The Rancher and the Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

  Taking out the card that the sheriff had printed for all of them, Joe placed it on the counter before the shopkeeper and tapped the bottom of the card. “That’s my number if you find out anything.”

  Cassidy saw the storekeeper pick up the card and absently tuck it into his back pocket. She had her doubts about the card’s fate.

  The next minute, she felt Will’s hand at her back again, this time he indicated that he was ushering her out. Although it annoyed her that he felt she needed clues in order to know what to do, she didn’t want to cause any sort of a scene. She did her best to hold her tongue as she allowed herself to be guided out.

  Her silence lasted only for so long.

  “I know how to go in and out of a store,” she informed Will between gritted teeth.

  “Yes,” he agreed amicably, “but you usually don’t know when,” he pointed out. Once outside, Will turned toward the deputy. “You want to ask around anywhere else, or is that it?”

  “One more stop,” Joe answered. “I thought we could stop by the church and see if Father Tom knows anything about this baby. He doesn’t pick sides,” Joe added as he drove them to the church.

  Father Tom was a slight man, standing about five-seven or so. He’d run the church and ministered to those who chose to attend for close to fifteen years now. Unlike the shopkeeper, there was no wary expression in the priest’s eyes when he saw Joe and the others entering the church.

  Approaching Joe quickly, Father Tom embraced the deputy before extending a hearty greeting to the two strangers Joe had brought with him.

  And then the priest smiled warmly at the baby in Cassidy’s arms.

  “Is this yours?” Father Tom asked the deputy.

  “No, my two are home,” Joe told the man who was the sole reason for his conversion as a young man. “We were hoping that you might recognize him.” He nodded at the baby.

  But the priest shook his head, looking somewhat chagrined. “Unless they happen to have a distinct look that sets them apart, until they begin to take on personalities, I’m afraid that all babies look rather alike to me. Was this one abandoned?” he asked sympathetically.

  The word abandoned raised red flags for Will. “What makes you ask that?” he asked.

  The explanation seemed relatively simple to Father Tom. “Well, it’s obvious that you don’t know who the parents are. Why else would you bring him here, asking if I recognized him?”

  Cassidy was studying the priest as he spoke, and while he didn’t sound as if he was closed off the way the shopkeeper had been, she had a feeling that there was something that the priest wasn’t saying. Or maybe he felt he wasn’t at liberty to say.

  “Good guess, Father,” Cassidy told the priest. “So no one came seeking forgiveness for having given in to temptation and now had no idea what to do with the end result of that moment of weakness?”

  “No matter how general the terms are, if you’re asking me about someone’s confession, you know I can’t say anything one way or another,” the priest told her good-naturedly.

  “Even if it means reuniting this baby with his mother?” Cassidy pressed.

  “You’re assuming the mother’s from the reservation,” he replied, still carefully navigating the line between admission and denial.

  “Guessing, not assuming,” Will interjected, correcting the priest.

  “All I can do is ask around,” Father Tom said as he escorted them to the small church’s entrance. He held the door open as they left.

  “Well, that went well,” Cassidy said with a sigh as they made their way back to Joe’s all-terrain vehicle.

  Joe shrugged. “I didn’t really expect anyone to jump up and down, waving their hand or pointing someone out for us.”

  Then what was the point of coming? Cassidy wanted to ask. But because she liked Joe and he was helping them, she tempered her question to sound a bit more sedate. “Then why did we come here?” Cassidy asked him.

  “We came,” Joe replied quite frankly, “to plant the seeds.”

  “Seeds?” Cassidy repeated, looking at the deputy and waiting for more details.

  “Sometimes it takes a lot of patience to get someone to step forward with any information around here,” Joe informed them matter-of-factly. There was no judgment in his voice. That was just the way things were around here. They had very little, so they guarded what they did have—their secrets. “People like to play things close to the vest. If this baby does belong to someone on the reservation, I wanted the word to get out that we have him and that the baby is perfectly well.”

  “Maybe that’s all they wanted,” Will pointed out, “to be reassured that the baby’s all right. Now that they know that, they can just go on with their lives without saying anything or claiming him.”

  “Maybe,” Cassidy allowed, surprising the two men she was with, especially Will. “And maybe, after a while, that won’t be enough.”

  “What do you mean?” Joe asked.

  Will knew what she was saying. “Maybe now that she knows we have the baby, the baby’s mother will have second thoughts and want to reclaim him.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Joe agreed. “Another possibility is that now that his mother knows that her son is safe and with some people who risked their lives in order to rescue him, she’s found the right parents for her baby.”

  “Right parents?” Cassidy almost choked on the term. “You mean us?” she cried, startled. She barely spared Will a glance before protesting the scenario that Joe had just come up with. “Wait a minute, there are no ‘parents’ in the wings here. There’s just me and there’s just Will. In no known universe does that translate into the right ‘parents’ for this baby.” She was barely able to keep her voice down.

  Will laughed shortly. “Don’t hold back, Cassidy. Tell us what you really think.”

