by Leslie North
“Ah.” Hunter’s response was filled with pity. It made Scout want to climb through the phone and give him one good punch in the gut.
“What the hell does ‘ah’ mean?”
Behind him, back at the center of the farm activities, Scout could hear Lonny yelling to one of the other staff, and a cow lowing in protest.
Hunter’s answer was as smooth and reliable as Hunter always was. “It means I understand. I understand why you’d have assumed that. I understand that you don’t want Stella to take the baby halfway around the world.”
Scout stopped pacing and walked over to fencepost, where he leaned as he talked. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“I’m really not sure. Have you told her how you feel? Not just about the baby being across the globe, but about her?”
Scout’s throat grew suddenly dry. “I don’t know how I feel about her.” He was a liar, but he wasn’t about to admit that, not even to himself. Luckily, his brother was more than happy to call him on it.
“Really? You really don’t know how you feel about a smart, beautiful woman you’ve been sleeping with for weeks—hell, living with—who’s carrying your child?” Hunter snorted in disdain.
“It’s only been weeks. Not months or years.”
“How long did I date Kit before I knew she was the one? How long did Bran date Ava?”
“It’s not the same,” Scout argued stubbornly. “I’m not the same. I’m not like you and Bran. I never have been. It’s why I struck out on my own.” Scout slammed his mouth shut, he was not in the mood to be judged by his brother and his answering silence spoke volumes.
“What did you need?” Scout finally asked, his voice clipped and angry.
“Kit wondered if you and Stella would like to meet up for dinner at the honky-tonk tomorrow night.”
“I’ll have to get back to you,” Scout muttered.
“Okay. Just let us know when you get a chance.”
“Talk to you later.” Scout pulled the phone away from his ear, ready to tap the screen and disconnect the call.
But then he heard Hunter’s voice. “Scout?”
He brought the phone back to his ear. “Yeah?”
“Every relationship is different—the timeline, the details, the ups and downs. But love is love. It’s always the same.”
Scout tapped the screen and ended the call. His brothers had always thought they knew best. They’d always thought he should do what they did. Work on the family ranch, live in the family house, marry the mother of your child. But he did things his own way and he wasn’t about to change now. He cared about Stella. He wanted her and the baby. But that didn’t have to mean love and marriage, and he wasn’t about to go there just because Hunter and Bran thought he should. He was done with his family dictating his actions.
No, Scout had to do things his own way, and that meant he needed to find out how to get Stella to stay after the baby was born. One step at a time. Just like he’d done all these years working to buy the farm. One step at a time.
Stella dabbed some lip gloss on and assessed herself in the mirror. It was so good to be in real clothes again. She had her follow-up doctor’s appointment in an hour, and then she’d finally be off the dreaded bed rest. If only everything else in her life were so simple.
Scout had stopped sleeping in her bed. She’d slept alone the last four nights. Oh, he’d been his usual annoying self, bringing her healthy dinners and making sure she had books and music and anything he could find to entertain her. He’d even been sleeping in the main house in case she needed him during the night, but he’d managed to fall asleep in front of the TV instead of with her. Every single night.
She knew what had caused it—that moment she’d said a crib would be a waste—but she didn’t know what to do about it. She loved being here on the farm, and she felt safe and cared for. She knew Scout and his family would love the baby and always welcome him. But Scout hadn’t asked her to stay, and even if he did, how could she when her job was thousands of miles away? What would she do if she did stay? She’d promised Scout she’d sell him the farm, after all. She’d no longer have a place to live and an income from the business. The money from the sale wouldn’t last forever, and then she’d be a single mother, with no way to earn a living, dependent on the good will of her baby’s father.
No. Stella needed to stick to what she knew—taking care of herself. Now that would mean taking care of herself and her baby, but she could do it. She was a pro.
What she wasn’t a pro at was finding a way to talk to the baby’s father about where he fit in. Because she knew he needed to—he deserved to—somewhere. But where? And how? She was so desperate, she resorted to something she’d only done one or two times in her adult life. She called her mother.
“Stella? Is that you?” Mirabelle answered. Stella sat on the edge of the bed and tucked the phone between her cheek and shoulder.
“Yeah, hey, Mom. How are you?”
She could hear her mom banging around with something in the kitchen. “Oh, good. Just getting some things out to cook dinner. I have a date coming over later.”
Of course she did, Stella thought. Mirabelle was never without some man hanging around.
“Been seeing him long?” she asked idly as she picked at the nail polish on her fingers. She thought about the women in Benin she’d been working with when she’d had to come home. They’d loved bright colors, and she’d sat with them while they all painted each other’s nails with the orange nail polish she’d brought. Then they’d used matching threads in their braids and hair twists that week. Every female in the village—old, young, and in between—had been decorated with orange from head to toe.
“Oh, you know me. I don’t like to keep any particular one around for too long. This might be our third or fourth date. I’m not really sure.”
