Having the Cowboy's Baby

by Stella Bagwell

  She figured the two he was talking about were Cordero and his brother, Matt. Juliet had told her last night before the evening meal that she worked at a local newspaper and would be out of the house today until six.

  Smiling in spite of her aching heart, she reached for one of the tacos. “Well, I’m glad your cook didn’t have to go to extra trouble for me. I feel like I’m intruding upon your family.”

  Mingo batted a hand through the air. “Nonsense. We’re happy that you’re here.”

  She heaved out a heavy sigh as she unwrapped the taco. “Well, I’m not so sure Cordero was that pleased to see me.”

  He chuckled again. “I hardly think that’s true. Matt said Cordero gave you such a bear hug he nearly broke your ribs.”

  Yes, but that was before she’d told him about the baby. That was before he’d insisted the two of them had to marry, she thought grimly. Insisted. Ordered. Demanded. In all of her dreams, she’d never expected a man to propose marriage to her in such a way. The memory of it still left her stinging with humiliation.

  She bit into the soft flour tortilla and scrambled egg and was relieved when her stomach didn’t revolt.

  “Cordero is a busy man. I don’t expect him to leave his work undone to cater to me. In fact, I think I should leave this afternoon.”

  “Now why would you want to do that? You just got here.”

  Because Cordero didn’t want her here. Not really. Oh, he’d been excited when he’d first spotted her all right. But everything had still been fun and games to him then. The second he’d heard about the baby, he’d turned into a bear. Complete with fangs. The only thing he was interested in now was the baby and how it would ultimately be raised.

  “I just think it would be better.”

  “For you? Or for Cordero?”

  She swallowed as her throat thickened with emotion. “Both, I suppose.”

  Suddenly Mingo’s hand reached across the table and covered hers. “Anne-Marie, I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is.”

  She had to bite her lip to keep from groaning out loud. “You just don’t know, Mr. Sanchez.”

  His big fingers patted the back of her hand. “I’m not Mr. Sanchez to you. I’m Mingo. And yes, I think I do know. I knew something was different the minute Cordero got back from Louisiana. The boy has been pining for you. And it’s good that you came.”

  Close to tears now, Anne-Marie bent her head. “I should have never gotten involved with him. He — he’s not a marrying sort of man.”

  With a heavy sigh Mingo rose from the table. Anne-Marie lifted her head to watch him quietly pour himself a mug of coffee, then carry it back to the table.

  He said, “You know I met Jules when he came to buy that pair of grays from Cordero. I liked him. Liked him a lot. We’re birds of a feather, your father and me.”

  Puzzled by his comment, she studied the older man’s face. Mingo was a tough outdoorsman, where her father ran the plantation from a business end. Mingo was built like a bull and just as robust, while her father was tall and slender with frail health. As far as she could tell the two men couldn’t have been more opposite.

  “What do you mean?” Anne-Marie asked him.

  “We both lost our wives way too soon to suit us.”

  “Oh.” The shadows in his eyes were too painful for her to take in and she dropped her gaze away from him to the tabletop. “Yes, Cordero told me about losing his mother.”

  “That tore him right in two,” Mingo replied. “You see, we’ve had a lot of loss here on the Sandbur. Only a few months before Elizabeth died, Matteo lost his first wife, Erica, in a riding accident. In fact, she was a lot like you — red hair and very beautiful. When we had her funeral Elizabeth was still well enough to stand at her graveside. But she was frail and losing ground even then.”

  He drew in a deep breath and let it out before he spoke again. “When she slipped away, it was the breaking point for Cordero. He was like a dog trying to lick his own wounds and growling if anyone tried to help him. He swore to me that he’d never marry. That he was never going to go through the hell his father and brother had gone through. I told him that he was wrong — that Elizabeth would be ashamed of him. But he wouldn’t listen. Since then I’ve been praying that time would heal him. Or maybe a woman like you.”

  Anne-Marie’s eyes slipped back to Mingo’s face and she was surprised to see that he was smiling. Here was a man who’d come close to losing his life in a violent way. Even now his voice held the faint hint of a slur, the corner of his mouth stretched unnaturally downward. Yet in spite of all the trials he’d endured, he was still a happy man. And suddenly she was ashamed of her self-pity, of putting her own wants first instead of the needs of her child and the man that she loved.

