The Rancher's Blessed Event

by Stella Bagwell

  “That’s good. Now get—”

  Suddenly her footing slipped, but she managed to right herself before falling. Instantly Cooper leapt off the porch and grabbed her around her thick waist before she knew what was happening.

  “Damn it, girl, what are you trying to do? Hurt yourself and the baby?”

  The harsh tone of his voice broke the happy spell his gifts had given her. As she looked up at his dark face, she wondered how she could have forgotten, even for a moment, the pain this man had caused her. “You would say something like that now,” she said through tight lips. “Now that it’s too late.”

  His face wrinkled with confusion. “What?”

  She tried to push his arms away from her. “Let me go! I can get back in the house myself!”

  Ignoring her efforts to get away, he guided her up the steps and into the warm kitchen. However, once they were inside with the door shut, he still refused to let her go.

  “I asked you a question, Emily. What were you talking about out there? What did you mean, too late? Are you keeping something from me about your visit with Dr. Bellamy today?”

  “No! And what would you care anyway? You wouldn’t give a damn if I lost this baby, too!”

  As soon as she realized what she’d said, her mouth fell open and every last drop of color drained from her face. For a moment Cooper thought she was going to faint and he tightened his hold on the sides of her waist.

  “This baby, too? Were you pregnant before?”

  There was no point in trying to hide it now, Emily thought. She’d already let too much slip. She knew Cooper wouldn’t quit until she answered him.

  Nodding stiffly, she whispered, “Yes.”

  “When?” he demanded.

  “A long time ago.”

  Her evasive answer caused him to give her shoulders a little shake. “How long ago? Tell me, Emily?”

  She sagged against the crook of his arm. “What does it matter, Cooper? You didn’t care. You had already gone.”

  Stunned, he lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “It was...my baby?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes jerked back down to hers. “And you didn’t tell me! Why?” he asked hoarsely.

  Her face felt frozen while inside her heart was so full of pain she thought it was going to splinter right down the middle. “Because when I found out I was pregnant you had already left Lincoln county. So I didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents or aunts. I didn’t want anyone knowing I’d made the gullible mistake of sleeping with a man who didn’t love me.”

  “You’re wrong—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Pushing out of his grasp, she hurriedly left the room.

  Minutes ticked by as Cooper tried to digest all that she’d just told him, but it was so hard for him to imagine Emily suffering the pain and heartache of losing a baby. His baby! Oh, God, if only he’d known! No wonder she hated him.

  Their supper forgotten, Cooper left the kitchen and walked down a long hallway to where the bedrooms were located. He found Emily in hers, lying across the bed. She was still wearing the coat and boots he’d bought for her.

  Her face was turned down to the mattress and the slight tremor of her shoulders told him she was crying. He felt like a jerk for ever hurting her, yet he couldn’t help but be angry with her, too. She’d shut him out, chosen not to tell him about their baby. The mere idea crushed him.

  “Emily.”

  She turned her head slightly and looked at him. “Get out!”

  “No. Like you told me before, you can’t open a can of worms then just walk away.” He went over and sat down on the side of the bed. “You shouldn’t be crying. It isn’t good for you.”

  She flopped onto her back and her wet eyes clashed with his. “I shouldn’t even be pregnant! That’s what Kenneth told me when he found out about the coming baby.”

  Shaking his head, he said gently, “Emily, don’t do this—”

  “I have to do it,” she interrupted. “You wanted to know, so you need to know all of it.”

  Cooper started to tell her he didn’t need to know anything just so she would calm herself. But then it dawned on him that she probably needed to tell him, she needed to share the burden of her pain with him.

  “Okay. Tell me,” he murmured.

  She scrubbed her eyes with her fists, but fresh tears reappeared as soon as she looked at him. Cooper felt sick and helpless.

