The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (6 page)

***

Natalie cracked an egg on the side of the bowl and turned on the mixer. It required
a full minute of high beating after each egg or the pound cake would be heavy and
soggy.

She couldn’t imagine walking away from Joshua and she’d only had him two months. “Why
didn’t she take you with her?”

“She had aspirations about being an actress and a two-year-old doesn’t fit with that
image, and besides, Dad said that she was free to go but if she took me away from
Cedar Hill, he’d tie up the courts so bad, she’d never even see a settlement. He made
her a one-time very generous offer to leave me with him and she took it,” Lucas said.

“Did she become an actress?”

“No, but she did find a high-powered business executive and married him a couple of
years after she left the ranch,” he said.

“You ever see her again?”

“Oh, yes. She comes at Christmas every year. Her folks live over in Bells and she
comes home for a couple of days. When I was a little kid, Grady would take me over
there for an afternoon. She hasn’t set foot back on the ranch since she left. Nowadays,
we usually meet for lunch somewhere in Denison and spend an awkward hour together.”

What kind of mother only saw her child on Christmas? And why didn’t she come back
to the ranch?

Natalie finished beating the cake mixture and poured it into a loaf pan, slid it into
the oven, and refreshed his coffee cup before she sat down at the table. The tension
had eased slightly and the feeling between them loosely resembled what they’d had
on the Internet.

“Jack never remarried? Is Grady married?”

He shook his head. “Neither one. Dad said he learned his lesson and Grady swears he
learned from Dad’s mistake. Besides, he always said it took two of them workin’ full
time to raise me. An Allen man only gives his heart away one time. Gramps told me
that a long time ago along with the lecture that I’d best be damn sure I was giving
it to the right woman before I let go of it.”

His cell phone rang and he dug it out of his shirt pocket.

“Sure thing. I’ll be right there.” He paused and listened some more, nodding when
he agreed and shaking his head when he didn’t.

“No, sir! She ran me off and they should be in the air by now, maybe even part of
the way to Memphis. Give me five minutes to get my coat on and drive down there.”

He pushed back the chair. “Hold down the fort, Josh. I’ve got to go check on a couple
of cows that aren’t acting right. Probably just need warming up in the barn, but if
they are ailin’, we’ll need to separate them from the herd.”

Natalie held in the excitement, but it wasn’t easy. He’d actually talked to the baby.
It was one tiny step in the right direction, and it hadn’t even grated on her nerves
that he called the baby Josh instead of Joshua. When she’d had him, she’d declared
to her parents and her brothers that he was to be called by his full name, not Josh
or a nickname like Buddy or Little Man.

Lucas opened the back door and two cows were right there. One was on the porch and
immediately stuck her head in the door and looked around until she caught sight of
Joshua, then be damned if that critter didn’t smile.

Natalie shooed at it with a tea towel. “What the hell? Do you let cows in the house?”

“Never known them to do that before.” Lucas grabbed the heifer by the ears and pushed,
but the other cow had her head up and was telling the whole world that she was not
moving.

“First dogs and now cows. Are you sure these animals aren’t used to coming in the
house?” Natalie asked.

“Hell, no! Shit, I don’t know what’s wrong with them. Move along now, you stupid…”
Lucas yelled.

He couldn’t get the cows out, but somehow three puppies ran through their legs and
into the house, headed straight for Josh, tumbling over their big paws and growling
at each other on the way.

The baby kicked and cooed at them just like the last time, but this time the runt
grabbed the toes of one of his socks and pulled until it came off. Joshua wiggled
his toes and thought the whole fiasco was something funny.

Natalie picked up the baby and the puppies stayed so close to her that she had to
be careful or she would have tripped.

“Damn dogs and cows,” Lucas growled. “I wish I was back in Kuwait.”

“Temper, temper!” Natalie scolded. “Are those old cows that maybe missed you while
you were gone? Or else they got into the yard and think this is the barn. And these
puppies have taken up with me since I’ve been here. That’s why they keep running toward
the house. You just need to get their pen fixed better.”

“They’re just cows, Natalie. I don’t know why they’re trying to get in the house,
but there’s no way they can get any more than their heads through the door. And I
may give every one of those pups away to the nearest neighbor whether he wants them
or not.”

Natalie finally reached the door. “Look, baby boy. Grandma never let a cow in the
house, but they do here.”

“I told you…” Lucas started but stopped when the cow sniffed at Joshua and then backed
out of the door. She swiftly traded places with the other heifer, which poked her
head in the door, sniffed the baby, and then contentedly backed down the steps.

