by Dianne Drake
“I’ve been called worse.”
Propped casually against the porch rail, leaning back against it yet not sitting, arms folded across his chest, feet crossed at the ankles...he was stunning. Especially with the way the morning sun kindled golden highlights in his otherwise dark brown hair.
He had a hard, chiseled look to him, and contrasted with Emily’s softness, her pale skin and blonde hair, Deanna was sure the baby would be beautiful with the looks of either parent. Or both. “It’s a compliment. And you’re lucky to have him, Beau, stubborn or not.”
“Don’t know what I’d do without him,” he admitted. “My mom died when I was a baby, and my dad spent most of my formative years trying to forget he had a kid. So Brax was the one who got me through the rough patches, especially when I was on the verge of turning into a juvenile delinquent.”
“You were not!” she exclaimed.
“Worst kid in Sugar Creek. Ask anybody who remembers me. If there was trouble, I was either instigating it or in the middle of it.” He smiled fondly. “I can remember maybe five or six times when Brax had to go down to the jail to get me out. And I’m not talking a hardened teenager getting thrown into jail. First time for me I was ten. I’d set one of the Founders’ Day parade floats on fire.”
So the baby would probably come with some feistiness. That was good to know.
“And they arrested you even though you were only ten?”
“More like locked me up until the parade was over so I didn’t get into any more trouble. Then I got to wash Mr. Gentry’s front window—he owned the bakery—once a week for a year because it was his float I burned down.”
“And yet you didn’t learn your lesson, did you?”
“About fires, yes. Didn’t set another one. But there were other incidents. Mrs. Duncan’s favorite porch rocker mysteriously ending up in the top of a tree. Mr. Baxter’s car parked in Miss Monroe’s front yard one morning...he was the very married school principal, she was the very single kindergarten teacher who was having an affair with him. Little town scandal revealed because I’d learned how to hotwire a car. Oh, and all the fire hydrants on Main Street being painted pink one night. To name a few incidents.”
OK, so maybe feisty wasn’t quite the best way to describe it. Creative. Yes, he was creative. A very appealing trait she would most definitely have to direct in the baby. “You terrorized the poor little town, yet look at you smile.”
“I smiled then, too, until I got thrown into jail. Then it was all frowns and shaking because I knew what Brax would do when he came to get me out.”
“What?”
“Hard physical labor. Mending fences, cutting back the brush line. Back-breaking work for anybody, and almost impossible for someone young and scrawny, like I was.”
She had a hard time imagining him scrawny. “Yet you were a repeat offender.”
“That I was.”
“And if I were a psychologist, I’d say there was definitely a pattern there. Some kind of emotional process you were trying to work out.”
“If you were a psychologist, you’d probably be right. But you’re not. You’re the nurse who’s going to fix another of my problems.”
“Who’s going to try and fix another of your problems. No guarantees. I’ll do the best I can, but I’m dealing with two very stubborn men who, I guess, have a long history of inflexibility. Am I right?”
He pushed away from the porch rail and glanced down toward the stables. “Care for a morning ride?”
OK, so he may not have answered her question, but his lack of an answer spoke volumes. No, it shouted. But she liked challenges. And the father of the baby she was carrying was definitely going to present her with a huge challenge.
“Sounds lovely, but no. I’ve got to get back to my cabin. You’re not the only one who employs me, and I’ve got some calls to make.” But a ride around the ranch might have been nice had she ever been on a horse before or had she not been pregnant. “And if you want me to work a few hours in your clinic every day, I’ve got to get a jump on everything else when I can. But I appreciate the offer. Oh, and so you’ll know, I’ll take on some house calls with you. That actually sounds fascinating. But not on horseback.”
“I have an SUV, if that works for you? Or a truck, or my self-indulgent little sports car my grandfather calls an abomination to four wheels and a drive shaft. Take your pick.”
“An SUV is just fine. Or walking, if it’s not too far.”
