As they drove away from the hospital, Jack said, "I'm glad I got to be in on what happened today since I missed the first seven months of my son's development."
Grace batted her eyes to stem the tears of humiliation over the whole ordeal. While Jack held her hand during the contractions it seemed okay for him to be there, but thinking back, she was mortified. "You should not have come in," she clipped. "It was very humiliating having you there." Although she couldn't deny that it helped her get through the worst of the contractions when he held her hand and looked down at her in a way that told her he understood, and it mattered to him what happened.
"I'm not new to this," Jack said. "I grew up on a ranch watching everything from mares to goats delivering their young. I turned and pulled my first calf when I was thirteen. Being with you during the delivery won't be anything new."
Grace snapped out of her little maudlin moment because she knew for a fact that Jack would not be with her when she gave birth. She was about to inform him, in no uncertain terms, when he said, "I hope you plan to breastfeed, especially with first milk and at least the first six months. Nine months would be better."
Grace looked at the man in irritation. He was moving into her life way too fast. "I'll be the one making the decisions, whether it's breastfeeding or—"
"Circumcision," Jack stated, as if it had just occurred to him. "It needs to be done early on so you'll need to let the doctor know in advance before we get to the hospital."
"I told you before I'm not having my baby in a hospital. I'm having him at home."
"Who put that idiotic idea in your head?" Jack asked.
"It's not idiotic," Grace replied. "Recovery's faster because there's no episiotomy, and no headaches or backaches from epidurals, and the baby won't be exposed to drugs. As for circumcision, there are conflicting views. I think the baby should be able to decide for himself when he's a man."
"He'll want it. It's unnecessary skin that causes problems. Which exit?" Jack said, eclipsing the tirade Grace was about to deliver about making all the decisions in regards to her baby, including circumcision... And giving birth at home... And the fact that Jack would not be taking her to the hospital, or anywhere else, after today...
"I don't know where you live," Jack said. "Which exit do I take?"
"The next one," Grace replied then wondered if it was wise for Jack to know where she lived. She could find the man on her doorstep. Permanently.
Jack eased into the middle lane of the freeway then moved at a slower clip as snow continued to build. "The doctor said you need bed rest," he said. "Can your sister stay with you?"
"No, she's got a high-powered job in Seattle," Grace replied.
"Your parents?"
"They're in Seattle too, but they're... busy."
"Aunts, uncles...?"
"No one's here."
"Where are all the people who are supposed to be with you when you give birth?"
"I'll have the midwife and the others will come after the baby's born," Grace said. "I don't want any of them around before because they drive me a little crazy."
Jack said nothing, but Grace could see his jaws bunching, and his eyes narrowed in thought.
When they finally reached her house, instead of getting out, Jack reached into the inside pocket of his parka, pulled out a checkbook and a pen, then scrawled out a check and handed it to her. Grace looked at a check written out for five-hundred-dollars. "What's this?"
"Child support," Jack said. "Consider it my first notice of intent to claim paternity."
Grace stared at the check. If she took it, she'd be acknowledging Jack as her son's father, and everything that entailed. Which meant scheduled visitation, and Jack taking her son on weekends to cattle roundups or rodeos, or wherever Jack went when he had time off...
When she made no move to accept the check, or give it back, Jack looked at her, and said, "Like it or not, you're stuck with me. You're carrying my son and I'm here for the duration."
Grace glared at the man. "I will not be bought like they tried to do at the fertility clinic," she said, "but I will be talking to an attorney." She slapped the check on the dashboard.
***
While waiting for Sam to pick him up, Jack sat on the couch in Grace's two bedroom house, watching as she puttered around. Periodically, she stopped and took a deep breath, and her hands went to her stomach, and he knew she was still having contractions. He'd get joint custody of his son, whatever it took, but unless Grace got complete bed rest he'd have no son, and he couldn't go through that again. He also knew the child Grace was carrying had a better than eighty-five percent chance of being a genetic match for Ricky. That alone was reason enough to make sure Grace got the bed rest she needed to bring the pregnancy to term.
