Roz Denny Fox

by Precious Gifts

  Once again, as he covered the punishing miles back to the roundup, Jacob vowed that Hayley Ryan wasn’t his problem. Let her mummify, for all he cared.

  He managed to stick to his guns for the rest of August—three weeks spent branding and moving a third of the herd to the rail cars. Then he rejoined the crew. The first afternoon back, he had occasion to object to the wrangler Dillon had chosen to send to Hayley’s camp to open the valves.

  “Send Julio, instead,” Jake barked, indicating a wrangler with nearly white hair.

  “It’s my decision.” Dillon rounded on Jake. “If I ask Ray, you want Alonzo. Miguel, instead of Orleans. What on earth is wrong with sending Emilio?”

  “He’s new. What do we really know about him?”

  “That he gives us a full day’s work for a day’s pay.”

  “You’re always riding point so you don’t hear the men talk like I do. The others joke about him being a ladies’ man.”

  “Exactly what half the valley says about you.”

  Jake crowded Mojave close to Dillon’s mount. “I’ve never forced myself on a woman. Besides, you feed into that hype, and you well know it.”

  Dillon studied Jake’s smoldering eyes and cocked jaw. Backing his big black gelding up a couple of steps, Dillon placed two fingers between his lips and issued an earsplitting whistle. “Hold up, Emilio,” he shouted. “Take a load off your horse and go get some chow. Jake’ll go open the valves tonight.”

  The young stud, Emilio, galloped up to his boss. It was obvious he was too disciplined and too in need of the job to argue. But the mockery brimming in his dark eyes let Jake and Dillon both know he’d figured out the score.

  When Emilio wheeled his tired piebald mare around and proceeded to ride to the chuck wagon as he’d been ordered, Dillon curled a hand around his brother’s hard forearm. “Maybe I should go. Honestly, dude, I’ve never seen you in this state over a woman.”

  “I’m not in any state. That punk Emilio thinks he’s hot stuff. The Triple C doesn’t need the reputation of hiring guys like that.”

  “Sounds as if you’d rather go yourself than let anyone else go.”

  “I’ll be glad to let you bust your butt making the round trip to release the water if that’s what you want.”

  Dillon laid an arm across his saddle horn while his horse nibbled the sparse dry grass. “Maybe you’re far too willing at that. I guess you’ve cooled on the Ryan woman. Hope you don’t mind if I relay that bit of news to Mom and Eden. They’ve had their heads together, plotting to import a woman the two of them met at the last craft show. A quilter. Mom’s gung ho, but Eden thinks the woman’s too old for you. She’s thirty-nine,” Dillon said slyly.

  The smile Jake forced more closely resembled a grimace, but he knew what Dillon was trying to do. Shake him up and make him admit he still had a yen for Hayley Ryan. “I’ve dated older women,” he said, determined to keep his brother guessing.

  Dillon stroked his stubbled jaw. “You trust the judgment of those two in picking you a woman? If I were you, I’d hurry up and ask someone to the harvest dance.”

  For the first time in a lot of years, Jake considered skipping the dance. He wasn’t fool enough to tell Dillon. He’d never hear the end of the razzing.

  “The older you get, Jacob, the slimmer the pickings in the valley. Ask Dad to let you attend more stock shows. I hear there’s an abundance of pretty, well-heeled ranch widows looking to find second husbands there.”

  “Or I’ll just build my house and live out my days as a bachelor. What’s it going to be, Dillon? Are you riding out to open the valves or am I?”

  “Aw, go on. Seniority has its privilege. I’m happy to let you get saddle sore.”

  In answer, Jake whistled for Charcoal. He nudged Mojave forward and let him pick his way around the herd. The minute they cleared the hill, out of sight of Dillon, Jake urged the gelding into a gallop.

  No way did he want his mom and Eden importing some designing woman. He’d ask Hayley Ryan to the dance. It’d serve those sneaky matchmakers right.

  Jake rode at a steady clip, eager to see her. He wondered if the weeks had passed as slowly for her as they had for him. It made no earthly sense, but he’d missed sparring with her—and missed other things about her, too.

