Rancher's Remorse (Culpepper Cowboys Book 2)

by Merry Farmer

  Cooper tried not to let a chill run down his back at the sight. It wasn’t so much a chill as an overwhelming feeling of responsibility. Boy, he needed to knock Faith up in a hurry. That was the answer to everything. If she had her own babies to worry about, then maybe she wouldn’t be getting all obsessive about selling babies to other people.

  He looked around the room some more as he thought about it. Because ultimately, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? An unhealthy obsession with babies? He turned to the kiln, the last thing in the room he hadn’t taken a look at. It looked like a big, silver vat with a locked lid and a control panel on the side. The lights on the control panel flashed green. Its display held the solid message “End of Cycle.”

  His curiosity flared. Kilns were something completely new to him. He should probably have asked more questions before letting her install it in his workshop. Whatever cycle it was doing was done, so he reached for the handle that kept the lid shut, flipped a few clamps, and opened it. A rush of dry heat wafted out along with an earthy, dusty scent. He leaned over the top to get a look at what Faith was sculpting and—

  “Oh, sh—”

  He leapt back, the lid of the kiln slamming, before he could get the curse out all the way. His heart hammered against his ribs, and his eyes went wide at what he’d seen. His brain was having a hard time processing it, so he crept back to the kiln and opened the lid again, trying not to pant with panic.

  There, in neat rows inside of the kiln, were limbs. Baby limbs. Rows of snow-white baby arms and legs.

  Cooper’s stomach turned, and his first thought was that his lovely, disturbed wife was dismembering babies. Sense caught up with him a second later as he squinted and took a second look. No, those weren’t real limbs, thank God in heaven above. They were sculptures.

  With a puzzled frown—still not entirely convinced he shouldn’t be panicking—he reached in and picked up a baby arm. It was warm to the touch, which only made his skin crawl more. Just like a real baby. Trying not to grind his teeth with the sheer weirdness of it all, he turned the arm over. Soft baby muscles, cute, tiny fingers, even carefully sculpted nails.

  Cooper let his shoulders relax. His brow rose. Actually, it wasn’t half bad work. There was no way he could do anything like that. Faith had rendered the baby limb so realistically that he was still more than a little skeeved out. He didn’t want to hold it for long, so he put the arm back in the kiln. He took one last look as the hair stood up on the back of his neck. As soon as he caught sight of the curve of a baby nose and realized there were heads down there in the bowels of the kiln too, he let out a sharp breath and backed up, shutting the lid.

  Dangit, his wife was crazy. She had an obsession with babies to the point where she was selling them and creating duplicates of their parts. What was he going to do?

  Well, the first thing he needed to do was to find her and make sure her craziness didn’t get her in trouble. He whipped around and shot across the workshop and back out into the afternoon. Faith wasn’t at home, which meant there was only one place she could have gone.

  Cooper practically sprinted across the rough ground of the field to make it to his mom’s house. The daycare was fully in session by the time he leapt up the front stairs and burst into the hall. A dozen sweet little children were eating sandwiches while his mom, Hope and Chastity walked between the tables. Joy carried a baby in her arms, and was feeding it a bottle. What were the odds that that baby had already been promised to some unknown buyer miles away from here?

  “Where is she?” Cooper burst out. “Where’s my wife?”

  More than a few of the kiddies straightened up and turned to stare at him. A couple of them started crying, as if he was the bad guy here.

  “Cooper? What are you doing here?” Linda came out of the kitchen with a platter full of those goody cups with spouts and handles containing milk. She handed it off to Hope, then continued over to him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  His mom was far too calm. She should be every bit as upset as he was. At least, that’s what Cooper thought. The voice of reason at the back of his head kept trying to tell him to sit down and think things through, that none of this really and truly added up to the conclusions he assumed it did. He ignored that voice and grabbed his mom by the arms.

  “Mom, where is she? Where’s Faith?”

  Linda shrugged. “She said she had a lunch date with that friend of hers, Nancy, in town.”

