Their Baby Miracle (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Lilian Darcy

  “But I wasn’t keeping it from you, Reba, we just had too damn much other stuff to think about. More important stuff. Like Maggie. And I had no idea he’d move this fast.”

  Reba wanted to apologize, but she couldn’t, because she was still angry, and it would have been empty, and not sincere.

  “Don’t you need to be fair about this, Reba?” Lucas said.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “But I can’t.”

  “Is that an apology?”

  “Best you’re going to get. Thank the lord I didn’t know about this, just now, when I called my parents!”

  “Is this going to ruin a break that we need so bad it’s killing us?”

  “Well, let’s see.” She parked her hands on her hips. “Has the cabin been moved, too?”

  She heard him swear, turned to look at him and found he’d gone white. “We need to find someone,” he said. “Lon. Anyone. The damned house, for a start.”

  “You mean it’s possible?”

  Lucas spoke slowly, hating what he had to tell her, appalled at his own sense of potential loss. “Dad and Raine have talked about putting something else on that site, yes.”

  He didn’t want it to happen, let alone for it already to have happened, any more than Reba did. He hated that he had a delegated responsibility for this place, but no right to make major decisions because it was essentially a playground for his father and Raine.

  “Such as what, exactly?” Reba asked.

  “A Swiss-style chalet.”

  She gave a stricken little cry, and started running for the calving barn. Lucas followed her, not letting himself sprint the way he wanted to. She’d definitely get there first, and that was best. He didn’t want to get in her way, right now.

  As he got closer, he could hear sounds that suggested the place was being cleaned—the rush of a hose, the scrape of shovels on cement, men shouting complaints to each other, the sound of a truck engine starting up. By the time he pushed against the big door still easing its last few inches shut in Reba’s wake, she’d found Lon and she was frowning up at his face.

  “Have they set it up nice for you?” Lucas heard her ask. “Do you like the new site?”

  Only Reba! he thought. One minute she’s so angry and hurt about her old home, she looks as if she’s going to fly into a thousand pieces. The next, she’s thinking about people she has no responsibility for any more, and making sure they’re happy.

  Pretty incredible woman.

  “Sure, it’s fine,” the foreman answered her. “Views aren’t so good—more cows, less mountain. But the plumbing works, and the heat, and the stove is level.”

  “And the cabin?”

  “Haven’t been up there. Too busy, with calving.”

  “But it’s still there? It hasn’t been—?”

  “Not yet. You taking a vacation up there?” He glanced at Lucas, nodded and lifted his hand. “Mr. Halliday,” he said, and looked as if he was about to veer in this direction, paying due deference to his new boss’s son.

  Lucas deflected the man’s attention back to Reba, with a quick shake of his head.

  “Hoping to,” Reba answered Lon. “Just a couple of nights.”

  “How’s your little girl?” Lon’s glance again took in Lucas, and Lucas could see him mentally joining the dots: so this had to be the father of Reba’s child? Made sense of a few things.

  “She’s little!” Reba answered. “Getting bigger. Slowly.”

  “Incredible what they can do for ’em, now.”

  “Yes. We’re hopeful. We might get to hold her, next week. Her nursing staff are kind of making us take a break for a bit, though.”

  “Cabin should be nice. Plenty of firewood, still. Hallidays didn’t use it over the winter, after all.”

  She asked him how calving had gone, and got a laconic report. Couple of stubborn ones still waiting to drop, corralled out back. Only lost a few. She looked as if she had about fifty more questions crowding into her mouth, but then she took a deep breath, clearly fighting to remember that Seven Mile’s ranching activities weren’t her business, any more.

  “Well,” she said. “We’ll saddle a couple of horses and start our vacation, Lon, leave you to it.”

  “Good to see you, Reba. They’re missing you over at the Longhorn. And Gordie is…” Another quick, somewhat uncomfortable look at Lucas, during which Lon drastically rethought his planned statement. He finished with a vague, “Yeah.”

  Outside the calving barn, Lucas asked, “Did you want to go look at the house?”

  Reba shook her head, her face still tight. “There’s no need. It belongs to the ranch hands, now, and they’re happy.” She cracked her mouth into a smile she was determined to get serious about. “Do you want to bring the pickup over, so we can shift our gear? I’ll start on the horses.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “I can say sorry now, if you want.” She tucked in the corner of her mouth and spread her hands, mocking herself.

  “Don’t. It’s okay.”

  They reached the cabin at around four-thirty, and it looked so exactly the same as it always had that the sharp, dragging ache in Reba’s throat and chest eased at last. She peeled herself out of Moe’s saddle, understanding Carla’s earlier “Ouch!” on a more physical level, now. But the soreness soon faded and they’d had a nice ride, getting here. It had done her spirits good.

  The air had begun to chill down already, and the cabin was in shade. “We’ll need to get that fire going in the stove,” she said.

  “As a former Boy Scout, I’m offering,” Lucas answered. “Unless you’d rather, while I bring in our gear and see to the horses.”

  Without saying much more, they both worked steadily for the next hour, splitting the various tasks instinctively, with no argument. Like the ride, it felt so good. Reba hadn’t had the time or the emotional energy to miss this life over the winter, but, oh, she needed it, now! How would she ever do without it?

