Suddenly, the painful truth of her situation hit her like a dart, right between the ribs. She would never have any of that. She and her baby’s father would never stand inside a magic cocoon of love, never feel three hearts beating as one.
“Are you all right?”
She tore her gaze away from the little family. “I’m fine,” she said.
But it wasn’t true. The comfortable peace that had buoyed her for the past three hours drained away as if someone had pulled an invisible plug. She sagged, inexplicably tired, and for the first time she noticed that the river smelled slightly musty and stale.
“Are you tired?” He touched her elbow. “I’ve kept you out too long.”
“No, no, it’s been terrific, honestly.”
At that moment, the baby lifted its head uncertainly, wobbling with the charming weakness of a newborn, and let out a sleepy, mewing cry. His parents smiled at one another, then bent over him, murmuring the eternal wordless promises of love.
Chase clearly hadn’t noticed them before. He watched for a second, until the baby settled back into his papoose, lips pursing and unpursing. The infant shut his unfocused eyes and sighed, breathing in the security of his father’s scent.
Then Chase turned to Josie, his face tight.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I promise you. It’s going to be all right.”
It was the same tone, the same soothing nonsense the young father was even now crooning to his baby.
She nodded, trying to smile. “I know,” she said.
He put the flat of his hand against her cheek. She felt her head tilt into it, just a fraction of an inch, as if of its own accord,
Her eyes drifted shut. His hands were warm. And strong. His thumb traced the ridge of her cheekbone, grazed the sensitive edge of her ear.
“Josie.”
She opened her eyes. He was gazing down at her, the blue of his eyes drowned by the night. She couldn’t read them.
But she knew he could read hers.
He hesitated another agonizing second, and then he kissed her. Slowly. And so softly that, at first, it was no more than the tingle of heat. Warm streaks of that glittering warmth cascaded down across her shoulders, across her back, over her breasts.
She made a small sound. She felt as weak as an infant herself, falling into a warm, deep dream of Chase.
“Josie,” he whispered again, right against her lips.
And then he pulled back. He blinked, as if he were trying to awaken from a trance.
He let his hand fall from her cheek.
“We should go home,” he said.
CHAPTER TEN
THE RIDE HOME WAS QUIET, the empty road stretching out like a bleached ribbon in the moonlight. He turned on the radio, found a nice soft rock station and dialed the volume just high enough to discourage talking. What the devil would they say? He did not intend to talk about that kiss, and it would have felt totally fake to talk about anything else.
He shouldn’t have worried. Josie seemed as determined as he was to pretend the kiss hadn’t happened. Besides, she was obviously exhausted, and within ten minutes she’d nodded off, her head tilted against the side window.
That left Chase with an hour and fifty minutes of pure solitude, to lecture himself for being such a goddamn fool.
The highway lights flashed rhythmically against her face, first spotlighting, then obscuring that sweet mouth, those long, dark lashes. Now you see her, now you don’t. It kept Chase’s nerves on edge, to the point that he had to make an effort not to look.
He searched for a country station. But some guy was singing about lips sweeter than wine, a cliché Chase had always found particularly dumb. But he realized that the guy who first wrote that line had probably kissed someone like Josie Whitford.
He turned to public radio instead, but they were playing some cello thing fit only for a funeral. With a disgusted grunt, he flicked the radio off completely.
As if the silence reached her dreams, she sighed, wriggling into a more comfortable position. A delicate finger of her perfume reached out and touched him on the nose.
God, would he never make it back to the Double C? He’d traveled this road a hundred times, but it hadn’t ever seemed so long. The white lines kept rolling under his tires, but new ones continued to slide at him, unwound from an endless string of torture.
And—damn it. When the car finally dragged itself through the Double C gates, he realized that, for him at least, the night wasn’t over.
Trent was waiting for them, a dark silhouette on the brightly lit front porch. The minute the truck came to a stop, crunching across the oyster-shell driveway, he loped over to the driver’s side.
Chase was already rolling down the window. Trent didn’t have any mother hen tendencies. If he’d waited up for Chase, there was a damn good reason.
Or rather, a damn bad one.
“It’s Captain Kirk,” Trent said in a low voice, resting his elbows on the window and leaning in. “He showed signs of colic this afternoon, and tonight he started rolling. Johnson is with him. He’s hurting pretty bad, I think.”
Chase cursed under his breath. “Have you called Doc Blaiser?”
“Of course. He was at the Berringer place. He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”
On the other side of the truck, Josie was finally waking up. She rubbed her eyes and moistened her dry lips. She ran her fingers through her tousled hair and blinked toward Chase.
“I’m sorry,” she said around a yawn. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.” Then she noticed Trent at the window. She must have seen something on his face, because her smile died. “What’s wrong?”
“One of my horses is sick. Colic. It’s probably nothing, but you can’t mess around with colic.”
“Which horse?”
He frowned. He’d forgotten that she already knew most of his horses by name. It crossed his mind suddenly that her collection of “Chase” stories might hold a clue. How current was Flim’s information? If they could determine when he stopped having access to details about Chase’s private life, they might be able to pinpoint how long ago Chase had known him.
