Cowboys Don't Quit

by Anne McAllister

  "She can't!"

  "I'm sure when you're God you'll do a better job of arranging the universe. In the meantime," Jill said acidly, "even without your permission, Annette is having the baby."

  "Jimmy's just gone into surgery," he argued, not that it made a damn bit of difference.

  "I'll tell her."

  "But—"

  But Jill had turned her back on him to talk to the admitting clerk, another woman he'd gone to high school with. Jill finished giving the clerk—Nancy, he remembered her name was—the information that Annette must have given her on the way into town. She didn't look at Luke again. He might as well have vanished right off the face of the earth as far as she was concerned.

  It might not have been a bad idea from his point of view, either.

  He felt like a man standing in the eye of a storm. He didn't connect with reality again until he noticed that Jill had finished and was heading down a corridor.

  "Hey!" he called after her.

  Nancy, the clerk, glared at him. "For heaven's sake, Luke! This is a hospital!"

  "Sorry," he muttered. He strode down the hall after Jill.

  Nancy leapt out of her chair and went after him. "That's maternity! Only fathers are allowed. You can't go down there!"

  He glanced back. "You gonna stop me?"

  He caught up with Jill as she reached the labor room. "I want to tell her myself. It was what I told her I'd do."

  Jill looked at him, then nodded and stepped out of the way. "By all means."

  The minute he stepped into the room he had second thoughts.

  Annette was lying half propped up in a hospital bed her hair as woolly and wild as a sheep at the end of a long, cold winter. Her face was colorless except for a high flush along her cheekbones, and her eyes were hugs and smudged.

  "Jimmy?" she asked, her fingers white as they clutched the bed rail.

  "In surgery."

  "Is he in a coma?"

  "Of course not." Then he remembered that the last time she'd seen her husband, he'd been out cold. He rested his palms on the rail at the foot of her bed. "He came around before I even got him to the hospital. Re-ally, Annette, he's— Are you all right?"

  The last burst from him because as he was speaking she began to shift uncomfortably. Her hands went to her abdomen, her lips tightened into a thin line, her whole body grew tense.

  Jill brushed past him and leaned over her. "Relax, Annie. Breathe slowly. Deeply. Easy now. Easy."

  Luke, who in his time had delivered his fair share of calves, found that watching human labor wasn't nearly as sanguine an experience.

  Annette tried to take a deep breath. It had a ragged edge and with it came a small moan.

  "Steady," Jill said softly. "You're doing fine. Just fine."

  Sweat beaded on Luke's upper lip. "Are you sure?"

  Jill shot him a hard glare. "If you're going to say things like that, get out of here."

  "I was only asking," he protested. "Maybe I should get a nurse."

  "The nurse is just outside. She's got another mother to attend to. Here, give me a hand."

  He blanched. "I deliver calves, not babies."

  "Not that kind of help," Jill said impatiently. "We have a doctor for that. I mean help her breathe. Rub her back."

  "You want me to...rub her back?"

  "Purely platonically," Jill said, giving him a hard look. "Don't worry. You'll be quite safe."

  Then Annette began to have another contraction and Jill turned abruptly away, giving Annette all her attention, urging the woman to match her breathing. The contraction passed. Annette rolled onto her side. Jill reached over the bed rail and rubbed her back.

  Luke watched. He saw her hands move in slow, even, rhythmic strokes over Annette's back, and he remembered the way those same hands had touched him. His eyes traced the profile of her bent head, the fall of her hair as it curved behind her ear, saw the tip of her tongue jut out for just a moment and run across her upper lip. And he remembered the way her hair had brushed against his chest, the way her tongue had touched his lips, had tangled with his tongue.

  His fingers clenched around the bed rail. He stifled a groan.

  Jill slanted him a glance.

  "Here it comes again," Annette said, and he saw her try not to tense as the contraction overtook her.

  "Doing fine," Jill murmured, still rubbing. "Just fine."

  "I'll do it," Luke said suddenly, needing to do something.

