Stunned by the revelation, Gabe was slow to move from his position. When he finally reached his horse, Stefanie had mounted hers and was waiting for him.
“I’ll talk to Clay.” With so many emotions tearing Gabe apart, those were all the words he could manage for the moment.
“How far is it till we find some cows?”
“Another half hour’s ride.”
He shoved his hat on his head. As if by tacit agreement, both horses moved forward at the same time.
Gabe had ridden over his land many times, always experiencing a sense of exhilaration and rightness. But the news about Clay had weighed him down, changing the tenor of their outing.
He wondered what thoughts were brewing in Stefanie’s mind. They seemed to be as dark as his because she didn’t speak again until they’d followed the curve in the river.
“I see cows! Oh—look at all the babies!”
In spite of his dark mood, he chuckled at her exuberance. “That’s the idea. These are brood heifers. They’ll be delivering calves all month.”
His gaze took in the fifty-odd head of half-long-horns grazing pretty much together.
“I’m going to ride through the herd and see if any of them are in trouble. You wait here.”
“I want to come, too.”
His heart rate picked up as she sidled over to him. At his signal they moved forward together. If she was nervous, it didn’t show. On the contrary, she acted excited. In turn, that excitement infected him.
He ran a trained eye over each animal, watching for signs of a heifer in distress. So far so good.
“Do they always have their babies out in the open like this?”
“For the most part. These are Texas longhorns. Ninety percent of the herd will deliver their calves without help. It’s the other ten percent we have to worry about.”
It wasn’t until they made it through to the opposite side of the herd that he spotted a cow down near the fence.
“Gabe?” Stefanie called to him. “Look over there!”
“I’ve seen her. Come on.”
He cantered as near as he dared, then dismounted. Stefanie followed suit. They tied their reins to the fence, then walked over to the heifer. Gabe knelt down next to her. Stefanie joined him.
“Oh…she’s having her baby right now!”
“She sure is,” Gabe muttered, noticing the feet sticking out but nothing else happening. “The knee of the mother’s leg is bent. Do you see that? The calf can’t get out.”
Stefanie’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. “We have to do something for them.”
“We will.”
Gabe got as close to the mother as he could and forced the bent leg to straighten.
“If you want to help, grab one of the calf’s legs. I’ll pull on the other.”
Stefanie didn’t hesitate. Together they began tugging. Slowly the head and shoulders appeared.
“Stop a moment. Let’s see if mama can finish the job by herself.”
They waited for a few minutes.
She shook her head. “I think she’s too tired.”
“I do, too,” he concurred. “Keep pulling.”
It didn’t take much effort to deliver the rest. As soon as the calf lay in the grass, Gabe leaned over to see if it was breathing.
“What’s wrong?” she cried in panic.
“Not a thing. I simply had to make sure she was breathing on her own.”
The mother suddenly pushed him out of the way and began licking her baby.
“Oh, Gabe—” By now Stefanie was in tears which turned to sobs of pure, unadulterated joy. “We just helped that darling little calf get born— It’s the most miraculous thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life!”
Gabe shared her emotions. Without conscious thought he pulled her toward him, crushing her in his arms. They clung in an embrace he’d only been able to dream about until now.
In a minute she lifted a tear-ravaged face to his. “What if we hadn’t come out here today? What would have happened?”
“Don’t even think about it,” he muttered before burying his face in the side of her neck. The fragrance of her skin intoxicated him.
For the next hour he held her close while they watched the calf sit up so he could be cleaned by his mother. Eventually he got up on all fours and began nursing.
Stefanie’s tears dripped onto his cheek.
“The calf is so sweet! We have to give her a name.”
“You mean him. Go right ahead.” Gabe was too choked up to say anything else.
“I’m going to call him Lucky.”
A chuckle escaped. “That sounds like a horse’s name.”
“I don’t care. They both would have died without your help. You were wonderful. You knew exactly what to do. You always know the right thing to do.” Her voice trembled.
He closed his eyes tightly.
Later, she turned to face him once more. “There must be other cows in trouble.”
“I’m sure of it. That’s why the stockmen are out checking all the herds around the clock.”
She blinked. “Do you have a lot?”
“Quite a few.”
“Are we going to keep looking, too?” She sounded so hopeful, he didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. In truth, he was loath to return to civilization.
“It’s getting late. After a wash at the river, we’ll head for an old fire watchtower the forest service doesn’t use anymore. En route you can help me keep an eye out for more strays. When dinner’s over, we’ll bed down there for the night and continue our search tomorrow on the way back to the ranch.”
Later he saw her pull out her pocket camera. Again his heart was touched as she took half a dozen pictures of what she affectionately called mother and son.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“THIS place has all the comforts of home!”
Since they’d eaten chili and hot cocoa over the Coleman stove, Stefanie had enjoyed the freedom of walking around without her wig or contacts.
