Baby by Midnight?

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “I take it Uncle Dex isn’t offering you much in the way of cash.”

  “Uncle Dex has been very generous. He’s selling me his practice at a very reasonable price and, except for the pastureland, which he’s keeping, he threw in this house and the rest of the buildings for much less than he could have gotten from somebody else. If he hadn’t, I’d probably still be living in my office.”

  “He should have given you the whole place, lock, stock and barrel.”

  The lines around her mouth told him she wouldn’t discuss her uncle. “He gave me more than I can ever repay when he took me in after my parents died. I know he’s gruff and on the critical side, but he’s all the family I have, and he’s never been anything but kind to me from the start.”

  Dex Thatcher wasn’t an easy man to describe, but kind wouldn’t have made anybody’s short list of adjectives. He’d agreed to take his orphaned eight-year-old niece as soon as he heard it was his place or foster care. But providing food, clothing and a roof over her head seemed to have been the extent of his commitment. It was a wonder Annie had turned out as well as she did. “I wish I could—”

  “You can’t, Alex. I’m lucky to have what I have, and believe me, I know it.” Her eyes fixed on him, her words came clear, concise and steady. “I’m happy with my life just the way it is.” She paused, then repeated, “Exactly the way it is.”

  It was pointless to tell her she needed him. He’d have to prove it to her a little at a time. Like with the green beans. She may have picked out most of them, but he’d wager she’d eaten enough to do her some good. He was good for Annie, too. No matter how much she protested, no matter how many imaginary Peace Corps heroes she made up. She needed him and he was staying in her life...and in his son’s. “Does that mean you want me to leave the dishes the way they are?” he asked. “Because it won’t break my heart to jump right into the painting.”

  She almost managed to disguise a sigh, but he knew her too well, knew that somehow in that moment of suggesting an unsavory truth, he’d lost a good piece of the ground it’d taken him all evening to gain. “Go take care of your horse, Mclntyre. I’ll do the dishes and save the painting for another day.”

  “Koby is already set for the night I did that while the meat loaf was cooking.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves and began washing a plate, sorry he’d given her an opening for any other option. “I’ll have your kitchen spick-and-span quicker than two shakes of a heifer’s tail.”

  “Alex?” She reached over and took hold of the dishrag in his hand. “I’d really rather do it myself, thanks. Besides, you know they’re waiting for you out at the ranch, wondering what’s keeping you.”

  “If the Bison City grapevine is as solid as its reputation, they know where I am, who I’m with and how much I weigh—with and without my boots on.” He held on to the dishrag, but she held on, too, and dishwater dripped into the sink and ran down his arm in soapy rivulets. “I’m not leaving the dishes for you, Annie, so forget it. It’ll only take a few minutes to do them.”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. “Not sick. I can wash dishes. I do it every day.”

  “So this is one day you don’t have to. Read a magazine or something. Take a bath. Wash your hair. Go back to doing whatever you did while I was cooking. I don’t care, just please let me wash the dishes tonight.” He didn’t know why it seemed so important, but staying in her kitchen a little while longer seemed tantamount to staying in her life from now on. Plus, he didn’t really want to go home. Matt would only want to talk about cutting horses, breeding and training them, and Alex wanted only to talk about Annie. No, scratch that. He wanted to talk to her. All night. All day tomorrow. Until she admitted under oath that her baby was his, and his baby hers. He wanted to touch her stomach and feel the puff of movement that meant his son was there and growing. He wanted to kiss her, too. To taste the remembered sweetness of her lips and let her know he still found her desirable. More now than ever. He wanted to hold her in his arms while she slept and he wanted to fix her coffee—no, caffeine in any form was probably not a good idea—milk, then. He’d fix her a glass of hot milk—even though that sounded plenty disgusting now, much less first thing in the morning. But whatever she wanted, he’d fix for her. Breakfast? No problem. Well, it wouldn’t be, once he replenished her cupboards and refrigerator, filled in the gap between empty and what few canned goods the last renter must have left behind. Whatever it took, he just wanted to be here with her and make up for all the times he hadn’t been. “Let me finish what I started here” is what he said.