“I’ll be damned.” Lucas scratched his head.

“It made Joshua smile and coo. I think he liked the cows. I know he likes the puppies,
but you better get them out of here because they’re stealing toys and socks.”

“Come on, you mangy rascals.” Lucas gathered them all up in his big arms and disappeared
out into the snow. “I’ve still got to go see what’s going on in the north pasture.
We’ll be in at dinner if not before. Must be this storm that’s got everything spooked,”
he said.

She was folding a load of baby clothes that she’d tossed in the washer after the men
had all cleared out that morning when her phone rang. The ring tone said that it was
her Aunt Leah, and she answered on the second ring.

“Are you on the way? Are the roads slick?” Leah asked.

“No, I’m not on the way. The roads are slick and it’s still coming down. He came home
last night.” Natalie put a cup of water into the microwave for hot tea as she talked.

“And?”

“It was very awkward.”

“I told you to tell him about Joshua.”

“I know, and he was very angry, but we’ve talked today and I’m staying. I promised
Hazel that I’d stay until Christmas. How long can you hold off the army?”

“I don’t know. Debra called all worked up because Joshua really smiled and she didn’t
get to see it and she asked me if I’d seen it yet and made me promise to take pictures
of the two of you and send to her. Now how are we going to handle that one? If you
send photos, she’ll be able to tell from the background that they damn sure aren’t
in my house,” Leah said.

Debra and Leah were twin sisters, born in Goodnight, Texas, and looked the same up
until Debra had four kids. Now she was twenty pounds heavier than her sister who’d
opted for a career instead of a family. Leah kept her brown hair dyed a rich chestnut.
Debra let the tendency toward early graying shine right on through. Leah worked as
an economics professor at the college in Conway and lived in a gated community on
the south side of town in a new modern home. Debra still lived on the ranch where
Jimmy Clark took her as a bride almost thirty years before. And Leah knew all about
Lucas and the relationship that had budded over the Internet. Debra didn’t even know
that Lucas existed.

“I’ll handle it,” Natalie said.

“You’d better tell her pretty soon, girl. She’s going to know something isn’t right
and I’ll be the one in the crosshairs.”

Natalie giggled. “And she don’t waste ammo.”

“Never has before, so I don’t expect her to start now. So now tell me about him. Is
he as handsome as you thought?”

Natalie swallowed hard. “Yes, he is.”

She told Leah the whole story about him coming home and finding her with a pistol
in her hand and how he had reacted to Joshua. When she hung up, it seemed like she’d
talked for an hour, but the clock said it had only been a few minutes.

She wasn’t sure about the dinner schedule on Cedar Hill compared to the one at her
father’s ranch, but at a quarter to noon, Jack, Grady, and Lucas all pushed inside
the house. Evidently, they did things the same way her family did. Breakfast by six
in the morning. Dinner at noon. Supper at six in the evening.

“Man, this place smells good,” Grady said. “Is that yeast bread I smell?”

“Pot roast isn’t worth much if you haven’t got hot bread to eat with it.” She smiled.

“Give us a few minutes to get washed up,” Jack said.

When they took their places around the table, Grady and Jack’s hair had been combed
back and their faces were shiny clean. Lucas’s big hands were still semi-wet like
he’d washed them well and barely touched the towel. He looked at the dinner table
like he could hardly believe all the food in front of him.

Joshua was content in the portable swing she’d set up close to the table. Everything
fascinated him and he brought out his big toothless grin when he heard male voices.

“If the click of the swing is bothersome…” she started.

“Hey, that ain’t nothing to complain about,” Grady butted in. “Kind of nice to have
a baby in the house again. We ain’t had that since Lucas was little. They’ve sure
enough come up with fancy things since then. When he was that size, we ate dinner
with him sittin’ on Jack’s or my knee.”

“He going to be smart.” Jack helped his plate and passed bowls to Lucas. “You can
tell by his bright eyes. I bet he’s walkin’ a long time before he’s a year old.”

“I see a pound cake back there on the cabinet,” Grady said.

Jack nudged Lucas with his elbow. “Had a dinner like this since you left home?”

Lucas shook his head and piled potatoes and carrots on his plate. “No, and I’m hungry.”

“You eat all that, you won’t have room for pound cake and peaches,” Jack teased.

“That means I get his cake, right?” Grady asked.

“You got that pistol handy, Natalie?” Lucas asked.

