The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby

by Carolyn Brown

  Bits of straw flew all around her, but she didn’t even notice. His hands in her hair made every nerve ending on her body tingle.

  “There, now you are presentable and Gramps won’t suspect that we’ve been making out,” he said seriously.

  “Don’t count on it. I bet he’s got surveillance cameras out here.”

  Both of them looked up at the rafters at the same time.

  She quickly stood up. “Time to make dinner. I promised Grady fried chicken today.”

  “I love fried chicken, but I’d give it up to stay out here and kiss you all day,” Lucas said.

  She giggled again. “Is that your best come-on line, cowboy?”

  His head bobbed. “Best I’ve got right now. What about you? Cook or kiss?”

  The side door opened and Grady poked his head inside. “Henry says that if you two are finished playing basketball that he’s getting hungry.”

  Natalie looked at the rafters again for the little red dots that would signal that a camera was hidden up there. “Looks like the choice has been made and it has to do with a stove rather than a bed of hay.”

  Lucas hopped up and threw an arm around her shoulders. “We were shooting a few hoops. I won, so she has to wash dishes.”

  “You won the first round. I won the next two, so you have to wash dishes,” Natalie said.

  “For fried chicken, I’ll wash dishes,” Grady said.

  Grady didn’t linger. He jogged from the barn to the yard fence, put a hand on the rail, and hopped over with the agility of a man half his age.

  “Can you do that?” Lucas asked.

  “Oh, yeah!” She took off in a lope with him right behind her.

  She cleared the fence only a scant second before he did and then suddenly he grabbed her from behind and spun her around to land against his chest. The kiss was hard, hungry, and promising. She could still feel the steam rising when he opened the back door for her and stood to one side.

  Chapter 14

  Lucas announced at the supper table that evening that he, Joshua, and Natalie were all going shopping. He looked across the table at his grandfather and shook his head. “No, Gramps, you three cannot babysit tonight. We are taking him with us. He needs to go through the toy store and pick out what he wants so y’all will know what to buy for him.”

  Natalie had been sitting on pins and needles all day. She wouldn’t ask if Lucas had heard from the doctor, but that had been the foremost thing on her mind. She’d played the old game of “what if” all day. What if she had indeed gotten pregnant again on a first-night stand? What if she hadn’t? Every emotion possible, from tears to laughter, had run through her mind as she prepared homemade noodle soup and chicken salad sandwiches using the leftover fried chicken.

  “Boy don’t need toys. He needs a pony and a saddle and some boots to grow into. That’s what Joshua needs, so take him to the Western store and show him the boots,” Henry grumbled. “Roads are slick. Y’all ought to leave him here just for safety. What if you slide off into a ditch?”

  “He’ll be strapped into his car seat and we both have cell phones. We’ll call you to bring a tractor and get us out if we have trouble,” Lucas said.

  “I’m not drivin’ a tractor in this cold,” Henry said.

  “Dad can,” Lucas said.

  “You are a spoilsport. We might not have a baby in the house after Christmas. And you’re not sharing.” Henry raised his bony chin a full two inches and looked down his nose at Lucas.

  Jack pushed back his plate. “Then we get to keep him Saturday night while y’all go to the Angus Christmas party. And you can’t be calling home every thirty minutes, either.”

  Henry’s chin lowered and he looked up at Lucas. “Deal?”

  “Hey, I’m Joshua’s momma. I’m the one who really calls the shots around here,” Natalie said.

  Henry rubbed his shoulder. “Be nice to an old man. I always wanted to live to see one more baby on Cedar Hill, and Joshua is my Christmas present. I just want to read to him and spend a little time with the feller before Hazel comes back and you go runnin’ back to Silverton. Which reminds me, don’t y’all think we should get grandparent’s rights? We’d get him for a weekend a month and maybe six weeks in the summer.”

  Natalie smiled. “But you’re not his grandparents.”

