Maverick Christmas Surprise

by Brenda Harlen

  “You don’t think I should want proof?”

  “Of course you should want proof,” she said. “But instead of worrying about whether you’re ‘on the hook,’ you might consider fatherhood as an opportunity rather than an obligation.”

  “I guess there’s only one way to decide our next step,” he said, and reached for his cell phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Beth asked, as she dipped her fork into her pie again.

  “The medical clinic—as soon as I can find the number,” he said, searching for the listing.

  “For a paternity test?” she guessed.

  He nodded.

  She chewed as Wilder connected the call, but her attention was no longer on the pie.

  “Okay,” Wilder said, when he’d set his phone aside again. “We’ve got an appointment at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “That was quick,” she said, surprised.

  “The sooner we get the test done, the sooner we can get the results,” he pointed out.

  She nodded her agreement, eager to know the truth and still a little bit worried about what that truth might be.

  “If it turns out that the baby isn’t mine, I won’t object to you taking him back to Dallas,” Wilder continued. “Until then, however, he isn’t going anywhere.”

  “But...the results will probably take several days. Maybe even longer.”

  “I guess that’s possible,” he acknowledged.

  “You can’t expect me to stay in Rust Creek Falls that long,” she protested.

  “You can leave anytime you want,” he said. “But you’ll leave without the baby.”

  Chapter Five

  Wilder could tell his statement had surprised her. It had surprised him, too. If Beth had shown up immediately after Leighton had left the baby on his doorstep, he would have happily turned the infant over to his aunt. But somehow, over the past forty-eight hours, he’d started to get attached to the little guy.

  He wasn’t quite ready to accept that the kid was his, and truthfully—for Cody’s sake—he still hoped Leighton had been wrong in identifying him as the dad. But he was invested in discovering the truth now, and determined to have it before making any decisions about his future.

  “But my job is in Dallas,” Beth protested. “My life is in Dallas.”

  “What is your job?” Wilder asked.

  “I teach kindergarten.”

  “Then it’s your winter break right now, isn’t it?” he pointed out logically.

  “It is,” she acknowledged. “And I didn’t plan on spending my holidays in Montana.”

  He shrugged. “As I said, you can go anytime you want.”

  “But you won’t let me take Cody with me.”

  “Nope,” he confirmed.

  She sighed. “Is there a hotel in town?”

  “Only Maverick Manor, just off the highway. But it’s booked through to the New Year.”

  “Motel, then? Or bed-and-breakfast?”

  “There’s Strickland’s Boarding House in town,” he told her. “But if you plan on staying in Rust Creek Falls, there’s no reason you can’t stay here. The room you slept in last night has been empty since Finn moved out.”

  “Are you sure the rest of your family wouldn’t mind?”

  “It’s just me and my dad here now,” he said. “And truthfully, I wouldn’t object to some help with the baby.”

  “Cody,” she said.

  He scowled. “What?”

  “His name is Cody.”

  “I know his name.”

  “Do you? Because I haven’t heard you say it—not even once.”

  His scowl deepened at that.

  “It’s only four letters. Just two short syllables. Co-dy,” she said again, deliberately emphasizing each syllable.

  “I know his name,” Wilder repeated.

  “But you won’t get attached if you don’t use it,” she guessed. “If you continue to refer to him as ‘the baby,’ and it turns out that he’s not your baby, it’ll be easier for you to walk away.”

  Annoyed by her insightful assessment—though not necessarily willing to believe it was true—he hit back. “I think I’m beginning to see why Leighton brought her baby here rather than leaving him with you.”

  Surprise and hurt were clearly reflected in her eyes before she sucked in a breath and quickly looked away.

  Wilder winced. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” she challenged, her eyes shiny with what he suspected were tears.

  “I sometimes lash out when I’m feeling defensive, and you got caught in the crossfire,” he explained.

  “And I can be overprotective of those I love,” she said. “I want what’s best for Cody, and apparently Leighton thought that was you, so you need to step up and act like his father.”

  “If I am his father,” Wilder said, still not quite ready to believe it was possible.

  Because in the brief time that he’d been with Leighton, there’d been no forgotten or broken condoms, no reason at all for him to suspect she might have been pregnant with his child when they parted ways.

  Yet somehow, in the short time that the baby—Cody, he mentally amended—had been at the ranch, Wilder had started to accept that fatherhood might not be the worst thing that could happen to him. That maybe it was time for him to not just step up but grow up.

  Beth nodded in acknowledgement of his point as a knock sounded.

  Before he could get up to answer the summons, the door opened and Avery stepped inside, kicking snow off her boots.

  “No babies on your doorstep today?” his sister-in-law teased in lieu of a greeting.

  “No,” he said. “And not funny.”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said, maybe trying to prove that she wasn’t a complete stick-in-the-mud. “I thought it was pretty funny.”

  Avery grinned. “That’s because you have a better sense of humor than my grumpy brother-in-law.”

  “I have reason to be grumpy,” he told her. “I was up I-don’t-know-how-many times in the night with the baby.”

