A Cowboy's Secret Baby

by Savannah McCarthy

  “Liz...” offered Wyatt, standing up.

  Liz took her daughter’s hand and rose to her feet as well. She was hardly worrying about her own safety, all she cared about was protecting Bindi.

  “It’s safe here,” said Wyatt. “We have 24-hour surveillance and top-notch security. You two can stay in a cabin far away from mine. Please, consider it, at least until we find out what’s happening with Alec.”

  Liz tried to think but it was no use. Wyatt was right—but how could she fall in line so easily? So much of her suffering over the past decade had come from trying to gain some form of independence from him. She knew by now that no matter how much she wanted to, she never could truly rely on him. Even if this time felt different, the idea of giving herself so completely to him set off all the alarm bells she had set up in her head. Staying with him at the ranch meant relying on him—Liz didn’t know if she could do that.

  But what choice did she have?

  She looked down at her sweet innocent daughter and her heart melted. She’d do anything for Bindi, and right now that meant giving up a piece of the independence she’d been fostering for the two of them in the name of safety.

  “Fine,” she finally sighed. “Lead the way.”

  The little trip to the big cabin was quiet and tense. Liz wasn’t angry at Wyatt per say, but she was upset at the situation she found herself in. She felt like she was setting herself up for a trap that would strip her of all that she had built up for herself and her daughter.

  Wyatt respected her silence and quietly showed them around the luxurious cabin they’d be spending the night in. Under less tense circumstances, Liz would have oohed and awed at the sight of it all.

  She’d stayed at the ranch before and spent nights in everything from small apartments to Wyatt’s own personal abode, but there had been intensive renovations since her last overnight stay, and the place that Wyatt was showing her now was far and above anything she’d ever seen before.

  Sweet Prairie Manner, said the sign out front. It was a fitting name; the ceiling-high windows in the living room looked out over an endless ocean of dark green land. Wyatt had obviously called in ahead, because a big fire crackled in the fire place and all the lights were turned on.

  “The bathrooms are stocked with every amenity; I’ll have groceries brought in tomorrow...” Wyatt started to explain. Liz helped Bindi onto a nearby couch. The sleepy girl spread out on the comfy cushions and rolled over, lost in her own little world.

  “Groceries?” Liz asked, turning back to Wyatt. “How long do you expect us to stay here?”

  Wyatt sighed and leaned against a big living room chair. His burly figure was silhouetted by the fire behind him. “Just until I can get enough information about Alec to know you’re safe. I know that’s not ideal, but, hey, at least Bindi likes it here...”

  “I like it here too,” Liz interrupted. “But it’s not about liking Gold River, or you for that matter, it’s about upending our lives. We’ve built our own little sanctuary in Watford. Sure, it’s not as glamorous as you’re used to, or as ‘nice’ as this place, but it’s ours, and we can’t just abandon it for the sake of convenience.”

  “Not convenience,” Wyatt clarified. “Safety.”

  “Safety?” Liz scoffed, a little more harshly than she’d meant to. “Couldn’t you assign a little security detail to stake out my home? Why do we need to be here?”

  “Because I want you here, okay?” Wyatt suddenly snapped. “Is that what you want to hear? It’s selfish, I know—you don’t have to tell me. But the only way I’m sleeping tonight is if I know you’re alright, and the only way I can know you’re alright for sure is to have you here, close to me.”

  Liz sighed. She didn’t want to fight. It was just that she was so exhausted from the rollercoaster of emotions she’d been experiencing over the past 24-hours.

  “We’ll stay here tonight,” she said, looking down at her sleepy daughter. “And then we’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Hopefully, I’ll have some real answers for you by then,” Wyatt’s said. His voice had turned cool and calm again. “For now, though, just know that you’re safe. You can rest easy. There’s security all around, even if you can’t see it. The guys I have on you and Bindi specialize in non-intrusive protection... I’ll also be here. I’ll stay at a nearby cabin—close enough to come running if you need me, but far enough away that you two won’t be caught in the crossfire if anything goes down. This cabin is supposed to be empty, so your name won’t appear anywhere on the Gold River directory and the only people who know about you staying overnight are those I’d trust with my life.” Wyatt stood up from the chair and looked wistfully out the living room windows. Liz followed his gaze; she could see their reflections flickering in the firelight. They looked so close, yet so far apart.

  She calmed and looked away from the window, back towards the real Wyatt. “Can you help me put Bindi to bed?” she asked softly. “I can barely carry her anymore.”

  Wyatt nodded dutifully. He was subdued but Liz could tell he was glad she was letting him help. He swooped the unconscious little girl off the couch and carried her to a bedroom on the main floor. There were two beds in the room; he put her down on one and Liz came over and tucked her in. She kissed her daughter on the forehead and then walked Wyatt to the front door.

  “Look, Liz...” he started. “I’m sorry about all this. If I had known beforehand, I never would have dragged you into this mess. You don’t deserve to live like this; I know how independent you are. Thank you for letting me help, it means more to me than you could ever know.”

  Liz stared up at the gentle giant. Her heart stirred but her gut was too constricted for any butterflies to flutter through. She was worried, but she was also glad that Wyatt was here with her.

