Rancher's Double Dilemma

by Pamela Browning

  “I take that back,” she said, knowing when she was defeated. “I’ll go with you to Rick’s cabin.”

  “Good, because I wouldn’t want you to stay here alone,” Garth said.

  Their eyes caught and held, and in his she saw something that stirred her soul to its depths. It was a protectiveness, that’s the only way she would have been able to describe it, and a willingness to stand up to her when her own well-being was on the line.

  Whatever it was, she liked it. She liked it a whole lot.

  BUNNY TRIED to get the babies to nap, but they weren’t much for napping at the same time. Or eating. Or sleeping. He’d had to resort to feeding Michele Two the beef jerky, whereupon she spit up all over herself and him, too. He tried to clean them both up while driving, but then he realized he’d have to stop. There was a ditch filled with water at the side of the road, and he dipped up some of it in an old foam cup to wash off his shirt and the baby’s playsuit. Then he rocked Michele Two until she put her thumb in her mouth and dozed. But Michele One, still in her car seat, wouldn’t sleep no matter what.

  He put the sleeping Michele Two in her seat in the truck, and he walked in circles around the truck carrying Michele One, unsuccessfully attempting to keep the mosquitoes away. He sang her a song—though the only one he could think of that was fit for a baby’s ears was “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” He got down to thirty-eight bottles of beer on the wall before the baby pitched a hissy fit and started howling.

  He didn’t know what was wrong unless it was the red welts from the mosquito bites that had raised on her arms and legs. He checked her diaper, and sure enough, it was wet. The diaper box was empty, though, so he had to resort to an old piece of cheesecloth that he kept in the glove box for wiping condensation off the inside of the windows. It was clean enough. He didn’t have any diaper pins, so he rummaged around in the glove box until he found some unpaid bills that were paper-clipped together. The paper clips worked, sort of.

  But even a clean diaper didn’t make Michele One any happier. She started screaming for her mama, and that woke Michele Two up, and the two of them started sobbing in unison.

  Wearily Bunny strapped them into the car seats and got back in the truck. His nose was running from his allergy, he had a crick in his neck from sleeping on Wanda’s couch, and he needed to get to that rodeo.

  “If it hadn’t been for my extreme urgency in obtaining some money, I never would have taken you two away from your mama,” he told the twins. Their faces were a picture of pure misery, and he felt terrible because he didn’t know what to do to make them happier.

  He passed a sign on the highway that said Day Work, Apply Here. It was probably some big rancher hereabouts looking for hands on a day-by-day cash basis, and it was the kind of work that had sustained him in the past.

  But he couldn’t stop. He had to take care of these babies, and it was pretty clear that he was doing a downright rotten job of it.

  It was only another half an hour before he arrived at Rick’s cabin. He fished the spare key out of the Mexican flowerpot where it had always been hidden and unlocked the door. He went outside, got both babies out of the truck, hauled them inside and set them on the floor. Michele One took off for the fireplace and ate some of the old ashes in the grate before he grabbed her up, and Michele Two kept calling for her mama in between sobs and hiccups.

  At least there was a battered crib in the bedroom. Bunny deposited both babies in it and heaved a sigh of relief.

  Then he sneezed. Too late he remembered that Rick and his wife had recently acquired a cat, and they took it everywhere they went. Even, presumably, here.

  THE SMALL LOG CABIN was hidden behind a windbreak of cedars. “That’s Bunny’s truck!” cried Lacey, bouncing up and down excitedly in her seat as they drove up. “See, the rust mark on the driver’s side door looks like the Indian head on an old nickel!”

  “So it does,” Garth said. He slowed the Honda. “Do we need to surprise him? Should we park where he can’t see us?”

  Lacey considered this for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

  Garth only lifted his eyebrows and pulled up beside Bunny’s truck. Despite the fact that Lacey didn’t think an element of surprise was necessary, he was running possible scenarios through his mind. Bunny might resist. Bunny might try to hit him. He might yell at them or push Lacey or try to flee with the children. Garth was prepared for anything, including calling the sheriff. He took his cell phone out of the case so it would be ready.

