The Cowboy's Baby: Devlin Brothers Ranch

by Joanna Bell

"I need to go take care of something. It won't take long. Less than an hour. More like half an hour. Will you wait here for me?"

  He gave me a look like 'really?' but he let me go. And just over half an hour later I pulled up again, carrying a bag from the Super Mart that contained: frozen peas, a pack of antiseptic wipes, a tube of antiseptic gel and a box of bandages. Maybe if I was a different person – a different girl – I would have known what to say. But I wasn't a different girl, I was me. Awkward, half in love with the boy from the richest family in western Montana and sometimes better at doing rather speaking.

  "What's all this?" Jackson asked when I dumped the bag out on the hood of his truck.

  He didn't think I was watching him but I was, and the brief look of – what was it? Relief? Happiness? – on his face when he saw what I'd been up to in town warmed my heart.

  "Aw, Hailey. You didn't have to get any of that stuff. How much did it cost? I'll pay you back, OK?"

  I shook my head. "No. Not OK. You're hurt. I'm just trying to help. That's what friends do."

  He was going to protest. He even opened his mouth to do so, but then something made him close it again. And so I sat in the late summer sunshine and wiped debris out of the wounds on his knuckles, applied antiseptic gel and bandages and finally placed the bag of frozen peas across the back of his swollen hand.

  "It feels better already," he said a half an hour or so later, as we gazed across the river and speculated about the whereabouts of the wolves at that time of day.

  "Good."

  "No," he said, holding the hand up and examining the swelling, which seemed to be going down. "It actually feels better. I'm not just saying it."

  I laughed, because I felt light-hearted as I always did with him. "Double good."

  Chapter 9: Jackson

  Once, when I was still in high school and life was one big prom with me as its king, I twisted something in my shoulder throwing a football. What I remember about that, even more than the lightning bolt-like pain radiating out across my back every time I tried to move my arm, was the fuss. There didn't seem to be anything on earth quite as concerning, quite as important, as Jackson Devlin's right shoulder. The coaches threw down their iPads and rushed onto the field, the cheerleaders let their pompoms hang limply at their sides – if I recall correctly, a few of them even wept – wept! At a hurt shoulder! The parents in the stands stood up and craned their necks to get a better look at me, expressions of deep worry on their faces.

  Again: all for a hurt shoulder.

  I was stretchered off the field, taking the concern of literally everyone at the game as my due.

  What a tiny little world Sweetgrass Ridge was. What luck to almost reach my twenties before having it dawn on me that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't the center of the goddamned universe.

  No one at that football game even knew me. They knew my name, and that I was Jack Devlin's son, and that I was the quarterback without whom the Sweetgrass Ridge Giants had no chance of making it to the state championships (spoiler: we didn't make it anyway), but they didn't know me.

  Hailey Nickerson did. She knew me when I was young and stupid and took everyone else's respect as my due. She knew me later, after I graduated and got angry at the whole world. And she still spent a chunk of what I knew were meager savings on bandages and anti-septic for my beaten-up hand. She still chose to sit there on the hood of my truck wiping dirt out of my cuts and making little sympathetic noises, as if my pain was her own, whenever she applied the antiseptic.

  How did it feel so big? How did a little antiseptic and a pack of frozen peas feel like the most one person had ever done for another in all of history? I don't know. All I know is if she'd asked me to yank my soul out of my body and give it to her, I would have.

  "Thank you for, uh – for the peas." I said when it was time to go because I had to get back to the ranch and the cattle.

  She was standing in front of me, searching through the endless wastelands of her purse for her car keys. She was right there. It would have been so easy to wrap my arms around her, pull her against me. Why didn't I? I was pretty sure she wanted me to. I could feel it sometimes in the way she would edge closer if we were sitting together, the way she would tilt her head in my direction. And still, I didn't do it.

  "No problem," she replied, grinning up at me.

