The Cowboy's Baby: Devlin Brothers Ranch

by Joanna Bell

Lacey looked like she wanted to say something, to try to stop me somehow. Wisely, she didn't. Instead, she asked if she could pack me up some leftovers before I left and I agreed.

  A few minutes later, as I was looking for Brody so I could explain that I had to leave, I walked smack into Jackson.

  Chapter 35: Jackson

  It was a good day. Up until that point, anyway. Everyone was in a good mood. I was in a good mood. I was in such a great mood I'd started to entertain ridiculous fantasies involving Hailey cornering me in a dark room, lifting her shirt off over her head and pulling my head down to her soft breasts...

  I was at half mast when I ran into her, actually, and for a split second I mistook the flush on her cheeks for lust.

  That didn't last long.

  "Hailey – what's going –"

  "Nothing. Where's Brody? I need to say goodbye."

  Fuck, she looked amazing. She was wearing a thin sweater with a v-neck just deep enough to reveal a luscious glimpse of cleavage. She smelled good, too. A jolt of lust stiffened my cock even further and I, like the horny moron I am, reached out and slid my hand around her waist.

  "DON'T!" She hissed, after a split second's hesitation I may or may not have imagined. "Where is Brody? Just tell me where –"

  "Calm down," I snapped, stung by a rejection I should by all means have seen coming.

  Never tell an angry woman to calm down, by the way.

  Defeated and confused about what the fuck her problem suddenly was after what seemed to be an enjoyable day, I told her Brody was asleep in the spare room at the end of the hallway.

  Before I could say anything else, she was gone. I made my way down to the kitchen in search of leftovers and hopefully some sympathy.

  Lacey was standing at the island, portioning out leftovers into plastic containers. When she heard me come in she looked up and fixed me with a look I had never seen on her face before.

  "What?" I asked grumpily. "Jesus, what did I do now?"

  ***

  I didn't go to work for 2 weeks after the conversation with Lacey – it I can call it a conversation more than an epic telling-off. It's a testament to her patience that she didn't fire my dumb ass on the first day I didn't show up.

  But I couldn't show up. I was too proud. Too stupid. Too male. Too addicted to my own self-righteous sense of grievance. Take your pick.

  My boss really let me have it that night in the kitchen. Lacey was Lacey, so it's not like she started screaming or yelling or throwing insults around. In a way that just made it worse. I'm actually better with being yelled at than having to deal with the whole 'disappointed mom' vibe. That's why I didn't show up for 2 weeks. Not because I was angry. Because I was ashamed. Because Lacey straight up called me out as brutally and precisely as I have ever been called out. She called out my wounded sense of male pride and my secret, irrational need to punish Hailey for my own failures and disappointments, for pain she wasn't at fault for.

  "You're a person who needs someone to blame," I remember her saying as we stood in the kitchen, surrounded by the paraphernalia of Christmas dinner. "I'm not judging you, Jackson. It's a trait a lot of us have, to some extent. But the thing is – she's not to blame, is she?"

  Lacey knew everything. All the juicy details of what went so wrong in Sweetgrass Ridge. She knew about Darcy's fateful ride to the wrong side of town and what she said to Hailey's mom. She knew Hailey tried to contact me multiple times before finally giving up when my old number was disconnected.

  "What must that have looked like?" Lacey pushed me. "I can understand you being angry if she just left – but she didn't do that. She tried to contact you – more than once, as she tells it. Is she lying?"

  "No," I replied quietly, shaking my head.

  "So where were you?!" Lacey demanded, not angry so much as animated with frustration. "Why didn't you take her calls? What happened?"

  "I threw my fucking phone into the river, OK?" I replied. "I – my dad and my brother got me drunk. I think they might have spiked my drink, because I never went on a bender like that before. I was out of commission for 4 days! And my must have erased all Hailey's messages while I was passed out. I thought she left me. I didn't have any idea she was pregnant! How would I know? I thought she left me to go to New York and be a famous artist and it made me feel like shit. So, yeah. I threw my phone into the Yellowhead River and drove to Los Angeles. That's it. That's what happened."