  He couldn’t resist spying on her camp when he landed within field-glass range. Not that he’d see her if she wasn’t seated by her campfire. The days had grown shorter. Ten minutes ago the sun had dropped behind Bella Vista Point.

  Raising the binoculars, he fiddled with the central focus. Suddenly Hayley’s camp loomed right beyond the tips of Mojave’s ears. “What in blazes?” Jake kneed the horse forward. Was the woman having a party?

  No! A hiss escaped Jake’s strangled lungs. Two men, a woman holding a baby and four other kids were sitting cross-legged near her fire. She wove between them, scooping food out of a metal pot. Every one of the ragtag group seemed nervous and ill at ease. “She’s got herself visitors from across the border.”

  His heart leapt half out of his chest. Were they armed? If Jake hadn’t been so panic-stricken, he might have watched longer and thought through his actions a little more clearly. All he could imagine was Hayley lying bloodied and battered, her meager possessions appropriated by the crooks who promised to guide illegals through the desert.

  He let out a rebel yell guaranteed to raise the dead. And he rode Mojave like a wild man into her camp, sliding the shocked horse to his haunches a foot from the crackling fire. Ashes scattered, and so did Hayley’s visitors.

  Charcoal, loving the unexpected chase, ran hither and yon, setting up a din that drove every animal in the countryside wild.

  Within seconds of Jake’s making his grand entrance, all that remained of the wanderers was six cracked plates and an unholy silence. Even the animals who’d been drinking from the stream went quickly to ground.

  “Jacob Cooper, are you drunk?” Hayley braced her hands on her hips. Hips that had broadened an inch or two since the last time he’d seen her. In fact, there were other changes in her appearance. Her hair had grown. It now swirled about her waist. Instead of the ever-present blue jeans, she wore a long loose print jumper over a round-necked T-shirt. In the center of her jumper, below where her waist should be, Jake noticed a bulge—like a misplaced pillow.

  His eyes nearly popped out of his head. Hayley Ryan was pregnant, or Jacob Barrett Cooper had not been raised on a ranch where procreation was a cyclic fact of life.

  Hayley stopped yelling at him the minute she saw where Jake’s eyes were trained. Nervously she smoothed a hand over the secret she’d kept from him. Then she caught herself and carefully shook her jumper loose so that nothing showed. As if she believed that, once hidden from prying eyes, her condition no longer existed.

  Jake went hot, then cold, then hot again. He stumbled over two of the plates dropped by the fleeing family. As the night creatures began to stir, he slumped heavily into the closest lawn chair. Instantly the webbed seating gave way with a loud rip, dumping Jake in the dirt. But his pain and humiliation seemed minor compared to the turmoil in his gut. Pregnant. The woman he couldn’t stop visiting was going to have some other man’s baby.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “MY STARS, JACOB! Are you hurt?” Hayley ran to his side and extended a hand to help him up from the tangle of metal tubing that had been a chair. “This belonged to Gramps. I knew the webbing was frayed. Honestly, I never dreamed it would give way,” she babbled, hovering over him anxiously.

  Almost in a daze, Jake watched Hayley’s cotton jumper flow from her shoulders, draping the tops of her boots in a shapeless mass. He wondered if he’d imagined her condition. Yes. The light from the fire pit must have been playing tricks. Her face hadn’t changed. It was the same narrow oval. Her arms were still slender, although darkly tanned now from her work in the sun. The wind must have billowed out her dress. After all, he was used to seeing her in jeans.

  Clambering to his feet—with the only r
eal injury to his pride—Jake dismissed what he thought he’d seen. Instead, he tackled the subject that had brought him roaring into her camp. “Those people you were feeding. I hope you knew them.”

  “We didn’t get around to exchanging names. The children…the entire family was hungry. You barged in here like some demented warrior and scared them witless.” She walked to the outer edge of the clearing and peered into the darkness. “It’s all right,” she called softly in Spanish. “He’s a friend. Please come back and eat. The baby didn’t finish his milk.”

