The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby

by Carolyn Brown

  “It is,” Lucas said hoarsely.

  “Drew said it takes a couple of weeks before you adjust. You want eggs with your sausage gravy and biscuits?” she asked.

  “Omelet?” he asked.

  Natalie nodded. “Henry?”

  “Honey, I’ll eat anything you put on this table. I love a big breakfast. That kind of food sticks to the ribs so a man can work all morning without listenin’ to a grumblin’ stomach. How about you, Josh? You want an omelet this morning?” Henry said.

  Natalie’s soft laugh sounded like tinkling Christmas bells in Lucas’s ears. It was honest and real, totally unlike Sonia’s high-pitched giggle. There he went comparing apples and oranges again.

  “I don’t think Joshua is ready for an omelet. Baby rice cereal is his buffet of choice for a few more weeks. Momma says on Christmas morning he can have a jar of baby food bananas or pears. He gets to choose,” she said.

  Henry turned his attention back to Joshua. “Well, son, next Christmas I promise you can have an omelet. You’ll be a full year old by then, and we’ll sit right up here at this table and we’ll have us an omelet and bites of biscuit. By then you’ll have a mouth full of teeth. Way you are slobbering I’d say the first two are already on their way.”

  “Really?” Natalie asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Probably have them by Christmas. Reminds me of that old song about all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Josh here, he just might get two by then.” Henry chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Lucas asked.

  “Your granny always said that when a baby cuts teeth early then the next one is on the way,” Henry answered.

  “Bite your tongue,” Natalie raised her voice.

  Lucas opened his mouth to tell his grandfather that by the next Christmas, Josh would be back in Silverton, but he clamped it shut. Arguing with the old fellow wouldn’t accomplish a thing, and upsetting him during the holidays was just plain wrong. He looked forward to their Christmas party kicking off the whole season in and around Savoy. No way in hell would Lucas ever ruin one bit of the holidays for Henry. He lived and breathed Christmas because that’s when he felt closer to his precious Ella Jo’s spirit and felt as though she came back to visit with him every year.

  The ring tone of his cell phone said that Hazel was calling. Lucas fished it out of his shirt pocket and said, “You need to be home, not laid up in a bed playing sick.”

  “I can plan that party from here, so don’t give me none of your sass,” Hazel said.

  Lucas shook his head. “Always did say that you barked orders like a five star general. I’m putting you on speaker so everyone can hear you including the baby, so watch your language.”

  “The hell I will,” she said. “I didn’t watch my language with your dad or you and I’ll be damned if I watch it with another generation on the ranch. Now Lucas, you and Jack, make sure all the lights are working right. If one of them old bulbs is shot, it’ll throw the whole line out of whack.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said.

  “Grady will oversee moving the furniture out to the barn, and there’d better not be one scratch on it. And Henry’s job is to take care of the crew bringing in the tables and party ware. You got that?” Hazel asked.

  “I do,” Henry said.

  “Who else is in the room?” Hazel asked.

  “Natalie, me, Gramps, and the baby,” Lucas said.

  “And what’s my job?” Natalie asked.

  “You are to make cookies all morning and keep the coffeepot and tea pitcher filled for the folks who are working at setting up. Fix sandwiches for dinner, and tonight those men are taking you out to eat because the kitchen belongs to the catering crew in the middle of the afternoon,” Hazel said.

  “It’s snowing again,” Henry said. “We might not be able to get out to be going to a café, and besides, Natalie’s cookin’ is better’n what they’d serve up anyway. The caterers can just move over and give her some room or hell, she can cook at my place and we’ll all eat there.”

  “If the caterers can get in, you can get out. Lucas, you make reservations over at the Red Lobster in Sherman,” Hazel said.

  “Why there? Maybe we want to go to a steak house like Texas Roadhouse,” Lucas said.

  “Don’t you argue with me. You can eat steak any day of the week, and besides, they serve steak and lobster specials over there all the time. Do you like seafood, Natalie?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Love it,” Natalie said.

