A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy

by Deb Kastner

  “Gee, thanks.” He curled up one corner of his lips and winked at her.

  She blushed. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “No, I know.” He brushed the wetness from her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “I’m just teasing you.”

  His gut clenched. Talk about feeling like a jerk. Now wasn’t the time to be making jokes.

  Within minutes, Delia arrived with her medical bag and checked out Edward, flashing a light into his eyes to examine his pupils and taking his blood pressure. She had him move his extremities and checked for broken bones.

  Edward’s hip hurt and his ribs were sore, but Delia said she suspected the pain came from the impact of the fall and not from any breaks or fractures.

  Cash stood and stepped back, giving Delia room to move around the patient. He suddenly felt as if he didn’t quite belong in this intimate family situation, seeing as he wasn’t related to Edward and Alyssa.

  He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and shifted from one foot to the other, wondering if he ought to just quietly let himself out. But then he thought about Alyssa.

  She would need support after Delia left. He wasn’t about to leave her alone when she might need him, so he leaned his hip against the counter near the stove, crossed his arms and watched from a distance.

  When Delia had thoroughly examined Edward, she gave the go-ahead to move him into his bedroom. Cash and Alyssa braced the old man between them and slowly walked him down the hallway.

  “No getting out of bed unless I say so,” Alyssa warned her father as she tucked the covers under his chin.

  Cash searched for the television remote and handed it to Edward.

  “Could you please get him a glass of cold water?” Alyssa asked as she fussed over her father, plumping his pillows and adjusting them under his head.

  “Sure thing.”

  As Cash entered the kitchen, Delia was just packing up the last of her supplies in her medical kit.

  “When you and Alyssa are finished with Edward, I’d like to have a word with you both,” Delia said.

  Cash nodded and took the glass of cold water in to Edward, who was already drifting off to sleep.

  Cash moved close to Alyssa and took her elbow. “Delia would like to speak to us.”

  “Us?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “You. She wants to speak to you.”

  Delia had said she’d wanted to speak to them both, but she didn’t have the full picture of why he was here. For all she knew, he was a dinner guest, instead of what had really happened, that Alyssa had phoned him out of sheer desperation when she’d found her father flat on the floor. If she’d had someone else to call, Cash figured she would have.

  He placed his hand on the small of her back as they returned to the kitchen. Delia was already seated at the kitchen table and gestured for them each to take a seat. Alyssa flopped into a chair across from her, but Cash was too restless to sit.

  “I don’t think your dad has a concussion,” Delia affirmed with a reassuring smile. “But he did take a hard fall, and he was already in a weakened state. Definitely keep a close eye on him for the next twenty-four hours. Have him remain in his bed as much as possible and be sure to give him a hand whenever he needs to walk, because his balance may be off for a while. I placed a lidocaine patch on his ribs and have prescribed some painkillers for his hip and back, which may leave him a bit dizzy and foggy-headed.

  “Also, you can expect to see some fairly substantial bruising showing up in the next few days, particularly on his hip. If his symptoms get worse or he complains about something new, give me a call immediately.”

  “Will do,” Cash said, moving to stand behind Alyssa’s chair and laying his hands on her shoulders. He might technically be a third wheel, but knowing Edward, Alyssa was going to need all the help she could get to keep him in bed and resting. Granted, Alyssa had indicated that Edward was already ill, but the man Cash remembered was a stubborn old goat. He’d be up and about far too soon if he wasn’t being watched like a hawk.

  Maybe he couldn’t solve Alyssa’s problems, exactly, but keeping Edward in bed, Cash could do.

  Of course, Alyssa might not want him to stay. But he was going to offer—insist, for her own good. He was determined to be there for Edward.

  For her.

  * * *

  Finding her father sprawled on the floor yesterday, howling in pain, had taken ten years off Alyssa’s life. After dropping to his side to let him know she was there, she had immediately pulled out her cell phone to call for an ambulance, but her stubborn father hadn’t let her.

  So instead she’d called Cash.

  Why had she called Cash?

  It didn’t make a lick of sense. He wasn’t family. Though he was working at Emerson’s he wasn’t even a permanent employee. They weren’t even close friends. Not really—or at least she hadn’t thought of him that way until today.

  Instead, it had been an instinctive gesture on her part. She’d desperately needed someone to be with her, to support her through this emergency, and with Eddie out on the range where he couldn’t be reached, she didn’t have any other family to turn to.

  Even though her father hadn’t wanted an ambulance, her first call should have been to the town doctor and she was annoyed and irritated with herself that it hadn’t been. She couldn’t believe she’d been so shaken that she hadn’t even thought of that.

  An ambulance, yes, but not Dr. Delia. Maybe it was because Alyssa knew Dr. Delia didn’t usually work on Sundays, but she was always on call, so that was no excuse.

  But Alyssa had been so frightened, had felt so helpless, that her brain was in a frenzy. With all the panic and adrenaline coursing through her, her mind had gone blank. It was all she could do to take in her father’s condition and give him what comfort she could.

