The Rancher and the Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

  And they had one more thing in common: both of them were going to die here if he didn’t reach them in time.

  * * *

  HER ARMS WERE getting really, really heavy, but she knew that if she gave in to the feeling, gave in to the very thought of how exhausted she felt, both she and most likely this baby were not going to live to see another sunrise.

  Hell, they weren’t going to live to see another half hour if she didn’t find a way to save them.

  Her lungs aching so much that they hurt, she still somehow managed to tap into an extra burst of energy. She stretched out her arms as far as they would go with each stroke, and she finally managed to get close enough to the baby to just glide her fingertips along the lip of the tub.

  C’mon, just a little farther, just a little farther, she frantically urged herself.

  “Gotcha!” Cassidy cried in almost giddy triumph, her fingertips securing just the very rim of the tub. Her heart pounding madly, she pulled the tub to her. “I’ve got you, baby,” she all but sobbed. “I’ve got you!”

  The problem was, she’d used up all of her energy, and, while she’d finally, finally managed to reach the baby, both she and it were still in the middle of the rushing water.

  The situation didn’t exactly look hopeful.

  And then Cassidy felt something snaking around her waist and holding her fast as it grabbed her from behind. Exhausted beyond belief, unable to turn to see what had caught her, Cassidy still frantically cast about for some way to free herself and the baby before whatever it was that was holding her dragged them down to the bottom of this newly formed river.

  With no weapon within reach, Cassidy frantically pulled back her arm and struck hard at whatever was holding on to her with her elbow. Her only hope was to use the element of surprise to drive off whatever creature had ensnared her.

  “Ow! Damn it, Cassidy, I should have my head examined for not letting you drown instead of trying to save you,” the deep voice behind her grumbled.

  She could feel the words as they rumbled out because the man behind her had such a tight hold on her; his chest was pressed up against her back closer than the label on a jar of jam.

  “Laredo?” she cried, absolutely astonished even as she struggled to keep the very last ounce of energy from seeping out of her body. Confusion vibrated through her. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

  “I thought that was rather obvious,” he bit off coldly, both his breath and his words grazing the back of her head. “I’m trying to save you from drowning in this damn flash flood.” Before she could offer any sort of a protest, he turned the tables on her. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  She had a death grip on the baby’s tub, which in turn kept the baby from being swept away by the river. “What does it look like I’m doing?” she challenged angrily.

  “Proving me wrong,” he answered, still keeping one arm firmly secured around her torso as he continued to slowly, powerfully, make his way back to the bank.

  “Okay, I’m waiting,” Cassidy retorted weakly, mentally bracing herself.

  Whatever was coming was not going to be flattering. She knew him too well to expect anything else. She also knew him well enough to know he was bound to save her because of the same ingrained sense of honor they all shared.

  “Why are you wrong?” she gasped when he didn’t say anything.

  “Because you can still find new ways to mess up, just when I thought you’d exhausted all the available possibilities.”

  Anger appeared out of nowhere, giving her an unexpected surge of energy. She knew it wouldn’t last, so she talked quickly.

  “There was a baby in the river. What was I supposed to do?” she demanded weakly. “Wave at it?”

  “No, but drowning with it wasn’t exactly going to help anything,” Will snapped as he finally managed to reach the riverbank with both of them in tow.

  The baby was still crying. It was loud enough to almost drown out the sound of their voices.

  “I wasn’t drowning,” she informed him.

  She meant to snap the answer at him, but all she could manage was an indignant gasp. Her last surge of energy was all but gone. But he had a way of making her so angry, she still felt compelled to argue.

  “I had everything under control. I didn’t need your help.”

  Exhausted himself from fighting against the current, Will fell back against the bank. It was still raining, but at this point, he was hardly aware of it.

  “Right.” The single word mocked her.

  She would have peppered him with biting rhetoric if she only had the energy. As it was, taking in a full breath was about all she could manage. She couldn’t remember ever being this exhausted.

  The moment she had at least an ounce of extra energy to spare, she would direct it toward the baby whose cries had turned into subdued whimpers—and that, in reality, worried her more than the cries did.

  So, for the moment, all she could say in response to Will as they both lay on the bank, getting wetter and silently grateful that neither one of them would become a statistic today in this latest battle with Mother Nature, was, “Thanks for the thought, though.”

  “Any time,” he murmured.

  In the distance, as the rain began to swiftly retreat, he could have sworn that he heard a horse whinnying.

  Or maybe it was a colt.

  His mouth curved ever so slightly.

  Britches was safe after all.

  Chapter Three

  Cassidy hated to admit it, even if it was just to herself, but there was no getting away from it. Laredo had a great smile that warmed up a cold room and could easily set even the coolest heart on fire, at least momentarily. It was exactly for this reason why she would never even allow him to suspect that she felt this way.

