Grant

by Jennifer Ashley

  The relief Grant felt surprised him. He hid it with another sip of his thick black coffee.

  She didn’t have to worry, Grant thought. He wasn’t about to push them into moving in together, marrying, settling down. Not yet. He’d give her time to heal, to get used to the idea. But he wasn’t going to let it go either.

  Christina taking the job at the bar meant she was staying in Riverbend. They’d have time to become comfortable with each other again. No pushing.

  They’d broken up last time from all the pushing. Maybe they were older now, and wiser.

  Not so old Grant couldn’t get hard watching Christina swish around the kitchen in that thin little yellow robe. Not long later, she was straddling him in a kitchen chair, while the room rang with their cries of passion and the bacon burned.

  They were late to the shoot, but Carter’s annoyed look turned to understanding when he saw Christina get out of the truck with Grant.

  “She’s going to be an extra in the robbery scene,” Grant explained.

  Carter gave Christina a nod. “Good. We need more women. Costuming is in the depot.”

  “Good morning to you too, Carter.” Christina caught his elbow and kissed his cheek then waltzed off to the depot.

  Carter said nothing, but he looked pleased.

  ***

  It was fun—for a while—pretending to be a train passenger from a hundred and thirty years ago, getting robbed by Wild West bandits.

  Especially when one of the bandits was Grant. Christina, sitting in the rather hard train seat in her high-necked, long-skirted dress, fantasized about the train robber with the beautiful blue eyes, who’d sweep her up and carry her off to ravish her privately.

  Hard to act terrified of the gunslinger when Christina had woken up with him this morning, sunlight brushing his bronze-colored skin. Grant’s touch on her had been gentle, caressing the marks his mouth had left on her last night.

  After the small train went around on its circular tracks about ten times, however, and they did the scene again and again, the fun started to ebb.

  Christina was getting motion sick on the swaying, stuffy car. By the time the extras were finally released, she was hot, sweating, and ready to hurl.

  Changing back to her regular clothes then sitting outside at the depot to watch the stunt work helped some. There was a breeze, and the early April day was pleasantly cool.

  The train went around again. Grant came flying off the back, landed, rolled, grabbed his running horse and swung onto the saddle, galloping off into the grasses.

  Tyler and Carter each did their jumps from the train, Tyler making his leap to his horse by putting his hands on the horse’s backside and vaulting forward into the saddle.

  Next they did a shot of all of them jumping off at the same time, only they didn’t bother getting on the horses for that one. Every piece of action would be cobbled together later by the editors to produce a smooth sequence of events.

  The director wanted more shots, but it was getting late and Carter stopped him.

  “Don’t want to wear out the horses,” he said. “We’ve done enough for the day.”

  Christina was happy to head out to the parking lot to watch Grant help his brothers load the horses into trailers. They’d used Buster today, and he didn’t want to go back into his trailer. Finally Grant coaxed him in with Carter and Tyler blocking from behind, and the trailer door shut. Buster kicked it once, just to be a shit, then settled down.

  Grant came back to Christina, half exasperated, half amused by Buster’s antics, and gave her a kiss good-bye. He had to return to the ranch with Carter and Tyler to look after the horses, but Christina was grateful to go home alone to rest. Acting was a lot of work, she reflected. There was a lot of sitting around waiting, and then going over the same scene again and again. Exhausting.

  Christina was so worn out and overheated that she called Karen and canceled the meeting for tonight. Karen didn’t sound happy but rescheduled for the next evening. They’d have dinner, she said, six o’clock, at Mrs. Ward’s diner. From Karen’s tone, Christina knew she’d better show up.

  Grant called from the ranch’s office, using the land line because he’d lost his cell phone again.

  “Want some dinner?” he asked.

  Hearing his velvet tones made Christina’s blood warm, but she knew she couldn’t get up from where she lay on the bed even for Grant tonight. And the thought of food made her even queasier. “I feel like crap, to be honest,” she said. “Throwing up on you would embarrass the hell out of me, so I’m just going to have some club soda or something and go to sleep. Your own fault, making me train sick.”

