The Cowboy's Baby Blessing

by Deb Kastner

  “So you’re asking if my plan is basically a shot in the dark?” Rachel competently condensed his drawn-out explanation.

  Samantha laughed. “That’s the short version. I like yours better.”

  “Can something go wrong? Maybe. But I don’t think we’re looking at a wing and a prayer. We don’t actually have what Trish wants. At the end of the day, Trish can’t take something we’re legally unable to give her. She won’t listen if we try to explain it to her, but if we show her what she would really be signing up for, I don’t think she’ll be so quick to pick up that pen. More than likely, she’ll scurry back to where she came from.”

  “How are we going to show her?” Seth asked, interested but not thoroughly convinced.

  If it could happen, if they could make Trish go away, he could look forward to his future—a future with his custody of Caden secure...and hopefully Rachel by his side. It would be a whole new world for all of them, and he wouldn’t take it for granted. He would thank God every day for all His blessings.

  Rachel grinned, and Seth thought he might have seen a bit of a puckish gleam in her eyes.

  “I’m glad you asked. That is where you all come in. We have to think of ways to help her visualize what her life might be like if she were to take over Caden’s guardianship. If we make it real enough to her, she won’t be coming back, even with a lawyer.”

  She pulled open the notebook she’d brought with her and clicked on the pen.

  “Put your thinking caps on, ladies and gentlemen, and let’s get creative.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rachel couldn’t help but laugh as she surreptitiously watched Trish pick her way across the dirt to Seth’s office at the Hollister ranch. The limo had had to stop halfway down the driveway or risk getting permanently stuck in the mud, so Trish had to make it the rest of the way on foot.

  In heels.

  Spiky ones.

  At least the woman was predictable.

  Trish scrunched up her face in disgust as she carefully dodged the many cow pies littering the area. Rachel suspected her distress was as much from the pungent smell as it was from trying not to land an expensive shoe in a pile of pucky.

  Someone may have let ten head of cattle onto that ground earlier in the day, and Seth certainly hadn’t had time to remove the droppings.

  No—he was too busy riding the range and herding cows. He wasn’t going to have time to shower, so he was bound to come in dusty and smelling of horse.

  The copy of the legal document outlining the terms of Caden’s trust—twenty pages of legalese on a blue background—was propped neatly on the desk, waiting for Trish’s perusal.

  Most important of all, Caden was sitting on Zooey’s lap on a blanket in one corner, quietly playing with a set of toy cars.

  Everything was in place.

  Now it was up to Trish to show her hand and admit to the real reason she was here.

  Rachel glanced once again at Caden and Zooey, so sweetly interacting together. Her heart clenched in her throat when she considered that this evening might be the last time they were together like this.

  After tonight, when they’d effectively banished Trish from Seth and Caden’s life, Rachel and Seth would have no more reasons to seek each other out. She wasn’t even sure Seth would keep Caden in her day care once she was finally able to speak with him.

  Was she crazy, talking herself out of the opportunity to be in a relationship with the best man she’d ever known?

  The man she was in love with?

  The answer was an unquestionable yes, and though her heart was breaking into terribly painful shards, it was best for everyone to end things now—before their lives got more complicated.

  But oh, how it hurt.

  As it was, Zooey had already bonded with Caden in a special way, and he clearly adored her. That alone was reason enough to be steadfast in her decision. A failed relationship would be far too damaging for everyone involved, not just Rachel and Seth.

  She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t risk hurting the children.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Trish said when she walked in the door and slammed it behind her with an annoyed huff of breath. “When Seth asked me to meet him in his office, I assumed he meant a nice professional building—not some run-down add-on in the middle of a barn.”

  “Come on in, Trish, and make yourself at home,” Rachel said with a smile. “You’ll find this place is quite cozy. Seth runs all of the Bar H ranch business from here. If you’re serious about taking up Caden’s guardianship, you’ll be spending quite a lot of time here.”

  “But it smells.” Trish cupped her palm over her nose and mouth. “Like cows.”

  “Yes, that’s generally the primary aroma on a cattle ranch, although you’ll probably get a nice whiff of horses, pigs and chickens as well, when you take a full tour of the place. Don’t worry—you’ll get used to it.”

  “What do you mean, I’ll get used to it?”

  On cue, Seth stepped through the door. Rachel almost cheered at how he had outdone himself. She was honestly impressed. She didn’t know what he’d done to make himself look quite so...dirty. It looked rather as if he’d rolled in the pigsty.

  Maybe he had. He smelled bad enough, and there were streaks of mud on both cheeks and all down the front of him. If he’d wrestled with the pigs, he’d lost.

  But to Rachel, he had never looked better.

  What was wrong with her?

  Trish gaped as Seth flashed her his most charming grin and then removed his hat and slapped it against his thigh. Clouds of dust burst forth and then slowly settled on the ground at his feet.

  “Long day riding,” he said by way of apology. “Do you know how to ride a horse, Trish?”

  She shook her head violently. “I haven’t been on horseback since I was a child. The closest I’ve ever been to a horse in twenty years is a carriage ride through Central Park.”

