Rancher's Double Dilemma

by Pamela Browning

  “Oh, Lacey,” he said, the words little more than a groan. He was as turned on by her as she was by him, some part of her mind noted with satisfaction. Another part of her recoiled. They couldn’t become lovers. There were important issues to be resolved between them. She knew it and he knew it.

  But as if in slow motion he reached for her. She felt the grip of his hands around her upper arms, the coarse springy hair on his chest as he pressed her to him. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him, absorbed the warmth of his body, wanted to feel more of him even than that. It was such a comfort to be held by another human being, especially at a time when she was worried about the babies.

  Then he was tipping her head back and gazing deep into her eyes, and she was unable to move, unable to speak with the emotion of it.

  “Lacey, forgive me, but I’ve been wanting to do this from the first moment I set eyes on you walking toward my house.” And he lowered his head, the movement agonizingly slow, and his lips captured hers.

  They were soft lips, yet purposeful, too, and they felt moist and cool against hers. They moved over her mouth as if to take possession of it, of her. She felt herself growing weak, her mouth opening to admit his tongue, his tongue gliding inside. It seemed as if every pore of her body opened to him, and she wanted more and more and—

  He shoved her away. “I’m sorry,” he said unsteadily. “It was seeing you like this, seeing you fresh from your bed, smelling so sweet, looking so sexy and—I’m sorry,” he finished lamely. His hands fell to his sides, and he clenched them as if that would prevent him from reaching out to her again.

  She wondered if he needed her comfort as much as she needed his. And was that so bad, to want to be connected with another human being, to draw solace and strength to herself in that way? To do what nature had intended them to do? No, it wasn’t. She was sure of this in her heart of hearts. It was the way people were meant to be—together with someone. Loved by someone.

  “Neither of us has anything to be sorry about, Garth,” she said with conviction before realizing that even though she still held the sheet around her, it had fallen low enough to expose most of one breast to his gaze. She hitched the sheet higher, but she refused to be embarrassed.

  “You’d better go back to bed,” he said.

  Without you, her mind supplied, but she didn’t say it. She only nodded, and with great force of will, she slowly closed the door between them.

  She tiptoed back to bed and lay there for a long time before finally falling asleep. She didn’t know how late it was before she slept because the electricity had not yet come back on to power the clock, and she didn’t have a watch.

  And what she did while she lay there wide awake was to replay Garth’s kiss over and over again in her mind. Had he really wanted to kiss her ever since the first moment he saw her?

  Well, perhaps not. But it was a romantic thought to hold close to her heart as she waited for sleep.

  WANDA KICKED BUNNY out of her apartment at the first light of dawn, for which he was not at all grateful. He did appreciate the fact that she fed the babies cinnamon oatmeal and a half a banana each before sending them all on their way. He wasn’t so lucky. There was no more banana and he never ate oatmeal, so he had to make do with a few stale Cheerios from a beat-up old box that Wanda produced at the last minute.

  He installed the kids in their seats in the pickup, and with one last wistful look at Wanda’s closed apartment door, he drove out of the parking lot. She’d taken the babies into her double bed with her last night, and he’d had to sleep on the couch, which was lumpy and covered with cat hair. The cat had been an aloof flat-faced Persian who had tried all night to shove him out of her way, since the couch was apparently the cat’s usual sleeping place.

  Bunny sneezed just thinking about it. He was allergic to cats.

  At first he’d thought he was going to get lucky with Wanda, but after they got to her apartment, it became clear that all she was interested in was the babies. At least she had fed them. She’d also changed their diapers.

  He glanced over at Michele One, who was trying to grab the pacifier away from Michele Two. Michele Two seemed determined not to hand it over.

  “You’ve only got one of those things?” he asked them. Not that they could answer. They didn’t talk, unless you counted meaningless syllables. Fact is, these babies were downright boring and a whole lot of work.

  Today he’d return to his mom’s house and see if she’d shown up. Maybe she’d had a date last night or something. She got around, Delilah did.

  He headed the truck back to her house, and when he got there, he saw a piece of paper stuck to her front door. It was Lacey’s note saying that she’d come to get her babies.

  Well, she wasn’t going to get them. Not until Delilah got to see them and had sufficiently rewarded him for going to all this trouble.

  He went back to the truck and rubbed his scratchy eyes. A glance in the rearview mirror informed him that they were rimmed in red, and the whole inside of his head itched. It was that cat, of course. He hated cats.

  “Guess we’ll have to find a place to hide out,” he said glumly as Michele One puckered up her face and let out a holler. Michele Two followed suit, and soon they were crying so loud that he couldn’t even tell if the truck had cranked. Then it let out a huge backfire, which startled the two of them so that they stopped crying. The peace didn’t last long. They were at it again before he’d reached the road.

  Bunny’s head was beginning to ache. The babies were screaming, and he was hungry, and he was supposed to ride in a rodeo the day after tomorrow. What would he do with the babies if Delilah didn’t show up before then?

  Chapter Ten

  “About last night,” Garth said when he and Lacey were facing each other over a table in the coffee shop attached to the motel.

  Lacey spared him a nervous look over the top of her menu.