“Whatever you wish. But the horse option is always open.”
What she wished for was a healthy baby. What she also wished for was getting to know the baby’s father. Simple things. At least, she hoped they were simple.
Suddenly, nothing seemed simple. Not one blessed thing in her life.
CHAPTER FOUR
IF HE DIDN’T stop staring up at her cabin, he wasn’t going to get anything done. Two of the horses still needed their morning workout, and there was a fence section out on the back forty he hadn’t gotten to and probably wouldn’t for a day or two. There was too much to do to kill time the way he’d been doing this morning.
Sure, it was all hands-on work he could have Joey or someone else do, but one of the reasons he liked being back here was that he got to flex different muscles. He’d done it when he’d been young, gotten himself all buff doing it. Then medical school and even during his short tenure as general surgeon in New York had changed all that. No more tough physical work. No more ripped muscles. He’d grown soft. Too soft, without the necessary hours to remedy the abdomen that was no longer a six-pack and the pecs that weren’t quite as firm.
It hadn’t mattered because he hadn’t cared. Being on the margin of well toned had been good enough. Now he wanted to be toned and perfect again, the way he’d been a decade ago. No reasons or excuses necessary, and he sure as hell wasn’t conceding the coincidence of Deanna’s arrival. It was simply time, that was all.
So, after years of relying on his brain rather than his brawn, he was being hit by this sudden urge to work himself back into shape, and this was where he could do that. But not if he kept standing here, staring up at her cabin.
“She’s not up there, if that’s what you’re looking for. I saw her in town when I came through a while ago.”
“I’m not looking for her,” Beau said, even though that’s exactly what he’d been doing. “Just...resting.” At eleven in the morning. Like Joey was going to believe that.
“Well, looking or not, she’s the prettiest woman I’ve seen around here in a long time. Sure glad the one you married the first time didn’t ruin you for something else in the future.” He glanced up the incline to the cabin and smiled. “Like the pretty little nurse you’re not hoping to see.”
Beau turned to face him. “Everybody knew Nancy was bad except me. Would have been nice if somebody had mentioned that to me before I married her.”
“No, sir. You were staring cross-eyed at her, and it’s not smart to come between a man and the woman he’s looking at that way.”
“Live and learn,” Beau muttered, anxious to get off the subject. He didn’t like talking about Nancy or thinking about her. “So let me get back to the horses. Onyx still needs a ride, so does Cashew, and I’m running out of time. I’ve got patients coming in early today.”
“You’re running out of time because you’ve been staring too long at her cabin.” Joey chuckled. “And didn’t she just leave here three hours ago?”
Beau dug deep for a comeback that would silence the man on the subject once and for all, but when nothing was forthcoming, Joey forged ahead. “Anyway, only because I think it’s time you do more than stare, I’ll exercise the horses and you can get yourself ready to see her when she comes to work later on. You know, get all primpy in front of the mirror...”
His chuckle turned into a belly laugh a
s he spun around and headed off in the opposite direction.
“I don’t primp,” Beau yelled after him.
“Neither do I,” Deanna said, entering the stable from the other direction. “Decided a long time ago that with me it’s the natural look or nothing.”
Beau spun around to face her. “You’re early.”
“Actually, you never specified an exact time. So I’m neither early nor late. But I got everything done I needed to this morning, ran to the store in town, and decided to come here instead of going back up to the cabin for another hour or so.”
Her gait was deliberately cautious and slow on the straw as she approached Beau. And so sexy he caught himself staring again.
“My first patient’s due in about an hour, but you can work the hours that are best for your schedule. I’m grateful, not picky.” His eyes darted to Joey, who popped back into the doorway behind Deanna, grinned, and gave him a thumbs-up. “But since you’re here, I think it would be a good time to get yourself familiar with our medical set-up.”
“Just point me to your fleams and blood-letting cups,” she teased, referring to antique medical devices.