“Keep it ready,” she answered.

“Anyone touches my cake, you shoot to kill.”

He had no idea that he had just handed her the moon, the stars, and maybe even the
sun. The man that had comforted her after Drew’s death and who’d carried on an Internet
relationship with her was back.

“Momma taught me not to waste ammo. I could just break their arms,” she said.

Jack threw back his head and guffawed. “If that didn’t sound just like Hazel.”

“Well, thank you,” Natalie said. “I didn’t get to know her, but what little time we
visited, I got the impression that she was a pistol.”

“Oh, honey,” Lucas looked across the table and locked gazes with her, “Hazel ain’t
a pistol. She’s a big-assed double-barreled shotgun.”

The energy between them sizzled so loudly that she wondered if Jack and Grady could
hear it too. It had that strange eerie feeling that came five minutes before a tornado
hit. Noise was all around them, but they were in a vacuum with no sounds but the flutter
of their hearts. His eyes bored into hers and she could hear the storm coming closer
and closer. She’d never had a man strip her totally naked just by looking into her
eyes.

She blinked and looked at Joshua. When she chanced a look back at Lucas, he was loading
his plate with roast and potatoes.

The hardwood floor in the hallway was cold enough to make Natalie wish she’d dug a
pair of socks out of her suitcase. She reached for the old-fashioned glass knob on
the bathroom door, but it was locked. She whipped around to do a fast tiptoe back
to her room and the door flew open.

“Next,” Lucas drawled.

She stopped and looked over her shoulder. The scent of men’s soap, musky shaving lotion,
and minty toothpaste all combined and again created that crazy feeling of a storm
on the way. Moist, warm air flowed out of the room, but it did little to warm her
chilled feet. She had to remember to drag out the fuzzy house shoes or at least put
on socks in the morning.

“Good mornin’,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”

“Doesn’t matter how long you take. Dad’s already been in here and he’s out with Grady
doing some early morning chores. So it’s all yours.”

She shoved her hand into her pocket. Touching the baby monitor should have grounded
her back into reality and taken her mind off that dark red towel slung low around
his waist and what was beneath it. She should be thinking of Joshua and not wondering
what it would be like to run her hands over that acre of bulging muscles on his chest.

He propped an arm against the doorjamb and looked at her. “Did you sleep well?”

Her hair probably looked like it had been combed with a hay rake. She hadn’t brushed
her teeth yet and her nightshirt was five years old and faded. Was he truly being
nice or was he telling her that she looked like hell?

“Joshua was only up once through the night, so it was a good one,” she answered.

“That’s good,” he said.

Holy shit! She was blocking the door and the hallway. He probably felt like a bull
penned up in a cattle trailer. She stood to the side to let him pass and his shoulder
brushed against her breasts. A flannel nightshirt separated soft skin from hard muscles,
but the air in the hallway still crackled and fizzled around them like embers in a
red-hot fireplace.

Mother Nature was a bitch.

It wasn’t fair for her to turn all the pheromones on the whole planet of Venus loose
in the small confines of a hallway in a ranch house in Savoy, Texas. Or that Mother
Nature had dropped a man with all the testosterone of Mars right there in the same
place. There was sure to be a war of the planets. Would the house be standing when
it was finished, or would the bed sheets be on fire?

It was only four weeks and she could get through the days by reminding herself that
when Christmas came, he was going to owe her one helluva paycheck.

His back was to her when she took the next step into the bathroom. Her cold foot got
tangled up in a throw rug in front of the vanity. One second she was thinking about
what it would be like to kiss him, the next she hoped that the fall didn’t break her
nose when she hit the edge of the claw-foot tub as she fell forward.

Shit! Momma will kill me if I die in this place. She doesn’t even know about Lucas!

She was suddenly jerked to an upright position. She hit his chest with a force that
reminded her of the first time she shot her dad’s thirty-caliber Argentine Mauser
rifle. It kicked the shit out of her shoulder. Slamming against Lucas’s chest came
close to knocking the breath right out of her just like the rifle had that first time.

She looked up and noticed there were gold flecks in his brown eyes. Her hands were
on his chest. Her gut twisted up in a pretzel and those pesky pheromones began to
dance around a bonfire right there in the middle of her stomach. Mother Nature had
not redeemed herself at all. She’d just shown Natalie what she could never have.

