with your life instead of working whatever schemes you’re doing down there?”

  He couldn’t do this. Not today, after he had held her sweetness in his arms in the night, when his defenses were already dangerously thin.

  “Back off, East.”

  She ignored him as he suspected she would. “Come home, Cisco. For good this time, I mean.”

  He stared. “Here?”

  Color rose on her cheeks. “Not necessarily here. You know what I mean. I’m sure Quinn could find you a job somewhere at Southerland Shipping up in Seattle.”

  What the hell was he qualified for, after a decade of secrets and subterfuge? Working as some clerk for his best friend?

  “I don’t think so,” he answered, then added another lie. “I’m living the dream.”

  “But how can you possibly be happy with that sort of life? Always moving from place to place. On the run all the time.”

  He supposed the irony of the whole thing was that when he was a kid, all he had ever wanted was a place to call home. He could remember lying in the grass on the edge of a vast cherry orchard, talking to another kid of a migrant worker, telling him the first thing he would do when he had saved enough money from the three dollars a crate they were paid was buy a house of his own. Some place where he could park an old car in the garage and fix it up sweet, where he could sit on the back porch and drink beer in the evening, where he could have a pretty woman in the kitchen making him tamales whenever he wanted.

  Yeah, he’d been a serious chauvinist when he was ten. But it had seemed like everything he could ever want.

  And now his life was not unlike his father’s, only he wasn’t harvesting crops. He was on some misguided quest to save the damn world.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing down there,” Easton said. “But it surely can’t be too late to make a clean start. I know you, Cisco. I know you can’t be happy.”

  “You don’t know me. Not anymore.” He flung the bitter words at her and he thought her skin turned a shade paler.

  “Obviously not,” she said, her voice low. “But I do know you broke Jo’s heart over and over before she died. Do you have any idea how much she worried about you all the time? And so do I.”

  “Don’t waste your time or energy. Nobody asked you to be my frigging conscience,” he snapped, his voice so harsh that the baby started to fret.

  Easton glared. “Now look. You’ve upset Belle.”

  Of course he had. Because he was an irresponsible idiot who spent his days drinking and carousing with the chicas an
d otherwise squandering his life away.

  He ignored the pain of her poor opinion and turned his attention to the baby. “Hush, sweetheart. Easy.”

  He crooned to her in Spanish, the songs imprinted on his memory by another woman he had failed.

  Belle didn’t care if he was disappointing everyone in his life. He supposed that was one of the beautiful things about children. They loved you without judgment or expectations, except that you send that love right back at them.

  When he looked up, Easton was watching with that tight, unreadable expression again. “You seem to have everything under control here,” she said stiffly. “Since you don’t need anything from me, I have work to do.”

  He thought about telling her. There would be some grim satisfaction in it, he supposed. Hey, funny thing. I’m not running from the law. I am the law. How about that? I’ve been an undercover drug agent since I was recruited a decade ago fresh out of the Marines.

  But the truth was, she was better off thinking the worst of him. How could he let her down if she didn’t expect anything of him? He was already as low in her esteem as he could get, so he couldn’t disappoint her more.

  His mother, Soqui. Even little Belle.

  Any female who brushed up against his world ended up paying dearly for her mistakes and he couldn’t do that to Easton.

  Chapter Six

  She managed to avoid the house for the rest of the morning, even though she was ashamed at her own weakness.

  She should be tough enough to face him. She had offered her advice, had urged him to come back and settle down. If he chose a different path, she couldn’t do anything about it. What did she accomplish by rushing away to sulk? Absolutely nothing.

  Burt hadn’t been expecting her help today since she had told him she expected to be busy at the house with Belle all day. As a result, she spent the morning with busy work. Cleaning out the stalls, fixing a few loose fence rails, organizing the tack room.

  Finally she had run out of make-work and had turned her attention to Jo’s vegetable garden.

  She supposed it could still be called a garden, though only barely. After two summers of virtual neglect by Easton, the garden was in pretty sorry shape, weedy and overgrown. She had hours of hard, sweaty work ahead of her clearing out the weeds and spading in some soil prep so she could plant a few tomato plants for August beefsteaks.

  Yanking weeds and attacking the garden mess was slow and monotonous, something that kept her hands busy but left her mind entirely too free to wander through the muck, into things she didn’t want to think about.

  Suzy brought her pups out to enjoy the May sunshine and Easton paused to watch them chase each other around the bench where Jo used to love to sit and raise her face to the sun.

  She shouldn’t have said anything to Cisco. The way he lived his life wasn’t any of her business. Hadn’t he made that clear enough over the years?

  When he first took off down south after a short stint in the Marines, Easton thought maybe he was just trying to connect with the part of his past, his heritage, that had died with his father. But when those first months had stretched into a year and then two with no sign that he wanted to come home, no fixed address they could contact him at, no apparent direction or legitimate source of income, she had been consumed with worry.

  Jo and Guff had worried, too. She knew they had. But whenever he would come home, Cisco would smile and joke and charm them all into believing he would be okay.

  Over the years, the laughter had faded from those dark eyes. That’s what she hated the most.

  Once, after he hadn’t called home for eight or nine months, Jo had sat her down and reminded her Cisco was an adult, free to make his own choices.

  “What if his choices are stupid?” Easton had retorted.