  Jill looked doubtful, but he stepped forward, and she moved aside and let him take over. He rubbed Annette's back, and it was purely platonic. But he couldn't help what his mind was thinking. In his mind the skin he touched and stroked and kneaded was Jill's. Annette let out a sigh of something—relief, bliss, momentary freedom from pain? Luke didn't know. What his mind heard was the eager whimper that Jill had made when she was loving him, being loved by him. He flicked a glance in her direction.

  She was watching his hands. Her breathing was shallow. Her lips were slightly parted and seemed to tremble.

  "I gotta go," he said abruptly, and he jerked his hands away from Annette and took off out of the room without looking back.

  "What happened? Is he...all right?" Annette asked.

  There was a second's pause. Then he heard Jill answer, "I think he went to check on Jimmy."

  He'd totally forgotten about Jimmy. But it seemed a good idea—and a way of salvaging his sanity. For the next hour he shuttled back and forth between maternity and surgery. There was no way he was going to start touching Annette again, not when all he could think about was touching Jill in entirely more intimate ways. Finally Jimmy was out of the operating room and in recovery. Annette seemed to relax more after that, and Jill favored him with a fleeting look of approval.

  Around five in the morning, Jimmy recovered from the anesthetic and the tables turned. One of the nurses, thinking she was being helpful, told him that Annette was in labor, and at once Jimmy tried to get up to go help her.

  "The hell you are," Luke exclaimed. "You're staying right here."

  "But she needs me! She's counting on me. It's my kid!"

  "She's got Jill. They're doing fine."

  "You sure?" Jimmy sagged back against the bed. "Thank God for Jill," he murmured. He shut his eyes for a moment, then looked at Luke once more. "Go see how they're doing, will you?"

  So for the next hour and a half, Luke went back and forth bearing reports the other way.

  Annette moved into transition finally, needing to pant, becoming frantic and clinging to Jill's hand, squeezing it so fiercely Luke thought the bones would break.

  But Jill never faltered. She brushed Annette's hair away from her face, blotted her cheeks and forehead with a cool damp cloth, all the while keeping up the soft words of encouragement that Annette needed to steady her breathing.

  "Time to move to the delivery room," Annette's doctor decided at last.

  He asked Jill to come along. "She'll do better if you're there," he said. Then he turned to Luke. "Guess you might as well come, too, if you're reporting back to Dad."

  "Me?" Luke gulped. "But I—"

  Annette's gaze fastened on him. "Please. For Jimmy."

  He wanted nothing more than to back right out of the room and keep on going. He was nailed to the floor by Annette's beseeching blue eyes. He gave one small, jerky nod of his head. She beamed. Then the beam turned to a grimace, and she clutched Jill's hand.

  "Oh, God! I need to...I need to push."

  "Let's go," the doctor said.

  Luke thought that cows had it better. No one told them they had to move right when they were in the throes of delivery. No one hustled them from bed to gurney to delivery table while they agonized. But then, no cow, to his knowledge, had ever had Jill to help her through it. And Jill was an asset, no doubt about it.

  She steadied Annette by her mere presence. She spoke calmly and soothingly all the while the doctor and nurses did their bit. She kept Annette focused, stroked her cheek, br
ushed her hair out of her face, let her fingers be mashed by Annette's desperate ones.

  Luke watched. And felt as useless and out of place as a steer in a pen full of heifers. He wasn't sure exactly when the faint, queasy feeling and the perception that things were getting stuffy turned into something a little more pressing. One minute he was standing there, watching as Annette strained to push with the contraction, and the next he felt a rushing sound in his ears and he took a desperate step back toward the wall.

  "Oh, hell," he heard the doc mutter. "Get him outta here."

  And the next thing he knew he was out in the corridor, sitting in a chair with Jill pushing his head down between his knees.

  "Deep breath," she said. "Now another."

  He dragged in the air, felt himself shudder, heard the rushing sound in his ears fade gradually. He stared down at the linoleum between the blue gauze sanitary shoes they'd made him put on over his mud-caked boots. In the distance he heard a baby crying.

  "All right now?" Jill asked, and he managed a nod, embarrassed to death.

  "I'll just go back in then. See if we've got a girl or a boy making all that racket."