  Ice-cold dread spilled down Cooper’s spine. It was worse than he thought. Faith had gone to have a meeting with her transporter. He had to stop her. Without a word, he whipped around and lunged for the door. He might still have time to catch her before anything illegal happened.

  “Son, what are you so worked up about?” Linda came after him. “It’s just lunch. So what if she isn’t keeping to that silly schedule you’ve set for her.”

  “Oh, and congratulations, by the way,” Chastity called from the other room.

  Cooper frowned, but ignored the comment. He threw open the front door, then turned to his mom.

  “This is about more than lunch dates, Ma. Faith is in trouble.”

  “Trouble? She didn’t seem like she was in trouble earlier. Unless you’re talking about the other kind of trouble.” Without warning, she beamed from ear to ear. “But it’s hardly being in trouble when you’re married.”

  Cooper shook his head. “I have to stop her from doing something she’ll regret,” he said. “I need to do it for her, for our family, for the ranch.”

  “For the ranch?” Linda made a face and shook her head. “The ranch is fine now. What are you—”

  But Cooper didn’t hear the rest of the question. He was already down the porch steps and halfway across the yard on his way to his truck.

  9

  “And I know it’s ridiculous, but I just can’t bring myself to tell him.” Faith sniffled, reaching for the napkin that had come with the croissant she’d ordered to go with her coffee. She blew her nose, making a horribly unattractive squelchy sound, then dabbed at her eyes.

  “Personal demons are the worst.” Nancy reached across the small café table and touched Faith’s wrist. Her hands were warm from cradling her mug of hot chocolate. It was just the sort of thing Faith needed. “They make even the most obvious, ordinary things seem like insurmountable obstacles, don’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Faith whined. She felt like a stupid teenager, but with Nancy there to spill her guts to, that kind of felt good. It didn’t solve anything, though. “And now two of my sisters are pregnant, and I’m going to have to watch them go through everything and pretend to be so happy for them.”

  Nancy made a face, wrinkling her nose. “You know, Faith, I kind of have to agree with your sisters that your mom might have been pulling one over on you. That stuff about kilns shriveling your womb sounds…well, it sounds bogus and then some.”

  “But the doctor.” Faith sighed. “The tests he ran.”

  “What tests?”

  “Blood tests. He did an examination. He said it was straightforward.” He’d said it was, but now, a couple thousand miles away from Dr. Morrison and her parents and the restrictions that had seemed so normal to her for so long, she wasn’t even remotely sure.

  What if it had all been a lie?

  Well, if it had, was it really worse to beat herself up over the fact that she’d been gullible than accept that her own mother had deceived her in the most personal possible? Mama was Mama, regardless of what she’d done. And Faith had found a way around the rules anyhow.

  “Whether the whole thing about having babies is true or not,” she went on, swirling the last of the coffee in her mug, “How am I supposed to explain everything to Cooper now?” She glanced up, and when she saw the doubt in Nancy’s expression and her raised eyebrow, Faith went on with, “It’s not only the fact that I’ve sat on this for so long. Cooper is really into things like schedules and duty and order. He’s been a regular sergeant-major lately. We have
to get up at the same time every day, eat at the same time, shower at the same time, work, watch TV, and…well, you know…all at the same time every day.”

  “That’s a little OCD,” Nancy admitted. She took a sip of her hot chocolate.

  “More than a little. I’m actually really worried about him. How is he going to react to having his schedule blasted out of the water when rush orders come in around the holidays? For that matter, how is he going to handle it when months and months pass with no babies?” Nancy’s doubtful look returned, but Faith rushed over it with, “I’m ruining all of his carefully organized plans to fulfill his responsibilities to the ranch and to the family.”

  “Look, you didn’t ask for my advice.” Nancy touched her hand again, then reached for her giant chocolate-chip cookie. “But I’m going to give it to you anyhow. Tell Cooper everything. Deal with things as they come up instead of getting your panties in a twist in advance. And for heaven’s sake, get a second opinion about the whole not being able to get pregnant thing. From a real doctor, not that quack from home.”

