The Rancher's Lullaby (Glades County Cowboys)

by Leigh Duncan

  “Not gonna happen,” she whispered. She couldn’t wait. Couldn’t live through the night without knowing the answer to the most important question of her life.

  She ducked into the bathroom. Five minutes later, she emerged, shaking worse than ever before. Questions crowded her head, each one more important than the other. How had it happened? How had she gotten pregnant? Not the deed. She knew exactly when and where, but how? After she’d tried every conceivable route to pregnancy, why now? Why with Garrett?

  She sank onto a kitchen chair. The clock above the stove ticked away the minutes. The refrigerator hummed. On the street below, a horn honked. Still she sat, trying to absorb the news.

  Her stomach rumbled. The faintest wave of nausea rolled through her midsection. Remembering the settling effects of Doris’s tea, she boiled water. She’d taken a cup from the cabinet and unwrapped a tea bag when she recalled hearing that pregnant women should avoid caffeine. Pregnant, she thought, and shook her head.

  After booting up her laptop, she searched for foods an expectant mother should avoid...or eat. The list was so overwhelming that she settled on a cup of hot water and a package of store-bought vanilla cookies she scrounged from a box in the pantry. She reached for a pad of paper, intending to write out a grocery list. When she stopped, the list of things she needed to buy stretched for three pages and included a crib, an infant seat and a high chair.

  Slow down, she told herself. She’d have months to make these purchases. Tension wasn’t good for the baby.

  The baby. Awed, she cupped her hands protectively over her tummy. She closed her eyes, determined to do nothing but enjoy the moment. Tears dampened her cheeks. She let them flow without making an effort to stop them. A sudden urge to talk to her mom swept through her, and she reached for her cell phone. Her fingers hovered over the screen. She dropped the phone on the table. She couldn’t tell her folks. She couldn’t tell anyone. Not before she told Garrett.

  Garrett. She tugged a loose strand of hair. She had to tell him. He deserved to know he was going to be a father. She closed her eyes, willed herself to picture the rancher’s face when she gave him the news. He was bound to be surprised, shocked even. She had, after all, sworn she couldn’t get pregnant. And she’d been wrong. She imagined the rancher’s hand on her growing belly. Saw his face light up when he felt the baby—their baby—move for the first time. She could practically see him cradling their infant daughter or newborn son in his strong, tanned arms.

  And if not? Garrett had said he didn’t want another child. She stared down at her still-flat belly. She really had no choice. Miracles like this came along only once in a lifetime.

  She’d barely swallowed the last cookie when a knock at the door startled her. Lisa rose slowly. Spying Garrett through the peephole, she hurriedly blotted her cheeks and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “Are you all right?” he blurted the moment she swung the door wide. “You had to have been scared when Puck took off. It’s okay if you were too shaken to stay this afternoon. As long as you weren’t hurt. You weren’t hurt, were you?”

  Hurt, no. Shaken? She was shaken all right, but it didn’t have anything to do with a runaway horse. Exercising every ounce of willpower she possessed, Lisa managed not to cup a protective hand over her midsection as she stared at the man who’d driven thirty miles to check up on her.

  “You didn’t need to come all this way, Garrett. I’m fine,” she insisted. “In fact, I was just heading out to the grocery store. It can wait. Come on in. What made you think something was wrong?” She was babbling and took a shuddery breath. She had no business asking Garrett into her apartment when home pregnancy tests lined the counter in her bathroom. Especially not since each one displayed distinctly positive results.

  She eyed the tall rancher as she searched for the right words to tell him what he deserved to hear from her own lips, but the moment he stepped into her apartment, she lost her train of thought. A thrill shimmied through her at how lucky they’d been in finding one another.

  He peered down at her, concern filling his blue eyes. “I thought we were going to spend the afternoon with LJ. When you left all of a sudden, I thought maybe something was wrong between you and Mom. You two didn’t get into a fight, did you?”

  “No, not at all.” Dismissive, Lisa brushed a hand through the air.

  Garrett gave a brief nod before he posed another question. “Is it LJ, then? Am I asking you to spend too much time with him?”

