Wyatt's Pretend Pledge

by Liz Isaacson

  Another hour passed, and Tripp brought his bundled baby out to the waiting room. He’d clearly been crying, and Skyler stayed at the back of the crowd while everyone took turns meeting the baby and embracing Tripp.

  “Skyler,” Tripp finally said, pulling him into a hug. “Thanks for coming.” They both cried then, and Skyler felt like the whole world was different once again. He’d never seen Tripp cry as an adult, and it was humbling and horrible at the same time.

  “Any news on Ivory?” Momma asked.

  “She just woke up,” Tripp said, taking back his infant son. “Her placenta had ripped away from the womb, and they said it was lucky we were already here, or she may have bled too much before they could save her.”

  He let the tears run down his face. “Thank you for the prayers. I know God heard them and saved my wife.”

  Liam put his arm around Tripp, and the sight of the twins leaning on each other was too much for Skyler. He swiped at his eyes and sucked in a tight breath.

  “We named him Isaac Luther,” Tripp said, smiling through his emotion. “And as soon as they say Ivory can have visitors, I’ll let you know.”

  More hugging. More crying. More cuddling the new baby. Even Skyler gave the tiny boy a kiss before Tripp went back into the maternity ward.

  He felt wrung out and put together backward, and he didn’t know what to do about it. His stomach grumbled, and Micah’s next to him did the same. “Breakfast?” Micah asked.

  “Do we have time?”

  “I think we have time.” He yawned and stood up. “Momma, we’re going to get something to eat. What should we bring back for you and Daddy?”

  After that, it turned into a dozen orders, and Skyler’s annoyance rose again. His phone chimed, and he pulled it out of his back pocket.

  You’re not home? I thought we were running this morning.

  “Mal,” he said under his breath, his thumbs already flying across his screen.

  “Who’s Mal?”

  “No one,” he said, not even glancing up at whichever brother had asked.

  “You’re going running with her? Do you run?”

  Skyler sent his message explaining about Tripp’s baby in as few words as possible, and looked up. Wyatt stood there, his eyes gleaming.

  “Yes,” Skyler said. “I run.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since Mal started asking him,” Marcy said, smiling. “Right?”

  Skyler rolled his eyes. “No, not since Mal started asking me.” Though, if he could be honest with the two of them, yes, since Mal started asking him. And he’d gone to her yoga classes and this frou frou smoothie shop she liked.

  “We’re coming to breakfast with you,” Wyatt said, taking Skyler’s phone before he could comprehend what had just happened. “So you can tell us all about her.”

  “Nothing to tell,” he said, the chime on his phone making his heart leap.

  “Didn’t you bring someone else to our wedding?” Marcy asked.

  “That’s because I’m friends with a lot of people,” Skyler said. And maybe—just maybe—he wanted to be more than friends with Mal. He just didn’t know how to get there, because he had a reputation that nothing was serious, and he absolutely was not interested in a real relationship.

  If he’d known he was digging his own grave, he might have played things differently at the university.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Micah kept his head down as he crossed from Seven Sons land to the Shining Star. The path was well-marked, and he’d been walking it for a few months now, since Simone had sat next to him in the rocking chairs on the front porch at the homestead.

  Simone had a strict schedule, and if Micah wanted to see her and talk to her, he had to go in the middle of the afternoon, when there was no chance of her sisters showing up in her workshop.

  A “she-shed” she called it, and Micah had smiled widely at that. He sometimes went to her cabin in Cowboy Row at night too, but that had ended as summer had dawned, as she liked him to come after darkness had fallen.

  And that happened really late at night now, and Micah hadn’t been able to keep up with his sleep schedule. Not if she wanted to see him during prime afternoon nap time and then past his bedtime.

  In all honesty, he would give up anything to see her. Even sleep.

  He knocked on the door to her shed, which she kept locked these days. She’d actually started doing it when Callie had walked in on her and Jarrod making out—Callie’s words, not Micah’s.

