The Rancher's Unexpected Family

by Myrna Mackenzie

  “How nice to see two of my former students together in one place,” the woman said. “I don’t often, you know. Kathryn was from my last class just before I retired. I remember you had such a crush on Holt back then. It was so cute.”

  Kathryn wanted to find a place to hide, a tall order at this stage of her pregnancy. She felt her face heating up. “I was very young,” she said. She wanted to add the words and stupid, but it probably wouldn’t do to antagonize Holt when he hadn’t given her an answer yet. After all, her goal was to build a clinic, not marry the man. And—fingers crossed—if he said yes, maybe the time spent together would clear away the last skeletal vestiges of his attraction for her. Because she now saw that he was a lot like James. Maybe she’d even been attracted to James because of her leftover crush on Holt. Sweeping him from her soul would be freeing. “I’m not a teenager anymore,” she told both Mrs. Best and Holt. “Not so naive.”

  “Well. Things do change, don’t they?” Mrs. Best asked, apparently realizing that she’d committed a faux pas. “It’s good that you’ve grown up. If you hadn’t, becoming a mama would probably have done the trick. It’s a real responsibility. As a teacher, I saw my share of bad parents. Don’t you be one.”

  If Kathryn hadn’t been so scared of messing up as a mother, she might have smiled. Mrs. Best clearly hadn’t given up teaching when she retired. Fortunately, she turned away from Kathryn and focused on Holt.

  “Holt, I really did need to speak to you,” she said. “I hate to mention this, but my fence that Clay built got damaged in the storm and if it’s not fixed just right Bitsy gets out. While you were gone, I asked that idiot handyman, Donald, to take care of it, and the next thing you know, my little dog was chasing cars in the road. I’ve had to keep her in the house since then. I should have known not to trust it to anyone but you.” She looked up at Holt as if she expected him to not only do something about her fence, but to restore world peace.

  Holt only hesitated half a second. “I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Best.”

  With a smile, the woman turned to go. “He’s so good to all of us,” she told Kathryn. “Just like his father.” For a second she looked as if she might pat him on the cheek. Maybe Holt thought so, too. He had a wary look in

  his eyes.

  Kathryn managed to contain her skepticism. When Mrs. Best walked away, she raised her chin. “So you’re not as immune to requests as you seem.”

  “Fixing a fence is easy.”

  Maybe. Kathryn wasn’t sure it would be easy for everyone. “What did she mean when she said that you’re good to everyone?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “Not important. Long story.”

  And one he clearly wasn’t going to share with her. The man was certainly living up to that cowboy reputation as a rugged man of few words. It was such a cliché that she almost wanted to laugh.

  Almost. Not quite. Holt was rugged, and staring up at him from her perch on the chair, she had to look up the entire length of his long, lean body. Pregnant as she was, she was still a woman, and despite her mistakes as a teenager and in her marriage, apparently not immune to Holt’s physical charms. She pushed herself to her feet to break the spell and change the view to something less dangerous.

  “But you do still consider requests for help,” she prodded softly. She tried not to hope too hard.

  “Depends on the request. Mrs. Best’s is something I can do myself. Yours involved begging my friends for favors. I don’t beg well. I don’t ask for things. Even so, I came to tell you yes.”

  She blinked. She’d been prepared to argue more, even to plead a little.

  “Just like that.”

  “No. Not just like that. I still don’t like this any better than I did, but I’ll do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t push it, Kathryn. If you’ve decided you don’t need my help after all, I’m better than fine with that.”

  “No. I want your help. I’ll take it. You can’t back out now.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t back out. Ever. Once I’ve given my word, it’s golden. Understand?” The look he gave her might have killed a man. But she’d faced worse.

  “Do you look at Blue like that?”

  He looked taken aback. Then he gave her that maddening, half-amused expression. “Blue and I understand each other. Without speaking.”