  “That’s not the rumor I been hearin’. Them old women down at the church is plumb settin’ the old ladies gossip vines on fire,” Henry countered. “Y’all can take him tonight but come Saturday night, he belongs to us. We’re going to watch the Christmas tree lights blink and I’m going to tell him stories about Lucas and my sweet Ella and then we might even watch one of them little kid Christmas shows on television together. And if he don’t like it I’ll get out one of them Scooby movies in the drawer.”

  Natalie nodded. Sometimes it was simply impossible to beat the opposition. “Scooby?” she asked.

  “It’s one of Lucas’s old movie tapes. We still got a VHS player, so Joshua can watch the same funny stories about that crazy dog as Lucas watched when he was a little boy,” Jack answered.

  Grady cocked his head to one side and then pushed up out of his recliner. “I hear something scratching at the door. I bet it’s those pesky puppies again. I’m beginning to think we might as well turn them all three into house dogs.”

  “Bluetick hounds don’t belong in the house,” Henry said.

  “It’s the prodigal son’s fault. He was gone more than a year and all the animals in the damn county want to come see him,” Grady said.

  “Might as well put your coat on,” Jack said. “You’re goin’ to have to take them pups back to the pens.”

  Grady opened the door, expecting a flurry of puppies, but one big yellow mama cat waltzed right in instead. At first Natalie thought the cat was carrying a mouse in her mouth and then she realized it was a kitten that still didn’t have its eyes open. The mama cat went straight for Henry, hopped up in the chair, and dropped the kitten in Joshua’s lap, jumped down, and went to the door.

  Grady opened it and she dashed out to the porch, picked up another kitten, and brought it inside. She repeated the process until five babies were squirming in Joshua’s lap, and then she laid down across his legs and purred.

  “I’ll be damned.” Henry laughed. “I believe Grady is right. Every animal in the world is coming to see you, Lucas.”

  “It ain’t the prodigal son,” Jack said.

  “No, it’s kittens born out of season and the mama knows it’s warm in this house,” Natalie said.

  “We’ll put her in the utility room in a laundry basket until it warms up and then she can go back to the barn,” Lucas said.

  ***

  Natalie changed shirts and put on a better pair of boots, ran a brush through her hair, and applied lipstick. She dressed Joshua in a bright red flannel shirt and navy blue knit pants. Then she shoved him down into a fleece bunting and stretched a stocking hat with a Santa Claus appliqué over his head. She carried him into the living room and Henry shook his head.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You got too many clothes on that boy. He’ll sweat and then get cold and get pneumonia. You’d better leave him with us,” Henry answered.

  “Ain’t happenin’, Gramps,” Lucas said.

  “Soon as the truck warms up, I’ll take him out of the bunting,” Natalie said.

  “Put it back on before you take him out in the cold air. He’ll catch pneumonia for sure if he gets chilled,” Henry said.

  “Yes, sir,” Natalie said.

  Lucas helped her into her coat and ushered her out the front door with a hand on her back. “I’ve already got the truck warmed up so that he wouldn’t get cold.”

  “Henry’s just giving it one last-ditch effort to make us change our mind. He’s really g
otten attached to Joshua.” Natalie crawled into the backseat and removed the bunting before she strapped the baby into the car seat. He flashed his most brilliant toothless grin at her and she kissed him on the forehead. “Feel all better, does it, son? Well, we’re going to do some serious shopping tonight. What do you think we should buy Henry?”

  “Duct tape.” Lucas suggested.

  “Why that?” She threw one leg over the front passenger seat and gracefully slid into a seated position.

  “Damn, you are flexible,” Lucas said.

  “Yes, I am. Years of playing basketball and hard work. Now tell me more about this Angus Association party on Saturday night.”

  “It’s the annual Christmas dinner at the Red River Angus Association. Your folks must belong to something similar,” he said.

