Stay (6 page)

She turned over and stared out the window, studying the gray sky. A picture of the poor butchered body of the dead calf swam before her eyes, but she didn’t cry this time. Even his death served a purpose. He’d provided a better life for the little heifer.

Everything on the ranch had its place and its purpose. There was a rhythm to each day. Seasons changed, weather varied. The cows gave birth. Antelope, deer and elk shared the grass and even the minerals she provided for the cattle. Sometimes when she was out on the trail, she saw a bear or discovered cougar tracks in the snow.

The land swayed to its own natural beat, a beat Lucas heard and understood. Like every other living thing on the ranch, he played his role. Without a doubt, he was the man Wolf had wanted to be.

Maybe he was even more.

The entire story of Wolf’s brief existence passed through Syd’s mind in the space of a heartbeat.

Had Wolf been real? She forced herself to ask the same question she’d asked for months and she realized she had no perfect answer.

Yes, Wolf had been real, as real as any man she’d ever known, the baby was proof of that, but it occurred to her that being real and being human were two very different things.

Well
.

Syd sat up and tossed the quilts aside. What was the use of asking questions that had no answers? There was work to be done. In her attempts to avoid Lucas she’d also avoided her role. The Triple Creek was her ranch and it was about time she behaved like a ranch owner.

Syd got to her feet and stopped. She pressed a hand over her abdomen, astounded, thrilled at the tiny fluttering sensation.

“Oh my god, the baby moved.”

She rushed to the kitchen, hoping to share the news with Lucas or with anyone for that matter, but the room was dark and empty. Syd turned in a slow circle. The space around her felt hollow. That was the only word that came to mind. Without Lucas the kitchen was a lonely place. She was lonely.

“And you expected… What? What did you expect? Everyone around here has a job to do so suck it up and do yours.”

She needed to go over the books, pay the bills and see which cows remained dry. Any cows that had been dry two years in a row would be sold off along with the yearling steers in another month or so.

She wanted to get a look at the two bull calves, make sure the mother had enough milk. Syd wondered if the cow had accepted the tiny heifer. Oh yes, she could find plenty of ways to fill her day.

Syd leaned back against a cabinet, feeling that tiny fluttering sensation again. It was odd how the littlest thing could be so earth-shattering. She wanted to tell someone so bad.

“Lucas, I want to tell Lucas.”

The account books were balanced, bills paid. Syd reached for the ledger where she kept a record of every birth. She was impressed to see that Lucas had updated it daily. Even though she’d dropped the ball the past month, he hadn’t. He’d made his most recent entry early this morning.

Five cows still hadn’t delivered. Well, wasn’t worth worrying yet. She’d give the vet a call if they hadn’t dropped their calves in another week.

She turned on her computer and entered all the data onto her spreadsheet. Her father insisted upon keeping hand-written records, but Syd wanted both. She understood his need to hold the ledger in his hand, but she preferred the clarity of a spreadsheet.

Finished at last, Syd leaned back in her chair and ventured a glance out the window. She noticed a break in the clouds. It looked like the skies were beginning to clear and she wanted to ride out, see the herd with her own eyes.

She pulled on her boots and grabbed a rain slicker just in case the weather turned sour again.

Syd caught Delia and led the horse into the barn, dumped a bucketful of grain into the trough and left the horse to her oats, closing the barn door behind her.

She walked around the side of the building. Someone, probably Lucas, had moved the cow and the little heifer into the horse pasture behind the house. The skin of the dead calf was gone. The cow grazed placidly, the calf slept in the thick green grass beside her new mother. Lucas must have felt it was safe to remove the pelt. Syd was pleased as punch to see the cow had accepted the calf as her own.

The two bull calves were doing well also. They lay curled together in the pasture just down the road. Syd studied their mother. The cow appeared robust. She came from a line that seemed prone to multiple births. She’d keep an eye on the calves just to be sure, but if Syd was a betting woman she’d bet good money they’d be fine.

Syd headed back to the tack room. Without thinking she reached for her saddle, but at the last minute she hesitated. She realized she shouldn’t lift it, not at this stage in her pregnancy. There wasn’t anyone around to help her.

Well crap, where had she stashed that lightweight training saddle?

Syd searched the room, deliberately ignoring the gold barbed wire Cass had stuck in the back. She’d probably buried the training saddle somewhere, hopefully not beneath one of the heavier saddles. After ten minutes of searching, she gave up. It wasn’t worth it. She’d ride Delia bare back.

Maybe she’d run into someone, someone like Lucas. Syd didn’t feel like being alone, not today of all days. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember he was the baby’s father, she wanted to share the news with him anyway.

Who else was she going to share with?

What the hell?

Lucas pressed his lips together to keep from shouting and spooking her horse. He’d never known such a stubborn pig-headed woman. She was a doctor for Christ’s sake. She knew better than to get on a horse when she was four months pregnant. And she was riding bareback.

He shook his head, astounded. Didn’t she have any regard for her safety and the health of her baby?

At least she had the sense to keep the mare to a walk. He slid his rope back and forth between his fingers, tempted to lasso her and tie her to the bed for the next five months.

A corner of his mouth turned up at the thought of Sydney tied to a bed. Images filled his brain in rapid fire fashion, every single one of them incendiary.

