by Merry Farmer
“Consequences?” Cooper stepped closer to her, his voice softening. “What consequences?”
Faith winced and hid her face.
“For the record,” Nancy spoke up, “I don’t agree with Faith’s conclusion. I think it’s her mom manipulating her.”
“How is your mom manipulating you?”
Faith writhed with discomfort. She hated the feeling that her husband wouldn’t get along with her mom. But she also hated the feeling that she’d been made to look like a complete, flipping idiot.
“Faith, what’s wrong?” Cooper was close enough to touch her back.
The heat and weight of his hand sent a shiver down Faith’s spine. The sensation grew when he rubbed her shoulder, squeezing it in support.
“I’m so glad that you’re not selling babies illegally.” He stopped, then laughed and shook his head. “There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. And I’m sorry that I would even think that’s what you were doing. Heck, the more I think about it, the more I realize how stupid I was. I mean, how big of a moron do you have to be to suspect your wife of something like that?”
Nancy made a sound, but one sharp look from Cooper and she held up her hands in defense.
Cooper turned back to Faith. “All of this happened because we didn’t talk to each other openly and honestly when we should have. And I’m not blaming either of us for doing that,” he rushed on. “This whole marriage situation was weird from the start, and we knew it. I blame my Granddaddy’s stupid will and Travis’s blasted buy-out. The whole money thing has had me so jumpy these last few months that I haven’t known if I’m coming or going. When someone springs something that outlandish on you, it makes you wonder what other bizarre stuff life is going to throw at you.”
“And I blame the desperation my sisters and I have lived with for the past few years.” Faith turned around and dragged her eyes up to meet his. “But it’s so hard to admit the truth when everything around you has been so ridiculous you don’t know what to believe for years.”
“Then tell me.” Cooper turned her the rest of the way to face him squarely. He rubbed his hands on her arms and managed an encouraging smile. “I’m not your mom or your dad. I’m your husband, and even though I am apparently a complete whack-job with a suspicious streak a mile long, I love you.”
Faith melted into a smile. A heartbeat later, tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t look at Cooper. “I can’t have children,” she burst at last.
“What?” Cooper’s hands tightened on her arms.
Faith dragged her eyes up to meet his. “I can’t, and it’s my own fault. It’s because I didn’t listen, didn’t obey.”
Her stomach turned as she heard the words coming out of her mouth—heard them in her mother’s voice, scolding. She didn’t know what was worse, the truth she’d believed for so long or the depth to which her mother had gotten under her skin.
“How does disobedience make it so that you can’t have children?” Cooper asked.
“Okay, for the record again, I don’t believe a word of this not able to have children business,” Nancy said.
Faith wanted to believe her, but she could only shake her head and cringe. “It’s my fault. And now two of my sisters are pregnant. It’s too much for me, Cooper, it’s just too much. I shouldn’t have chosen my dolls—fake babies—over my future, real babies. I just wanted to be good at something, to get recognition for doing something on my own, not as one of the Quinlan Quads. I’m selfish, I know, but I just wanted to have something that was my own.”
There. That was the truth of it. She had wanted to be proud of herself, and as they say, pride goes before a fall. Falling was the pits.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, pulling out of Cooper’s grasp. Really, she wanted to fall against him, hide her face against the warmth of his strong chest, and make all the rest of the insanity go away, but it was too late for that. “I can’t stay here.”
She took a few steps back as her tears began to flow, then turned and bolted out of the café.
10
Cooper hated to run out on a reporter without so much as goodbye. You never knew what people would say to get a scoop. But Faith was upset and in shock. The things she’d told him had fit themselves like puzzle pieces in his brain, making sense of everything. All except the bit about her kiln meaning she couldn’t have children. That was just silly. He figured Nancy would understand, though, particularly since she was the one who had connected the dots and brought things out into the open.
Faith had already jumped in her car and was pulling out of the parking lot by the time he made it out the café’s door. There was nothing he could do but race for his truck, start it up, and follow behind her.
“How could I have been such an idiot?” he murmured to himself as he followed Faith through the pokey roads of Culpepper and out onto the main drag that would take them back to the ranch. “Stealing babies and selling them.” He huffed and shook his head. Too many late-night B-movies is what that was. No more TV for him. He’d start reading books to pass the time. That way he couldn’t latch onto stupid ideas and let them destroy his marriage.
His hands began to shake on the steering wheel as he thought about how close he had come to really and truly messing things up. If Faith wasn’t as kind-hearted and forgiving as she was, she wouldn’t be heading home along lonely Wyoming roads now, she would have marched him down to the courthouse and demanded a divorce right then and there. The face that she hadn’t blown up at him was the best hope he had that he could—by eating a gigantic slice of humble pie—get past this.
He was already determined to be the best husband any woman had ever had, but now he was more invested on succeeding at that than ever. He’d failed once, but he never would again.