  She didn't know. She didn't understand how grateful I was or how much those frozen peas meant to me. And I wasn't good enough with words to tell her. So I just stood there looking at the top of her head as she took up the search for the keys again. When she found them and moved to get into her car, I reached out and stopped her.

  "Hailey."

  She looked down at my hand on her wrist, and then up at me. "Jackson – uh, what? What is it?"

  "Thank you," I said again, raging internally at my own near-total inability to express myself. "I mean, I don't – I just – I'm not sure anyone ever did anything that nice for me before, is all."

  The sun was lower in the sky by that time, the evening light angled just right to cast the shadows of her own eyelashes across her cheek. Fuck, she was so beautiful – and she had no idea.

  "It was just some peas," she shrugged. "You should refreeze them when you get home and then use them again tonight if the swelling hasn't gone down all the way."

  "Yeah? OK, yeah. I'll do that."

  The freezer wasn't working so I wasn't going to do that, but I didn't want her to worry. I didn't want her to worry about anything ever again. Maybe one day, that would be something I could arrange.

  I drove back to the ranch feeling like my heart – among other things – was going to explode. Why the sweet blue hell was I so useless around her? Me, Jackson Devlin, ruiner of cheerleader's pristine reputations and known breaker of hearts.

  It was because this time, I actually gave a shit. This time it wasn't just a stirring in my pants. It was that, but it was so much more. And I didn't have the first idea what to do about it.

  I did know it was coming up on Hailey's birthday, and I wanted to do something special. Not the expensive designer purse most guys would have gone with – because all the girls in Sweetgrass Ridge seemed to inexplicably covet expensive designer purses. No, it had to be something else. Hailey wasn't those other girls. I'd never once heard her express a lust for designer goods.

  So what the hell was I going to do? I didn't actually have any money, because my dad was of the opinion that a future ranch was a better deal than present wages.

  The next day, after riding out at dawn to check on the cattle, I stopped by the retirement home where Hailey's mom worked.

  "Oh!" She said, in a tone I couldn't read, when she saw me waiting for her in the reception area. "Jackson. Is everything OK?"

  Hailey was close to her mother, and we'd met briefly a few times. Mrs. Nickerson wasn't cold, exactly, or even standoffish, but there was something there, some wall behind her eyes when she spoke to me that I didn't understand.

  "Everything's fine!" I replied, smiling. I wasn't used to dealing with people who gave me the vague feeling they didn't approve of me, so I probably went a little overboard on the enthusiasm. "I just wanted to talk to you about Hailey's birthday."

  "We usually just go to Henrietta's with the family and a few friends. You're obviously welcome to join us – I think she'll be inviting you a little closer to the date."

  Henrietta's was Sweetgrass Ridge's only restaurant, the kind of place that served burgers and milkshakes and had been around for as long as anyone could remember. I'd been a few times as a child when classmates had their birthday parties there, but let's just say it wasn't the kind of establishment my stepmother would be caught dead in (Sweetgrass Ridge had a number of places that fit that particular bill).

  "Oh, OK. Yeah, I'm sure she'll mention it," I replied awkwardly. "I was just thinking of, uh – well, I wanted to do something for her. Something a little –"

  "Nicer?" Mrs. Nickerson asked, eying me.

  "No!" I replied, a
little too quickly. "No that's not – that's not what I meant."

  She didn't believe me, I could see it written all over her face. And she definitely wouldn't have believed me if I told her I didn't actually have the money to afford Henrietta's.

  "I just meant something different, maybe. Something extra."

  "Henrietta's has always been enough for Hailey," came the response.

  Goddamnit. How was I fucking it up so badly? All I wanted to do was something nice for Hailey's birthday. And all I accomplished that day at the retirement home was to confirm her mom's obvious suspicions that I didn't think a birthday dinner at Henrietta's was good enough.

  "Of course," I agreed. "I didn't mean that it wasn't. Maybe I'll just talk to Hailey about it?"

  "That sounds like a good idea."