  “Then that’s where you are going tonight for all your hard work, cooking and putting up with them cantankerous old farts while I’m laid up. You’ll take lots of pictures and send them to me over this computer thing that Willa Ruth has set up, right? Jack has her address for it,” Hazel said.

  “I’ll be sure you have some by morning,” Natalie answered.

  “Then it’s all covered. Y’all have fun. I got to go. Willa Ruth has my breakfast ready. It tastes like shit, but she says it doesn’t have too much fat or carbohydrates in it, whatever to hell that last thing is. I tell her to let me eat what I want and die when I’m supposed to. Seems like in this house if it tastes like shit, it goes on the table and if it tastes good, it stays in the grocery store. Bye now.”

  The line went quiet. Lucas picked up his phone and shoved it back into his shirt pocket. “She ain’t changed any at all.”

  “I’d say she’s callin’ it like it is,” Grady said from the doorway.

  “It ain’t fair to the baby to have to watch us eat like that and all he gets is that stuff that looks like wallpaper paste,” Henry said.

  Natalie laughed again. “He thinks it tastes just like an Angus T-bone. He told me so when I shoved it into his mouth.”

  The sound of her voice and laughter stayed with Lucas all morning as he helped his dad tighten every light bulb around the roof, fix the bunting where the goat had eaten his dinner, and string lights down the fence on either side of the lane leading from road to house. Snow fell steadily through the morning, leaving almost two inches on the ground and settling on the brim of his old work hat.

  A dusting of white covered the ice that had accumulated on the tree limbs, but the gray skies didn’t let a glimmer of sun rays through. Unless something drastic changed, the guys would drink too much and the women would flirt too much and there would be rolling in the snow before the night was done. It didn’t sound like fun to Lucas. He’d rather take a four-wheeler ride across the ranch with Natalie snuggled up against his back.

  Like that would happen! There was no way in hell that she’d leave Joshua and go for a ride with him. Besides, he was the soldier home from the big bad war and he had to stay at the party until the last dog went home. He fingered his dog tags. He should take them off, but it didn’t seem right, not yet. Not when Drew had died over there. Maybe his death wouldn’t have affected Lucas so much if there had been others or if they hadn’t gotten to be such close friends, but until it felt right, he would wear the dog tags to honor his fallen friend.

  He checked the final four strands of lights around the porch posts.

  “All done,” Jack said.

  “We put up lights in our tent and several of the guys had a little fake tree, but it wasn’t home. We saved our packages until Christmas morning and those that didn’t have one, the rest of us shared with them. Hazel’s cookies were the biggest hit in the tent,” Lucas said.

  “I’m glad the boys enjoyed them. She got a big kick out of fixing boxes to send to you. Was Drew there then?”

  “He was there when we got there, then he went home for about six weeks over the holidays and came right back. It was his third tour,” Lucas answered.

  “And he was Natalie’s best friend. We haven’t had much time alone since you got home. I know that baby was a big shock, but we thought you’d be excited
. Seems like a blessing after those tests,” Jack said.

  Lucas removed his hat and shook a layer of snow from it. “I wanted my own kids, Dad.”

  “Everything happens for a reason. Some women aren’t mother material. Your mother, Marilyn, wasn’t. Your grandpa tried to make me see some light, but I had on blinders where that woman was concerned. She was so pretty and had so much energy. I thought she’d channel all that into raising you, but it didn’t work that way. Sonia is a lot like her. Besides, that doctor didn’t say it was impossible. He said it would take a miracle. I believe in miracles, especially at Christmas,” Jack said.

  Lucas shoved his hat back down on his head. “I’m not sure that even God has a miracle that big up His sleeve. Here comes the first truckload of stuff, and I smell chocolate chip cookies coming from the house. Let’s get in out of the cold and grab them while they are hot right out of the oven.”

