Expecting His Brother's Baby (Baby Bonds #3)

by Karen Rose Smith

  Brock’s finger went to the address on top of the page. “They went to a P.O. box.”

  “I didn’t know he had a P.O. box.”

  “Do you have Alex’s wallet and keys?”

  When she would have stood to go get them, Brock laid a hand on her shoulder. “Just tell me where they are.”

  With her mind racing, her stomach twirling, she pointed into the living room. “In the right bottom drawer of the writing desk.”

  The piece of furniture was an antique. There were two small drawers. The top part opened and lay flat on two braces that slid out to support it.

  Quickly Brock went to the drawer and removed a key ring with about a dozen keys, as well as a worn, brown leather wallet.

  “Did you go through his wallet?” he asked gently, as he sat beside her once more.

  “Yes, I did. But it was right after he died and I guess I was distracted.” Actually, she’d sat and cried as she’d gone through it. He’d had lots of cards—two credit cards, a phone card, an auto club card, an ID card, a charge card for the Trading Post in town. Now, as she sorted through them she saw the Visa card. Why hadn’t it jumped out at her before?

  Because her mind hadn’t been on credit cards. It had been on mementoes—things he might have had in his wallet that had meant something to him. Or to her. In one of the flaps she’d found a bootmaker’s business card, as well as a parking receipt for his last rodeo.

  “You’ve never seen the credit card before?”

  She shook her head.

  Picking up the ring of keys he asked, “Do you know what each one of these goes to?”

  She’d taken his truck keys off the ring. There were two for the house, a set for her pickup that had been in the accident, small padlock keys that she had duplicates of that opened sheds. She didn’t know anything about the last three. Suddenly she wondered if one of them opened Trish Hammond’s apartment.

  Brock focused on one that wasn’t as large as a house key nor as small as a padlock key. “I think this goes to the P.O. box. The number’s on it.”

  She was less concerned about the P.O. box than the bills before her. It looked as if Alex had paid the minimum most months, letting the two-thousand-dollar balance stand. Did she owe two thousand dollars more? she wondered.

  When her eyes sped down the list of expenditures on each bill, that cold feeling returned…so cold that she almost dropped the paper in her hand. The list of purchases ranged from flowers and candy to a five-hundred-dollar gold bracelet and charges for hotel rooms. She could feel Brock’s attention on her, and she didn’t know what to do or to say. She’d known Alex had cheated on her with Trish. How many others had there been? Did she even want to know?

  “Did you know he was cheating on you?”

  There was an edge to Brock’s voice and an inflection that said he was angry or disappointed or…something.

  Raising her chin, she looked right into his turbulent brown eyes. “Our marriage was in trouble. He was away so much and I thought that was the real problem. I had gotten hang-up calls, but I didn’t really know for sure what was going on until—until the day of the accident.”

  “The bull-riding accident?”

  “No. My accident.”

  “But Alex had been dead almost four months.”

  “The woman he’d been seeing called me, supposedly about boarding a horse. Trish Hammond is a waitress at Clementine’s, and I met her there after work. After I got there, she took out a belt buckle that Alex had given her in April. She said she thought I might like to have it, but she just wanted to see my reaction. She wanted to see me upset. She wanted me to know she was the other woman.”

  “I don’t understand why she’d do that.”

  Kylie shook her head. “I don’t, either. I guess she just wanted to see me suffer more. Or else she was curious as to who I really was. I didn’t say much. I was really upset. As I was driving home, that’s when the ball joint broke.”

  The moments ticked by, and she knew Brock was waiting for the whole story or anything else she was willing to tell him. “When I found out I was pregnant—” Her throat tightened.

  “I knew it wasn’t the best time, but I wanted this baby. Alex didn’t. He thought I’d gotten pregnant just to trap him into staying home more. We argued, and I told him if he didn’t go to counseling with me, I was going to leave. He left for Las Vegas early, and that was the last I saw him. I wish…I wish so many things had been different.” She stopped then because the lump in her throat was too big, her sadness too great, her regret too overwhelming at that moment.