Stella paused, waiting to see if her mom would ask how she was, how the pregnancy was progressing. But all she heard was her mother muttering to herself about where the cream could have gone to.
“So, Mom, I’m at six months now.” She closed her eyes, suddenly more tired than she’d ever been in her life.
“Oh, really? Done with all the barfing?”
“Yeah. All done with that part.”
She heard Scout come in downstairs and start talking to Jean Anne in the kitchen.
“You still there?” Mirabelle asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Hey, Mom, I called because I wanted to ask your advice on something.”
Mirabelle chuckled. “Well, that’ll be a first. I don’t know that anyone’s ever asked me for advice before. But I guess when I helped you with that sewing project in third grade, it turned out okay, so our track record’s not too bad.”
Stella felt her temple begin to throb at the mention of the notorious sewing project. She’d been given an assignment to create something that represented her family. Stella had decided she wanted to sew a small quilt with each square representing something about her family. Mirabelle had agreed to help with the sewing, Stella was in charge of making the squares.
Stella had spent hours on the phone with her grandpa, asking questions about the family. She’d discovered she was the third generation of Steadmans to “live” on the farm so she’d made a square with a cow. She’d learned Steadman was an English name so she’d made a square with the Union Jack flag. She’d researched more and found out her father had loved music so she’d made a square with music notes. When she was finally done, Stella had ten family squares and all the plain squares she needed to make the quilt. She gave it all to Mirabelle and waited. And waited. And waited.
The morning of her class presentation, Stella had woken Mirabelle up—it was usually Stella who set the alarm clock so they would get up in time to go to school. “Where is my quilt, Mom? I need it for the presentation today.”
Mirabelle had spent the next half hour explaining to Stella how she’d meant to sew the quilt but it took a lot of time cooking and cleaning for
an eight-year-old and then she still had to go to work at the import shop. Stella had listened as she’d stapled her squares together into some semblance of a quilt. She hadn’t ever forgotten the look of pity in her teacher’s eyes when she’d handed over the uneven, pathetic scraps of cloth connected by six dozen staples.
Now Stella swallowed hard and soldiered on. She really was desperate. “I told you about Scout? The baby’s dad?”
“Yes. Worked for your grandpa, right?”
She had to give Mirabelle credit for remembering that much.
“Yeah. And he’s been great. I was on bed rest the last nine days, and he’s taken care of everything, brought me meals, run my errands, all of it.”
“Well, good job. That’s one you keep around for a while.”
Stella rolled her eyes and prayed for patience. “He wants to be involved with the baby, and I’m not sure how to do that with my job. I mean, the baby and I will be out of the country ten or more months every year. What do you think I should do?”
She waited on pins and needles. Just once, she wanted her mother to come through, have a helpful idea, make a considerate suggestion. Just once.
“Well, you know it was your grandpa who suggested the schedule for you. You were maybe four months old, and we’d been couch surfing all that time.”
Stella lay back in the bed and closed her eyes again.
“I got a call from George one day, and he said he’d been trying to find me and he wanted to know you. I told him that was fine, but he’d have to put up with me too because, well, you can’t put a baby on an airplane. We spent about six months with him, and then a friend asked me if I wanted to come to San Diego and work in this new massage shop they were opening, so your grandfather asked if he could have you summers and school holidays. That was pretty much it.”
“So…you’re saying I should give the baby to Scout for the summers and school holidays?”
“I guess,” Mirabelle’s voice was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Seemed to work fine for you.”
Stella heard someone coming up the stairs. She’d gotten all she was going to out of Mirabelle. “Hey, I need to go, Mom.”
“Okay.” Stella could have said she was going to fly to the moon and would never be back on earth again and Mirabelle would have had the same response said in the same tone—cheerfully distant.
“Hope your date goes well,” Stella said.
“Thanks. Talk to you later!”
Stella tapped at the screen, and for the first time in years, she wanted to cry over her mother’s lack of concern. Her mother had absolutely no interest in the pregnancy or the baby or what might happen to Stella next. And after spending the majority of her life working not to care, it was horrifying to realize that she really still did.
“Knock, knock.” Scout stuck his head in the partly open doorway.
“Yeah,” Stella said, fussing with things on her nightstand so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Are you ready to go to the doctor—” He stopped mid-sentence. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She could see the concern in his eyes, and that only made it all worse.
“Nothing,” she said as she stood and tried to smile.
“Does something hurt? Are you having contractions again?”
She could see the panic in Scout’s eyes. He deserved more than platitudes. “I’m fine, the baby’s fine. I just had a phone call with my mother, and she was…herself. And sometimes that’s hard.”
His brow was furrowed, and he inspected her for a moment before continuing. “Okay. You ready to go to the appointment? Get them to officially let you out of the bed?”
