The Rancher's Expectant Christmas

by Karen Templeton

  “Except at night,” Deanna said on a sigh. “Kid wakes up if I breathe too loudly.”

  “Because, hey,” Val said beside her. “Twenty-four-hour dairy bar. Right?”

  Deanna looked at the blonde, hunched into a pile-lined hoodie worn under a down vest, her cowboy-booted feet crossed at the ankles. “So you breastfed, too?”

  “I did. Probably will this time, too.” This said with a smug grin, bless her heart. The secret was no longer a secret, since keeping the news to himself was apparently beyond Josh’s twin.

  “One question.” Deanna lowered her voice. “When does the dripping stop?”

  Val laughed. “Yeah, the fun part. I swear I felt like an automatic sprinkler system for weeks. But it does get better. Eventually.” She chomped off the end of her churro, then wiped the pastry’s cinnamon sugar from her chin with a napkin. “Does make things awkward for a while, though.”

  “Things?”

  “As in sex,” Mallory said, still staring at the baby. “Bras and nursing pads—not exactly alluring.”

  Val snorted a laugh through her nose. “You kidding? Willingness is alluring. At least in my experience.”

  Deanna blushed so hard her cheeks actually hurt. “Not an issue for me,” she muttered, biting a hunk from her own churro in the ensuing, deafening silence.

  “So,” Val said brightly, “you’re staying through the holidays?”

  “Might as well,” Deanna said as nonchalantly as she could manage. Although after that kiss? She’d considered leaving as soon as she could book a flight home. But while on the surface that might’ve been the easiest solution, it was also the most cowardly one. And if ever a time called for big girl panties, this was it. “Since it’ll be easier to get a flight after the New Year...”

  God, did that sound as lame to everyone else as it did to her?

  Austin ran over to throw himself across Deanna’s lap, grinning, cheeks pink underneath a triple-cuffed beanie, and Deanna’s heart nearly burst out of her chest.

  “Jeremy an’ Landon and me are playing airplanes! It’s so fun! Watch!”

  Then the little boy zoomed off, arms outstretched, to join Josh’s oldest nephew and Mallory’s son, the natural leader of the pack. Deanna had missed this as a kid, not having siblings or cousins close by, living too far outside of town to hang out with the local kids very much. Except for Josh, of course—

  “He clearly adores you,” Mallory said softly, making Deanna start. Val popped up off the bench to see to Risa, who’d tripped over nothing and landed hard on her tummy. “I remember those days of being worshipped.”

  Oh. She’d meant Austin. Of course. Except...

  “Only Austin’s not mine.”

  Instead of responding, Mallory shifted the baby in her lap, sweeping a strand of coppery hair off her cheek. “So no nibbles yet on the Vista?”

  Mallory’s attempt to shift the subject to safer, more neutral territory, Deanna assumed. Oddly, it wasn’t. “It’s not even going on the market until after the New Year—”

  “Oh, please. Realtors are masters at letting things ‘slip.’ And the Vista is prime property.”

  Her forehead bunched, Deanna turned to the woman holding her daughter. Prime property indeed. Especially for Hollywood types hankering to play rancher during their downtime. And the used-to-be film star undoubtedly still had connections.

  “You have a buyer.”

  Amusement danced in Mallory’s soft gray eyes. “I do. Me.”

  Deanna blinked. “What? Why? You already have a place—”

  “Not to live in, for a therapy facility. I’ve been thinking about looking for a place for a while now, actually. Ever since Zach took me to the one that got me riding again. And Zach understood...”

  The other woman cleared her throat. Deanna already knew Mallory had been a champion barrel racer as a teenager back in Texas, before Hollywood. And long before the skiing accident that had left her in a wheelchair and derailed her acting career. And that Josh’s older brother had been instrumental in helping Mallory reembrace something that’d clearly meant the world to her at one time.

  “He understood what you needed?” Deanna ventured.

