by Tina Leonard
Unhappily, she rubbed her barely swollen stomach. The nausea had passed, thank heaven. She was sore in places, but mostly glad about the baby. Her mother had stressed that she should tell the father, but Stormy just couldn’t. Three months apart hadn’t made her feel any better about their relationship. She might think about him all the time, might know she’d lost her heart to him. But she knew that she was not the woman he would fall in love with. He would not welcome a bond between them, particularly a child. Her lifestyle was not his way; California would never suit him. They had too much that would keep them apart.
She hated to think of what he would say if he knew she was carrying his child. Quickly, she got to work, determined that, the sooner she left Texas, the better for everyone.
Particularly me, she sadly told the baby growing inside her. I want to give you a home. I don’t want you to grow up feeling you’re not wanted. I want you.
Cody would offer to marry her. Cody would shoulder the burden of his offspring, just as he shouldered Annie, Mary, and his mother. Sometimes even the needs of Desperado. He was a good man, and he would do the “right” thing.
For a woman who desperately craved to be wanted and needed, being an obligation would break her heart.
Chapter Fourteen
“Stormy! Hang on a sec!” Tate “Wrong-Way” Higgins jogged to catch up with her. “Long time, no see!”
And a sight for sore eyes. He’d been hoping for a chance like this. Desperado might have gotten the movie, but he was flat determined to get the girl. The baby doll dress teasing the middle of her thighs made his throat dry enough that his voice hit a high note when he’d called out to her. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.
“Hello, Tate.” She offered him a warm smile. “It has been a while.”
“You’re purtier than ever,” he told her, quite sincerely. For the longest, Hera at the beauty salon had kept her eye on him. But he wasn’t interested in the big-boned Hera. Any woman who could probably wrestle him down wasn’t for him. No, sir. He admired Stormy’s long legs under the flippy, short white dress and sighed to himself. He was deeply interested in that.
“Well, thank you, Tate. I didn’t expect to see you in Desperado.” She kept smiling.
Tate hoped that meant she’d keep talking to him a while longer. “I keep my eye on what everyone’s doing around here. Besides, it’s fun watching a movie get made.”
“I’m sorry that Shiloh didn’t turn out to be quite what we wanted.” Her expression was sincere.
He waved off her apology. “No matter. Maybe we’ll get the sequel when they make it. I just know they will. It’s going to be great.”
“Thanks.” Her smile turned rueful. “I hate to rush, but I really—”
“Now I was going to tell you that you oughta let me take you out to dinner.” He put the broadest smile on his face so she’d accept.
“I’m flying back out tonight. I’m sorry, Tate.”
She did appear to regret that they couldn’t get together, and hope soared inside him. “Well, maybe you could give me your business card so that I can call you on a movie idea I’ve got.”
“Um—sure.” She handed him one and he took it like a drowning man.
“Hot dang, Miss Stormy.” He tipped his hat and backed away slowly, as if he were afraid she’d snatch the card back. “I’ll call you sometime.”
“Okay. Bye, Tate. It was nice seeing you again.”
She walked inside an office, and he sighed to himself happily. Stormy Nixon was the woman of his dreams. About ten yards away, he saw Hera walking around, viewing the set. Obviously she was on her lunch break. He snuck off in the opposite direction before she could see him. Hera had specific ideas where he was concerned, and he didn’t want her pointing her sharp scissors his way. Just because every once in a while he went by and gave her a little pleasure, it didn’t mean he was going to marry her. She’d hinted last Christmas about an engagement ring, but he’d gotten off with a pretty pin. He hadn’t mentioned the stones were cubic zirconia, of course, and while Hera had seemed a little disappointed with the pin, she had thanked him for it the way he liked to be thanked.
It wouldn’t do for her to catch him with another woman’s phone number. That would get him kicked out of her bed for a while, which would be inconvenient. Worse, she might try to drag him into that tiny white clapboard church she attended. On Sunday, anybody who walked past it could hear the Baptist preacher shouting hell and damnation to any sinner within earshot. Tate always scurried past as quickly as possible. He wasn’t about to enter those double doors with Hera Gonzalez.
