“Glad to help,” the woman said, already on her way. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
Cash perched alongside Wren. “Looks like we flunked that parenting test.”
“I feel awful.” Nuzzling the side of Robin’s head, Wren inspected the angry red scratch on her back. The staple hadn’t broken the skin, but the way his baby girl had screamed, he’d have expected barbed wire sticking out of her tag.
Furious, Cash stood. “Wait here.”
“Where are you going?” she asked while Robin sucked on her chubby fist.
“To give that store a piece of my mind. They can’t just go around hurting children. Aren’t there laws for this sort of thing?”
“Yeah.” Smoothing her hand up and down the baby’s back, Wren said, “There are also laws against bad parenting. We should’ve known to check the tag. In some of my prebaby reading, an article said the best way to prevent skin irritation is to remove tags.”
Arms crossed, he asked, “Then why didn’t you do it?”
“You seriously didn’t just ask that.” After easing their sleeping baby into her stroller, Wren was on her feet, weaving through the hellish holiday crowd.
Hands shoved in his jean pockets, Cash doggedly followed. “It’s an honest question.”
“Where?” she sassed over her shoulder. “In Cowboy Land? Surgical price-tag removal isn’t taught. It’s learned through firsthand parenting experience. Something neither of us have, but most especially you. Aside from changing a few diapers, what have you even done?”
“Plenty,” he said as she entered a kitchenware store, maneuvering the stroller to a quiet side aisle. “I’ve changed diapers and made a late-night diaper run when we ran out of the cloth ones.”
She put her hands on her hips, and mean flashed from her eyes. “Congratulations. I suppose that qualifies you for father of the year?”
“I’m trying, all right? And anyway, it’s not like I can feed her. As for the whole bath thing…” He shook his head. “Nope. Not for me. She’s tiny and slippery and if I accidentally hurt her, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Jaw hard, staring at the ceiling, Wren looked so far removed from the woman he felt he’d grown to know and married that had he been a sci-fi fan, he would’ve wondered if she’d undergone an alien switch.
“I’m sorry, okay?” His hands on her hips, finally able to ease in as close to her as he wanted, he brushed the pad of his thumb over her full lower lip. “I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, but I obviously said bad, bad things. I deserve to be punished.” She still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Seriously, spank me. Cuff me. Whatever you feel fits the crime.” He winked and grinned, but it was tough working his charm without an audience. “If you’d look at me, my rugged sexiness would go a long way toward helping you select a proper punishment for my crimes.”
Oh, she looked at him, all right, but not with lust—more like disgust.
Cash’s stomach sank.
Had marrying Wren been the worst decision he’d ever made?
IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE. The first ever Wren had experienced not with friends who took pity on her for being alone, but with a family truly her own—Robin. Her baby girl. Flawless in every way. Cash—her husband. The man she’d believed to be her best friend. If it hadn’t been for the chill that’d settled between them ever since their disastrous shopping trip, she might have been happy. As it was, she felt trapped in limbo between a potential fairy tale and a nightmare.
In the kitchen late that afternoon, while Robin napped, Wren prepared a veggie tray to share that night with Cash’s family.
Prissy lounged near her feet, eyes wide in hope of snagging a falling snack.
As she chopped cauliflower, Wren’s memory regretfully wandered back to their mall outing. To their baby’s crying. To the way once they’d discovered the problem, Cash had seemed furious with her for not having known what to do. His unrealistic expectations had been not only ridiculous, but cruel. As if because she’d been to medical school she should be a better parent than she currently was.
“Need help?” Fresh from the shower, Cash strolled in to the kitchen with rumpled damp hair, wearing nothing but half-zipped jeans. Had she cared, she thought his six-pack abs would have qualified for the eighth world wonder. He stopped behind her, close enough for his radiant heat to muddle her thoughts. Wren pretended he’d never even entered the room.
“No, thank you.”
He stole a baby carrot. “Wyatt’s going to love this. When we were little, every holiday whenever we had a platter—cheese, meats, cookies, whatever—he used to sneak them from the table and run off to his room so he didn’t have to share.”