  She’d pulled up her contact list and Cash’s name had been near the top. The rest was instinct.

  Cash’s presence, oddly enough, had made her feel stronger, more capable and able to handle the crisis.

  Thank the good Lord he’d also thought to phone Delia right away, allowing her to remain at her father’s side while he spoke to the doctor.

  Daddy hurting himself when she wasn’t around to see it was exactly what she’d been afraid of ever since Mama had left them. Alyssa had her own apartment since she’d returned from getting her MBA and moved out of the family home.

  Things had been fine back then. Her father had been an active man dedicated to making Emerson’s Hardware all it could be. It had been Daddy’s idea to contact Kickfire and he was the one who had originally planned the renovation—which was part of the reason Alyssa was so committed to seeing it through.

  Deep in her heart, she hoped that maybe once the remodel was done, her father might see his way back to working in the store. That he might regain his strength. If she could provide him with a new purpose for his life, then maybe...

  When Mama had taken off after Aaron’s death, she had left her father all alone.

  Alone, and now ill.

  Alyssa would never get past her mother’s betrayal. But she hoped her father would.

  She’d believed that once he’d seen the work she’d done on the store renovation and the institution of the Kickfire brand, he would catch her enthusiasm and be anxious to return to work.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  More than once since Mama had left, she’d considered moving back home to stay with Daddy and support him through what must certainly be the most difficult trial of his life, the abandonment by a life partner and the death of his son. But when she brought up the subject, Daddy had shot it down.

  He didn’t need help, he’d assured her. He was fine on his own.

  But clearly, he wasn’t fine, even if he was too stubborn to admit it.

  Alyssa sighed and leaned in
to the cushion on the living room sofa, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. She was bone tired but too wound up to doze. The television was on, playing softly in the background, but she couldn’t pay attention to whatever was on the screen.

  It had been a close call today.

  Much too close to ignore.

  Things had to change, whether Daddy liked it or not. It was time to put her foot down. She didn’t like telling her father what to do, but she and Eddie had some difficult decisions to make. At least she’d have her brother’s support, so they would be able to present a united front when they laid down the new laws.

  She sighed wearily. One thing was certain—Daddy could no longer live alone. Not in the state he was currently in. If it was purely grief, he wasn’t coping well, and Alyssa wasn’t sure he would ever fully recover. Not when he’d lost the will to try.

  At the very least, Daddy was severely depressed. But if there was something medically wrong with him, she needed to know that, too. She would give Delia a call once this crisis had passed and ask her to give Daddy a thorough physical examination.

  Alyssa yawned and glanced at her watch, then stood and stretched her arms over her head, bending her neck from side to side to remove the kinks.

  It had been a long night that had morphed into an even longer day. She’d stopped by the store first thing in the morning and checked on the kittens, but then had left Emerson’s closed for the day with a brief note taped to the window to explain.

  Once her friends and neighbors in Serendipity heard what had happened, they would understand why she’d chosen to spend the day watching over her father. It wouldn’t take long before her church family and neighborhood friends banded together to help care for her father.

  Jo Spencer had already dropped by earlier in the morning with a care package, if one could call the entire passenger’s seat of a pickup truck full of prepared food a “care package.”

  Casseroles, homemade soup, freshly baked bread and rolls, cookies, milk and butter—enough for her father to live on for at least a week, probably more. Alyssa figured most of the food came from Jo’s own café, Cup O’ Jo’s, but Jo must have raided Sam’s Grocery, as well.

  Presumably Jo had heard the news about Daddy from Dr. Delia. And if Jo knew, it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the town found out what had happened.

  Which was a good thing. Everyone close to Daddy, including Serendipity’s local church, where he had attended regularly before Mama had left, would take it upon themselves to visit and make sure he was doing okay. Having folks who really cared about their neighbors was one of the biggest benefits of living in a small town where everyone knew each other.

  It was past time for Alyssa to relieve Cash, who was sitting at Daddy’s bedside, watching over him. When she’d left the two men, Cash had been reading the book The Lord of the Rings to him, which was one of Daddy’s favorites. He was a big fan of fantasy novels.

  Just after leaving the room earlier, Alyssa had hung around for a couple of minutes out of sight, listening to Cash read. He could have been an audiobook narrator, with his smooth, rich baritone voicing all the different characters. He even gave a couple characters a high, squeaky falsetto. She’d smiled softly before making her way out into the living room to crash on the couch for a while.

  Despite her fatigue, she hadn’t been able to doze as she’d hoped. The scene kept playing over and over in her mind. Daddy on the floor, helpless to get up on his own.

  What if she hadn’t been there? What if it hadn’t been Sunday? What if he’d laid there for days instead of hours?

  Shaking off her anxiety, she quietly walked to the hall that led to Daddy’s room.

  As tired and stressed out as everyone was, she expected to find Daddy sound asleep and Cash dozing in a chair by his bedside, the book propped open over his chest.

  Instead, she found him halfway down the hallway, leaning his shoulder against the door frame of Aaron’s old room, his lips pressed into a hard, straight line and his expression pensive as he stared into her brother’s bedroom.