  “Oh, well, no matter. I was out of practice when I started, too. It’s easy enough to pick back up if you put some real effort into it.”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  Seth raised a brow. “I thought Rachel would have told you. The Bar H ranch comes with Caden. They’re a package deal.”

  She looked alarmed for a moment and then nodded as an idea hit her. Rachel knew exactly what she was thinking. She could almost see the dollar signs in Trish’s eyes.

  “Okay. I can live with that. How much money do you think I can make selling it off? Do you know someone who might want to commercialize the land, or am I better off trying to sell it as is?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s just it,” Seth said smugly, and then paused for dramatic effect.

  Rachel didn’t know if Trish was holding her breath, but Rachel was, just waiting for the punch line.

  “You can’t sell the ranch.”

  “What?” Trish squeaked. “I thought you just said the ranch comes with Caden.”

  “Oh, it does. It’s his legacy, written into the will, which you would know if you had been at Tracy’s funeral. You can’t sell the ranch. If you take over Caden’s custody, then you have to see that the ranch prospers for the next twenty years so Caden can take it over when he reaches manhood.”

  Trish grabbed the nearest chair and sat down. Rachel could tell the wheels in her brain were spinning, trying to make this new piece of information work into her plan.

  “It’s hard, physical work, but it’s quite fulfilling, I assure you,” Seth continued. “I never thought I’d want to be a cowboy, but actually, it kind of fits my style.”

  And it did, more even than Seth probably recognized.

  “I am not leaving New York City to come live on a ranch,” Trish protested. “I was born on a ranch and I promised myself I would never go back
.”

  “Hmm,” said Rachel. “That’s unfortunate. I mean, you can talk to Wes, the ranch manager, but there are a lot of day-to-day decisions that will have to be made by you. I don’t think you can do that long-distance—at least not if you want the ranch to thrive, for Caden’s sake.”

  “She means make money,” Seth clarified.

  Trish already looked overwhelmed.

  Now for part two.

  “I assumed you’d want to look at the paperwork for Caden’s trust fund.”

  Rachel scooped it off the desk and handed it to Trish. The type was so small Rachel couldn’t even make it out with her reading glasses on. Not that it would have mattered. She didn’t understand half of what the paper said anyway, and she doubted Trish would be able to, either.

  Trish scanned the paperwork with a frown, but her eyes lit up when she spotted the figure with the dollar sign and several zeroes after it.

  “That’s the value of all the assets being held in trust, including the dollar value for the ranch,” Seth pointed out. “There’s some cash in savings, true, but it’s for his college education,” Seth explained before Trish exploded with joy.

  “But he’ll be getting the ranch. A cowboy doesn’t need a college education.”

  “And there’s where you’re wrong,” Seth said, leaning his hip against the desk and crossing his arms. “A ranch owner needs a good business education. I’ve just signed up to start taking online business classes on the GI Bill. Trust me, there is much more to cattle ranching than herding stock from pasture to pasture. Accounting, for one. How are you with numbers?”

  He winked at Rachel. She was still trying to absorb the new information Seth had just shared. She had no idea he’d signed up for an online college. She was proud of him for his foresight. He’d really embraced his role as guardian of the ranch as well as little Caden.

  He’d taken the curveballs that life had thrown him and used them—not to give up on his dreams, but to alter them into something better.

  Just as she’d had to do when she was sixteen, pregnant and alone.

  Trish set the legal papers back on the desk—upside down, as if she didn’t want to look at them.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Caden is two. He won’t be in college for years. I can borrow the money and then pay it back when it’s time for him to go to school.”

  “Actually, you can’t,” Seth said smoothly.

  “And why not? It would be my—er, Caden’s—money.”

  “Just Caden’s money,” Rachel replied. “Locked in until he turns eighteen and earning good interest.”

  “Locked in?” Tracy sounded appalled—and a little discouraged.

  “The trust fund is run by a trustee from the bank. Not even Caden’s guardian, whoever that might be, can touch it.”

  “So there’s no money there, either.”

  Trish was thinking hard. Rachel could tell their plan was working. Now all that was left to cinch the deal was the grand finale.

  Caden.

  * * *

  This was the part of the plan Seth was most nervous about. Everything else had gone off without a hitch. He was pretty sure Trish was doubting herself right now—trying to figure out how she was going to come out on the winning side of things and starting to realize there was no winning side. Or rather, no way to win if you wanted just the benefits without the responsibilities. Responsibilities that had frightened Seth at first, but that he was now happy to embrace. He was starting to feel at home in his role as rancher, and he loved being Caden’s daddy. His heart ached at even the thought of giving that up.

  But whether he liked it or not, Caden was the crux of this entire matter. They had given Trish a lot to think about. Hopefully, she had seen by now that trying to get guardianship of Caden was a losing proposition—

  Not in her best interest.

  And there was one way to prove it.

  He met Rachel’s eyes and she nodded briefly.

  It was time.

  He walked over to the corner and gently lifted his son into his arms, giving him a soft, reassuring kiss on the cheek before turning to Trish and carefully settling the toddler in her lap.