He almost laughed out loud at the notion of tying her down. A woman like Syd wanted to be on top. She didn’t give up control easily. Riding out on a horse while pregnant cinched it for him. Sydney Blake did what Sydney Blake wanted to do.

She hadn’t seen him yet and he hoped to keep it that way. He didn’t want her loping off down the hill to get away from him.

Lucas sat back in the saddle and watched her thread her way through the herd.

She was a beautiful woman, but then he’d been aware of that fact since his very first day on the ranch when he’d found her soaked from head to toe, suffering from hypothermia. Her naked body wasn’t something a man forgot, at least not this man. The pads of his fingers burned with memories as they roved up and down the stiff rope. And he hadn’t even touched her like that, though he’d wanted to. Lord knows he’d wanted to.

He’d gotten her out of her clothes, dried her off; built a fire in the stove. Made her pancakes with maple syrup, fried her up some bacon, for crying out loud. He’d warmed her, fed her, when all he really wanted to do was take her to bed and fuck her six ways from Sunday.

Lucas was of two minds. He had never wanted a woman so bad in his entire life. But he’d never fought so hard to resist the demands of his pecker.

Syd was trouble precisely because she tempted him so. She wasn’t a one-night stand or a summer fling; she was the kind of woman a man kept by his side forever.

So why in the hell did the other Wolf, his mysterious doppelganger, leave her? He’d heard the two ranch hands discussing him late one night. Chuck said the other Wolf was dead, but Ryan said he’d just regained his memory and gone home.

Lucas didn’t know what the hell to believe and he sure as shit didn’t want to ask too many questions. The answers might not sit well with him. But that woman, she didn’t sit well with him either. Just look at her, riding bareback with ease and grace, like she was born on a horse.

His heart lurched in his chest when he saw her squeeze the mare’s flanks with her thighs. The horse transitioned directly from a walk to a gentle, rocking lope.

Sydney had seen him. She was headed right for him.

Lucas laid the coil of rope across the saddle horn and urged Bodacious forward. He rode to meet her halfway.

She slowed her horse as he approached and gave him a shy half-smile. “They look good,” she said with a nod toward the cows and their calves. “Thank you for all your hard work.”

Lucas turned his horse’s head so he could walk beside her. They weren’t his cows and it wasn’t his ranch, but he felt a swell of pride just the same. He swallowed the lecture he’d planned to give her. “You’re welcome.” He caught the appraising look she shot his way. “Something on your mind?”

Syd opened her mouth, but closed it again as if reconsidering what she’d planned to say. He watched her give an odd little shake of her head. “Why don’t you have your own ranch? I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you’re so good at this. You know exactly what to do. It’s second nature to you.” She glanced up at him again. “You were born to this life.”

Lucas shrugged. “It’s a long boring story.”

“Well, I don’t mind listening, or you can give me the abridged version if you prefer.”

“It’s very simple,” he said. “My father had three sons, but only one ranch. I have two older brothers. They divided the ranch between them. A three-way split would have been impossible and I was just seventeen when my father passed away.”

“How, uh, if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

“I turned twenty-nine on April first. I was an April Fool’s baby, born in a late spring blizzard. My brothers are eighteen and twenty years older than I am.” He grinned at her raised eyebrows. “My father married late in life. He’d intended to be a bachelor but realized in his mid-forties that if he didn’t have children he’d lose the ranch. The land was first settled by my great-great grandfather and my dad wasn’t about to sell it off. I guess you’d call my mother a mail-order bride. She married him sight unseen. He was forty-six, she was twenty-five. The two of them didn’t waste any time having kids.”

“But they hadn’t planned on a third, so…”

“So I hired on with my brothers.” He finished her sentence.

“Is your mother still alive?”

He nodded. “She lives in the main house. Has her garden and her chickens and her precious milk cow.”

Syd lifted her face to his. “She sounds like a wonderful woman. I wouldn’t mind a milk cow myself.”

Lucas snorted. “She is an interesting woman. Hard to believe she’d never left Baltimore until she came west to marry my dad.”

“So she’s from Baltimore?”

He nodded. “She went to Johns Hopkins. Has a Master’s Degree in neuroscience.”

Syd’s mouth dropped open. “She has a Master’s in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins but she gave it all up and came west to marry a rancher twice her age?” She blew out a breath. “Wow. How’d that work out for her?” Syd laughed. “Sorry, I’m just… That kind of came out of left field.”

He laughed. “It worked out fine. She’d always dreamed of marrying a cowboy.”

“Every little girl dreams of marrying a cowboy,” she said.

Lucas teased her. “I thought every little girl dreamed of riding a horse.”

“Well, why do you think we want to marry cowboys?”

Both pulled their horses up at the sound of thunder. A sharp gust of wind whipped Delia’s tail forward, startling the mare. Syd gripped the horse tight with her thighs and managed to keep her balance, but just to be on the safe side Lucas leaned over and grabbed the mare’s bridle. Lightning flashed overhead and thunder crashed, making them all jump.

“Give me your reins,” he ordered.

Syd tossed them over without hesitation. Lucas reached for her with his free arm and slid her onto his horse, balancing her across his lap. Thick black storm clouds poured over the mountains, bearing down on them. A sharp, cold hailstone stung the back of his neck and he knew they had to find shelter fast. They’d never make it to the house before the full force of the storm hit.