Which brought up another subject, approaching her about giving birth at the hospital in New Jersey where they could harvest the cord blood. But since he had no legal claim, he'd lay the groundwork for when he did. But they'd take it one step at a time. "Look," he said, knowing she was miffed about his attempt to square away his paternal rights with a check. "I'll let the paternity issue go for a while, but you need bed rest and you have no one here to look after you, so you could come to my place. My mother lives there, and my brother and sister-in-law have a house on the ranch, and the lodge housekeeper can look after you so you can stay quiet."
"Housekeeper?" Grace paused on her way from the kitchen to the hallway with an armload of dirty dish towels he assumed were intended for the stacked washer-dryer in the bathroom.
Jack shrugged. "It's a working guest ranch. Flo takes care of the domestic end of the lodge. There's a bedroom off the kitchen where you can stay and it has its own bath."
"I can't just leave here," Grace said. "I have a job."
"Doing what?"
"Cleaning houses. I'm with Merry Maids."
"You won't be doing that for the next few months," Jack said. "And what do you plan to do after our son's born?" It came to him that, for the first time, he'd referred to the baby as theirs—Grace's and his. Unplanned. A human error that put his sperm into the uterus of a woman he'd never laid eyes on before today, and who was now the mother of his unborn son. A precious gift. A son he never expected to have, and wanted very badly.
"What about all my stuff?" Grace asked.
Jack looked around the modest house. "What stuff?"
"Books, clothes, things to do. This is my home. It's where I want to be. Everything's ready for the baby here and I have to go to my birthing class tomorrow," she said as she headed down the hallway toward the bath.
"That's what I mean," Jack called after her. "You're supposed to be in bed and you're already planning on going out." He was beginning to get a handle on this woman. If she thought he was bullheaded, she needed to take a good look in the mirror.
"I have a cat and she's going to have kittens," Grace said, as she emerged from the hallway.
"Fine, we'll add her litter to yours." Jack couldn't help smiling because Grace was smiling. The first real smile he'd seen. At the clinic she'd given him a couple of twitches, but nothing that went to her eyes. Brown eyes, he noticed. Their son would be brown-brown. Eyes and hair. "So what's it going to be?" he asked, as Grace passed him on her way back to the kitchen.
Grace stopped abruptly, put her hands to her belly and let out a grunt. Then she eyed him as if sizing him up, and said, with hesitation, "Does your housekeeper live there?"
Jack nodded. "She has a room down the hallway from where you'd be."
Grace let out another little grunt, and her hands pressed harder to her belly. After a few moments, she replied, "I guess I could stay for a week. Give me a few minutes to pack my things and put Mei Ling in the cat carrier. I hope you don't have a problem with a cat in the house."
"I do," Jack said. "But she can stay in the barn with the other cats."
"Oh no," Grace said in a firm voice. "Mei Ling's a Blue Burmese. If she can't stay in the house, I'm not coming." She planted
her hands on her hips and glared at him.
Jack eyed Grace, who looked as immovable as a mountain, yet was willing to stay at the ranch but for one provision. A damn cat to scratch the furniture, and deposit fleas in the rug, and sharpen claws on the walls. But that seemed to be Grace's terms for getting her and his unborn son to his place. "You have to keep the cat in your room," he said, wondering how he'd get that past Flo. Her only requirement when she hired on was no inside pets. Which worked for him. Cats were for clearing the barns of mice… dogs for rounding up stock. "Flo doesn't like cats… says they scratch the furniture and hide their messes in dark corners."
"Her name is Mei Ling, not the cat, and she's litter box trained," Grace said. "And she doesn't scratch the furniture as long as she has her scratching post."
"Then the cat comes with a litter box and a scratching post," Jack said in a plodding voice, while wondering how Flo would welcome that. Not too damn well, he imagined. All he hoped now was that she wouldn't give notice...
"Mei Ling. Her name is Mei Ling," Grace emphasized. "As long as you think of her as the cat, you won't bond."
"I don't intend to bond with a cat," Jack groused.