She was about to thank him for saving her and wiggle free of his embrace when she
realized that his eyes were going all fuzzy and closing very slowly, leaving heavy
black lashes to rest against his high cheekbones. She barely had time to moisten her
lips and then boom! The whole earth spun around like a merry-go-round. She couldn’t
think or breathe; she could only feel. And the passion was blistering hot!

She’d known it would be. There had never been a doubt in all those months that she
was drawn to the computer screen every night that if they met, the attraction would
be strong and the heat sizzling. But in her imaginary world, he would feel the same
way.

Yes, ma’am, Mother Nature was a coldhearted bitch. And Fate was her mean old sister.

Natalie did not want to open her eyes when the kiss ended. She wanted to stay in that
make-believe world where he would pick her up and carry her off to bed. But the whimpering
on the monitor in her pocket brought her back to reality with a thump.

“I’ll put the coffee on,” he drawled.

She barely nodded. Her brain was still in a mushy state, so words were not possible
anyway. If she’d had to speak or eat dirt, she’d have gone to the kitchen and gotten
a spoon.

He stepped out of the bathroom and was gone. She shut the door, put the lid down on
the potty, and sat down. She’d only come close to fainting one time in her entire
life and that was the day she looked at the pregnancy stick and it showed positive.
She put her head between her knees and inhaled deeply several times. The walls stopped
weaving and the floor settled back down where it belonged.

Hellfire! If one kiss could do that, what would happen if they ever…

She didn’t let herself finish the thought.

***

Lucas’s hands shook when he pulled on his jeans and snowy white T-shirt. He wasn’t
going to ever acknowledge that baby or even talk to him. But hell, he was Drew’s kid,
and Drew was dead and he owed his old buddy that much. Besides, he was so damn stinkin’
cute that no one could resist him. Not totally unlike his mother, who had just turned
every testosterone jet loose in his body with that kiss. Lucas had figured kissing
her would be pretty damn great; he hadn’t expected to hear bells and whistles and
see stars.

His hands were still trembling when he buttoned the plaid flannel shirt he had dug
out of his closet. Sex had never brought on such turmoil in his body, much less a
single kiss. Granted, it had been a year since he’d touched a woman. Maybe that was
the problem. He just needed a good rousing bout of sex so that a kiss wouldn’t turn
him into a jiggling mess of nerves.

He’d been born and raised in the house, so he knew his way around every piece of furniture
without turning on a light. The hallway opened into the living room of that end of
the house. A doorway to the left took him into the kitchen. He rounded the end of
the table and stumbled over the baby swing, knocking it over and almost sending him
into a headlong fall toward the stove.

“Dammit!” he swore as he set it up again.

He’d endure the swing and even learn to walk around it, but if he stepped on one of
those slimy teething things on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night,
he’d fire Natalie on the spot. He didn’t care what the family said or how hard they
begged.

He flipped on a light to be sure there wasn’t anything else between him and the coffeepot.
Cussing must be good for the soul, because his hands were steady as a rock when he
turned on the water for coffee and stared out the kitchen window.

The sky was still gray, but there was nothing falling. The thermometer outside the
window fluttered around the twenty-degree mark, which meant what was on the ground
wasn’t melting off that day.

The coffeepot gurgled to a stop as Natalie and Joshua made it to the kitchen. She
smothered the baby’s face with kisses and put him in the swing, wound it up, and kissed
him one more time. “See, I told you if you ate all your green eggs and hams, you could
go to Six Flags this morning.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Lucas pulled two cups out of the cabinet
and filled both. “I don’t cook, but I make a mean pot of coffee.”

“Strong?” she asked.

He held a steaming mug out toward her. “Oh, yeah. It has to make your eyes flash tilt
to be good coffee. Green eggs and ham? Oh, you read Dr. Seuss to him, right? And the
swing is like an amusement park ride. I get it now.”

“That’s pretty close to what Daddy says about good strong coffee.”

Their fingertips brushed in the transfer and his hand was hotter than the steaming
coffee in the mug she held. Her touch hadn’t produced as much blistering fire as there
had been in that scorching kiss that came near to blowing that red towel right off
his body. But it was going to be a long, long month if every time he accidentally
touched her, he was aroused to the point of pain.

He was a rough cowboy and a soldier. He had nerves of steel. He could do his job in
the desert or on a ranch, and he was good at both.

“Got a preference for breakfast this morning?” Natalie busied herself getting stuff
out of the refrigerator.

“Omelets and waffles,” he said quickly to take his mind off her lips.

Her head bobbed once.

“So you like to cook?”