“We’re a century or so past that,” he said, laughing as he pulled a handful of sugar from his pocket then walking over to Nell’s stall, where the heavily pregnant horse stretched her neck out to take it from his hand. “But sometimes I don’t think so.”
“Ah, that would be your attempt to sway me? Or, at least, prejudice me? And without the offer of future breakfasts?”
“How about the offer of dinner after our last house call this evening? Would that work for you?”
“We have a house call?”
“Five, if you want to go with me.”
“I’ll go, but not by horse. Remember?”
She walked up to Nell and stroked her muzzle, and moved in closer when she discovered the mare was as gentle as a kitten. Which put her in almost intimate proximity to Beau. He could smell her shampooed hair, feel the heat her body radiated. She was oblivious, standing there, making up to Nell. But he wasn’t oblivious. In fact, he was so aware of her every nuance he had to take a step back. “Not by horse,” he managed to say, hoping his voice didn’t sound too adolescently squeaky.
“They’re beautiful animals, though,” she said, holding out her hand to him for some lumps of sugar. “I’ve always liked horses...in literature and movies. Never ridden one, being the city girl that I am, but I always thought I might like to learn someday. So, if I feed her this sugar she won’t bite my hand, will she?”
He surrendered the sugar carefully, dropping each of the four lumps precisely, one by one, into her open palm so he didn’t come into too much contact with her. “She’s the soul of gentleness. Probably the sweetest horse I’ve ever known.”
“And you’ve been around horses all your life, right?” Her first attempt to open her hand to Nell was met with skittishness, not by Nell but by Deanna, who pulled back before Nell could take the sugar. “Sorry, I’m a little nervous. This is as close as I’ve ever been to an animal this large. Will you show me how?”
He did. Placed four lumps in his own hand and gave the sugar to Nell, hand open and palm up. “It’s easy,” he said, handing another couple of cubes to Deanna. “Just relax and let Nell do the work.”
Deanna smiled self-consciously, but still wasn’t able to bring her hand all the way over to the mare’s reach, so Beau took hold of her hand and guided it to the horse. And held it as the horse very gently lifted her lips and took the sugar lumps.
“That’s amazing,” she whispered, as the last of the sugar disappeared from her hand. “I can see why you love them.”
“First time I was on horse was with Brax,” he said, slowly pulling his hand away from hers, glad to break the contact. “I was three, I think. Probably too young for most contemporary parental thinking, but he took care of me. Put me up on the saddle with him, and we only went around the yard. Didn’t get past the driveway. But I felt so...free. And invincible, like I could do anything.
“Of course, Brax inspired that confidence in me as much as the horse did. But I was having a rough life and I think that’s the first time I ever truly understood that things would work out for me, no matter what was scaring me, because my grandfather would take care of me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping the horse slobber from her hand on a rag Beau had handed her. “It’s a rough way to grow up, but you were lucky in ways so many kids aren’t. I’ve seen them abandoned, left to fend for themselves, raise younger siblings, go to work when they’re supposed to be going to school. I think we take a roof over our heads and a meal on our tables for granted too often.”
“True colors,” Beau commented, stepping away from Nell’s stable, satisfied she wouldn’t foal in the next twenty-four hours and anxious to get away from the spell Deanna was casting over him. And she wasn’t even trying, unlike Nancy, who’d come at him with every flirtatious trick in the book. But Deanna was so...so unassuming, so unaware of what her closeness could do to a man.
“I’m sorry?”
“Brax always taught me that a person’s true colors reflected the deep-down self that comes out naturally, when they’re not trying to impress or intimidate someone. Your true colors are nice. Very compassionate.”
“I didn’t have parents either. They were killed when I was five, and my aunt and uncle took me in and gave me that roof and food. So I was lucky, like you were with Brax, but Brax wanted you, whereas my aunt and uncle didn’t want me.