  She was trying to collect herself enough to speak when Mingo added, “Anne-Marie, there are some people that seem to breeze through life without a care and die old in their bed. But God seems to put trials on those that love him the most. To test us. Teach us. You’ll make it through this trial, Anne-Marie. You and Cordero.”

  As Mingo’s words sank in, she realized again how wrong she’d been to lash out at Cordero last night. She’d wanted to punish him for not giving her what she wanted. She’d even been angry with him for not understanding her needs when all along she should have been telling him what was really in her heart.

  Give and you shall receive. It was time she followed those instructions.

  “Where is Cordero this morning?” she asked.

  “He’s down at the cutting pen. If you want to go, I’ll drive you,” he offered with a grin.

  Rising from her seat, she skirted the table and hugged Cordero’s father. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He patted her shoulder and then she straightened away from him and smiled with a gratefulness that glowed in her blue eyes.

  “Just let me go change into a pair of boots and I’ll be ready,” she told him.

  He nodded. “I’ll wait here for you.”

  Her heart suddenly lifting with renewed spirit and hope, she left the kitchen and hurried up the staircase to her bedroom.

  She had placed her bag on the foot of the bed and was digging through the contents in order to reach her boots when a knock sounded on the door.

  Figuring Mingo had followed her up to tell her something else, she called, “Come in.”

  “What are you doing? Packing to leave?”

  Cordero’s voice stunned her and she whipped around to see him striding into the room. There was a look of stark fear on his face as his gaze took in her and the bag and the idea suddenly struck her that he’d lived these past years refusing to love, dreading he would lose again.

  “Cordero, I thought —” Her heart hammering, she stepped toward him. “I’m not packing. I came up here for my boots. Your father was going to drive me to the cutting pen, to see you.”

  The tight grimace on his face eased. “I had to leave the house early this morning. I’m sorry about that. I know we need to talk and —”

  Love swelled inside her chest and she didn’t try to stop herself from showing it as she went to him and gathered his hands within hers. “Cordero, before you say anything, let me say this. I was wrong last night. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. This isn’t all about me.”

  His eyes were skeptical as they roamed her face. “I don’t care if you’re angry with me. Slap me. Kick me. Whatever you have to do. I just want to know why you don’t want to marry me?” He moved close enough to touch her face and as his fingers trailed down her cheek so did her tears.

  “Because I —” She stopped, then started over. “I don’t want you to marry me because you feel it’s the right thing to do. I want you to marry me because you love me — me and the baby. But if that isn’t possible —”

  Her words broke off as he swiftly circled his arms around her shoulders and pulled her tight against him. “Oh, Anne-Marie,” he said in a choked voice, his face buried in the side of her hair. “You don’t h
ave to explain more. Because I know now that you love me.”

  Rearing her head back, she looked up at him with bemusement. “Does that part matter?”

  He suddenly chuckled and the sound was like music, assuring her heart that everything was going to be as it should be.

  “It’s only everything.” He lifted his hands to frame her face. “I think I’ve been in love with you from the first moment I saw you walking across the yard at Cane’s Landing. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I didn’t want to think that I could need anyone that much — that I would ever put myself into such a vulnerable place. But these past two months without you have been a living hell for me. Even if you hadn’t shown up to tell me about the baby, deep down, I knew I was going to have to go to you.”

  Shaking her head with wonder, she smiled at him through misty tears. “Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

  Groaning with regret, he stroked his hand down the back of her hair. “Because I’m a stubborn man, Anne-Marie. This morning I got into it with a horse buyer. I was fuming because he tried to get me to lower the price on a filly I had for sale. I wound up telling him to forget the whole thing, that I would never sell her. And then after the man left the ranch, I realized I wasn’t really angry with him. Lots of buyers try to negotiate the price. I was actually mad at myself for putting Sweet Pea up for sale in the first place. I loved her and deep down I didn’t want to lose her. It’s the same with you, my darlin’. I love you and I don’t want to lose you. Will you marry me, Anne-Marie? Be my wife for as long as we both shall live?”

