The Bravo Bachelor

by Christine Rimmer

  Later. For all of it.

  He was still hungry, so he got another sandwich, more coffee and a piece of chocolate cake. That time he ate slowly, letting Mary have all the time she needed, to talk to Ida, to eat her own dinner.

  Almost an hour had gone by when he poked his head back in the door of her room. She’d switched off the lamp by the bed. Only the dim recessed light in the ceiling, turned down low, bathed the room in a dim glow. The remains of her meal waited on the swinging bed tray, which she’d pushed to the side. She seemed to be sleeping, her head turned to the far wall. He couldn’t see the baby, but figured she must be in the bassinet on the other side of the bed.

  He started to duck back out again, thinking how it was time, after all, for him to go. He could slip away without disturbing either of them, and get in touch in the morning, to make sure she was doing okay.

  But Mary turned her head with a sigh and saw him, her eyes half-open, a slow smile curving her soft mouth. She whispered his name. “Gabe…” And she held out the hand without the IV hooked into the back of it.

  His heart strangely lighter, he slipped into the dim room and let the door shut silently behind him.

  Chapter Five

  After he put her dinner tray outside the door, Gabe returned to Mary, took the hand she offered and sat in the chair. They were quiet for several minutes, just being there, together, in the dark. He could hear Ginny’s breathing, even and shallow, from the bassinet across the bed.

  “She’s sleeping,” Mary whispered, and squeezed his hand. He was thinking that she was bound to drift off to sleep herself in a minute or two. Then he would go.

  But instead of closing her eyes, she whispered, “Poor Ida. She’s all upset she wasn’t here. She said Helga took a turn for the worse. Ida had to rush her to the hospital—and in the confusion, she left her cell at Helga’s house.”

  Funny, but by then, he’d started to feel as if he knew Mary’s mother-in-law—and her sister, Helga White, too. “Is Helga okay?”

  “She’s better, Ida said.”

  He realized he didn’t even know what illness Helga suffered from. “What’s going on with Helga?”

  “She has heart problems. Low blood pressure and congestive heart failure. This time, her heartbeat slowed and almost stopped. They got her stabilized at the hospital. But now they’re talking about a pacemaker. She’ll be hospitalized for the next several days.”

  “So what will Ida do—I mean, now that Ginny’s here?”

  “She says she can get her other sister, Johanna, to fly up from Arizona and take over with Helga. Ida says they agreed, she and her sisters, that she would have to be here when the baby came. Poor Ida…” Mary chuckled, low. “She feels so bad she wasn’t here for me—and plus, there’s the disappointment. She wanted so much to see her grandchild born. This was a once-in-a-lifetime deal for her. Rowdy was her only child.”

  “That’s rough.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, she’ll get over it—the minute she gets her arms around Ginny.”

  Ginny. So Mary was calling the baby Ginny, too. He supposed it was a logical choice as a nickname for Virginia. Maybe it had even been the name Mary’s mother went by. Still, for some crazy reason, it pleased him to no end that he had called her Ginny first, and that Mary thought of her as Ginny, too.

  Gabe shook his head. Was he losing it or what?

  Mary was watching him. “What?”

  As if he would ever cop to getting all warm and fuzzy because they both called her baby Ginny. “Nothing. So Ida’s coming back to look after you, huh?”

  She nodded. “It might be a few days until she and her sisters get things worked out and she can come home. And Dr. Breitmann said they’ll probably release me from the hospital tomorrow afternoon, if there are no complications. So in the meantime, until she gets here, Ida insists I’m supposed to get a doula to stay out at the house with us. Ida will foot the bill.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a doula?”

  “Kind of a combination housekeeper, nanny and nurse.”

  “Where do you find one?”

  “Ida will make some calls and get back to me with some numbers.”

  “Well, all right then. You’ll have a doula.”

  Her eyes were shining. “So everything will work out—oh, and I told Ida all about you.”

  He faked a scowl. “All about me…like what?”