  “What I think is that this was just a waste of time,” she informed the two men. “Even if the priest acted like he was holding something back, nobody is going to come forward and suddenly cry, ‘That’s my baby, please give him to me.’”

  She deliberately scanned the area, taking note of every woman who had even momentarily turned in their direction. What she saw was mild curiosity, if that. What she didn’t see was any expression of longing, secret or otherwise.

  Adam’s mother wasn’t here.

  “So what’s next?” Will asked.

  “That’s easy. Next we go back into town so I can change Adam’s diaper before someone comes along and decides to cite us for polluting the air,” Cassidy quipped.

  She was about to shift the baby to her other side so that she could open the vehicle’s rear door and get in when Will reached around her and opened it for her. She slanted a glance at him, then muttered a perfunctory, but less than enthusiastic, “Thank you.”

  She could hear the smile in Will’s voice as he replied, “You’re welcome.”

  Cassidy didn’t bother to look at her childhood adversary. The next moment, she more than had her hands full. Adam had decided that he had been quiet long enough. Filling his small lungs full of air, he let loose with a loud wail, making his displeasure heard by everyone within what had to be a half-mile radius.

  Chapter Eleven

  Olivia was hanging up her landline when she saw her intern returning. Since Cassidy still had the baby with her, Olivia came to the logical conclusion, secretly hoping she was wrong.

  “No luck?”

  Cassidy had intended to go straight to the cubbyhole she usually occupied when not working in Olivia’s office, but since the latter had called out to her, she stopped and stepped into the woman’s office. She really wished that she had better news.

  “No, no luck,” she confirmed. There was no point in hiding her disappointment. “I thought for sure we’d find at least his mother on the reserva
tion.” The more she had thought about it, the more it seemed to have made sense to her.

  “Well, maybe he’s not from the reservation,” Olivia suggested. After all, it wasn’t as if they had any proof. At best, it was just one possible assumption.

  “I’ve just got this gut feeling that Adam’s connected to the reservation in one way or another.”

  “Well, the truth has a way of coming out if you give it enough time, so if one of his parents is from there,” she said, nodding at the baby in Cassidy’s arms, “we’ll find out eventually.”

  “Hopefully sooner than later,” Cassidy added. She looked down at the baby. Adam was scrunching up his face again, which she had already learned could only mean one thing. She wasn’t certain just how much one diaper could hold. “Right now, I’ve got to change Adam’s diaper before it gets toxic.”

  Olivia laughed, waving Cassidy on her way. “Good idea,” she agreed. “Meanwhile, you’ve given me something to think about.”

  By now, the aroma from Adam’s diaper was definitely competing with the oxygen in the room, but Cassidy couldn’t bring herself to just walk away with that open-ended comment hanging in the air.

  “What have I given you to think about?” she asked.

  “Getting an investigator,” Olivia said bluntly. “Up until now, I didn’t think our firm really needed one, but now, with this coming up, I’m beginning to think it might be a good idea to have an investigator working for the firm, or at least having one on retainer. We need someone who could look into things for us, make sure all the details are straight if we have any concerns to the contrary. Or, in this case, someone who could find out if this baby’s parents can be located.”

  Yes, Olivia nodded to herself as Cassidy hurried off to the ladies’ room with Adam, hiring an investigator was definitely something to think about.

  * * *

  CASSIDY WAS DETERMINED to put in as long a day as she could to make up for the time she’d missed. Olivia, however, was equally determined that she leave early with the baby. Cassidy made a counteroffer, insisting on taking at least some of the work home with her so she wouldn’t fall any more behind than she already was.

  It was all part of not just the learning process at the law firm, but part of making her feel useful.

  In the end, it was a draw. Cassidy left earlier than she’d intended, but she did leave with a satchel full of papers to work on during those snatches of time when Adam didn’t need her.

  When she finally arrived home, Cassidy still felt as if she’d put in a day and a half at the office even though that was far from the case.

  “How do mothers do it?” Cassidy asked her small passenger as she undid his car seat from its restraints in the backseat. “I feel like I’m ready to crawl into that crib Cody lent us for you, and it’s not even six o’clock yet. Must be some vitamin supplement I don’t know about.”

  In response, Adam whimpered. He seemed ready to launch into another crying jag, but then apparently changed his mind. And just like that, the baby began to play with his toes again, which had become his newest form of fascination.

  “Lucky thing I can’t misplace those,” Cassidy commented. “Hope you keep on playing with them until we can locate your mama.”

  That that might never happen was an idea she didn’t want to even remotely begin to entertain—even though part of her had to admit it was a viable possibility. Although not a regular occurrence, flash floods did happen near and around Forever. Thinking about it now, Cassidy could remember hearing about at least five flash floods during her lifetime. However, she could only recall hearing about one fatality in all those instances. Since those odds were in her—and Adam’s—favor, she fervently hoped that they would continue to hold.

  Busy trying to carry the baby as well as bring in her satchel, Cassidy took no notice of the truck that was parked off to the side of the house. At least not until she walked into the house.

