Her Baby and Her Beau

by Victoria Pade

  “Who runs your ranch in Northbridge now—I know,” Kyla said.

  “I didn’t know you’d gone back there.”

  Kyla shrugged. She didn’t owe him any explanations. He didn’t deserve any.

  “Do you know my brother?” Beau asked.

  “Only by name. We’ve never been introduced and if he knows who I am—”

  “He doesn’t. I told you, I never said anything to anyone, so there’s no way—”

  Kyla wasn’t up to arguing this now, so she merely cut him off to say, “No, we don’t know each other. But Northbridge is Northbridge—everybody at least knows of everyone else.” And the belief she’d had for as long as she’d been living in Northbridge that his brother was just pretending not to know who she was held fast.

  “That’s what Seth said—that he knew of you. But after GiGi called him he asked around, talked to someone who I guess is your roommate—”

  “Darla.”

  “She confirmed that you came to Denver to visit family, that you were in a fire, and she said that the only survivors were you and a baby who’s—”

  “My cousin’s daughter—Immy. My godchild.”

  “Who’s now yours to raise?”

  “Rachel and her husband, Eddie, named me as Immy’s guardian in their will.” They’d told her that. She’d taken it only as another honorary position, not thinking for even a minute that the need to actually become Immy’s guardian would ever come about.

  “And there’s a business.” He glanced around them. “These truck stops that you’ll need to run until the child grows up and takes over?”

  “Three of them, I’ve been told,” Kyla said.

  “Your roommate said you don’t know anybody else in Denver.”

  “Eddie’s secretary has done a few things for me and she contacted his attorney who came to the hospital, but no, I don’t really know anyone...”

  “And you’re hurt...” He looked her up and down again.

  “Not as badly as I could have been,” she said.

  “But still...how are you taking care of a baby with that?” He nodded at her wrist. “Your fingers are sausages—that can’t feel good.”

  It actually hurt tremendously whenever she had to use any part of her wrist, hand or fingers to do anything with Immy. But she didn’t need or want his sympathy, so all she said was, “I manage.”

  “Here?” he asked, with another glance around that took in the motel and the rest of the truck stop. “On your own?”

  He was stating the obvious, so she didn’t respond to it.

  “Seth said you aren’t married, your roommate told him you aren’t involved with anyone and don’t have any family to come up here to lend a hand—”

  “My parents died seven years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. And I guess the school year just started in Northbridge, so your roommate has to be there and can’t come, either—”

  “I teach kindergarten. Darla teaches fifth grade. They got a sub for me, but yes, classes started last Thursday and Darla can’t be gone, too.”

  “So here I am,” he concluded. “And I want to help.”

  He was not going to be her knight in shining armor, if that’s what he thought.

  “I don’t know how you could,” she said flatly.

  “For starters, this is no place for you and a baby to be staying, let alone recuperating. I have a house—a big house—that’s more comfortable, not to mention much quieter than this.” He nodded toward the sounds emanating from the bustling travel center. “You can have your own room with a private bathroom, and there’s another room that the baby can go into. I don’t know squat about taking care of a baby—”

  “Join the club,” Kyla said under her breath.

  “—but I’m more able-bodied than you are right now, so I can lend a hand with...what’s the baby’s name? I know you said it, but—”

  “Immogene—but her mom and dad call...called...her Immy.” Kyla fought a fresh wave of grief at the thought that that was past tense.

  “I can lend a hand with Immy,” Beau went on, “and you can rest and let me help you get back on your feet. Camden Superstores can provide both of you with everything you need to start over—”

  “Darla is just waiting for me to give her an address and she’s sending my own things to replace what I lost,” Kyla informed.

  “Still, I’m sure there are a few things you could use to tide you over, and I’ll get the baby outfitted with whatever it is babies need. Then, if you’re open to it, when you’re better, I can also maybe give you some help with the business side of things, overseeing these truck stops. My own family was left in a situation not too different than this—Camden Incorporated had to be run for a while by people other than Camdens after H.J. died and before the rest of us were old enough to take it on. If you need help with that—maybe you don’t...”

  A weak, wry, overwhelmed laugh shot out of Kyla and from her muddled emotions came a blurted confession. “I know what to do with five-year-olds, not with babies. I don’t know anything about being a single parent. And when it comes to business...I was raised by people who rarely had two dimes to rub together, and if they did, they squandered them. I definitely don’t know the first thing about running any business. And now I have what I’m told is a huge one on my hands. I think Immy might already hate me, and if I’m as bad with finances as my parents were, I could ruin everything Rachel and Eddie left her before she’s old enough to read, much less take over for herself—”

  “So you do need help.”

  “I don’t know what I need,” Kyla lamented, fighting the breakdown that she felt on the verge of. But whatever she needed, it couldn’t be Beau Camden.

  And yet Beau Camden was the only one standing there, offering.

  Damn it all, anyway...