  “Like how you came over to try and get me to sell the Lazy H and ended up driving me to the hospital and sticking with me right through to the end. She says you’re a hero and she can’t wait to meet you—but to warn you that if you think I’ll sell that raggedy stretch of sagebrush and boulders Rowdy left me just because you came to my rescue in my hour of need, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Ida’s warning didn’t surprise him. “She loves the ranch, too, huh?”

  “Uh-uh. She hates it. It belonged to her husband and he made her live there when she wanted a house in town. He left it to Rowdy, knowing that if Ida got her hands on it, she’d sell it in a heartbeat.”

  He couldn’t help thinking that maybe Ida was the one he should approach with BravoCorp’s offer. If he convinced her she needed to put the pressure on Mary for Mary’s own good, and Ginny’s, too…

  But Mary was one step ahead of him. “I see that gleam in your eye, Gabe Bravo. Don’t even think about it. Ida knows I love the ranch. And more than anything, she wants me to be happy. You try to get her to put pressure on me, she’ll tell you you’re on your own with that and send you on your way.”

  “She doesn’t sound like your average mother-in-law.”

  She slid him a sideways glance. “You got something against mothers-in-law?”

  “Not in the least. I’ve never even had one.”

  She made a soft snorting sound. “Bachelor to the core. I knew it.”

  “And damn proud of it—so you’re crazy about your mother-in-law, huh?”

  “I am. Ida’s the best there is. No joke. Plus, she’s how I met Rowdy. I moved down from Dallas and went to work at the store. I’d always had this fantasy about living in the Hill Country.” Between San Antonio and Austin, right in the geographical heart of Texas, the Hill Country was a lot of folks’ idea of country living at its best. “I guess you could say I was finally living my dream,” Mary went on. “And Ida was so kind to me. I was just…I don’t know, so attached to her from the beginning. I’d lost my mom about a year before. Ida didn’t take her place, exactly. But she sure helped fill the empty space Mom left when she died.”

  Gabe thought about that nice, thick dossier he had on Mary, worked up by the best private investigators BravoCorp’s money could buy. He knew that she’d been raised by a single mom, in Arlington, a good-sized city about ten miles east of Fort Worth. He knew the small college she’d gone to and when she’d moved to Wulf Creek and met her husband. Still, he asked her, “What about your dad?”

  She shook her head, kind of slow and sad. “He left us when I was two. I don’t even remember him. It was always just me and Mom. She was so…smart and loving and always there for me, you know? I hardly knew what to do with myself when I lost her. She was a schoolteacher.”

  Mary spoke so openly about what must have been damn tough for her and her mom. And that had him feeling like a complete jerk, to be hiding the ball like this, asking her for personal information he already had. He busted himself. “Your mom taught primary grades, right?”

  She caught on instantly. He watched her soft eyes grow guarded as awareness dawned. He found himself thinking, as he had when he first met her, that she was too quick by half.

  In a whisper, she accused him. “You’ve had people looking into my past.”

  “Yeah.” He met her gaze directly. “It’s what I do, Mary. You know that.”

  “Why ask me if you already know it all?” She pulled her hand from his.

  He took it back again, turned it over, ran his finger along the crease at the tender center of her palm. “Because this
isn’t about business, Mary. This is strictly personal. I want to know about you. I want you to tell me about you.”

  She eased her hand from his a second time. At that point, what could he do but let it go? While he’d been down in the cafeteria, she must have cleaned up a little. She smelled faintly of lemons again. And she’d run a comb through her hair. It fell smoothly to her shoulders, still in need of a shampoo and a good cut, but no longer matted and stringy with sweat. She speared her fingers back through the chestnut strands. “What time is it?” Before he could answer, she glanced up at the round clock on the wall across from the bed. “Eight-thirty.” Finally, she looked at him again. “You’ve been so terrific. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without you…”

  He got the message. “You want me to go.”

  “Well, I mean, it doesn’t seem right. You’ve been here all day. I’m sure you have all kinds of…things to catch up on.”