  She sat frozen to the spot, stiff and unyielding. She didn’t try to engage with Caden. Trish looked like she thought if she moved, Caden might bite.

  Fortunately for her, Caden wasn’t a biter.

  Much.

  Seth took a deep breath and plunged in, even though his gut was churning and he wanted to snatch his son back out of that woman’s arms.

  “If you really want guardianship of Caden, I imagine you’ll want to get to know him better.”

  “I...er...yes, okay,” she said, looking around nervously at anything but Caden.

  “I’m sure you’ve thought a lot about how you’ll take care of him. It will take careful management of the ranch to continue to make a real profit. You’ll probably have to invest your own money into covering your expenses. What is it you said you do in New York?”

  Trish didn’t answer. She’d clasped her hands around Caden and was rubbing them together, one over the other.

  “Well, you’ll have to focus on learning ranching for now,” Seth said. “It’s a full-time job, so you’ll want to find a decent day-care provider for Caden. You’ll be in the area, so I recommend Rachel here. She runs the best day care in the county. No—that’s not right. In all of Texas.”

  “My facility is just a small home-run operation. I’m sure you’ll want him in one of those high-end preschools,” Rachel added. “Pretty pricey, and it’s going to be a long commute each way, but entirely worth it if you want all the bells and whistles the top-tier preschools offer—foreign-language lessons, musical training, the works. Caden is a smart kid. He’s already showing potential in several areas. I’m very impressed by his early learning skills.”

  Trish looked as if she were choking.

  “Were you thinking of a private school?” Seth asked. “He’ll need to be in a heavily academic school if he wants to get into an Ivy League college. Oh—and you’ll want to make sure he plays sports. Whatever interests him.”

  Not that Seth felt that there was any need to send Caden to an Ivy League school, unless that was what he wanted. There were plenty of good colleges and universities out there, and the important thing was getting a solid education that would prepare Caden for the life he wanted to lead. Maybe an expensive private school would have the best program for that—maybe not. It would be Caden’s decision, either way.

  But with her designer-label lifestyle, Trish seemed the type to assume more expensive automatically meant better. Even if that involved pulling Caden from Rachel’s day care, where he was loved and appreciated, and dumping him into some high-pressure day care that crammed the kids full to bursting with education and discipline but probably skimped on individual care, affection and fun.

  “And since the money for his education can’t be touched until he’s ready for college, that means the tuition costs before that will have to come from you.”

  He couldn’t believe he was saying this—talking about Trish’s role in Caden’s upbringing as if it were really going to happen. As if there were even the slightest possibility that he would hand off his guardianship to this woman.

  He wouldn’t. Not in a million years.

  No worries, he reminded himself. They were talking her out of guardianship, not into it.

  And it was working.

  “Aside from school,” Rachel said, “children are a persistent drain on your bank account. Clothes, food, diapers. Although obviously, you don’t have to worry about money.”

  Rachel had phrased the sentence as a given, but in truth, Seth knew she was trying to ferret out the real answer.

  And Trish was turning green. And red. And purple.
r />   A whole rainbow of colors.

  “I don’t have any money,” she mumbled, almost too low to hear.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Rachel asked.

  “That’s why I came here. I work as a fashion buyer’s assistant. I planned to go to school, but that never worked out. I’m a glorified secretary. I don’t make much money, and living in New York is expensive.”

  Now that Trish had started talking, the whole story poured out of her.

  “I was too ashamed to go to Tracy’s funeral and let everyone see what a failure I am, so I sent a lawyer. I really had to scrape to put that together. I thought I’d get some kind of inheritance that would allow me to finally go to school. But when the lawyer came back, he said all of Luke and Tracy’s money was tied up in Caden’s trust.”

  “Meaning land,” Seth said.

  “Yes,” Trish agreed with a rueful chuckle. “I got that message loud and clear.”

  Telling her story was apparently cathartic to her. As she relaxed, so did Caden, so much so that he fell asleep in her arms. She stroked his silky hair, the first time she had really touched him.

  “He is a sweetheart, isn’t he?” Trish murmured.

  “Yeah,” Seth said, his voice cracking with emotion. “He is.”

  Trish sighed. “Obviously, I didn’t think this thing all the way through. I wasn’t going to neglect him,” she assured them. “I just had this vague notion that once I got Caden’s guardianship, I wouldn’t have to worry about money. I was going to get a live-in nanny. I know nothing about children. I thought I could raise him without really interacting with him.”

  She paused and sighed again. “But now I realize what a mistake that would have been. I was thinking about what I wanted—not what Caden requires or deserves. Caden needs love and attention, and that’s what you two give him.”

  Seth’s heart warmed toward Trish. And he didn’t try to correct her about his relationship with Rachel. They might not be officially in a relationship yet, but he intended to fix that as soon as possible.

  “Believe it or not, I was raised in a very close-knit family,” Trish continued. “Tracy and I were best friends. She loved the ranch, but my passion was sewing and designing clothes. I got it in my head that I was going to take off and make a big-name label for myself.” She scoffed. “Not so much, huh?”