The Rancher and the Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

  For her, it had never really been about gifts—at least not the store-bought kind. The gift of family and love was what was and had always been of major importance for Cassidy. Everything else came second, but she still immersed herself in it. Currently she had her internship at the firm and her online classes to juggle, not to mention that she was taking care of the baby and still finding time to decorate the house for Christmas, something that had always been, without a doubt, her very favorite “chore.”

  While she kept herself busy with all of this, Cassidy was doing her damnedest not to dwell on what had gone down between Will and her—or even think about it. But her resolve seemed to be made out of vapor, and trying not to think about having made love with Laredo just caused her to dwell on it that much more in her unguarded moments. Moments that, for some reason, seemed to be cropping up more and more as the days went by.

  The only thing she was grateful for was that neither Connor nor Cole said anything about what had become the elephant in the room.

  But finally Connor gave up on trying to stay out of Cassidy’s business. So he confronted her in the kitchen late one afternoon.

  It must have been obvious that she just wanted to avoid any sort of conversation with him about anything other than Adam or the approaching holiday.

  When she tried to get around him, he blocked her exit from the kitchen and bluntly asked, “Okay, what’s up with you and Will?”

  Cassidy pretended to look at him blankly, as if his changing the subject to Will hadn’t caused her to abruptly shut down and try to leave the room.

  “Nothing’s up with us,” she replied crisply. “I find him the same irritating creature I always have.”

  “No,” Connor contradicted her, matching her every move so that she couldn’t leave the room, “you’re going out of your way to avoid him when he comes by.”

  Cassidy blew out an annoyed breath. “Because I find him the same irritating creature I always have.”

  “No, that’s a lot of bull. Something’s changed,” Connor insisted. “It has ever since you came home last week after running your ‘errands’ the day after Adam was in the clinic.”

  Cassidy scowled. She was not about to have a heart-to-heart with her big brother. Those days had long passed. She was a grown woman and was entitled to live her life without interference. Nowhere did it say she had to open up about what she was feeling.

  “You’re letting your imagination run away with you,” she said dismissively.

  There was a knowing look in Connor’s eyes as he said, “It wasn’t my imagination that noticed the buttons on your blouse were misaligned that day.”

  Cassidy opened her mouth and then closed it again, momentarily at a loss as to how to respond. Her brother had definitely caught her off guard.

  Connor just continued, “I might not have as much schooling as you do, but I’m not just a hayseed cowboy, Cassidy. I do notice things—and you were gone a long time that day. Are you going to tell me that you were running errands all that time?”

  That was exactly what she wanted to tell him, but the words seemed to be sticking in her throat. She didn’t make it a habit of lying to Connor, but neither did she want to be drawn out on the carpet and treated like a child.

  She looked at him defiantly. “Would you believe me if I did?”

  “If you swore that it was the truth, I’d have to.” He looked into her eyes, wanting to believe that the relationship they’d always had of mutual respect was still alive and well. “Are you?”

  She bit the bottom of her lip. She really wanted to swear to him that it was the truth. Because it would put an end to Connor’s speculations about her and Laredo, which were definitely coming too close to the truth for comfort.

  But she had never once lied to Connor, and she couldn’t allow her desire to block that whole day out of her life to cause her to lie to Connor now.

  “No,” she finally said, defiance in her tone.

  He could always read her, although at times it took some effort. “My guess is that you’re avoiding Will because it went too well and that scares you.”

  Cassidy tossed her head. “Nothing scares me,” she informed him. “Now I’ve got a test to study for—” Adam’s cries broke through the conversation. “And a baby to change, and I’ve still got a few gifts to wrap. None of which are going to take care of themselves, so can we table this conversation about a man who makes my blood pressure rise for now?”

  “We’re going to have to have it sooner or later,” he pointed out.

  Circumventing Connor, Cassidy crossed into the living room and picked up Adam from the playpen. She began patting his back automatically in soothing concentric circles.

  “Later. I vote for later.” As she started to leave for her bedroom to change the baby, there was a knock on the front door. She glanced over her shoulder at Connor. The latter was already heading toward the door. “You expecting anyone?” she asked him, a hint of wariness entering her voice.

  Cody and Cole were both at work. Besides, neither one of them would knock. Connor shook his head. “Nobody I can think of.”

  When he opened the door, he found Will standing there.

  “You’re right,” Cassidy commented as she turned away and began to walk up the stairs. “It’s nobody.”

  But Will wasn’t about to get drawn into a sarcastic verbal battle. He addressed her back, his voice somewhat strained and formal. “Cassidy, you might want to wait up. This concerns you, too.”

  But Cassidy just kept on going up the stairs. “There’s nothing that you can say that concerns me, Laredo,” she retorted.

  He didn’t bother arguing with her. He just told her the headline. “They found Adam’s mother.”

  Cassidy’s arms tightened around Adam as she froze. She put one hand on the banister to steady herself before turning. Her eyes on Will, she came back down. Her mind was going everywhere at once, trying to think, to anticipate what came next.