  His brother’s wife was immediately sympathetic. “I’m not surprised the little guy had a restless night, in an unfamiliar place with people he doesn’t know.”

  “And, as a result of his restless night, I had a restless night,” Wilder felt compelled to point out.

  “Actually, that’s why I stopped by,” she said. “To see if you were managing okay with the baby. I wished we could have stayed later the other night, but we had to get back to Pumpkin.”

  “Pumpkin is a goat,” Wilder explained to Beth.

  “Goat?” she echoed, as if uncertain she’d heard him correctly.

  “Don’t ask,” he warned. “Because if you do, she’ll never stop talking about it.”

  Avery’s narrowed gaze promised retribution for what she perceived as the slight of her beloved pet, but she refocused on the purpose of her visit to ask again, “So how are you managing with Cody?”

  “Lucky for the kid, I’ve got some help now,” he said.

  His sister-in-law’s attention shifted back to Beth. “You must be the owner of the car in the driveway with the Texas plates.”

  She nodded and offered her hand. “Beth Ames. I’m Cody’s aunt.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Avery, one of Wilder’s sisters-in-law,” she introduced herself. “And since I’m obviously not needed here, I’m going to head back to my place. The furniture for the nursery was delivered this morning, and I can’t wait to get it set up.”

  “You mean you can’t wait to nag Finn to set it up,” Wilder said firmly, concerned that his sister-in-law might attempt to tackle the chore on her own.

  “Finn’s busy trying to rebuild the engine of some piece of equipment.”

  “The baler?” Wilder sugg
ested.

  “Maybe. I sometimes tune out when he’s grumbling about stuff like that,” she admitted. “And anyway, the point is that I know my way around a toolbox well enough to put the furniture together.”

  “You should wait for Finn to do it,” Wilder insisted.

  “I don’t want to wait,” Avery told him.

  He sighed. “Fine. If Beth doesn’t mind me leaving Cody in her capable hands, I’ll go put your furniture together.”

  “Of course I don’t mind taking care of my nephew,” she said pointedly.

  “And I’d be happy to keep Beth company while you’re gone,” Avery said.

  “Why does that not reassure me?” he wondered aloud.

  His sister-in-law grinned. “I won’t spill all of your deepest, darkest secrets,” she promised. “But only because I don’t know them all.”

  “Lucky me,” he said dryly.

  “But Finn has shared enough stories that I can probably keep Beth entertained until you’re back.”

  * * *

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” Beth said to Avery when Wilder had gone. “Because I wanted to thank you personally for helping take care of Cody. Wilder said you’ve been a big help.”

  “It was my pleasure,” Avery said. “Your nephew is a real sweetie.”

  “I think so,” she agreed, with a smile.

  “Plus—” Avery rubbed a hand over her rounded belly “—it was good practice for my own little bundle of joy.”

  “Wilder said you’re due in the spring?”

  “Early March,” the other woman confirmed. “I feel as if I’ve been pregnant forever, but now I can finally almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Then she sighed. “What I can’t see are my feet. But maybe that’s a good thing, because I haven’t had a pedicure in...forever.”

  “You should treat yourself,” Beth said. “Because you’ll have even less time for those kinds of indulgences once your baby comes.”

  “I’d love to treat myself,” Avery agreed. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a spa in Rust Creek Falls. It’s one of the things I miss about living in Dallas.”

  “You’re from Texas, too?”

  “Born and raised,” the expectant mom confirmed.

  “So what brought you to Montana?”

  “Finn,” she said. “We’d known each other in Dallas, and when I heard he’d moved to Rust Creek Falls, I came here to see him and decided to stay.”

  “You know it’s love when,” Beth said.

  Avery chuckled. “Yeah, it was a pretty big change,” she acknowledged. “But Rust Creek Falls isn’t so bad, once you get used to it.”

  “I don’t plan on being here long enough to get used to it,” Beth said.

  “That’s too bad. Because Wilder’s going to need some help learning how to be a dad to Cody.”

  “Do you really think he’s interested in being a dad?” she asked dubiously.

  “I know he is,” Avery said. “Even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

  Beth frowned at that.

  “He just needs some time to get used to the idea, especially considering how the happy news was delivered.”

  “I encouraged Leighton to get in touch with the father, as soon as she told me she was pregnant, but she insisted he wouldn’t want to know,” Beth confided.

  “I’m not judging your sister,” the other woman hastened to assure her. “I walked more than a few miles in her shoes.”

  Beth’s confusion must have shown on her face, because Avery said, “You didn’t know that I was pregnant with Finn’s baby before we got married?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I was,” Avery said. “And although I came to Rust Creek Falls specifically to tell him that we were going to have a baby, it still took me a long time to find the right words—or any words, really.”

  “But you did it,” Beth noted.

  “I did it,” the other woman confirmed. “And then, as if I wasn’t freaked out enough about being pregnant, I freaked out even more when Finn suggested we get married.”

  “You didn’t want to get married?”