  “Just the opposite.” Now that she was going to have a baby of her own, she probably ought to get as much on-the-job training as she could. And what better child to learn from than Garrett’s own son? “I love doing things with LJ. He’s the sweetest kid.” She batted her eyes, teasing. “Just like his dad.”

  Truth be told, she’d fallen just as hard for Garrett’s child as she had for him. Already she looked forward to walking the boy to the bus stop on his first day of school, waiting for him to come home each afternoon. She’d teach him to play the guitar and hold her breath while Garrett gave him riding lessons. They’d bake cookies together and eat them warm from the oven. At that last thought, she smothered a laugh. Okay, she corrected, maybe they’d go to the bakery together and reheat the cookies in the microwave.

  “You’re so good with him, Garrett. It’s easy to see how much you love him.”

  A troubled look darkened the rancher’s blue eyes. “It wasn’t always like that. Not so long ago, I could barely stand to be in the same room with the boy.”

  Lisa frowned. Garrett’s cool relationship with his son was one of the first things she’d noticed about him. “You’ve changed,” she reminded him gently.

  “Yeah, but...now that we’re thinking of a future together—that is what we’re thinking, isn’t it? A future? Our future?”

  She loved that Garrett could be so self-assured one minute and yet so tender-hearted the next. She nodded. Spending the next forty or fifty years with him was what she wanted more than anything...besides having a baby. But if she thought he’d sweep her into his arms and profess his undying love—or at least kiss her senseless—she was wrong. Garrett sank onto the edge of her couch.

  “I guess it’s time I came clean about my past,” he said simply.

  “You aren’t an ax murderer, are you?” Certain he wasn’t, she let a teasing grin tug at the corners of her mouth.

  “No, but...” Looking downright glum, he studied the floor. “Arlene’s death was my fault.”

  Lisa sucked in a breath and leaned forward. Her voice barely a whisper, she asked, “How?”

  * * *

  GARRETT SHUDDERED AS he recalled how he’d spent LJ’s infancy in a fog of self-loathing, guilt and blame. “I’m not sure where to start,” he confessed, his voice so low it was barely audible.

  “Most people say to start at the beginning. We have plenty of time. Neither of us is going anywhere.”

  “Losing Arlene was my fault.” Bald-faced honesty hurt, but this was no time to sugar-coat the truth. “I pressed her to start a family. We’d been married for several years, known each other since we were kids. It was time. The natural progression of things. Or at least, I thought it was.”

  “She didn’t want children?” Lisa’s calm acceptance urged him to go on.

  “Arlene always said her students were her kids. Looking back, I think she’d have been perfectly happy if things had just gone on the way they were. We both had good jobs, doing work we liked. I suppose you’d say she’d found her calling, but me, I wanted more. Wanted a child of my own. A son to carry on the Judd name. A daughter who’d wrap me around her little finger. I convinced Arlene to let nature take its course. See what happened. The next thing I knew—” he shuddered “—the next thing I knew, Arlene was pregnant.”

  “With LJ?” Lisa breathed.

  He nodded. “From early on, there were problems. Arlene’s blood pressure spiked.” He swallowed. As a rancher, he’d seen cows go down with eclampsia. Without a vet o
n hand, they often lost the cow and the calf. So when the doctor diagnosed his wife with the condition in its early stages, he’d known the situation was serious.

  “We did everything the doctors told us to do. Diet. Exercise. Medicine to control her blood pressure. Then, bed rest. None of it made a darn bit of difference.” He rubbed the knuckles of his left hand, the hand that had held his wife’s until the nurses forced him to let go. “The docs recommended we terminate. Try again later. Arlene wouldn’t have anything to do with the idea. At seven months, they said the only solution was to deliver the baby early, but my wife refused. Said he was too little, begged to hold out a little longer. Like a house of cards, everything started falling apart after that. Her kidneys shut down. She went on dialysis. The docs put her in the hospital where they could monitor her condition better.”

  “What a nightmare,” Lisa murmured.

  “She was three weeks from her due date when...” His voice thinned. He took a minute to get control. “The placenta separated. They rushed her into surgery for a C-section. LJ, he was fine. They whisked him off to the neonatal unit to be sure. But Arlene...”