  “Who found her?” she asked him in a stilted voice.

  Will came closer to the staircase. “The sheriff and Joe, acting on an anonymous call from someone on the reservation.”

  Her insides were quivering as Cassidy desperately tried to steel herself. She wasn’t succeeding very well.

  She didn’t remember coming back down the stairs. All she was aware of was that her legs felt rubbery. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears as she asked, “When will she be coming for the baby?”

  “She won’t be,” Will told her quietly. Before Cassidy could ask him anything else, he added, “They found her in her car. It must have washed up at the edge of the reservation a month ago. There was water in her lungs. She drowned in that flash flood.”

  “How do they know she was Adam’s mother?” Connor asked.

  Will’s eyes shifted over to his friend. “Joe said they found some baby things in the car, and she had this locket around her neck. There was a picture of the baby pasted inside it.”

  All three of them were now standing in a small circle. The only one oblivious to the gravity of the conversation was its subject. Adam.

  Connor glanced at the boy. “No offense to Adam, but a lot of babies at his age look the same if you shrink their picture down to locket size,” he said.

  “Which was why Joe stayed on the reservation, following up,” Will told them. “Joe figured that since he originally came from there, if he kept at it long enough, someone would talk to him and tell him what happened.”

  “And?” Cassidy asked, prodding him.

  “And he found the girl’s aunt who, with enough prodding told Joe the whole story. Seems Adam’s mother, Miriam Morning Star, was taking Adam and leaving the reservation the morning the flash flood hit. She was going to go look for Adam’s father, a college kid who, along with some other students, had volunteered to
work on the reservation a year ago.”

  Connor, listening, nodded. “I remember. There were ten of them as I recall.”

  Will nodded. “Miriam and the volunteer had a brief relationship, and then he went back to school. A few letters were exchanged, and then he stopped writing—around the time she told him she was pregnant. Miriam’s aunt said that the girl got it into her head that once the baby’s father saw Adam—who, by the way, she called Joshua—they’d be a family. Except that she never got too far off the reservation. From the looks of it, the car was engulfed by the floodwater. Miriam lost control.”

  “And they only found the car now?” Cassidy questioned incredulously.

  “The car was partially hidden by debris. Hey, there was a lot of land to cover for three deputies,” he reminded Cassidy, “and don’t forget, her aunt thought she’d left the reservation. When the truth dawned on her, she wasn’t overly eager to talk about a niece who had shamed her ancestors and turned her back on her heritage by giving herself to an ‘outsider.’”

  “Does the aunt want to take Adam?” Cassidy asked in a wary voice. She was trying to figure out what sort of recourse she had open to her. He might represent a lot of work, but she had gotten very attached to Adam in the last month.

  Will shook his head. “She wants him to go to a stable home. She told Joe to do as he sees fit.”

  “Nobody else in the family?” Connor asked, remembering his own circumstances when he’d taken over as his siblings’ guardian. There’d been no other family members.

  “Not from anything that Joe heard,” Will answered. “And he asked around.”

  At least that threat was gone, Cassidy thought, suddenly coming to.

  “Well, unclaimed or not, Adam still needs his diaper changed. I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “I’ll be here,” Will called after her.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Cassidy murmured, although loud enough for Will to overhear.

  * * *

  SHE TOOK HER time changing the baby, letting the full import of the information that Will had just finished telling them sink in.

  “Well, Adam, it looks like you really are an orphan after all. What do you think we should do about that?” she asked.

  The baby made a gurgling noise as if in response, and she laughed softly as she finished changing him.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” she said as if the baby had said something intelligible. “Well, I’m going to have to think about that, but I’ve got a feeling that I might not have all that much time to think. Sometimes things actually do move fast around here.” She sighed. “Usually when you don’t want them to. Word might get back to social services up in the county.” She picked Adam up, thinking how good he felt in her arms. “The truth of it is, I’ve gotten very used to having you hanging around, even if I don’t sleep much anymore.

  “Besides, if you’re not around, what’ll I do with those Christmas presents I bought for you?” Adam made more unintelligible noises, to which she nodded and said, “My thoughts exactly.”

  When she brought Adam downstairs again, she was all set to announce that she was going to adopt Adam. She clung to the fact that she had been caring for him all this time and that it would act in her favor.

  “I get it,” Will said the moment she started coming down. Apparently he’d been waiting at the foot of the stairs since she’d gone up.

  She had no idea what Laredo was referring to. “Get what?”

  “I get it if you don’t want to adopt Adam.”

  “I don’t want to adopt Adam?” she echoed, stunned. Just where had he gotten that idea? She’d never said anything of the kind. To be fair, she had never said anything one way or the other about Adam’s future.

  “Because if you don’t want to,” Will continued, “then I’ll adopt him.”

  “You?” Cassidy said in disbelief, her tone mocking the very idea.

  Connor stepped in and deftly took Adam from her. Her hands free, she fisted them on her hips as she faced Will.

  Will felt his back going up. “Yes, what’s wrong with that?”