The drive home was painful and silent, and it seemed to take forever. Cooper stayed right behind Faith. He could have driven out in front and forced her to slow down and stop, but sense told him to go home, figure things out there. He was worried that Faith wasn’t in any condition to drive, but they reached the ranch, drove off the man strip, and up to their house without incident. Faith cut her engine as Cooper cut his. When she got out of the car she seemed calm, but she didn’t look at him. She made a bee-line straight for the front porch.
“Faith, wait up.” Cooper hopped down from his truck and strode across the drive.
Faith tensed, picked up her pace, then changed her mind and stopped to wait for him. Of course, that could have had something to do with the fact that Chastity was sitting on their porch, waiting.
Chastity stood. She wore an anxious expression that melted into relief, and she held something in a baggie in her hands. “Thank God you two are home. I was about to borrow Chris’s car and come after you.”
Faith scrunched her face, looking from Chastity to Cooper and back again. Cooper closed the remaining distance and spread his arms wide. He wanted to scoop Faith up in a bear-hug and never let her go. Instead, he waited, hoping the forgiveness and apology he felt in his heart showed in his face.
Something must have showed there. Faith swayed toward the house, then changed her mind and leaned toward him. Cooper was close enough to catch her and close his arms around her. He lifted her half off her feet, just so glad that he was holding her.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re just a couple of stupid, gullible idiots. But at least we’re idiots together.”
“I’m sure you regret marrying me.” Faith’s voice was muffled as she spoke into his shirt. “I’m sure you think that sending away for mail-order brides is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.”
“Far from it.” He chuckled, squeezing her tighter. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time, Faith. You have no idea how boring my life was up until now. These last few days sure have been interesting…” He put special emphasis on interesting. “…but they’ve shown me that there’s more to life than cows and clocks, wills and buy-outs, and making sure everything stays on
schedule.”
Faith shook her head, leaning back to look at him. “I think you’re right, I really am crazy.”
“I never said you were crazy.” He hadn’t said it, even though he had thought it a time or two.
“Yeah, but I must be. Who in their right mind would let the two of us go through all the things we’ve gone through?”
Cooper shook his head. “Don’t all newlyweds have their bumpy times as they work out the best way to be together?”
Faith laughed. “Not like this.”
“Well, it’s all said and done anyhow, isn’t it?” Cooper hugged her, resting her head against his shoulder and stroking her hair. “You own what is apparently a pretty fabulous business.” His heart skipped a beat and his eyebrows rose. Somehow, that’d been forgotten in this whole weird mess. He nudged Faith back and tilted her chin up so that he could smile at her. “I want to know all about that, now that I know what it is.”
“You…you do?” She blinked. The teary, glassy look in her eyes cleared up, and she smiled. “You want to know about my business?”
“Of course, I do.” He laughed. “Reporter-chick Nancy seems to think you’re something of a big-shot. I want to know all about the thing that makes my wife so great. I want to know all about the things that you love. And I want to help in any way I can.”
“Really? And…and you wouldn’t feel, I don’t know, emasculated if I gave all of the profits from That’s My Baby to you to help buy out Travis’s part of the ranch?”
Faith seemed so surprised that it made Cooper angry. Angry because someone somewhere along the line—her parents, by the sound of things—had given her the impression that what she loved wasn’t good enough or proper enough.
Of course, underneath all that anger was elation. “Sweetheart, I would never ask you to hand over money that you have rightfully owned for yourself. If you want to keep that and, I don’t know, buy petunias with it, that’s okay with me.”
“No, Cooper.” She gripped him tighter. “I want to give as much of it as you need to you and to the ranch.”
Relief like nothing Cooper had ever felt welled up in his chest. “Then darling, I will support that and anything that you love and want to do to the very best of my abilities. But I have to know what you’re thinking and what you love and what’s going on with you first.” He snorted a laugh. “And by know about it, I don’t mean finding out when I open a kiln full of baby arms and legs.”
He was trying to be funny, but Faith looked like she was going to cry all over again.
“The kiln. My mother and Dr. Morrison from back home said that working with the kiln all the time shriveled up my womb, that I can’t have children.”
“Yeah, about that.” Chastity tried to cut in. She stepped down from the porch and started across the gravel toward them.
Cooper held up a hand to stop her. He focused all his attention on Faith.
“I don’t care if you have one baby or a hundred babies or no babies at all.” He rested his hands on the sides of her face and bent down for a soft kiss. “I love you, Faith Culpepper. I love you because you’re you. You’re sweet and thoughtful and, as I’m discovering, industrious and talented and far, far smarter than I am.”
He could feel her blush under his palms as she cast her eyes down and whispered, “Cooper.”
He kissed her again to keep her from going on. “I love you because you’re you,” he repeated. “Not because you’re some baby factory—even if you sort of are, in an entirely different way—or because you’re the means for us to keep the ranch. There are four of us brothers. Let someone else shoulder the responsibility for a while. Let them be the ones to step up and reproduce.”
“Funny you should say that.” Chastity tried to interrupt again, and again Cooper waved her off. Chastity crossed her arms, the big popsicle-stick-looking thing in the baggie tucked against her elbow.