  She was long gone before Luke realized that the baby crying must be Annette's. He lifted his head slowly and slumped back against the chair, closing his eyes. God, what a jerk he was.

  He could hear people talking and moving around inside the delivery room. Above them all, he could hear a baby. Furious and indignant. But alive. Thank God for that.

  He took another deep breath, then two. He needed to go back in—if they would let him. He needed to get all the particulars and go tell Jimmy. But he could well imagine the reception he'd get. Luke Tanner damned near fainting at the sight of a baby being born? Hell, he'd never live it down.

  Maybe if he waited, a nurse would come and tell him.

  When the door opened finally, Luke straightened and looked up hopefully.

  It was Jill. "Better now?" she asked.

  He stood up quickly, his cheeks still burning. Immediately, he wished he hadn't; he was still dizzy and had to grab the doorjamb for support. Jill started to reach for him, then tucked her hand into the pocket of her slacks.

  Luke swallowed and took a deep breath. "I'm fine. Just got a little light-headed, I guess. Must've been hungry or something."

  She didn't call him a liar. She just nodded. Then she smiled. "It's a girl."

  He'd forgotten about the baby. Now he grinned. "Sounds like a banshee."

  Jill laughed. "She's a fighter. Annette will have her hands full, I'll bet." Her laughter faded and she smiled again, almost wistfully. "Lucky girl," Luke thought he heard her say. She looked away.

  "I'll go tell Jimmy," he said.

  "Come see the baby first. Then you'll be able to report firsthand." She opened the door to the delivery room and held it.

  The nurses smiled. The doctor looked up from whatever messy business he was engaged in and grinned knowingly at him.

  Luke shrugged sheepishly.

  "Where'd you go?" Annette asked. She was pale but composed now as she lay on the delivery table looking up at him, her baby cradled in her arms.

  Luke shrugged awkwardly, feeling heat creeping into his face. "I just...needed some air."

  Annette's eyes widened. "You mean you had to.. .you... got sick?"

  "I did not get sick!" he retorted, then grinned at the knowing looks. "Much."

  Annette giggled. "Wait'll I tell Jimmy!"

  "You do and you'll be living back in town," Luke threatened, but she just laughed again.

  "You won't kick us out," she told him confidently.

  "Yeah, well, not if you keep quiet about it," he said gruffly, then edged closer to get a look at the baby. "Not bad," he said. "Little more wrinkled and redder'n a calf, but—"

  "Lucas Tanner! She's beautiful," Annette protested, hugging her sleeping daughter close.

  "Whatever you say. Got a name yet?"

  "Jimmy and I are going to have to talk about it," Annette said, then her eyes widened and she levered herself up slightly. "How is Jimmy?"

  "Doing fine. And probably antsy as hell waiting for news."

  "Go then," she urged him. "Tell him she's seven pounds eleven ounces, twenty inches long, has lots of beautiful brown hair, lovely blue eyes, and she's absolutely gorgeous."

  "She is? Er, yes, ma'am." Luke gave her a grin and a wink and started for the door.

  Jill was standing in front of it. She looked tired and disheveled and more beautiful than ever.

  And, God help him, even now he wanted her.

  Their eyes met, and he knew she didn't want him— or anything to do with him.

  Taking a deep breath, Luke brushed past.

  The sun was already well above the mountaintops by the time he'd talked to Jimmy, relayed all the messages about his new daughter and reassured him that Annette was doing fine. He was just heading out to be the first customer in Paco's mother's cafe when he looked up to see Jill coming out of Annette's room.

  "Everything okay?"

  She nodded. "She's sleeping. So's the baby."

  "So's Jimmy."

  "Good," she said. She looked as if she might go past him.

  "You okay?" he asked her.

  "I'm fine." She gave him a wan smile. He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, wondering what else to say. Jill leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes briefly.

  "You must be beat."

  She opened her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck. "First delivery I've ever been through. Takes a lot out of you even when you aren't the one doing the work."

  "You were pretty impressive. You got her through it."

  "She needed me to."

  "You're calm in a crisis."

  "Not always," she said, and he knew they were both remembering Keith's death. It was always there between them.

