Stella stared at him, not entirely sure how to respond. Baby things. Yes, babies did need things. Of that she was sure. But what things? She didn’t know. And cribs? Changing tables? Those sounded like the kinds of baby items you used in a permanent place. Not what you took along when you were moving baby from place to place on consulting contracts. “Um…baby things.”
“Well, I took a look at my savings account, and I think I could chip in a thousand. But you should put together a list, and if that’s not enough, I can dig up some more.”
Stella suddenly felt sick. A thousand dollars? Why would Scout give her a thousand dollars for baby things when the baby wasn’t even going to be living with him?
“That’s really…generous…” she said awkwardly.
Scout’s smile began to fade. “It’s not generous, it’s my kid. And if that’s not enough, then I’ll figure out how to chip in more. I mean, I know it’s expensive and—”
“No. No.” She put her hand on his. “I didn’t mean it wasn’t enough. It’s more than I can afford, and you’re wonderful to offer it. The thing is, I’m not sure there’s any point in getting cribs and changing tables when I don’t know where I’d put them.”
He looked at her in confusion. “Well, I figured we’d just use the bedroom…” His voice faded away, and she could see the moment it all connected. His gaze went hard, then coldly neutral.
“Right. No place to put that stuff when you’re traveling the world.” His tone became painfully false. The tone you’d use when you were trying to hang up on a telemarketer. “I guess I thought the point of us getting to know each other was so you’d feel comfortable staying here with the baby.”
“And I thought the point of us getting to know each other was so you’d be comfortable setting up some sort of arrangement for the baby to spend part of his time with you here in Texas and the other part with me wherever I was.”
She knew then that they’d made yet another mistake. Just like they’d fallen into bed that first time and made the baby, they’d been falling into bed ever since and making a mess.
“So, you should probably get some rest.” He stood. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Scout…” She sounded forlorn even to her own ears, and something in her chest ached. A voice inside her head said she was doing this all wrong, but she couldn’t bear to figure it out right then. She only knew this was one of those moments, like the moment she’d read that final plastic stick and seen the blue lines, like the moment she’d answered the phone and heard her grandfather was dead. A moment when her world would shift, and after would be different than before. It didn’t escape her notice that Scout was there in some way at each of those life-changing moments. And he was here now, but she could feel him leaving. See his eyes and how they were changing.
“I’m sorry you’re bored,” he told her, hand on the doorknob. “Lonny said Maria was going to come by and visit later today, so maybe that’ll help.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She watched him warily.
“I’ll be by after work. See how you’re doing.”
She just nodded, and then he was gone.
14
Scout kept his head down as he made his way from the main house to the milking barn. But when he reached the barn, he kept right on going, past the equipment barn, past the garages, all the way to the first empty pasture he reached. He opened the gate, walked through, and kept on going.
He was halfway across the field, long grasses catching on his jeans, flies buzzing around his head, when the phone in his back pocket buzzed with the tone for his brother Hunter.
“Dammit,” he snapped as he stopped and pulled it out to answer. “Yeah?”
“I take it I’ve caught you when you’re all tied up?” Hunter’s deep voice rolled over the line.
Scout sighed. “No. No, I’m just taking a little walk.”
“Uh-oh. You only take those walks when you’re about to lose it. What’s goin’ on?”
Scout squinted as he looked up at the pale blue sky and the bright sun that was almost directly overhead. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to have to tell his brother how badly things were going. How he’d gone and assumed since he and Stella were getting along so well, it meant something more than just passing time until the baby was born.
“It’s nothing,” he told Hunter with a sullen tone that sounded adolescent to his own ears.
“Scout. What’s going’ on?” Hunter demanded.
Scout ran a hand through his hair as he began to pace in circles in the pasture. “Stella and I have been—”
“Sleeping together, I’d assume. I mean, I knew you were spending a lot of time at the main house, and the way you looked when you were at the hospital the other day…let’s just say it was pretty obvious.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I assumed that meant something it doesn’t. It’s my fault. I screwed up, and now I’m right back where I started.”
He heard Hunter say something quietly to someone, then he was back. “Which is where, exactly?”
Scout stopped, one hand on his hip as he looked back toward the buildings on the property, the heart of the farm he’d put so much of his own heart into. And that was when he realized that none of it would ever matter again if Stella and the baby weren’t there with him.
“With Stella determined to take the baby and go back to work—all over the world.”
“Ah.” Hunter’s response was filled with pity. It made Scout want to climb through the phone and give him one good punch in the gut.
“What the hell does ‘ah’ mean?”
Behind him, back at the center of the farm activities, Scout could hear Lonny yelling to one of the other staff, and a cow lowing in protest.
Hunter’s answer was as smooth and reliable as Hunter always was. “It means I understand. I understand why you’d have assumed that. I understand that you don’t want Stella to take the baby halfway around the world.”