  Smiling softly, the redhead met Deanna’s gaze. “Even if I didn’t.” She looked back over the square, her breath misting around her face. “Which is how it so often goes, isn’t it? Somebody else seeing what you can’t? I came here to escape. Didn’t work out that way.”

  And clearly she was not in the least unhappy about that. Mallory’s words prickling her consciousness, Deanna took a sip of her hot chocolate. Except it’d gone cold and cloying, nearly choking her. She cleared her throat. “Escape? From what?”

  “Life? Myself? A pity party that’d gone on five years too long?” Mallory shrugged. “But Zach knew it wasn’t escaping I needed. What I needed, what he knew I needed, was to reclaim my...dominion. And now...well. Wouldn’t it be lovely, helping other people get past their fears like I did?”

  “It would,” Deanna got out. Somehow.

  “Also, from what little I knew of your dad, I think he’d be pleased, don’t you? Knowing his family home was being put to good use?”

  Would he? Even though those weren’t the plans he’d envisioned for it?

  For Josh and her?

  Deanna’s eyes cut to Mallory’s. “So whose idea is this, really? Yours? Or Zach’s?”

  Mallory laughed. “As it happens, I was about to bring it up to Zach when he beat me to the punch. I swear, sometimes it totally freaks me out, how much we think alike.” Her smile softened. “Almost as much as how against all odds this incredibly good man landed in my life. And I thank God every day that he didn’t give up on me—on us—when giving up would have seemed the most logical choice.”

  Deanna smiled, even though Mallory’s words, not to mention her I-don’t-give-a-damn-who-knows-it happiness, made her even squirmier than she already was. “I didn’t know Zach all that well when I was a kid, since he’s so much older. But I do remember he was a good guy, even then.”

  “I gather all the Talbot boys were. Are.”

  “Well, the jury was out on Levi for a long time,” Deanna said, ignoring Mallory’s subtext as she smiled at Levi’s newly pregnant wife playing hide-and-seek with all the little kids behind the sparkly trees. “In fact, you’d’ve never known he and Josh were twins, they were so different. And who knows about Colin.”

  “Ah, yes. The mystery man. Zach’s not even sure he’ll come to the wedding.” Set for some time in the spring, Josh had said. “But back to my proposal...it’s a serious offer, Dee.”

  “Didn’t think it wasn’t. But Josh doesn’t know about it yet?”

  “I thought I’d feel you out first,” Mallory said gently. “Since it’s your home—”

  “Only half mine, now.” She faced Mallory again, her heart pounding painfully against her sternum. “But even before, the Vista was every bit as much Josh’s as mine. In every way that really counts. Especially since I haven’t even lived here in more than ten years.”

  “So what if I buy you out,” the redhead said, excitement making her cheeks brighter than the cold already had, “and Josh could keep his half interest and keep living there with Austin, since Zach and I are perfectly happy where we are. The therapy end would be entirely separate. It could definitely be a win-win for both of you.”

  Deanna looked away, her stomach churning, even as she knew this could be a perfect solution. Josh could stay right where his heart had always been, and Deanna would still have plenty to invest for Katie’s education. Not to mention this would be a painless way to sever her ties without hurting Josh—

  Josh? Or yourself—

  “This way the Talbots could still keep all the traditions alive,” Mallory said, as though assuming Deanna’s silence meant she needed
to up her sales pitch. “Whispering Pines...”

  Mallory smiled down at Katie, making cute little baby faces in her sleep. “What I loved most about this town, the whole area, when I first came here years ago, was that sense of real community I remembered from when I was a kid in Texas. And the people here...from the get-go they made Mom and me feel like one of them. We were...”

  She smiled. “Embraced. Welcomed. A lot more than I would’ve expected, since I do know small towns aren’t always like that. But this one is. After so many years of not actually feeling connected to anything real, to have finally found home again...there’s no price to be put on that. So if I can in some way help keep intact whatever makes Whispering Pines so special—and I think the Vista plays a huge part in that...” Her eyes touched Deanna’s again. “I’d be very honored.”