No way. Not while he had a chance with Stormy Nixon. He gazed at her card with supreme delight.
For her, he’d be willing to move to California—and make a trip to the altar.
“Uh-oh. That piece of cow turd Wrong-Way’s talking to Stormy,” Curvy said. “You best get on the horn fast with Cody and let him know she’s here.”
“No way. We got in big trouble for messing in his business last time. Ain’t gonna have him chew my head off again.” Pick was adamant about this. “We already agreed.”
“Yeah, but that was before she showed up here! We don’t have to call and make up nothing! We just have to let Cody know she’s here!”
“I’m sure she called him,” Pick stated laconically.
“I’m sure she didn’t if Wrong-Way’s over there poaching. Just look at him.” Curvy’s eyes bugged with disgust. “I think we should call Cody.”
“He does appear to be finagling,” Pick agreed as Tate took something from Stormy. “Maybe you better call up to the ranch.”
“Uh, maybe you better,” Curvy negotiated. “I’m still deaf from him yelling at us last time.”
“Flip for it.”
“Oh, heavens to Betsy.” Curvy went and borrowed a quarter from Hera Gonzalez, returning a minute later. “Call it.”
“Heads.” Pick sat up stiff as a bone, watching as the quarter landed in the dirt. “It’s heads! You gotta call!” he cried triumphantly. “And you best hurry too, because she’s going inside. Who knows how he’ll find her if he don’t come on?”
“All right.” Curvy picked up the quarter and ungraciously stumped off toward the pay phone. Trust Pick to get me into this, he thought grumpily. “Cody,” he said when the answering machine switched on, “it’s Curvy. And Pick,” he added as a safety precaution. “We just saw Stormy on the movie set and wondered if she’d had a chance to call you yet and let you know she’s around. That’s all now. Bye.” He hung up and headed back over to the wooden keg. “He wasn’t home.”
“Just your luck,” Pick grumbled. “What a waste of a quarter, which you gotta pay back.”
“Hey!” Curvy stiffened at this unexpected attack. “It’s not my fault if he’s not at home!”
“I didn’t say it was.” Pick glared at him and mopped his brow. “I just mentioned that your luck always seems to be bad.”
“It isn’t!” Curvy was affronted by his friend’s sudden change in mood. “Let’s not forget who got elected mayor around here, and who didn’t!”
Pick jumped to his feet. “That’s a down and dirty thing to say! A fair-minded opponent wouldn’t gloat in his victory over his best friend!”
“Hmmph.” Curvy moved his wooden keg a few inches away from Pick’s.
Pick responded by moving a few feet in the opposite direction.
Curvy swiftly pulled his stool a few yards away.
Pick hauled his wooden keg to the complete opposite side of the set, sat down on it, and turned his back to his friend.
Curvy’s jaw dropped. How dared he! “Hmmph!” he said to himself, but the sound didn’t bear much strength. He’d been friends for so long with Pick, gotten so used to his tooth picking, that he wouldn’t be able to look at a toothpick without feeling out of place. Sadly, he turned his gaze toward Mary, who was saying her lines with a tall, dark stand-in Curvy had never seen. Suspiciously, he wondered if the stand-in looked none too clean, a
nd perhaps even a bit shifty. After they finished practicing, the gophery-looking fella walked Mary over to get a drink, gently touching her back as he handed her a cup. Curvy watched in alarm. He wasn’t at all sure if Cody shouldn’t be told that his niece was being eyeballed by such a disreputable-looking character.
Unfortunately, the one man he could worry and fret over the situation with had just turned his back on him.
About seven o’clock in the evening, Cody made it into town. He was dirty and hot, but Curvy’s message had perked his spirits up in a way they hadn’t been in days. Weeks. He’d decided to head on down to this section of his land and see if he could locate Stormy. Maybe he could talk her into going out to dinner with him. On her previous visit, he hadn’t had the chance to take her out the way a lady should be treated. He’d like to do that once before she returned to California.