"You may not have a choice," Grace said. "Mei Ling also has two fleece-lined cat beds—one for the bedroom and the other for the living room by the heater, like the one over there—" she pointed to a pet bed that Jack hadn't noticed until now… and a catnip mouse, and a donut ring with a ball in it, and a wooden base with a stick with feathers on the end of it...
"And her sky room," Grace added. "It's a carpeted box with entry holes, and it sits on a pedestal. Mei Ling sleeps in it during the day. I'll just go round it all up."
And this was just the beginning, Jack surmised, as he watched Grace disappear down a hallway to gather all the cat paraphernalia. The only thing missing was the cat...
And then Mei Ling came sashaying into the room with the haughtiness of a queen, lifting and placing her four paws as elegantly as a ballet dancer. Her short, blue-gray coat displayed meticulous care, and the slightly rounded belly beneath it was a reminder that soon there would be who knows how many more of the worthless creatures. She walked up to Jack and sat in front of him, and for a few moments her unblinking amber eyes regarded him gravely. Then to Jack's annoyance, she leapt onto his lap and proceeded to groom herself.
***
When Sam came for them, Grace saw him eye the cat carrier with Mei Ling staring out, then shift his gaze to the collection of Mei Ling's things by the front door, then to Jack, and from the looks passing between the men she knew Mei Ling was not welcome. But that was because they didn't know her. They would soon, whether they wanted to or not. Mei Ling had her ways.
The men collected everything, and while Jack was outside wrestling with a small blue tarp to cover Mei Ling's sky room that he'd tied on the top rack of Sam's SUV, and Sam was stashing cat paraphernalia inside the vehicle, along with Grace's bags and personal belongings, Grace stood at the living room window looking out at the frigid, dismal day. Snow continued blowing and building, and everything was coated in white.
After the men finished, Jack came for Grace and Mei Ling. "The front steps are slippery," he said, "so I'll take the cat to the car and come back for you."
"Her name is Mei Ling," Grace insisted, but Jack had already left with the cat carrier.
When he returned, Jack said, "You have everything you need?"
"I think so." Grace stepped onto the porch and locked the door, but when she went to negotiate the steps, Jack simply picked her up and carried her, as if it was the natural thing to do with a pregnant woman on a snowy day. It surprised Grace when she got a whiff of something spicy, like he used aftershave. For some reason she expected him to smell like a barn, but the little trace of spiciness was refreshing. "Umm," she hummed, as the aroma tickled her nostrils.
"You having another contraction?" Jack asked.
"Uh, no," she replied. "The cold air kind of shocked me."
"The car will be warm," Jack said, setting her down at the curb.
Grace looked inside the vehicle, and said to Sam, "Where is Susan?"
"She and Ricky are with Susan's folks in Portland while Ricky has some tests run and gets his treatment at the children's hospital," Sam explained.
'I'm so sorry about your son," Grace said. Until now, everything that happened from the moment the attorney informed them of the mix-up, to the unexpected visit to the hospital, to her agreeing to stay on a guest ranch with the family of the stranger who was the father of her baby seemed more like a dream than reality. And now a little boy was part of the reality. She was curious about the boy's illness but didn't think it her place to ask, after what Sam and Susan had gone through earlier, learning that the clinic botched their chances for finding a genetic match with the child growing inside Susan, a child that was also Marc's son. A child that should be hers. For some reason, that hadn't settled in. But it was. Slowly.
Until a few hours ago, she'd imagined the child inside her to one day be a towheaded toddler with mischievous blue eyes and a sweet disposition, and someday have his father's droll sense of humor. Somehow she'd have to morph that image into one of a dark eyed, dark haired child who would one day tower over her. She looked at Jack, a preview of the man her child might one day be. At least he'd be handsome. Bullheaded and inflexible, but most definitely handsome...
A thud in her tummy brought her hands pressing against it.
"You okay?" Jack asked.
She nodded. "Just a solid kick in the belly. He's active right now."
"Can I feel him kick?" Jack asked.
The look on his face was intense, like feeling the kick of his son was important, which she found puzzling. But then she didn't know the man who'd fathered him, so she nodded vaguely.