  Lacey slid out of her side of the car, and he got out of his. Looking determined, looking fearless and brave and beautiful, she ran up to the cabin door.

  Before she could knock on it, however, the door flew open. He presumed the man who opened it was Bunny, though Garth had never expected Lacey’s ex-husband to be this runty little cowboy with rundown boots and red eyes and smelling of sour milk. He had a wild-eyed look about him, comparable to someone who had been terrorized to within an inch of his life.

  “Boy, am I glad to see you,” he said to Lacey with the nasal delivery of someone with a stopped-up nose. “You can have these babies. Please, take them away and I’ll never bother you again. I…I can’t stand it anymore.” And then he sneezed.

  Lacey ran to the crib in the bedroom and scooped the babies up into her arms. She was crying, they were crying, and Garth, who was right behind her, felt perilously near tears himself.

  He reached his arms out for Ashley—at least he thought it was Ashley—and she came to him with an angelic smile. “Dada?” she said. “Dada?” It was the first time she had called him that.

  Emotion knotted like a fist somewhere under his breastbone, and he felt pure love for this, his dear baby daughter. He buried his face in the soft blond fuzz on her head and inhaled the sweet baby scent of her. Her face was smudged with dirt—it looked a lot like ashes—and so was Michele’s. Yet except for their tearstained faces and dirty clothes and a number of mosquito bites, the babies seemed fine and fit and full of beans.

  Bunny had followed them into the bedroom. “I tried to feed them, but they don’t seem to want to eat at the same time ever. I tried to change their diapers whenever they needed it, but I ran out. I—”

  Lacey had peeked down Michele’s playsuit and had seen that she was wearing a dishtowel for a diaper. “A dishtowel?” she said incredulously. “My baby is wearing a dishtowel?”

  Bunny looked apologetic. “That’s all there was here. These two kids go through a heap of diapers in a day, let me tell you. And that one never sleeps,” he said, pointing at Michele. “She stays awake and cries.”

  “That’s because of this,” Lacey said, plucking the pacifier out of Garth’s shirt pocket. “She needs it to drop off to sleep. I’d be obliged if you’d wash it off real good and give it back.”

  Bunny took it, looking slightly askance, and went into the kitchen. Over the sound of running water, he asked, “Where’s Ma, anyway?”

  “Delilah has gone on a cruise,” Lacey informed him. “Which you would have known if you had called her like I did.”

  Bunny brought the pacifier back, his eyebrows quirking in surprise. “You phoned Ma?”

  “Well, I got her answering machine. By the way, Bunny, this is my employer, Mr. Garth Colquitt. Garth, Bunny.” Totally bummed out over this whole scene, Garth nevertheless shook Bunny’s hand. They’d met in the hospital waiting room last year, but Bunny didn’t seem to remember him any more than he remembered Bunny.

  “You might tell me how there happens to be two of these babies when one of them died,” Bunny said into the awkward silence afterward.

  Lacey kissed Michele, then bent sideways and kissed Ashley. “I suppose you need edifying, Bunny, but I am not much inclined to tell you anything, considering.”

  Bunny looked hurt. “As your mother would certainly say, Let bygones be bygones,” he said.

  “She might also say, What goes around comes around.”

  “Lacey, Lacey, these are
our babies we’re talking about. Two of them.” Bunny’s eyes shot daggers at Garth, and Garth wondered if they were teetering toward an exchange of blows. He figured he could knock this guy out with a couple of well-placed punches if he had to.

  Lacey looked from one man to the other. “Garth Colquitt didn’t have a thing to do with what happened at the Sweiger County Hospital,” she said. Then she launched into a lengthy and wordy explanation, all of which made Garth slightly sick to hear again. Still, he knew that this story would have to be repeated many times. Many, many times.

  “So,” Lacey concluded, “Ruth is at Quail Hills Manor, she’s not at all well, and I don’t think we have any recourse about what happened, do we, Garth?”

  Garth snapped his attention back to the conversation when he heard his own name. “It might come down to criminal prosecution, but someone else would have to file charges. I won’t do it.”

  “I won’t, either,” Lacey said promptly, and their gaze caught and held in a moment of quiet understanding.