  “Then he will hopefully learn not to make the same stupid choices the next time,” Jo had answered in that calm, no-nonsense voice of hers. “All we can do is pray and cry a little bit for him and be here waiting for him when he decides to come home.”

  Easton had waited. Those first few years after he left, she had missed him terribly—and his infrequent phone calls and e-mails would leave her more worried than ever but still praying for the next one.

  She was pathetic. She knew it. After Guff died, when everything changed, she had dreaded that occasional contact, unable to bear her worry for him.

  She shoved Jo’s favorite shovel into a particularly nasty rush skeleton weed, grunting at the effort.

  Gardening wasn’t necessarily her favorite activity, but she had to admit she found a deep sense of accomplishment when she was able to work the spindly thing free of the soil to toss into the wheelbarrow.

  One of Suzy’s pups wandered over and pulled out the weed. He shook it back and forth as if it were a deadly enemy.

  “Hey, quit it, you. You’re going to spread nasty noxious seeds all over my garden.”

  The puppy barked at her and scampered away, the weed still in its mouth. She chased after it across the grass, laughing despite her lingering frustration with Cisco. Just before she caught up, she heard the crunch of tires on the long gravel drive that led to Cold Creek Canyon Road.

  She finally wrenched the weed away from Suzy’s pup and tossed a twig for it instead, then shaded her eyes with her hand. When the vehicle drew closer, she recognized the blue-and-white Pine Gulch police department SUV.

  Easton set her hoe against the garden fence and walked through the gate toward the driveway, just as the vehicle pulled to a stop. A moment later, Trace Bowman opened the door of his vehicle and climbed out.

  He raised a hand in greeting when he saw her and took off his dark sunglasses, shoving them in his pocket as he walked along the path toward her.

  He really was remarkably good-looking, with that sun-streaked brown hair and that edge of clean-cut, heroic earnestness about him.

  She wanted so desperately to feel something for him. If she loved Trace Bowman, he wouldn’t break her heart again and again.

  “Something wrong, Officer? I could swear I wasn’t speeding. In fact, I do believe I’m the slowest weeder in the county.”

  His smile glinted in the sunlight. “Nothing wrong. I had some business out this way and figured I would stop in and check on things since I was in the neighborhood.”

  He was great-looking, nice and cared about her well-being. Why couldn’t she have the good sense to relish those things? Instead, she was like Suzy’s fat little pup, determined to go after the one thing that wasn’t good for her.

  “Did del Norte take off again?” Trace asked, scanning the area with what she guessed was a practiced lawman’s eye.

  “Not yet. The, um, baby’s aunt had a funeral in Montana, so she was delayed. She’s going to pick Belle up on her way back to Boise either tomorrow or the next day.”

  “And del Norte will be leaving after that?”

  “I’m sure he will. He never stays long.”

  He swatted at an early deerfly, his expression taut, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite find the words.

  Finally Easton sighed.

  “What’s on your mind, Trace?”

  “I know it’s none of my business but I’m worried about you.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” she lied. “I’m fine.”

  He reached for her gloved hand even though it was quite obviously covered in dirt. “I don’t like that he’s here.”

  His hand was big and warm and somehow comforting, but she still forced herself to slip her hand free, using the excuse of taking of her gloves and shoving them in her back pocket.

  “I can’t kick him out. This is his home as much as it’s mine, Trace.”

  “Maybe technically. But everyone knows this is really your place. You’re the one who has run things singlehandedly for the last few years. You’re the one who stuck it out while everybody else took off. What is Cisco, really, but some vagabond petty criminal out for the next thrill?”

  She had
said nearly those same words to him earlier, but now she had to dig her nails into her palms to keep from defending him.

  “Cisco would never hurt me, Trace. We practically grew up together.”

  He reached out suddenly as if to caress her cheek, but instead he pulled a stray leaf out of her hair.

  “I’m sure you think you know the man. I understand that and can respect it. But something’s off with him.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours checking the usual sources to see if I can find out a little more about him and what he’s been doing the last few years.”

  She stared. “You ran a background check on him?”

  “I made a few calls. Looked up a few things. He’s in my town, East. He shows up out of the blue with a baby that’s supposedly not his. I need to know if he’s going to bring trouble with him.”

  Oh, Cisco had already done that. She closed her eyes briefly, her mind on that midnight kiss. When she opened them, she found Trace Bowman watching her out of concerned green eyes.

  “What did you find out?” she asked.

  “Very little, which bothers me just as much as if he had a lengthy rap sheet. The man’s a ghost, Easton. He has left very little trail, something highly suspicious.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then reached for her hand again. “Whatever he’s up to down south, I have serious doubts it’s anything legit.”

  Hearing the words she had long suspected from an officer of the law was a stark slap of reality.

  “You don’t have evidence he’s done anything wrong, though.”

  “No. He’s covered his tracks. Or someone else has done it for him. That doesn’t make me any more comfortable having him here.”

  Was Cisco lying about Belle? Was the baby somehow part of some nefarious scheme? No, she couldn’t wrap her head around it. He would never put a baby in harm’s way. Or her. Somehow she knew that with equal conviction.

  “I don’t know him anymore, Trace. I’ll freely admit that. But I do know he won’t hurt me. The baby’s aunt is coming later today for her and then Cisco will return to whatever he’s up to and I can get back to running my ranch.”