“It’s about time,” he commented to Linc’s announcement. Little got past Jackson, and Beth knew that if either of her brothers had guessed her condition, it would be him.
“I have a problem I need you guys to help me with,” she said. “I...” It was harder than she’d thought to say this. But Shag Heller would not tolerate pussyfooting around and she’d learned her lessons from him well. She cleared her throat and blurted, “I’m pregnant.”
Linc took his wallet from his back pocket and handed a twenty-dollar bill to Jackson, who accepted it without taking his eyes off Beth for more than a moment.
“Are congratulations in order?” Linc asked, sounding partly as if he were teasing and partly as if he honestly weren’t sure the sentiment was appropriate.
Jackson frowned at her. “What I want to know is, who’s the father and where the hell is he?”
“That’s what I need to talk about. Ash is the father.” No money changed hands, this time. Beth was glad to know they hadn’t been betting on that subject, at least.
“How’d that happen?” Jackson asked.
Linc threw him a look and shook his head. To Beth he said, “Black-and-white. Everything is black-and-white with him, just like with old Shag.” To Jackson, he said, “When hearts and hormones are involved, anything can happen. Anytime. One of these days you’re going to run into a filly who’ll teach you that.”
Jackson just stared darkly at him for a moment before pivoting his gaze to Beth again as if he was still waiting for an answer that made sense.
Beth had no intention of giving one. “The point is, I’m about five months along, but until the day before I left the reservation and finally saw a doctor, I thought stress was causing...my symptoms. So, of course, when I found this out, the divorce was final.”
“But the baby’s still Ash’s,” Jackson reminded.
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t really make any difference—”
“It sure as hell does.” Again this from Jackson.
“Will you let her talk?” Linc asked.
Jackson remained stoic but silent and she went on.
“I couldn’t reach Ash to tell him, so I finally sent him a note.” Beth drew yet another deep breath, shoring up to hide the uncertainty she really felt about being a single mother. “I explained that this doesn’t really have to mean anything to him, that I can afford to support the baby myself and want to raise it on my own, and he doesn’t need to be bothered with anything—”
“Bothered?” Jackson raised his voice. “It’s his baby, not a bother. Is that how he looks at it?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. Jackson, will you calm down? Ash didn’t want us to have kids of our own for perfectly good reasons I don’t have the time to get into right now, and—”
“He doesn’t want his own baby? I took him for better than that. I must have been mistaken.”
Beth closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them to Linc. “Would you throw some cold water on him so I can get this out?”
“Shut up, Jackson” was Linc’s contribution. But it again stalled their brother.
“I don’t know what Ash’s reaction to the news was. He just got the letter last night and I haven’t talked to him. But the thing is, he’s on his way here. In fact, he could be here any minute, and I don’t want to see him.” Again she disguised her own doubts with a mask of strength she didn’t honestly feel. “I don’t need his help with the baby, and I don’t want it. In fact, I don’t need or want anyone to give it a second thought. I want you, Linc, to pay attention to your wedding plans and your honky-tonk, and you, Jackson, to just take care of the ranch, and Ash to go back to the reservation and go on about his business just the way he does normally.”
“I don’t know about that,” Linc mused, and Beth knew she’d poured it on a little too thick.
But there was no admitting to anything less than complete independence. Not for her. Not for a Heller. So she forged on insistently.
“Ash and I are divorced. It was a clean break and I want it to stay a clean break. This baby doesn’t fit in with his plans, anyway, so when he gets here, I want you guys to say I left Elk Creek and you don’t know where I am,” she finished like a boulder gaining momentum on a roll down a steep hill.
“By God, he owes his own child more than to just turn around and act as if it doesn’t exist,” Jackson nearly shouted.
“You know, Beth,” Linc interjected reasonably. “Jackson isn’t all wrong. No matter what Ash’s plans were, or how he may or may not feel about it, he has a responsibility to this baby and to you now.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t want—”
The doorbell rang right then to cut off her words.
Beth suddenly felt hot and cold at once, as if something were chasing her, and all she knew was that she had to get away.
“Please,” she implored her brothers. “If that’s Ash, just tell him I’m gone. Tell him I don’t want anything from him but for him to leave me alone.”
“Like hell I will!” Jackson headed for the door.
Beth turned a final plea to Linc. “Come on, trust that I know what I’m doing. It’s really better if Ash and I don’t see each other.”
“I don’t know about that, Beth,” he repeated.
“Look, I’m going to slip out the back door, so telling Ash I’m not here won’t even be a lie—for the moment at least. Just do it and get rid of him!” And with that she turned and hurried through the dining room in the direction of the kitchen.
She had every intention of doing just what she’d said, or getting out of the house, into her car and taking off—if not for parts unknown, then at least for the other side of town. For Kansas’s house maybe.
But she only got as far as the swinging doors to the kitchen before she stopped.
Go on! she told herself.
And she meant it.
