A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy

by Deb Kastner

  “Ha, ha. It ought to be.” He lifted his hammer to strike the next nail. “I’ve been using more nails than is probably strictly necessary. Remember, I’m a cowboy, not a carpenter.”

  “It looks good all the same.”

  Her words of praise surprised and pleased him, and his fingers slipped, bringing the ball of the hammer straight down on his thumb.

  “Ow,” he grumbled before he could stop himself. He held up the offended appendage and shook it out.

  Alyssa reached for him. She pulled his hand down and examined his thumb. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I distracted you, didn’t I?”

  That ship had already sailed a long time ago. Alyssa was distracting by her mere presence, which was probably why he’d already smacked his thumb more than once today. He might be trying to build an emotional barrier between them, but he wasn’t immune to her pretty face, especially when she smiled.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He tried to shrug it off. “It’s not the first time today I’ve slipped up,” he admitted, gritting his teeth to grin at her and realizing it probably looked more like a grimace. He didn’t want to be a baby about it, no matter how much his thumb was throbbing. He was too much of a man to ever admit how much pain he was really in.

  “Oh, no. Cash. You should have said something.”

  “Nothing to say,” he muttered. “It’s all good.”

  It would take more than a few splinters and slamming the hammer into his thumb to keep him from his task. He would take a couple of aspirin when he got home.

  His head was throbbing louder than his thumb, anyway. He had so much on his mind that it was no wonder his brain felt as if it were about to explode.

  Mollifying Martin and bringing his rodeo skills up to par, for one thing. Another, infinitely more significant reason for his stress was that he couldn’t get a hold of Sharee. She wasn’t answering his calls and now her voice mail box was full.

  What were her plans for their baby? He suspected she was avoiding him, so she wouldn’t have to answer that question.

  He blew out a frustrated breath. Hitting his thumb was little more than pain transference, if he wanted to look at it that way. And Alyssa was a nice diversion.

  He picked off his hat and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.

  Her lips twitched.

  “What?”

  “Forgive me.” Despite her best efforts, a giggle escaped her lips. “I know you’re in pain. It’s terrible of me to laugh, but...but you...you...”

  She waved her hand toward his forehead, the cutest little snort escaping her lips.

  He arched his brows.

  She covered her face as another giggle escaped her.

  He reached up and brushed his forehead with his fingers. He pulled his hand away to see grime caking the tips. He suspected what had started as a swirl of sweat and sawdust now had three distinct finger marks treading through it, like an animal’s track.

  What now?

  He couldn’t think of a way to fix the problem without making it worse. He obviously couldn’t use his gunked-up shirtsleeves, and he didn’t carry a handkerchief.

  “Hold on a second,” she said, jaunting off to the bathroom just inside the stockroom. She returned a moment later with a couple of wet paper towels and two dry ones, as well.

  “Here. Let me.” She leaned on tiptoe to wipe his forehead clean and then handed him the dry paper towels to finish mopping up.

  “Dirty work, I guess,” she teased.

  “No worse than rodeo. Anyway, I’m enjoying doing something different for a change. Working with my hands is fulfilling. It’s a new experience for me to build something from nothing but raw materials. And I think I’m getting the hang of it. Give me a day or two and I’ll be a regular Mr. Fix It.”

  “I hope so. I don’t need an employee out on an injury so quickly after hiring you.”

  “It would take more than me slamming a hammer into my thumb to put me on the injured list. And you bid on me at an auction, which isn’t exactly the same thing as hiring me for a job, as grateful as I am that you’re paying me.”

  She made a vague gesture. “Six of one...”

  She paused. “Actually, I came over to ask you if you wanted to break for lunch and grab some takeout from Cup O’ Jo’s Café.”

  “I’ll never say no to a good meal.” He smiled down at her. “Let me tidy up this mess a bit while you call Jo with our order, and then I’ll go pick it up. Chance’s daily special? Don’t forget dessert.”

  Chance Hawkins was Jo Spencer’s nephew and head cook at the café, while his wife, Phoebe, was well-known for her homemade pastries.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Alyssa moved back behind the front counter and picked up the phone to call Cup O’ Jo’s Café. Cash filled his arms with random fragments of leftover boards and let himself out the back door into the alley where the Dumpster was located, shared by several stores on the east side of Main Street.

  He flipped the lid back and was just about to toss his armful of wood shards into the bin when he heard a tiny, distraught mewl.

  He froze, suddenly alert.

  It was a cat—or at least he thought it was—and it sounded as if it was in distress.

  But where was it?

  He had far too much to do today to spend time looking for a random cat that either belonged to someone else or likely was feral, out roaming around back here. It wasn’t his business or his pet, but he couldn’t push away the niggling feeling there was something wrong.

  He’d always followed his gut. It seldom led him wrong—even if it was just about a cat.

  Dumping his armful of wood on the ground next to the trash container, he turned around slowly, his gaze sweeping across the back of the building. It was clean, save for a few empty crates, and there weren’t many places for a cat to hide.

  He swiveled back the way he’d come and walked around the Dumpster, crouching to look underneath.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” he murmured in the high voice men reserved for animals and babies. “Where are you?”

