And Baby Makes Five (12 page)

Lilly didn’t have to wonder but a moment about what had happened to the big horse. Samantha trotted out of the barn and stopped beside the cedar swing, threw her head back and let out a loud
Eee-haw.

“Oh, no! I should have known you’d be up to no good,” Lilly groaned, swinging her truck into the drive and heading toward her impossible ward before she let the entire stable loose. Sometimes she wished Leroy had taken the donkey with him.

Then again, what would she do if she couldn’t see Samantha? She did love the little minx.

Cort knew the moment he saw Lilly’s old truck that something was amiss. It took only one guess what
Miss
that might be when he opened the door of his truck and Loser bounded off the seat and scurried off around the far corner of the barn, barking. Loser barked at only one thing. Samantha.

What had the donkey done now?

He found Lilly standing with one hand on her hip, the other wrapped around a rake, and by the look on her face, he could tell she was ready for him to jump down her throat. And he might have a few weeks earlier. Sucking in a breath, he surveyed the damage and willed his temper down. Lilly obviously thought this was her fault, and she looked so contrite and cute at the same time he wanted to take her in his arms and soothe her feelings.

He was always wanting to take her in his arms…and that wasn’t going to happen. He had to get a grip. He had to get out of this trap his heart was setting for him, or he was a doomed man heading for more heartbreak.

When he spied the baby carrier sitting on the bench next to the wash bay, his heart slipped another notch into the snare. He didn’t want to look at Joshua. Ever since he’d held the boy, Cort hadn’t been able to think straight. He’d continued to see that sad smile on Lilly’s lips. He could think of nothing other than that she wanted a houseful of children—and he could never give her what she wanted.

This attraction he felt for her didn’t make sense. There was no way that he could feel, this quickly, the things his heart was trying to tell him he was feeling.

No way.

But he was drawn to the baby just as he was drawn to Lilly. And his heart ached, knowing he was no good for them, knowing they were right down the road from him, but feeling they were as far away as the moon. It had been all he could do to stay away. But he had. Now here they were, on his turf, tempting him with their wholesome lure.

Lilly stepped beside him and they quietly watched Joshua sleep for a moment. He was all bundled up, his little face barely visible. Cort’s heart swelled with longing for a family of his own. The nearness of Lilly, the scent of baby powder, reminded him even more of what he didn’t have.

“I like watching him sleep,” he said, fighting the feelings. It wasn’t bad enough that he wanted to wrap his arms around Lilly—he also wanted to reach out and touch the top of the baby’s head. To see if it still felt as soft as the muzzle of a horse, as he remembered. But he didn’t. Touching mother or child was going to do nothing but amplify the things he couldn’t allow himself to feel. Turning away, he strode to the pile of feed that littered the floor.

“Samantha did this, didn’t she?” The accusation came out harsher than he’d meant.

“I’m sorry. I saw her coming out as I was passing by.”

“I guess I’m gonna have to get the whip after the ole girl.” He tried to joke, to relieve the tension eating at him. It didn’t work. Lilly whirled toward him, eyes blazing fire.

“You wouldn’t dare! True, she’s being a pest, but don’t even think about hurting her. I promise this isn’t like her. She has never, never been this destructive.”

Her words cut him to the core. “After all we’ve been through, you think I’d really hurt Samantha?” At least she had the decency to look confused. “Lilly, I was just joking. I wouldn’t harm Samantha. I don’t know what’s going on with her, but after what she did for you the night Joshua was born, I wouldn’t be much of a man if I hurt her. But I’m not saying I haven’t been tempted to tie her to a tree.” He smiled.

“Oh,” she said in a breathy expulsion of air.

He reached for the rake she still held. When she didn’t let go, he raised an eyebrow at her.

“You can let go now. It looks like I came home in the nick of time.”

Lilly relinquished the rake, dropping her hands to fidget with the seams of her jeans. She was tired—he could see it in her eyes and in the set of her shoulders. Not that she would admit it. That would mean she was in need of help. He was quickly recognizing that she didn’t like to admit she needed anything.