  Banned from the operating room, he’d hit his knees, but his prayers hadn’t changed the outcome. “They couldn’t stop the bleeding. They tried, um, they tried everything.” The doctor’s ashen face and blood-stained green scrubs—they still haunted his dreams, reminding him that his wife, the mother of his child, was gone.

  Tears leaked from his eyes. Deliberately Garrett straightened the arms he’d crossed while he talked, flexed the fingers he’d clenched. He mopped his face with his shirttail.

  “If I hadn’t been so insistent...” He let his voice trail off.

  “Oh, Garrett, you can’t blame yourself. You had no way of knowing.” Lisa’s voice trembled. “I’m so very sorry about what happened to Arlene, but women have babies all the time. You couldn’t know how it would turn out.”

  “Maybe not.” Garrett drew in air until his lungs filled to capacity. Expelling the cleansing breath through his nose, he wiped his damp palms on his jeans. He wrapped his fingers around his knees. “But I can make damn sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  A soft gasp drew his focus to the dark eyes that searched his face. Gently he reached for Lisa’s hands, laced his fingers between hers.

  “One day you might change your mind,” came her quiet whisper.

  “Doubtful.” He shook his head. Certain she had to be thinking of her own situation, he tightened his grip on her fingers when she tried to pull away. This was one area where he could offer reassurance, and he rushed to supply it. “This has got to be difficult for someone like you. Someone who’s tried so hard to have a baby. Honey, if there’s one thing Arlene’s death taught me, it’s that this life doesn’t come with a whole lot of guarantees. My love for you is one of them. You’ll always be perfect to me, just the way you are.”

  Her fingers went limp in his grasp. She sank back into the cushions as if every drop of starch had seeped out of her spine. Studying her, Garrett noted the signs of someone who’d just had a huge burden lifted off her shoulders. He patted her hand, glad they’d cleared the air between them. It was kind of ironic when he stopped to think about it. Of all the men and women in the world, he and Lisa had found their perfect match in each other.

  “Wasn’t there something else you wanted to talk about?”

  “It—it can wait.” Lisa blinked slowly. “It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I think it’s all catching up with me. I don’t think there’s anything I want more than a nap.”

  Garrett’s eyes honed in on her. She did look a little pale. No matter how well she’d handled it at the time, having Puck run away with her had probably taken more out of her than either of them had realized. Maybe she should rest.

  Unable to resist, he grinned. “You want some company?”

  She pushed to her feet. “I don’t think I’d get much rest if you stayed.”

  Rising, he wiggled his eyebrows in his best lascivious leer. “True.” When the move drew a smile, he wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her close. “The roundup starts next weekend, but how ’bout we get away together after that? I’ve got a few days comin’ to me. We could head over to Blue Spring. It’s real pretty this time of year.”

  He tried to hide his disappointment when Lisa shook her head.

  “I can’t close Pickin’ Strings. Not even for a day or two. Not till it’s operating in the black.” She tilted her face up to his. “Rain check?”

  “For you, anything.” He leaned in, his lips meeting hers. Minutes later, as he headed down the stairs to his truck, Garrett told himself he had far more than any man deserved. He had a son to carry on his name, a boy who would, in all likelihood, grow up to be far too much like his daddy. He’d been given a second chance at life, at love, with a woman he adored.

  He paused, his foot hovering over the bottom riser. Why, then, couldn’t he shake the feeling that something was wrong between him and Lisa, and he just couldn’t put his finger on it?

  Chapter Ten

  Garrett pulled Gold into the grass that grew just beyond the trail. He tipped his hat to Sarah and Mrs. Brown as they rode past. Two of the ranch hands herded a half-dozen cattle past his vantage point while he waited. At last, he reined his horse in alongside Jake Brown while he gave the man’s two daughters a deeper grin than the obligatory one he reserved for most guests. Carolyn and Krissy had spent the hours before they hit the trail this morning practicing with lariats, trying their darnedest to throw a loop over a tree stump. They hadn’t succeeded. Their luck hadn’t improved once they mounted up. Especially since their new target was a calf that didn’t want to leave its mother.