  Kyla blinked back tears that threatened again, though she couldn’t help slumping slightly against the SUV’s grille.

  “We’ll just take it one step at a time,” Beau said in a consoling and less stilted voice. “And I’ll be there with you the whole way.”

  It was what he should have said to her fourteen years ago.

  And hearing it, Kyla felt the anger and hurt and confusion she’d felt then, surprised that after all this time and even under the current circumstances the feelings could be as strong as they were.

  “Please,” he said into her negative thoughts, once more as if he could read them. “Let me do this for you now and we’ll sort through the past later.”

  It went against everything in Kyla to accept help from anyone. Ever.

  And if she were on her own there was no way she would accept anything from him.

  But she had Immy.

  And she really was alone in Denver.

  Eddie’s secretary had been kind, but she was new to the job, barely nineteen, and she already had her hands full dealing with the chaos at the office.

  One of the volunteers at the hospital was also a volunteer with the Red Cross and had come to see her. But once the volunteer found out there were resources available to her and Immy through the truck stops Immy now owned, that was the last of the volunteer or the Red Cross.

  Eddie’s estate attorney had come to the hospital to talk to her and he’d let her know that even though Eddie and Rachel’s wills needed to go through probate, he could likely persuade a judge to release funds from the estate for the care and well-being of Immy, as well as for Kyla as Immy’s guardian. To tide them over until he accomplished that, he’d advanced her three hundred dollars from his own pocket.

  He’d also contacted the truck stop and arranged for their motel room, and for the convenience store and the diner to run tabs for whatever food she ordered and whatever she could use out of the convenience store.

  But from there he’d said only that he’d be in touch.

  The diner food was salty, greasy and very heavy, but more problematically, the one choice of baby formula from the convenience store wasn’t the organic s
tuff Immy was used to. Kyla thought it was possible that the newborn didn’t like it and so was refusing to eat. That potentially had contributed to the problems this evening and could ultimately lead to Immy feeling sick or having digestive ailments.

  Kyla’s driver’s license and credit cards were lost in the fire, so she couldn’t rent or drive a car to go outside the truck stop, and she had no idea if taxis were equipped with child car seats to allow her to attempt to get anywhere else.

  Plus she didn’t even know where she was or where to go from here to try to find Immy the formula Rachel had used.

  And besides all of that, Kyla was well aware that she was not only inexperienced and inept with Immy, she also wasn’t physically up to caring for the baby altogether on her own. She’d overestimated the strength of her sprained wrist the first time she’d had to lift Immy and nearly dropped her. And even though she was more careful now, using her wrist and hand was still painful and they were very weak.

  So while Kyla was inclined to hold her chin high and refuse even an iota of help from Beau, for Immy’s sake she didn’t think she could look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Even if that gift horse was the same person who had left her pregnant and alone with that problem once upon a time.

  Still, it meant going to stay at his house. With him...

  “Do you have a wife or someone I’d be imposing on?” she asked when that suddenly occurred to her. And made her feel yet another thing she didn’t want to feel—a twinge of jealousy.

  “No wife. No girlfriend. It’s just me,” he assured her. “And it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

  “Immy cries and needs to be fed in the middle of the night. And tonight she just cried for a long time for no reason I could figure out,” she warned.

  “I’ve been through worse,” he said with a hint of the smile she’d never forgotten, a smile that had haunted her. “So what do you say?”

  It was galling not to be able to tell him off the way she had in her head many, many times over the years.

  But she had to think of Immy. To put her first. And she knew that Immy would be better off if there were two of them to care for her—even two people who didn’t know what they were doing seemed better than one, one who was struggling with injuries to boot. And Beau had the use of both hands and a car, so he could go out and find the formula Immy was accustomed to. Plus if they went to his home Immy wouldn’t be breathing air polluted with exhaust fumes.

  So the bottom line was that Beau’s offer was one she just couldn’t refuse, Kyla decided. For Immy’s sake, if not for her own.

  But even as she came to that decision she vowed that the minute—the exact second—she could pack up Immy and handle everything on her own, she’d leave Beau Camden in her dust. Not unlike the way he’d left her.

  “Okay,” she conceded ungraciously. “But as soon as I get some things in order, we’ll be out of your hair.”

  All he said to that was, “There’s a Camden Superstore down the street—I can go there now and get a car seat and whatever else we need and come back—”

  The thought of disturbing Immy sent renewed panic through Kyla. “No, not tonight!” she said in a hurry. “You don’t know what it took to get Immy to sleep. Tomorrow—we can move tomorrow.”

  “How about I stay here tonight, then?”

  In her room? With her? What was this guy thinking?

  Then he said, “The rooms on either side of yours look empty. I can check into one of those, probably hear the baby if she wakes up...”

  There would be someone else to see to the baby if the crying started again and wouldn’t stop.

  It was tempting.