  He actually didn’t want to think about Simone kissing anyone else, especially the arrogant cowboy who lived only two doors down from her, even now. Micah glanced up, as if he’d see Cowboy Row from here, but Simone’s shop sat behind the stables and the chicken coops, sort of tucked into a corner of the ranch. A pasture with several tall trees waited right behind her she-shed, and a sense of peace filled Micah as he waited in the Texas summer heat.

  The lock finally jangled, and Simone opened the door a moment later. Blessed air conditioning filtered out of the building, but Micah couldn’t move. Her beauty had rendered him mute and immobile once again. How a cowboy in this little Texas town hadn’t snatched her up a decade ago, Micah wasn’t sure.

  “Hey,” she said, smiling as he leaned into the door.

  He had to step up to enter the she-shed, and when he did, she fell back. He’d held her hand over the months. They’d cuddled on her couch, and a couple of times on a piece of furniture she was working on.

  But he hadn’t kissed her.

  Yet, he thought, his eyes moving to her mouth as he passed her. He still felt like he was walking on thin and cracking ice with her, and it was starting to get old. Would he have to live his whole life on eggshells, because he was worried he’d upset her?

  “Wow, look at all of this.” He took in the assortment of pottery on a shelf facing the door. She closed the door, locking them inside with all the cool air. “You’ve been at the wheel forever.”

  “Just last night and this morning,” she said, her voice like music to his ears. She came to stand beside him, and Micah’s fingers twitched. It was Simone who slid her fingers into Micah’s, and all the unrest in his soul quieted.

  “Is one of these for me?” he asked.

  “Why would one of those be for you?” she asked, but he heard the teasing quality in her voice. “Oh, wait. It’s your birthday next week.”

  “Another year older,” he said, smiling.

  “How old?” she asked.

  “You haven’t guessed right yet.”

  “Okay, so we’re sticking to that.”

  Yes, Micah was sticking to that.

  “Let’s see. Last time, I think you were younger than thirty-six and older than thirty-two.”

  “That’s right,” he said, though he couldn’t actually remember. They hadn’t talked about his birthday yesterday, or the day before. He hadn’t seen her the day before that, as Tripp and Ivory had finally been released from the hospital, and Micah had gone to their place to help with Oliver while Tripp made sure Ivory was okay at home.

  She’d been in the hospital for five days as they monitored her to make sure she didn’t have any lingering internal bleeding. She’d recovered quickly once everything had been repaired, but she’d had a Caesarean section, and that didn’t heal in a few days. She slept sitting up, her newborn nestled on her chest, and Tripp had been waiting on her hand and foot.

  “So I have three choices.”

  “And one guess for today,” he said, grinning at her. He lifted her hand to his lips and watched as Simone’s eyes started glittering. A small smile appeared on her mouth, and Micah wanted to kiss it away.

  “Thirty-three,” she said.

  “Older.”

  She shook her head, smiling in full force now. “Tomorrow I’ll get it.”

  “Friday night,” he said. “We could go to Amarillo to that pizza place Skyler told us about.” No one would know them in Amarillo, and maybe they wouldn’t have to snea
k around to see each other anymore.

  Simone hadn’t actually requested that they keep their relationship a secret, but she hadn’t wanted to hold his hand in front of her sisters or his brothers. So her message had come through loud and clear.

  In truth, Simone had held him at arm’s length for five months, and Micah needed to do something about it.

  Kiss her or break up. Those were his two choices.

  “I’m totally feeling like pizza,” she said.

  “Great,” he said, actually a little surprised and hoping it didn’t show in his voice. “Did you want to come over to the ranch, and we’ll go from there? Or do you want me to pick you up here?”

  “I’ll walk over,” she said. “Wait. It’s a million degrees outside. You can come pick me up.”

  “Four-thirty?”

  “It’s a date.”

  He got up the courage to look away from the pottery Simone had thrown, and their eyes met. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said. “About me. About us.”

  Her eyes widened a little, her shock evident. “Oh.”