  Katie woke up, started to whimper. Deanna stood to take her daughter from Mallory, almost overwhelmed by the wave of protectiveness that washed over her.

  “I’ll have to talk it over with Josh, of course.”

  “No rush. Really. Only promise me you’ll give me first rights of refusal?”

  The baby tucked against her chest, Deanna smiled down at Zach’s fiancée. “But you don’t even know what we’re asking for the property.”

  “Not an issue,” Mallory said, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth. “Now—” she pivoted the wheelchair to face the square. And the small herd of children in it. “I suppose we should corral these little critters before they freeze...”

  Deanna hugged her daughter more closely as it occurred to her that everything she’d worked toward the last few weeks was almost effortlessly falling into place. She’d have funds for Katie’s education, Josh would get to keep the ranch...a perfect solution, really.

  So why didn’t she feel happier about that?

  Chapter Eleven

  “Hey, squirt,” Josh said, grinning for his kid when he came storming into the kitchen, where Josh was fixing himself a sandwich. He grabbed the kid to swing him up on his hip, kiss his cold cheeks. “You have a good time?”

  “It was so fun,” Austin said, linking his hands around the back of Josh’s neck. “An’ DeeDee and me bought you a present, ’cause she said Santa only brings ’em for kids, not for grown-ups.” His smooth little forehead pleated. “That true?”

  “Mostly, yeah,” Josh said, trying to keep a straight face. “But I don’t think you’re supposed to say you got something for me.”

  “DeeDee only said I couldn’t tell you what it is. And I’m not gonna. ’Cause it’s a secret.”

  “Good. Where is she, anyway?”

  “She went to feed the baby in her room. C’n I go play with Thor out back? I already ate.”

  “Okay, but only as far as the Big Tree.”

  “I know,” the boy said as Josh lowered him to the floor. “I’m not a baby, sheesh.”

  Josh sighed as kid and dog ran out the back door, then chomped off a big chunk of the sandwich before going down to Dee’s room, where he stood at the door warily spying on her. Seated in her mother’s old rocking chair wedged into a corner of her bedroom, she softly chattered to Katie while the baby nursed, her hand batting at Dee’s chest. Chuckling, Dee caught the tiny hand and kissed it, holding it to her lips as the baby continued to suckle.

  And Josh’s gut knotted, that no matter what choice he made when it came to Dee, it never seemed to be the right one. Instead of maybe giving her a reason to reconsider her move, to reconsider him, all he’d given her was even more reason to leave.

  More reason to remember all the reasons why they wouldn’t work.

  And yet, for all Dee’s insistence on returning “home,” he couldn’t help wondering what, exactly, she was returning to. Since Emily had let it slip that Dee’s social life hadn’t been exactly hopping before the pregnancy. That for various reasons Emily had become her only real friend, and her aunt and uncle...well, who knew what was going on there. Nothing good, as far as he could tell. She had her little apartment, and what could be a good job, he supposed. But that wasn’t exactly a life, was it?

  Still. Although he was obviously a fool, he wasn’t so much of one as to bring that subject up with her. Because God knows he’d had enough of those “talks” with Jordan that no way was he going down that particular road again. Like he’d said to Austin, Dee had to want to stay here. Want a life with him and his son. Clearly she didn’t. And never let it be said he couldn’t learn from his mistakes.

  Apparently sensing his presence, Dee looked over with a slightly nervous smile curving her mouth, and Josh wanted to smack himself, for letting a single, stupid impulse ruin what had been good and right and honest between them. That he hadn’t let well enough alone.

  “Ah. You’re here.” Dee nodded toward her unmade bed. “Have a seat.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  She sort of laughed. “Not at all. In fact, it’s good news. At least I think so.”

  The old Navajo rug absorbed his boots’ clomping as Josh crossed to the bed and lowered himself to the edge, then leaned forward to link his hands between his knees. He caught a whiff of those rumpled sheets, smelling of baby and fabric softener, faintly of her perfume, and his libido stirred, intrigued. He told it to go back to sleep.