  Lacey quietly continued to portion out leftover stuffing and candied sweet potato, slices of turkey and heaping spoonfuls of cranberry sauce for her guests to take home.

  Just before I left, she looked up at me. "You know what it sounds like, Jackson? It sounds like neither of you is to blame for what happened. So maybe you need to think about the fact that you've been blaming her for months. How do you think it feels, to be blamed for something like that? Do you think it hurt her any less than it hurt you?"

  I retreated to the guest house a short time later with my sleeping son in my arms.

  Was she right? Was Lacey right?

  She was. Hailey was right, too. She was right all those months ago when she tried to tell me and I, too lost in my own anger, refused to listen. I used her as a scapegoat for my own pain.

  How could anyone ever have thought I was a good man? I wasn't. I was a monster.

  ***

  When I returned to Sea Vista Ranch after a sufficient period of moping, Lacey didn't fire me. Even though it must have screwed her over pretty bad not having me around to give the scheduled lessons or do my part of the heavy lifting that was one of the specific things I'd been hired for, she didn't fire me.

  "Hey Jackson," she said when I walked into the barn to get one the geldings saddled up for a lesson, as if it was just a normal day.

  "Hey."

  "Are you back?"

  I looked up. There was no judgment in my boss's eyes, no anger, no wish to punish. How did some people get like that – so forgiving, so full of empathy for the fuck-ups and freaks of the world? And why couldn't I seem to muster any of it – including for myself?

  I coughed. "Yeah. I'm back."

  Chapter 36: Hailey

  If I didn't know any better, I'd say someone chewed Jackson out. As much as I believed both of us would have preferred not to deal with each other, we had to – because we had Brody. After Christmas, when we had to talk in order to make arrangements and plans for visitation, Jackson seemed different. Quieter, almost subdued. Which was not like him at all. Not the Jackson I knew, anyway.

  He was still good with Brody, though. I'll give him that. He called when he said he was going to call, he arrived when he said he was going to arrive and he didn't complain (much) about having to pay for plane tickets or hotel rooms. A few times I was even half-tempted to invite him to stay with me and Lili, where he could have slept on the couch.

  But that way lay trouble – and I knew it too well to pretend I didn't. It didn't seem to matter what Jackson Devlin did or didn't do, I was beginning to think I was never going to get over the way standing close to him – hell, just overhearing his laugh on Skype when he was talking to Brody before bedtime – sent shivers of desire through my body.

  At Christmas, mere moments after discovering he'd told Lacey a highly biased account of what happened between us, he put his hand on me and I swear it was all I could do not to fall into his arms right then and there.

  I had to stay away from him. Physically, I mean. I couldn't be alone with him. I didn't trust myself. And I certainly wouldn't be able to respect myself if I let something happen again. Of course we had to see each other, because neither of us wanted Brody to suffer through one of those situations where his parents couldn't even be in the same room. But I made sure it was always in the daytime, and that I always had Lili or my mom or someone else with me.

  And surprisingly, it worked. Mostly. For awhile.

  Another solo show was scheduled for that summer, in London. So as ever, I used my unrelenting busyness to ignore the thi
ngs it was convenient to ignore. Which was mostly how goddamn lonely I was.

  You might think it would be impossible to be lonely with a beautiful, healthy child, a family that loved me and a thriving career. You would be wrong. Sometimes at night – especially the nights when Brody was with Jackson – I would cry myself to sleep like some kind of heartbroken schoolgirl.

  In the spring, when my days in the studio were starting to get hectic again as the London show loomed larger on the horizon, I asked my mother one night if she would move back to Montana if she could.

  At first she demurred, shaking her head and reassuring me that she liked New Jersey just fine. But I kept pushing, because I was going to make the people I loved happy, even if I ultimately couldn't do the same for myself.

  "It is a little flat here," she finally confessed. "Not that I mind. I just miss the mountains sometimes. I miss looking out the window and seeing them there, you know?"