  She let go of the dishrag, and her end dropped like a rock into the water, splashing soap suds across the front of his shirt. “If you insist.” Wiping her hands on the dish towel, she tossed it onto the counter next to the sink. “I’ll go over to the clinic and check on Loosey.”

  “Sick goose?” he asked, tearing his thoughts away from her lips...the soft, kissable curve of her lips.

  “Loosey is your dog, Alex. Remember?”

  “I thought his name was Footless.”

  “Her name is Footloose. Loosey, for short,” she corrected, patting his arm as if he were a forgetful old fool who couldn’t remember the name of a dog...or the way a woman’s naked body felt wrapped around his.

  He brought his hand out of the water and laid it, wet and warning, over hers. “You’re not flirting with me, are you, Annie?”

  Awareness flashed in the depths of her green eyes, and beneath his palm her skin felt heated and taut. But she didn’t let on like she noticed, didn’t even pull her hand away from his. Instead, she gave her thick red hair a toss and smiled up at him, serenely and sensuously, obviously brave in the face of his considerable cowboy charm. “Now, why would I do something that stupid, Alex, when I’ve already told you I’m in love with someone else.”

  He smiled back, unfazed by her boast. “Oh, right. The hero. Does this Peace Corps paragon have a name?”

  “Yes,” she said, “he does.” Then easily withdrawing from his touch, she waltzed over to the cabinet where the canned goods were kept, reshuffled the vegetables, and pulled the bag of Hershey’s Kisses from behind a very large, very dusty can of green beans. Tossing her prize in the air, she caught it with one hand and headed for the door. “I’d offer to share my dessert,” she said. “But there’s only enough left for me. You can have an orange, though, if you can find one.”

  Then she sashayed out the door, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the dirty dishes.

  Chapter Four

  “You get in this house right this minute!” Willie was motioning to Alex from beneath the soft yellow light of the back porch even before he braked the pickup to a complete stop. It was funny, he thought, how over the years her hair had gone gray, she’d picked up a few wrinkles and a few more pounds, but what she yelled was word for word the same, with merely a change in the prime directive. You get in this house right this minute...and eat your dinner! You get in this house right this minute... and clean your room! You get in this house right this minute...and do your chores...finish your homework...put some hot chocolate in your belly! Rain or shine. Trouble or good graces. Willie’s You get in this house right this minute...had called him home a million times.

  Home.

  Newly capped in faraway white, the Bighorns faded into the gray-blue distance, a view Alex privately believed Mother Nature had sculpted exclusively for him. In every other direction plains rolled into the crescendo of darkness, a muted carpet of autumn color blending into a winter night. Livestock in coats growing shaggy and coarse were dark shapes in the pasture, some still and sleeping, some in search of leftover summer grasses. A crisp breeze heckled the trees and plants in passing, bending close to whisper, “Cold weather coming. Sleep, sleep.”

  It mattered not that night had fallen, Alex knew this country like the inside of his skin. He knew it by dawn and dark and every hour in between. He knew it through each season, through sun and rain, storm and snow. Each time he returned, each time
he was here in this spot, halfway between the wild, wild west and modern civilization, sitting in whatever vehicle he happened to have parked between the S-J barns and the ranch house, back from wherever it was he’d been, Alex knew with the force of an arrow through the center of his soul that he was home.

  “What are you yelling about, Wilhemina?” He grinned at her as he grabbed his duffel and slammed the pickup door. “Can’t you see I’m home?”

  “You get in this house right this minute and hug my neck!” She shifted from foot to foot, bobbing with excitement as he strode up the steps two at a time to reach the porch. Then he was being hugged within an inch of his life, surrounded by her welcome and the tea rose fragrance she’d worn since birth. Well, his birth, anyway.

  “It’s about time you got here,” she said, smiling with toothy happiness, wiping a trace of a tear from under her blue eyes. “Josie called about six-thirty wantin’ to talk to you, and that’s the first I knew you were coming home.” She gripped his arm with both hands and steered him inside the house. “Where’ve you been, young’un? I put a plate up for you, saved back a hunk of my Sin-Full chocolate cake. You’re hungry, I expect, after that long trip.”