  “My apologies. I’m not a wonderful and psychic dog but a decidedly human woman.”

  “Yes, I noticed. That you’re not psychic. And that you’re a woman.”

  He wasn’t really even looking at her body. His gaze didn’t drop, but she felt as if he could see through her clothing. Kathryn felt hot. And bothered.

  “Okay,” she rushed on, irritated that she couldn’t seem to control her reaction to Holt. “I’ll draw up some plans, all the things we need to do, and I’ll give you a copy so that you know your part and I know mine.”

  “Why are you doing that?”

  She looked up, blinking wide. “I like organization. I make lists.”

  “No. You’re rubbing your back. You’re—you’re real pregnant.”

  “Yes. I noticed.”

  He didn’t smile at her sarcastic tone. “You should sit down. You don’t need to stand.”

  Now he was making her mad. “Mr. Calhoun, I don’t care to go into the details, but know this. I have been ordered around all my life and I’m done with that. I’ve thoroughly researched pregnancy, and Dr. Cooper and I have talked. I’m a healthy woman, and I’ll let you know if I need to sit down.”

  He raised that sexy eyebrow that had always driven her mad. “I wasn’t giving you an order.” His voice was low and somewhat mocking.

  “I— Yes,” she stammered. “I understand that. My apologies for jumping to conclusions. Of course, you were just being polite.”

  He didn’t answer her. But she didn’t sit, either, even though right now her legs were beginning to feel as if they wouldn’t hold her up any longer. Her back was aching, and if Holt hadn’t been here, she would have sat down, but the man had always made her feel weak. She had a bad feeling about what might happen if he knew that she was susceptible to him. It was very important that they keep things on a business footing during the remainder of her time in Larkville.

  “Thank you for agreeing to help.”

  “I won’t be available a lot of the time,” he warned her. “Now that I’m back at the ranch, I have duties.”

  “We can meet there.”

  “I don’t think we need to meet.”

  And she certainly didn’t want to meet any more than was necessary, but...

  “Humor a pregnant woman,” she said, knowing that wasn’t fair.

  “Just send me a list. I’ll do my part. And decide which parts I won’t do.”

  With that, he walked away. For a few seconds, Kathryn wondered what she’d ever seen in him.

  Other than that gorgeous body that could still make her squirm. When she woke in the middle of the night having the “Holt dream,” the one where he picked her up and carried her to his bed, the one where he came to her wearing nothing but an unzipped pair of jeans, the one where she finally got the chance to plunge her fingers into all that wonderful black hair, Kathryn knew she was going to have to be incredibly careful during her time here.

  A man like Holt who could make a bloated, nearly-nine-months-pregnant woman feel desire was far too hot to handle. Good thing he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE first place Holt went the next morning was to the hangar on the ranch where he kept his Cessna and his helicopter. There was really no reason to do this. Both were kept in pristine condition, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t have any cows to herd out of remote locations. And he had no emergencies to tend to.

  While he’d been away, his ranch hands had done their best to keep the place going, but the Double Bar C was big. He had plenty of tasks stacked up. Good. He needed some sweaty, backbreaking ranch work to c
lear his head and keep away any distracting thoughts of Kathryn. What was it about the woman that made her so tough to ignore? Was it the combination of delicate woman combined with that tigress determination? Or the fact that he could tell that he intimidated her but she still held her own with him?

  He swore. Did it even matter? No, it didn’t. Because he didn’t want it to. They were going to have the equivalent of a “ten-minute business relationship.” They were fire and ice, not a good combination. Plus, ranching was all he cared about, all he knew. It was what he was good at, and he wasn’t good at relationships. At all. Not that it mattered.

  Don’t lose track of what’s important, he could hear his father saying. You’re in charge of the Double Bar C, the family’s legacy. When you’re away from the ranch, remember who you are. You represent the biggest concern in the area, and people will look up to you. You have a responsibility to the ranch, and through the ranch a responsibility to the family and the town. The ranch is the one thing that will never fail you. Don’t let anything interfere with that. Don’t get sidetracked or weak and make foolish mistakes with a woman the way I once did, son. Wanting a woman too much can kill a man.