  Krissy twirled her rope in the air and let fly.

  “Good one,” her sister called when the business end grazed the calf’s back. The loop clung for a second before it fell into the dirt. The little heifer kicked her heels and trotted closer to her mother’s side.

  “The girls seem to be enjoying themselves,” Garrett remarked as the younger girl recoiled her rope for another try. “How ’bout yourself?”

  The New Yorker tugged a brand-new Stetson low over a pair of designer sunglasses. “Sure beats taking a cruise. We did that last year. Six days with forty-two hundred new friends. I get enough of crowds back home. This time, we wanted to try something different. Get in touch with nature.” He spread his arms in an expansive gesture. “Fresh air. Sunshine. I envy you, man. You get to have this all the time.”

  “Yep. I reckon I do.” Garrett treated himself to a leisurely glance at their surroundings. From the lakes with their densely wooded sections to the acres and acres of grassland that stretched clear to the horizon, the Circle P’s quiet beauty surrounded him. As a teen, he’d hungered to see a different part of the world, been eager to leave the ranch in his dust. Once he’d won his share of gold buckles, the novelty of following the rodeo circuit had worn off faster than a jack rabbit could cross a dirt road. Then life in Atlanta had soured him on big cities. Coming home had given him a new appreciation for the place where he’d been born and raised. It stirred him to tend the land the same way his father and forefathers had, to pass that sense of stewardship along to his son.

  His brothers were doing the same thing with their children. Hank often took Noelle with him when he checked the grazing pastures on the Bar X. As for Colt, Bree might be too young to drive a tractor, but he’d seen his brother walking hand-in-hand with the little girl, pointing out the various plants and animals that inhabited their little corner of the world. It was all part of building an appreciation, a love for their way of life. Garrett squared himself in his saddle. One day soon, he’d do that with LJ, too. Had, in fact, already started during their picnics with Lisa.

  Lisa. From the very beginning, LJ had loved snuggling next to her while they played silly singing games or she read aloud to him. Thanks to weekly riding lessons, she’d overcome her fears, endured a runaway horse and lived to tell the tale
. He smiled, thinking how smoothly she had fit into his life. How much he wanted her to be a part of his future. His, and LJ’s.

  It was time, he reckoned, to take their relationship to the next level. Between the practice sessions and the jams, the weekly riding lessons and outings with LJ, they already spent all their free time together. But he wanted more. He wanted to linger over long, slow kisses that didn’t have to end. To spend all night making love to her. To go on real dates and make plans for a future together.

  All of which he couldn’t do as long as his own future remained unsettled.

  Tugging his reins to the side, he urged Gold off the trail. Ty lingered among the last of the riders and, spotting him, Garrett waited until his friend drew abreast before he tapped his heels to the buckskin’s flanks. The horse blew air and settled in to a plodding walk beside Ranger.

  The Circle P’s owner tugged down the bandana he’d tied over the lower half of his face. “Everybody ahead enjoying themselves?”

  “Those guys from New Jersey...” Garrett stumbled over their names.

  “Wayne, Tony and Cory,” Ty supplied without missing a beat.

  “Yeah, them. They’ve been nippin’ from a flask since we left the barn. We’ll probably want to watch them as the night goes on.” Monitoring their guests’ drinking habits went hand-in-hand with maintaining the Circle P’s family-friendly atmosphere.

  “Thanks for the heads-up. How are Carolyn and Krissy?”

  “I don’t know what they’ll do if they ever rope one of those calves, but they’re having a blast trying. Their mom’s a quiet one. I don’t think she’s said two words all morning.”

  Ty nodded. “And the others?”

  This first day on the trail, riders mostly stayed with their own groups. Garrett gave his boss and friend a brief update on each. When he finished, they rode in companionable silence until they spotted a smudge of dark smoke rising from the bunkhouse chimney. Knowing they’d reach the camp within the hour, Garrett took a breath. Much as he hated the thought of moving on, he’d understood from the start that he was only filling in as manager for his brothers. Now that he was thinking of a future with Lisa, it was time for him and LJ to settle down for good.