“We wanted a family, you know. Three kids, or maybe four. Now you’re telling me Rebecca can never have any children. It’s…” He felt his self-control disappearing as a blinding rage took hold of him. “It isn’t fair, goddamn it! This just can’t be happening. Rebecca will… She… Rebecca… Oh, God, how will I ever tell her?”
“I’m sorry, Zach. There was nothing else I could do.” The surgeon reached out a hand in comfort, but Zach shrank away from his touch. The doctor turned and headed for the door.
“When can I see her?” Zach called after him.
“She’ll be in recovery for a while. I’ll have a nurse send for you when she’s conscious.”
Zach sank into the nearest chair and dropped his head into his hands. He bit his lip to hold back the wounded cry that sought voice, but the awful, wrenching sound escaped his throat and echoed in the room.
He realized now the choice had been made long ago. He could not give up Rebecca. That did not keep him from grieving the loss of his never-to-be-born children. Or the loss of the children Rebecca would have loved the way she loved all helpless living creatures who crossed her path. A tight band gripped his chest making it nearly impossible to draw breath. The emotional pain of this catastrophic event was every bit as bad as the physical pain had been all those years ago.
Two tiny booted feet appeared beside him. He felt a hand patting his shoulder in comfort.
Jewel leaned close to his ear and said, “Don’t cry, Zach. ’Becca’s gonna be okay. The doctor said so.”
He lifted his head from his hands, unaware of the tears on his cheeks. “I know, Jewel. It’s just…” She was too young to understand the devastation he felt at the doctor’s other news.
“Are you sad ’cause ’Becca can’t have any babies?”
He had underestimated her. Again.
“Yes, I am.”
She played with a frayed spot at the knee of his jeans where it had gotten caught on some barbed wire. Her hand stilled and she looked up at him. “If you want, I could be your little girl.”
Zach felt a rush of emotion. How vulnerable she looked, waiting for his answer, her heart right there in those wonderful, unforgettable mud-brown eyes.
He swallowed past the thickness in his throat. “I’d like very much for you to be my daughter, Jewel.”
Her gap-toothed smile was slow in coming, as though she couldn’t quite believe her ears. Then she launched herself into his open arms, which closed around her.
“Oh, ’Becca will be so glad!” she said. “She told me not to worry, that she’d give you a good talking-to, and that you’d change your mind,” she admitted with youthful naïveté. “Only you changed your mind all by yourself!”
Zach smiled ruefully and let himself bask in the little girl’s grin of approval. Oh, Jewel was her mother’s daughter, all right. He was going to have his hands—and his heart—full with the pair of them. Thank God.
Zach surreptitiously swiped the tears from his eyes when he spotted his parents returning to the waiting room. “The doctor’s been here, and Rebecca’s going to be fine,” he said.
“Only she can’t have any babies,” Jewel piped up.
Zach saw the look of shock and sympathy in his parents’ eyes and knew he couldn’t stay and talk with them right now. He wanted—needed—to see Rebecca.
“Will you keep an eye on Jewel? I’m going to see Rebecca.” He didn’t wait for an answer. As the waiting room door closed behind him, he heard Jewel saying, “I’m going to be Zach and ’Becca’s little girl.”
He smiled. That ought to keep his parents busy for a while.
Zach got directions from a nurse to the private room where they had moved Rebecca. There was a light at the head of the hospital bed that illuminated her face, but the rest of the room was cloaked in shadow. Her eyes were closed, but they opened when he sat down next to her on the bed.
“Hello, kid,” he said.
“Hello, Zach.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like a horse kicked me in the stomach.”
She reached down to her stomach and gingerly touched it. She frowned as she felt the staples in her skin that the doctor had used to close after surgery. “Zach?”
He reached for her hand and brought her knuckles up to his lips. “The doctor had to do a little surgery.”
“How little?”
“He took out your spleen.”
She heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, is that all? I think I can do without that.”
“And your uterus,” he said in a quiet voice.
She snatched her hand from his and winced at the pain caused by the jerky movement. “What did you say?”
“Your life was at stake. The doctor had no choice. He had to remove your uterus.” It hurt, oh, how it hurt to see the stricken look on her face.
“No!” she cried. “It’s not fair. Oh, Zach, it isn’t fair! I wanted to give you children. I wanted—”
He pulled her awkwardly into his arms, trying not to hurt her as he maneuvered her head against his shoulder. He kissed away the hot tears spilling from her eyes. “It doesn’t matter, kid. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m just so glad you’re alive. I love you so much—”
“But—”
“Nothing else is as important to me as you are.”
“But—”
“I don’t know how I would go on living if anything happened to you.”
“But—”
“I love you—”
Rebecca clamped a hand over Zach’s mouth. With every word he had said her heart had lightened. It was a blow to realize she could never bear children, but she was more concerned now with what that information meant to Zach. “You said we would get a divorce if I wasn’t pregnant in a year. Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?”
She removed her hand to let him speak.
The silly man nodded vigorously and said, “Uh-huh.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You only married me to have a mother for your children.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I can’t have any children now.”
He shook his head. “Not true. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve already got one.”
She stared at him a moment before understanding dawned. “Jewel? Oh, Zach, are you really willing to adopt Jewel?”
“The kid insists on staying. I couldn’t very well throw her out, could I?”
Rebecca smiled through her tears. “Oh, Zach…We’ll have a houseful of kids, I promise.”