  His ears picked up two more soft mews, one right on top of the other.

  Was there more than one cat?

  Inside the Dumpster, maybe?

  Cautiously, he peeked over the edge and into the bin, trying not to make any noise that would startle a cat.

  Sure enough, a mama cat was curled on her side on top of a broken-down box, nursing five tiny newborn kittens. The inadvertent distress calls had come from the little ones.

  If he hadn’t heard the kittens’ mewling when he had, he might have—

  His gut lurched painfully. The thought made him sicker to his stomach than he already was.

  He’d been just about to pitch an armful of heavy and some sharply pointed lumber right on top of the poor mama cat and her newborn kittens.

  “Thank God,” he murmured before even realizing he was praying. It had been a while since those words had left his mouth, but he didn’t want to take them back.

  Lifting his hat and scratching the back of his neck, he went back into the shop and waited until Alyssa hung up the phone with Jo.

  “Hey, Alyssa,” he called from the stockroom. “We’ve got a—situation here.”

  “What’s up?” she asked, approaching him. When she saw his face, her gaze filled with concern.

  “There is— I almost—” he stammered, wiping his clammy hands down the front of his shirt. “It’s not the major catastrophe it could have been. And now—I’m thinking you might like what you see. Maybe it would be easier if I just show you.”

  He gestured for her to go ahead of him out the back door and into the alley.

  “I was about to toss an armful of wood scraps into the trash bin when I heard mewling.”

  “A cat?” She looked puzzled. “What
’s the big deal about a cat? We have several feral cats roaming around here.”

  “True.” He shrugged and grinned mischievously. “But I found this one inside the Dumpster.”

  “It’s a good thing you heard him before you tossed a pile of wood on him. He could have gotten hurt. Did you shoo him away?”

  “Um...no, I didn’t. And it’s a her,” he said, his grin widening. “Take a look for yourself.”

  Alyssa peered over the top of the bin and she broke into a smile that lit up her whole face. She was beaming like sunshine on a cloudless Texas summer day.

  “Kittens,” she exclaimed. “Newborn, by the looks of it. Their little eyes aren’t even open yet.”

  “Brand-new to the world,” he affirmed, trying not to be affected by the way Alyssa’s voice had softened when she spoke of the kittens.

  “Thank the good Lord you heard them in time.” She looked toward the sky when she spoke, and Cash knew her words were really a prayer.

  As for Cash, he’d abandoned his faith in the Lord the day he’d left Serendipity in the dust, which was why his own instinctive prayer for the kittens had come as such a surprise to him. As a young man who’d thought he was invincible, he’d had no use for God. Now, after all he’d done, he couldn’t understand why God would have any use for him. But he was thankful he’d found the litter before he’d accidentally hurt them.

  “I know I’m stating the obvious here, but we’ve got to move them,” she determined. “They are in danger here. I know the mama cat probably doesn’t want us to bother her. We don’t even know if she’s from around here. It’s possible she’s feral, which will make things more complicated. But we can’t very well leave them in the Dumpster. There’s no telling when someone else will toss a bag of trash into the bin without hearing them the way you did.”

  “I agree,” he said, nodding. “But what are we going to do with a mama cat and a litter of kittens?”

  “Why, adopt them, of course.” Alyssa’s grin widened, then faltered. “At least for the time being. Maybe one of them can become our new store mascot.”

  Cash chuckled. “The feline face of Emerson’s Hardware.”

  * * *

  Not for the first time in her life, Alyssa’s mouth had worked faster than her head. That seemed to be happening to her more and more often recently.

  She’d never had a pet before, much less a cat, and she had no clue how to care for a litter of kittens. But it wasn’t as if she had a choice. She couldn’t just leave them in the bin where they might get hurt, and the only idea that came to her was to take them inside her store—for the time being, anyway. She didn’t necessarily have to keep them, but in truth, she’d fallen in love with the sweet kitties the moment she saw the tiny bundles of fur.

  “You want to keep them here at the store?” Cash asked dubiously, drawing a hand down his darkly stubbled jaw.

  “I think that’s reasonable, at least for now. We’ll need to ask around to see if anyone is missing a cat, of course.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose I could take them back to my apartment, if you think that would be a better scenario. The only thing is, I work here nine-plus hours a day, six days a week, so I will be able to keep a better eye on them here at the store. The shop does get noisy sometimes, but I think they’ll do okay in the storeroom. When they’re older we can keep them behind the counter.”

  “Kittens will be a big draw for the customers,” he said. “Giving them an extra reason to stop by and visit Emerson’s. I suspect it will be easy to adopt the kittens out when the time comes.”

  They hadn’t even technically rescued the kittens, and yet already the thought of adopting them out made Alyssa’s heart drop. Not that she could keep an entire litter of kittens. That was out of the question.

  Maybe one, though. If they weren’t claimed by the mama cat’s owner.

  “The mother is so pretty. Such unique coloring. She doesn’t look like a stray, but you never know. We should take a picture of her and put it on a poster in the window. Someone is bound to be missing their pet.”