  Just the feel of horsey leather in her hands, the smell of the smoke from the fire, the tang of spruce and fir needles mingled with the peaty mud and the almost metallic odor of the melting snow. The sound of water trickling, the snap of the burning wood, the glowing white-orange firescape showing through the glass front of the fan-forced stove, and her growing anticipation of a well-deserved meal.

  “You pump, I’ll cook,” Lucas told her, as the light began to fade.

  So she left her riding boots and socks by the back door, pulled a squishy old armchair close to the heat of the stove, nested herself in cushions, relaxed, closed her eyes and actually didn’t hate the pump, actually got some impressive results.

  Going into the kitchen to put the two jars in the freezer, she found Lucas presiding over sizzling steaks and onion. He’d already heated a can of thick vegetable soup, baked some chunky whole potatoes in the microwave, and tossed a tart oil and vinegar dressing into the salad mix they’d bought.

  He looked at her jars. “Wow!”

  “Am I the queen of this, or what?”

  “You’d better be hungry now.”

  “You’d better have cooked enough!”

  “Shall we eat by the fire? Want a beer? Shirley told me unofficially that it’s supposed to be okay, at this point to have one, if you want.”

  “Yes, to both.”

  It felt like the best and happiest meal she’d ever had.

  Lucas dragged a second armchair nearer to the stove, as well as the old, squat-legged coffee table that looked like some bizarre breed of dog, turned into dark wood. He put their beers there, as well as their soup in thick stone-ware mugs, sour cream for the potatoes and barbecue sauce for the meat.

  Mom and Dad had left all their vinyl LPs and their old 1970s record player here, with its wobbly little device that could stack and play a whole five records in sequence. Lucas put together a medley of Hawaiian slack-string guitar, the sound track to the movie of Guys and Dolls, a 1960s greatest-hits collection, some Johnny Cash, and Simon and Garf
unkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and this oddly inspirational mishmash rolled along in the background as they ate, complete with needle static and the occasional warp-related jump.

  They didn’t talk much at first, just a few lazy comments about the fire, the ride, the weather and the meal, which tasted so simple and good.

  By the time they’d finished eating, the room was so warm they both took off the sweaters they’d worn during the ride, and Reba couldn’t help, um, staring, really, at the stretch of Lucas’s muscles as he pulled the garment over his head, and then at the snug fit of his gray T-shirt across his chest.

  “I remember…” her body began to say. “We’ve been here before, and we felt this way, then, too. We couldn’t let it go, and we didn’t want to.”

  He stretched, worked the muscles at the back of his neck with his fingers, picked up his beer, drained the last mouthful and looked at her across the top of the empty can, his thumb slipping back and forth over the surface of the metal.

  Her body began to tingle. Wasn’t his doing the same? Doing the male version? When he drew breath to speak, she expected some kind of seduction line, or at the very least an acknowledgment.

  We’re going to get ourselves in trouble again, aren’t we?

  What is it that gives us this connection?

  Something like that. Which meant that his actual words threw her totally for a loop, especially since he spoke so slowly, as if he had to drag each one out, beyond a barrier of deep reluctance. “Have you thought yet about how you’re going to manage, how you’re going to structure your life, once Maggie comes home?”

  No, she hadn’t.

  Didn’t he understand that she was still too scared? He was looking at her so intently, with those liquid amber eyes, surely he had to see straight into her heart? She could see the tip of his tongue caught between his even white teeth, as if her answer was something important that he could hardly wait to hear.

  She shook her head in answer, not wanting to say more. Not able to, actually.

  “Had you, before she was born?” he said, pushing her harder. “Are you happy that you’ve stayed in the area?”

  “Lucas—”

  “I’m serious, Reba.”

  He shifted in the squishy armchair, leaning forward to rest one forearm on his knee, while he opened the squeaky stove door, added more wood and prodded it into position with a smoking stick. The glowing light reflected on his face, showing his fatigue—those little lines around his eyes, his papery skin. His mouth was firm and serious.

  “Last year,” he went on, “you talked about not wanting to lose your dreams before you even understood what they were.”

  “I remember, yes.” During their drive down to Steamboat Springs.

  “I always felt… I wondered how much of what happened between us was an exploration, for you, about what some of those dreams might be.” He closed the stove door, sat back in his chair and looked at her again. “It sure wasn’t something you did every day, that was obvious.”

  Defensively she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, letting her bare feet rest on the edge of the armchair’s seat. She lifted her chin. “How much do you charge for your therapy sessions, Dr. Halliday?”

  “They’re free, as long as I get answers I can believe.”

  “What right do you have to any answers at all?”

  “I’m Maggie’s father.” He spoke quite gently, as if simply reminding her of something she already knew. And of course she did know it, she just hadn’t let herself face the full implications before. “I have a right to know where and in what circumstances you’re planning to raise our child, don’t I? More than you had any right to know in advance what had happened to your old house.”

  “You didn’t have to add that last part.”