  She nodded. Every year her mother fretted about the Christmas dinner for the association for months. She made numerous trips to Amarillo to find just the right dress so that Natalie’s father, Jimmy, would think she was the prettiest girl at the party.

  “It’s at the Denison Country Club. The food is good, and you will go with me, won’t you?”

  She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Lucas Allen, are you asking me for a date?”

  His brown eyes twinkled. “Yes, ma’am, I am. The ladies call it semiformal. Us guys just wear our best creased jeans and shine up our boots real good and sometimes we put on a jacket. But the ladies get all dolled up. Will you go with me?”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I? Henry will take me out in the yard and pay old Crankston to shoot me with his shotgun if I don’t let him keep Joshua that night.” She smiled. “But I did not bring anything to get dolled up in, so we’d best hit a couple of dress stores tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Me and Josh will sit outside however many dressing rooms that you want to use. We won’t even complain, will we, cowboy?” He looked in the rearview mirror. “Well, okay, we won’t complain if we can play in the toy store an extra fifteen minutes.”

  Natalie laughed. “And when should I be ready for the party?”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven. Cocktails are served at seven thirty and it’s about a half-hour trip over there. We have a babysitter, so that’s no problem,” he said.

  Natalie did not miss the we in that statement and her heart skipped a beat before it raced ahead.

  Lucas reached across the seat and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “Didn’t see one. Fought with one, though,” she said.

  “Who won?”

  “He did.”

  “Drew?” Lucas asked.

  She nodded.

  “Sometimes I wonder what he would say about all this too. I mean, he was your friend and now you are here and it’s kind of crazy the way it all came about. To all of us in Kuwait, he was king of the base. But I get the feeling from what you’ve said that he wasn’t like that when y’all were growing up. Tell me about him,” Lucas said.

  “Drew was that kid that was at the bottom of every social list in the county. His parents already had grandkids when he was born and there was never any doubt that he was a big, big accident. Then he was just a little kid and he didn’t have fancy clothes or boots and the other kids were vicious toward him. To be king of the base would have been like giving him a real crown,” she said.

  Lucas cocked his head to one side. “But he grew out of it in high school, right? He wasn’t just a little kid when we knew him. He was almost six feet tall and built like a wrestler.”

  Natalie smiled. “By then he’d become the resident bad boy of the whole area. He was good-lookin’, funny, and had a summer job workin’ for my dad. He bought his own clothes and he even bought a car. Not a truck but a car in a county where every teenage boy sees visions of pickup trucks. He drove too fast, especially when he was drinking, and that was every weekend. Mothers warned their daughters about him and my folks tried their damnedest to break up our friendship.”

  “Didn’t work, huh?”

  “No, neither one. The daughters in the county flocked to him like flies on maple syrup and my parents figured out real quick that Drew and I would always be friends no matter what his reputation was,” she said.

  The pickup grew silent except for the baby noises in the backseat. Natalie remembered the quilt in the back of that old souped-up car Drew raced around the whole Panhandle in those two summers after he got his driver’s license. If the quilt could talk, Lord, the tales it could tell would have ruined the lives of too many women to count. Their mothers might not let them date him, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t meet him out in a cotton field with a six-pack of beer.

  “Hey, you said something about duct tape before we got off on the subject of Drew and ghosts,” she changed the subject.

  “We need to wrap up some for Gramp’s Christmas present.” Lucas chuckled.

  “Why?”

  “To slap across his mouth,” Lucas answered.

  “How can he read to Joshua if his mouth is taped shut?”

  Lucas nosed the truck into a parking space in front of a Western-wear store and turned in his seat. “Hey, feller, I betcha if Momma gets the blanket out of the diaper bag and wraps you up, you won’t have to wear that tow sack into the store.”

  “It’s called a bunting,” Natalie said.

  “Looks like a tow sack with a zipper up the front.”

  “It’s red and fuzzy and tow sacks are brown and made of burlap,” she countered.