  What was he doing in Aaron’s room?

  “Cash?” she murmured, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  He jerked as if jolted with a bolt of electricity and spun around, his eyes wide with shock. His breath came in heavy gasps as he ran his palm back through his hair, leaving the dark waves in unruly tufts and spikes.

  He looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, furrowing her brow. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No. No.” He blew out a breath. “It’s okay. I was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t hear you walk up.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Your dad is sound asleep. I doubt he’ll wake for hours, but I didn’t want to leave him until I knew you were awake to keep an eye on him.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. He needs his rest. But that wasn’t what I asked.”

  She silently gestured toward Aaron’s bedroom.

  Cash glanced into Aaron’s room again and his expression tightened with strain, so much so that Alyssa could see his pulse beating frantically in the corner of his jaw.

  “I was coming out to see how you were faring, since I know what a stressful night it’s been for you. I thought maybe you would have crashed on the couch. I planned to cover you up with a quilt and let you sleep for a while, since I’m wide-awake, anyway.”

  Alyssa’s chest flooded with warmth. With all the rumors about Cash that were floating around before the day of the auction, she’d truly expected to find him no more than a callous cowboy who tromped his boots all over everyone to get what he wanted.

  Instead, she saw before her a man with true compassion radiating from his azure eyes. Though he was thoroughly exhausted, she perceived sympathy in his gaze. He might have said he was wide-awake, but he certainly didn’t look it.

  He looked ready to drop, and Alyssa suspected that like her, he hadn’t slept a wink, not even a light doze. And yet even so, he’d been ready and willing to take her shift, so she could get some sleep.

  That wasn’t the act of a heartless, insensitive man.

  He was a complete enigma to her, that was for sure.

  “The door was wide-open, and I couldn’t help but notice it as I passed,” Cash said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall. “I—I wasn’t snooping.”

  She raised her brow. “I never said you were.”

  “I just—” He paused, his voice raspy. “I was surprised, that’s all. Aaron’s room hasn’t changed a bit from when he was a teenager. We spent a lot of time in here, playing video games and hanging out together.”

  “I remember,” she said softly. “My room was just down the hall, and you two guys made quite a ruckus sometimes.”

  She didn’t tell him that she’d always been especially mindful of him whenever he spent time with her brother. It was as if she had some kind of invisible connection to him whenever he was around.

  He chuckled, but his amusement didn’t reach his expression. “We were pretty rowdy, weren’t we?”

  She nodded. Their eyes met and held, and she could palpably feel his grief washing over him in great tidal waves.

  “Daddy has kept Aaron’s room like a shrine. I’ve tried to convince him that we need to go through Aaron’s things eventually, even if Eddie and I are the ones doing it, but he won’t hear of it.”

  She placed a hand over her rapidly beating heart, willing it to slow. Her chest contracted painfully.

  “Unlike with Aaron, Daddy immediately wiped out every trace of my mother ever having lived here, but I think he’s holding on to his memory of Aaron to get him through his own grief.”

  “I can’t even imagine. What you and your family have been through—it’s no wonder your father is having difficulty recovering from all the hardships he’s been th
rough recently. Any man would. But I can’t express how sorry I am to see him this way.”

  That made two of them. It broke her heart every time she laid eyes on Daddy.

  She was a little surprised that Cash realized the depth of her father’s pain, and more than that, didn’t think him weak for it.

  “Is it okay if I—” He gestured, asking if he could enter the sanctuary of Aaron’s room.

  Alyssa nodded, tears pricking her eyes. She understood what Cash was asking. She’d spent a lot of time here in Aaron’s room after he’d died, just sitting on his bed, sobbing quietly as she embraced her many happy memories of him.

  His baseball trophies and the mitt and ball he’d used when the high school team had won the state championship when he was a senior were in a case along one wall. His favorite cartoon superhero posters lined his wall. In one corner lay stacks of rodeo magazines he’d collected as he’d dreamed about his future in pro rodeo.

  Alyssa would never admit it to anyone, but sometimes she’d talk to Aaron—out loud, as if he was sitting there with her. She’d tell him about what was going on at the store, and how Eddie had found his calling as a wrangler.

  Aaron would have liked that.

  And sometimes, through her tears, she told him how much she loved him and missed him and how her life would never be the same without him.

  Cash reached for the mitt and ball on the top of the display case, putting the mitt on his hand and tossing the ball in the air, easily catching it when it came down again. Cash had been a star first baseman during his high school years, but not as good as Aaron, who’d held the record for the number of strikes pitched, and who still held the school record to this day.

  “If Aaron had lived in a bigger town, he could have gotten a full-ride scholarship to university,” Cash said, his voice raspy and cracking with emotion. “He was that good.”

  Alyssa nodded.

  Aaron had loved baseball and he had excelled in it. But there’d always been something he’d loved even more.

  “I don’t think he would have taken a scholarship even if one had been offered to him,” Alyssa said. “That wasn’t his path. He would have been miserable in college. He never much cared for academics. All he ever really wanted to do was pro rodeo.”