  At once, I was transported back to the kitchen of our condo in Sweetgrass Ridge, the one with the window over the sink that, if you stood slightly to the left, allowed a brief glimpse of the Rockies in the distance. That window was never sealed properly. On the coldest days of the year the bitter winter wind would leak through the cracks and make whoever was washing the dishes – usually my mom – pull their sweater a little tighter around themselves.

  The memory was so immediate and so clear it took my breath away. It also revealed what I should have noticed long before – my mother was homesick.

  So was I.

  ***

  "You should relax," Candy commented one evening at the studio as she watched me running a damp cloth over a curve of raw clay again and again, turning the vessel this way and that to check that everything was as I wanted it. "You made it, you know. You're here. You're successful. And if I've learned anything it's that the most precious thing success allows us isn't fancy condos or travel but the opportunity to slow down."

  "Slow down?!" I laughed, dipping the cloth into a bucket of cloudy water at my feet and wringing it out. "The show is next month and look at me – this piece should have been fired last week! And who knows if that new glaze formula is even going to work with the clay. This is my first time showing ceramics, what if everyone hates –"

  "Hailey."

  "What?!"

  Candy pulled her chair a little closer and looked me in the eye. "What do you think is going to happen if you don't finish this piece?"

  "Well," I replied at once, "I'm going to have to go back to the previous one – the tall, slim one with the wider opening and the –"

  "No," she cut me off again and didn't break eye contact. "I mean what do you think is going to happen if you just don't finish this last piece – whichever piece it is?"

  I sat back in my chair and held the damp rag to my forehead – I was already covered in clay from head to foot, so it didn't matter if I added another layer.

  "I, uh – I don't know."

  Candy put a firm but kindly hand on my shoulder. "I'll tell you what would happen – nothing. Nothing at all. The show would go ahead with one less piece. No one would even notice. You're torturing yourself for literally nothing, and you should really stop. It's not healthy."

  She was right. It wasn't healthy. Even Brody noticed my mood, asking during dinner a few days before my talk with Candy if I was angry and then looking relieved when I reassured him that I wasn't, that I was just worried about my show.

  The cherry on the top of anxiety cake came that very night, in the form of a phone call from Jackson requesting a longer visit – in California, with Brody – when I was due to be in London.

  "What does he need to go to London for?" He asked when I balked. "Brody is 6 now. And you know you're going to be busy the whole time, anyway – he's going to spend most of his time with Lili. Or your mom. Is she going?"

  "No," I replied. "Just Lili. And he's old enough to appreciate London, Jackson. Don't underestimate him –"

  "Oh Jesus, Hailey. No one is underestimating anyone, OK? I'm just saying he loves it here – you know he does. It's summer, he doesn't have school. Do you honestly think he wouldn't rather be here than dragged around London with you and Lili?"

  Jackson was right. As irritated as that made me, it was true. Brody would rather be in California with his dad and the horses and his kindly 'aunt' Lacey than in London spending most of his time in the hotel or tagging along with me as I did press for the show.

  "Fine," I said. "Fine. He can go to California."

  "Really?" Jackson replied, and the surprise in his voice just annoyed me anew.

  Things were better with him since Christmas. He was a little nicer. Lacey said something to him, I knew that much. He still hadn't apologized, but I'd given up on that anyway. If slightly nice Jackson was the best I could get, I would take it.

  "Yes," I replied through lightly gritted teeth. "Really."

  ***

  A few weeks later, a car drove all 5 of us to JFK airport. My son, my mom and my aunt boarded a flight to Los Angeles and a few hours later me and Lili boarded ours, bound for London.

  "Fancy," my cousin whispered, grinning as we made our way to first class. The gallery in London offered to pay to fly me in style as part of the deal to do the show and I jumped at the opportunity to live, even briefly, like one of the people who bought my work.

  Trying our best not to look too impressed, like the Montana rubes we still were at heart, we settled into our adjoining luxurious pods. I dug around in my purse for a sweater and when I looked up again, Lili had popped her head over the barrier between us.

  "Hey, cuz!" She giggled. "Look at us with all the fancy people. Where is our champagne? I've developed a thirst!"