  “Thank you for caring,” she finally said, taking his big, rugged hand in hers. She rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb and stared at his thick forearms. He was so strong and steady—right now, Liz needed that more than anything. She still didn’t know how it would work out between them in the long term, but she did know one thing for sure: he was here for her now, and that’s all that mattered.

  Chapter 14

  Wyatt

  That night, Wyatt remembered everything.

  He was in an unfamiliar bed—he had been unwilling to go all the way back to his cabin for fear of being too far from Liz and Bindi if they needed him—and his head was on fire.

  He poured himself a drink, trying to calm his nerves, but nothing helped. He wished Liz would have let him stay with her. The news of Alec’s release would have been hard enough to deal with by itself, but to find out about it just after reconnecting with his long-lost love was like receiving a hip check to the gut.

  He tried to watch TV, he tried to read something, he even tried having a hot shower, but his mind was racing at a thousand miles per minute and nothing was slowing it down.

  Finally, exhaustion overcame him in the wee hours of the morning and he fell into a restless sleep. True nightmares filled his troubled mind with dangerous memories…

  … He saw his parents, smiling at him after a game, then he saw their caskets. He saw the courtroom and the church and he saw that face. Alec Garland…

  … Alec Garland and Wyatt Sounder had been good natured rivals once upon a time. They’d both grown up in Watford City and, despite the small population, quickly become two of the most promising prospects in the state of North Dakota.

  Alec was big and beefy and could control a game with the sheer weight of his presence alone. He bullied kids on the ice for entire seasons, earning honour after honour and building up a mean reputation. The only player who ever seemed to give him a real run for his money was Wyatt.

  Wyatt was big too, though not nearly as big as Alec, but also infinitely more skilled. His game was based on finesse, not brute strength, and it made him a phenom of sorts. Coaches from all over the country, Canada included, came to watch the two boys duke it out. The
y played on the same state all-star team and did well enough to both get a national team invite.

  That’s where things started to go wrong for Alec.

  From the first tryout, it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to dominate based on size alone anymore. All-Star players from the other states were just as big as him, but also way more developed. They could stick handle around him like he was a pylon and through him like he was a feather and he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Wyatt, on the other hand, was a natural. Despite being on the smaller end of the spectrum compared to some of the other players, he was so skilled and so naturally talented that he actually dominated more against the better competition. Playing with teammates that were almost as good as he was meant he didn’t have to spend entire shifts trying to score on his own, he could set up others and win that way.

  The coaches saw his shinning talents quickly enough and offered to cover his expenses so that he could continue with the team.

  The same enthusiasm was not shown for Alec. The burly brute’s shortcomings were put on full display and it quickly became clear that he was not anywhere near the top crust of youth hockey players in the country. He was cut from the team after the first exhibition game—one of the first players to be let go—and he went back to Watford with his head hung low. There would only be one player from North Dakota on the national team, and it wouldn’t be him.

  A big problem for players who are so good at hockey from such a young age is that they tend to wrap their whole identity up in the sport. Alec had suddenly been smacked in the face by a slapshot of reality and he didn’t know what to do about it. He came from a good home and had good parents, but it didn’t take long for him to start getting into trouble.

  Wyatt had sympathized with him at first. He’d understood what it might be like to lose the dream that hockey provided him, and so, he’d tried to reach out to his increasingly isolated peer—but he never got any response.

  Alec started skipping school and hanging out with the wrong crowds. He was clearly angry, but even hockey was no longer an outlet for him. After getting into a particularly brutal fight during a Watford city game, he was suspended from the league, then when he took that fight to the streets a few days later, he was expelled.

  Alec had scoped out where one of the youth league board members lived, and then he had waited for him to come home from work late one night. Alec was a big teenager and obviously a talented athlete. The older gentleman he was waiting for stood no chance. With the guy’s wife and kids inside, Alec beat the man to within an inch of his life on the front doorsteps of his own home.

  It didn’t take long for him to get caught. He was sent off to a juvenile detention center and sentence to an intense rehabilitation program.

  In the meantime, Wyatt was excelling at all aspects of life. He was the star player on a national team that went on to win gold at the junior Olympics, and his life outside of the arena was as steady as ever. He was never a great student, but he had made friends with an exceptionally bright girl named Elizabeth Turk, who was helping him study. With her assistance, he was on track to receive full-ride scholarships from nearly every school in the country.

  Word was out that he was also going steady with her.

  Wyatt also had many interests and hobbies outside of hockey, including horseback and bull riding. He’d spend offseasons at his parents’ rickety ranch, Stony Brook, learning to ride and getting a wider appreciation for the world.

  Meanwhile, Alec stewed away in some cold detention center. It didn’t help that Alec’s parents held Wyatt’s accomplishments up as an example for what their troubled son should strive for. They meant well, but every time they visited Alec in juvie with a story about Wyatt, they were only helping dig him deeper into his hole of resentment.

  By the time he got out, Alec was far worse off than he had been even before he was put away. He was bitter and resentful and barely even an official adult yet.

  ... And then Wyatt got drafted, 2nd overall, to the biggest, most famous professional hockey team in the world.