  “Mary. I saw your baby born. I think we’re pretty much past all the polite-sounding noises. Say what you mean.”

  “Okay. Thank you. For everything….”

  “You’re angry, because we’ve had detectives finding out about you.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Angry?”

  “Just say it.”

  “But, Gabe, why should I be angry that you’ve been trying to find my weak points, nosing around in my life, looking for a way to get to me, to maneuver me into doing what I don’t want to do?”

  “All right.” He spoke gruffly. “Yeah. It’s rotten that we had our investigators nosing around in your private business. What can I say about that? Except I didn’t even know you then.”

  Her face softened. “Just business, right?”

  He shrugged. “That’s right.”

  “And really, when I think about it, it’s only what I should have expected. But it does remind me…”

  “Of what?”

  “That the crisis is over. You have been wonderful, Gabe. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “But?”

  “It’s time for you to go.”

  That hurt, her sending him packing. Even if she did happen to be right. It was time for him to leave. It was past time. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  Which made him, what? An idiot. A complete fool. A sentimental schmuck. All of the above.

  “Well, all right.” He kept it light, rising, bending over her, kissing her forehead, whispering, “Sleep well.”

  She stopped him as he pulled open the door to the hallway. “Gabe?”

  “Yeah?” Hope burned in his chest, embarrassing the hell out of him. But she only gave him a smile and a shy little wave.

  Outside, it was night. Cool and cloudless. He got behind the wheel of the SUV and then, before he started the engine, he did what he should have done hours ago: called his dad.

  Davis Bravo was freaked. “Gabe.” He swore. “You scared ten years off my life.”

  Gabe felt a stab of guilt, then. A few months before, his older brother’s plane had gone down in the Sierras. Ash had survived the crash, but it had been more than a week before they found him. Gabe probably should have considered that getting out of touch for a day when he was supposed to be at work would have his father worried sick.

  His dad demanded, “Where in God’s name are you?”

  “Wulf City. And I’m fine. Sorry, Dad. I’m really sorry.”

  “Your mother was about ready to call in the FBI and the Texas Rangers.”

  “Seriously. I’m safe and sound and you can call off the dogs. Tell Mom I love her, I’m not injured, bleeding or otherwise in trouble, and I’m less than thirty-five miles from home.”

  A silence on the line, and then, “All right. As long as you’re okay.” Again, Gabe reassured his father that he was fine. Davis must have believed him, because he got down to business after that. “What happened with the Hofstetter woman?”

  So Gabe laid it all out for him, that he’d just finished giving his pitch when Mary had started having contractions, and he’d taken her to the hospital—and ended up staying through the birth, since she was all on her own. “I just now left her,” he finished, “a few minutes ago, with her newborn baby girl in the bassinet beside her.”

  Another silence, then Davis let out a low laugh. “I have to hand it to you, son. You have got the touch. Now you and the Hofstetter widow are best friends, am I right?”

  Gabe answered flatly. “We are friends, as a matter of fact.”

  “And she’s agreed to sell that ranch, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  “But she will. You’ll talk her into it, show her the light.”

  “You know, Dad…”

  “What?”

  “She’s firm on not selling. I always hate admitting failure. But this time, I have to tell you, it’s beyond my talents to change her mind.”

  Davis sputtered. “What the hell?”

  “You heard me. She doesn’t want to sell.”

  His dad made a scoffing sound. “As if that’s news. Come on. What do you think we sent you in for?”

  Gabe took that as a rhetorical question and kept his mouth shut.

  His father provided the answer anyway, in an insulting sing-song. “Because she doesn’t want to sell.” Davis paused, but he wasn’t done. “And don’t give me the limp leg on this. You’re going to change her mind for her, just like you always do.”

  Gabe suppressed a sigh. “You got a whole lot of faith in me, Dad.”

  “You bet I do. You’ve proved to me over and over that my faith is justified. Now, all I want is for you to prove it one more time.”