  “For a long time after you left, Kenneth didn’t know you and I had been lovers. He hadn’t realized we’d gotten that close and I didn’t tell him until—one day he came by the ranch. I hadn’t seen him in a while and I suppose the sight of him only reminded me of you even more. I don’t know. But anyway I was in a particularly low mood and started crying in front of him. When he began to question me, I broke down and told him about the baby.”

  “I see. You could tell him. But you couldn’t tell me,” he said accusingly.

  Her eyes lifted to his face. It was full of bitterness and she had to wonder what her confession was doing to him. It was hard for her to believe he might have cared back then.

  “You weren’t around. Remember?”

  “I could have been found!”

  She groaned. “If a man has to be tracked down to be told he’s going to be a father, then it’s pretty obvious he wasn’t interested in the first place!”

  “I wrote you. You knew I hadn’t gone off with intentions of forgetting you,” he argued.

  Emily sighed. “The only thing you ever talked about in those few letters I got was about the next rodeo you were going to or the one you’d just left. And about the money you were winning. Nothing about us or when you would be coming back.”

  “What the hell did you want me to talk about? It would have been wrong of me to make promises to you when I didn’t know where or when my next dollar was coming from.” He grimaced as his eyes scanned her pale face. “But I guess Kenneth knew exactly what to say to you. He must have made damn quick work of proposing to you.”

  “He was concerned about me and the baby. He said he wanted to take care of us.”

  Cooper’s eyes narrowed to calculating slits. “Why? Did he think I couldn’t?”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but he quickly shook his head, then turned his head away from her. “There’s no need to answer that,” he said in a low, gritty voice. “I think I’m finally beginning to see how things really were.”

  “What do you mean, really were?”

  He looked back at her and Emily could see his gray eyes were roiling with emotions she couldn’t begin to understand.

  “Kenneth was just like our old man,” he said flatly. “He didn’t think I could handle the responsibility.”

  Emily’s brow puckered. “I don’t think that was the case at all. He simply thought you were no longer interested in me. And he knew I didn’t want to force you into coming back and marrying me simply for the sake of the baby. I didn’t want you that way.”

  Incensed, his nostrils flared. No one, especially Emily, had understood what had really been in Cooper’s heart back then. Kenneth should have contacted him and let him know about Emily’s condition. But he hadn’t. Instead he’d married Emily himself. Maybe his motive had been concern, as Emily seemed to think, but Cooper was beginning to see it as something else entirely.

  “So you married Kenneth and let everyone think it was his baby you were carrying?”

  Her head swung sadly back and forth. “No. It didn’t happen that way, Coop. I couldn’t bear to think of marrying another man. Not while I was carrying your child. I kept holding out—hoping you’d come back. I was only a couple of months into the pregnancy and no one but Kenneth knew about it. But then I had a spontaneous miscarriage and was forced into going to see Dr. Bellamy to make sure I was all right. With Aunt Justine being his nurse, I could hardly hide what had happened from her. But she’s respected my privacy all these years. No one else in my family knows about it.”

  Cooper was quie
t for long moments as he tried to take in all that she’d just told him. “You didn’t marry Kenneth because you were pregnant. So why did you marry him?”

  In the past few years, Emily had asked herself that question a thousand times over. She still wasn’t exactly certain why, except that Kenneth had caught her at a very vulnerable time in her life. She’d lost Cooper and then their baby. She’d needed someone and something to believe in and Kenneth had sworn to always love her.

  “He seemed to care about me and he thought we could have a good marriage. You were out of my life and he wanted me in spite of losing the baby.”

  He made a snorting sound. “How noble of him.”

  “It was more than I got out of you,” she returned.

  Maybe it had been, Cooper thought. But only because his brother had chosen to exclude him, once again. It made him wonder what else had gone on with Kenneth that he hadn’t known about.

  Emily’s sigh brought him out of his thoughts and he looked at her with such deep regret that tears welled up in her eyes.

  “If it’s any consolation our marriage was never rosy. He didn’t say it often, but for all these years Kenneth believed I was still carrying you around in my heart.”

  Had she really been carrying him around in her heart all this time? Cooper wondered. It was hard to imagine. More often than not she seemed to despise him.