  She let out a soft sigh of joy as he lifted her hand to his lips. “Cordero, I love you. I wanted to be your wife long before I learned about the baby. I think — well, for a long time, I was hanging on to a dream, trying to be the perfect angel my mother often called me. Trying to live up to what I thought she wanted me to be wasn’t the right reason to enter a convent.” She shook her head and smiled with awe. “Thankfully there was a higher hand guiding me toward you.”

  His eyes full of love, he slipped his arms around her waist and cradled her against him. “I understand your need to help others, Anne-Marie, and after we’re married I want you to continue to do that. Just so your work doesn’t take you too far away from me and our children.”

  She slid her palms up his broad chest, then cupped them around the sides of his face. “Maybe you did understand me when I lay down with you in the grass,” she said softly.

  Smiling, he lowered his lips to hers. “You were giving me your heart. And now it’s too late to take it back. I plan on keeping it forever.”

  He sealed his promise with a lengthy kiss that had Anne-Marie’s heart singing, shouting, rejoicing.

  When he finally lifted his head, she said, “Mingo is waiting down in the kitchen. Maybe we’d better go give him the news that he’s getting a new daughter-in-law.”

  Laughing, Cordero grabbed her by the hand and led her out of the room. “We’ll go tell him. But somehow I don’t think it will be news to him.”

  Ten months later on an early spring day filled with bright sunshine, Joseph Cordero Sanchez was christened at the family church not far from the Sandbur, then whisked home to a house full of family and friends gathered for the celebration.

  As always on the Sandbur, a party required lively music, plenty of good food, with equal amounts of dancing. All three were presently in such full force that some of the merrymaking had spilled into the backyard and even down to the barns.

  Little Joseph was the second baby to be born to the Sanchez family in the past few months. He joined Matt and Juliet’s son, Jess, who was born a week before Christmas. Both boys had been ruling the household and today were getting equal attention as adults fawned and cooed over the two little cousins.

  Jules, who seemed to be getting stronger and healthier every day, had traveled down from Louisiana to attend his grandchild’s baptism. At the moment he and Mingo had withdrawn to a corner of the great room and were conspiring to slip out of the house and down to the horse barn.

  At the opposite end of the room, near the staircase landing, Cordero’s sister, Lucita stood with their Aunt Geraldine, watching the celebration.

  “I’m so glad you and Marti could drive up from Corpus to be here today,” Geraldine told her. “This day means so much to Cordero and Anne-Marie.”

  Lucita’s eyes drifted over to her two brothers, who were both holding their baby sons, showing them off to friends with fatherly pride. The sight was a very happy one. Yet it also filled her heart with sadness. Her son was without a father now. The man had disappeared from their lives. But not before trying to hurt her in every possible way.

  “I’m glad I could come,” she said to Geraldine. “It’s nice to spend time with my dad and brothers.”

  Over the rim of her coffee cup, the older woman regarded her niece. “They want you to come home, Lucita.”

  She grimaced. “Yes, I know.”

  “Well?”

  Lucita pulled her sad gaze away from her brothers to glance at Geraldine. “You’re right. I think it’s time I come back to my family.”

  The older woman frowned. “If you’ve decided to come home to the Sandbur, why do you look like your world is coming to an end?”

  Did she? Funny, Lucita felt as if her world had ended long ago.

  “It’s not that, Geraldine. It’s that — I’m frightened.”

  “Frightened?” Geraldine repeated blankly. “Of what?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” she answered, “but I think someone has been stalking me.”

  ISBN: 9781426801235

  HAVING THE COWBOY’S BABY

  Copyright © 2007 by Stella Bagwell

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  eBook Info

  Title:Having the Cowboy’s Baby

  Creator:Stella Bagwell

  Date:2007

  Type:novel

  Format:text/html

  Identifier:ISBN 9781426801235

  Source:PDF

  Language:en

  Relation:None

  Coverage:None

  Rights:Copyright © 2007 by Stella Bagwell