  “No, okay.” Silence. “It’s not my intention for this to get hostile, Reba. I just want to know where you’re up to, before we—” He stopped. Their eyes met.

  Make love? She nearly filled the words in for him.

  “—decide if we’re going to—”

  Make love.

  Just say it.

  “—have to get lawyers on board, or something.”

  No! Shoot… I was thinking “make love” and you were thinking—

  “Lawyers?” she almost shrieked. “This has been so nice, and now you’re talking about lawyers?”

  “Only because it’s been so nice. If it had been horrible, lawyers would have been obvious and I wouldn’t have needed to mention them.”

  She glared at him.

  “Does talking about something like this have to make the evening less nice?” He shifted again, and the fabric of his gray T-shirt rippled and tightened all across the front of his body. “I’m asking as a friend. Imagine that I’m asking in an alternate universe where we never conceived Maggie at all.”

  Reba made a little sound of protest and let her head drop to the back of the chair. Her eyes stung.

  “I know that’s impossible,” he said. “For both of us. But let’s try. For one minute. Where would you be now? Living in town and working at the steakhouse?”

  “No.” That had always been an interim measure. For too long, because of Gordie, and Mom’s illness and—

  “Then where?”

  “Somewhere working with horses. In a landscape where I can breathe.” That was always what she’d loved about her life at Seven Mile.

  “And how will you fit Maggie into all that? How will you fit her relationship with me?”

  “And you’re saying this can stay nice, when you ask questions like that?”

  “They’re questions you should be asking yourself.”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head. “Not yet.”

  He was silent and she waited for him to gather the words to push her even harder, but when he spoke, his tone had changed. “Same reason we couldn’t buy clothes for her yesterday.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she nodded an answer anyway.

  Suddenly, the warm room no longer felt like a haven but like a prison. She jumped up, grabbed half their dirty dishes from the coffee table and took them into the kitchen, where the air was still cool and beads of condensation had formed on the inside of the windows. The mugs and plates made a satisfying clatter as she stacked them on the metal draining board beside the sink.

  Going back for the rest, she met Lucas in the doorway, and this time he didn’t cloud the issue with talk of lawyers and plans and the future. He just took her right in his arms, buried his face in the hair that had tumbled to her neck, and held her close.

  Chapter Ten

  Lucas’s T-shirt was hot from the fire, and so was his face. The dry cotton fabric pressed against Reba’s body like an iron, while his cheek burned on hers. She could smell steak and smoke and soap and beer.

  For a long time, they barely moved. Reba didn’t want to, because if she moved, she’d have to think about which way—even closer to him, or apart?—and she didn’t want to think about anything. She just wanted to feel.

  This.

  Him.

  His strength, his heat, his silent emotion.

  Before she could go beyond these simple things, he began to kiss her. It didn’t take much. Just a soft angling of his head brought his warm mouth against the corner of hers. Its imprint was soft, yet so intense and so strongly felt that she could have cried. The ragged breath she drew in was almost like a sob.

  “Oh, Lucas. I don’t want to talk. Or think. Don’t make me do any of that.”

  “No. Sure. You’re right. I can’t.” His voice sounded hazy, just a murmur of breath against her mouth, more kiss than words.

  She kissed him back, meeting his mouth with hers as his lips parted, tasting him with eyes closed. The kiss was as endless as a royal feast, like a whole slice of time cut out and shifted into another world. His mouth belonged against hers, and she had no power to question it. She almost forgot that there could be more to lovemaking than this.
>
  Why rush? Why look ahead?

  Just this.

  The tastes of beer and wood smoke and male skin, deep on her tongue. The sounds that vibrated far down in his strong chest. The solid feel of his arms, his muscle-wrapped torso, his hardness against her lower stomach, his legs meshed with hers. She slid her hands down his back and rediscovered that taut backside she’d held last year, and those firm creases at the top of each thigh.

  “So good…” he muttered.

  He pulled the already loose elastic band through the final inches of her ponytail, releasing the scent of her shampoo into the air around them. Her spine rippled with sensation as he spread his fingers and combed them through her free-flowing hair, then let them whisper against the tender, hidden skin at the back of her neck. He never stopped touching her mouth with his.

  Her breathing went ragged and deep, pushing her breasts against him. She gasped, went dizzy, didn’t even want to stay in control.

  The explosive crack and hiss of a log of unseasoned wood inside the stove finally brought them back into this universe, enough for him to mutter, “I don’t know why I told myself this wouldn’t happen, if we came up here.”

  “You told yourself that?”

  “Dumb, huh? We have too much to work out, Reba. You know that.”

  “Is that what you were trying to do before, by the fire, with those questions?”

  “Tabling the issues. It was simple last year. I thought. We both thought.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not, now.”

  “I do know that.”

  “We have to be clear on the connection. Is it just Maggie? Is it the attraction, too? If it’s both, what else gets caught in the net?”

  “Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

  “No.”

  He pulled away more decisively and veered back toward the fire. He must have known she would follow. They stood side by side, stretching their hands toward the radiant heat that glowed through the glass. The hairs on his forearm grazed and tickled her skin and he laced his fingers through hers for a moment before letting her go again.