  “You okay?” Grant’s concern warmed her even more.

  “I’ll be fine. Just need some sleep. No more going around in circles for five hours again, all right?”

  “You got it, sweetheart. But hey, you know, it’s a paycheck.” Karen’s production company paid their extras. A lot of smaller studios didn’t.

  “Looking forward to it,” Christina said sincerely.

  “You call me if you need anything, all right?” Grant said. “I’ll try to find my phone, but don’t hesitate to call Carter or my mom. They’ll get me.”

  Grant let her go after a few minutes of whispered sexy talk, like they used to do. Finally he said, “Good night, baby. Remember, call me if you need me.”

  “You got it. Good night.” Christina wanted to add, but wasn’t sure she should, Love you.

  She felt better when she hung up. She’d missed every nuance of their life together.

  In the morning, Christina barely made it to the bathroom before she lost the contents of her stomach. She felt better after that, but still shaky, so she called her doctor and made an appointment to see her that afternoon.

  “I might have the flu,” Christina said as she sat on the end of the exam table. “Or heatstroke.”

  She should have asked for a break yesterday. It had been too hot, she wasn’t used to the heavy costumes, and the other extras had been flagging too. But they’d all stubbornly kept on, wanting to show how tough they were, Christina thought. Besides, getting frisked by Grant over and over again hadn’t been a bad thing.

  Her doctor worked at the clinic at the crossroads, the same one Christina had brought Ray to when they’d been in a car accident last fall. Everyone in River County came to this clinic.

  Dr. Sue, a fifty-something woman with short blond hair, three kids, and a husband who was a pediatrician, studied the file a nurse had walked in to give her, then put her hand on Christina’s bare knee.

  “You don’t have the flu, Christina,” she said. “You’re pregnant, sweetie.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Christina gaped, the dizziness she’d finally managed to shake swamping her again. “No, I can’t be.”

  “Did you have sex with a man?” Dr. Sue asked, her look impish. “That’s how women get pregnant, Christina. I remember telling you that when you were sixteen.”

  “Well yes, but I mean …” Christina struggled to think. “I went to a doctor in Dallas. She said I wasn’t pregnant. I’d thought I was …” She rapidly explained.

  Dr. Sue listened without changing expression. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You went to a clinic, where there were about forty women in the waiting room, and the lab there ran a quick test. No chance of getting the sample mixed up, or the wrong thing written down on the wrong record?”

  Christina clutched the end of the table. “I couldn’t come here, because you know it would have been all over town, people speculating on why I went to my doctor this week when my yearly checkup is always in June.”

  “I do understand, Christina, but if you’d come to me, you’d have gotten the correct results, and saved yourself a trip and a lot of money. I had the lab downstairs look for pregnancy as well as other things. When a healthy young woman who is obviously back with her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t feel well, I guess pregnancy, and I’m usually right.”

  C
hristina still couldn’t breathe. “Do you mean you think I was really pregnant when I went to Dallas? This isn’t something that happened last week?”

  Dr. Sue shook her head. “Based on when you missed your period and all my experience …” Dr. Sue rested her hand briefly on Christina’s abdomen. “I’d say you were about six or seven weeks gone.”

  Another wave of dizziness hit her. When Dr. Sue moved her hand, Christina laid her own on her lower abdomen. Could she feel…?

  Dr. Sue gave her a smile. “I’d talk to Grant. Congratulations¸ Christina. This is so wonderful.”

  Christina gnawed her lower lip. “If I’ve been pregnant seven weeks, then there’s a problem.”

  “Ah,” Dr. Sue said, though her bright look didn’t fade. “There’s a chance the baby is Ray Malory’s.”

  Christina nodded, her face hot.