  Hailey's mom was, if anything, even harder to impress than her daughter. And I was, at 22, still too immature to see the situation from anyone's perspective but my own. She'd shown up to talk to the son of the richest man in town in the dingy, depressing reception area of the retirement home where she'd spent most of her adult life working. If I'd been wiser, I would have seen that she was simply embarrassed, and probably more than a little protective of her daughter. After all, I came with a reputation, and it wasn't for being polite and gentlemanly towards the young women of Sweetgrass Ridge.

  Still, something had to be done about Hailey's birthday. I would happily scrounge up some spare change to go to Henrietta's with her family – for all her mom's skepticism I actually liked her. I liked her protectiveness. She and Hailey were close and loving with each other, everything I knew families were supposed to be. I wanted her to like me. I also wanted to do something for Hailey myself, a gesture of some kind to show her how much she meant to me.

  So what the hell was I going to do? It was to be Hailey's 18th birthday.

  It had to be something big, because 18 is a big birthday. It had to be something she would remember.

  Disapproving or not, Hailey's mom did provide me with one crucial piece of information before I left – she told me that Hailey didn't have a passport. Damn.

  Chapter 10: Hailey

  My 18th birthday was on a Friday that year and I spent the first part of it the way I'd spent most of my birthdays up until then – at Henrietta's with my mom, Lili, Tiago and aunt Sandra. And, that year, Jackson Devlin.

  I opened gifts at the table as usual, and was relieved to see a small smile on my mom's face when I received a sketchpad and new drawing pencil from Jackson. She was still wary of him, often making offhanded remarks about people who thought their money could buy anything they wanted, and I had secretly been worried that he was going to buy me something way more expensive than anyone else (something I knew he couldn't actually afford) and confirm all of her suspicions.

  But by the end of dinner everyone had relaxed, and I was beaming with genuine happiness when I blew out the candles on my cake – and my childhood.

  "That was great," Jackson said afterwards as we drove out to the canyon. "That was – that was so great, Hailey."

  "Calm down," I chuckled. "You don't have to pretend like you love Henrietta's, it's just me and you here."

  He frowned at that, his handsome brow furrowing as he drove. "That's not what I meant. I'm not talking about the restaurant. I'm talking about your family."

  "What about them?" I asked, still glowing with happiness at a successful birthday dinner.

  "They love you."

  "Yeah, they –" I broke off on the verge of a smart-ass comment about that being what families do, because Jackson had just missed the turn-off to the canyon. "You just missed Latimer Road."

  "Did I?" He asked, not slowing down or stopping to turn around.

  At once, I knew something was up. And Jackson himself refused to answer any of my questions about what that might be until we were 35,000 feet in the air and I was staring down at the tops of the moonlit clouds.

  "Where are we going?" I breathed, still not quite sure I wasn't dreaming.

  "You should try to get some sleep. We both should."

  But I couldn't get any sleep at all. Even when Jackson himself dozed off I stayed glued to the plane window, filled with anticipation. I wasn't the kind of girl who things like this happened to – was I? The kind who got whisked off on flights to unknown destinations for her birthday?

  When I was sure he was asleep I turned around in my seat and looked at Jackson the way I wanted to look at him all the time, but was always too self-conscious to let myself do so. He was too big for the cramped seat, his left shoulder jutting out into the aisle and his long legs folded at an awkward angle. Every now and again a fellow passenger would walk by and take notice of the broad, long-limbed, devastatingly handsome man blocking the aisle. And then they would look at me and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it just a tiny little bit every time I saw the look of disappointment on another girl's face.

  Sorry, he's with me. In fact he arranged this whole trip as a birthday surprise. Yeah, I know. I might actually be the luckiest girl in the world.

  Up until an hour or so into the flight, Jackson made sure I had my ear buds in and music on – and that I didn't play with the touch screen to discover where we were headed. But as he slept next to me a pause in my playlist coincided with an announcement warning of possible turbulence ahead, and then ended with the news that we would be landing in New York City at 7:20 a.m., as scheduled.

  New York City.

  New. York. City.