  Bunny, however, affected a swaggering braggadocio. “What about me? It affected me, what that old woman did. She should pay somehow.” Garth thought, but was not entirely sure, that Bunny meant that Ruth should pay money. This made him slightly incredulous, but then, Bunny was strapped for funds and was a real bozo besides.

  He was proud that Lacey didn’t buy any of it. She glared at the man, a look that could have sliced right through him, and proceeded to rip into her ex-husband. “Oh, Bunny, come off it. We were both sad about the baby that died, but you’ve just said you never want to see these two girls again. You’re not going to do anything about that night at the Sweiger County Hospital and you know it. You’ve moved on with your life. Say, aren’t you supposed to be at some rodeo someplace?” To her credit, Lacey was displaying a steeliness that Garth had only before suspected was part of her character. And he was relieved that she was treating Bunny like the repellent little lizard that he was.

  All the bluster fizzled out of Bunny like air out of a balloon. “Yeah, I’m supposed to ride in the Challenge Rodeo tomorrow.”

  “So leave.” Garth thought it was impressive, the way Lacey summarily ordered Bunny Shaw out of their lives. Now if he would only go.

  “What…what about Ma?”

  “What about her?”

  “She wants to see the baby. Babies,” he corrected himself.

  Lacey sighed and moved closer to Garth. “I’ll call Delilah when she gets home and ask if I can bring them over. If that’s okay with you,” she amended with a glance up at Garth.

  “I guess so,” he said, but he wasn’t eager to let Ashley out of his sight again so soon after losing her. Maybe he would go with Lacey when she went to see Delilah with the babies. He didn’t think he wanted her to undertake that chore all by herself, anyway.

  “Well, Ma would have given me money if I’d shown up with them. That’s why I took them in the first place,” Bunny said disconsolately. He stared down at the toes of his boots.

  “Buncombe Shaw, listen to what you’re saying. First you talk about Ruth Acevedo and how you think she should be held accountable for shuffling these babies around when she wasn’t even in her right mind. Then you take the babies and disappear, and it looks to me like you fully expect to be let off scot-free.”

  “Well, sure. The babies are mine, ain’t they?”

  Bunny’s belligerent words sent a chill knifing through Garth. The man had a claim on these babies. He was their natural father. But Lacey didn’t hesitate in setting Bunny straight. “Not anymore, they aren’t,” she said. “You make a move toward these children and I’ll make you sorry you ever thought about it. Don’t you think you need to learn to work for a living? Provide for yourself for a change?”

  “What do you think I’m doing? I make money riding those bulls. I sure don’t do it for the fun of it.”

  “You do, too,” Lacey said. “You do it because you don’t want to grow up. You do it because women flock around. You do it because you’re a lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing cowboy without much to commend him but a line of patter and a pair of jeans that fit right well.”

  “Hey, Lacey, that last part was real complimentary,” Bunny said. He treated her to a slow grin and a hitch of those tight jeans, which Garth was pleased to see had absolutely no effect on Bunny’s ex-wife.

  Lacey leaned against Garth, her shoulder against his arm, her hip pressed against his thigh. He felt her warmth through his clothes. “Garth, I do believe it’s time we started back for the ranch,” she said.

  “Lacey,” he said, and his heart was overflowing with admiration and respect for her, “I do believe it is.”

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the ranch, they couldn’t believe the sight that greeted them.

  Across the big white sign near the entrance to the ranch was arrayed a huge banner. It said, in big red letters, WELCOME BACK, ASHLEY AND MICHELE. Tied to the sign, a dozen helium balloons danced and bucked in the stiff breeze.

  The elm tree in the driveway was festooned with pink and white crepe paper, and more crepe paper decorated the porch. Kim and Cody ran down the steps to greet them as soon as they saw the car coming around the bend.

  “Let me hold her? Oh, please, can I?” said Kim, and Michele all but fell into her arms. Cody took Ashley, and the four of them headed for the house.

  “I made us a homecoming supper using Lacey’s recipe,” Kim said when Garth wrinkled his nose at the smell of lasagna baking in the oven.

