The Rancher Takes a Bride

by Brenda Minton

  They reached the room with the open glass door. Inside, a doctor stood next to Lilly, his smile easy, his gestures not those of a man in the middle of an emergency. He waved them inside.

  “You must be Mom. We’ve been asking for you. After we settled on the fact that it isn’t Saturday, and she wasn’t on her way to school when the bus hit her.” The doctor smiled down at his patient. “We’re going to do a CT scan of that head, and then we’ll do some X-rays.”

  The doctor motioned Oregon out of the room and followed close behind her. Duke went with her. Joe stayed with Lilly, who grimaced in pain as she told him something they couldn’t hear after the doctor slid that glass door closed.

  “You’re her dad?” the doctor asked. Duke shook his head.

  “No. I just drove her mom up here.” He glanced down at the woman next to him, her lower lip between her teeth, her worried gaze on the girl inside that room.

  “You can stay,” she whispered, still not looking at him.

  The doctor looked from Oregon to Duke, gave a curt nod and continued. “We’re going to run some tests. She has some abdominal tenderness. I’m sure we’ve got a fracture in her left leg. We’ll know more after X-rays.”

  “She’ll be okay?” Oregon finally looked away from her daughter and made eye contact with the doctor.

  “She’ll be fine. She’s not going to be happy when she realizes what a cast will do to her summer activities, but hopefully we can have her back on two good legs very soon.”

  “Can I go back in now?”

  Sliding the door back open, the doctor said, “You have a few minutes, then you can wait in here for us while we run the tests.”

  She nodded as she walked away, leaving Duke with the strangest feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched the less than animated form of Lilly on that hospital bed. Joe stepped out of the room to join him.

  “She’ll be okay.” Joe said it like he was comforting Duke.

  “Of course she will. Her mom is here now.”

  Joe gave him a puzzled look and shook his head. “You going in there?”

  No, he wasn’t. He had done his part. He’d been shaken to his core when he’d seen that car speeding down the street, seen her freeze in her tracks as the sedan screeched to a stop too late. It could have been worse, he’d told himself. Much worse.

  He shook his head, not wanting to replay it in his mind again. What he needed was...a cup of coffee. He made his excuses and headed down the hall. Joe started to follow.

  Duke put his hand out to stop the older man from tagging along, giving advice he didn’t want or need. “Give me a minute alone.”

  “She’s okay, Duke.”

  “I know that.”

  He knew she was okay. He didn’t know if he was, though. He’d nearly put the nightmares to rest in the last year or so. He’d been almost back to normal. But now faces were flashing through his memory. Names he’d almost forgotten were surfacing. A man didn’t forget those young men, their names, their stories.

  He put his dollar in the vending machine and raised his hand, ready to pound his fist against the glass front, but then he stopped himself. His chest ached, and each breath had to work its way from lungs that seemed to be closing up.

  A hand touched his back, small and gentle. He didn’t turn. He knew that it was Oregon. He inhaled her presence, the soft scent of wildflowers.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded, slowing his breaths, feeling his heart return to normal. Yeah, he was fine.

  “We have to talk,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear.

  But he’d known this moment was coming.

  Chapter Two

  Oregon stood in front of Duke, his features chiseled in stone but somehow beautiful with his bright blue eyes, wide, smiling mouth and golden skin. He’d been just as beautiful thirteen years ago. She’d been eighteen. He’d been barely twenty. It had been the year her mom married a Texas rancher who raised quarter horses and didn’t mind Oregon trying to be a cowgirl.

  Now she had to tell him what she’d come here to tell him. It’d been a year since she’d first arrived in Martin’s Crossing. At first she hadn’t told him, because she needed time. Needed to make sure he was a person she wanted in her daughter’s life. She wanted to know that Lilly would have someone she could depend on. Someone who wouldn’t walk away, who wouldn’t let her down.

  “Oregon?” His voice was cold. His tone hard.

  He knew.

  “It’s about Lilly.”

  “What about Lilly?”

  “Lilly is...” She looked past him, down the empty hall. Where were all the people who would interrupt, keeping her from having this difficult conversation?

  He took her hand and led her to a consultation room that was empty. She balked at the door. “We can’t just walk in there.”

  “We can and will.” He pulled her inside.

  Once the door was closed, he pointed to a yellow vinyl chair. She sat and he stood in front of the door like a bouncer at a club. Blocking her from running? No. He stood because he had too much energy to sit. Sometimes in the early-morning hours she saw him running through the streets of Martin’s Crossing. Sometimes she saw him at night. Outrunning his nightmares, she thought.

  These were some of the many things she’d learned about him since moving to town. Thirteen years ago, she hadn’t known much. She’d known he was a young man with a lot of anger who partied too hard. He’d team roped with his brother, Jake. He’d bought her a cheeseburger, and she’d laughed when he wiped ketchup off her chin, right before he kissed her.

  “So, Oregon Jeffries. Tell me everything.”