  Watford City’s chosen son was setting the world on fire, all the while troubled young Alec was struggling to even get a simple job. He had become estranged from his family, and when his parents packed up and moved to Florida, he didn’t follow them.

  He squatted at their old house, stealing wi-fi from a neighbour and began to obsessively hound Wyatt on social media. He followed the budding hockey star’s every move and grew more and more envious. He became known around town as a thief and a drunk who broke into people’s liquor cabinets and raided fridges of booze and spirits.

  He was a drunk before he was even of legal drinking age and no one in Watford could do anything to stop him. He was just too physically big to deal with, so most just avoided him. The local cops kept their eyes on him, but he hadn’t been violent since returning home, so he only ever spent days at a time in the local county jail for petty crimes.

  People around town felt bad for him, but it didn’t mean they were willing to help. Things only got worse when the oil boom happened. Turns out, the land Alec had been squatting on, the very same land his parents had sold to the city and abandoned for Florida, was sitting on enough oil to have set him up for life.

  That was the tipping point. That’s when the violence came back. The cops rode Alec out of town, but he didn’t know where to go, so he set up shop at an abandoned ranch a few miles outside of the city.

  It was around this time that the accident happened…

  Alec would only come into town for two reasons: to steal booze and watch games. The service was spotty at best out where he was staying, so it was the only way he could indulge. Despite his bitter split with the sport, he still enjoyed watching hockey—he especially liked drunkenly cursing out Wyatt whenever he appeared on TV.

  The townspeople generally put up with his appearances, because as long as no one tested him, there was no violence. It didn’t matter that he was underage and getting drunk, or driving home afterwards, no one wanted to deal with him.

  The town turned a blind eye.

  Wyatt’s parents usually flew out to watch their son play in-person, but if the games were too far south, they’d stay home and watch in town with friends. Their big dream project, Gold River Ranch, was still under construction, but they already had a home out there that they’d drive back to after most nights in town.

  One night, Mr. and Mrs. Sounder were in Watford watching Toronto play an away game in Florida. Wyatt had a great performance, a goal and 2 assists—well on his way to rookie of the year honours—and the couple left Pop’s local diner in high spirits.

  Alec had also been watching the game at a dive bar across town. Seeing Wyatt flourish always put him in a foul mood, and so he hit the road that night with a few extra bottles of booze in his system.

  At the same time, Wyatt’s parents were on their way home. Probably singing show tunes or church hymns in the old family car, they pulled off of Main street and rounded the corner onto Laird... at the exact same moment that Alec was drunkenly blazing down the street in the opposite direction.

  Two opposite lives collided at that moment... all too literally.

  A later inspection of the crash would show that the Sounders had tried to veer out of the way at the last second. Their car had been sideswiped and flipped, sending it rolling off the side of the road and down into a ditch.

  They didn’t survive.

  Alec, on the other hand, had escaped with barely a scratch on him or his vehicle. Even after the collision, his car was in good enough condition to high-tail it right out of town.

  He ran, and no one knew what had truly happened until a few days later, when nearby security cam footage showed who was truly at fault for the ‘accident’.

  To investigators, it had looked almost like Alec had been playing a game of chicken with the unaware Sounders. The only reason he ended up surviving the impact at all was because of a quick last second swerve by Mr.
Sounder. It saved Alec’s life, but ended those of the Sounders.

  Alec became a fugitive, and Wyatt was flung into a state of pure grief.

  Until then, Wyatt had been living a life that few could ever dream of. The shine from all the money and fame didn’t make it through the tragedy though—Wyatt’s dream quickly turned to a nightmare, and with no parents to turn to for comfort, he panicked. He isolated himself from the world and threw every last inch of his soul into hockey. It was the only way he could seem to manage the pain…

  Wyatt tossed and turned in his bed as he remembered the chilling state he had been left in after receiving the news.

  … He had suddenly been thrown into a cold, uncaring state of limbo. He was completely alone. Throughout the suffering, he had held out hope that he might hear from Liz, the only person he had ever cared about nearly as much as his own family, but the closest he ever got were visits from her parents.

  Mr. and Mrs. Turk had provided him great comfort, but their presence also reminded him of how badly he had blown it with Liz. It made him feel even more alone—would he ever experience unconditional love again?

  He had decided not to think about it. He started ignoring everything but hockey.

  In the meantime, an outlaw Alec was ignoring everything but Wyatt.

  The fugitive’s twisted mind had somehow managed to blame his former boyhood rival for all his troubles. He started obsessing over Wyatt; writing violent messages to his social media accounts and crossing state lines to visit the towns he was playing hockey in.

  Alec knew he was in big trouble—there was no coming back from what he’d done—but it appeared that instead of trying to run from his past, he wanted to bull-rush it, head first. He made it clear online that he meant to ‘finish the job’. He wanted revenge—for what? No sane mind could tell you; but it quickly became clear that Wyatt was in danger.

  Every federal agent and personal security team member advised Wyatt to stop playing hockey until they could catch the madman, but Wyatt wasn’t having any of that. He feared the emptiness of having no purpose far more than he could ever fear Alec.