  “Good point. But at the moment, our biggest issue is figuring out how to rescue the litter.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about caring for cats, never mind kittens. I’ll look it up on the internet once we’ve got them inside. For now, let me see if I can rustle up a couple of blankets. I think I have an empty box around here somewhere that might work as a bed for them.”

  She ducked inside and took a couple of soft, new snuggle-blankets off the shelf, removing the tags and placing them near the cash register so she could ring the blankets up later. She found a short-sided box and situated it in the warmest corner of the storage room, and arranged the blankets for the litter’s comfort.

  Cash entered the stockroom with two kittens tucked into his shirt. Alyssa’s heart leaped at the sight of the handsome cowboy carrying the newborn kittens with such gentleness. Kindness and compassion lined his expression, softening his features.

  There was something innately attractive about a man rescuing a helpless baby animal—or in this case, five plus the mama—and when his stress lines receded, it was easy for Alyssa to remember how handsome he was way back when. How good-looking he would be now, were he not worse for the wear and tear of life.

  “Here are the first two,” he said, gently placing them in the basket. “They’re so helpless. Their eyes aren’t even open yet and they mewled like crazy when I picked them up. They didn’t want to be taken away from their mama, that’s for sure. I hope I didn’t frighten them too much.”

  Cash crouched beside the box and ran the tips of his fingers across the kittens’ soft fur before rising back to his feet. “I’d better hurry and get the other three kittens. I’m saving the mama cat for last because I suspect she’s going to be the most difficult to deal with.”

  He laughed. “I don’t think Mama Kitty understands that we want to help her.”

  He flashed the back of his left hand. Angry red claw marks etched the skin.

  “Your poor hand,” Alyssa murmured sympathetically. “Between the cat and your hammer...” She was serious, but she added a teasing note in her voice.

  He gave her a playful growl. “Rub it in, why don’t you?”

  She chuckled. “Can I help it if you are a walking, talking accident just waiting to happen?”

  Who also happens to save kittens.

  He snorted. “That about sums it up.”

  Their gazes met and locked for a moment before she looked away, pretending to busy herself with the kittens in the box. Her heart was rapidly beating, and she took a deep breath, concentrating on slowing her pulse to its normal rate. She tried to tell herself that it was just the adrenaline of having found the litter of kittens, but deep inside, she knew better.

  Cash left to retrieve the other three kittens before bringing in the mother cat. Given the war wounds he already bore from tussling with the mama cat, Alyssa half expected him to bring her in holding her at arm’s length and away from her sharp claws. Instead, he’d cradled her against his chest and was stroking her head.

  “She doesn’t look so dangerous now,” Alyssa said. “It appears you’ve made a new friend. Look—she’s purring.”

  “She’ll be even happier once I get her situated with her babies.”

  He stooped to place the cat into the box with the kittens and remained there for a moment, watching the blind, cuddly balls of fluff instinctively crawling over each other to reach their mama.

  “Mama Cat is such a pretty color,” Alyssa remarked. “I wonder what it’s called?”

  Cash shrugged. “Fancy, whatever it is.”

  “That’s it,” Alyssa exclaimed, clapping her hands with glee.

  “What is?” Cash jerked to his feet at her sudden delighted outburst, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Fancy. I was just thinking abou
t how we needed to call her something, give her a name—until her owner claims her, that is. We can’t keep calling her Mama Cat. That’s just weird.”

  He raised one dark eyebrow.

  “Fancy is the perfect name for her.” She leaned down to run her palm across the cat’s long, multicolored fur. “What do you think of that, Fancy?”

  The cat meowed twice in response.

  Cash laughed. “I guess that’s a yes, then.”

  Alyssa pulled out her cell phone to see if she could identify the cat’s breed and hair color.

  “I’ve found out what the unique coloring is called,” she said after she’d typed in a few key words. “Fancy is a calico. The color appears in many breeds of cats, though, so I’m not sure about that yet.”

  “Interesting that only one of her babies has the same coloring as Fancy,” Cash remarked. “You’d think they’d all be the same, right? Or maybe one or two colors and patterns like their parents. But the rest of these kittens look nothing like Fancy, or each other, for that matter.”

  “I wonder why that is?” Alyssa mentally added that question to her ever-growing list of things she suddenly wanted to learn about cats. Of course, the care and feeding of a mama cat and a litter of kittens was at the top of that list. The rest could wait until later.

  “It must be some kind of a genetic mystery,” Cash said. “You know, like how human parents who both have brown eyes can have a blue-eyed baby.”

  “I’ll do more online research later, but right now we need to concentrate on the basics,” she said. “Water and cat food for Fancy, and a litter box.”

  “Good thing you own Emerson’s,” Cash said with an amused gleam in his blue eyes, gesturing to the feed department, which contained everything from horse barley to kitten food, as well as an assortment of pet supplies. “You don’t even have to visit a different store to get supplies for your new kittens.”

  Alyssa noticed that Cash had lost his broody attitude once he’d come across the litter of kittens. He’d been pleasant over the week he’d worked for her, but she could tell his surly attitude had been brimming just beneath the surface, something Alyssa suspected he always carried with him, maybe without even realizing it.