  “Hayley, please.” Jake vaulted the dog to reach her. Gripping her shoulders, he yanked her out of the shadows. “It’s okay if they milk our cows at the Triple C or butcher an occasional steer. There are men around to handle anything that might get out of hand. But you’re alone, for crying out loud. I guarantee one guy in that outfit is being paid a lot of money to illegally get those folks into Arizona. It’s a huge racket. A dangerous one for the families and for you. You simply can’t put out the welcome mat. You’re lucky I arrived when I did. The instigator might have stolen everything you owned, or worse, left you dead in the process.”

  “You are so cynical, Jacob Cooper. They were polite and appreciative. Down on their luck, but since when is that a crime? Oh, I’m wasting my breath. I doubt you’ve ever not known where your next meal is coming from.”

  “I understand the problems. We hire as many family men with temporary work permits as we possibly can. The people who traffic in humans for money are con men. They charge exorbitant fees and as often as not dump la familia in a blistering desert without resources of any kind. It’s less the family I’m trying to warn you about than the guy in the Panama hat who was with them. He’s probably a ringleader.”

  Hayley released a sigh of resignation. “Abuelo, the little boy called him. Grandfather. The mother’s younger than me. Her dream is to provide a better life for her kids. Is that so wrong?”

  She spoke with such passion while unconsciously cradling her stomach that Jake’s heart collided with his own churning stomach. His first impression had been correct. He had no notion how far along she was, but Hayley Ryan was definitely going to have a baby. That made it a thousand times more foolish for her to be out here. “You’re pregnant,” he said simply. “Why didn’t you tell me that right off the bat? It puts a different spin on everything. You can’t stay here. When’s the baby due, anyway?”

  Hayley, who’d hoped Jake had missed her new rounder shape, wheeled away from him and extended shaking hands toward the fire. She felt suddenly cold. Not stay here? She had to. The makeup of ore she’d dug the past few days had changed dramatically. She wasn’t altogether sure what the changes meant, but felt in her bones that she was on the verge of discovering something that would make a difference in her baby’s life. “It’s for me to say what I do, Jacob,” she said with renewed ferocity. “Go away and leave me alone.”

  “Come on, Hayley. I worried when I thought it was just you.” Jake flung an arm wide. Mojave shied and Charcoal paced between the two humans, whining as he looked at each. “But you and a baby… It’s craziness for a pregnant woman to be this far from a good road. You need to be close to town, where there’s adequate medical care and decent doctors.”

  “Thank you very much for your flattering opinion of my capabilities. I’ve seen a doctor. He gave me a book describing all the stages of pregnancy. I plan to be out of here and back in Tombstone long before it’s time to deliver my baby. Anyway, I don’t answer to you. It’s my baby. My responsibility. My decision.” Her eyes flared as she crossed her arms protectively over the gentle slope of her abdomen.

  “Oh? So the kid doesn’t have a father? I’ll bet he’d have plenty to say about how you’re jeopardizing his child’s life.”

  Hayley’s face crumpled. Her lips trembled and her eyes filled with pain. Long seconds ticked by before she seemed to get a grip on her emotions. “You’re wrong. Joe didn’t care about me. He’s not the type to be a husband or father. Besides, he forfeited all rights when he walked out on me.”

  “I didn’t mean to open old wounds. It’s just…if it was me, I’d want to know I had a baby in the works. A man deserves a chance to do right by his child.”

  A haunting smile came and went. “Not all men have your sense of responsibility, Jake. Believe me, the last thing Joe Ryan wants is to be tied down.”

  “He married you. I’d say that represents a tying down of sorts.”

  A harsh broken sound emerged from her throat. “You don’t know the facts.”

  “So tell me.” He walked over and shackled Hayley’s restless fingers in his larger hands. “I want to understand why you’re willing to take such risks.”

  Hayley kept her eyes averted. A second sound, this one more like a sob, worked its way to the surface. No words or explanations followed.

  Jake felt the pain that obviously racked her body. Releasing her wrists, he gathered her against his chest. It was impossible not to notice the slight framework of her bones. Her head didn’t even reach his chin. Despite everything Jake knew about her tenacity, her determination to tough it out on her own, she seemed fragile enough to break.