“You don’t have any business out here trying to clean up a mess like this. Take Joshua and go on home.” His words were callous, but the need to protect her was overwhelming. The sooner she went home the better.

When she didn’t make a move to leave he dared to look more closely at her. Something more was wrong. The dark circles under her eyes told the story. She was more than tired. She was worn out. Maybe the baby wasn’t sleeping. He should have put his foolish feelings aside and gone back down there to help her out as he’d said he would. What kind of neighbor was he anyway? What kind of man was he?

She swallowed hard and shifted from one foot to the other.

“Samantha let one of your horses out.”

C
ort’s expression changed faster than she could blink. It was exactly what she’d feared. Why couldn’t he have come home an hour or so later? By then she would have located the horse, had everything cleaned up and been home resting with Joshua.

Cort swung around and spotted the empty stall. “Ringo! You know it had to be him,” he growled, stalking out of the stable, his expression dark. “Let me guess—he jumped the fence.”

Lilly trailed him, nearly running to keep up with him. When he got outside he halted abruptly and she promptly smacked into him.

“Sorry,” she said, backing away. “I was going to go after him as soon as I cleaned everything up.”

Samantha chose that moment to trot around the corner. She came to a skidding stop, slapped her big ears back against her head, lifted her upper lip, exposing her teeth, and grinned like a chimpanzee.

That was not the thing to do.

Cort snorted and walked past her, but Samantha followed right behind him. Loser trailed after the donkey, snapping at what was left of her tail. Those two were just begging for trouble. Shaking her head, Lilly backtracked to retrieve Joshua so they could tag along, too.

She shouldn’t have cleaned up Samantha’s mess first. She should have gone after the expensive horse. What if something happened to it? What would she do?

Please, Lord, let Ringo be okay.

But what could happen to the horse? He was just out joy running….

He’d already jumped one fence.

Oh, no! What if he was out jumping every fence he encountered? What if they couldn’t find him? It wasn’t normal for a horse to just jump fences. Did Ringo do this often or had he done it because of being spooked by Samantha? Oh, this wasn’t good.

“You don’t think he’d jump more fences, do you?” she asked, lifting a hesitant eyebrow when Cort stopped to look back at her.

“All the barbed wire in that section hasn’t been changed to pipe, and there are mares on the other side that he might try to get to. If he wants over there bad enough, then he might paw into the wire or run at it and harm himself. Ringo is pretty dense for a horse. If he got too anxious, yes, he might jump again.” He disappeared into the tack room, then reappeared a few seconds later with a halter and a rope. With Samantha still trailing him, he headed for his truck.

“Wait for me,” Lilly called, hurrying to catch up, struggling to lug the baby and carrier across the gravel drive.

“No! You go home,” Cort snapped, and pointed a long, blunt-nailed finger at Samantha. “And take this bag of trouble with you. It’s starting to look like a three-ring circus around here.”

Lilly bristled. “Do not tell me what to do, Cort Wells.”

Holding open the driver’s door, he stopped with one foot in the truck. Loser sailed past him onto the seat, rushing back and forth from him to the passenger’s door watching Lilly wrench open the rear door and lift Joshua into the truck.

“At least someone is glad to see us,” she muttered, reaching for the seat belt.

Cort stomped around the truck, and Lilly whirled to meet him. Slamming her hands on her hips, she glared up at him. Too tired to care whether he wanted her along or not, she wasn’t prepared for the way his nearness supercharged her pulse rate.

“Lilly, this is crazy. You need to take Joshua home and get him out of this weather. It’s getting colder and he’s probably hungry. If he isn’t now, then he will be before we get back.”

Now he was trying the bad-mother routine on her! “Wait right here and I’ll get his bag.”

“Lilly! Take the boy home.”

He was so irritating! What was the big deal about them going along? Did he dislike her company that much? Had she imagined that day she walked him to his truck that they were becoming friends? She fought the urge to concede and go home. But he needed her. Whether he thought so or not.