“Should I make two so he can have his own?”
Laughing, he said, “He does better with the whole sharing thing now than he used to.”
She wanted to come up with some witty reply, but had nothing left in her to say. During their outing he’d really hurt her.
“We all right?” Cash nuzzled her neck, pressing warm, wet kisses in places he knew damned well turned her on. Maybe that was the problem with their whole stupid upside-down relationship. From the first night they’d met, he’d learned her every intimate secret. Now there was nowhere left for them to go.
“Honestly,” she mumbled, resting her cheek against his chest, “I don’t know. Your reaction at the mall was crushing. I wanted you to be jazzed that though we’d done it in an unorthodox way, together we figured out what was hurting our daughter and fixed it. Instead, I got the impression you blamed me from the start. That crack about me not learning about prickly tags in med school was not only uncalled for, it was insulting.”
“I’m sorry.” Judging by the darkening in his eyes, the lack of sexual innuendos, this time around he was sincere. “The munchkin’s crying flipped me out. I wasn’t prepared for that level of panic.”
His raw confession touched her. She’d felt the same, but didn’t think dads even cared about babies’ crying. Oh, of course they cared, but not in the soul-deep way moms did.
“As for me not helping you out more on the late-night shifts, what do you want me to do?” He launched a heavenly shoulder massage. One that made her purr with contentment. Not that she wasn’t still upset with him, but considering how much her back had been hurting, she put her fury on hiatus.
“All I want from you, Cash, is to know you’re there. Half the time I’m sleepwalking, yet you don’t seem fazed by Robin’s attack on our schedule.”
“Oh…” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Trust me, I’m fazed, but again, I need guidance. When you’re breastfeeding, I’m not even sure if I’m welcome in the room.”
“Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be?”
“That’s just it…” His back to her, he thumped the heel of his fist against the stainless steel fridge, and Prissy scampered to the living room. Cash continued, “When it was just me and you and occasionally my mom or Mrs. Cahwood around the house, I knew where I stood. I knew when you needed refills on herbal tea or when the flowers on your nightstand needed changing. Now, as much as I love Robin, I’m scared of her. She can’t tell us what’s wrong or what she needs.” Taking over with the chopping of bite-size broccoli chunks, he added, “She reminds me of a Chinese exchange student Dallas brought home. We tried bending over backward to make the guy feel comfortable, but because of the language barrier, nothing worked. The week he was here felt like a start-to-finish disaster. Kind of like I feel as a father.”
“First, comparing our daughter to a Chinese exchange student is crazy. Second, the more you’re around Robin, the more instinct kicks in. By this time next week we’ll both recognize the meaning behind her every burp and coo.” Wren took mayo, buttermilk and sour cream from the fridge, intent on making homemade ranch dip for the center of her tray.
“How do you know?”
Artfully arranging black olives alongside celery, she noted, “Believe it or not, that’s one area we did cover in med school.”
Tackling the few dishes in the sink, he said, “I didn’t mean to tick you off again.”
“You didn’t.”
“Then why are you still refusing to look at me?”
Good question. One she suspected that were she to dwell on it for the next two weeks, she still wouldn’t have an answer for. “Please,” she implored, pushing stray hairs from her flushed cheeks, “can’t we get through tonight and tomorrow without further deep discussion?”
Drying the cutting board he’d scrubbed, he turned to her, cracking a smile. “That mean you’d rather spend our time on more productive matters? Like making out?”
After the deep admissions they’d both shared, his reverting back to his usual carefree ways irked her to no end. Was the man ever serious? If not, was she willing to spend the rest of her life trying to tame him?
Chapter Seventeen
Christmas Eve, after their meal of turkey, ham and turducken with all the trimmings had been eaten, Cash sat with Wyatt and Dallas in his mom and brother’s living room, watching a John Wayne movie marathon. Instead of a white Christmas, their part of the state had been slammed by pouring rain that showed no signs of letting up.