  Gabe felt a weariness then, deep in his bones. When Davis Bravo wanted something, the word “no” disappeared from his vocabulary. “I’m tired, Dad. Heading home. Good night.”

  “Gabe. Gabe, I’m not finished talking to—”

  “Gotta go.” Gabe disconnected and tossed the BlackBerry onto the seat beside him. He started up the Escalade and was just pulling out of the parking lot when he remembered that Mary had horses and goats. And chickens, too. And there was also that scraggly brown dog. Was anybody looking after them?

  He decided he might as well go ahead and check on things at the Lazy H. Feed the stock and pet the damn dog. No big deal. It was between there and home. Hardly out of his way at all.

  There was a battered green pickup in the backyard when Gabe drove around to the rear of Mary’s house. And a light on in the barn. Evidently, Mary had already called someone to look after the stock.

  Still, Gabe got out of the Escalade quietly and approached the lit-up barn with caution. Inside, he found a skinny old man in overalls coming in from what Gabe assumed was the horse paddock. The old guy had a bucket in either hand and Mary’s brown dog at his heels. The dog whined and came straight for Gabe, dropping to her haunches, looking up at him hopefully. Gabe knelt to give her a little attention. He petted her head and scratched her around the ruff of her neck.

  The old guy squinted at him. “Who’s that there?”

  Gabe knew harmless when he saw it. He rose and stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “I’m Gabe. A friend of Mary’s.”

  The old man dropped a bucket so they could shake. “Garland Hadley, friend of the family. I got me a small spread northwest of here. Rowdy’s dad and me, we went way back.”

  “Mary give you a call?”

  “Yep. Said she had her a baby girl named Virginia Mae and would I mind lookin’ after the animals.” The old guy dropped the other bucket, swiped off his straw hat and scratched the few wiry-looking hairs on the top of his head. “Great news, ’bout that baby. Shame Rowdy didn’t live to see her.” He looked Gabe up and down. “You knew Rowdy?”

  “Never had the pleasure.”

  “A fine man. I knew Rowdy since he was knee-high to a gnat.” He shook his head and hit his hat against his thigh. “Cryin’ shame he’s gone.”

  “Yes, it is.” It seemed the right thing to say. “Anything I can help you with
here?”

  “Naw. Got it handled. You know when Mary’s coming home?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, I think.”

  “I’ll look in on her when she gets back, look after the livestock for the next few days.”

  “I know she’ll appreciate that.”

  “I heard Ida’s in Missouri. Mary got someone to drive her home?” The old man asked the question and it all came clear to Gabe.

  “Yeah. I’m taking care of that.”

  Garland nodded and slid his hat back on. “You’ll be needin’ that car seat she bought. I got a key to the house. Come on. I’ll get it for you.”

  Mary woke in the middle of the night and wondered where she was.

  And then it all came flooding back: the hospital. She was at Wulf City Memorial.

  And Ginny. She’d had Ginny.

  She rolled her head to the other side, slowly, almost fearing that when she looked, she’d find only emptiness in the space where Ginny’s bassinet was supposed to be. She’d learn it had all been a dream.

  But no. No dream. Real.

  Ginny lay on her back, sleeping so peacefully, making darling little sucking motions with her tiny mouth. Mary’s arms ached to hold her close. But no, better to let her get her sleep. The poor sweetie needed it, after what she’d been through. Toughest job in the world, being born. Mary grinned to think of it. Easy enough to grin now that all the hard work was done.

  Gabe.

  She thought his name and she felt…lonely. She missed him. Which was downright crazy, if you considered it. She hardly knew him. He was only a slick operator, a rich guy from a world she didn’t understand, sent in to smooth-talk her into signing over her ranch.

  “No…” She whispered the denial to the silent, darkened room.

  He wasn’t only that. He was more. He had been good to her. Kind and helpful and there, ready and able to do what had to be done when she needed him, needed a friend. Even when she’d tried to get rid of him back at the house, to tell him she would manage by herself, he wouldn’t leave her to find a way to the hospital on her own.