Wyoming Bride (32 page)

“She?”

“It’s a girl. Her name is Lauren,” she added.

“Lauren. That’s pretty. What if it’s a boy?”

“Then you can name him.”

Flint was intrigued by the idea. He’d had mixed feelings when he’d learned he would be raising another man’s child. Disappointment was uppermost, because he couldn’t start on his own family until McMurtry’s kid was born. He was surprised Hannah was going to let him name the child if it was a boy.

“How about Douglas?” he announced. After a good friend who’d died in the war. “Or maybe Russ.” He’d had a good hunting dog named Russ. “Or Jesse.” He had a sibling named Jesse, a sister with a boy’s name, who’d disappeared during the war.

“Thank goodness it’s a girl,” she said with a laugh. “Sounds like you can’t make up your mind.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Just in case.” He dropped to his knees, put his mouth next to her belly, and said, “Hey, you in there. Don’t be kicking your mom.”

He felt Hannah’s hand on his head, felt her fingers threading tenderly through his hair. He kissed her belly, then stood and picked her up and carried her to bed.

Flint revered Hannah’s pregnant body. He found satisfaction in the way she clung to him and arched her body toward his. He felt exhilarated by her sighs and moans of pleasure. He marveled at the fullness of her breasts, admired the roundness of her belly, and at last, found his way home.

As he lay oxygen-starved beside her afterward, Flint wondered whether it was possible to learn to love a woman. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all he needed to do. He also needed to fall out of love with a woman. Surely there was a way to accomplish both.

He figured he had about two months—until McMurtry’s kid was born—to figure it all out.

“Are you all right?” Ransom asked.

Emaline rolled onto her side on the buffalo hide rug and threaded her fingers into the dark V of curls on Ransom’s chest. “I never imagined sex would be like that. It’s not just pleasurable, it’s uplifting. What I felt was so … unexpected.”

Emaline was hard-pressed to come up with superlatives. Ransom had been gentle at first. She was the one who’d become demanding. She was the one who’d bitten and scratched. She was the one who’d lifted her hips in time with his thrusts. She was the one who’d clasped her legs around his thighs at the ultimate moment as he set his seed in her womb.

“Glad to hear you approve,” he said, sitting up and grinning down at her.

Emaline rolled onto her back, reached her hands up over her head, and stretched, arching her back like the cat that got the cream. “When can we do it again?” she asked.

He laughed. “I’m ready.”

Emaline glanced at him and blushed. He certainly was. She sat up, amazed at how unashamed she felt to be naked with him. She crossed her legs and said, “I think we already made a baby.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said with a smile. “I can’t wait to be a father.”

“I know you’ll be a wonderful father,” she said, smiling back at him.

“And you’ll be a wonderful mother.”

Emaline’s smile disappeared as she ducked her head. She wanted to believe she could survive a pregnancy, but she’d heard so many horror stories from her aunt that she found it hard to believe. “I hope I get the chance,” she said quietly.

A furrow appeared between Ransom’s brows. “Does that mean you’re thinking you have nine months left to live?”

She shrugged.

He pulled her onto her feet and into his embrace and hugged her. Hard. “You can’t give up like that, Emaline. I won’t allow it.”

She hugged him back, hoping against hope that he was right.

“I can’t help being scared, Ransom.”

He let her go and looked into her eyes and said, “Do you think I’m not scared, too? I know pregnancy has risks, but they can be managed. I plan to take very good care of you. I don’t intend to let anything happen to you.”

“You can’t help the fact that I have narrow hips. You can’t change the way I’m made.”

He huffed out a frustrated breath, then turned abruptly and went hunting for his clothes, which he’d dropped willy-nilly around the parlor. He didn’t look at her as he dressed.

Emaline realized that while it had felt perfectly natural to be standing naked together, it was very uncomfortable to be a naked female in a room with a fully clothed male. She began pulling on her own things, hurrying to catch up with Ransom.

When she finally got her blouse on, he was standing with his hip cocked, something she’d noticed both brothers did when they were anxious or uncomfortable, waiting for her to finish buttoning her skirt. Her fingers kept fumbling with the last button, until finally he took a step closer and said, “Let me do it.”

He did up the button, then took her by the shoulders with both hands and said sternly, “Look at me, Emaline.”

“You sound like my father,” she said petulantly.

“But I’m not, as you very well know. I’m your husband. You’re mine to love and cherish and protect. I’m making a rule that—”

“I hate rules!”

“You will never, ever again mention childbirth and dying in the same breath,” he continued as though she hadn’t interrupted.

“But—”

He kissed her to stop any further objection, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, so she could feel his need. But they were fully dressed now, and he slowly withdrew his tongue from her mouth and said, “As much as I want to make love to you again on that rug, I think we’d better get to bed. I’m going to need all my strength tomorrow.”

“I thought you said you were completely well,” she said.

“I am. But we’re short a cowhand and there are a lot of hungry steers out on the range. Flint and I are going to be running hay all day tomorrow.”

“I wish I could help.”

“It helps to know you’ll be waiting here with a hot meal when I get home.”

“So you married me for my cooking?” she teased.