  “Fortunately, there’s a way to find out who the father is without risking the baby,” Dr. Sue said. “Because we certainly don’t want any risks. I’m going to make sure you have this baby and it’s healthy and so are you. Don’t worry about that. We can do a test of your blood—they can isolate the baby’s DNA in your bloodstream, but we’ll have to wait until you’re at least nine weeks along. And we’d need a DNA sample from both men for comparison, of course.”

  “Oh.” Christina had hoped that there would be a high tech test they could do today to rule out one man or the other.

  Dr. Sue gave her a wise look. “It means you have to sit them down and tell them. They’re both good men, raised well. I’m sure they’ll consent to giving a sample.”

  Christina was certain they would as well. That wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was explaining the situation, finding out how Grant and Ray took the news, and deciding what was best for the kid.

  I’m putting my baby’s welfare first. Always.

  This was terrifying. And so effing wonderful. Christina’s doldrums of the last weeks evaporated in one second. Here was the relief the doctor in Dallas expected her to feel, except for the opposite reason.

  Karen had told Christina she’d put other people ahead of herself for too long, and Christina agreed, to a point. But this changed everything.

  “Oh, my God, I’m pregnant.” Christina beamed a huge smile at Dr. Sue, then she started to cry. “I’m actually pregnant. Thank you, God. Thank you.”

  “Yes, you are,” Dr. Sue said. “I was wondering when it would hit you.”

  ***

  Christina planned to tell Grant first, but Bailey called Christina as she was climbing into her truck for the drive home. Bailey and Adam were heading back to Riverbend during a break in shooting—they were both homesick and ready to slow down for a few days.

  Christina couldn’t stop herself blurting out the news.

  Bailey was silent on the other end of the line for a long time. Then she shrieked. “So it’s true after all!” she yelled with both laughter and tears in her voice. “Grant?”

  “I don’t know.” Christina told Bailey all Dr. Sue had said. Both of them cried and laughed, then cried again.

  “What am I going to do?” Christina wailed. Her emotions were flying high. She’d have to take some deep breaths before she drove.

  “Nothing,” Bailey said. “You wait until I’m there tomorrow. I’ll take care of everything.”

  ***

  Grant still had a hell of a lot of work to do on the commercial, so he didn’t have a chance to meet up with Christina the morning after her train shots. He called her, worried about her being sick, but she told him she was fine, just busy, like he was.

  He let her go, but he planned to go over to her house when he finished up for the day, and make sure she was all right. If she still felt bad, he’d convince her to stay home for the night—with him—so he could take care of her.

  Before that happened, Bailey and Adam returned.

  “What the hell?” Grant said as he strode out of the office in the late afternoon light, still in his shoot attire. “Why didn’t you two tell us you were coming?”

  “We wanted to surprise you,” Bailey said. She kissed Grant on the cheek, then went off to greet the rest of the household.

  Grant was very glad to see his older brother, missing him more than he wanted to admit. Adam had always been the brother Grant confided in when he could talk to no one else.

  Adam looked better. When he’d come home last fall, he’d been badly burned from an accident during a movie stunt. He’d healed physically pretty quickly, but the scars remained, inside and out.

  Bailey had helped him through, and though Adam wasn’t one hundred percent better, he’d vastly improved. Bailey was working some kind of magic.

  Faith squealed and squealed when she saw Bailey, and Bailey spent a long time hugging her. The two had become very close when Bailey had worked at the ranch last year. Then Bailey took off to see Christina—good, Grant didn’t like Christina being alone—leaving Grant and Adam together on the porch.

  Adam talked a while about his new movie in California, but finally he broke off and simply looked at Grant. “You’re way too quiet. What’s going on?”

  “A lot of shit,” Grant said.

  He told the whole story of events since Adam had gone—Karen’s arrival, Christina lurking in Grant’s bedroom and how they’d not been able to keep their hands off each other, Grant’s hope that his reconnection with Christina could be permanent.

  He omitted the part about Christina thinking she was pregnant and discovering otherwise. That was too personal and tender, plus Grant had promised he’d keep his mouth shut.