  “Weren’t expecting that, were you?” He smiled, because while he wanted things to be serious, he didn’t want to push her away.

  “I’m holding your hand.”

  “It’s been five months,” he said.

  “And?”

  “And I haven’t kissed you.”

  Simone blinked those beautiful, dark eyes that reminded him of a deep, country night. She slid her free hand up his arm and to the back of his neck, her fingernails eliciting a shiver from Micah.

  He took that as her way of saying, You better kiss me then, and he took her into his arms and brushed his cowboy hat off into his hand. In the next moment, his lips touched hers, and Micah could’ve sworn angelic choirs started singing.

  It was definitely too hot in the she-shed now, as Simone kissed him back. Everything he’d been imagining this moment to be had come to fruition, and Micah broke the kiss for long enough to take a deep breath, and then he kissed her again.

  He lost track of time and space inside the she-shed, and it wasn’t until she giggled that he realized he’d backed her into the door he’d knocked on so many times. “Wow,” he said, not backing up a single inch.

  “Yeah?”

  Heat filled Micah’s face. “Yeah. Wow.”

  “I think wow too,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  She looked at him, and all that flirtatious power between them returned. “Yeah.”

  “So are we allowed to tell people?”

  Simone cradled his face in her hands. “Isn’t this more fun?”

  Micah didn’t know what to say. No, what would be more fun would be holding her hand after Sunday dinner. Cuddling with her on the couch while Jeremiah put a movie on for Whitney, who was due to have their baby any day now.

  “I mean, yeah,” he said. “This is fun.” Kissing her had been lots of fun. But something deep inside him writhed. Was she embarrassed of him?

  “But….” she prompted.

  “Yeah, but, I mean. Is this what we are? Why don’t you want anyone to know about us?”

  Simone sighed, and though she couldn’t step back, she slipped away from him all the same. She walked over to the pottery she’d thrown and picked up a piece from the shelf. “I just feel…I don’t know. Like, both of my sisters are married to two of your brothers.”

  “And?” Micah stayed right where he was by the door.

  “And, I don’t know. It feels a little weird. Like, there are other cowboys out here.”

  His heart ba-bumped painfully in his chest. “So it is me.”

  Simone didn’t answer, and Micah felt the air whoosh right out of his lungs. He’d kissed her, and now he felt like he should break-up with her too. He gave himself a small shake. He didn’t want to break-up with her.

  His phone went off, the loud ringtone actually startling him. “It’s Jeremiah.” He fumbled with the lock on the door, got it open, and stepped outside. “Hey,” he said, a big, giant sigh accompanying the word.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice on the outer edge of frantic. “Whitney is having the baby, and I’m headed back to the ranch. Wondering where you are?”

  Micah spun in the direction of Seven Sons. He was at least half a mile from the homestead, and he could probably run it in a few minutes. “Five minutes out,” he said, already moving. “Where are you? How’s she doing? Is she okay?”

  “I was out in the corn,” Jeremiah said. “So I’m at least ten minutes. If you could get there and see, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure,” Micah said, feeling his calf muscle cramping up a bit. He didn’t run like Skyler, and while he wasn’t overweight, he definitely wasn’t in marathon shape. “So you don’t know how she is?”

  “She called and said she’d had a contraction and could I please come back to the homestead. I called you five seconds later.”

  “I’ll call you back,” Micah said, and he gripped his phone tightly and focused on his breathing. True to his word, he reached the homestead only a few minutes later, and he vaulted up the back steps to the deck. All three dogs stood at the door, almost like they could sense a problem inside.

  “Look out, guys,” he said, reaching over them to open the door. “Whitney?” he called. “It’s Micah. Jeremiah called me.”

  She wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, and he hurried down the hall. “Whitney?”

  “I’m in here,” she said, and Micah opened the bedroom door. “I was taking a nap, and I woke up and….” Tears streamed down her face. “Where’s Jeremiah?”