  Ever since she could remember, Will Laredo attracted the female of the species as if they were thirsty jackrabbits and he was the only watering hole for more than two hundred miles. Cody and Cole—and even Connor on occasion—seemed to think that was one of Laredo’s attributes. She, on the other hand, viewed it in an entirely different light.

  It just gave the man an even bigger head than he already had.

  When she saw the corner of his mouth curve just now as they both lay on the bank, gasping for breath, all these other thoughts came crowding into her head. Like how this resembled the aftermath of a marathon lovemaking session with the two of them lying so close together, breathless and grateful.

  She was delirious, she angrily upbraided herself.

  Cassidy squelched her thoughts. She was exhausted and consequently—although she would have rather died right here on the spot than admit it—vulnerable. This was definitely not the time to have thoughts like that marching through her brain.

  People did stupid things when they felt vulnerable—even her. Stupid things that would go on to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

  Well, not her.

  “What are you smiling about?” she demanded breathlessly, expecting him to say something about getting to play the superhero to her damsel in distress—or something equally irritating.

  She braced herself to lash out and put him in his place.

  But Laredo surprised her by saying, “Britches made it.”

  Britches? Her eyes narrowed into probing slits. Right now, the baby they had saved was quiet, and she was beyond grateful for that.

  Was Laredo referring to the baby?

  “Is that some kind of a nickname?” she challenged.

  Was this yet another way to talk down to her? Even so, she had to admit that she was glad Laredo had showed up when he did. Despite her defensive words to the contrary, she really wasn’t 100 percent convinced that she would have been able to make it back to the bank with the baby without Laredo’s he
lp.

  But if she even hinted at that, he would never let her live it down.

  “No, it’s a name,” Will told her mildly, “for my colt.”

  “Your colt?” she repeated.

  Was he talking about his father’s old gun? As she recalled, Jake Laredo had kept an old Colt .45 that he claimed had belonged to his great-great-grandfather, handed down to him by Stephen Austin, the man who’d founded the Texas Rangers. There was more to the story, but she’d always pretended to be disinterested whenever he mentioned it. In her opinion, Laredo’s head was big enough. She didn’t need to add to it by acting as if she cared about anything he had to say.

  “A colt’s a male horse under the age of four,” he told her patiently.

  Some of her energy had to be returning because she could feel her back going up. Heroic endeavors or not, Laredo was talking down to her again, Cassidy thought, annoyed.

  “I know what a colt is,” she snapped, or thought she did. Afraid of scaring the baby again, she lowered her voice. “I just didn’t know you had one.”

  “It’s a horse ranch,” he reminded her, referring to the property that his father had left to him—something she was aware of since she was in Olivia Santiago’s office when he’d been called in and told about his father’s will. The fact that his father had left it to him had rendered Will speechless. She’d almost felt sorry for him—almost. “What else am I going to have?”

  “Debts.”

  The answer came out before Cassidy could censor herself. It was Laredo’s fault. He had that sort of effect on her. The next moment, remorse set in. He was the bane of her existence, but he didn’t deserve that.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “Sure you did.” Instead of being annoyed, he let her words pass. “Because it’s true,” he admitted matter-of-factly.

  Everyone in town knew that his father had had money troubles. They’d only gotten worse over time. There was no reason to believe that anything had changed just before he died. Jake Laredo had sought refuge in the bottom of a bottle, drinking to the point of numbness, after which he’d pass out. Subsequently, the ranch had fallen into disrepair and ruin. When he’d gotten the letter from Olivia about his father’s death, he’d returned only to put the old man into the ground. He’d been surprised that the ranch was still standing and that there were a couple of horses—rather emaciated at that—still in the stable.

  Will saw it as a challenge.

  “It’s probably why he left the place to me,” Will was saying, more to himself than to her. “It was his final way of sticking it to me.”

  Still lying on the bank, Cassidy turned her head toward him. She decided it had to be what she’d just gone through. The experience had to have rattled her brain to some degree because she was actually feeling sorry for Laredo—a little, she quickly qualified. But the feeling was there nonetheless.

  “Someone else would just walk away,” she pointed out to him.

  “Someone else isn’t me,” he told Cassidy. “Besides, I can’t walk away. If I did, that old man would have the last laugh.”

  The last laugh would have meant that he couldn’t do the honorable thing, couldn’t pay off his father’s debts, couldn’t make a go of the ranch. In effect, it would have made him no better than Jake Laredo had been. Or at least that was the way Will saw it.

  “I don’t think he’s laughing much where he is now,” Cassidy said quietly.

  Meaning hell, Will thought. He almost laughed at that but checked himself in time. “Well, I see you haven’t lost it.”

  Her eyebrows drew together in a puzzled look. She was actually trying to be nice to the man. Served her right. What the hell was he talking about?

  “Lost what?” she asked.

  “That knack of saying the first thing that comes into your head without filtering it,” he told her.