Scout stopped pacing and walked over to fencepost, where he leaned as he talked. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“I’m really not sure. Have you told her how you feel? Not just about the baby being across the globe, but about her?”
Scout’s throat grew suddenly dry. “I don’t know how I feel about her.” He was a liar, but he wasn’t about to admit that, not even to himself. Luckily, his brother was more than happy to call him on it.
“Really? You really don’t know how you feel about a smart, beautiful woman you’ve been sleeping with for weeks—hell, living with—who’s carrying your child?” Hunter snorted in disdain.
“It’s only been weeks. Not months or years.”
“How long did I date Kit before I knew she was the one? How long did Bran date Ava?”
“It’s not the same,” Scout argued stubbornly. “I’m not the same. I’m not like you and Bran. I never have been. It’s why I struck out on my own.” Scout slammed his mouth shut, he was not in the mood to be judged by his brother and his answering silence spoke volumes.
“What did you need?” Scout finally asked, his voice clipped and angry.
“Kit wondered if you and Stella would like to meet up for dinner at the honky-tonk tomorrow night.”
“I’ll have to get back to you,” Scout muttered.
“Okay. Just let us know when you get a chance.”
“Talk to you later.” Scout pulled the phone away from his ear, ready to tap the screen and disconnect the call.
But then he heard Hunter’s voice. “Scout?”
He brought the phone back to his ear. “Yeah?”
“Every relationship is different—the timeline, the details, the ups and downs. But love is love. It’s always the same.”
Scout tapped the screen and ended the call. His brothers had always thought they knew best. They’d always thought he should do what they did. Work on the family ranch, live in the family house, marry the mother of your child. But he did things his own way and he wasn’t about to ch
ange now. He cared about Stella. He wanted her and the baby. But that didn’t have to mean love and marriage, and he wasn’t about to go there just because Hunter and Bran thought he should. He was done with his family dictating his actions.
No, Scout had to do things his own way, and that meant he needed to find out how to get Stella to stay after the baby was born. One step at a time. Just like he’d done all these years working to buy the farm. One step at a time.
* * *
Stella dabbed some lip gloss on and assessed herself in the mirror. It was so good to be in real clothes again. She had her follow-up doctor’s appointment in an hour, and then she’d finally be off the dreaded bed rest. If only everything else in her life were so simple.
Scout had stopped sleeping in her bed. She’d slept alone the last four nights. Oh, he’d been his usual annoying self, bringing her healthy dinners and making sure she had books and music and anything he could find to entertain her. He’d even been sleeping in the main house in case she needed him during the night, but he’d managed to fall asleep in front of the TV instead of with her. Every single night.
She knew what had caused it—that moment she’d said a crib would be a waste—but she didn’t know what to do about it. She loved being here on the farm, and she felt safe and cared for. She knew Scout and his family would love the baby and always welcome him. But Scout hadn’t asked her to stay, and even if he did, how could she when her job was thousands of miles away? What would she do if she did stay? She’d promised Scout she’d sell him the farm, after all. She’d no longer have a place to live and an income from the business. The money from the sale wouldn’t last forever, and then she’d be a single mother, with no way to earn a living, dependent on the good will of her baby’s father.
No. Stella needed to stick to what she knew—taking care of herself. Now that would mean taking care of herself and her baby, but she could do it. She was a pro.
What she wasn’t a pro at was finding a way to talk to the baby’s father about where he fit in. Because she knew he needed to—he deserved to—somewhere. But where? And how? She was so desperate, she resorted to something she’d only done one or two times in her adult life. She called her mother.
“Stella? Is that you?” Mirabelle answered. Stella sat on the edge of the bed and tucked the phone between her cheek and shoulder.
“Yeah, hey, Mom. How are you?”
She could hear her mom banging around with something in the kitchen. “Oh, good. Just getting some things out to cook dinner. I have a date coming over later.”
Of course she did, Stella thought. Mirabelle was never without some man hanging around.
“Been seeing him long?” she asked idly as she picked at the nail polish on her fingers. She thought about the women in Benin she’d been working with when she’d had to come home. They’d loved bright colors, and she’d sat with them while they all painted each other’s nails with the orange nail polish she’d brought. Then they’d used matching threads in their braids and hair twists that week. Every female in the village—old, young, and in between—had been decorated with orange from head to toe.
“Oh, you know me. I don’t like to keep any particular one around for too long. This might be our third or fourth date. I’m not really sure.”
Stella paused, waiting to see if her mom would ask how she was, how the pregnancy was progressing. But all she heard was her mother muttering to herself about where the cream could have gone to.
“So, Mom, I’m at six months now.” She closed her eyes, suddenly more tired than she’d ever been in her life.
“Oh, really? Done with all the barfing?”
“Yeah. All done with that part.”
She heard Scout come in downstairs and start talking to Jean Anne in the kitchen.
“You still there?” Mirabelle asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Hey, Mom, I called because I wanted to ask your advice on something.”