  He wasn’t in the habit of kissing women to comfort them. Especially not women who were pregnant with another man’s child. But something about the stoic way Hayley tried to hold back tears suggested she believed this pregnancy was solely her obligation. Jake didn’t know why her husband had chosen to leave with another woman. He didn’t care, except that Hayley had clearly decided it was because she wasn’t desirable. Which was hogwash. Outwardly, she put on a good show. Inside, she was like a raft breaking apart in high seas. She needed to be shown there was nothing wrong with her in the desirability department.

  He could tell her in so many words, but Jake didn’t think she’d listen. Or if she did listen, she wouldn’t believe him.

  Kisses were harder to dispute. And kissing Hayley Ryan was far from a hardship.

  Yet he didn’t want to scare her. He took care to slide his hands to the nape of her neck. Tunneling his fingers beneath her heavy hair, he slowly tilted her face toward his. He lowered his lips even more slowly, making sure to meet her eyes. He didn’t want her mistaking his intentions. No way did he want her misconstruing this as a pity kiss. He had to be honest—he was doing this for him as much as for her. Kissing Hayley had been on his mind for some time. And he intended to do it right.

  The campfire popped and shot sparks. Hayley’s heart cartwheeled, and she gave a start. She was assailed first by panic and then shock as his lips covered hers. But as his kiss grew more demanding, her eyes drifted closed, and soon she ceased to think at all. She let the human contact soothe a desperately lonely ache that resided deep inside her. An ache Joe Ryan had done nothing to assuage.

  Everything around her receded. The campfire, her trailer, his animals. Vanished, as did the night noises beyond the perimeter of the dancing flames. Scary sounds that too often pulled Hayley from sleep and set her heart pounding in fright—the way it did now.

  No, it wasn’t the same. She felt nothing of the dread that inevitably followed the sudden stark awakenings. Those black moments of pure terror that forced her to face facts. She had only herself to rely on now.

  She was all the tiny life inside her had, too.

  Yet…in holding her close, in kissing her, Jacob Cooper offered solace. Solace and something more. He offered hope.

  Hope for what? Some part of Hayley’s befogged brain struggled to make sense of why she stood here, her lips locked to a virtual stranger’s. A series of flutter kicks low in her stomach served as a potent reminder. She was pathetic. This wasn’t the first time she’d been blinded by that lonely vacant feeling. A need to be held, comforted and loved. The very need that had confused her and made her fall for Joe’s lies.

  He’d never wanted her. Not really. He’d only wanted the easy profits from the Silver Cloud mine. And Joe had been unscrupulous enough to walk her down the aisle to get them.r />
  What did Jacob Cooper want?

  Hayley’s baby kicked again, a sobering reminder. The Blue Cameo. Of course. Or rather, the water—the natural spring that was on this site. For a second Hayley was sorely tempted to grab whatever fleeting comfort she could derive from Jake’s kisses and the strong arms in which he cocooned her—until she remembered that fleeting wasn’t what she wanted for the child growing inside her. In a hailstorm of regret, she began shutting down her senses and started to withdraw.

  Jake was vaguely aware of faint movements beating feebly against him. At first he was too engrossed in the pleasure of kissing Hayley to realize what he was feeling. But that flutter he’d felt was a tiny human being.

  Sensations raced through him. Awe, mixed with outright possessiveness. As he paused to catch his breath, he was suffused with a blinding desire to safeguard something precious. Hayley and her unborn child.

  Shaken by such intense feelings he let her go and took a stumbling step backward.

  Freedom from the threat of Jake’s closeness was what Hayley wanted. And yet she reeled from their sudden separation. But when he reached out a hand to support her, she shrank away, telegraphing a touch-me-not warning. She hauled in the next breath, then clutched her stomach and began retching. “Just…leave,” she choked out, moments before she lurched into a nearby thicket.

  “No way, Haley!” Jake shouted, not fully understanding her rapid transformation. “I’m taking you to the Triple C. Go sit by the fire while I hitch up your truck and trailer.”

  Hayley poked a white face out from a network of shrubs. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on anything that belongs to me.” Racked by the nausea that chose indiscriminate times to strike, she bent double into the bushes again, and this time emptied the meager contents of her stomach.

  She hated having Jake see this. Over the past three or four weeks, she’d discovered that her morning sickness, which had gotten a late start according to the pregnancy-advice booklet, descended at any time of day or night.