There was a lot more that he’d like to do with her, of course, but one didn’t stoop to such things when the lady in question wasn’t a girlfriend in any sense of the word. With this many months separating them, he couldn’t ask her to hop in the sack with him, no matter how tempting holding her again would be. But he could take her out to dinner and spend the evening listening to her cheerful laughter.
Actually, he looked forward to that. He’d shower and shave and put on his best dress blue jeans and boots.
Out of the corner of his eye, a black limo slid past. Cody barely paid it any attention. He was only interested in finding Stormy.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered. The codgers were seated at opposite ends of the movie set. Both appeared wilted by the day’s heat—and maybe flared tempers. “What’s going on, boys?”
“Nothing!” Curvy stated loudly, staring at Pick’s back.
Pick shrugged, refusing to take the bait. Cody sighed. “I got your message, Curvy. Do you happen to know where Stormy is? I’d like to say howdy to her.”
“Ah—” Curvy stared up at him in dismay. He glanced at his friend’s back as if for assistance. “She just left in that limo, Cody. She’s heading back to California.”
Cody’s stomach felt as if it dove into his boots. “Did she say that?”
“Yep.” Curvy nodded. “She sure did. She also said to tell ya hi.”
“I see.” Disappointment whistled through him, sharp and well defined. “Well, guess I’ll head back up to the house. Thanks for calling, Curvy.”
“You’re welcome.”
He glanced over at the other codger. “Thanks, Pick.”
“Sorry you didn’t catch her, Cody,” Pick called. He kept his back turned decisively toward Curvy.
Cody sighed and walked toward his truck. He supposed he should ask what had derailed the codgers for the moment, but his heart ached too much. He couldn’t believe Stormy Nixon had set foot on his ranch without trying to hunt him up.
Stormy gasped as Cody walked past the limousine.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?” the chauffeur asked.
“Fine.” She whipped around to peer out the back window after Cody. He looked strong and sturdy, and wonderfully sexy. There was dirt on the back of his jeans and his boots were worn and dirty, but she didn’t care. Cody Aguillar looked like a miracle to her. “There’s your daddy, baby,” she said, rubbing her stomach.
“Pardon me, ma’am?”
“I’m just talking to myself,” she called to the chauffeur, turning back to watch Cody. He moved with purpose and long-legged grace, and Stormy couldn’t help thinking there was no more fabulous man on earth. Maybe she should have called him to let him know she was in Desperado. Since she wasn’t showing yet, it would have been safe enough. But she would definitely have gotten misty. She seemed to cry at anything these days, which the doctor told her was hormones. Her mother recommended transcendental meditation. Actually, Stormy suspected her recent bouts of teariness had more to do with pining for a certain rancher. Watching him hungrily as the limo left him behind, Stormy suddenly wondered if he’d come looking for her. Mary surely had not called him to mention Stormy’s presence. Pick and Curvy might have, though. Hopefully they wouldn’t do something like that. After all, she and Cody hadn’t exactly advertised their relationship.
No, she thought, turning back around in her seat, he hadn’t been coming to see her. Mary was rehearsing and no doubt her proud uncle wanted to watch. It was ridiculous for Stormy to imagine—hope—that he’d hotfoot it down to the set to see her. Touching the snake teeth she’d had made into an exquisite silver collar necklace on her return to California, she closed her eyes and let the tears slide down her cheeks.
“Yes, Cody. I talked to Stormy,” Annie replied to his carefully, casually worded question.
She turned to him as he sat with a soda in front of him that he couldn’t drink if he had to. Though her kitchen was nearly a second home to him, Cody felt awkward.
“She called to see how I was progressing with my pregnancy, and we chatted about morning sickness and things like that. Why?”
“Just curious.” He glanced at her stomach. “You are feeling okay, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Annie laughed. “Everything seems to have calmed down this fall. Mary’s a changed child, and the nausea passed. I feel positively blossoming.”
She looked it, too. Cody was happy for all of them. “Glad to hear it,” he said, jamming his hat onto his head. “Guess I’ll head back to the house.” He walked outside the house disconsolately.