  I then did something very uncharacteristic and promptly burst into tears.

  "Hmmm," Jackson mumbled in his sleep as I tried desperately to curb my blubbing. "Hmm. Hailey. Hailey?" His eyes flew open as his brain registered my upset. "What is it? Is something – what's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I squeaked, blinking quickly and wiping tears off my cheek. "Nothing."

  "Nothing?" He asked, fully waking up. "Then why are you –"

  "New York?"

  Jackson sighed. "Aw, damnit! It was supposed to be a surprise. I had it all planned out. I was going to get us a cab and make you wear a blindfold until we got to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then –"

  "New York?" I repeated, interrupting him out of sheer excitement and grabbing his forearm with both hands. "We're going to New York?!"

  New York was one of those places that was almost more mythical than real to someone like me. It was like London or Sydney or Tokyo – impossibly glamorous, impossibly sophisticated – and impossibly far away. It didn't seem realistic that I was going to be in the city I'd seen so many times in movies and on TV shows in less than a couple of hours.

  "I wanted to take you to Paris," Jackson said, smiling at my reaction. "But your mom told me you don't have a passport."

  Paris? But – how? I knew what no one else in Sweetgrass Ridge did, and that was the fact that Jackson Devlin didn't actually have any money of his own. So how were the two of us on a flight to New York City at that very moment if neither of us had anything like enough spare change to afford it?

  "I just went to the bank in Great Falls," he continued, seeing my confusion and knowing immediately what it meant. "The banks in Sweetgrass Ridge know giving me a line of credit is just going to piss my dad off, but all anyone sees in Great Falls is my last name. It wasn't a problem."

  I suddenly found myself torn between two distinct emotions – on the one hand dizzy happiness and disbelief at being on a plane with Jackson Devlin on our way to New York, and on the other the instinctive worry of the person who has grown up without much money. I knew about lines of credit. I knew my mother spent most of my childhood paying off the one she had to take out when my dad left.

  "You got a line of credit?" I asked. Jackson had very little income, enough to cover groceries and heating bills if that.

  "Yeah, I did. I wanted to do this for you. I wanted to do something huge for your 18th. You're not disappointed – are you?"

  Bless him, he didn't even think about the consequences. And it was a
ll for me. How could I give him a lecture on responsible spending when he'd done it for me?

  "Of course I'm happy," I told him, swallowing my concerns.

  It wasn't a lie. I was happy. Blissful, even. So was he. Mostly because neither of us had any idea what the future held in store...

  ***

  I woke up that afternoon in a bed so expansive it probably had its own zip code, in a room with windows so tall the sun streaming through them almost blinded me.

  Where was I?

  I sank back into the pillows as I remembered the evening before, the drive to the canyon which turned into a drive to the airport, the flight, the dreamlike taxi ride through the city just as dawn broke and I could no longer keep my eyes open.

  My phone said it was almost 2 p.m. There was a message from Jackson, sent an hour previously.

  "Sleep as long as you want. Msg me when you wake up. I hope you like the room."

  A wave of anxiety threatened to wash over me as I looked around and realized I was alone – he'd paid for two rooms, and even unsophisticated Hailey Nickerson from Sweetgrass Ridge knew it must have cost a pretty penny.

  It was done, though. It was paid for. And I resolved then and there to postpone my worrying until we got back home to Montana. I was in New York with the man I was pretty sure I was in love with. It was the day after my 18th birthday. I was going to enjoy every minute of it.

  I threw the sheets off and crawled out of bed, stretching and luxuriating in the pure opulence of the room as I made my way over to the windows. And there it was – Central Park laid out below me like a single autumnal patch on a quilt made mostly of skyscrapers and cars and cabs and pedestrians and everything that was the big city. The thrill started in my toes and worked its way up through my whole body like bubbles in a champagne glass.

  I stood in front of those windows for a long time, watching the city go about its business below me until I was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  "Hold on!" I yelled, assuming it was Jackson and quickly throwing on the fluffy robe that hung from the bathroom door.