In the past month the ranch had finally seen winter giving way to spring, and the first tender blades of grass were beginning to grow on the river valley that stretched through the ranch’s property. The mature cows were dropping their calves without problems, and the mares continued to add to the crop of babies that would eventually become a part of the Chaparral’s working remuda.
As for Laurel, she’d chosen Quint’s sister-in-law, Bridget, to handle her prenatal care and eventual delivery of the baby. So far the beautiful redhead had declared Laurel and baby to be in fine health. At first, Laurel had been half afraid Russ would try to make her quit work, but thankfully he’d seemed to understand how important her job was to her. Instead, he took extra caution to make sure she didn’t do too much lifting or overtire herself. Laurel had never felt so loved or pampered in her life.
Pulling her thoughts back to the present, Laurel watched from her seat on the couch, as Quint carried his glass to the middle of the room.
“I think we should make a toast to Grandfather,” Quint announced to the guests. “May he have many, many more nights like this one.”
The white-haired man with his drooping mustache and wise, leathery face raised his glass and responded to his grandson’s toast. “Thank you, Quint. And to Russ and Laurel for a long and happy marriage.”
“Hear! Hear!” Frankie Cantrell seconded.
Laurel dutifully sipped her ginger ale, then turned to Russ, who was nestled comfortably at her side. “I’ve never seen Alexa and Quint’s mother looking so beautiful and happy. Texas is definitely agreeing with the woman.”
“Maybe she’s found a man there,” Russ said thoughtfully.
Laurel shot him a clever look. “A man? Does every woman have to have a man to make her happy?”
“I’m seeing a smile on your face,” he smugly pointed out.
Laughing, she squeezed her husband’s hand. “But not every woman is lucky enough to have a man like you.”
Slipping his arm around her shoulder, he chuckled in a low, sexy way. “Hmm. Flattery. So what could you be wanting? To bring Josie home with us?”
Laurel grinned. As much as she’d loved her little cottage, as soon as she and Russ had married, they’d moved all of her things into his bigger house, including her cats. Leo was still outraged by the intrusion, but the arrogant tom was beginning to relent and make friends with the other felines.
“As much as I’d like to bring her home with us, she wants to play with the other calves.”
“We’ll turn her out tomorrow,” he promised. “So she and her sister can get back together.”
Laurel cast him a hopeful glance. “It will be okay for that to happen now?”
“The twins have grown past their very needy stage. They can eat grain and hay now, and the mother doesn’t have to provide as much.” He smiled at her. “See, they’re going to get to be one big, happy family after all.”
Sighing with contentment, she smiled at him, then swept her gaze around the room at all the people who were slowly and surely filling up her life in a very good and special way. This time Jonas had gotten to accompany Alexa to the Chaparral, and the couple appeared to be as much in love now as they had four years ago. Maura had just announced that she and Quint were going to have a third child and, incredibly, after all these years, Reena had received a warm letter from her daughter, Magena. “I guess we’ve proved my mother wrong,” she said. “Happy endings do really come to pass.”
The slight pressure from Russ’s hand urged her gaze back around to his face.
“Speaking of your mother,” he said, “I think you should call your father and brother and let them know about your marriage and the baby.”
With a doubtful scowl, she said, “I’m not sure they want to hear happy news. They’re all about doom and gloom.”
He patted her hand. “If anyone can change their attitude, you can, my darling. And eventually our child will want to meet the only uncle and grandparent he or she will probably ever have. That is, unless your mother or my father miraculously reappear.”
Laurel mulled that thought over for a moment. “You’re right, Russ. My father and brother’s dark look at life can’t hurt me anymore—it can only hurt them. And maybe it’s time they faced up to the way they treated me and Lainey. As for my mother and your father, I feel very sorry for them.”
He arched a brow at her. “Why is that?”
“They gave up the best things in life they could ever have.”
Bending his head next to hers, he nuzzled her ear and whispered, “You’re going to make one hell of a good mother. And I’m a very lucky man.”
“Well, still behaving like honeymooners, I see.”
At the sound of Quint’s teasing voice, both Laurel and Russ looked up to see the ranch owner taking a seat in a nearby armchair.