“I was an obligation for them to fulfill and I think that’s where my true colors, as you call them, came from—from my need to fix situations that others can’t, or don’t want to, fix. Growing up, my situation was never truly fixed. Anyway, why don’t you finish up what you’re doing here, and I’ll go wash my hands then take a look at your office, see what’s there, and check out what I’m going to be dealing with?”
“It’s the white building out at the side of the house. Two exam rooms, one room for emergencies, and one for minor procedures. Waiting room, small office and a supply room. It was the original house here, and Brax turned it into his clinic when he built the house he’s in now...for my grandmother. She refused to live in the place where he worked.”
He fished a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Deanna. “Make yourself at home. Today’s schedule is on the computer...my addition to the practice because Brax prefers keeping everything on paper. Password to log on is Alexander.”
“Trying to sway me again?” she teased.
“Maybe a little.”
“Well, between us, I prefer the computer to pen and paper, so that’s a point in your favor.”
With that, she exited. Didn’t look back. Didn’t even hesitate like she wanted to look back. Just kept walking. Deliberately. Confidently.
“There something to be said for a filly that’s reserved, the way she is,” Joey said, coming out of the stable office.
“I thought you were exercising the horses.”
“Can’t do that without a horse, and I didn’t want to interrupt you to walk through the stalls, so I...”
Beau waved him off before he could finish, then spun around and strode out the door. Truth was, Joey was hitting close to home with his comments. Too close, and it was getting to Beau in ways it shouldn’t. “Not going near it,” he muttered with iron resolve as he headed for the house. “Nope, not going near it.” Then he caught sight of Deanna entering the clinic and stopped and simply stared again. “Not going near it,” he muttered again, but this time the resolve wasn’t quite there.
* * *
So far, the afternoon was going well. Easy work, all things considered, even though she was feeling the effects of it in her lower back. It had been a long time since she’d done any kind of consistent physical nursing duty and, so far, she w
as loving it. Three patients had already passed through the exam room she’d commandeered for herself—simple cases but rewarding.
And she’d assisted Beau with one sweet little lady, aged eighty, who traditionally should have been home knitting or baking cookies but who’d inhaled a few too many paint fumes, turning her kitchen from pale blue to sunny yellow. She was fine, a little light-headed, which was what had brought her to the clinic, and together Deanna and Beau had given her a complete exam, just to be on the safe side. Deanna had an idea that Mrs. Eloise Hightower probably marched right back home afterwards to finish her decorating and sniff more paint.
“Doing OK?” Beau asked, passing Deanna in the hall.
“Actually, I’m enjoying this. Is the pace always this laid back?”
He chuckled. “This is a vacation. I’ve had days where they’re lined up outside. And I’ve just taken on another house call this evening.”
“But not on horseback, right? Because expecting me to do anything more with a horse than give it sugar lumps will subtract countless points from your side.” A sly smile crossed her lips. “Keep that in mind, Doctor.”
“I am, which is why we’re going by SUV, like I promised. Don’t want to evoke the wrath of the medical-practice arbiter, do I?”
“No wrath in me,” she said as she disappeared into the supply closet to fetch forceps and all the other necessities required to extract one very large splinter from one little toe. “At least, not yet,” she called over her shoulder, then laid her hand across her belly.
“He wants to get me...which would be us...up on a horse. Which I’m not going to do because, well, you know the reasons. But you should probably also be aware that your daddy’s a little bit of a cowboy. Very handsome, too, in the rugged cowboy sense. He’s not ready to admit what he wants though, and stand by it, because it conflicts with everything he’s planned for himself. I think we all face that at one time or another, don’t we?”
Deanna assessed for a baby bump, a little disappointed she wasn’t feeling it yet, although she did feel life, and a deep sense of contentment. “You’re not what I had planned either, but I’m happy.” Happier now that she had a better sense of Beau. She liked him and, truthfully, she could go home tomorrow assured that this baby had the best coming from both parents.