  I laughed and affected a world-weary air. "I'll never be able to fly economy again!"

  We went on like that for awhile, two young women from Sweetgrass Ridge, Montana trying on our fake rich lady personas.

  "This is actually a pain in the ass," Lili concluded just before take-off. "I can't even talk to you without kneeling on the seat and –"

  "You can sit closer to your friend if you wish," a flight attendant said, appearing as if out of nowhere and leaning into my pod to adjust a few things like magic until the desk area in front of me was transformed into a seat.

  Behind her, Lili's eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle an embarrassed laugh.

  "Oh," she said, as the flight attendant gestured to the seat. "Oh. Yeah. I'm – uh, sorry, this is my first time flying in, uh –"

  "It's no trouble at all!" Our pretty new friend reassured us without a single hint of condescension in her tone. "Everyone gets confused with these new convertible seats. Would you two ladies like anything when we're in the air? Champagne?"

  Soon enough, the plane was taxiing, it's engines revving until the high-pitched whine filled my ears.

  "Is that normal?" I asked Lili, struck suddenly by the idea that something sounded...different.

  "Is what normal?" She replied.

  "The engine. Does it sound weird to you?"

  "Uh," she paused, listening. "No?"

  I tried not to think about the engine as the plane accelerated down the runway. I really tried. But for some reason, I couldn't get it out of my head. A feeling of prickling heat came over me as I felt the aircraft leave the ground and begin its ascent into the clouds. I was very aware of the feeling of my heart beating in my chest. It seemed to be beating very fast – too fast.

  Fuck. What's happening?

  There was a strong urge to get out of my seat. I even reached down and put my fingers on the buckle of my seatbelt, actually contemplating undoing it and – and what? I didn't know. Going to sit with Lili, maybe. I just didn't feel right where I was.

  The plane shook a little when it entered the clouds and I closed my eyes and pressed my lips together.

  Just let it level out. Then you can have some champagne. It'll be fine.

  But it wasn't fine.

  "Are you
OK?" Lili asked, her voice floating over the barrier between our pods.

  But I couldn't answer. My mouth was weirdly dry, my throat tight.

  "Hailey? I can hear you breathing. Are you going to get sick?"

  I coughed and the cough turned into a weird, high-pitched hiccup kind of thing. "Yes," I replied as a wave of heat traveled down my body from the top of head to my feet and sweat began to bead on my forehead. "I mean – no. Not sick. I –"

  But as soon as I said I wasn't sick the urge to vomit came out of nowhere and I retched loudly.

  "Hailey!"

  I scrambled through the magazines and headphones and various bits and pieces in my pod, my fingers fumbling and weak, looking for the barf bag. Then I tore it open and held it under my mouth as I retched again. Nothing came up.

  "Hailey!"

  "I feel really bad, Lili. I'm scared. I think –"

  I gagged again and spit into the barf bag. What the hell was going on?

  I don't know how long I sat there, hunched over and terrified something was seriously wrong with me before the seatbelt sign went off. Lili came right over to my pod, her brow furrowed with concern.

  "Hey," she said, brushing my hair out of my face. "Did you get sick?"

  I shook my head. "No. But I don't feel well. I feel really weird. I'm actually kind of freaking out."

  "Are you having a panic attack?"

  Hearing the words 'panic attack' jolted me slightly back to reality. Was I having a panic attack? I'd never had one before, as far as I knew.

  "I don't know," I whispered, so scared I actually teared up. "I'm sweating so much right now! My heart is beating so fast."

  "Yeah," Lili said gently. "That sounds like a panic attack."

  There's really no worse place to discover you're having your first panic attack than at 35,000 feet. The urge to run away is so strong it's almost irresistible – but there's nowhere to run away to.

  So I just had to endure it. The flight attendants did their best, distracting me with jokes and snacks and tales about their most fearful flyers – told to reassure me, I think, that what I was experiencing was actually perfectly normal. Lili stayed with me in my pod for the whole flight, alternately rubbing my hand and guaranteeing me that everything was going to be fine.