  “With garlic bread and all the trimmings,” Cody added. “I made the garlic bread. Looks like I might have to learn to cook a little bit since Kim and I are going to be married soon.”

  Garth let that announcement pass after a keen-eyed look at Cody, whose expression gave nothing away. All the same, Garth couldn’t help wondering how the Wichita Falls debate had been settled, if it had. But he wasn’t about to introduce that topic, not at this joyous time.

  “What about these mosquito bites?” Kim asked anxiously. “Are you sure the babies are okay?”

  “I’ll ask Donna to check them over,” Garth said.

  “Want to call her tonight?” Cody asked.

  Lacey glanced over at Garth, a question in her eyes.

  “No,” Garth said, shaking his head. He had other plans for tonight.

  Kim had already set the dining room table with Lacey’s Fiesta Ware, and Lacey pitched in to add the silverware. “Lacey, I feel so awful about not watching those babies better,” Kim said as they worked together.

  Cody stepped in from the kitchen. “Me, too,” he said, looking contrite.

  Lacey couldn’t think of a way to excuse their lack of responsibility, so she said, “All’s well that ends well,” and then she caught herself up short. She was becoming too much like her mother, which didn’t alarm her, since Sheila Sue had always been a wonderful person and a kind and caring parent. It surprised her, that’s all, and it reminded her that she wanted to call her mother right away.

  She left Garth to explain their ordeal to the others and went into Garth’s office to use the phone. She hoped that this time she wouldn’t be interrupting anything important when she called Sheila Sue.

  “Lacey? Is that you? Lacey, you haven’t called me in such a long time! I tried to reach you a couple of times, but you were never there. What in the world is going on?”

  “Mom, you won’t believe it,” Lacey began.

  “Well, sweetie, try me,” she said.

  “I’ve found the other twin, Mom, the one that was born first? She didn’t die, it was all a hospital mix-up, and it’s the craziest thing, but she’s alive and her name is Ashley and she’s exactly like Michele only with the birthmark on her right side instead of the left side. And she can say ‘Mama,’ and I can’t tell you how happy—”

  “Lacey. Slow down. I’m not getting this. I’m not understanding at all. You say you found your baby? Are you okay, Lacey? Do you think you need to see a counselor, dear? Someone who could help you deal with yo
ur grief?”

  Lacey couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. “Oh, Mom, I’m not grieving anymore. Her name is Ashley, and I love her, and it’s so good to see these two babies so alike. My babies, Mom. Both of them.”

  Sheila Sue didn’t reply. When she did, it was cautiously. “You mean it’s true? You haven’t gone ’round the bend or anything?”

  “Nope, I am perfectly sane. I am, for the first time in a long time, really okay.”

  Her mother’s voice was shaky. “You…you’d better tell me, Lacey. Tell me all of it, every last bit.”

  Which Lacey proceeded to do at length, and only when Garth stuck his head in the door did she start to wind down.

  “Excuse me,” Garth said, “but dinner is ready. The babies are hungry. And we’re going to feed them lasagna right along with us.”

  “I think I’m wanted, Mom. And needed. It’s time to eat.”

  “Lacey, I want to see my granddaughters right away. I’m going to send you a ticket to fly down to Florida to see Fletcher and me.”

  “Mom, no.” Lacey wasn’t ready for this.

  “I mean it, Lacey. And I want you to meet Brian. He’s quite charming.”

  “Brian?” Lacey said, distracted by the commotion in the dining room. Garth was moving the high chairs in, and Kim was setting lasagna on the table, and Cody was bouncing a baby on either hip while they squealed in delight.

  “Brian is my neighbor Andrea’s son. She still wants to talk to you about that day-care job. It would be good to come right away, since she’s thinking of opening a new center. What a great opportunity it would be to get in on the ground floor of a going concern!”

  “I’d better call you later,” Lacey said, her eyes still on the group in the dining room. “Right now I’ve got to go.”

  She thought Sheila Sue was still talking when she clicked the phone off, but she would explain later that she’d really had to hang up.

  Kim bustled in from the kitchen. “Lacey, you’re right next to Garth at the head of the table. Cody’s at the foot, and we’ll put a baby on either side.”