The Heart of Hill Country

by Sherryl Woods

  “With all due respect, sir, he’s a Brady.”

  Harlan shot him a look of understanding. “Well, of course, he is. But he’s an Adams, too, and we take pride in our own, no matter what name they carry.” He turned back to Angela. “Now I don’t want you fretting about not having this baby in a hospital. I’ve called the Doc and he’ll be here in an hour or so to check him out. He’d already got his sled out to come to the open house, so he said he’d just start a little earlier.”

  “Thanks, Grandpa.” She smiled at her father, who was totally absorbed in studying Clinton Daniel’s perfect little face. “You know what, Daddy?”

  Luke tore his gaze away from his first grandchild. “What, darlin’?”

  “I’m glad I had him at home. Now I know what it must have been like for you and Mom.”

  Luke grinned. “Darlin’, you don’t know the half of it. Dani is the next best thing to an M.D., compared to me. She was also stone-cold sober. Your mama got a rotten bargain when she stumbled up to my doorstep that night.”

  Angela shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think that’s the night we really became a family, even if it did take you a while to accept the inevitable.”

  Luke put Clinton Daniel back in her arms, then kissed her. “I love you, baby. Now your Grandpa and I had better get out of here before your mother comes in after us.”

  “Could you ask her to give us a second before she sends in the next round?” Clint asked. “There’s something I need to say to Angela.”

  “No problem,” Luke said, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “You just let Jessie know when you’re ready for more company.”

  After Luke and Harlan had left, Clint sat down on the edge of the bed, hip to hip with the woman he wanted so badly to be his wife. He reached out and gently brushed a fingertip across his son’s cheek. His skin was so soft, just like his mama’s.

  “Clint?”

  Her expression was questioning. He looked directly into her eyes and for a moment he lost his train of thought. She could do that to him, rattle him so badly he’d be tongue-tied. He swallowed hard and tried to collect his thoughts.

  “There’s something I should have said before,” he said eventually. His gaze strayed to the baby nestled in her arms, then back to her. “Thank you. Thank you for my son. Thank you for not giving him away, the way you threatened to do.”

  For an instant he thought he saw disappointment flicker in her eyes, but then it vanished.

  “He’s my son, too,” she said quietly. “I know what I said in Montana. It was awful and it was cruel. I have no excuse, except that I was upset.” She smiled, but it was clearly forced. “Just like you said, though, that was in the past. I can’t change it. I just want you to know that I will always take very good care of him.”

  “We will, angel. We will take very good care of him.”

  “And just how are we going to do that with you in Montana and me in Texas?”

  Clint wanted to declare flatly that she was going to marry him and come back to Montana with him, but the stubbornness he saw simmering in her eyes warned him off making that particular declaration.

  “We’ll work it out.”

  “I will not have this child bounced back and forth between two states,” she warned.

  “Neither will I.”

  “Which leaves us with what choice?”

  “I haven’t got all the details figured out just yet,” he admitted.

  “Well, do let me know when you think you have a plan,” she snapped.

  “Don’t be sarcastic, darlin’.”

  “Go tell Mother to let the others in,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Are you upset, angel?” he inquired sweetly, delighted with the reaction. If he could keep her stirred up and off-kilter just a little longer, maybe he could come up with a surefire way to get her to tumble straight into his arms.

  “Upset? Me? Of course not.”

  “Then relax your jaw before you grind all your teeth to nubs,” he advised. “Your family will get the idea that you and I are having a little squabble on what should be the happiest day of our lives.”

  “We aren’t having a little squabble,” she said. “I am trying very hard not to kill you.”

  “Shh,” he whispered. “You don’t want the baby to hear you saying a thing like that about his daddy.”

  She regarded him sourly. “My hunch is he’ll hear a lot worse before all is said and done.”

  Clint turned away before she could catch him grinning. The new tactic was working very nicely, he thought, very nicely indeed.

  14

  Clint was sticking to her like a damned burr. He was about as annoying, too, Angela thought irritably.

  Maybe if he’d looked at her once, really looked at her, she would have felt better. Instead, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off his son.

  She told herself she was glad he was so enchanted with the baby, so taken with fatherhood, but it might have been nice if just once he’d kissed her or squeezed her hand or even run a fingertip across her skin the way he did across the baby’s. Every time she witnessed that trembling, awestruck touch, she was so jealous she could spit. How pitiful was that?

  She glanced up as he came into her room. His gaze skimmed across her, then aimed straight for the cradle beside the bed. When he realized it was empty, then and only then did his gaze settle on her.

  “Where is he?”

  “Grandpa’s got him downstairs showing him off.”

  “Again? I thought most of the state was here yesterday for the open house. They got a look at him then.”

  “I’m not sure, but I think he’s just showing Consuela and Maritza that he can already make the baby smile.”

  “Didn’t your mother say that was just gas?”

  “Try telling that to Grandpa. He’s sure Clinton Daniel is very advanced for his age,” Angela said with a grin. She waited for Clint to make up an excuse and go chasing after his son. Instead, he pulled a chair up beside her bed and sat down.