  “There’s no need to go into that,” she said as dispassionately as she could, although there was nothing dispassionate about the way her hands were sweating or the way her heart was thumping against her breastbone.

  “I think there is,” he said evenly.

  “Nothing happened.” In the back of her mind, Lacey decided to order scrambled eggs with sausage instead of bacon, and in the front of her mind she wondered how she could be thinking of food with Garth staring at her like that. Not staring, exactly. It was more like he was observing her. Observing what, she wasn’t sure. Her hair was limp from washing it this morning with the motel’s shampoo, and she hadn’t had a hair dryer, so it was still slightly damp. The voile dress was wrinkled, though clean, but she hadn’t been able to do a decent job with her makeup because all of it except her lipstick was back at the ranch. Thank goodness for her faux pearl earrings, though—swinging against her neck, they at least made her feel fully dressed.

  “May I take your order?” The waiter stood poised with his pad and pencil.

  They ordered, and Lacey folded her hands in her lap. “Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked.

  “I think you’re beautiful without makeup,” Garth said.

  She managed a shaky laugh. “I don’t look all that great this morning. Not after waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep and…” She bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t referred even obliquely to what had happened between them in the middle of the night.

  “I couldn’t sleep, either, Lacey. I wanted you.” His gaze was steady.

  “I don’t think—” she began.

  “You don’t have to think about it now. We need to focus on getting the babies back before we do anything about what you feel and what I feel.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” she said, her voice low.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what you feel.” Her voice was nearly a whisper now.

  “I feel strongly attracted to you. I have for a long time, but there were reasons to ignore it. You
know, always something happening, and then there was the problem of the babies and what we were going to do about The Situation, and—”

  “And the chicken pox,” she said.

  His eyes crinkled. “And the chicken pox,” he agreed. He became suddenly solemn. “You know, I trust you, Lacey. I trust your judgment. If I didn’t, I would have called the sheriff and reported those babies missing. By this time Bunny could have taken those girls all the way to Mexico.”

  She knew that it was an act of faith on his part to keep looking for the babies instead of calling the authorities. Ashley was the most important thing in the world to him. For Garth to trust her, Lacey, must be extremely hard to do right now.

  “They’ll be okay,” she said. “I promise. Bunny won’t take them far from his mom’s place. From here.”

  She was surprised when Garth reached across the table and clasped one of her hands in his. She put her other hand over his, and that’s how they were sitting when the waiter brought their breakfast.

  Self-consciously she salted her eggs and tasted her orange juice. “It’s fresh squeezed,” she said, pleasantly surprised.

  Garth’s gaze was warm on her face. “One reason I like you so much, Lacey, is that you take pleasure in such simple things.”

  “Oh, I—” she began to object.

  He wouldn’t let her. “It’s a rare quality. Don’t apologize for it. I like seeing your eyes light up when something pleases you. You have a glad heart, Lacey. By being the person you are, you’ve managed to bring happiness into a house that needed it.”

  Lacey blushed.

  “Well, don’t let your eggs get cold,” Garth said with an amused gleam in his eyes, and when she looked up, he was grinning at her.

  “Oh, I reckon I’m too hungry to do that,” she told him, and then everything was all right again.

  After breakfast they rode the short distance to Delilah’s house and got out of the car to look around. The sky above was a vast unblemished blue, and the sun, not too hot yet, splashed ribbons of yellow across the grass. Garth spent some time inspecting the driveway and said that there were fresh tire tracks, which, after he compared them with the Honda’s tires, he said were not from their car. “I bet Bunny was here,” he said with some certainty. He stood in the middle of the driveway, his thumbs looped through his belt, thinking.

  Lacey eased herself down on the top step of the porch. “He must have seen my note, so maybe he’ll call.” But she knew she didn’t sound too positive.

  “Speaking of calling, I’d better report back to Cody and Kim. They’re bound to be worried.”

  He punched out the ranch number on his cell phone and ambled up the driveway as he spoke with Cody. “No, we’re fine. We’re still looking for Bunny and the girls.”

  Lacey made herself think about where Bunny might be. She’d been too tired last night to come up with any possibilities except for Bunny’s friend Rick, who was married to Darla. Darla had sent her a note one time that was postmarked from that town where her parents lived.

  What town?

  The town where Darla grew up. She and Lacey had talked about it once, how Darla had been a cheerleader there, how she’d met Rick at the Sonic Drive-In after a game, how he’d been from their rival school, Trout Cash-man High, which they’d both thought was a funny name for a high school. They’d giggled about it, and Darla had said that she, the former Darla Dunlett, was a proud graduate of Warren G. Harding High School in Harding, Texas. That was it! Darla’s parents lived in Harding!

  Garth was still talking to Cody on his cell phone. “Yeah, sit tight and we’ll be in touch with any news. No, Lacey says Bunny won’t hurt them. Sure, I believe that. Listen, Cody, I have to.” He was walking back toward Lacey now, looking down.

  “I’ll tell Lacey you send your best. Right. Bye.”

  “Garth, I thought of someone we can call, someone who might know where Bunny is.”