For instance, Alexander wouldn’t have known about any horses Chase bought in the past five years. Charming Billy had been gone for three.
But that was something Chase and Josie could explore tomorrow.
“It’s Captain Kirk,” he told her. He turned back to Trent. “When did the rolling start?”
“I’m not sure.” Trent’s face tightened. “Eli was supposed to be sitting with him. When I came through to check on things, maybe an hour ago, Captain Kirk was already on the ground, in a lot of pain. But Eli wasn’t there.”
“What?”
“I know.”
“Where the hell was he?”
“We just found him. Out behind the hay barn. He and Nikki were…counting stars.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah. I told him to take her home and then get his ass back here so that you can chew it off.”
Chase pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, trying to hold back the headache that had begun to set up shop in his skull.
“I haven’t got the energy.” He exhaled. “Just fire him.”
Trent nodded. “Gladly.”
Beside him, Josie made a small noise.
Chase turned to her. “I’ve got to get to the stables,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that…you’re really going to fire that boy?”
“Yes. This isn’t his first mistake, although this one would be enough by itself. You don’t leave a sick animal alone, not on this ranch. But as it happens, he broke a twenty-thousand-dollar mechanical cow earlier this week. So this screwup is actually his second big one.”
“Third,” Trent put in. “He’s ignored the feed schedule, fed the horses early or late, to work it around his social life. Probably all week.”
“Oh.” On hearing that, Jo
sie looked subdued.
Chase wondered if she knew enough about horses to understand how imperative it was to establish and keep a regular feeding routine. Or maybe she was just remembering a few days ago, when she had challenged him about giving up on the roan with a phobia.
She really did have a thing for protecting the underdog, didn’t she?
Trent glanced at Josie through the window. He raised one brow to Chase. “You sure you want to fire him?”
“No,” Chase said. “What I want to do is strangle him.” He opened the truck door and climbed out. “Get Josie upstairs, Trent. And then tell Eli Breslin to get his lazy, undisciplined butt off my ranch.”
“SUE, COME ON! Please! You could make him change his mind.”
Nicole, dressed in the trashiest short-shorts Susannah had ever seen, had been pacing the wood-paneled great room at Everly Ranch for the past ten minutes.
She dropped onto the arm of the big leather sofa, then popped right back up again. She was clearly too full of furious adrenaline to settle anywhere. “You know you could get Eli his job back. You just don’t want to!”
“You’re right,” Susannah said, putting her initials on the housekeeper’s shopping list, then turning to the menu for the Burn Center’s barn dance this weekend—their biggest fund-raiser of the year.
Nikki, who had already opened her mouth for her next barrage of accusations, stared at her sister. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re right. I don’t want to. Chase knows how to run his own ranch, and he wouldn’t welcome any interference from me, any more than I’d welcome interference about Everly from him.”
“But you’re his fiancée!” Nikki’s voice had reached a high-pitched whine. She sounded about ten years old, which made her thick, black eyeliner look even more absurd. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“It means I respect him enough to leave him alone. What you and Eli did last night was wrong. You know it, and Eli knows it. It was selfish of you to let him put his job in jeopardy. Not to mention what could have happened to Captain Kirk.”
That took a little of the wind out of Nikki’s sails. She loved the sweet old bay. Chase had taught her to ride on Captain Kirk’s gentle, slightly swaying back.
But apparently teenage hormones were even more powerful than old loyalties. “Captain Kirk was fine when Eli left him. And he wasn’t gone that long. Trent tried to make it sound worse than it was.”
“How could he? Eli had a job to do, and he didn’t do it. End of story.”
“You think it’s that simple?” Nikki’s face was as red as her midriff-cropped see-through-net shirt. “God, you’re all such hypocrites and liars!”
Susannah half rose from her chair. She felt a shocking desire to slap her little sister silly. How dare she take that tone? But she lowered herself back onto the cushion, fighting for control.
“Nicole, if you are going to be insolent, this conversation is over.”
“Why can’t you at least tell the truth? Chase didn’t fire Eli because he left the barn. He fired him because you asked him to.”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she wiped them with the hem of her tacky shirt. “You wanted Chase to get rid of him. Just because you’re so miserable, you can’t stand to see me happy.”
Oh, right. Susannah dropped the menu on her desk and rubbed her temples. God bless the egocentricity of youth. Your relationship hits a snag, and the whole world must be in a conspiracy against True Love.
“That’s absurd,” she said wearily. “I’m not miserable, and even if I were, I’d still want you to be happy.”
“You’re not miserable? Look at you. You never have any fun. You never do anything but worry about the ranch and making money. On the weekends, your entertainment is working at the Burn Center.”
“That’s not called misery, Nikki. It’s called growing up. Someday you’ll learn that you can’t be happy if you’re ignoring your obligations.”
“God, Susannah. Can you hear yourself? You sound just like Grandfather.”
That was a jab right at the jugular, and Nikki knew it. In their family, comparing people to Arlington Everly was like comparing them to Hitler, or Satan.