  He could hardly break her heart by telling her he hadn’t driven straight through from Texas without a stop. “Are you kidding? I could probably put away that whole cake and still have room for the crumbs.” He hugged her ample waist, untying her apron sash in the process, but when he tried to fix it, she batted him away and simply took the apron off.

  “You’re not company,” she said. “But I guess as how I can take off my apron and sit a spell all the same. Now you sit down and I’ll get you that cake.”

  Alex sat, taking his usual place at the long, pinewood table, inhaling the scents, absorbing the familiar sights, relaxing into the memories of growing from child to man in this kitchen. The whole S-J Ranch house had been modernized over the years, added on to and made more convenient as the McIntyre legacy grew. But the kitchen was still oversize, the heart of the home, the place for family meetings and meals, the one room where ranch hands and family blended into one entity, the ranch.

  He loved the smells of hearty food that had assimilated into the walls for nearly eighty years, the weathered cedar beams stained dark from the heat of cooking so many meals. As a child, he’d spent a lot of time in the corner of this room, doing penance for one boyish misdeed or another. He was convinced that’s why he liked to cook: he’d experienced it through all five senses, just being in the room. Even when under strict orders to keep his nose pressed to the knothole in the wall, he’d listened to the sounds of Willie making dinner, telling him how to peel a potato or make a gravy, doing her level best to keep his mind off his sins, talking because she liked having him there, or more likely, because she thought boys needed as much comfort as penance. He’d heard voices in the walls, made up tall tales, imagined a hundred outlaws busting through the doorway to steal Willie’s good grub before they went out to rob the train. Or hang. He’d always had a certain fascination with crime and punishment.

  “Your room’s ready,” Willie announced as she pushed a plate toward him. A plain plate except for what looked like a half pound of chocolate cake weighting it down. “I invited Josie and Justin to come out for dinner Friday night. Jeff, too, if he can get away from that hotel he insists on livin’ in. I’m fixing your favorite meal, too, so don’t you go tellin’ me you can’t stay through the weekend.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her he was staying until she got tired of him and kicked him out, but the words hung in his throat. The ranch belonged to Matt No matter that the property deed stated he, Jeff and Josie were partial owners, too. The S-J was a place Alex visited, like Disneyland or New York City. A place he came back to. A place he left from. Not the place he could hang his hat. As good as it felt to be home and have Willie fuss over him, he didn’t really want to be here.

  He wanted to be in the run-down house next door to the Thatcher clinic. He wanted to be with Annie. “If you’re making my favorite meal, Willie, I’d be plum loco not to stay, wouldn’t I?”

  She hovered near the table, delighted just to watch him. “Don’t go givin’ me your double-talk, bucko. What I want to hear is that you’re flat tired of travelin’ around, sleepin’ in barns, eating food not fit for pig slop, and you’re finally ready to settle down and stay put where you were meant to be all along.”

  He gave her the smile he saved just for her. “One day, Wilhemina, I’m gonna make you sorry you made that wish.”

  She set her hands on her hips and watched as he made a show of digging into the rich chocolate cake. “I’d sure like to see you try.”

  “Would you look what came in with the cat!” Matt McIntyre walked in from outside, tossed his hat onto a hatrack where it swung lazily, perfectly hooked. Just once, Alex would have liked to see that hat hit the floor, but it never did. Not even during the worst times, the years following the accident when Matt’s wife and unborn baby were killed. Scooping more of the Sin-Full cake into his mouth, he watched Matt walk to the table, pull out a chair, turn it around and straddle it, facing in. “How ya doin, Tex?”

  Why was it big brothers always had to remind you they were older, tougher, and smarter just in the way they asked a simple question? What was it about Matt that always had Alex feeling like a runny-nosed, cow-licked, scrawny kid? “Doing fine, Wy. Heard the one about the rancher and the dumb blonde?”

