The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  Neile pulled back and blinked. Her whimper died. Her eyes widened. She looked at Jenny.

  Jenny touched the petal-soft cheek with one finger. “Like that?” she asked and blew again.

  A sound came out. A gurgle? A chuckle?

  Then Neile smiled. It was a tentative smile, a wary smile. But still—a smile.

  And for the first time in weeks, Jenny felt a smile touch her face, too.

  *

  On Sunday mornings Jenny went to church.

  She fully intended to go this morning, except she didn’t realize how long it would take to get a baby ready.

  Saturday morning she’d awakened at five and lain there in anxious anticipation of Neile’s first murmur. This morning, however, she was experienced enough—or tired enough—that Neile was in full-throated roar by the time Jenny managed to pry open her eyes.

  “Coming,” she called, stumbling out of bed and groping her way into her robe. “I’ll be right there.”

  By the time she had Neile fed and bathed and changed, and got dressed and ate breakfast herself, it was late, but they still could make it. She scooped the baby up off the rug and heard a faint squishing sound. There was a definite feel of dampness against her fingers.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Neile gurgled.

  Jenny carried her into the bedroom. By the time the second change had been accomplished, Neile was gnawing her fist and looking around hopefully.

  “You’re hungry?” Jenny had figured out the meaning of that particular look the day before. She supposed she could take the baby and a bottle and hope that Neile cooperated during the thirty-minute drive into Elmer.

  But then Neile yawned and jammed her fist into her mouth and began to gnaw. Her brow puckered. Her hopeful look faded. A sniffle was fast turning into a sob.

  “I guess we’re not going today,” Jenny said to her charge. A morning nap seemed a more likely prospect. Honestly, she could use one as well.

  She was beginning to understand those dark circles under Jed’s and Brenna’s eyes. She wondered how—with two babies Taggart and Felicity ever managed to cope.

  Neile was gnawing her shoulder by the time Jenny had the bottle ready, then carried the little girl to the rocking chair. Neile glommed on at once, wrapping fat fists around the bottle and staring up at Jenny unblinkingly.

  Jenny trailed a finger along the baby’s cheek. “Better?”

  At first Neile’s sucking came hard and fast. But gradually, the tension in her small limbs lessened. The rhythm of Jenny’s rocking soothed her. Her grip on the bottle loosened. She blinked. Her eyelids drooped.

  Jenny smiled. With one finger, she touched Neile’s small hand.

  It let go of the bottle and latched on to Jenny’s finger with a strong grip. Jenny rubbed her thumb lightly over the baby’s tiny fingers . . . and wished . . .

  For Mace. For the love they’d lost, for the children they’d never have, for the hopes and dreams that had once seemed so possible and which were forever out of her grasp.

  It wasn’t only Mace who could have a pity party, she thought wryly.

  But even as she thought it, her eyes blurred, and she had to tip her head back and close them against sudden tears.

  The door opened.

  Jenny’s head jerked up.

  Her eyes flew open—to see Mace standing there.

  Chapter Five

  “Mace.” Jenny’s eyes were wide, her whisper shocked.

  No more shocked than he was. Mace stood rooted to the floor, one hand on the doorknob, staring at her. The last thing he expected to see here this morning was Jenny. She should have been at church now! Singing hymns, smiling at the neighbors, not here sitting in the rocker holding a child!

  He stumbled backward in his haste to get out of the room.

  “Mace! Wait!”

  But he wasn’t waiting. He crossed the porch and started down the steps as the rocker creaked behind him. “Mace!”

  He heard her footsteps, heard the baby start to cry. He turned and glared at his wife.

  “What, damn it?” His voice was harsh, ragged. “For God’s sake, sit down. You’re making it cry.”

  Jenny eased back and sat down in the chair and began rocking again. The wailing stopped. “Her,” she corrected. “It’s Neile. I’m babysitting Neile for the weekend.”

  “Good for you.” His voice was still harsh. It didn’t matter whose child it was; it wasn’t theirs.

  He thought he’d get over it by now. He thought the steady normal everyday ranch work that had sustained him his whole life would sustain him now.

  Think again, he told himself savagely.

  In the three weeks since he’d walked out, things had gone from bad to worse. He had too much time to think, too much time alone.

  Too little Jenny.

  He’d hoped that talking to Anthony would settle things. Once he had got the legal proceedings underway, he told himself, there would be no changing his mind. No going back.

  Great theory. He just wished his head—and his heart—would get with the plan.

  They didn’t. They wanted Jenny.

  So badly that he’d finally made himself an appointment in Billings with another doctor. Maybe the one they’d gone to had had spermicide in his stupid little cups. Maybe he was a quack. Maybe, Mace had desperately hoped, he was wrong.

  Friday he’d found out that the second opinion confirmed the first.

  “No sperm,” the doctor had told him, shaking his head sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can’t you do something? Isn’t there some way? What are we putting all this money into medical research for?”

  “Perhaps a donor?” the doctor suggested.

  “No.” He wasn’t having some other guy’s sperm swimming around inside Jenny!

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said again. “We can often help if the count is simply low. But when there are none . . .” He spread his hands helplessly.