Susannah glanced at the portrait over the fireplace, which her grandfather had commissioned just a few years ago, right before he died. The hard brown eyes met hers without wavering, and without mercy, just as they had done in life.
Arlington had refused to smile for the sitting. He had prohibited the artist to indulge in any sugarcoating, any prettying-up, to make him look younger, nicer, less thin-lipped and hollow-eyed. Less like a man about to die.
He’d been proud of being the toughest son of a bitch in East Texas. He thought every crag and furrow in his strong-boned, weathered face was a badge of honor. Stone-jawed and sour, clearly at the emaciated end of his rugged life, he stood beneath a rack of sixteen-point antlers, the biggest kill of his eighty-nine years.
Death comes for the hunter. And the hunter doesn’t flinch.
“Maybe I am like him,” Susannah said dully. “Maybe I have to be.”
“Okay, then, fine.” Nikki curled her lip and glared at her sister with scornful green eyes that could have been cloned from the man in the portrait.
Susannah braced herself. Nikki clearly knew she’d hit a brick wall and being thwarted made her mean. She was like her grandfather that way.
Maybe, each in her own style, they’d both inherited his hard-hearted streak.
“So I guess if I want help I should ask Josie Whitford, I’ll bet Chase listens to her. At least she looks like a real person. Like someone who might have a heart. Because you clearly don’t.”
MID MORNING, while Josie was doing her English homework, Chase stuck his head in briefly to let her know Captain Kirk was fine. Apparently, though they’d feared enteritis, it had turned out to be plain old gas. Painful, but not dangerous.
He looked relieved, and she was happy for him. Apparently, no matter how many younger, more valuable quarter horses they bought for this ranch, he’d always have a special affection for that old bay.
He didn’t stay long. He had an appointment in town, he said.
They didn’t mention Eli Breslin. Josie had immediately regretted her remarks last night—and her embarrassment had kept her awake. Round about midnight, she’d actually considered putting on a robe and going out to the stables to apologize.
But then she realized she was just kidding herself. The apology was secondary. Mostly, she just wanted to go out there because Chase was out there.
Had she hoped he’d kiss her again?
Surely not. It had been a wonderful kiss. But they both knew it was a mistake they must never repeat. So she stayed where she was and willed herself to sleep.
After he left, she spent the rest of the morning in his office, using his computer to upload her homework and take the weekly vocab quiz. Thank heavens for online classes! Otherwise, she might have had to let that Greyhound bus drag her back to Riverfork after all.
But, now that she’d been fired from the Not Guilty Café, she had no reason to hurry home. Online banking took care of the bills. Online education kept her enrolled in the one class she’d been able to afford. She didn’t own a dog or a cat or a parakeet. Not even a goldfish was staring sadly at the door, praying for her to turn the key.
Which was a good thing. Because every day she saw a little more clearly just how much she didn’t want to return to her old life. If you could call it a life. A half-empty efficiency apartment, an online class and a job waiting tables hadn’t ever seemed exciting, but she had accepted it as the slow road to something better.
Now she knew it wasn’t enough.
Not for her. And not for the baby who would be born in September.
What she didn’t see clearly was what she did want. And unfortunately she’d have to decide before long. That bill she’d clicked this morning, sending in her quarterly health insurance premium, had scraped the last of the cash from the bo
ttom of the barrel.
She was going to have to get a job and very soon.
Even if she had a huge, cushiony savings account, she couldn’t take advantage of Chase’s hospitality forever. No matter what he said about teaming up to find the bad guy, this lovely interlude was nothing but a charity vacation at Club Clayton.
Lazy mornings, catered food, long walks beneath flowering trees. Horses gamboling in green pastures. Daffodils dancing at the edge of Clayton Creek. A handsome, intelligent man to drive her to the doctor, pick up her medicines, sit across from her at dinner.
Kiss her in the moonlight…
If she wasn’t careful, this delightful fantasy would spoil her for real life.
It was time to climb back onto her own two feet. Thanks to Chase and his doctors, thanks to Imogene and her fabulous feasts…and of course, thanks to the insulin pump, she was healthy enough to get back to work.
Healthier, in fact, than she’d been in months. Maybe years.
Tomorrow, she’d look in the paper and see what jobs were listed nearby. Why not move east? This part of Texas was beautiful. After only ten days here, the three years she’d spent in dusty Riverfork seemed like a bad dream.
Besides, her mother and stepfather lived in Austin. When the baby was born, wouldn’t it be nice to have family close by?
She clicked off the monitor and stood, setting her papers to one side. Now she really was dreaming. She could see her stepfather’s face, if she asked him to make room in his well-run life for an unwed mother and her illegitimate baby. He’d trot out some judgmental cliché that let him off the hook entirely. Josie had made her own bed, he’d insist, and she would have to lie in it alone.
Her mother would probably wish she could patch things up. She might yearn to be a part of her grandchild’s life. She might even send Josie a twenty-dollar bill in the mail, or a gift certificate to a sensible drugstore.
But she wouldn’t have the nerve to cross her husband. She never had.
Outside, a mower was humming along, happily munching on the grass that had shot up after last night’s rain.
Texas Baby Page 11