  “I think you know.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “We met in a small town outside Stephenville, Texas, when I was eighteen. Nine months later, I had Lilly. When I first came to Martin’s Crossing, I thought you’d recognize me. But you didn’t. I was just the mother of the girl who swept the porch of your diner. You didn’t remember me. Not a flicker of recognition or a question about who we were.” She shrugged, waiting for him to say something.

  He brushed a hand across his face and shook his head. “I’m afraid to admit I have a few blank spots in my memory. Bad choices in my youth. You probably know that already.”

  “It’s become clear since I got to town and you didn’t recognize me.”

  “Or my daughter?”

  His words froze her heart. She trembled, and she didn’t want to be weak. Not today. Not when her daughter was somewhere in this hospital having tests done. Today she needed strength and the truth. Because some people thought the truth could set her free. She worried it would only mean losing her daughter to this man who had already made himself a hero to Lilly.

  What if he wasn’t the man they needed him to be? Oregon wanted to stop the cycle of broken promises, broken relationships. She wanted Lilly to have a solid foundation that didn’t shift and move on the whim of an adult.

  “She’s my daughter.” He repeated it again, his voice soft with wonder.

  “Yes, she’s your daughter.” She whispered the words into the small room. A Gideon bible had been placed on the table between two chairs. A lamp in the corner offered soft light. In this room, lives changed. People were given the worst news. People received options.

  In this room, Duke Martin learned he was a father.

  “Why didn’t you try to contact me?” He sat down heavily, stretching his long legs in front of him. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to know?”

  “I knew from friends that you had a problem with alcohol. And then I found out you joined the army. Duke, I was used to my mother dragging me along from relationship to relationship. She was with men who were abusive, who were alcoholics, and a few who were okay. I didn’t want that for my d
aughter.”

  Oregon’s own father hadn’t stayed. He’d been a nameless man who walked out on them. And then there had been her mother’s countless marriages, with Oregon never being given a choice in the matter.

  “You should have told me,” Duke stormed in a quiet voice, respectful of this place. She’d learned something about him in the past year. She’d learned that looks could be deceiving. He looked like Goliath. But beneath his large exterior, he was good and kind.

  He kept his power carefully leashed, his temper controlled, his voice even in tone. He leaned forward in the chair, brushing his hand through his short hair.

  “You’ve been in town over a year. You should have told me sooner,” he repeated.

  “Maybe I should have, but I needed to know you, to be sure about you, before I put you in my daughter’s life.”

  “Maybe?” He erupted in quiet anger. “Maybe you should have told me Lilly is mine? What if something had...”

  She shook her head. “No, don’t go there.”

  “You kept her from me,” he said in a quieter voice.

  “You have to understand. I was eighteen and alone and making stupid decisions. And now I’m a mom who has to make sure her daughter isn’t going to be hurt. I have to make sure the man I bring into her life isn’t going to walk out on her.”

  “I do not walk out.”

  “I know. And I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”

  “You could have told me years ago. A letter, even a short note, would have been nice.”

  “You left.” Another person in her life who had left. Not that she’d expected him to stay. He’d been a day, a smile, a moment. She’d been a kid who’d made bad choices in her search for love.

  “You know for sure...” he started to ask, but his words trailed off.

  “I know without a doubt. There are no other possibilities.”

  He studied her for a few seconds. She met his gaze head-on because she had to be strong. “Why did you change your mind and decide to bring her to Martin’s Crossing?”

  Of course he would want to know that. She would tell him why, but not today. She couldn’t tell him everything, not in one crazy, overly emotional day. “I knew she needed you.”

  The simple answer was the truth. It was enough for now.

  * * *

  She wasn’t telling him everything but for Duke, it was enough for one day. He had a daughter. For the past year Lilly had bounced in and out of his diner. She’d swept his floors. She’d talked to him about the kind of horse she wanted. She’d looked up at him with those blue eyes that were so much like his, he should have seen himself in her. He should have seen it. He should have recognized Oregon.

  He rubbed the top of his head and stared at the woman he’d let down, mother of the girl he’d let down. He’d become his mother. Man, he wanted to pound something. He needed to get on his bike and take a long ride through Texas. But unlike Sylvia Martin, his mother, he would come back. But he wouldn’t walk away from this hospital, from Lilly or Oregon.

  He looked at her. Her dark hair framed a face that was delicate and shifted from cute to pretty with a smile. She shrugged slim shoulders. “Maybe you should have remembered but you said it yourself, there are a lot of holes in your memory.”

  Yeah, a lot of holes. Blackouts. Days lost. He reached into his pocket and felt that coin he carried, a reminder of how long he’d been sober. Two years and counting.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he made eye contact with the woman sitting across from him.

  “I’m sorry, too. I know she needs you.”

  There were so many ways he could react to that. He could be angry, but what would that get him? She had wanted to protect her daughter. He couldn’t blame her for that.

  “So I guess I passed the test,” he finally said.

  “Of course you do.” She stood, her eyes darting away from him to the door. “We should go. I don’t want her to be alone too long.”

  “No, of course not.” She would never be alone again. He would see to that. “Does she know?”

  “That you’re her dad? No.”

  “We have to tell her.”