  ***

  Furniture, except for the kitchen table, had been carried out while Natalie was busy baking. She was removing another dozen cookies from the pan to cool when a tall, blond-haired cowboy reached out and grabbed one.

  “I’m Noah Call and these look like some fine cookies, ma’am,” he said.

  “I’m Natalie Clark and thank you.” She smiled.

  “This’d be your baby, the one that everyone is talking about?” He nodded toward Joshua.

  “Yes, it is. His name is Joshua.”

  Noah reached for another cookie. “Good strong name. Momma says that a man needs a good name. All her eight boys are named after boys in the Bible.”

  Noah Call—if she’d gone to school with him, he would have sat between her and Drew Camp when the teachers put them in alphabetical order. Would one little change like that have put her life on a different course?

  “So you from around here?” she asked.

  “Yep, grew up right here on this ranch. My daddy was a hired hand until last year when he and Momma retired and moved down to Waco to be around my oldest brother and his wife. Lucas is two years older than me, but we went to school together. Played a couple of games of basketball on the same team before he graduated. I hear you was a coach for a while,” Noah said.

  Mercy! The gossip vine had surely done its job.

  The burst of cold wind brought Lucas, Jack, and a dozen more people into the living room before she could reply to Noah’s comment. Lucas made a beeline for the table and snagged two cookies.

  “They’re every bit as good as Hazel’s,” Noah said. “You don’t want to keep her around, kick her over the pasture fence and we’ll hire her out in the bunkhouse to cook for us. Might be fun to have a baby boy out there.”

  Lucas clapped a hand on the cowboy’s shoulder. “Noah, where have you been keepin’ yourself? I been home a whole week and you haven’t come by.”

  “Grady sent me and Emmett to the old line shack for a few days. He was afraid the storm was going to be worse than it was. Weatherman was talkin’ blizzard and a foot of snow for a while there. We’re just glad to get back to the bunkhouse in time for the party. Glad you are home, but I’m sorry to hear that Hazel is laid up for a few weeks.” Noah picked up two more cookies. “I got to run. See y’all tomorrow night. Natalie, honey, you got a real pretty little boy there, and I really do like his name.”

  “Thank you.” Natalie smiled.

  He settled his hat on his blond hair and disappeared out the back door. She looked across the room at Lucas and asked, “Is the line shack the cabin that Henry and Ella Jo lived in at first?”

  Lucas shook his head, “No, it’s even smaller than the cabin. Dad and Grady built it before I was born, and it’s at the very back side of the ranch.”

  “Just how big is Cedar Hill?” she asked.

  “Just under nine sections. Gramps started with one section and bought up land when he could. The shack is four miles from here back into the woods. Only way to get to it is by four-wheeler or a horse.”

  She did the math in her head. Nine sections at six hundred forty acres per section came up to about five and a half thousand acres. Pretty nice little spread they had carved out of the mesquite and scrub oak.

  “And your ranch?” he asked.

  “Twenty acres,” she answered as she took more cookies from the oven.

  “That’s not a ranch,” he said.

  “You asked about my ranch. It’s twenty acres. I bought a corner of land from Daddy and I have a trailer on it. That’s my ranch. If you want to know about Daddy’s ranch, it’s about twice the size of Cedar Hill. We put in six thousand acres of cotton a year and the rest we use for pasture to raise Angus.”

  His smile was so bright that it lit up the whole kitchen. Hell, it might have run the sun some competition if it had been out. For the life of her, Natalie couldn’t think of a single reason the size of her dad’s place was so amusing.

  Chapter 8

  Natalie dressed in her best designer jeans, Western shirt, and boots. She’d twisted her brown hair up into what she called a messy French twist and held it with a big crystal-encrusted clamp that matched her belt buckle. On most days she didn’t take time to put on makeup, but that night she did. A little dark eyeliner and pale blue eye shadow, some mascara, a touch of blush, and a bit of lip gloss.

  “Don’t know why I bother with all this. No one will even see me anyway. You will be the center of attention,” she told Joshua as she dressed him.