  Micah took in the situation in front of him. The wet sheets. The way Whitney lay, like she couldn’t position herself any differently “He’s coming,” he said. “I’m calling the paramedics.”

  “No,” she said, but she didn’t move. “I’m not having the baby here.”

  “Yes,” Micah said as he dialed 9-1-1. “I think you are.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jeremiah leapt from the back of the truck before Orion had come to a complete stop. Micah had not called him back, and he had no idea what he would find when he went inside the homestead.

  He took the steps two or three at a time, his heart racing. “Whit?” he called as soon as he opened the door. Why didn’t Micah have her loaded up yet? They should be headed to the hospital, and he’d thought his brother would have his wife ready.

  Micah appeared at the mouth of the hallway. “The ambulance is on the way.”

  “Ambulance?” Jeremiah’s vision went white for a moment. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not a doctor,” Micah said. “But she’s not making it to the hospital. That baby is coming, fast. And right here.”

  Right here.

  Jeremiah pushed past his brother and sprinted down the hall to the master suite. Whitney lay on her side of the bed, a plethora of pillows stacked behind her. She was crying, and Jeremiah dashed to her side. “Sweetheart,” he said.

  “I can’t stop it,” she said, hiccuping. “Micah said we shouldn’t move me, and Miah, I couldn’t. I tried to get up, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

  “Shh, it’s fine.” He stroked her hair off her forehead, and she seemed sweaty and clammy to him. “I’m going to get a washcloth and a drink. It’s okay. It’s going to be fine.” He hurried into the bathroom and tossed a washcloth into the sink.

  He filled a glass with water, turned the water to hot, and went back to his wife’s side.

  “Yes, she’s still in bed,” Micah said. “Her husband is here now.”

  Jeremiah glanced at him as he handed Whitney the water. She drank, and she calmed a little.

  “They want you to check her,” Micah said. “The ambulance is eleven minutes away.”

  Whitney screamed, and Micah dropped his phone. Jeremiah spun back to her, with no idea what to do to help her. He’d never had a baby before, and he’d never witnessed a birth. All he could think about was Ivory, and how if she
’d had her baby at home, she’d be dead.

  And his wife—his wonderful wife that he’d only had for a year now—was screaming like she was about to die.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  She gripped the sheets and said, “It hurts.”

  Micah had recovered his phone, and he said, “I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Jeremiah?” someone said, and it drew his focus.

  “Right here,” he said.

  “I need you to check her,” the man said. “We need to know how far along she is.”

  “Okay,” he said. “How do I do that?”

  The paramedic started explaining, and Jeremiah did what he said. Whitney lay back on the pillows, and she put her feet flat on the bed. He checked her, and he said, “Uh, yeah, I can probably fit my whole hand.”

  “Can you see the baby’s head?”

  Jeremiah felt like he was having an out-of-body experience, because he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. “I don’t think so.”

  “Jeremiah,” Whitney whimpered, her fingers clenching the sheets again. “Here comes another one.”

  “She’s contracting again.”

  “Less than two minutes,” another man said, and Jeremiah didn’t think that was good.

  “How close are you?” Micah asked, pure panic in his voice. “What should we do if you don’t make it?”

  “They have to make it,” Whitney said, and Jeremiah’s whole world narrowed to her hysteria.

  He moved back to her side and looked at her. “Whitney,” he said calmly. “Look at me, baby. Look. This is happening. And it’s fine. Micah and I have experience with birthing cows and horses.”

  “Jeremiah,” she bit out. “This is not a cow or a horse.”

  “I’m getting towels,” Micah said. “And I’m going to throw a couple in the dryer so they’re warm for the baby.”

  “No!” Whitney cried out. “I am not having my baby here. We’re not wrapping him in towels!”

  “It could be a girl,” Jeremiah said calmly. He would not lose his head. He’d spoken true, and he had delivered babies of other species. This was his wife, and he would do whatever he had to do to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. “And we’ll wrap her in towels if that’s what it takes to keep her warm.”