  Holt knew that his father had been talking about someone other than his mother—possibly his first wife—because he saw how his mother suffered for loving his father too much. Sometimes she cried; he remembered her telling him how his father had never really loved her and now he, her son, was becoming another cold, closed-off Calhoun male. She clung to him when Clay was away. He felt sorry for her, but her unhappiness only reinforced what his father had said. Giving in to emotion was a mistake.

  That wasn’t happening. He’d already made some pretty foolish mistakes. He’d already run into his own weaknesses, and he wasn’t doing it again. He’d lost too much. But he didn’t want to think about that now.

  With a growl, he headed out. Riding across the land, he breathed in the scent of new-mown hay. This was his world, where he could forget his mistakes and just be himself.

  So, he buried himself in work, and for the first time in weeks he felt good. Riding up to the house at the end of the day, he knew once again that he was where he needed to be. Just him, a few men, the animals and the land. That was all he wanted.

  But when he opened the door, Nancy was waiting. “Kathryn Ellis called three times. I finally gave up and gave her your email address. You might want to check it. She seemed to think there were things you needed to know.”

  Instantly a vision of soft gray eyes came to him. Pink lips. Luscious breasts.

  He fought that image. He reminded himself of the reasons he had to ignore those eyes and lips and breasts. Instead, he marched to his computer and downloaded her message, and the list she’d sent him. And the revised, longer list she’d sent. And two more lists: her part, his part, a timeline. Everything was color-coded. There were links to articles on communities that had built clinics, links to suggested fundraisers.

  When he was done reading, Holt had to blink, he’d been staring at the screen so long. He was tired. He was also glad. Kathryn might be pretty and soft, and he might feel the urge to touch her whenever she was near, but she was a finicky list maker.

  Good. That made her easier to ignore.

  He didn’t bother answering. He had his own way of doing things, and he’d already decided what he would and wouldn’t do. One thing he wasn’t going to do was follow his blasted instincts and kiss Kathryn’s pretty pink lips. The irritating woman was clearly emotional about all this stuff, but he wasn’t an emotional man. Never had been. Never would be.

  And that was final.

  * * *

  Kathryn paced the floor of her house. She checked her email, which meant that she checked nothing. There were no messages from employers and no response from Holt.

  For an entire week, she had called. She’d sent emails. She’d even mailed him a letter, just to be safe. Nancy had been unfailingly polite, but she was clearly a “Holt woman,” loyal to her boss. She didn’t want to discuss him, and Kathryn understood that. She wouldn’t have discussed Dr. Cooper if someone had been trying to glean information on him.

  But enough was enough. The clock was ticking—on two fronts. Baby Ellis had been kicking more and more. Her stomach felt like a giant exercise ball with the exercise taking place on the inside. And several of Dr. Cooper’s patients were getting really worried.

  “I know it’s immature of me, Kathryn,” Ava DuShay had said yesterday. “But sometimes when I think of Dr. Cooper leaving, I just see myself running after his car yelling, ‘Please don’t leave. I’m scared.’ Because, you know, I’m old. I don’t drive anymore. Getting to an Austin doctor would be near impossible.”

  Kathryn had tried to soothe Ava, but it was difficult when she understood. And it was infuriating that Holt had told her he would help and now he wasn’t helping.

  With a sigh of resignation, Kathryn grabbed some papers from her desk, went outside and got in her car. She didn’t like getting too far from town anymore. A part of her was half-afraid that her less than dependable car would conk out on a lonely road and she would go into labor with no one around to help.

  Still, with two weeks to go, she was probably safe, and she and Holt were at an impasse. He probably thought she would just disappear if he ignored her.