  “So Mallory and I got to talking while we were in town,” Dee said, “and...she’d like to buy my half of the Vista.”

  It took a second for her words to register. “You serious?”

  “Well, she certainly seems to be. To turn it into a therapy ranch. Partly, anyway, since she fully expects you to keep your enterprise going, too.”

  He couldn’t tell from the tone of her voice how she really felt about this turn of events, although her refusal to look at him told him something. What, exactly, he wasn’t entirely sure.

  The thing was, on the surface it wasn’t a bad idea. At least, a helluva lot better one than selling the ranch outright to some stranger, of Josh losing his home as well as whatever chance he’d convinced himself he might have with Dee. Even if that second thing was now obviously a nonissue. The minute he started peeking below the surface, however, things started feeling sketchy.

  “I suppose,” he said carefully, “we could consider it.”

  “That’s what I told her.” Dee shifted the baby up onto her shoulder to burp her, smiling when the kid released a belch loud enough to hear across the state line. “Not until after the holidays, though. If you’re okay with that.” When he didn’t say anything—because he honestly wasn’t sure what that would be—she went on. “This could be the perfect solution, don’t you think? Especially since it would keep the ranch in the family.”

  His frown gouged his forehead. “Whose family, Dee? The ranch belonged to the Blakes. Not the Talbots.”

  “Technically, maybe. Although you know as well as I do your family’s connection to the Vista runs every bit as deep as mine did.” She fiddled with her top to put the baby to her other breast, and Josh felt another kind of pull that went way beyond sex. She paused, looking out her bedroom window, where they could see Austin romping with the dog. “Your connection, especially.”

  For the first time he heard something he hadn’t before, although he supposed it’d always been there: sadness. Not bitterness, or boredom, but something more like grief, if he had to put a name to it.

  As in, the Vista held some pretty bad memories for her. Memories he now finally, fully realized trumped whatever good ones there might’ve been, whatever glimmers of hope he might’ve thought he’d seen in her interaction with his family, the community. Hell, her mother had died here; her father had more or less ignored her before sending her away. Those two things, on top of the isolation she’d already felt...no wonder she wanted to get away. Again.

  “You really were miserable here, weren’t you?”

  A huge
sigh left her lungs before she smiled again, forced though it might’ve been.

  “Not all the time,” she said. “There were...moments. But there was a reason I glommed on to you. Because you made it bearable.” The smile brightened, slightly. “Even fun, sometimes. Still. The moment I returned I remembered...” Glancing around, she sighed again. “How abandoned I’d felt here. Yes, you did your best. And Gus, God bless ’im. But none of that changed how I felt, even if those moments temporarily alleviated it. And then...then...” She looked down at the baby, her mouth pulled tight. “There’s that whole manipulation business.”

  “Your father, you mean.”

  She grimaced. “All I wanted, when I was a kid, was for him to really pay attention to me. A real connection. Like you have with Austin. Like I pray I do with this one,” she said, smiling for her daughter. “Not to be made to feel like a chess piece to be moved at will.”

  “The same way you felt manipulated by Katie’s father.”

  A pause preceded, “Because what else do I know, right?”

  And, oh, how Josh wanted to plead that he wasn’t like that. And wouldn’t be. But even he knew if you had to argue your case, you didn’t really have one to begin with. If she didn’t know who he was by now...well. Nothing he could do about that.

  “Except if Granville sent you away because you were unhappy here—”

  “He sent me away,” she said flatly, “so he wouldn’t have to deal with me. Because...” Josh saw her swallow. “Because I wasn’t Mom and he couldn’t deal with that. So now he wants to fix things?” She scoffed, then lifted her face to his, apology swimming along with the tears in her eyes. “And please don’t take offense, because none of this has anything to do with you.”

  “Good to know,” he said, and she pushed out a tiny laugh.

  “It’s only, when you think of home,” she said, looking out the window again, “you should get a warm, fuzzy feeling, you know? Good memories, good associations—”