  “Yeah.” Faith sighed. “I guess. I—”

  Behind them, the café door burst open. Cooper leapt inside, eyes wide and bright, color high.

  “Faith!”

  The steady flow of Faith’s conversation with Nancy was blown out of the water as every problem she’d been mulling over vanished. “Cooper? What’s wrong?” She leapt to her feet, mind racing through a thousand possibilities of one of her sisters being hurt, Linda in trouble, the ranch in flames.

  “Don’t do it.” Cooper rushed toward her, grasping her by the arms. He stared down at her with so much passion and determination that a ripple of fear caused Faith to start shaking.

  “What? Don’t do what?” She blinked, did her best to fight off the sense that the world was about to come to an end as Cooper guessed every naughty thing she’d ever done, and tried to stand straighter. “Is somebody hurt? Is Linda in trouble?”

  Cooper clenched his jaw and pursed his lips. His eyes still flashed with adrenaline. “Ma’s going to be in trouble if she keeps helping you with this crazy scheme of yours.”

  “Crazy…scheme?”

  “This business with the babies,” Cooper rushed on. “It has to stop. Faith, it has to. I love you too much to let you continue to be involved in something this…this abominable. I don’t care how many women are in on the deal or how many of them want those babies, you can’t keep doing this. I love you, I do. I know we’ve only been married for a short time and we barely knew each other before that, but I love you. So much. More than I thought I could love anyone.”

  “Cooper!” Faith’s heart rolled and slapped around her chest. One minute she was lifted up on the wings of perfection—her husband loved her!—and the next, she as tossed into the pit of despair—he was demanding she give up her business. It was everything she’d been afraid of and more.

  “Cooper, I love you too.” She grabbed his arms, digging her fingers into his muscles, which could be such a comfort to her. “I honestly love you. But the business means so much to me. It’s my creative expression. It gives me something to be proud of. And I think that I’m helping people by doing it.”

  “But it’s wrong, Faith, it’s so wrong.” Cooper looked like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to drag her into a tight embrace or push her away forever. “Babies are not a commodity. You can’t just sell them to people, no matter how much they may want them.”

  “But…but they are.” Faith shook her head, utterly confused. “And more and more people want them all the time. That’s why…oh, I didn’t know how to tell you this or what you would think. The business is doing really well, Cooper. We’re becoming nationally known. That’s why Nancy is here.”

  Faith glanced over her shoulder to Nancy, who stood, a deep frown etching her face. Nancy tipped her head to the side and crossed her arms as she listened to the argument.

  “I know exactly why Nancy is really here,” Cooper said. “And if she tries to transport a single one of those babies for you, I’ll call the cops on her.” He quickly rushed on to say, “But I won’t call them on you. I don’t want to get the law involved, Faith. You need a psychiatrist, not a jail cell, to deal with this.”

  “I…psychiatrist? Why Nancy is really here?” Beyond baffled, Faith let go of Cooper and took a step back. Her head spun with all the conflicting details zipping through the air. “Nancy is a reporter from Louisville. She wants to do a story about That’s My Baby.”

  “But that’s not your baby, Faith,” Cooper pushed on. “None of them are. I don’t care how frazzled the mothers are or how much they might regret having children, but bringing them to your sisters’ daycare so that you can sell them on the black market is wrong. It’s just wrong.”

  A resounding silence filled the café. It wasn’t crowded, but a few of the patrons who had been there enjoying an early afternoon snack dropped what they were doing to stare. Faith’s jaw dropped. The particulars of what Cooper was saying were having a hard time sinking in. Black market? Frazzled mothers with kids at Hope’s daycare? Selling babies? What?

  All at once, Nancy burst into laughter. The sound was like a gunshot. Faith flinched and took another step back, bumping into the table. Nancy continued to laugh, holding her sides.

  “You think that Faith is kidnapping babies and selling them?” Nancy asked Cooper.