  Cassidy had to admit that she felt more comfortable sparring with the cocky so-and-so, receiving stinging barbs and giving back in kind.

  She could feel the adrenaline starting to rush through her veins again. She was definitely coming around, Cassidy thought.

  “Hey,” she cried, bolting upright as the realization suddenly hit her. “It’s stopped raining.”

  “And that baby’s stopped crying,” Will added. “It’s like Nature’s taking a break.”

  The moment he said it, Cassidy’s head snapped back around. What had struck her subconsciously now hit her head-on. Laredo was right; the baby in the tub was no longer crying.

  Was that because...?

  Her heart froze as she looked down at the infant in the tub again. And then she exhaled the breath she’d just sucked in and held a second ago.

  Wonder of wonders, the baby was sleeping. For a moment, she’d thought the worst.

  “I guess all that crying took everything out of him—or her,” Cassidy added as an afterthought.

  “Him or her? You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl?” he asked her incredulously.

  Rather than answer him directly, she said, “Well, it was crying so hard I couldn’t think, so it’s probably a male,” she speculated.

  He was trying to nail Cassidy down, something that had never been easy to do. “Then you’ve never seen this baby before?” he questioned.

  “Well, I haven’t been to the new-baby store recently, so no, I’ve never seen this baby before. Not until I saw it floating by in that flash flood that used to be a creek,” Cassidy added.

  Laredo looked at her skeptically, which indicated that he didn’t believe her. But then, she supposed that just this once she couldn’t really fault him. If she were in his place, she wouldn’t have believed him, either.

  “No, seriously, I’ve never seen this baby before.” She looked at the sleeping infant and shook her head. The whole thing seemed almost macabre as well as incredible. “Who sticks a baby into a plastic tub?” she asked.

  “Someone trying to save its life would be my guess,” Will said, speculating. “Maybe it was someone who’s new to the area. They were driving through and got caught up in the flash flood—this could have been their last-ditch attempt to save the baby.”

  She had a question for him. “Who drives around with a plastic tub in their car?”

  “Someone who had no place to live,” he guessed. The expression on her face told him that she thought he was stretching it. “Hey, I don’t have all the answers, but it’s a possibility.”

  “It’s also a possibility that the kid’s mother or father is looking for him or her right at this very minute,” Cassidy said, thinking how she would feel in that person’s place.

  Scared out of her mind.

  The baby began to stir. Any second it was going to wake up and start crying again, she thought, looking at the infant intently.

  And then it was no longer a speculation.

  The baby they had rescued was awake again. The next moment, it began to cry.

  Will recalled something he’d overheard a young mother saying. “At this age, they only cry for a reason. It’s either hungry or wet,” he told her, getting up.

  “Or maybe it just doesn’t like being crammed in a little plastic tub.” Speculation aside, she lifted the infant out of the confining tub. And as she did so, she also quickly drew back a section of the diaper and took a peek. “He’s also wet,” she pronounced, although that could have been the result of being caught up in the flood.

  “He?” Will echoed as he stood up.

  “He,” Cassidy repeated. “It’s a boy.” Holding the baby to her chest, she started to get up only to have Will reach down for the infant. She tightened her hold. “What are you doing?”

  “You don’t want to risk falling over with the baby as you get up,” he told her as if it was a common occurrence for her. “I’m a
lready up.”

  “Good for you,” Cassidy commented sarcastically. Grudgingly she let Will take the baby, then popped up right beside him and reached to take the child back.

  But Will didn’t release him. “What are you planning on doing?” he asked.

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to have a tug-of-war with this child if that’s what you’re thinking.” It came out like an accusation.

  Will didn’t rise to the bait. “No, what I’m thinking is that this baby needs to be seen by one of the doctors at the clinic.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

  Okay, Cassidy allowed, so maybe Laredo was capable of having a decent thought once in a blue moon. But she wasn’t about to let him think that he’d gotten the jump on her.

  “That’s just where I’m taking him,” she informed Will coolly.

  But he wasn’t budging.

  Now what? she thought, exasperated.

  “You planning on tossing him in the back of the truck?” Will asked.

  Her eyebrows drew together like light blond thunderbolts, aimed right for his heart. “Of course not,” she snapped.

  He continued to hold on to the infant protectively. The baby was beginning to fuss. But Will’s attention was focused on the woman who stood in his way. “Okay, then what?”

  “Um—”

  To Cassidy’s surprise, he relinquished his hold on the infant, who was now beginning to cry. “C’mon, you hold the baby, I’ll drive.”

  It really irked her when he took the lead this way, as if he was in control of everything, including her. “I don’t need you to drive us.”

  Standing right in front of her, Will drew himself up to his full height. Although Cassidy would have never admitted it out loud, he did make a formidable obstacle.

  “You planning on holding him in one arm while driving with the other hand?” he asked, then challenged, “On these roads?”