  “I didn’t know what I wanted. I was scared and confused and everything just seemed to be happening so fast. We had a one-night stand, I got pregnant, I told him about the baby, he proposed, we got married—” she paused then, a smile curving her lips “—and then we fell in love.”

  Beth sighed, a little wistfully. “It sounds like a romance novel.”

  Avery chuckled. “There was enough drama between our families to fill a lot of pages, that’s for sure.”

  “And now you’re one big happy family.”

  “Or faking it,” Avery said. “But I don’t care if our respective fathers are just going through the motions, because I know that Finn loves me as much as I love him.”

  “I’m glad things worked out for you.”

  Avery rubbed her belly again. “Me, too.”

  And maybe Beth was guilty of reading too many fairy tales to her kindergarten class, but one of the reasons she’d continued to encourage—Leighton would probably say “nag”—her sister to reach out to Cody’s father was that she wanted a happy ending for them, too.

  Though leaving the baby at his door wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind, Beth wanted to believe it was the first step toward a possible reconciliation of Cody’s parents.

  Assuming that Wilder was the little boy’s father.

  Of course, she had no reason to doubt the claim in her sister’s letter. No reason except Leighton’s confession that she wasn’t 100 percent certain.

  But if she was being honest, she’d suspected, even at the time, that her sister had only been pretending to be uncertain so that Beth would stop nagging. Because she couldn’t be expected to contact the father if she wasn’t sure who was the father. And the fact that Leighton had brought Cody here proved she wasn’t uncertain at all.

  But if Beth acknowledged that the hunky cowboy was her nephew’s father, and if Wilder was willing to step up and be his father, where would that leave her?

  On her way back to Dallas, alone.

  And that scenario wasn’t one she wanted to contemplate.

  * * *

  When Avery had gone, Beth took Cody into the family room with the giant Christmas tree for some playtime. The ranch house was so warm and homey, she’d been taken aback to learn that Max was an unmarried rancher with six sons.

  Of course, it was possible that he’d had the house professionally furnished. Or maybe one or more of his daughters-in-law had helped with the finishing touches. In any event, Beth felt comfortable in the house, despite being an uninvited guest.

  She sat Cody in her lap on the floor and played patty-cake with him, then she entertained him with “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and used his favorite blanket as a curtain for peekaboo.

  As much as she always enjoyed playful interaction with her nephew, she understood the importance of alone time, too, to teach him independence. But considering that Cody hadn’t seen his mother since Christmas Day, she opted to focus on play today so he wouldn’t worry that she’d left him, too.

  “How about some tummy time?” she suggested, spreading his blanket out on the carpet.

  “This is supposed to help you build strength for sitting up and rolling over,” she said, laying him down on his belly on top of the blanket.

  Then she stretched out on the carpet facing him, her chin propped up on her folded arms.

  Cody lifted his head to look at her, a wide, toothless smile spreading across his face.

  “You’re already such a strong boy, aren’t you?” she said, wiping his drooly chin with the corner of the blanket. “You’re going to be rolling over before we know it, then I won’t be able to put you down for fear of losing you.”

  Cody pushed himself up higher, as if to prove he wa
s ready to move on to bigger and better things.

  “I lost track of the number of times I had to tell my kids to get their feet off the furniture,” a deep voice said from behind her. “But I never objected to anyone sitting on it.”

  Embarrassed to have been caught in such an undignified position, Beth immediately rolled over and rose to her feet. If his reference to “kids” hadn’t already identified him as Wilder’s father, she would have guessed the relationship just from looking at him.

  She gauged him to be in his midsixties. His handsome face, deeply tanned and lined, attesting to a life spent outdoors. Though she knew him to be a rancher and he was dressed in the cattleman’s usual uniform of jeans and plaid shirt, his clothes looked more Rodeo Drive than rodeo.

  “Um, hi,” she said, scooping Cody up off the floor. “We were just having some tummy time.”

  He nodded. “I heard.”

  “Oh.” Her cheeks flushed hotter as she wondered how long he’d been standing there, watching them, and if she’d said anything she shouldn’t have. She tended to think out loud when she was with Cody, to help build his listening and vocabulary skills, and often didn’t even realize she was doing it.

  “To build strength for sitting up and rolling over,” he noted.

  She nodded. “It also reduces the risk of developing a flat spot on the back of the head as a result of spending too much time on his back.”

  “We didn’t worry about that when my boys were babies,” Max told her. “Because the conventional wisdom of the time was to put babies to sleep on their tummies.”

  “Now ‘back to sleep’ is the recommendation,” Beth said.

  “I learned that when my first granddaughter was born,” he acknowledged. “She’s six and a half now—and a total princess.”

  “Is this hers?” Beth asked, reaching under the sofa to retrieve the Princess Aurora doll she’d spotted earlier.

  “It is,” Max confirmed. “Hunter called last night, asking me to look for it, and I insisted it wasn’t here. Obviously I was wrong.”

  She gave him the doll. “A fringe benefit of tummy time is finding things you didn’t even know you’d lost.”