She continued to examine the interior of the roofed tower in delight. Gabe had caught back the shutters to make it open-air. The glow from the butane lantern revealed a walk-around porch. Before dark she’d been able to look over the railing to the ground thirty feet below.
Gabe had pumped up one air mattress and was working on the other. “After I bought the ranch, I had this structure repaired, then stocked it with bedding and supplies. If the hands ever get caught in a storm coming down this side of the range, they know they can find shelter here.
“As for the boys, this is their reward for good behavior. Some get to come here every couple of weeks for an overnight.”
The stars from this vantage point looked like diamonds heaped on black velvet. “I was just thinking what an exciting hideaway this would have been when I was a girl.”
“More exciting than your father’s yacht?”
She heard an edge to his question, the first evidence of tension since they’d left the calf suckling. The beauty of that hour, the physical closeness they’d shared was something she would treasure forever.
“There’s no comparison between the two. It’s another mansion on water, not in the least imaginative. Up here you can pretend to be a thousand different things.”
“Like what?” he mocked dryly.
“Rapunzel.”
“What shall we be tonight I wonder?” His whimsical question threw her.
Emboldened by the intimacy of the night she said, “Peter Pan and the boys?”
His soft laughter resonated through her body. When it stilled he said, “Do you want children one day? During our marriage I don’t believe the subject ever came up.”
Gabe had no idea how cruel his question was. She sat down on the camp cot to pull off her cowboy boots.
“If the right man came along, I’d love seven or eight,” she answered honestly.
“That many.”
“Maybe it’s a slight exaggeration, but I was an only child,
don’t forget. Mom always had to ship in friends for me. You can’t imagine how much I envied you and your brothers. You never needed friends because you always had each other. When you got sick, you were all sick together.”
“Don’t remind me.” He handed her an air mattress, which she put on her cot. “But I have to tell you that a First Lady with seven or eight children would be the sensation of the millenium.”
Not that again! It appeared Gabe was a chip off the old block, only more impossible and stubborn than his father! Out of anger, she played along. “You’re right, especially when I would insist we live elsewhere.”
“I thought you told me it was every woman’s dream.”
“Of course it is. For entertaining dignitaries. But it’s hardly the place to raise seven or eight children. One pillow fight and the Lincoln bedroom would be destroyed. Besides, children like things cozy.
“Did I ever tell you how much I hated my parents’ house? It was too enormous for three people. Having a whole suite to myself scared me to death. For years I took my quilt and laid down by my parents’ bedroom door at night, when they were home. They never knew I was there.”
“Stefanie—” His whisper held shock and incredulity.
“There you have it.” She laughed in remembered pain. “A page from the diary of a rich little Newport society girl who’s all grown up now.”
“But probably still terrified to sleep alone in her own suite,” he muttered in self-deprecation. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he ground out.
“And have you think I was trying to inveigle myself into your bed?” her question rang out in the brisk night air. “Gabe—I got over those fears when I went to college.”
He handed her a couple of blankets. “I don’t think so. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come running to me when you should have been taking a well deserved vacation around the world.”
“That’s different.” She lay down on the mattress and pulled the blankets up to her chin, ready to go to bed. “The world should be seen with a lover.”
He moved around doing a few last-minute projects, then turned off the lantern. “I tend to agree with you.” He got into his makeshift bed. Their cots were next to each other, the closest they’d ever been for a whole night.
While she was contemplating his comment, imagining herself locked in his arms in a Parisian attic, a mournful cry sounded out of the quiet.
“What was that?” Stefanie shot straight up in the cot.
“A coyote. It won’t bother us.”
“I’m sure it won’t… Gabe?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for bringing me today. I know you didn’t want to, but I wouldn’t have missed it. B-before you fall asleep, could I ask you one question?”
“Fire away.”
She’d annoyed him again, but she wouldn’t be able to settle down until she had an answer.
“Are you going to tell Clay I revealed his confidence to you? It’s all right if you do, of course,” she hastened to assure him. “You have to do what you think’s best. I’d simply like to know what to expect the next time I see him.”
“I plan to be straight with him.”
Her breath caught. “So what you’re saying is, he might turn on me.”
“It’s possible. But his wrath doesn’t usually last very long.”
“Since I’ll be leaving in a week, I guess it’s rather a moot point.”
“Stefanie?”
“Yes?”
“If he makes you uncomfortable, come to me at once. I want that understood.”
“I will.” She couldn’t take much more.
“Have you decided where you’re going to look for work?”
She could scarcely breathe for her anguish.
“Probably Kalispell. Hayden said he could put me on part-time at the feed store if my job at the barn didn’t pan out. But as I told you before, should I stay in the area, I promise I won’t come to the ranch.