  When Brock reached out and took her hand, the tears crept loose and she shut her eyes.

  Taking a deep breath, she swiped away the wetness. She didn’t want Brock’s pity. “You must think I’m just another weak woman who couldn’t face the truth.”

  “That’s not what I think at all. You’re strong, Kylie. I’ve always known that. From the time you were running your pop’s ranch with him, everyone in town knew nothing could keep you down. You wanted your marriage to work and nobody can fault you for that.”

  She had desperately wanted her marriage to work. She’d believed in her vows made before God. “When I married Alex, he needed me. We’d always been such good friends. We’d both lost our dads, and I thought we understood each other. I think he liked the idea of marriage, but being married was something else. I’ve lain awake at night wondering what I could have done differently. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken on so much of the responsibility. Maybe I should have gone with him to more of his competitions. Maybe I should have prettied myself up so he didn’t look elsewhere.”

  Brock made some kind of noise and she saw the nerve in his jaw work. But he didn’t say anything, and she had no idea what he was thinking. He was still holding her hand, though, and that felt good and safe and secure…and right.

  Yet how could it be right when so much else was wrong?

  “I’m just beginning to see that you’ve been carrying too much of the burden for too long,” he said. “I want you to call Mr. Tompkins and tell him you’re not coming back to work.”

  “Brock, I need the money.”

  “No, you don’t. You need to take care of yourself and your baby. The little bit of money you’re going to bring in in the next six weeks or so isn’t worth the cost to your health or the baby’s. Can’t you see that?”

  “I see that I have bills to pay.”

  “You’re not the only one with regrets. I should have kept in touch with Alex better, especially after Jack died. I should have seen what he was doing and how he was treating you. So this is what’s going to go down. You can sell off a parcel of land on the north border. That’ll give you capital. If it’s not enough, I’ll add some to it. And I’ll come up with a plan. It’ll take a couple of weeks until I figure out what’s best to do. But by the time I leave here, you’ll be up and running again.”

  Mixed emotions battered Kylie. Gratitude warred against pride. “I hate the idea of you rescuing me.”

  “I could be insulted.” His eyebrows arched and his lips twitched with amusement.

  “If I let you do this, I’ll be indebted to you.”

  “No. I’ll be indebted to you. You’ve managed to keep this place, Kylie. For all Alex did, the bank could have foreclosed.”

  “If you put your own money in, then you deserve a share of the profits.”

  When his eyebrows furrowed deeper, she said, “I mean it, Brock. I won’t take a handout. I won’t be a charity case.”

  “You’re not one.”

  “Well, I feel like I am.”

  “All right,” he agreed, relenting. “I’ll accept some profit. We’ll figure out something. But we’ll put a moratorium on it, too, until the ranch is in full swing again.”

  “How long a moratorium?” she asked warily.

  “A year.”

  “Six months.”

  “Kylie, it’s going to take that long just to figure out what will work and what won’t
.”

  “Six months. I’ll be able to send you something regularly by then. I know I will.”

  “I don’t know if you’re the most optimistic woman I’ve ever met, or just the most determined.”

  “With a child to think about, I have to be both.” She looked down at the credit card statements. “I can’t believe he kept all this from me. I can’t believe I was so naive.”

  “I’m not sure naive has anything to do with it. You wanted to believe the best of Alex. You wanted to think your marriage was sacred. So did I. It’s ironic, but my breakup had to do with children, too.”

  “Your wife got pregnant?” The idea of that challenged Kylie’s equilibrium. She definitely didn’t like the idea of another woman pregnant with Brock’s child, though she had no right to object to that. No right at all.

  “No, she wasn’t pregnant, and that was the problem. Maybe Alex and I weren’t so different in some ways. After we were married a year, Marta wanted to have kids. I didn’t.”

  That didn’t seem to jive. Brock would make a terrific father. She’d seen that with Timmy and with Molly. “Why didn’t you want children?” she asked gently.