  Matt grinned. “Can’t say I have.”

  “That’s because there isn’t a blonde dumb enough to hook up with a rancher.”

  “Ha, ha. I guess it was too much trouble to pick up the phone and let us know you were heading our way?”

  “Nah, it wouldn’t have been any trouble at all, but I wanted it to be a surprise. You know how I hate those ‘kill the fatted calf shindigs. Besides, you knew I’d be home sometime this fall.” He licked the fork and faced the moment of truth. “I bought the stallion.”

  Matt’s eyes lit up. “Which one? The King line or the Diamond Cut?”

  “Bloodline isn’t everything.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s a lot” Matt hesitated, went on, “well, Jeff and I trust your judgment on this. You’re the expert.”

  “Glad you feel that way. This horse is Texas born and bred, and he doesn’t know his family connections are nothin’ to write home about, so I don’t want you telling him.”

  “If he can speak English, his sire must’ve been Mr. Ed.”

  “He’s out of Blue’s Symphony by Polar Express and don’t bother poring over your breeding charts ’cause you won’t like what you find. But I promise you, Kodiak Blue speaks the language of cows as if he’s part Hereford. He’s entered in the Midwestern Cutting Horse futurity, and when he wins in December, our breeding program is going to hit the ground running.”

  Although there was no discernible shift in posture, Matt tensed. Alex. could practically feel it creep across the table toward him. “Kodiak Blue?” Matt repeated. “Isn’t that Chase Ramsey’s horse? The one he shouldn’t have been able to give away after last year’s Congress?”

  That was one way of putting it, Alex supposed. “Ramsey is a fool and he nearly ruined Koby trying to turn him into something he isn’t.”

  “But you’re gonna turn him into a champion. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  The tension reached Alex, settled in like a dull headache. “Yeah, big brother. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “Well, now...” Willie knew when trouble was brewing and what she could do to defuse it. “You want a piece of cake, Matt? There’s plenty. How ’bout a glass of milk, Alex? Or another piece of cake for you?”

  “No, thanks.” Alex was proud of himself for holding his brother’s gaze and not backing down. He was right this time, damn it. Let Matt be the one to look away. But when he finally did, Alex didn’t feel much in the way of relief. “My appetite isn’t all I thought it was, Willie. Must be the excitement of being home.”

/>   Matt shook his head to let Willie know he didn’t want cake—and that there wasn’t going to be a family brawl. “What happened to your Jeep?”

  “Sold it. Brought that magnificent vehicle parked outside. Didn’t you see it on your way in?”

  The grin returned to Matt’s face, strained but passable. “I saw it. Figured you wrecked the Jeep and were in too big a hurry to get home to replace it with a decent truck.”

  “There’s a damn good engine under that rusty hood.” Alex stretched the truth a bit rather than open himself up to more criticism. “And it’s the only thing I could find big enough to haul the horse trailer I bought. Wait’ll you see it.”

  “If it goes with the pickup and the horse, I can only imagine.”

  Had he made so many bad choices that Matt didn’t believe him capable of making a right one? “Koby didn’t seem to mind it,” he said tightly.

  “So you brought the horse with you?”

  “It’d be kinda hard to train him long-distance.”

  “I realize that, knucklehead.” Matt cuffed him on the shoulder, trying to restore camaraderie. “What I’m trying to figure out is what you did with him.”

  “Left the horse and the trailer at Thatcher’s clinic.” Alex pushed the plate away and Willie whisked it out of sight. “Stopped there on my way into town this afternoon.”

  A momentary pause criss-crossed the room, boomeranged between Matt and the housekeeper and was gone. “You stopped to see Annie?” Willie asked in a rush of curiosity she obviously couldn’t stop.

  “Something wrong with the horse?” Matt asked just as quickly.

  “No.” Alex answered both at once, then decided he might as well go ahead and explain. They’d just pester him with questions until he did. “I found an injured dog about fifty miles out and took her in to the clinic. Finding Annie there was a surprise. You’d think somebody would have told me she’d taken over old Dex’s practice.”