“And other things,” he said as he kissed her beneath her ear. He looked deep into her eyes as he laid a hand on her belly and said, “I hope there’s a child growing in there, Em. I pray for the day we’ll have sons and daughters, lots of them, playing around us. And I mean
us
. I have no intention of raising those brats alone.”

Emaline was surprised into laughter. “Brats? I would never raise a child who wasn’t courteous and kind and thoughtful. Why, if a child of mine ever—”

He kissed her again to cut her off and said, “Exactly! I’m going to need you to teach our kids all those manners. Start planning to stick around for the long haul. Do you hear me?”

Emaline had never loved Ransom as much as she did at that moment. He was going to make a wonderful father. But she knew what was likely to happen if she got pregnant, even if he wasn’t willing to accept it yet. “Ransom, it’s not something I can control,” she said quietly.

“Oh, yes, you can,” he insisted. “
Believe
you’re going to live, and you
will
live.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“A lot of times, it does,” Ransom said. “Out here, Emaline it’s about survival of the fittest. You’re healthy. You decide you’re going to live through this pregnancy, and you will.”

He put a finger to her temple. “Sometimes, more times than you can imagine, you can survive against the odds. Think about my gunshot wounds. They should have killed me, but they didn’t. I had a very good reason to stay alive. You, Em. You were the reason I fought so hard to live. Now I need you to start thinking like a survivor.”

“But—”

Ransom kissed her again. Thoroughly. When he finally let her go, her legs felt like wet noodles. She clung to him, leaning her head against his chest, where she could hear his heart beating as hard as her own.

“Ransom, I don’t believe—”

He captured her mouth, the kiss almost savage. When he let her go, he said, “That isn’t what I want to hear, Em.”

Emaline sighed. “All right. Fine. I’ll imagine a future with a dozen children sitting around us at the table.”

He grinned and said, “That sounds a little ambitious. But if you’re willing, so am I.”

She laughed at his silliness. A dozen children. He was going to be lucky to get one. She sobered and said, “I’ll try, Ransom. I promise to try.”

He took her in his arms and held her close. “That’s all I ask, Em. I want children, I won’t deny it. I know there’s peril. I’m not denying that, either. But you can do this. I know it.”

She hugged him back, because she knew there was no sense arguing with him anymore. He’d only kiss her again. She would keep her promise to think positive. She would also write a letter to her child, in case she didn’t survive its birth.

It was a comfort to know that Hannah would be nearby. At least her motherless child would have an aunt to provide the kind of female guidance she’d had from Aunt Betsy.

“Let’s go to bed,” she said at last.

He surprised her again by lifting her in his arms and heading for the front door.

“Ransom, where are you going?”

“I never got to carry my bride over the threshold.”

Emaline laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve been married three months. And it’s freezing outside!”

“Indulge me, Em. Will you get the door?”

She leaned down and opened the door and a swirl of snow blew into the house. Ransom stepped out onto the covered front porch, and she pulled the door closed. The moon was half hidden by snow clouds, leaving the porch full of shadows. She shivered in his arms as the wind whipped stinging snowflakes against her nose and cheeks.

Ransom lifted her a little higher, kissed her mouth, and said, “I love you, Em, now and forever.”

For a cowboy, it was poetry. She kissed the edge of his mouth and said, “And I love you, Ransom. I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you.”

It wasn’t until she finished speaking, that Emaline noticed the difference between what he’d vowed and what she’d sworn.
Forever
was a great deal longer than
the rest of my life
. But it was too late to make the change without pointing out the difference.

She shivered again and clung to him, feeling the desperation of her situation. If she was pregnant, she was going to have to hide her fear from Ransom. She was going to have to cope with it on her own.

At last she said, “Take me inside, Ransom. It’s cold.”

She leaned over and unlatched the door, and he carried her across the threshold. As soon as she was inside, he set her down and turned to close the door behind him.

She looked at him and saw that his shoulders and hair and eyelashes were covered with snowflakes and began brushing them off. He did the same for her.

A moment later she was in his arms, being hugged so tight she couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t leave me, Em,” he said in a harsh voice. “Don’t ever leave me.”

There it was. The plea he would have made on her deathbed, stated at the start of her pregnancy. What should she say in reply? She said the only thing she could. What she’d promised him she would say. “I’m here, Ransom, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Flint surveyed the hide of the OOX cow on his land and saw what he thought was the CC brand barely visible beyond the OO on the cow’s brown hide.

“I told you he stole those missing cattle,” Ransom said. “Let’s skin it, and find out for sure.”

“Then we’re the thieves,” Flint said.

“Not if it turns out to be our cow.”

The only way to know for sure that the brand had been changed was to kill the cow, skin it, and check the hide on the inside for the original brand. The cow had a broken leg, so it needed to be put down, but Flint didn’t want to give Ashley Patton an excuse to accuse them of rustling by skinning it.

“We’re still losing stock,” Ransom pointed out. “It’s got to be Patton. We should do something about it.”

“Like what?” Flint asked. The renegade Indians had disappeared, probably to some Sioux camp in the Dakota Territory, where they could snuggle down in their buffalo robes and ride out the bitter winter.

Ransom shot his brother a disdainful look that Flint recognized.
Coward
, it said.

It’s caution!
Flint wanted to snap back. But the insult hadn’t been spoken, so there was no way to refute it.