“Uncle Cody!” Mary called, running to meet him at his truck.
“Hey, ladybug. How’s my film star?”
“Oh, Uncle Cody.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’m not a star. But I’m having lots of fun.”
“And you’re getting your homework done, too?” He gave her a stern look.
“Yes,” she said, laughing as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “I think I’m going to have all A’s this first session.”
“I hope so.” A stray thought struck him and he paused before getting into his truck. “Did you get to see Stormy?”
“Oh, yes!” Her eyes gleamed with happiness. “She said I looked so pretty, and then she came out and talked to me again and gave me a hug before she left. I just love her, Uncle Cody.”
His niece’s eyes shone with a lighthearted delight he’d never seen before. Cody nodded to himself. If Stormy had made this many good changes in Desperado, then so be it. He couldn’t be angry with a woman who’d meant so much to so many people.
“Didn’t you see her, Uncle Cody?” Mary’s eyes gazed at him curiously, almost worriedly.
“Nope. Missed her. I was out in the fields all day.” Briskly, he got into the truck. “Probably catch her next time. Love ya, ladybug.” He started the engine and drove away, his heart crushed by the knowledge that apparently Stormy had made time for everyone in Desperado that she had ever talked to.
Except him.
Mary watched her uncle leave in dismay. He looked old suddenly, and somehow worn. Well, maybe not old exactly, but certainly tuckered out. The strangest expression had come over his face when she’d told him that Stormy had hugged her goodbye. Mary swallowed, remembering that, once upon a time, she had thought Stormy only liked her because of Uncle Cody. She’d even thought that she couldn’t trust Stormy if she was going to be best friends with her uncle. Mary had been so frightened of being left out, like she was sometimes at school.
Well, not so much anymore. Now that she was in a movie, she had more friends than ever. She got invited to all kinds of parties where even the parents asked her lots of questions that made her feel important. Like, how did you get the part, and do you know anyone I could call to see if there might be a part for my kid? Yes, she had lots of friends now.
Sadly, she looked at her feet. Of course, Stormy had done her best to help Mary out. All her newfound friends she owed to Stormy.
But poor Uncle hadn’t gotten to see Stormy. And he hadn’t looked very happy about it. Sadness filled Mary’s heart. Stormy could have called Uncle if she’d w
anted to. And Stormy could have made an appointment to see him, if she’d wanted to.
Suddenly, Mary knew why Uncle looked so lost. He had wanted to see Stormy. But Stormy, for some reason, hadn’t made time for him. She’d made time for Mary, though.
Once that would have made Mary feel like a princess. Now she just felt sorry for Uncle. All her life her uncle had been there for her. She’d always been his ladybug. Even when she was mean and bad, her uncle loved her. Anytime she needed him he rushed to her side for whatever he could do to help.
She felt small and selfish for being jealous of him before. She was going to have a new baby in the house to love and care for, but Uncle was all alone in his big, empty ranch house. Mary sank onto the top step of the porch and put her face in her hands. Poor Uncle Cody. He liked Stormy too. He needed her friendship.
But there was nothing Mary could do to help him. Though he had ridden in like a handsome knight to rescue her many times, she couldn’t do that for him. She couldn’t make Stormy like him if she didn’t.
Sloan allowed three days to pass after he’d heard Stormy’d been in town. When he still hadn’t heard word one from the stoic rancher, he decided it was time to put in a surprise appearance. A do-drop-in of sorts, to surreptitiously check up on the ol’ desperado.
He was in a shed skinning rattlesnakes. Sloan sighed and took a seat on a busted chair. “You’ve been out of sight lately.”
“Yeah.” Cody didn’t look up, but he nodded. Sloan scratched at his chin and looked his buddy over. Maybe eight or ten pounds of weight loss, which could be blamed on Carmen being gone, but he thought there was more to it than that. Cody was a damn fine cook. He could rustle up his own grub.
Weight loss and a taciturn expression could point to a rancher suffering the pangs of love.
He leaned back and examined his hat. “Heard from Stormy?”