Cooper focused on Faith, brushing the tears that now flowed with his thumbs. At least they weren’t tears of misery. He kissed her cheeks, tasting salt, then went on.
“So what if we turn out to just be the cool aunt and uncle. I’m fine with that. We’ll spoil all our nieces and nephews. And believe you me, just because you can’t have babies does not mean I won’t keep putting every ounce of effort I have into attempting to make them.” He wiggled his eyebrows at the promise.
Faith giggled, her face heating more. The way she lowered her lashes now and glanced up at him made him want to drop everything and get to work finding new and exciting ways to overcome every sort of infertility to make babies galore.
“I don’t know what to say,” Faith whispered. She squeezed her fingertips into his arms as she held him, a smile spreading across her beautiful face. “No one has ever been so sweet or so supportive of me in my entire life.”
“Hey, hello?” Chastity feigned offense, but her eyes sparkled with happiness and she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face.
“Okay, except for my sisters,” Faith amended. She leaned closer to Cooper and whispered, “But not like this. This means everything to me. I have always wanted to be strong, but with you, I’m stronger than I ever could have imagined.”
“Well, good.” Cooper nodded. “That’s the way it should be. And if we have to go to half the fertility doctors in Wyoming to get a better idea of what’s wrong or to get the treatment you need to be a mother—if you want to be—then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Oh, Cooper.” Faith breathed out with enough emotion to bowl him over, and threw herself into his arms.
Cooper squeezed her tight, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around. When he put her down, he kissed her with long, lingering passion.
“Let me save you some time.” Chastity stepped forward as she spoke this time, holding out the thing in the baggie.
She wasn’t going to be told off this time, so Cooper gave up and faced her, still holding Faith with one arm. “What? What is it?” He squinted at the baggie.
“You won’t have to worry about that fertility doctor or getting a second opinion on Dr. Morrison’s crappy diagnosis.”
Faith’s eyes went round, and her jaw dropped. “What?” She reached out and snatched the baggie from Chastity.
“I told you Dr. Morrison was lying and that Mama was pulling one over on you.”
Chastity was a little too smug for Cooper’s liking, but at the moment, Faith was so transformed with shock that he didn’t care.
“What’s that?” He leaned closer to get a better look at what Faith was staring at in the baggie. His eyes popped wide too when he realized it was a pregnancy test.
A positive pregnancy test.
“Are you sure it’s mine?” Faith’s voice was an octave higher than normal.
“Yes.” Chastity laughed and pressed her hands to her heart. “Joy kept careful track of all of them. And guess what? She’s preggers too.”
“Joy?” Faith blinked at her sister.
“Joy is right,” Cooper said, meaning something entirely different. He swooped Faith into his arms for another tight hug. His heart had never been lighter.
As soon as he put Faith down, she blinked from the pregnancy test to Chasity. “So…so Mama was lying to me all that time.” Her face contorted to painful disappointment.
“I’m afraid so.” Chastity sighed. “But hey, look at the bright side. That kiln of yours doesn’t shrivel wombs. You can work with it and around it as much as you want without a care in the world.”
“That’s right.” Faith perked up, her smile returning. “We should maybe even get another one. If Nancy does the article that she says she wants to write, That’s My Baby will be booming with business. I might have to hire more help to run things.”
“Or we could figure out a way to get Honor and Grace out here so they could help too,” Chastity suggested with a wink.
“I wouldn’t mind at all.” Faith let out a breath of relief at last. It was about more than just her business or the fact that she was pregnan
t against what she probably saw as all odds. It was the kind of breath of relief you only blew out when you’d come to a point where you knew that everything was really and truly going to be okay.
* * *
I hope you’ve enjoyed Rancher’s Remorse. And yes, there’s so, so much more to come for these Culpepper Cowboys. Next up is Kolby and Joy’s story, told by Kirsten Osbourne. Can Joy live up to her name and bring happiness to reserved Kolby Culpepper or will the ghosts of Kolby’s past keep him from warming up to his new wife? Find out in Cowboy’s Conundrum! And after that, keep your eyes peeled for Chris and Chastity’s story, Teacher’s Troublemaker to find out just how far Chastity would go to introduce herself to Mr. Pickley-Wickley.
Click here for a complete list of other works by Merry Farmer.
About the Author
I hope you have enjoyed Rancher’s Remorse. If you’d like to be the first to learn about when new books in the series come out and more, please sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/RQ-KX And remember, Read it, Review it, Share it! For a complete list of works by Merry Farmer with links, please visit http://wp.me/P5ttjb-14F.
Merry Farmer is an award-winning novelist who lives in suburban Philadelphia with her two cats, Butterfly and Torpedo. She has been writing since she was ten years old and realized one day that she didn't have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something. It was the best day of her life. She then went on to earn not one but two degrees in History so that she would always have something to write about. Her books have topped the Amazon and iBooks charts and have been named finalists in the prestigious RONE and Rom Com Reader’s Crown awards.
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