  “How’re you feeling, angel?”

  “Better than I expected. I’d be downstairs myself, but everyone insists I should be resting. Another twenty-four hours of this and I’ll be stir-crazy.”

  “Maybe you should be thankful there are a dozen people around who are eager to take the two a.m. feedings.”

  She regarded him skeptically. “Are you relieved?”

  Clint grinned sheepishly. “No. I want to do it myself. I jump up the minute I hear him so much as whimper, and I run smack into a traffic jam outside your door.”

  Angela chuckled. “You’d think I’d have the inside track. After all, I am in the same room, but even if I get to him first, someone plucks him right out of my arms and tells me to get my rest.”

  “They wouldn’t be able to do that if you were breast-feeding,” Clint said thoughtfully.

  Angela hadn’t even had time to consider that. Too many people had been trying to take charge in typical Adams fashion.

  “You know, you are absolutely right. Everything’s happened so fast, I haven’t been thinking straight.” She glanced at her watch and saw that it was just about time for another feeding. “Will you go down and retrieve our son?”

  His expression was so eager, she wanted to laugh.

  “I’ll be back in a heartbeat,” he promised.

  “Don’t let anybody talk you out of this,” she warned. “They’ll try.”

  “I’ll tell them I have my instructions,” he promised. “Then I’ll grab him and run like hell.”

  Angela wished like crazy that she could be there to watch Clint repossessing his son. Nobody stood in Clint Brady’s way when he was after something.

  Suddenly, though, her amusement faded. Would it be like that when he decided he wanted to take the baby away from her for good? That po
ssibility slipped into her head when she least expected it. It had been frightening enough before the baby was born, but now that he was here, now that she’d held him in her arms, she wasn’t sure she could bear the thought of losing him.

  By the time she heard Clint coming in the door, tears were tracking down her cheeks. He was babbling nonsense to the baby so intently that he didn’t notice at first that she was crying. When he did, he stopped dead and stared.

  “Angel? What is it? What’s wrong? Did something happen while I was gone?”

  “My baby,” she pleaded, holding up her arms. “Please, I have to hold him.”

  He gently placed the baby in her arms, then studied her with bemusement. “Darlin’, are your hormones going wacky or is something else upsetting you?”

  Unwilling to explain the fear that had suddenly overwhelmed her, she shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Just leave me alone with the baby.”

  Clinton Daniel began to whimper. Nothing she tried seemed to soothe him, which sent more tears cascading down her cheeks. Obviously she didn’t know the first thing about being a good mother. Clint wasn’t blind. He would see that and use it against her. Even now he was scooping the baby up and rocking him gently. The baby quieted at once, more proof that Clint would be the better parent.

  “Mind telling me what upset you?” Clint asked mildly.

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine,” she said, blotting her tears with a tissue and fighting for composure. “Let me have him. He’s fussy because he’s hungry.”

  Clint studied her worriedly. “Are you sure? Maybe this isn’t the time to change the routine.”

  “It’s hardly a routine,” she said testily. “He’s only twenty-four hours old.”

  Clint ignored her and glanced at the baby. “He’s asleep again,” he said softly as he placed him in his cradle. When the baby was settled, he pulled the chair a little closer to the bed. “OK, angel, tell me what’s been going on in that head of yours?”

  She sniffed and cursed the combination of hormonal swings and genuine terror. “Nothing.”

  “Tell that to someone who’ll buy it.”

  “Clint, just go away. I’m fine.”

  He studied her intently, then sighed. “You aren’t, by any chance, panicking that I’m going to run off to Montana with the baby, are you?”

  Alarmed that he could read her so easily, she tried to feign shock. “Why would you say that?”

  “Wild guess.”

  “Well, you can just take your guesses and go fly a kite.”

  He nodded, but didn’t budge. “That’s a productive approach.”

  “Are you suddenly into soul baring?” she countered. “Since when?”

  “Maybe I just wised up and realized it would be smart to put all the cards on the table so there’d be no room for misunderstandings.”

  “Did this epiphany happen overnight?”

  He grinned at her sarcasm. “No, it’s been coming on for a few days now.”

  “OK,” she said agreeably. “You go first.”

  “I’m not the one with the attitude.”

  “Maybe not, but I have a feeling my attitude might improve if you just this once said what was really on your mind. Try it.”

  He squirmed uncomfortably and remained as tight-lipped as ever.

  “It’s not so easy when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?”

  “No,” he conceded. “OK, I will tell you what’s on my mind.”

  Now that he’d made the commitment to open up, Angela got a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Maybe this was a really bad way to go. Maybe she wasn’t ready to hear what was going on in his head.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out a solution to our dilemma,” he said.

  His response took the option of silence away from her. “Any luck?” she asked warily.

  “OK...as I see it, we have three choices. Well, one of them really isn’t an option, but I’ll lay it on the table. We could get married, baptize our son and head back to Montana together,” he suggested, ticking it off on his fingers as if it were as unimportant as an item on a grocery list.