“Honeymoon?” Laurel asked jokingly. “What is that?”
The rancher chuckled. “Don’t blame me. I’ve tried to send Russ away to Hawaii or somewhere nice and warm. But he’s a workaholic and refuses to go.”
“We’ll go soon. Before the baby comes,” Russ promised. “Right now there’s still too much calving and foaling going on. And I don’t want to go anywhere until we figure out who could be poisoning the cattle.”
A perplexed frown creased Quint’s face. “Who? I thought the question was what.”
Russ said, “I was going to tell you later tonight. After supper. This evening I got a call from the university with the test results on Josie. The goat milk was tainted with a chemical substance. The same chemical substance that was found in the blood of the sick calves.”
Floored by this news, Quint stared at him. “But couldn’t that be from a fertilizer, or something inadvertent like a weed or poisonous vegetation?”
“It could. But it wouldn’t explain Josie’s milk being tainted. If the goat had eaten something poisonous and passed it on in her milk, she would have been deathly sick first.”
Clearly horrified by this information, Quint shook his head, then darted a glance over his shoulder to where his wife, mother and sister were all gathered around Abe. “I can’t imagine anyone hating us Cantrells that much.”
“Maybe it’s not about hating at all,” Russ commented. “People do strange things for strange reasons.”
Quint shoved out a long, heavy breath. “Well, we can only hope the twin calf will be the last incident we see of this. Right now I’ve got more immediate problems with Grandfather. His cook and old ranch hand, Jim, has broken his leg and is going to be out of commission for at least a couple of months. Grandfather refuses to leave Apache Wells and come to the Golden Spur to live with Maura and me and the boys. Now that Maura’s expecting again, he doesn’t want to put any extra work on her. He’s insisting that Reena move out to Apache Wells and cook his meals. The damned man. He’s just using Maura’s pregnancy as an excuse to get his way, that’s all.”
Russ exchanged a knowing smile with Laurel. “Sometimes a man will do most anything to get what he wants.”
This comment had Quint scooting to the edge of his seat and staring at Russ with disbelief. “Are you saying Grandfather has his eye on Reena? That’s ridiculous! The man is eighty-five years old. I mean, sure, he’s always liked women. But Reena is thirty years younger than him. And Abe’s always said he’s still in love with Grandmother’s memory.”
“Maybe he’s put her ghost to rest,” Laurel suggested, then turned an adoring look on her husband.
Loving Russ had finally given her the strength to put Lainey’s ghost to rest, and though Laurel would never forget her beloved twin sister, Lainey’s memory no longer haunted her.
Russ gave her a conspiring wink. “Don’t worry about it, Quint. Could be Abe just wants to eat Reena’s good cooking.”
With a good-natured groan, Quint rose to his feet. “Either way, I think I’ll go keep my eye on Granddad.”
As the rancher walked away, Laurel turned to Russ. “I don’t think he’s too wild about
the idea of Abe finding a new love.”
“It’s not about love—it’s about change,” Russ reasoned. “He wants his grandfather to stay just as he is.”
A thoughtful smile curved Laurel’s lips. “When you first told me you were moving here to the ranch, I thought the change would ruin everything. I was so very wrong.”
His eyes sparkling with love, he squeezed her hand. “I felt a calling to this ranch and its family, Laurel. But most of all I felt a calling to be your husband.”
“Well, you and your calling certainly changed me,” Laurel said softly, “and all for the better. Sounds like Abe is in for a change, too.”
Russ chuckled. “We’ll soon see.”
Leaning her head close to her husband’s, Laurel sighed with happy contentment. “And we’ll soon have another big change when our baby gets here. Think you’re ready for it?”
“I couldn’t be more ready, darling. You, me and our baby. The best is yet to come.”
* * * * *
Don’t miss the next story in the
MEN OF THE WEST series, as
Laramie meets his match!
Coming soon!
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of Once Upon a Matchmaker by Marie Ferrarella!
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Chapter One
So this was what all the secrecy, giggling and whispers had been about.
Micah Muldare sat on the sofa, looking at the gift his sons had quite literally surprised him with. A gift he wasn’t expecting, commemorating a day that he’d never thought applied to him. He’d just unwrapped the gift and it was now sitting on the coffee table, a source of mystification, at least for him.