  “I could tell you the time didn’t seem right, that I knew I’d be away from home a lot, that a child would tie us down when we were making advances in our careers. But the real bottom line reason went much deeper. It went back to Jack marrying my mother, looking at me when I was born and wanting something different. You saw Marta. Tall, sleek, light brown hair, porcelain skin. Just what would have happened if our baby had been born with a broad face and black eyes? How would she have felt then?”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “I did. She said she was sure our child would be a mixture of both of us.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I wanted to keep the marriage intact. I agreed we’d try to get pregnant. We moved from a condo into a house and I didn’t take foreign assignments. But when we didn’t get pregnant, we began growing apart. Finally, we saw a specialist and were both tested. Everything was fine. She blamed me. She said I didn’t really want a child and that was a subconscious barrier.”

  He stopped and blew out a breath. “To show her I was invested in the decision, I went along with trying artificial insemination. That didn’t work, either. I thought we needed a break from all of it, and I suggested we take a vacation and just relax. But her idea of relaxing and mine were very different. We decided to take a cruise so we could have a little bit of everything. But on the ship, we didn’t have the same interests. We found ourselves going our separate ways. When we came back together at night, we didn’t have much to say. She wanted a baby. That’s all that was on her mind. When we got home, she asked for a divorce. She wanted to start over before it was too late to do it with someone who wanted a family as much as she did.”

  “Oh, Brock. I’m so sorry. You must have felt so betrayed. Wedding vows mean taking the bad with the good, riding it out when it doesn’t look like you can. I still believe if Alex had gone to counseling with me we could have turned our marriage around. But we both had to be willing to try.”

  “We both got the raw end of the deal. But at least Marta was honest about what she wanted. Alex…Alex was spoiled and pampered and thought he always had to get his own way. Jack did a disservice to Alex by letting him think the world revolved around him. I knew it didn’t. I knew I had to cut my own path. But Alex expected everyone to just hand over whatever he wanted.”

  “They usually did,” Kylie admitted without bitterness. “He had this way about him that just—” She stopped, overcome by what she once felt, overcome by pain that it had all gone so wrong, overcome by the concern that she was lacking and always would be. She knew she was to blame in this, too. She should have been more…done more. If she had been the best kind of wife, Alex wouldn’t have looked elsewhere.

  As if Brock heard the thoughts running through her head, he stood, then took her hands and pulled her up with him. “Don’t blame yourself for the failure of your marriage.”

  “It was my fault as much as it was Alex’s. Don’t tell me you didn’t blame yourself.”

  “My situation was altogether different. Alex was the type of man who needed adulation. He needed the crowds cheering for him when he rode that bull. He needed women looking at him as if he was God’s greatest gift. Women. Plural. Not just you. Alex was always like that. I thought marrying you would change him. But apparently, marriage didn’t have any affect at all. I’m sorry about that, Kylie, because you deserved better.”

  “Whatever my marriage to Alex was or wasn’t, it gave me the greatest gift of my life.” Her gaze lowered to the child she was carrying. Then she looked up at Brock again. “I have to believe that if Alex had lived, he would have learned to become a dad. Even if I had left, I would have always encouraged that. You said you thought our marriage would change him. It didn’t. But I do believe having a child would have. Being pregnant has changed me. It’s made me stronger, more sure of the life I want to lead, more aware that I have to make right decisions.”

  “You’ve grown up,” he said, sounding as if he might be surprised by that fact.

  Because she and Alex were the same age and Alex had never grown up? “I think part of me has always been grown up.”

  His eyes grew darker, almost black. The light there was full of heat. She felt it, connected with it, wanted more of it.

  Be careful, her common sense warned her. You’re vulnerable, it went on. You’re susceptible.

  The thing was, she’d always been susceptible to Brock. Now she wondered if her crush had been more than a crush.