  “Great! Cody and Kim send their love. Kim says—”

  He stopped talking and bent over to pick something up from one of the ruts in the mud.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said, holding it up so Lacey could see. “What do you make of this?”

  Lacey came closer and couldn’t help gasping.

  The object that Garth was holding up was Michele’s pacifier.

  AT HIS WIT’S END, Bunny made a last-minute swerve into a roadside rest area and unbuckled both babies from their car seats. Then he realized that he hadn’t gotten the disposable diapers out of the box behind the seat, so he had to juggle one baby on his shoulder and balance the other on the seat while he dragged out two diapers, one of which the Michele in his arms grabbed away from him and tossed gleefully on the ground where it landed in a puddle of water. This meant he had to procure another diaper, and by the time he had secured both diapers under one arm and hoisted the other Michele, he was cursing like crazy. This earned him a disapproving look from a blue-haired dowager with a cane, but he didn’t much care.

  He knew he would have to do some cleaning up of the one who needed a diaper change, so he headed for the men’s room. Once there, he realized that there was nowhere to change the diaper, much less a clean place to park the other twin. He left and gazed longingly at the women’s rest room door, because he remembered from when Lacey was traveling with him that the women’s room often supplied diaper-changing stations.

  But he couldn’t go in there without risking being accused of being a pervert.

  He walked around in front of the rest room door for a while, Michele One getting more and more crabby. Michele Two was saying “bababababa” over and over, which was starting to drive him slightly nuts. Finally, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he stopped a woman who was headed on a beeline course for the rest room and asked the woman if she would mind changing his baby’s diaper. The woman took one whiff, looked at him as if he were certifiable and said with some force, “You’ve got to be kidding!” With that she whisked her own child into the no man’s land of the women’s room, her retreat accompanied by a couple of incredulous over-the-shoulder glances.

  Bunny Shaw, who had ridden bulls galore, who had been thrown more times than he could count, who had been tossed and gored and trampled and yet had survived, felt defeated by a simple diaper change.

  “All right,” he said heavily by way of sounding a retreat. “Let’s us go right back to the truck.”

  Michele One started to object, and Michele Two deliberately shoved a fist into his eye, his allergy-reddened eye, so by the time they reached the truck he was in an even more foul mood than before.

  “Now. Just. Sit. Tight,” he snarled after corraling the babies in the bed of the pickup, whereupon one of them headed at a fast crawl for a bright yellow bottle of anti-freeze that he kept there. He had to clamber over the tail-gate to grab it away from her before she touched it, and she didn’t like that very much so she started to cry.

  He found an old towel in his tool kit that he was able to lay the stinky Michele on, and he talked to her while changing her diaper. The other Michele was still crying, her face bright red, her eyes all squinched tight. “You aren’t such a good sport,” he told her.

  By the time he got the stinky Michele into a new diaper, she was laughing and cooing, which he found that he liked. “You’re pretty cute,” he told her. “Your sister ought to be more like you.”

  So he took the crying Michele and the laughing Michele and strapped them back into the car seats, and they left the rest area.

  “I have an idea where we can go,” he said. Not that either of them was listening.

  But then the crying Michele stopped crying, which he thought was good, and then she got a certain look on her face, which he knew was bad.

  “You aren’t…?” he said to her.

  But she was.

  “All right, all right, I’ll change you,” he said with disgust.

  At this rate they would go through an awful lot of diapers today, and he didn’t have money to buy more. Not th
at it mattered to those babies. No, they were completely oblivious to his unhappiness.

  For the first time he wondered if he would be able to keep them until his mother came back from wherever she was. And, he reminded himself with a sinking heart, he had no idea when that would be.

  “LOOK, LACEY, I’m not going to hang around Delilah’s house waiting for Bunny when chances are he’s taken off for that cabin.” Garth paced back and forth in front of Delilah’s porch. He looked steamed, all right.

  “Rick’s wife said Bunny might have gone there. Might have is a far sight from did,” Lacey retorted. Rick’s old family fishing cabin had been a retreat for Rick and Bunny where they could kick back and mend between rodeos. They’d often gone there to fish and sometimes hunt, and it wasn’t all that far away.

  “We should head for the cabin. Now,” Garth said.

  Lacey shook her head. “I keep expecting to see Bunny’s truck rolling toward us from the road,” she said.

  “Lacey, I want those babies back, and I don’t have it in me to sit around doing nothing.”

  Lacey got up and went to him. His shadow fell across her face, reminding her that the sun was getting higher, the air was getting hotter, and that in this part of the world, tempers often rose along with the thermometer. “I know it’s hard,” she said with some resignation. “We could go, I guess. But then there’s Michele’s pacifier. Bunny might figure out where she dropped it and come back for it. Michele can be downright stubborn about wanting that pacifier.”

  “I think he’s long gone.”

  “I’ll tell you how to get to the cabin, and you can go there while I wait here.” It seemed like a simple solution, though she didn’t relish tackling Bunny by herself, if and when he showed up, and there were all sorts of reasons why this plan wouldn’t work. What would happen if Bunny appeared and gave the twins back? She would have no transportation, no place to stay except Delilah’s front porch, and with two babies to look after besides.