  “Think again, ranch boy,” she muttered as she drove to the Double Bar C.

  She wasn’t going to stop at the house, not without making a cursory attempt to find Holt on her own first. It wasn’t fair to keep putting Nancy on the defensive, and besides, chances were good that if Nancy called Holt, he would simply give her some placating message and suggest Kathryn go home.

  Nervous as she was, with a history of being easily cowed, Kathryn knew she was just going to have to suck it up and do the right thing. If she wanted to be a successful urban developer and a good example for her child, she needed to learn how to deal with adversity and difficult people. Holt was probably an excellent proving ground. But if she’d had a choice, she wouldn’t have chosen to practice her negotiating skills on a man who had fueled her fantasies.

  Driving over the road on Holt’s land, Kathryn felt like a trespasser, but then she heard the sound of men shouting.

  “Jackpot,” she muttered. She wasn’t far from the house. The building was just over the rise, but she wasn’t sure her rattletrap vehicle could negotiate the uneven terrain where the voices were coming from without losing some vital parts, so she left her car and began to walk.

  Soon she saw a series of pens, some sort of metal contraption and a group of men. There was a lot of swearing and good-natured joking going on. It blended with the bawling sound of animals, and as Kathryn grew closer, she saw that these were calves. Even a greenhorn like her could figure that out. She also saw that Holt, whose height and bearing made him stand out from the crowd, was in the thick of things.

  Men were herding animals from one pen to another, into a narrow area of fencing and then into the metal contraption where the calf was caught in place. Then Holt took what looked like a syringe and gave the animal a shot in its shoulder, after which they let the animal out of the contraption and moved it out of the way so the next one could be brought in. It was fascinating, even though Kathryn didn’t understand the whys and wherefores. What she understood was that if she waited long enough, Holt would finish and then she could swoop in on him.

  She moved closer, intending to stay out of view, but the land was open here, and one of the men saw her. “Holt,” he said. “Company incoming.”

  Holt stopped what he was doing. He glared at Kathryn. She was a good thirty yards from the chute where the men were gathered, but with those long legs of his, he crossed the distance and was standing next to her in a matter of seconds.

  “I’m assuming you have a good explanation for why you’re standing out in an open field under the blazing sun risking heatstroke and...”

  He glanced down at her stomach.

  She placed a palm over it as if
her puny hand could hide her from his gaze. “I’m in no danger and neither is my baby,” she said. “If I went into labor, I’m pretty sure that most of you know something about giving birth.”

  He looked horrified. She felt a bit horrified herself. It was totally unlike her to say something like that. “Not that I intend to give birth anytime today or anywhere near you.”

  “That’s good to know. But you still haven’t given me an explanation of why you’re near a big gathering of hoofed animals.”

  She looked around and saw that in addition to several pickup trucks and four-wheelers, there were a few horses. And, of course, all those calves.

  “They’re penned.”

  “Not the horses. And even with the calves, escapes have happened.”

  “They’re...they’re babies,” she tried to argue.

  “Big enough to run you over and trample someone your size if you got in their way. Big enough to hurt you and your baby.”

  “You’re trying to scare me.”

  “I’m trying to get you to go home.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if you’d answered any of my messages.”

  “They didn’t need answering. I saw your list of what you wanted me to do. I’m doing what I thought needed doing.”

  “Which isn’t all of it if you’re saying it that way. And you haven’t even told me what you’ve done. How can we be partners if you don’t talk to me?”

  He froze. “I’m not good at partnering with people. I like to work alone.”

  Which was a blatant lie. She pointedly looked toward the men, the ones he’d been working with only moments ago. He shrugged, not even remotely apologetic. “They don’t send me fancy color-coded lists like you do, hon.”

  Kathryn blushed. She was pretty sure he had used that term in order to get the city girl to march back to town in a huff. But the way he said it...she instantly imagined him in a bed half-naked, his arms around a woman after they’d just—