Her chest ached when she looked at him. He was helpful and concerned and so loyal. She knew he already loved their child, and even if he never loved her, he deserved to be a part of the baby’s life. She’d have to figure out a new way to run her life, because the fact was, she wasn’t alone anymore. She was going to be a mother, and her baby had a father who wanted to be involved. Most women would consider that a blessing, not a problem.
“I’m ready,” she told him, and it meant things he didn’t realize at that moment. “But before we go—” She reached out and grabbed his hand. His eyes widened for a moment before being replaced with a wary expression.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…since we had that conversation about buying baby things the other day.”
He simply kept watching her, but his hand was warm and cradled hers gently.
“I know I hurt you when I said I was still planning to take the baby and run around the globe.” She squeezed his hand tighter and stepped closer, her belly brushing against him. A tiny smile kicked up the corner of his mouth and his blue eyes widened.
“I’ve been on my own for most of my life.” She turned her gaze away from his for a moment as shame of some sort washed over her. “And my model is a woman who never let anyone or anything in. Her entire life, she has been completely autonomous. And if you’re her child, you’d better get to be autonomous real fast, too.”
Scout nodded as if he understood.
“But I also had a grandfather who cared, who wanted nothing more than to be with me from the day I was born.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and her voice quavered for just a moment before she got herself back under control. “I left George. I left him alone because I thought I was supposed to be alone. And now he’s gone, so I really am alone.”
Scout started to argue, but she pressed her fingers against his lips, shushing him, a soft smile on her face. “But I’ve been given a second chance. A chance at being with my baby, and a chance at giving him you, too.”
Scout grabbed the fingers she had over his lips and kissed them before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her closer.
“I understand now that I can’t just take the baby and head off to foreign countries. I’m not sure I can live in Gopher Springs full-time, either. But I’m willing to look at all the options and find one that we can both live with.”
Scout lowered his mouth to hers until their lips were the merest whisper apart.
“Thank you,” he murmured before kissing her.
And as he moved his mouth over hers, softly sweeping one moment, playfully nipping the next, Stella knew she’d made the right decision. It wasn’t going to be easy, and it would mean the biggest changes she’d ever made in her life, but it was the right thing for the baby, it was the right thing for Scout, and she had to believe it would be the right thing for her.
15
Scout looked down at Stella as she slept, the moonlight draped across her face and chest, her round belly covered by the quilt her grandmother had sewn. He rested his head in his hand, propped on his side in the bed, as he softly stroked a finger down her neck, over her collarbone, into her soft cleavage.
When she’d told him she was willing to look at other options for her job and where to raise the baby, his entire soul had lifted. Not since he’d first started working for George, decided that this farm was the one he wanted to own, had he wanted something like he wanted Stella and the baby. And the idea that he could have the farm and the two of them? That was something truly amazing. Something he’d be grateful for forever.
Stella shifted, and her eyes drifted open. He smiled at her sleepy expression.
“Sshh,” he coaxed. “I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”
She shook her head and rolled to her side so she was facing him. He lay back down, cupping her jaw in his palm as he gazed at her.
“You need your sleep,” he whispered.
“I need you more,” she answered. Blood pulsed to his groin as he felt her fingers skim across his abs and dip under the waistband of his boxers.
He couldn’t help the smile that began to spread across his face. “The doctor did say sex was okay again, didn’t she?”
She gave his cock a squeeze, and he was lost. He pulled her face to his and kissed her like his very life depended on it. He consumed, he cherished, he burned wi
th need. His tongue tangled with hers, and soon their breaths were coming fast and rough.
As his lips skated over her bare skin, she arched her back and dug her fingers into his hair, pulling just hard enough to keep his mind from short circuiting from the heat they produced together.
He slid his hand down over her belly and found the soft core of her. She was hot, and so wet.
Stella moaned with desire, so he stroked her again.
“Oh, God,” she gasped.
“There is truly something divine about the way you feel,” he whispered to her before he slid two fingers inside and began to pump.
Stella cried out, her hips thrusting in time with his hand. His cock ached like nothing he’d ever felt in his life, but he refused to give in to his own needs. He wanted to see Stella in all her glory, wanted to watch her face as she came.
And then she was, pulsing around his fingers in waves of gorgeous pleasure. She said his name over and over, and he thought it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. When she finally came back to earth, he slid his fingers free and then she suddenly gasped again.
“Are you okay?” he asked, seeing her lips press together.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. Then she grabbed his hand and held it to her belly.
Beneath his palm, he felt a roll that started below her belly button and worked its way up.
“What the…”
She gave a throaty laugh as it happened again.
“Well, hot damn,” he said, his voice reverent.
“There he is,” she said as her belly bulged for a moment on one side and then the other.
“There he is,” Scout agreed. Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to the taut skin of her middle. “Hey. I’m sorry, did we wake you?”
Stella laughed. “You have to admit, that would have woken the dead.”
Scout couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. “But it’s not like the contractions you were having after the accident?”
“No, this is completely different. Those felt like cramps. This is…I don’t know, but it feels like something’s rolling around inside.”