“I’d bet on it,” he said with a chuckle. “I’d be a fool not to bet on it! I could make a fortune betting on it.”
She laughed, and he lowered his head to capture her laughter with his lips. It was like coming home. His heart thumped a little faster. He might have lost this chance at happiness. He was reaching out now with both hands to love and life. And children. His and Rebecca’s children. He wondered who they were, where they were right now, and by what mysterious means they would find their way to his doorstep.
“How many, Zach?”
“What?”
“How many can we have?”
“Oh, Lord,” he said with a groan. He should have seen this coming. “Four. Altogether. Not one kid more, Rebecca. I swear I can’t handle more than that.”
“All right, Zach. Four.”
Zach eyed her suspiciously, then shook his head in resignation and pulled his wife close. It was going to be more. He would bet on it. He could make a fortune betting on it. And he would likely need the fortune to feed everybody.
Zach grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Rebecca asked.
“I’m just happy.” Zach pulled her close. “I’m just a very happy man.”
EPILOGUE
SEVEN. ZACH HADN’T IMAGINED BEING the father of seven children after ten years of marriage, but he was surviving the experience amazingly well. Jewel was fifteen now, and blessed with two sisters and four brothers. Only one of the children had been a newborn when they adopte
d him. Colt was seven now and hell on wheels. You weren’t supposed to have favorites, but he would always have a special fondness for Jewel, who was the first child to steal his heart, and for Colt, who had known no other father before him.
The other children had all been older when he and Rebecca adopted them, but they were equally precious to him. The other two girls, Frannie and Rolleen, were nine and seventeen now. The other three boys, Rabbit and Jake and Avery, were eight and twelve and thirteen, respectively. Of course, Rabbit’s name wasn’t really Rabbit, it was Louis. But they had discovered he loved raw carrots and lettuce and all sorts of vegetables, so Jewel had given him the nickname, and it had stuck.
Fortunately, they had a lot of help. Mrs. Fortunata and Mr. Tuttle had fallen in love and married years ago, and the two of them were like another set of grandparents for the children. Thanks to Rebecca, there were always extra hands around the ranch. Some of the Camp LittleHawk kids had even come back to work at the camp and become friends.
Like Pete. Who had beaten all the odds. He was eighteen now and had been a camp counselor last summer. He was heading to college in the fall. He wanted to be a paleontologist, of all things. He said it was the Indian drawings in the canyon at Hawk’s Pride that had gotten him interested in the subject.
Zach watched Rebecca edge through the sliding glass door and step into the courtyard.
“Why are you sitting out here all alone in the dark?” she asked.
“It’s quiet out here.” Which a houseful of kids was not. Ever. Zach opened his arms, and Rebecca settled in his lap on the wooden swing and snuggled her head against his chest. “I was just thinking what a lucky man I am,” he said.
“We are lucky, aren’t we?”
“Umm.” With so many kids, it wasn’t always easy to find a private moment with his wife, so he relished this one. He shoved the hair back from her nape and kissed the softness there. She still lit his fire, all these years later, and he felt the slight tension in his genitals as he took the weight of her breasts in his palms.
Rebecca made a kittenish sound in her throat. “You aren’t sorry, are you, Zach?”
He was too busy kissing her throat to answer.
“About having so many children, I mean, and not any of them your own.”
He raised his head abruptly and dropped his hands from her breasts. He turned her so he could take her face between his palms. He was irritated at having to stop his lovemaking to settle something that he had thought was settled long ago.
“Let’s get this straight once and for all. These children are all mine, legally, morally, and every other way. I love them all. I’d give my life for each and every one of them. They’re Whitelaws, through and through.
“And I bless the day you came into my life and became my wife. I won’t say living with you is easy, because it isn’t. There are times I don’t think I can be the man you expect me to be, but I keep trying because I love you.
“Which isn’t always easy. Because it isn’t natural for me to be as open and generous as you are. And sometimes there are so many strangers working around here, it’s hard to know who’s who.
“But I wouldn’t give up one single frustrating, exhilarating, mind-boggling minute of the past ten years.”
“Oh, Zach, I’m so glad you feel that way.” She fiddled with the collar of his Western shirt. “Because, there’s this girl—”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“But you just said—”
“Seven is enough. We agreed when you brought Rabbit home that he was the last. I’m forty-six, Rebecca. Forty-six-year-old men don’t go around having kids.”
“But Cherry is fourteen, Zach. She won’t be any trouble at all. Or, maybe only a little.”
Zach groaned.
“It seems she has this attitude problem and has been skipping school. Her foster parents finally gave up on her. She’s in a juvenile detention center right now, but if we—”
“All right.”
“—agree to be her—”
“I said all right.”
Rebecca threw her arms around Zach’s neck and kissed him all over his face. “Oh, Zach, thank you so much.”
Rebecca opened the first two snaps on his shirt and slipped her hand inside to rest it against his chest. “You have the biggest heart of any man I know. And I love you, very, very much.”
Eight wasn’t so many, Zach thought. But this was absolutely the last one.
Next time he was putting his foot down.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5172-8
HAWK’S WAY: CALLEN & ZACH
Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holder of the individual works as follows:
THE HEADSTRONG BRIDE
Copyright © 1994 by Joan Mertens Johnston
THE DISOBEDIENT BRIDE
Copyright © 1995 by Joan Mertens Johnston
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Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach Page 24