  Cooper stood as tense as a tiger, darting a look between Nancy and Faith. “I-isn’t she?”

  “Is that what you think?” Faith’s question was barely more than a breath.

  It all made sense. Suddenly—a little painfully—it all made sense. Cooper thought that she was selling babies? Well, she was selling babies. He’d overheard her on the phone, seen all of the photographs that she used to sculpt from in her workshop. That day when they’d been packing up back-orders…the sound she’d heard from the door must have been him listening in. She wracked her brain, going over the conversations she and her sisters and Linda had had. If he’d already made the assumption she was selling real babies, then yes, she could see how he could get the wrong idea.

  It was utterly ludicrous.

  Cooper squirmed on his spot, rubbing the back of his neck. He seemed to notice that they were being observed by everyone in the café. His face colored, and his shoulders hunched. “You’re not selling babies?”

  “Um, sort of.” Now it was Faith’s turn to writhe. This was it. This was the moment she had to explain it all. No more misunderstandings. Time for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Thankfully, Nancy jumped in first.

  “Don’t you know who your wife is?” she asked.

  Cooper bristled just a little before his expression grew worried. “She’s Faith Culpepper?”

  Nancy squeezed in one more laugh before saying, “Well, yes, she is, but she’s also the owner and creator of That’s My Baby.”

  Cooper’s face pinched. He rolled his shoulders. “What’s that?”

  Nancy snorted. “It’s only the country’s premier handmade, lifelike baby doll company. Faith’s dolls have become a national fad. They’re so lifelike that people swear they can see them move.”

  Another uncomfortable pause passed before Cooper said, “Dolls?”

  “You knew I made dolls.” At last, Faith found her voice. “I told you right from the start.”

  “Rag dolls,” Cooper insisted.

  Faith shook her head. “When did I ever tell you I made rag dolls?”

  “I…” Cooper clamped his mouth shut, took a breath, then said. “I assumed.”

  “Then what did you think the kiln was all about?”

  Now he looked downright squirrely. “I looked in that kiln earlier. It was filled with baby parts. Really realistic baby parts.”

  “For the dolls,” Nancy cut in. “For the really realistic dolls. I assume.”

  Now that the dots were connecting, Faith’s mind was beginning to work again. Poor Cooper! He thought she was inv
olved in something illegal. He probably thought she was crazy too. All because he had some information, but not enough. All because she had failed to speak up when she should have to explain what really was no big deal.

  She reached for her purse on the table and took out her phone, tapping through a few apps to get to the webpage for That’s My Baby. She wasn’t going to go blaming herself entirely for not saying anything—Mama had as much to do with her fear of speaking up as anything else—but this whole thing could have been avoided. And who knew her husband had such a wild imagination.

  “Here.” As soon as she had the page for That’s My Baby loaded, she handed her phone to Cooper.

  Cooper took the phone with a scowl. A moment later, his brow flew up. It went even higher and his expression softened as he scrolled through the page. “Holy cow.”

  “I should have been clear right from the beginning,” she sighed. “But in my defense, I thought you understood at least a little of what I was doing.”

  Cooper’s only answer was a grunt as he continued to look at her phone.

  “And on the other hand…” She swallowed. Admitting the next bit was definitely going to make her look like a fool. “Well, Mom and Daddy never approved of any of us working outside of the home, even if we were working in the home. Mama found out that the dolls had become more than just a hobby, and she kind of…kind of lost it on me.”

  That got Cooper’s attention. He snapped his head up, expression dropping into a protective scowl. “What did she do?”

  Faith shrugged. “She got mad and told me to stop. I wasn’t about to stop doing something I loved, though. So the girls and I took it all underground. Honor and Grace helped too, even though they were younger. But…but there were consequences.”

  Now she was at the part that she really didn’t want to talk about. She turned away, buying time before explaining why she was ultimately a failure as a wife and how all of Cooper’s careful planning and sense of duty was about to be crushed.