But somehow she was suddenly paralyzed. She turned toward the front door just as Jackson opened it.
And there Ash stood. Tall, proud, almost regal in his bearing and the pure power of his masculinity.
Her heart took a skip she didn’t want it to, and then everything seemed to click into slow motion as she watched Jackson double his fist and land a punishing blow to her former husband’s jaw.
Ash’s head shot to the side, but that was all that was disturbed by the punch that would have knocked any man in Elk Creek across a room.
Then the big, powerful Indian again leveled his coal-colored eyes on her brother and, with a deadly calm, he said in his deep, rich bass voice, “I’m here to see Beth.”
The instant the words were spoken, something made him look past her brothers into the dining room, where Beth had stalled. And just the way her gaze had been caught and held by his on that airplane the first time they’d met, so it was now.
Did she heard him whisper her name or only read it on his lips? She didn’t know. But she knew he’d said it. And somehow she also knew it was filled with confusion. With pain. Maybe with longing....
No, that couldn’t be.
But she suddenly realized those things were alive in her, even if they weren’t in him. And she hated herself for it. For the fact that for just one split second it took away the anger she felt at him—for being there, for not having given her the life she’d been so sure they’d have together. Her anger at what would never be...
“Go away, Ash,” she said in a voice that was barely audible.
In spite of her brothers blocking his path, he took a step forward, as if he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—stay away from her.
“Linc!” she called, sounding panicky, beseeching her brother for the help she’d requested moments before.
Then she saw Linc’s hand go to Ash’s broad, hard chest to hold him back.
And that was when she made her escape.
From the man who had fathered her child.
The man she’d divorced.
The man who had, once upon a time, enchanted her.
Chapter Two
Asher Blackwolf stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom of his rented log cabin in Elk Creek’s only tourist accommodation—the ten-cabin hunting lodge. With a hand on either side of the old-fashioned pedestal sink, he leaned close and turned his stiff jaw carefully from one side to the other, angling his head slightly to give himself the full view of his jawbone.
There was soreness to go with the slight discoloration where Jackson Heller’s fist had landed the night before, but he’d live, he thought wryly.
And a punch in the face was the only thing he’d gotten for his trouble.
“Damn you, Beth,” he muttered under his breath, not really blaming Jackson—or Linc, either—for being upset and feeling protective of their sister. In spite of the fact that she wasn’t in need of protection.
Even Linc, who he knew to be the more mild mannered of the two, had looked as if he wanted to bruise the other side of Ash’s jaw. But then, if he had a sister who was pregnant by her ex-husband and ran out of the house as if she were afraid of him, he doubted that he’d be well-disposed toward that ex-husband himself.
Of course, she didn’t have any damn reason to be afraid of him. Or to run from him, for God’s sake. And he didn’t really understand why she had. Did she hate him that much?
That thought twisted his gut, though he told himself the response was uncalled-for. Whether she loved him or hated him shouldn’t matter. Their marriage was over.
But what he had every right to resent was her leaving him alone with his two former brothers-in-law glaring at him as if he were a mass murderer.
For three hours he’d sat there facing them, none of them knowing what to say, none of them happy. Jackson downright mad, and Linc only repeating again and again that Beth had begged him to tell Ash to go back to the reservation and leave her alone, and suggesting that maybe that was what he should do.
Ash had certainly spent more pleasant evenings.
It hadn’t even been informative. Beyond the fact that their sister was pregnant, neither Linc nor Jackson knew any more than Ash did.
And he had plenty of questions. Like why the hell she hadn’t come to him personally with news like this. Why she’d waited so long. Why she hadn’t told him before the divorce was final. What they were going to do now...
Ash let his head hang down between his shoulders as the impact of the news washed over him the way it had been every few minutes since he’d found out.
She was pregnant...
Was she happy about it? Unhappy about it? Did she resent that the baby was his? Was that why she wanted to exclude him—so she could try forgetting it was his child at all?
No doubt about it, there were questions he needed answered.
Linc had assured him he’d try to reason with her about seeing him. But whether or not his former brother-in-law convinced her to agree to it, Beth Heller was going to see him today. She could do it willingly, or she could do it unwillingly, but she was going to see him.
Because the one thing he wouldn’t do was accept her orders to ignore the bombshell she’d dropped on him.
He pushed off the sink and went back into the room where one double bed, a small table with two chairs and a bureau with a TV on top of it filled the space. His suitcase was open on the rack at the foot of the bed and as he bent over it to get a clean shirt, he caught sight of Beth’s letter out of the corner of his eye.
His teeth clenched at just the thought of it, but rather than taking his shirt out the way he’d meant to, his hand reached to the letter.
He’d read it a dozen times since finding it in the mail that had accumulated while he was gone, but for some reason he was compelled to open it and read it yet again.
It was just like her, he thought, feeling a dull ache in his jaw from muscles that tightened in anger.
She didn’t want his help.