  Emily went on, “And then it didn’t help matters when I couldn’t conceive. Kenneth had the idea that the miscarriage I suffered with your baby had damaged me somehow. But I—”

  He looked at her sharply. “It wasn’t the reason you couldn’t conceive, was it? I mean, you’re pregnant now.”

  Emily sighed and Cooper was grateful to see her tears were drying and she was far more composed than when he first entered the bedroom.

  “Dr. Bellamy assures me the miscarriage had nothing to do with it. He simply believes Kenneth wasn’t very fertile. We’ll never know because he refused to be tested. But as far as I’m concerned that’s all just medical jargon anyway. I was the reason I couldn’t give Kenneth a child. I had sinned with you and that was my retribution.”

  Cooper had never imagined that Emily might be blaming herself. Him, most surely. But not herself. “That’s crazy talk!”

  “Is it?” she countered. “You don’t feel any regret or guilt for making love to me all those years ago?”

  Groaning, he reached over and pushed his fingers through the side of her hair. “Emily, there’s nothing sinful about two people loving each other. The only thing I regret is...that you didn’t wait on me. And if I’d known about the baby—”

  “I told you before, I didn’t want you that way,” she whispered fiercely. “If you didn’t care enough about me to stay, I certainly wasn’t going to drag you back by forcing the responsibility of a child on you.”

  His fingers left her hair and traced a gentle pattern over her cheek. “I was coming back. I know you don’t believe me—”

  “But when? Whenever you grew tired of being a rodeo star?” She shook her head. “I needed more than a vague promise from you, Cooper.”

  “Do you think I left this place just to chase after some cockeyed dream? I left so I could eventually give you more.”

  Grabbing his hand, she gripped it as her eyes searched his. “You still don’t understand, Cooper. I didn’t need material things from you. I needed a commitment from you.”

  He had been committed to her. But obviously she hadn’t been able to see what was in his heart way back then. She’d taken his leaving as a sign of desertion. And now it was too late to change the past.

  His eyes fixed on a spot of the bedspread, he absently rubbed his fingers over the back of her hand. “And I needed to be able to offer you more than just me, Emily. Cooper Dunn by himself wasn’t good enough for a woman like you.”

  The picture he was trying to paint for her was suddenly unfolding in her mind and she shut her eyes, hoping it would block out the painful image. “Oh, Coop,” she whispered brokenly. “How did things between us get so messed up?”

  Cooper was tired of trying to understand why or how any of it had ever happened. Right now all he wanted was to hold her, feel the reassuring warmth of her body against him.

  She didn’t resist when he pulled her into his arms. For long moments he simply held her head against his shoulder and buried his face in the silky fall of her hair. But after a while he realized she’d started to cry again.

  Easing her head back, he wiped the teardrops from her cheeks, then bending his head, he placed a kiss on her pale forehead.

  “Don’t cry, my darling. Please don’t cry.”

  “Oh, Coop,” she suddenly wailed, then flung her arms around his neck. “Love me!”

  Cooper didn’t bother to question her invitation. He needed her too much. Easing her back down on the mattress, he framed her face with both hands.

  “I’m not supposed to love you, Emily,” he murmured against her lips. “But I can’t seem to help myself.”

  Gripping his neck, Emily urged him closer, opened her mouth to the hard line of his. She’d never needed him so much or wanted him this badly.

  Her eagerness didn’t surprise Cooper. Somewhere deep inside him, he’d known, just as she knew that the fire between them had never died. But the urgency of her soft lips against his mouth, his face and neck was filling him with heat, making it impossible to pull away from her.

  Like a starved man, he drank over and over from her lips while his hands crushed her hair in both fists. Eventually her fingers were loosening the buttons of his flannel shirt, tugging the tails from his jeans, then sliding across his hard abdomen.

  “Emily,” he groaned against her throat. “You know I can’t resist you.”