  And Mace had driven home feeling, if possible, even worse than he had three weeks before. On the drive down he’d dared to entertain the faint hope that he could drive back to the ranch tonight and take Jenny in his arms and tell her that the nightmare was over.

  It seemed to him now that the nightmare had just begun.

  “Jed and Brenna went down to Jackson,” Jenny was explaining. “She’s opening a show there. More cowboy hero paintings and a new series on children of the west. That was the official excuse.” She smiled a little nervously as she talked, as if Mace were some sort of wild animal that she might spook at any moment. It wasn’t far from the truth. “I think they wanted a second honeymoon.”

  “They had their first not much more than a year ago,” Mace muttered.

  But he understood. He remembered that desire. He remembered weeks—months—when he didn’t think he could take Jenny to bed often enough.

  He still felt that way, God help him.

  “Yes, but they haven’t had much time to themselves,” Jenny reminded him. “They’ve had a houseful, with Tuck and the baby and Brenna’s dad.”

  “I know what their problem is,” Mace said tightly. It was nothing compared to his own—the big unsolvable one and the smaller more immediate one: how was he going to get out of here with Jenny smiling at him like that?

  “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “I’m not back,” he said. “I just came to get some stuff. I didn’t think you’d be here,” he added bluntly, yanking some shirts off their hangers and bundling them into his arms before turning to face her.

  As he’d hoped, her smile faded. His last words were cruel and unnecessary, and he knew it. He watched as the hurt flickered across her face.

  He expected it—hell, he’d caused it—but still he had to steel himself against it. Hurting Jenny was like hurting himself. And even being prepared for it didn’t help.

  He shoved himself away from the door. “I’ll come back another time.”

  “No!” She leapt up this time, uncaring whethe
r she woke Neile or not. “You’re not going to walk out on me again, Mace Nichols!”

  He tried. She came after him, bouncing the baby as she hurried across the room and onto the porch. Neile, obviously unused to such treatment, dropped her bottle and began to wail. Jenny kept coming.

  Mace made it all the way to his truck, feeling as if all the devils in hell were on his tail. He had the door open and was tossing the shirts inside when she caught up to him and grabbed it to stop him from getting in and closing it. She almost dropped the child.

  Mace saved the baby—and ended up holding her himself. “Here.” He tried to thrust Neile back into Jenny’s arms.

  But Jenny was having none of it. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “You hold her, and we’ll talk.”

  “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “What about the little matter of that legal separation?”

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Maybe not now. You will.”

  The stubborn Jenny Fitzpatrick chin he remembered from childhood lifted now. “You think so, do you?” she challenged.

  “Yes.” The word came through his teeth as a hiss. Neile wailed in his arms. “Damn it, Jenny!”

  He couldn’t take this! Jenny kept her arms folded as he fumbled with the crying child. “Shh,” he muttered to her, jiggling her against his chest. “Hey now, shh. Jenny,” he pleaded. “Take her. She’s your responsibility.”

  “Interesting that you’re so big on responsibility,” Jenny said, “when you’ve just walked out on me.”

  “For your own good,” Mace countered, stung.

  “The hell it is!”

  “It is,” he insisted. “You’ll thank me someday.”

  She gaped at him. “I’ll thank you? Oh sure. Maybe you expect me to even name my firstborn son after you?”

  He felt the blood drain from his face.

  He shoved Neile at Jenny so firmly this time that she had no choice but to open her arms. Then he jumped in the truck, slammed the door and gunned the engine.

  “Mace! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, Mace. Don’t go. Don’t! Damn it, Mace.”

  But the thought of Jenny with a firstborn son that was someone else’s was more than he could take.

  *

  Jenny told herself she was foolish. She told herself she wasn’t ready for this. She told herself that she’d be sorry.

  But there was just so long you could bang your head against a wall—or against the hardheaded stubbornness of your husband—and get nowhere.

  She had to do something.

  So Jenny took Felicity’s suggestion: she was going on a date.

  Well, it wasn’t precisely a date. It was dinner at Felicity and Taggart’s with Becky and the twins and Felicity’s newly arrived brother, Tom.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she told Felicity.

  “Relax. It will be good for you.”

  “But I’m not interested in another man!”

  “Maybe it’s time you get interested.” Felicity’s tone was sympathetic, but firm. She was more of a realist than Jenny.

  Still, it turned out better than she expected. Maybe it was because Felicity’s judgment was generally to be trusted. Maybe it was because, when she met Tom Morrison, he didn’t seem threatening to her peace of mind.

  Mostly it was because he was nothing like Mace.

  Tom Morrison had warm brown eyes and shaggy blond locks that were as different from Mace’s sea-blue eyes and short-cropped black hair as day was from night. He was lean, but not hard. His conversation had more to do with books, politics and National Public Radio than it did a bull’s breeding line or the price of feed this coming winter.

  Jenny began to relax.

  While Felicity put dinner on the table, and Taggart juggled a fussy baby, Tom lounged in the porch swing and, bouncing a happy baby on his knee, talked about a book he was assigning for a course in African literature he was teaching in the fall.