He stopped by the swing and touched the baby’s cheek. He expected a grin, but Josh
latched on to his finger and stared right at him as if sizing him up. Did babies know
more than adults thought they did? The boy’s eyes didn’t blink for several seconds,
and Lucas wondered what he really thought of the folks at Cedar Hill Ranch.

Natalie took bowls from the cabinet and turned on the oven. “Momma can’t boil water.
Aunt Leah, her twin sister, is the cook in the family. There were just the two of
them, and Aunt Leah hated getting her hands dirty, so she learned to cook when she
was young so she could stay out of the fields. You know what folks say about it taking
both twins to make a whole. I believe it. They are as different as night and day and
yet when one of them is in trouble or sick, the other one knows before anyone says
a word. Aunt Leah never married, but she’s a gourmet cook. Momma married, had four
kids, and Daddy hired a cook and housekeeper instead of a field hand. She can work
all day outside the house and supervise a crew both inside and out, but she doesn’t
cook or clean.”

“And you?”

She plugged in the waffle iron and the red light on top came on. “Daddy said I had
to learn both worlds.”

“Which one do you like best?”

She pulled the egg basket from the refrigerator. “Neither when I was younger. All
I wanted to do was coach basketball and teach. But after three years of that, I decided
farming wasn’t so bad. When I wasn’t rehired at the school, Daddy hired me to work
on the ranch. But Momma stole me to help our cook pretty often.”

“And your brothers?”

“You’ve got one up on them. They can’t even make coffee, but they’re all married to
women who are hell on wheels in the kitchen.”

He smiled. “You are the oldest, though, right?”

“Yes, I am. Momma had me and two years later she had Isaac, then the next year Jarrett
came along, and Shawn the year after that. Four kids in five years. They’re all married
and ranchin’ with Daddy. Shawn just got married last week.”

“I remember you telling me that. How was the wedding?”

She cracked eggs in the bowl, added a splash of milk, then salt and pepper. “Beautiful.
His bride comes from the next cotton farm up the road. She had a Christmas wedding
even though it’s still a month away.”

Jack rounded the doorjamb and zeroed in on the coffeepot. He poured a cup, took several
sips, and then sat down at the end of the table close to the baby’s swing.

“Good mornin’, sunshine! Did you sleep well last night or did you keep your pretty
mommy up? Did you know that today me and your Uncle Grady are going to bring the Christmas
tree in out of the barn and set it up? You’ll love the lights, I betcha. And if you
could reach those shiny ornaments, you’d be trying to put them in your mouth.”

Joshua cooed and waved his hands around.

“Yes, sir, with those very hands. It won’t be long until your hands will be big enough
to hang on to a pony’s reins. By then you won’t care as much about Christmas tree
stuff.”

“You’re putting up a tree today?” Natalie asked.

“We usually get it out of the box the day after Thanksgiving, but Hazel said we had
to wait until Lucas got home. We’re already a week late and this blasted weather is
keeping us from doing much else, so this is the day.”

Lucas had never shared the ritual of putting up the tree with anyone but his dad,
Grady, and Hazel.

“But,” he started.

Jack held up a palm and shot a look that said
enough
across the table. “Can’t have a party without a tree, can we?”

A rooster crowed and something hit the kitchen window. Lucas looked up just in time
to see the rooster try to light on the casing, fail, and flop back to the ground.

“What the hell?” Lucas headed for the door. “Did you leave the hen house door open,
Natalie?”

She popped both hands on her hips. “I’m a ranchin’ woman. I double-check things like
that.”

He opened the door and more than a dozen big Rhode Island Red hens flocked into the
house. He slammed the door shut, but not before the three puppies rushed inside with
the rooster right behind them, squawking when he left a few tail feathers behind.

“Holy shit!” Henry yelled. “What did you do, Lucas?”

Chickens were everywhere. Puppies chased them, biting at their tails and spitting
feathers out in their wake. Grady and Jack jumped up and chased the dogs, but they
were wet from the snow and no one could get a grip on the slick little devils. Men,
chickens, and dogs all in a blur with Natalie trying to get to Joshua before a stupid
chicken flew at him and hurt her baby.

The rooster flew over everyone and roosted right there on top of Joshua’s swing, like
the king of the mountain daring the puppies to try to get him. He fluffed up his feathers,
threw back his head, and crowed in his loudest voice. One hen followed his lead, settled
down in Joshua’s lap, wiggled around until she was comfortable, tucked her head under
her wing, and shut her eyes.