  “I don’t want you to,” she murmured. Her hands slid up his chest, then rested against his flat nipples.

  Groaning in his throat, Cooper tried to remember any other time he’d felt as he did now. He was consumed with physical desire and yet there was so much more inside him. His heart ached with the need to give her comfort and pleasure and joy. He’d never felt like this with any woman. And he knew if he lived until the end of time, he never would.

  With his lips still fastened hungrily to hers, he loosened the buttons on her coat. Sensing his need, Emily raised up enough to allow him to slip the coat off her shoulders. As soon as he’d tossed the garment out of the way, he lay down beside her and pulled her into the tight circle of his arms.

  Emily pressed herself against him and reveled in the hard length of his body. It had been so long since she’d felt like this—like a woman.

  As his lips continued to feast on hers, his hands stroked her back, then slid beneath her sweater and around to her breast. After encountering the thin barrier of lace, his fingers fumbled urgently with the clasp of her bra until the material finally fell away and his hands could touch her freely.

  Her breasts were full and heavy in his palms, her nipples rigid against the pads of his thumbs. Moaning low in her throat, Emily eased far enough away from him to slip the sweater over her head. The sight of her in the dim lamplight made his breath catch in his throat.

  “You’re more lovely than I ever remembered,” he murmured, then dipping his head he kissed one smooth breast.

  Emily dug her fingers into his dark hair. “Do you know how often I’ve dreamed of being with you again...like this?”

  “Not nearly as much as I have,” he said hoarsely, then pressing her flat against the mattress, he found her mouth again.

  Then as he eased himself over the length of her, he felt it. The soft mound of her belly pushing against him. The baby. Kenneth’s baby. How could he have forgotten? How could he be making love to her while she carried another man’s baby?

  The desire that had been pulsing through his veins like hot lava instantly turned to ice water. With a moan of selfdisgust he rolled away from her. His breaths coming hard and fast, he stared up at the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry, Emily
, I—”

  Befuddled by the sudden separation of their bodies, she raised up on her elbow and looked at him. “Cooper? What’s wrong?”

  Cooper cut his gaze back to her face and immediately felt a lance of regret at the passion he saw etched on her features. She wanted him! Just knowing that ought to be enough for him. But it wasn’t. He couldn’t take what she so readily offered, then later walk away. He’d already hurt her far more than he could bear to think about. Yet he couldn’t stay. He wasn’t emotionally fit to be her husband or the father of her baby. Not while every part of his heart was filled with resentment. For years he’d played the whipping boy, the second son beneath Kenneth. He didn’t want to be the second husband or a stand-in father. He’d be miserable if he tried.

  “I just can’t do this,” he said lowly.

  Leaning closer, she placed her hand upon his chest. She could feel the rapid thud of his heart and beneath the evening shadow of his beard, his face had paled.

  “Are you ill?” she asked worriedly.

  Unable to hold her gaze, he glanced at her small hand resting in the middle of his chest. “No. I’m—”

  “You realize you don’t want to make love to me. Is that it?” Her voice was low and hoarse as though it hurt to speak.

  Cooper shook his head. “I do want to make love to you, Emily. More than anything. But I’m not going to. Now or ever.”

  She didn’t say anything and eventually Cooper turned on his side to face her. His gray eyes shadowed with pain, he reached over and gently touched her swollen belly.

  “Cooper,” she began before he could, “It’s perfectly natural for pregnant women to make love.”

  “It isn’t that. It’s...the baby reminded me of Kenneth. Of all the—”

  Her eyes grew wide as the meaning of his words sunk in on her. “If that’s the way you feel then why...why did you pretend to want me when—”

  “Damn it all, I do want you! But...”

  Grabbing her sweater, she jerked it over her head. “I’m sorry you’re repulsed by the sight of my body. I’m sorry you can’t deal with the fact that I’m carrying Kenneth’s baby. But it’s my baby, too. And when it gets here it will still be my baby. If you can’t deal with that, maybe you should leave. That seems to solve your problems, anyway.”