  Jenny sipped her margarita and listened, letting Tom’s conversation wash over her. It was so pleasant. So nondemanding.

  She found herself surprisingly interested in the book he was talking about, which she’d never heard of. Not surprising. There were always too many chores to be done for her to settle down with a book. The most she ever got to read, it seemed, was the newspaper.

  Now he piqued her interest. The course he was teaching sounded interesting, too. Once upon a time she’d have liked to take a course like that. She said so.

  Tom smiled. “They probably have a similar course at Montana State. Why don’t you look into it?”

  “Maybe I will,” Jenny said. It could occupy her time instead of spending it always fretting about Mace. “We never had time . . . or the money.”

  She felt a little like she was betraying Mace when she said that, so she added quickly, “I never minded, really. I like being a teacher’s aide.”

  “You can still be a teacher’s aide if you are taking classes,” Tom said.

  “Yes,” Felicity said, coming out onto the porch. “Why don’t you check it out, Jenn? You could start work on your degree again.”

  “Oh no,” Jenny said. “I couldn’t. I have no time.” Then she stopped and felt her face flush.

  The fact was, this summer she did have time. This summer she wasn’t working with Mace because he made it so obviously clear he didn’t want her to. She’d tried to help, but his determined cold shoulder had made her mad. If he thought he could handle the ranch on his own, fine, she thought. Let him.

  Since then she hadn’t saddled a horse.

  Now, though she had some time, the thought of taking a class at the university was daunting.

  “I haven’t taken classes in years,” she protested. “It’s been ages since I got my AA. I’d probably fail.”

  “Lots of nontraditional students feel that way,” Tom said easily. “In fact, most of them do better than the kids. They’re motivated. Professional. Adult.” He gave her an encouraging smile over the top of his margarita glass.

  His faith in her was surprisingly touching. Jenny found herself smiling back. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “All colleges have admissions counselors. Why don’t you go see one?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Jenny nibbled at the salt on the rim of the glass, then ran her tongue over her lips. It seemed like a huge departure from her real life. See a counselor? Think about college?

  What would Mace say?

  Would Mace even know? Or care?

  She took another sip of her drink. “Maybe I will.”

  *

  The next morning Jenny was convinced her brave statement had been the margarita talking. She wasn’t seriously thinking about going back to college, was she?

  She looked around the small ranch house she and Mace and their friends had built. In it she saw the embodiment of Mace’s dreams, Mace’s hopes.

  She had taken them on, had been very happy with them, but they hadn’t been hers. Not to begin with.

  Her dream had been a college education. A job teaching, not just being an aide to someone else who taught. She’d had the grades for it. As valedictorian of their small high school, she’d had offers of plenty of scholarships and grants. But she hadn’t wanted scholarships or grants or the college education as much as she’d wanted Mace.

  And now?

  She didn’t have Mace.

  She briefly entertained the possibility that she wouldn’t win out, that she might never have Mace again. She didn’t really believe it. But . . .

  Go see an admissions counselor?

  Maybe she would.

  *

  He didn’t let himself dwell on Jenny’s firstborn son.

  He tried not to let himself dwell on Jenny.

  Every day when he got up, it took Mace less time to remember where he was and why Jenny was no longer beside him, then to shove the thought away and force himself out of bed to get on w
ith his life.

  Every night when he came back to the cabin, exhausted from a day riding the range, moving the herd, doctoring cattle, or fixing fences, it didn’t take him long to find something else to do to keep from thinking about her.

  Pretty soon he’d be fine, he promised himself. Before long he wouldn’t miss her at all. But there was no comfort in knowing it.

  It might have helped a little if he’d had a friend or two. A little camaraderie. A bit of distraction.

  But his friends were Jenny’s friends. And that weekend at Taggart’s school, it had been all too obvious who they were giving their allegiance to.

  And anyway, if someone did come around, there was always the chance that the conversation would come around to Jenny—and why they were separated. He had no doubt speculation was rife.

  And about that he had nothing to say.

  The knowledge of his infertility shamed him and embarrassed him still. Every time he thought about what he wasn’t capable of doing, he felt like less than a man.

  It was better that they think him a surly, selfish son of a bitch. He didn’t want them thinking he was less than a man, too.

  So he stayed by himself.

  When he needed groceries or gasoline, he drove to Livingston. When he needed blackleg medicine or a new cinch for his horse, he drove to Bozeman. When he needed to talk to his lawyer, he used his cell phone.

  The last time he called, Anthony had told him that Jenny had a lawyer and was asking for half the property if they divorced.

  “Half the property? What’s she going to do with half the property?” he yelped. “She won’t stay on the ranch.”

  “No, but by law she’s entitled to a share,” Anthony said.

  Of course she was, Mace knew that. But he just thought of her as moving to town or something. He wanted her to have plenty to live on. She deserved plenty. Trouble was, even in the best of times they’d never had plenty between the two of them.

  And now they were going to have to divide the ranch?

  “I’ll have to buy her out,” he told Anthony.

  Though how he was going to do that, he didn’t know. They barely broke even now. Maybe she’d let him pay her over time. A long time.