Robin, wearing a fuzzy green elf suit, had crashed on his chest. He loved how her eyelashes were already long enough to sweep her cheeks and every so often her little lips suckled.
“Been getting much sleep?” Dallas asked during a commercial for trash bags.
“Sure. Lucky for me, Wren’s breastfeeding, so I usually get plenty of zzzs.”
“Bad idea, man,” Wyatt counseled. Prissy had long since crashed on his chest. “Friend of mine slept through every night feeding and found himself kicked to the curb after the kid’s first birthday.”
“Like you’d know,” Cash argued. “You don’t have a wife or kid.”
“May well be…” Dallas sipped from his beer. “But this is one case in which I agree with Wyatt. You’re playing a dangerous game in not sharing every part of the pleasure and pain of raising that baby girl.”
“I change diapers.”
Cash’s oldest brother grunted. “Not nearly enough.”
Tired of being nagged by the two guys he thought most likely to have his back, Cash picked up Robin and headed into the kitchen. Hopefully he’d fare better with leftovers and woman talk.
“Georgina,” Cash overheard Wren saying, “he means the world to me, but how do I make him understand that so does earning my medical license and then joining—possibly even starting—my own practice?”
“Give it time. You two are just starting out. Adjusting to the baby and married life doesn’t happen overnight.”
Tiptoeing from the door he’d been hiding behind, Cash whispered to Robin, “Looks like Daddy needs to ramp up Mommy’s Christmas surprise.”
He took the back stairs two at a time. When he reached the twins’ closed door, he slowly turned the knob and then crept the door open, inching his way inside.
“Who’s there?” Bonnie asked, blinding him with the Barbie flashlight that had been in her stocking. Dallas being a softy where his girls were concerned, he’d allowed them to open one gift each and their stockings after dinner. “I’ve got an Old West sheriff rifle and I’ll put on my badge and take you down!”
“Yeah,” Betsy said, completing his twin torture by nailing him with her laser pointer. “I’ve got a hamster and I’ll get him to go ninja on you!”
Robin started to cry.
“Ladies,” Cash said, entering the room and closing the door before turning on the lights, “who taught you to be so violent?”
“Uncle Cash!” Bounding out of their beds, the girls danced around him as if it’d been a year since their last visit.
“I wanna hold the baby,” Bonnie demanded.
“No, me!” Betsy tugged Robin’s foot.
Robin’s scream was loud enough to wake the entire population of Weed Gulch.
“Knock it off,” Cash said to the little monsters his brother was raising. “And keep your grubby paws off the baby.”
“We’re not grubby.” Betsy was back to shining that damned laser thing in his eyes.
“Give me that.” When he took it from her, she started to cry.
Bonnie kicked his shin.
Wincing in pain, but thankful she hadn’t messed with his bum knee, he said, “You little bugger. Get back to bed pronto, or I’m calling Stella.”
They feared their nanny far more than Dallas, who was the world’s biggest pushover, so they scampered into their beds. After jiggling and patting Robin, Cash finally got her quiet, too.
“Now that everyone’s settled down—” Cash perched on the foot of Betsy’s bed “—I need a favor.”
“I don’t like you anymore,” Bonnie announced.
“That’s fine. Just give me your doctor kit.”
“I love my doctor kit.” Bonnie bolted back out of bed and sat on her toy box. “You can’t have it.”
“Please?” He wriggled Robin’s arms to look as if she was begging, too. “I’ll buy you a new one just as soon as I can get into town.”
“What’re you doing with it?” Betsy asked, plopping alongside her sister. “’Cause if you need to fix a broken gut or something, it doesn’t really work.”
Tired of sass, Cash placed Robin on Betsy’s bed, surrounding her with pillows and animals so she wouldn’t roll off. Next he hefted a twin under each arm and set them on Bonnie’s bed. “Stay.”
While the twins pouted, Cash rummaged through naked Barbies with chopped-off hair, missing limbs and eyeballs. Sparkle dresses and shoes and enough Lego to build a life-size house. Finally he found Bonnie’s kit. It had been attacked with markers and crayons, but was basically still intact.