“Cort, what if Ringo gets cut? What if there’s blood?”

His eyes stilled, studying hers. His shoulders relaxed a bit as what she was saying sank in. Lilly could feel the tension that continued to radiate from him, but her words had hit their mark and he nodded.

“Get your diaper bag.” He took a step back, allowing her room to scoot past him. When her arm touched his, her mouth went dry. Her senses were getting crazy with fatigue.

Trying not to think too much about the sensations assaulting her, she snatched the diaper bag from her truck. Butterflies churned in the pit of her stomach as she made her way back to Cort. He waited beside her door, one hand resting on the top corner as he held it open for her. His other hand was stuck in his back pocket, one booted foot slightly out front, leaving his weight on the back leg. Lilly had seen a hundred other men stand the exact same way and none of them made her pulse skip. Only Cort could do that to her. He was just a man, she told herself. But no other man had ever caused her insides to melt.

She was tired.

That’s all it was.

When he reached and took her elbow, she nearly jumped into the seat from the sheer shock of his touch.

Tired. Tired. Tired. The man had touched her before. But this time she’d felt…something. She was tired.

“If I can’t beat you I guess I’ll have to let you join me.” His words slapped her in the face.

What was she kidding herself about? Obviously he got nothing out of touching her. “I reckon that’s right.” It took all she had to grit the words out as she stared straight ahead. What had she been thinking?

Electricity! Phooey! She was so tired she was just flat-out nutty. And that was all there was to it!

Cort drove through the pasture, figuring Ringo had headed straight toward the west boundary, where he knew he could get into some tomfoolery. He’d done this all the other times that Samantha had let him out, and thankfully, he had yet to get hurt acting silly over a bunch of females. What worried Cort the most was the show he had coming up next week. The last thing he needed were war scars on Ringo from another stallion or barbed-wire tears on his sides or his forelegs.

He should have already taken care of the fence.

Guilt swamped him.

You shouldn’t have been angry at Lilly.

“Look, Lilly, I shouldn’t have gotten angry like that. At you. I’m sorry.”

She was sitting rigidly in the seat beside him. Her chin was up as she scanned the pasture in the waning light. Cort’s insides were trembling just being near her.

“Fine,” she said with a faint nod of her head. “I’ll accept your apology if you’ll accept mine. I should have taken care of Samantha long ago.”

“I told you I’d fix it. And I didn’t.”

“No matter. Samantha is my responsibility, and I should never have told you I’d let you handle my problem.”

The woman had to be the most exasperating female he’d ever met. Stubborn, uncooperative—

“There’s Ringo!” Lilly exclaimed, pointing out across the pasture. “Oh, my! Cort, don’t look….”

Fainting wasn’t macho.

Not that he’d ever worried about that too much. But it was hard on a guy’s ego.

Since he’d known Lilly, it seemed that he’d spent more time on the ground than at any time in his life.

Thank goodness he hadn’t fainted this time. Only because it was twilight and Ringo’s coat was as dark as blood, and Lilly’s warning had given him time to say a prayer. God had been faithful.

Ringo’s injury turned out to be merely a deep scratch on his nose that bled profusely. Lilly might be stubborn and uncooperative, but she had a beautiful heart. Warm and caring were the two adjectives he’d left off earlier. She’d felt terrible for Ringo.

Her compassion for the horse touched him. She’d been persistent, insisting that she help care for the wound.

She’d driven him mad with her nearness. The more he was around her, the more he liked her. The more he liked her, the more certain he was she needed lots of children. She had a heart for loving.

It was evident in everything she did. Loser wasn’t even the same dog he’d been a month ago. That dog followed her around as if he worshiped the ground she walked on. And if he wasn’t following her around he was plopped beside the baby carrier watching Joshua.

“Yep, boy, they’re pretty special,” Cort said, driving back up the road to his house after following Lilly and Joshua home. He’d insisted on making sure they got home safely and into the house. Lilly was worn out. It was nearly nine by the time they’d cleaned Ringo’s wound, and he wanted to do everything he could to make sure she and Joshua were protected.