Jack slipped his hand beneath her jacket and put it on her tummy. His big broad palm was warm. Their son would also have big hands, and that didn't seem so bad. A whole new image of the child growing inside her was beginning to take hold...
"I hate to break up this father-son bonding," Sam said, "but the cat's fussing."
"Her name is Mei Ling," Grace insisted.
Sam looked at the cat, then at Jack, who shrugged, and said, "Get used to it."
Forty-five minutes later, they turned off the main highway to the Oregon coast onto a snow-covered county road with ruts where other cars had passed. After following it for about another fifteen minutes, they turned onto yet another snow-covered road, a narrow one, and passed through a tall ranch gateway made of upright timbers with a cross bar. Hanging from the cross piece was a sign with the words, DANCING MOON RANCH, along with the vague image of a moon, which Grace assumed was the ranch brand. A few hundred feet further was a compound that included several barns with attached corrals, numerous outbuildings, a string of log cabins along a creek, several log homes belonging to Jack, Sam, and their widowed mother, as Jack pointed out, and a huge guest lodge.
As they approached the lodge, Grace stared at the place that would be home for the next week. The large two-story building was made of massive logs, with front-facing gables on both ends, and a steep roof for shedding snow. A porch ran the full length of the front of the lodge, terminating at an immense stone chimney.
After pulling up to the front entrance, Jack helped Grace out and up the front steps to the porch then started to unload. Jack had just set the last of the cat paraphernalia onto the porch when a woman dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, with a quilted vest over it, stepped out of the lodge. Appearing in her late-forties, Grace assumed the woman was Flo. She looked at Grace with curiosity, then eyed the cat in the carrier with an expression that said, that cat won't be staying inside, then looked at Jack for confirmation. Jack took Grace's elbow and said to Flo, "This is Grace Templeton, the mother of my son. She's staying here for a couple of weeks. She needs bed rest, and the cat will be with her in the bedroom off the kitchen. Give Grace whatever she needs. She'll let you know what it is."
&nbs
p; Flo said nothing, her eyes shifting between Jack, and Grace's belly, and the cat in the carrier, and fixing on Grace's belly again. "When's the baby due?" she asked, her brow creased in a frown, her eyes holding a myriad of unspoken questions.
"Next month," Jack replied. "And don't try to figure it out right now, Flo. It's a long story." He handed the cat carrier to Sam then scooped Grace up in his arms and carried her through the entry. Grace couldn't help but be aware of the rock-hard arms holding her. Jack was all lean, solid muscle, and he carried her with no effort.
Once inside, what struck Grace first was the musky odor of wood from the massive log walls, intermingled with smoke from years of logs burning on the hearth of the immense stone fireplace at the far end of the great room. A rustic iron chandelier made of several concentric circular iron bands, and held together by welded interlocking horseshoes, hung from beams that crisscrossed above, forming a cathedral ceiling over the entry. And straight ahead rose a bank of stairs to a balcony above, which was lined with guest rooms, evidenced by the numbers on the doors. At the far end of the great room, and in the vicinity of the fireplace, were overstuffed chairs and leather sofas, which were arranged in groups, inviting conversation, and several wooden card tables stood ready for game players. Through a double-wide opening was a dining room, with one long table lined with a couple dozen chairs.
Grace saw no sign of guests. "I assume this is your off season?" she said to Jack, whose face was not more than a breath away from hers.
"Yeah," Jack replied, as he headed across the great room toward a hallway, still carrying her. "Guests start filling the place on Easter weekend and they’re here through New Years. We shut down for repairs after that, so winters are quiet."
Sam, holding the cat carrier, followed behind Jack, who passed the kitchen on the right and Flo's room on the left. When the hallway made a turn, Jack carried Grace straight ahead and through a doorway and set her down in a bedroom outfitted in peeled-pole furniture with Indian-motif upholstery and what looked to be a handmade quilt on the double-wide bed.
Justified Deception (Prequel: Dancing Moon Ranch Series) Page 21