“Come on, munchkin.” He scooped up Robin, glared at his nieces and said, “Wish Santa had known how ornery you two were before he bought your gift.”
In unison, Betsy and Bonnie stuck out their tongues.
“WHEW.” After feeding Robin and tucking her into her crib, Wren collapsed on the sofa beside Cash. “Mothering is exhausting.”
Prissy usually occupied the spot next to Wren, wherever that might be. But at the moment she was too busy with a chew bone to notice Cash horning in on her territory.
Lightly massaging Wren’s neck, he asked, “Any thoughts on how you’ll handle nursing once you’re back at work?”
The question brought on an instant headache, as well as a hot rush of panic. Yes, she’d given the topic a lot of thought and with always the same result—how would she realistically have it all? Marriage? Motherhood? The career as a doctor she’d worked years to achieve? It felt just within her reach, if only she were smart enough, energetic enough, stubborn enough to juggle it all.
“Well…” She forced her breathing to slow. “Since the day care is on-site, I’ll pop in to feed Robin whenever possible. If that doesn’t work, I can always pump milk or supplement with formula.”
“And us?” He shifted on the sofa, his proximity making it impossible for her to look anywhere but at him. At those gorgeous green eyes that had first drawn her in. Since having Robin, Wren had harbored horrible thoughts of wondering where she’d be now if she’d never met him. Midway through her first year of residency would she be happier? More fulfilled? Or was it the exhaustion of new motherhood forcing her thoughts to gloomy places?
“Cash…” How did she begin sharing her thoughts with him? No man wanted to hear his wife of barely two weeks already confessing doubts about their future. “I’m tired. We have Christmas with your family in the morning. Do we have to have this conversation now?”
“No. Sorry.” He smiled, but even having known him as briefly as she had, Wren knew by his lack of dimples that his heart wasn’t behind the expression.
“Ready for bed?”
“Actually—” he nodded toward the Christmas tree “—while you were with the baby, Santa left you an early gift.” He presented the simply wrapped box with a flourish. “He advised me to give
it to you now, before the family crush. Besides, after the past few rocky days, I wanted to…” Voice cracking, he looked away. “Look, I’ve been an ass. Said things I regret, and I’m sorry. Considering where we are in our relationship, this gift is backward, but…” He nodded toward the box. “Go ahead. Open it.”
In the months Wren had lived with Cash, she couldn’t remember him being more humble. Cupping her hand to his dear cheek, more than anything she wished she could’ve met him five years down the road. By then she would’ve been established. Ready for more than the one hot night they’d intended to be all they’d ever share. Now, even though she wasn’t sure, she felt caged by circumstance. She needed to file for her residency transfer, but couldn’t get Dr. West’s voice from her head. I’ve lost a lot of promising candidates due to so-called love, and I refuse to lose you, Wren Barnes.
Not that Wren hadn’t known full well what she’d been doing when she married Cash, but she felt as though she now had the stomachache of a child who’d eat en too much candy when her entire life before meeting him had been sugar free. Was what she shared with Cash the real deal or her mentor’s so-called love?
And then Cash melted her heart as if it had been made of chocolate. Inside the box was an obviously well loved child’s doctor kit just like the one she’d had at the orphanage. Only, the stethoscope on this model included a spellbinding square-cut diamond ring.
On his knees in front of her, Cash said, “You should’ve had this before our wedding, but I hope you’ll forgive me enough to not only wear my engagement ring, but honor me by becoming the first full-fledged doctor in the Buckhorn clan.” After slipping it onto her trembling left ring finger, he kissed it. He then rose to kiss her lips.
“Th-thank you,” she said, voice husky, eyes shining. “It’s beautiful, but Cash, it’s also unnecessary. I don’t need a ring to seal me to you.”
Rising, he threw his hands in the air. “Dammit, I’m not trying to buy you, but show you I care. I’m going to be a better father to Robin. A better husband to you. I’m sick of bickering and—”
The Bull Rider's Christmas Baby Page 14