She didn’t need it.
She had everything planned out. Everything under control. Everything taken care of.
He was superfluous.
Excess baggage.
No, she hadn’t said he was superfluous or excess baggage. Not in so many words, anyway. But he knew it was what she was telling him.
But, damn it, this baby was his, too. And he wasn’t going to be written out of its life before it was even born. Or after, either, for that matter.
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the words on the white paper.
In a few months you’re going to be a father... Once more that wave of shock and awe and disbelief washed through him.
They were going to have a baby.
He and his beautiful Beth...
Ash’s eyes pinched closed in rejection of that thought that had come on its own and he shook his head the way a dog shakes off water.
She wasn’t his Beth anymore.
They were divorced and he had no claim on her.
Or did he? The baby changed things, that was for sure. It tied them together despite the legal severing of their marriage.
But did it give him claim to Beth again?
Probably not.
Not that he wanted claim to her again.
They’d been right to get divorced. Somehow they’d lost that precious spark that had brought them together. She went her way. He went his. And every now and then they met up. Usually accidentally. Or coincidentally.
Or in bed...
But he was better off not thinking about that.
He still held the letter, and once more he focused on the impeccable handwriting on the crisp white stationery, hating the words that were there. Not for their message of the baby, but for what they conveyed about Beth not needing him.
It didn’t surprise him. Why should this be any different?
But he couldn’t help wishing that just this once it had been.
Deep down, in a secret place he didn’t want to acknowledge even to himself, he envisioned the letter he wished he’d received. We’re going to have a baby and I need you by my side. I want you...
He blew out a wry, mirthless sigh at the very thought.
Not Beth Heller. The earth could open up under her feet and she wouldn’t holler for help.
She was the damned most self-sufficient person he knew. And the stubbornest.
Not that anyone would think it to look at her. She was so thin, so fragile looking, with that alabaster skin and those wide blue eyes the color of Colorado columbines. Delicate—that was the word for how she appeared, her high-cheekboned face haloed in that thick, coffee-bean-hued hair, those soft pale lips, that thin nose that could have belonged to a porcelain doll...
Ha! She was no porcelain doll. Beneath it all beat a will and determination stronger than any man’s. Furniture to move? Beth Heller would do it herself. Or die trying. A tight lid to open? She’d beat on it, run it under hot water, use pliers, nearly break the jar rather than admit she couldn’t do it herself. Heavy boxes? If she couldn’t drag them, she’d devise something else—once she’d used roller skates—but she sure as hell wouldn’t ask for help.
Funny—when they’d first met, her independence had been one of the things that had attracted him to her. But her determination had somehow lost its charm. Ash wished that, just once, she would break down and admit she needed him.
But maybe what she’d told him was the truth. That even pregnant with his child, she didn’t want him or need him.
It had been such a long time since Ash had been able to read her feelings. She’d never been the type to say “I love you.” In the early months of their marriage, though, he’d always seemed to sense what she was feeling.
Somewhere, they’d lost their connection. She hadn’t so much as let him comfort her in her grief when her father had died. All she’d shown him was a stiff upper lip. Stoicism. Resolution. Death, she’d said to dismiss his concern for how she might be taking the news, was a fact of life.
Then, in the middle of the night when she’d thought he was asleep, she’d locked herself in the bath
room to cry for the old cuss. And when Ash went looking for her, would she unlock the door and let him hold her? Let him console her? Not Beth Heller. She’d gotten angry that he’d discovered her and she refused to open the door. She’d spent the whole damn night in that bathroom. And when she’d come out the next morning? Not a word about it. Not a tear or a sign that she’d ever shed one.
And he’d been left with empty arms aching to hold a woman who didn’t want him to.
No, the way she looked was no indication of the way she was. It didn’t reflect the core of steel that she wanted everyone to believe ran right through the center of her.
Whether it really did or not.
Ash threw the letter back into his suitcase and snatched his shirt with a vengeance.
That was all old business. Finished. Now there was something else to deal with, something else to concentrate on.
They were going to have a baby.
In spite of it all.
* * *
Late June sunshine flooded the cheery guest bedroom in which Beth woke up that morning. All of Kansas Daye’s house was like that particular room—bright, warm, homey, comforting. But it didn’t help the knots that formed in Beth’s stomach the minute her eyes opened and she recalled the reason she’d appeared on her old friend’s doorstep the night before, asking to sleep over.
She’d driven around for a long time after leaving the ranch, hoping to give her brothers enough of a chance to get rid of Ash for her.
But when she’d gone back, his car was still there.
She’d been afraid he was stonewalling, refusing to leave until he spoke to her, and so she’d sought refuge with Kansas.
Lord, but she didn’t want to confront him!
It had probably been unrealistic, but she really had hoped he would take her letter seriously and leave her alone. That he’d just go on with his life the way it was and let her go on with hers.
But no, he had to come to Elk Creek.
Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) Page 2