  They walked out into the hall and headed back to the emergency room. “Yes, I know.”

  “What does she know?”

  “That I was young and made a mistake. But that she isn’t a mistake.”

  “Man, Oregon, I should have been there. I should have been in her life.”

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Her voice faltered.

  “You weren’t in this alone. And you aren’t alone now. We need to get married.” The words slipped out quickly, without giving them a lot of thought.

  She stopped. He took a few more steps and then turned to face her. She was barely five feet tall. Her dark hair was long and soft. Her gray eyes had flecks of green in this light. Had he just proposed to her?

  “No.” And with that simple answer, she kept walking.

  He froze under the bright fluorescent lights, voices of people heading in their direction. Ahead of him Oregon kept walking. He was so tall that he only had to take a few steps and he was next to her.

  “Why not?”

  “Because this isn’t love. It was attraction once. Now we’re two strangers, and that isn’t enough for a marriage.”

  “Our daughter deserves—”

  She cut him off with an angry glare. “Don’t tell me what she deserves. She deserves a home and people who love her. People who stay.”

  “Right, but we have to think about our daughter.”

  “Mine,” she cried out, her eyes widening in fear. “She’s my daughter.”

  “I’m not going to take her from you.” He said it as calmly as he could, in the voice he used to soothe startled horses.

  “No, but you could take her heart. She already loves you.”

  “Oregon, this isn’t a competition.”

  They kept walking back to the ward with green walls, and rooms with glass doors, curtains for privacy and hushed voices. Oregon stopped, leaning against the wall a few short feet from the nurses’ station.

  “Duke, she needs you. That’s why we’re here. Right now I’m emotional and not thinking straight. My main concern is for her, that she’s safe and she’s going to be okay. Marriage to you, though, is not in my plans.”

  “We won’t discuss it today. You’re right. She needs us with her now.”

  He could understand her reluctance to marry. He hadn’t seen too much about marriage that he admired. But his brother Jake, the last guy he thought would fall, seemed to be taken with the idea. Jake and Breezy had fallen in love with each other, with the twin nieces they all shared, and the rest had been history. In their current newlywed phase of soft looks, sweet smiles and easy embraces, it was impossible to be around them for long.

  Duke avoided them as much as possible. He didn’t need to see their version of happily-ever-after.

  He’d rather stay at his old house, working on the wiring that needed updating, the plumbing that sometimes groaned with the effort of pushing water to the faucets.

  A house for a family, Jake had teased when Duke started the remodel. And now he had a family. True, Oregon didn’t want any part of making them one. But Duke would be a dad to Lilly. He wouldn’t let her argue him out of that.

  They entered the room as a nurse was settling Lilly back in, covering her with heated blankets and tucking in the edges.

  The nurse smiled at her patient. “Told you they’d be right back.”

  Oregon leaned to kiss her daughter’s cheek.

  Their daughter. Duke hung back, trying hard not to let this moment get the best of him. This shouldn’t be the first time he saw her as his daughter. There should have been a lifetime of moments. A newborn in a
hospital, first steps, first words, first day of school. Yeah, he’d missed out on a lot.

  He wanted to be angry with Oregon. He was angry, not just with her, with himself. He hadn’t been the kind of man a woman would turn to.

  This girl could have pulled him back to where he needed to be.

  She still could.

  For the moment he stood on the sidelines and watched as the nurse checked IV lines, as Oregon spoke in soft whispers and then as Joe reentered the room with a cup of coffee. Why in the world did this drama include Joe?

  How did a man adjust to suddenly being a dad?

  The doctor walked through the sliding door. He looked at his chart, looked up and smiled at Lilly, then at Oregon. He didn’t look at Duke or Joe, because they were just the extras in this scene.

  The doctor pulled back the blanket, touched Lilly’s toes on her left foot, rested a hand on the splinted leg. “Well, we have a minor concussion, and she’s very fortunate it wasn’t worse. No internal bleeding, for which we’re thankful. And then this broken leg that we’re going to set. She’ll be down for about six weeks, then back to work earning money for that horse.”

  “Oh, she told you.” Oregon smiled down at her daughter.

  “Yes, she did. She also told me you have stairs. She’s not going to have an easy time on stairs with the cast and crutches.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Duke cut in. Oregon shot him a look that clearly told him to stay out of her business.

  Thing is, her business had become his. He gave her a look that he hoped told her he wasn’t going to back down and pretend this didn’t matter. He ignored the daggers Oregon shot at him from eyes damp with unshed tears and smiled at Lilly. She smiled back with a smile he should have recognized.

  Yeah, this mattered.

  * * *

  After it was decided Lilly would spend the night in the hospital, Duke took Joe home, then headed for the ranch. Or his section of the nearly twelve hundred acres that made up the Circle M.

  He bypassed Jake’s place and drove down the dirt road to his house. The two-story home had a pillared front porch and a veranda that ran across the second floor. It had been a showplace years ago when his grandfather had been alive. And then it had been abandoned and had started to fall apart. Posts on the porch had needed to be replaced, along with the roof, siding and many of the windows.