  Instead of drawing her closer, touching her or kissing her, Brock dropped her hands. “I’m going to go into town and check if there’s anything in that P.O. box. I’ll bring home a form so you can have mail forwarded to here.”

  What if she told Brock she wanted to go with him? That was silly. A ride into town would accomplish nothing. She had so much to do here, and she’d better get to it.

  She had better not wrap her old feelings for Brock into a new package. A baby was between them. Her marriage to Alex was between them.

  That would never change.

  Chapter Six

  On Tuesday evening Kylie walked into the veterinary clinic a little less defiant than she’d felt that afternoon when she’d left for work. Yesterday her doctor had given her the okay, both to work and to drive. Brock and Dix both were acting like her keepers, disapproving of her doing either. But she was determined to maintain some semblance of independence.

  She wasn’t disregarding their concern or her own well-being. She had arranged a schedule with Mr. Tompkins that took the end of her pregnancy into consideration. The office would be closed between Christmas and New Year’s. He’d found someone to replace her as of January fifteenth. Until then, his wife, who had been filling in the last couple of weeks, would work mornings and Kylie would work in the afternoons. This way she wasn’t leaving him in the lurch, could earn some extra money, yet also was looking after her health and the baby’s.

  In the clinic’s waiting area, one man held a black Lab by his leash while the dog snoozed at his side. The woman sitting a few feet away from him held a carrier on her lap and Kylie glimpsed a tortoiseshell long-haired cat inside.

  The receptionist, Sherry Watson, smiled at Kylie as she approached the desk. “I’m here to pick up Molly. Is she in the back with Dr. Buchanan?”

  Dr. Seth Buchanan was Molly’s uncle, and the ten-year-old enjoyed spending time at the clinic whenever she could. She not only liked horses but furry creatures of all kinds, and Kylie suspected the little girl might become a veterinarian herself someday.

  “Molly’s mom told me you’d be stopping by for her. Going Christmas shopping, I understand.”

  “That we are. She wants to find the perfect gifts for her parents and can’t do that when they’re around.”

  Sherry lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Dr. Buchanan said something about
giving her a bonus for helping him. Molly was all smiles because she said now she could afford to buy her mom a new pair of leather gloves.”

  “Then I guess we’ll be stopping in at Tannenbaum’s Leather Shop.”

  “Do you want me to get her?” Sherry asked.

  “No, I’ll just go on back.” Seth had doctored the Warners’s horses for the past six years, ever since he’d returned and taken over running the clinic from his father, who had retired.

  Kylie found Molly sitting on the floor in front of the kennels, playing with a Cocker Spaniel pup. She was holding one end of a rope, the pup was holding the other, and they were occupied in a pretend tug-of-war. She looked up when Kylie opened the door and slipped inside.

  There were ten cages. Only one was occupied right now by a sleeping yellow tabby.

  Seeing Kylie’s gaze go to the cat, Molly explained, “She was spayed this morning. Her owner’s coming to pick her up in a little while.”

  “And who’s this?” Kylie asked, motioning to the pup.

  “She doesn’t have a name yet. Uncle Seth says he’s looking for a good home for her. Somebody just left her here. He doesn’t know who.”

  The pup suddenly lost her grip on the rope and fell back on her hind quarters, then plopped over on her side, looking up at Molly with big brown eyes.

  “I’m thinking about asking Mom and Dad if they’ll get her for me for Christmas. But they…”

  Kylie waited.

  “I think they were fighting again this morning. They got all quiet when I came down for breakfast.” Picking up the pup with one hand, Molly plopped her into her lap and scratched her behind the ears.

  Kylie didn’t want to butt into something that didn’t concern her, yet Molly was obviously upset about her parents.

  “Do you think you’re ready for the responsibility of a dog? If she’s yours, you’ll have to take care of her all the time, not just when you want to.”

  “I’m ready. She could be my best friend. She could even sleep with me. Then I wouldn’t feel so…alone.”

  “If you don’t want to bring up the subject with your parents, maybe your Uncle Seth could.”