  Before she could call out to Connor to announce that she and Adam were home, Cassidy stopped dead. There was someone else standing in the living room. He had his back to the front door, and he was thumbing through the album that Connor kept on the secondhand coffee table their father had brought home one year.

  Cassidy’s breath caught in her throat. She knew that back anywhere.

  “What are you doing here, Laredo?” she asked. Wasn’t seeing him once today enough? she silently demanded in frustration. “And where’s my brother?”

  “Which brother?” Will asked as he turned around to look at her. “And to answer your first question, I’m waiting for you.”

  “Connor,” she clarified. And then Cassidy replayed what Laredo had just said to her. She interpreted his response in her own way. A bolt of excitement zipped right through her as her eyes widened hopefully. “You found his mother!”

  For possibly the umpteenth time since their very first clash of wills, he wondered why Cassidy McCullough had to be so damn pretty. Why didn’t she have a face that made men embrace celibacy instead of nurturing thoughts where purity had no place?

  Snapping out of his momentary flight of fancy, Will had to think for a moment in order to remember her question. “No,” he answered, “why would you think that?”

  “Because you said you were waiting for me, and I just thought—” Why was she even bothering to explain herself to this man? She didn’t owe him an explanation. “If you’re not waiting here to tell me that you’ve found Adam’s mother, then why are you here?” she asked, running out of patience.

  Damn him, Cassidy thought. Laredo could make her temper flare faster than any man alive.

  In response, Will calmly smiled at her, which only irritated her further—and she knew that he knew it, but that still didn’t change things. “I’m waiting here for you to get back with the baby because I’m here to help out.”

  Cassidy stared at him. What was he talking about? “Help out with what?”

  Cassidy was a great many things, Will thought, most of them irritating. But he had never known her to be thickheaded before. Why was she pretending to be that way now?

  Blowing out a breath, Will spelled it out for her. “Help out with the baby.”

  If anyone else had just said that, she would have immediately, not to mention happily, turned over the baby to them and sank down on the sofa with a huge sigh of relief. But this was Will, and although she couldn’t really explain it, it went against her grain to admit to him that she needed his help—or any kind of help for that matter.

  “I never said I needed help with the baby,” she informed him coldly.

  “You didn’t have to,” Will told her. Looking down at the baby, he smiled warmly at Adam. “Everyone needs help with a new baby.”

  “He’s not a new baby,” she said defensively. “Dr. Dan said he was around two or three months old.”

  “Let me rephrase that,” Will said patiently, starting over again. “New to you. All babies represent a lot of work, and you’re not used to taking care of one.”

  “Oh, but you are,” she retorted sarcastically.

  “The man is offering to help, Cass,” Connor said in his eternally patient tone as he walked in from the kitchen. “Let him help.” Connor was carrying a couple of bottles of beer. He offered one to Will.

  Still holding the baby, Cassidy turned her entire body so that it blocked Will from having access to Adam. “I am not turning Adam over to a drunkard,” she informed her oldest brother.

  “He hasn’t had anything to drink yet,” Connor pointed out. “I just took the caps off the first two bottles. And since when did you become a teetotaler?” her brother asked. Cassidy liked sharing a beer as much as the rest of them.

  “Since I brought a baby into the house,” she replied, then her eyes shifted toward Will. “You can take the beer and go.”

  Instead, Will acce
pted the bottle from Connor and then put it on the coffee table. The indication was that he could have the drink later if that was her objection.

  “I’m here to pitch in,” Will told her firmly. “I helped rescue him. I want to help take care of him as well—until we locate his parents.”

  Cassidy drew in her breath.

  “You’re under no obligation—” she began.

  “That,” Will said, cutting her short, “is a matter of opinion. I’m not here to argue with you.”

  “Well, you certainly could have fooled me,” Cassidy retorted.

  Will went on talking as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “I’m here to do my fair share.”

  Just what was Laredo’s game? Cassidy was certain he had something up his sleeve, but what? While she couldn’t pinpoint what it was, she knew it had to be something that was meant to get under her skin—just like everything else he said or did.

  “Duly noted,” she told him crisply. “I’ll tell everyone that you’re a real prince.” Her hands were full, so she couldn’t wave him off. All she could do was say, “You’re free to go.”

  “Cassidy,” Connor interjected wearily. Will had been gone from the area for nearly four years, but it was as if nothing had changed in that time. The two still butted heads whenever they were in the same area—with his sister the bigger offender.

  Cassidy shot her older brother an impatient look. “What?” Her temper was growing increasingly shorter, and she found she had to exert effort not to growl out the word.

  “Shut up,” Connor said in the same mild-mannered voice he might have used to describe this morning’s breakfast.

  Stunned, Cassidy could only stare at her brother. “What?”

  “You heard me. I love you to pieces, Cassidy, but you could make a saint lose his temper. Now accept Will’s help and stop arguing over the matter.”

  “Look, Cassidy,” Will began, giving it another try. “I didn’t come here to cause you any problems, I honestly came here to help. Now for once in your life, will you stop arguing with me and just let me help.” It wasn’t a request.