His boys, four-year-old Greg and five-year-old Gary, sat—or more accurately perched—on either side of him like energized bookends, unable to remain still for more than several seconds at a time. Blond, blue-eyed and small boned, his sons looked like little carbon copies of each other.
They looked like Ella.
Micah shut the thought away. It had been two years, but his heart still wasn’t ready for that kind of comparison.
Maybe someday, just not yet.
“Do you like it, Daddy?” Gary, the more animated of the two, asked eagerly. The boy was fairly beaming as he put the question to him. His bright blue eyes took in every tiny movement.
Micah eyed at the mug on the coffee table. “I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Micah told his son. “Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything at all today.”
It was Mother’s Day. Granted he’d been doing double duty for the past two years, being both mother and father to his two sons, but he hadn’t expected any sort of acknowledgment from the boys on Mother’s Day. On Father’s Day, yes, but definitely not on this holiday.
The mug had been wrapped in what seemed like an entire roll of wrapping paper. Gary had proclaimed proudly that he had done most of the wrapping.
“But I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.
Micah praised their teamwork.
The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.
“Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.
Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”
“It’s an idea, a way of—”
Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.
So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.
“We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.
“Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.
Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.
Because of all the different medications he’d been forced to take, the little boy’s immune system was somewhat compromised. As an unfortunate by-product of that, Greg was more prone to getting sick than his brother.
And every time he did get sick, Micah watched him carefully, afraid the boy would come down with another bout of pneumonia. The last time, a year and a half ago, Greg had almost died. The thought haunted him for months.
Clearing his throat, Micah squared his shoulders. His late mother, Diane, had taught him to accept all gifts gracefully.
“Well, then, thank you very much,” he told his sons with a wide smile that was instantly mirrored by each of the boys.
“Aunt Sheila helped us,” Gary told him, knowing that he couldn’t accept all of the credit for the gift.
“Yeah, she drove us to the store,” Greg chimed in. “But me and Gary picked it out. And we used our own money, too,” he added as a postscript.
“‘Gary and I,’” Micah automatically corrected Greg.
The little boy shook his head so hard, his straight blond hair appeared airborne for a moment, flying to and fro about his head.
“No, not you, Daddy, me,” Greg insisted. “Me and Gary.”
There was time enough to correct his grammar when he was a little older, Micah thought fondly.
Out loud he marveled, “Imagine that,” for his sons’ benefit. A touch of melancholy drifted over him. “You two are growing up way too fast,” he told them. “Before you know it, you’re going to be getting married and starting families of your own.”
“Married?” Greg echoed, frowning as deeply as if his father had just told him that he was having liver for dinner for the next year.
“To a girl?” Gary asked incredulously, very obviously horrified by the mere suggestion that he be forced to marry a female. Everyone knew girls were icky—except for Aunt Sheila, of course, but she didn’t count.
“That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.
Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.
“Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”
Micah slipped an arm around each little boy’s very slim shoulders and pulled them to him. He would miss this when the boys were older, miss these moments when his sons made him feel as if he was the center of their universe.
“Come back and tell
me that in another, oh, ten, fifteen years,” he teased.
“Okay,” Gary promised very solemnly. “We will, Daddy.”
“Yeah, we will!” Greg echoed, not to be outdone.
Micah’s aunt, Sheila Barrett, stood in the living room doorway, observing the scene between her nephew and her grandnephews. Her mouth curved in a wide smile. While she lived not too far from Micah, it felt as if this was more her home than the place where she received her mail. She took care of the boys when her nephew was at work, which, unless one of his sons was sick, was most of the time.
“They picked that mug out themselves,” she told Micah, in case he thought that this was her idea. “They absolutely refused to look at anything else after they saw that mug. They thought it was perfect for you.”
“And of course you tried to talk them out of it,” Micah said, tongue in cheek. His amusement was there, in his eyes.
Sheila shrugged nonchalantly. “The way I see it, Micah, little men in the making should be as free to exercise their shopping gene as their little female counterparts.”
“Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”
“Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.
“Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.
Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.
The Doctor's Calling Page 19