  “Or, two, we could go into court and fight over custody and wind up with some judge deciding which one of us gets to keep him. Or, three, I could leave him here with you, forget all about him and let you raise him as an Adams.”

  She knew with absolute certainty that this last wouldn’t be an option he would ever consider. As for a custody fight, as painful as it would be, she might have gone for that if it hadn’t been for the whole Hattie Jones debacle. If that came out, well, the outcome in court might very well be a toss-up. She couldn’t take that chance and Clint knew it.

  “Are you trying to blackmail me into marrying you?” she inquired.

  “Of course not. If you have other options you’d like to throw out here, by all means go ahead.”

  She considered and dismissed a few that were so outrageous not even she could think of a credible way to explain them.

  “OK, what if we just worked out our own custody arrangement and had a lawyer draw it up?” she suggested hopefully.

  He shook his head. “Now, you see, here’s where I have a problem with that. I want my son with me. I don’t want him bouncing from state to state, especially now when he’s just a baby.”

  “We could wait—”

  “Until he’s older? I don’t think so. I’m not going to miss one single second of watching him grow up.”

  Nor was she. The path kept twisting right back to marriage, Angela realized. A loveless marriage. Well, loveless on his part, anyway. She might not trust him worth two hoots, but she loved him anyway, for reasons that would never make a lick of sense to her. She sighed.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said eventually.

  He nodded. “Don’t take too long, angel. Time’s running out.”

  At the warning, her temper flared. “Don’t threaten me. I can always take the baby and run again. It took you eight months to find me this time. I’ll make damned sure it takes longer next time.”

  Clint seemed startled by her threat and her vehemence. Then his gaze narrowed and his eyes darkened. “Now it seems to me that’s how we got messed up in the first place, with you making wild threats and refusing to listen to reason. Don’t even think about running again, angel. Something tells me this time I wouldn’t be searching all alone.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that your father and grandfather would be looking for you right alongside me.”

  “They’d never join forces with you,” she protested, but without much conviction. They would and she knew it. Clinton Daniel was an Adams and they would never ignore his existence or do anything to keep his father—a man they clearly liked and respected—out of his life. Besides, tough as they were, they were also a couple of old romantics. They believed in happy endings. For some reason they had evidently gotten it into their heads that she and Clint belonged together.

  She sighed. If only Clint felt the same, she thought wearily. If only they could recapture the emotions they had felt when they’d first met. Now, though, whatever feelings they had were colored by betrayal and fear and distrust. She wondered for the hundredth time if even love could overcome all that.

  * * *

  Clint had found the entire conversation with Angela about their future unsettling. As casually as he’d tried to introduce the subject of marriage, he’d been feeling anything but casual. If he’d been hoping for a sudden acknowledgment of the inevitable, though, he’d been sadly disappointed. She wasn’t about to give him an inch. He did have her thinking, though, and that was something.

  He gave himself until the first of the new year to make good on his scheme for getting Angela to admit she loved him. After that, with her or without her, he was going to have to head back to Montana. The thought of leaving her or his son behind
made his stomach churn. His plan had to work. He was counting on it.

  After another two days of sly hints and devilish taunts, he concluded that he had to be losing his touch. Just when he was dead-on certain that Angie was weakening, that she’d say yes to a proposal, she slammed on the brakes and put enough distance between them to keep him in a constant state of frustrated arousal. The woman was driving him crazy. One thing was certain, a lifetime wouldn’t be long enough for him to figure her out. Meantime the clock was ticking and he was fresh out of ideas.

  He’d lain awake half the night trying to assess his progress. As near as he could tell, it pretty much added up to zero.

  When he staggered downstairs at the crack of dawn for some of Maritza’s potent, eye-opening coffee, he found Luke there ahead of him.

  “You look like something the cat dragged in,” Luke observed, his expression amused. “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  “Baby keep you awake?”

  No, it wasn’t his son who was responsible for his lack of sleep. It was the kid’s stubborn mother. He shook his head.

  “Angela, then?”

  “Bingo.”

  “I don’t want to meddle, but if you’d like to talk about it, I can certainly listen.”

  The only fathers Clint had ever known well were the ones in this family. Unless he’d very much misread them, meddling was their middle name. “Thanks, anyway, but I think I’d better handle this on my own.”

  Luke nodded and regarded him thoughtfully. “You told me when we first met that you intended to marry Angela. Is that still your intention?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “I’ve asked her, I’ve told her, now I’m trying to torment her into it by avoiding the topic completely.”

  Luke grinned. “I’d say that’s your best bet.”

  Clint regarded his prospective father-in-law hopefully. “Do you honestly think it’ll work?”

  “In this family, reverse psychology is about the only thing that does. From the time she was an itty-bitty thing, Angie has been dead-set on going her own way, just the way I did. She couldn’t wait to get away from Adams territory so she could prove she was her own woman.”