  He set his hat on his head and tugged it down. "I gotta go. There's a ton of work to be done."

  She hesitated, then said, "I'm going to get breakfast at Linda's. Do you want to come?"

  He wanted to; he didn't dare. And thank heaven the time his stomach didn't growl and betray him. "Naw," he said, even as he realized what it must have cost he to invite him. His mouth twisted. "Thanks anyway. Maybe some other time."

  Jill didn't answer. She started toward the door.

  "Jill."

  She turned halfway around.

  "About what I said the other day... I'm sorry."

  Jimmy would have been irrigating in the morning in the south field. He would have been mowing hay in the north later that afternoon. He would have fit in fixing the gate by the Peelers' place somewhere in between. Luke didn't get down the mountain to work on the irrigation until past three.

  First he had to feed the dogs and horses, haul the salt, check the cattle, move a bunch up out of the willows, doctor a calf that had pinkeye, shut a gate some hikers had left open and ride an extra two miles just to check another gate he was sure he'd have to open if they left it shut. They had. He did. So by the time he finally rode into the yard by the ranch house, it was already midaf-ternoon.

  Jill's rental car was parked by the kitchen, so she was back from the hospital. He didn't go into the house. He turned out his horse, then took the truck and headed for the fields.

  Cy Nichols, his neighbor down the highway, was already there.

  "Ran into Jill in the cafe this morning," he said, lifting his hat and running a hand through thin, gray hair. "She told me what happened. We figured we'd help out." He jerked his head toward the far side of the field, and for the first time Luke spotted a small form hunkered down alongside one of the ditches. Paco.

  "He's a worker, that one," Cy said, blue eyes crinkling in his sun-weathered face. "He'll make a good hand."

  "I expect he will. Much obliged to both of you."

  Luke did the irrigating. Paco fetched and carried. Cy started the mowing. "That's enough for today," Luke said when Cy finished the first field. Then, stomach growling a
nd back aching, he remembered the gate.

  "Need a hand?" Cy asked.

  Luke shook his head. "Thanks for all you've done."

  Cy dismissed his afternoon's work with a wave of his hand. "We'll be back tomorrow." He ruffled Paco's hair. "Come on, boy, time we got you home for supper."

  "Told ya I could help," Paco said to Luke out the open pickup window.

  Luke gave him a tired grin. "I reckon you did."

  He watched Cy's pickup disappear down the road in a cloud of dust. Then he straightened up, got in his own truck and headed for the gate.

  It was past seven when he loaded his tools and drove back to the house.

  He saw with surprise that Jill's car was still parked by the kitchen. He figured she'd have gone into town to see Annette and Jimmy and the baby.

  He probably ought to drive in himself, but he was dirty and sweaty and hungry, and he hadn't slept in thirty-odd hours. He didn't think he had the strength to ride back up the mountain, clean up in the creek, ride back down and drive into town.

  He could shower in the house. But doing that mean seeing Jill. He didn't do it.

  He picked up his saddle and bridle, and was heading toward the corral when he heard a shout behind him.

  "Hey, Luke!"

  He turned to see Russ and Clare's eleven-year-old son, Dan, leaping off the porch and coming toward him.

  "What're you doing out here?" he asked when the boy got close.

  "Staying."

  "Staying? Here? How come?"

  "'Cause Mom went to California for a school-nurse conference and Dad had to go to Denver for some state meeting, so Aunt Annette said me an' Kevin could stay with her."

  "Annette's in the hospital."

  "Yup, I know. She had a girl. We saw it this morning when Mom took us and Jimmy, Jr. in."

  "So Annette can't take care of you."

  "I know. Jill is. She said it didn't matter, since she's got Jimmy, Jr. anyhow."

  Luke tried to digest that. He'd thought Clare and Russ would be keeping Jimmy, Jr. not the other way around. "She's got all three of you?"

  Another nod. "We're helping. I coulda helped you today with the irrigating, but you left so fast, we didn't even know you were here until you were halfway up the road. Can I help you tomorrow?"

  Luke felt light-headed again. He dragged a hand across his face. "Sure. I guess."