  Was he kidding? “Because, in case you forgot that you’ve always had this love ’em and leave ’em reputation, everyone else around here remembers and that, my friend,” she informed him, “is why you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of adopting this baby.”

  Rather than get annoyed, Will actually smiled at her dismissal. “I’ve changed—”

  To which she responded, “Ha!”

  “And I can make further changes,” Will continued as if he was already arguing his case before a family court judge. “I can make all the changes necessary in order to be regarded as a good father for the baby.”

  “Oh?” This was going to be good, Cassidy thought. “And what changes can you possibly make?”

  Will dropped the ultimate bombshell. “I can get married.”

  For a second, Cassidy’s jaw dropped, but she came around the next moment. “What woman in her right mind would have you?”

  “Well, I guess that rules you out because you’ve never been in your right mind.”

  Angry, Cassidy glared at him. How could she have thought that there was something between them? She must have been delirious when she’d made love with this man. Well, she was definitely over him now and thinking straight again.

  “I’ll have you know that I am very much in my right mind!” she informed him.

  “Fine!” he shouted. “Then will you marry me?”

  Connor was about to break up the argument when he heard Will’s unorthodox proposal and pulled back.

  Cassidy was still running on fury. Fury that came to an abrupt halt in the middle of her response. “What the hell are you yelling at me for—Wait, what?” She stared at Will. “Did you just ask me to marry you?” she demanded, stunned close to speechlessness.

  She expected Will to laugh at her and tell her that it was all a joke.

  But he didn’t laugh, didn’t say it was a joke.

  Instead, what Will did say was “Yes.”

  She refused to believe he was serious. There was a punch line here somewhere. “You actually want to marry me?” she asked.

  The corners of his mouth curved, all but undoing her entirely. “Amazingly enough, yes, I do.”

  “You want to marry me?” she asked again, unable to believe he wasn’t somehow setting her up for a fall.

  “Pay attention, Adam,” Connor said to the baby he was holding. “Your future dad’s well-intentioned but kind of slow-witted at times.” He turned toward Will. “She’s waiting for you to say the words, Will, so say them. Ask her to marry you,” he prompted.

  Will felt as if he was standing in the middle of someone else’s dream—until he realized that it was his dream, that maybe it had always been his dream and that only the fear of rejection had put him in denial all these years.

  Taking a deep breath, Will plunged in. “Cassidy McCullough, will you marry me?”

  Cassidy still held back. “Are you sure that you’re not going to shout ‘April Fool’s’ or something like that if I say yes?”

  “It’s December 21. That’s a long ways away from April Fool’s,” he told her.

  “Take a leap of faith, Cassidy,” Connor urged. “And know that I’ve got your back. If this turns out to be an elaborate hoax, I’ll skin him alive for you. Now answer the man,” he ordered.

  She closed her eyes and took a breath, then opened her eyes again. Will was still there, waiting. She said, “Yes!”

  Rather than any proclamations of an elaborate joke being in play, Will echoed “Yes!” as well, then threw his arms around her. Lifting Cassidy off the ground, he kissed her. Long and hard and with all his heart.

  Connor waited a moment, then, when it looked like a moment wasn’t go
ing to be nearly long enough for his sister and his best friend, he politely turned away from them.

  “C’mon, Adam, let’s give them some privacy. This looks like it’s going to take a while. Grown-ups are funny like that. But the bottom line is that you’ve got your mom and dad, and that’s all that really counts.”

  Epilogue

  It was perfect.

  Absolutely perfect.

  Cassidy scanned the area and smiled to herself in tired satisfaction.

  The tree was up and finally decorated. That had been touch and go for a while. All the gifts that she was in charge of were wrapped and under the tree—finished just by the skin of her teeth, she thought with a grin, if teeth had skin. The spiral ham was in the oven, its aroma competing with the heady scent of pine. Even the table was set.

  Everything was ready, including her, for the celebratory dinner that had become a tradition: Christmas Eve dinner.

  They had come a long way, Cassidy couldn’t help thinking, from that first Christmas she and her brothers had spent the year their father had died. Back then Connor barely had enough money for them to scrape by. Christmas Eve dinner that year was in Miss Joan’s house—she had insisted on it.

  Cassidy could remember being surprised that Miss Joan actually had a house. She had just assumed that the woman lived in the diner. To her thirteen-year-old mind, it had seemed that way.

  The jingling noise drew her attention toward the playpen.

  Adam was all dressed up and entertaining himself with the silver bells on his shoelaces. Apparently the ringing sound reduced him to giggles.

  Cassidy couldn’t remember hearing a more heartwarming sound than Adam’s laughter.

  A delayed chill filled the room, and Cassidy realized that Connor had opened the door. Cody, Devon and their daughter, Layla, had come in.

  “What is that wonderful smell?” Devon asked as she shrugged out of her coat while Cody held their daughter in his arms.

  “That,” Connor informed her, “is a genuine Christmas miracle. Cassidy made dinner and nothing’s burned.”

  “Evening’s still young,” Cody responded with a laugh.