Mirabelle chuckled. “Well, that’ll be a first. I don’t know that anyone’s ever asked me for advice before. But I guess when I helped you with that sewing project in third grade, it turned out okay, so our track record’s not too bad.”
Stella felt her temple begin to throb at the mention of the notorious sewing project. She’d been given an assignment to create something that represented her family. Stella had decided she wanted to sew a small quilt with each square representing something about her family. Mirabelle had agreed to help with the sewing, Stella was in charge of making the squares.
Stella had spent hours on the phone with her grandpa, asking questions about the family. She’d discovered she was the third generation of Steadmans to “live” on the farm so she’d made a square with a cow. She’d learned Steadman was an English name so she’d made a square with the Union Jack flag. She’d researched more and found out her father had loved music so she’d made a square with music notes. When she was finally done, Stella had ten family squares and all the plain squares she needed to make the quilt. She gave it all to Mirabelle and waited. And waited. And waited.
The morning of her class presentation, Stella had woken Mirabelle up—it was usually Stella who set the alarm clock so they would get up in time to go to school. “Where is my quilt, Mom? I need it for the presentation today.”
Mirabelle had spent the next half hour explaining to Stella how she’d meant to sew the quilt but it took a lot of time cooking and cleaning for an eight-year-old and then she still had to go to work at the import shop. Stella had listened as she’d stapled her squares together into some semblance of a quilt. She hadn’t ever forgotten the look of pity in her teacher’s eyes when she’d handed over the uneven, pathetic scraps of cloth connected by six dozen staples.
Now Stella swallowed hard and soldiered on. She really was desperate. “I told you about Scout? The baby’s dad?”
“Yes. Worked for your grandpa, right?”
She had to give Mirabelle credit for remembering that much.
“Yeah. And he’s been great. I was on bed rest the last nine days, and he’s taken care of everything, brought me meals, run my errands, all of it.”
“Well, good job. That’s one you keep around for a while.”
Stella rolled her eyes and prayed for patience. “He wants to be involved with the baby, and I’m not sure how to do that with my job. I mean, the baby and I will be out of the country ten or more months every year. What do you think I should do?”
She waited on pins and needles. Just once, she wanted her mother to come through, have a helpful idea, make a considerate suggestion. Just once.
“Well, you know it was your grandpa who suggested the schedule for you. You were maybe four months old, and we’d been couch surfing all that time.”
Stella lay back in the bed and closed her eyes again.
“I got a call from George one day, and he said he’d been trying to find me and he wanted to know you. I told him that was fine, but he’d have to put up with me too because, well, you can’t put a baby on an airplane. We spent about six months with him, and then a friend asked me if I wanted to come to San Diego and work in this new massage shop they were opening, so your grandfather asked if he could have you summers and school holidays. That was pretty much it.”
“So…you’re saying I should give the baby to Scout for the summers and school holidays?”
“I guess,” Mirabelle’s voice was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Seemed to work fine for you.”
Stella heard someone coming up the stairs. She’d gotten all she was going to out of Mirabelle. “Hey, I need to go, Mom.”
“Okay.” Stella could have said she was going to fly to the moon and would never be back on earth again and Mirabelle would have had the same response said in the same tone—cheerfully distant.
“Hope your date goes well,” Stella said.
“Thanks. Talk to you later!”
Stella tapped at the screen, and for the first time in years, she wanted to cry over her mother’s lack of con
cern. Her mother had absolutely no interest in the pregnancy or the baby or what might happen to Stella next. And after spending the majority of her life working not to care, it was horrifying to realize that she really still did.
“Knock, knock.” Scout stuck his head in the partly open doorway.
“Yeah,” Stella said, fussing with things on her nightstand so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Are you ready to go to the doctor—” He stopped mid-sentence. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She could see the concern in his eyes, and that only made it all worse.
“Nothing,” she said as she stood and tried to smile.
“Does something hurt? Are you having contractions again?”
She could see the panic in Scout’s eyes. He deserved more than platitudes. “I’m fine, the baby’s fine. I just had a phone call with my mother, and she was…herself. And sometimes that’s hard.”
His brow was furrowed, and he inspected her for a moment before continuing. “Okay. You ready to go to the appointment? Get them to officially let you out of the bed?”
Her chest ached when she looked at him. He was helpful and concerned and so loyal. She knew he already loved their child, and even if he never loved her, he deserved to be a part of the baby’s life. She’d have to figure out a new way to run her life, because the fact was, she wasn’t alone anymore. She was going to be a mother, and her baby had a father who wanted to be involved. Most women would consider that a blessing, not a problem.
“I’m ready,” she told him, and it meant things he didn’t realize at that moment. “But before we go—” She reached out and grabbed his hand. His eyes widened for a moment before being replaced with a wary expression.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…since we had that conversation about buying baby things the other day.”
He simply kept watching her, but his hand was warm and cradled hers gently.
Wrangling His Pregnant Cowgirl: Beckett Brothers Book Three Page 8