He hadn’t been able to keep from giving Lilly a hug before he left her at her door. It had been a long day of fighting off the need, and when it came down to it he just had to give in. She actually looked as if she needed a hug.

Her look of surprise lingered. She had been wonderful taking care of the cut, making sure Cort didn’t look at the dried blood, instead sending him to tend to Joshua.

He couldn’t help the hug. Anyone as dedicated as she’d been deserved more than a hug, but he didn’t have a medal, and he didn’t think she’d appreciate a kiss.

Though a kiss was exactly what he’d wanted to give her, he didn’t think he could survive it. So he’d hugged her, and told himself it was simply a friendly hug, that it didn’t mean anything.

But he was beginning to understand that he was on sinking ground.

Because watching her in action—tending to his horse, loving his dog and mothering her son—cemented Cort’s resolve that Lilly was indeed a woman who needed children. She was made to give love and tenderness.

But none of his arguments could compete with how right it felt when he held her in his arms. Nothing else had ever compared to that feeling.

Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny. Lilly had been up practically all night. Joshua wasn’t sleeping worth a penny, as Granny Bunches would have said. He’d cried most of the time, even when she sat in the recliner with him. Rubbing his tummy hadn’t helped. Giving him a tiny dose of oil in his water hadn’t helped, either, along with a host of other remedies she knew of for his little cramped stomach. Nothing helped.

She’d paced the house with him on her shoulder and prayed for hours. Samantha had circled the house looking in every window as she made the rounds from room to room. When Joshua’s cries became exceptionally loud, she would smush her nose to the window and grunt. Lilly understood the sentiment well. Joshua’s little tears had ceased finally, about the time the sun rose over the hill. Lilly’s tears, though, had just gotten started.

Raising a baby alone was scary.

What did she know?

She’d thought about calling Norma Sue, but felt silly not being able to take care of a normal case of baby colic. She sniffed, running a shirtsleeve across her eyes.

She’d decided she was going to be on Norma’s doorstep within the next few minutes if Joshua hadn’t finally found relief and gone to sleep.

Lilly laid Joshua in his bed, closed the door and went to take a shower. She could see how easy it would be to get depressed when someone had had as little shut-eye as she’d been getting. She used to wonder why God made people need sleep. There were too many things she wanted to do in a day, sleep being the least of those things. She’d learned to live on little more than five hours a night. And liked it that way.

Now she daydreamed about sleep. She was a walking zombie.

Lilly had calculated the amount of rest she’d gotten in the past four days and it had been about three, maybe four hours a day. And those had been sporadic catnaps caught between Joshua’s eating, sleeping and crying. So much for the traditional dinner she’d thought about cooking.

She relaxed her head against the shower tile and let the hot water soothe her muscles. She’d promised the ladies that she would take Joshua to church for the first time today and stay afterward for dinner in the small fellowship hall at the back of the building. She was so tempted to stay home and try to get a few moments of shut-eye. He was sleeping right now. The temptation to stay home was strong.

But she’d promised. She knew the ladies would be upset if they realized what a hard time she was having and that she hadn’t asked for help. And she knew she could do this.

Yes, she could do this, she told herself again an hour later. It was ten-thirty. Sunday school started at ten o’clock…so she’d missed that, but she could make it to the morning service. She had prepared a bean casserole, and carried it out to the truck, and now she was gathering up all the stuff she would need for the morning. It felt as if she was moving away for a week! Or a month, she thought as she walked outside manhandling the playpen.

Opening the tailgate, she lifted the medium-sized thingamajig—oh, her mind was losing it. She couldn’t even remember something as simple as
playpen
because she was so worn out. She had become a mumbling mess with lack of sleep. She would have laughed at herself—if she hadn’t been so stinking tired. She was actually being worse than Esther Mae with word flubs. And that was sad.

Slamming the tailgate shut, she went back inside, and gathered the formula bottles she’d prepared. She also grabbed the diaper bag, making certain it had baby wipes and cream and a couple of changes of clothes.