“When you and Clay’s mother get married, neither she nor her son need know I’m anywhere in the vicinity.”
“Did I say I was going to marry her?” came the terse demand.
What had Stefanie said to anger him now? “No, bu—”
“But nothing! Clay’s desires have little to do with reality. I’m hoping that in time, the therapy he’s getting here will help him to face certain truths and deal with them in appropriate ways.”
“You’re talking about his father’s death.”
“I mean the fact that his mother is an alcoholic, although she won’t admit it.”
No wonder Gabe wasn’t rushing into marriage with her yet! Stefanie’s throat constricted. “How tragic for both of them.”
“That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Clay would probably get back on track much sooner if Madelaine were also in counseling.”
“He has so much faith in you, I can see why he would think marriage to his mother would solve their problems.”
“Many people waste their time wishing for things when they ought to be working on the part of their lives they can do something about.”
A sharp pain attacked her heart, reverberating through her body. It sounded like Gabe understood all about Stefanie’s hopeless love for him, and was telling her a few home truths for her ultimate good.
“Clay’s very blessed to have someone like you in his life.” She took a fortifying breath before venturing another question. Though she risked a rebuff or worse, her curiosity had become insatiable. After tonight there might never be another opportunity to talk this openly with him again.
“Gabe? Why did you set up the ranch?”
He must have changed positions on the cot because she heard the rustle of blankets. “The first time our family traveled to Africa on one of Father’s goodwill missions. He took us all over the world on various volunteer projects.”
“It’s an amazing legacy he gave your family.”
“You’re right. He taught us service. The only problem was, we could only give it for two or three weeks at a time. We’d just get started on a project, like helping a community get back on its feet after a flood, then it was time to fly home.
“Sometimes I felt like we shouldn’t have gotten started in the first place. Our presence represented hope. In reality we only gave token assistance because we would have to pull out again before any long-term good could be done. We never saw anything through.
“I don’t know the exact moment it came to me, but by my twenties I’d made up my mind to find one project and give it all I had. The next step was to earn a lot of money so I could fund it the way I wanted.”
Riveted by his explanations she asked, “How did you decide to help troubled teens?”
“By accident. I have a second cousin who would have gone to jail for possession of narcotics if the family hadn’t come to me for legal help. The more he confided in me, the more I realized the pain he’d been in.
“It dawned on me then that it’s easier to help airlift food and distribute it to pockets of hungry people, than it is to help someone in an emotional morass who might require years of counseling before they’re on their feet again. That’s where the idea was born.”
She raised up on one elbow. “When the day comes that your father learns about this place, I’ll tell him he’s to blame. He exposed you to the suffering in the world. You simply followed his example and took it to another level.”
“He’ll write me off and you know it.”
“Surely he’ll come around with time,” she tried to encourage him.
“He might.”
In the next breath he reached out and caressed the side of her cheek with his hand. He’d never made a physical gesture like that toward her before. Her sense of wonder turned to longing. She would have kissed his hand if he hadn’t withdrawn it and rolled away from her.
Finally she understood the reason why Gabe had walked away from a heritage that could have turned him into the most powerful man in the world.
But power
was the antithesis of what Gabe was about. He had one driving need only—the desire to help those less fortunate than himself on a one-to-one basis. It translated to animals as well as humans.
All this time she’d been looking beyond the mark when the answer had been right there in front of her, so simple!
While those around him clamored to plan out his life, he’d been busy using his talents and means to obey a higher call. One to which he’d committed with such unwavering single-mindedness, he’d even married Stefanie in order to achieve his goal.
Gabe was so right to handle things the way he’d done up to now. The father he loved would never understand or approve. Because she knew the senator so well, she could hear his argument.
“Good Lord, son—you want to help people? What do you think being President of the United States means? How about effecting a peace treaty between warring nations, which would bring relief to millions of people throughout the world?
“How can you compare that kind of a good to dealing with a mere handful of spoiled rotten teenagers who will probably end up in prison no matter how many intervention techniques you apply?”
If that were all the senator was upset about, Stefanie could sympathize with his argument. But Gabe’s father was an ambitious man who loved the power, the control, the excitement that went along with the position. He was a proud man who wanted those same things for his brilliant son.
It was never going to happen…
“Good night, Gabe.”
The honk of Canada geese acted like an alarm clock for Gabe. While Stefanie was still out for the count, he stole from the cot and spent the next half hour making preparations for their departure. He left a breakfast of fruit and granola bars within her reach.
Once the shutters were closed, he descended the ladder to saddle the horses. Morning mist lay thick on the ground. Before Stefanie joined him, now would be the time to make a certain phone call.
It was almost 10:00 a.m. in Providence. If by some miracle Madelaine wasn’t hung over, he would impress upon her the need for action.
Husband for a Year Page 10