  “Sounds like you two are at a crossroads.” Adam rolled his cold bottle of beer around in his hands. “Do you walk on together, or take separate paths?”

  Grant growled. “When did you get so damn philosophical?”

  Adam’s grin pulled at the scars on the left side of his face. “When I surrendered to the fall and let myself hit the landing pad that was Bailey.”

  “Now you’re talking like a bad movie script.”

  “I don’t see the problem with Christina,” Adam said. “Sounds to me like you got to grab hold of her and hang on. Make her see that the two of you are better together than you’ll ever be on your own.”

  Grant took a sip of beer. “That easy?”

  “Yep. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Huh. Like you didn’t have to be smacked upside the head to see that Bailey was the one for you.”

  “Yeah, well.” Adam shrugged. “I got there in the end.”

  They drank in silence for a time, two brothers who didn’t need to talk to each other to be understood.

  “I see y’all have everything under control here at the ranch,” Adam said after a while. “More or less. I noticed that when Grace is cooking in the kitchen, Carter won’t come in the house.”

  “Faith really likes her,” Grant said. “And I like Grace’s chicken-fried steak. That is some good stuff.”

  “I’m looking forward to trying it,” Adam said.

  “Now that you are home,” Grant said after another stretch of companionable silence. “I’ve got a business proposition for you. It might not make us any money, but then again, we might be surprised.”

  “Yeah?” Adam looked interested. “Tell me.”

  Grant did. Adam’s smile grew to an all-out grin as they talked. “Let’s do it,” Adam said when Grant finished. “Sounds like fun.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Grant said. They clicked bottles.

  It was good to have Adam home again.

  ***

  The next morning, Bailey called Grant while he was getting ready to head out to the ranch, and told him to go to Christina’s, where she’d spent the night, instead. Her tone was cheerful, but Bailey always sounded cheerful, even when she was delivering bad news.

  Grant headed into town as quick as he could, stopped his truck outside Christina’s house, and went swiftly up to the porch. Bailey opened the front door before he could kn
ock.

  Christina sat on the living room sofa, looking fine in shorts, a blouse, and sandals. She usually went barefoot in the house, so her wearing shoes, even sandals, meant something was up.

  Before Grant could ask, Bailey, who’d gone back to watching out the front window, opened the door and let in Ray Malory, who paused on the threshold and gave Grant a belligerent look.

  “What’s going on?” Ray demanded of Grant.

  “Hell if I know,” Grant said. He didn’t like this. “Christina?”

  Bailey pointed at the two chairs on either side of the sofa. “Sit.”

  Grant and Ray looked at each other. Ray had come from his ranch, his boots leaving bits of dust and hay on the carpet. The fact that neither woman said anything about that didn’t bode well.

  Grant went to the chair on Christina’s right and sat down. Ray took the other chair. Christina said nothing, only looked straight ahead, her eyes on empty space.

  Bailey remained standing, putting herself opposite Christina, completing the square. It was Bailey who spoke.

  “Christina went to see Dr. Sue the other day, who confirmed that Christina is pregnant. From the timing, the father could be either you, Grant, or you, Ray.”

  Grant’s heart leapt high then started pounding hard. He surged to his feet. “But—”

  “Shh.” Bailey jammed her finger to her lips then pointed at the chair. “Sit down. You can talk when I’m done.”

  Grant tried to catch Christina’s eye, but she wasn’t looking at anyone, not even Bailey. He clenched his hands, trying to tamp down both his elation and trepidation and sank down to the edge of the chair. Ray sat tense as a bull in a chute on the other side of the room, his breath coming fast, his gaze fixed on Christina.

  Bailey continued. “Dr. Sue can run a blood test on Christina to confirm which of you is the father without doubt. All she needs is a DNA swab from each of you. Christina wanted you both to know, so you could have a fair chance at deciding what you want to do.”

  Grant waited a beat, in case Bailey had more to say, but she appeared to be done talking. He got to his feet again, and Ray rose with him.