  Natalie’s dad, Jimmy, declared from the day that they found out Natalie was having a boy that his first grandson would leave the hospital in boots and jeans. The jeans were soft denim and the legs had to be rolled that day. The boots were made of kid leather with soft soles, but by golly, they had pointed toes and the tops were detailed.

  Now Joshua’s feet fit into the boots like they should and the legs of his jeans didn’t need to be rolled anymore. In another month both would be too small. She had already bought the shadow box to frame them. It was made of rough cedar and had barbed wire strung around the outside edge.

  “If the basketball players can frame their jerseys, then we can do the same with your first jeans and boots. Someday you are going to be a famous bull rider, yes, you are.” She talked in a high-pitched voice that brought out Joshua’s biggest grins.

  When he was dressed and his dark hair parted and combed to one side, she placed him inside his car seat. “The ladies are all going to flock around you wanting to dance. You be careful and don’t lead none of them on.”

  His brown eyes sparkled.

  “I’d love to know what you are thinking.” She picked the seat up and carried it to the living room.

  “Would you look at that?” Henry exclaimed. “There’s a rancher for sure. I didn’t even know they made boots that little.”

  Grady took the car seat from Natalie and the three older men flocked around it. “Look at that hair. Now that’s a boy’s haircut. I hate it when the women folks put that jelly stuff in a little boy’s hair and make it look like he stuck his fingers in a light socket.”

  Jack touched his hand. “All you need is a cowboy hat and you’ll be right up there with the big boys, Josh.”

  Henry chuckled. “See, I told you he was a Josh, just like I told all y’all that Lucas was a Hoss.”

  Natalie giggled.

  “I hate nicknames,” Lucas said.

  “Me too,” Natalie whispered.

  “Are you old women about through carryin’ on?” Lucas asked.

  “Don’t be callin’ us old women,” Jack said.

  “You’ll embarrass Josh,” Lucas said.

  “No, we won’t. He likes us,” Henry said.

  Natalie was glad that they were doing all the talking and didn’t ask her anything that required an answer, because she was totally speechless. Lucas wore starched jeans that bunched up just right over the tops
of shiny black boots, a tooled belt with a silver buckle with what had to be the Cedar Hill brand engraved on it, and a brown Western-cut shirt that matched his eyes perfectly. The top two snaps were undone and his dog tags were tucked down inside. He held a black Stetson against his thigh, and her eyes strayed in that direction. She quickly blinked and was looking toward the dog tags when she opened her eyes again.

  “You look very nice,” he said.

  “Thank you. You clean up pretty damn good yourself.” She was surprised that words actually came forth when she opened her mouth. She figured she’d sputter and stutter around like a teenager meeting Blake Shelton after a concert at the state fair.

  “Can Josh ride with us?” Henry asked.

  “I’d better take him,” Natalie said.

  “Next time it’s our turn, right?” Henry said.

  “Hazel says that time about is fair play,” Jack said.

  “And we’d keep him so entertained that he wouldn’t cry,” Grady put in his two cents.

  “Next time.” Natalie nodded.

  She hadn’t thought about riding all the way to Sherman alone in a truck with Lucas. She’d figured she and Joshua would go in her club cab truck and the guys would all go together. Suddenly, she was as nervous as a virgin bride on her wedding night.

  Grady handed the seat to Lucas. “You carry him out for Miz Natalie. This boy has been puttin’ away some groceries. He’s too heavy for his momma to tote around when there’s a bunch of us cowboys to help out.”

  “No puppies,” Lucas whispered when they were on the porch. “I told you I’d make that pen air tight after the goats.”

  In the yard, she looked up to the roof. “No goats and no… huh, oh!”

  Mr. Crankston’s old blue truck came to a sliding stop in front of the house and he bailed out, shotgun in hand. “I tried to give you them damn goats and you wouldn’t have them and now you steal my jackass. What’s the matter with you, Lucas Allen? Did your brains get scrambled over there?”