  His brown eyes danced and his mouth quivered as he fought back a grin. “Are we having our first fight about a blanket or a sack?”

  “I’m his mother. Sometimes all you guys forget that. And we had our first fight the night you came home, remember?”

  Lucas leaned across the seat, cupped her chin in his big hand, and landed a scorching hot kiss on her lips. “You would look good in a tow sack tied up in the middle with a piece of rope. Hell, I bet you could even play some killer basketball in a getup like that. And I’d have such a good time untying the belt and pulling that tow sack up over your head.”

  Her insides had that crazy hot melted feeling like they always did when he kissed her or even brushed past her in the kitchen or the hallway. Shit! Shit! Shit! Why did he have to affect her like that? It wasn’t fair.

  “Are we going to argue, make out, or shop? If you want me all dolled up for Saturday night, it might ought to be the latter.” Her voice was even hoarse in her own ears, but then it was a miracle she could even speak after a kiss like that.

  He cocked his head to one side and said, “I’d rather take the make out option, but since you need to shop, we’d better get with it.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to find a thing in a Western-wear store to wear to a fancy party,” she said.

  “We’ll go other places. I just always start here for Dad, Grady, and Gramps. This year they are all three getting new work coats. We’re in for a hard winter and theirs are lookin’ pretty frayed and stained up,” he said.

  Natalie threw a blanket over Joshua and hurried into the store with him. The first thing she saw when she removed the blanket and threw it over her shoulder was an off-white, lace dress hanging on a mannequin to her left. Long-sleeved and with a high Victorian neckline, it had a slip liner with thin straps that let skin show through the lace. They showed it with brown dress boots that had a brown cross cut into the off-white tops.

  “It’s the last one. Size eight and the boots are nines. Want to try it on?” the lady behind the counter asked.

  “I’ll look around a little bit first,” Natalie said.

  “Well, hello, Lucas Allen! I heard you got home. I was workin’ or I would’ve been over to the party Friday night.” Her voice perked right up when she saw Lucas.

  “Natalie, meet Diane Larkin. S
he and I went to school together. Diane, this is Natalie Clark.” Lucas’s arm went around Natalie’s shoulders as he made introductions.

  “Oh, I’ve heard about you. Let me see that baby better,” Diane said. “Oh my Lord, that pesky raccoon that hangs around the garbage cans out back just slipped inside the store with y’all. It’s never done that before even if it is about half-tame. I feed it scraps because I feel sorry for it.”

  Natalie looked down and that was one big raccoon. He sat down at her feet and looked up at her as if he expected her to give him a half-eaten burger or some stale chips.

  “You open the door, Diane, and I’ll shoo him on out of here,” Lucas said.

  She grabbed a package of cheese crackers and slung open the door. “Come on, Coonie, you old renegade. Come get the crackers.”

  Lucas stomped his feet and slapped his hat against his leg. “Shoo, get on out of here.”

  An idea popped into Natalie’s head. She squatted down so that the coon could see Joshua. It peered into the baby’s smiling face and then ambled out of the store.

  “You are the animal whisperer. I swear I’ve never had trouble with animals before this.” He chuckled.

  “Well, I’m just glad that y’all convinced him to leave. I’d get in big trouble if my boss knew I was feeding him. Now let me see that baby.”

  Natalie repositioned Joshua and removed his cap.

  Diane nodded emphatically. “Yep, he’s got the Allen dark hair and eyes. You pulled a real sneaky on us, Lucas. Were you in the service over there in Kuwait too?” She looked at Natalie.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, you’ll have to tell me the whole story sometime. What can I do for you two today? Y’all out doin’ some shoppin’. Want to see what the fellows have been looking at when they’ve been in the last few times?” Her eyes went back to Lucas.

  Lucas shook his head. “I want you to wrap three Carhartt coats. You know their sizes.”

  “The best-lined ones?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Natalie cradled Joshua more comfortably and said, “I’d like to see what they’ve looked at.”