  But Kyla shook her head, her independent streak somehow demanding that she draw at least that line. “We’ll be all right for tonight,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “But Immy does have to have a car seat—Eddie’s secretary borrowed one to pick us up from the hospital.”

  “I’ll have one by the time I get here—and I’ll get here any time you say tomorrow morning. But you’re sure you’ll be all right tonight?”

  She wasn’t.

  But she also wasn’t willing to let him see that. “I’ll be fine,” she said, hoping she was wrong about Immy not liking the formula she had for her—or at least that the baby would put up with it for now.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  “I ordered something from the diner. Most of it is still left, if I get hungry.”

  He nodded and as she watched him do that she thought, Geez, he’s good-looking...

  Then she realized what had gone through her mind and she pushed it out of her head.

  “I suppose I should let you go in and get some rest,” Beau said then.

  Kyla stood, trying not to flinch as she did, and faced him as he took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “My cell phone number is on this. If you need anything—anything—just call.”

  Again, words that were fourteen years too late.

  Kyla accepted the card without comment.

  “So I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure that was the right course. “What time?”

  “Nine maybe...” she suggested aloofly and with no real knowledge of how that would work for Immy. Then she moved to the motel room door again.

  “I really—really—am sorry, Kyla,” Beau said quietly to her back.

  Too little, too late, she thought. But all she said was, “Tomorrow,” before she went into her room, closing the door on him.

  And wondering what incredible twist of fate had put her in the position she was in.

  To be rescued by Beau Camden of all people.

  Chapter Two

  Beau spent the remainder of Tuesday evening on the phone from home causing trouble for several Camden Superstore departments and employees. When he was done, he’d arranged to have his currently unfurnished guest room and a nursery fully outfitted by the time he transported his new charges to his house.

  He’d decided it all needed to get underway at zero-five-hundred and to be finished by zero-eight-hundred tomorrow morning.

  “Yes, that means the first truck is to be here at five a.m. and the whole job has to be done by eight a.m.,” he’d had to explain to more than one person who had acted as if he was out of his mind to believe what he wanted was possible.

  But he hadn’t brought his men and himself through three deployments to the Middle East by leaving room for error and he wasn’t going to start now. This time, unlike the way it had been since he’d been discharged, the civilian world was going to have to adjust to him rather than the other way around.

  Since going to the den with GiGi that afternoon and learning what he’d learned, he’d been on Marine autopilot. Show no emotion. Stoic composure at all costs. Do whatever it took to get the job done and make sure everyone under his command knew the same thing applied to them.

  As one of the ten owners and board members of Camden Incorporated, everyone who worked for Camden Superstores was basically under his command. It was something he’d verified with Cade before taking action.

  By then word had already circulated within the family about what was going on with him, so he hadn’t had to explain anything. Instead Cade had reminded him that everything the family owned and everyone they employed were at his disposal. Cade had told him to do whatever was required, and had given him the names and numbers of the people to contact.

  “Anything you need, however many people you need to get it done,” he’d been told. “We’re all still spinning over this one involving you...I’m sorry, man...”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Beau had said emotionlessly before going on to take charge.

  He doubted his inflexibility had made him any friends among Camden Superstores employees tonight. Because tonight he’d pulled rank and his orders weren’t going to be easy to follow.

  Not that he cared. This was top priority, even if decorators didn’t ordinarily arrive at their offices un
til nine or work so fast, even if items weren’t usually delivered and set up before ten. Tomorrow it all would be. At least here it would.

  But as Tuesday ticked into Wednesday there was no more he could do. He was finally off duty. At home. Alone.

  He’d poured himself a short Scotch when he’d returned from that truck stop tonight and come into the den to get busy. Most of the drink was still left in the glass on the desk he was sitting behind. He reached for it and finished it in one gulp.

  The next thing he knew he’d thrown that glass against the wall, shattering it into a million pieces.

  Then he took the first deep breath he’d taken since reading the entry in H.J.’s journal and exhaled until it felt as if his lungs had collapsed.

  Yes, the military had trained him well not to show emotions during the course of a mission.

  But nothing could keep him from having them.

  Especially not these.

  And now that he was off duty, they rose to the surface.

  To Beau the wrongs that were done in the name of building Camden Incorporated were disgraceful. It was still a struggle to resolve the fact that those actions had been taken by men he’d loved and respected. Men he’d known were strong-willed and determined—like any good marine—but men he’d believed were honest and decent, too.

  But the knowledge of what they’d done to other people was bad enough. He didn’t know how to process that his own life had been screwed with by one of H.J.’s conspiracies.

  Or what to do with the emotions that knowledge had let loose in him.

  He’d thought there was nothing worse than learning that the men in his own family had, in reality, no honor to them. And he’d fully supported the family’s plan to make amends.

  In fact, wanting to do that had contributed to his decision to come out of the service now.

  He’d told GiGi that she could give all of the projects to him from here on, that he was volunteering for that duty. That he was willing to make it his own personal undertaking to atone on behalf of the family.