The Heart of Hill Country

by Sherryl Woods

  Before anyone knew that his interest in marriage was totally self-serving, she was going to make absolutely certain that they were walking down the aisle. She was going to protect her role in her baby’s life...no matter what Clint had in mind for the future.

  6

  “So, where’s my precious angel!”

  Angela heard her grandfather’s booming voice all the way upstairs and sighed.

  “Not yet, please God,” she whispered. She wasn’t ready to see him yet, wasn’t prepared to see even a hint of judgment in his eyes. She wasn’t ready to explain the baby she was expecting. She certainly wasn’t prepared to explain Clint, not with things so terribly unsettled between them.

  Nor could she rely on her parents to smooth the way. It wouldn’t be fair to expect them to give answers to so many difficult questions, when she didn’t know the answers herself.

  “Not yet,” she pleaded again.

  Apparently God had other ideas. She heard her grandfather’s two-at-a-time tread on the steps, then the sharp, impatient rap of his knuckles against her door.

  “You in there, darlin’?”

  Resigned to the inevitable, she drew in a deep breath, plastered a bright smile on her face and threw open the door.

  “Grandpa,” she said and felt herself scooped into an awkward, but exuberant bear hug.

  After a minute he set her back on her feet and stepped back. “Let me get a good look at you.” His gaze traveled over her mound of a belly, then came to rest on her face. His eyes were troubled, but his beaming smile never faltered.

  “You look pretty as a picture,” he declared. “Impending motherhood obviously agrees with you.”

  “You should have seen me the first month,” she said, thinking of the nausea that had been a constant companion. There had been mornings she hadn’t wanted to budge from bed, much less see herself in a mirror.

  “I wish I had,” he said at once, “instead of you being away in who-knows-where all by yourself.”

  Sensing the likelihood that a lecture was about to begin, she hurriedly said, “My turn now.”

  She quickly scanned him from head to toe. Other than a few more gray hairs and a slight stoop to his shoulders he looked as fit as ever. He was one of those men who wore his age well and would until his nineties, God willing. He was almost in his eighties now and barely looked sixty.

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” she told him. “You’re every bit as handsome as you were the day I left.”

  He winked at her. “Love,” he confided. “I highly recommend it at any age.”

  Angela grinned at the allusion to the woman who’d turned his whole outlook on life upside down. “How is Janet?” she asked.

  “Perfect. Wonderful,” he enthused, eyes sparkling at the thought of her. “She’s downstairs with your mama. She’s as anxious to see you as I was, but she shows more restraint. She still says I haven’t got a lick of patience or any understanding whatsoever of privacy.”

  Angela grinned at him. “I guess there are some traits not even love can change. Not in an Adams man, anyway.”

  His expression sobered. “So when are you going to make me a great-granddaddy?”

  “The way I feel right now, it can’t be soon enough. Another week or two is what the doctor told me before I left Seattle to come home.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Me with a child in her teens and a great-grandbaby on the way. Talk about a couple of curve balls. Life’s thrown me some doozies. Not that I’m complaining. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  She grinned at his expression of delighted disbelief. “How are my cousins?” she asked, referring not only to the teenager her grandfather and Janet had had together, but to Janet’s daughter Jenny. It was Jenny’s theft of Grandpa Harlan’s truck that had brought them together in the first place. As a child, Angela had always thought Jenny’s rebellious ways fascinating. She’d envied the daring teenager. In the end, it appeared she’d outdone her.

  “Jenny’s going to be teaching school soon,” he said proudly, apparently oblivious to the irony. If his reaction to Erik’s desires had been half so approving, perhaps Angela’s natural father still would have been alive.

  “As for Lizzy,” he went on, “she is the most beautiful child ever born and the smartest.”

  “Don’t you let Luke, Cody and Jordan hear you say that,” Angela chided. “You’ll hurt their feelings. They all think they were gorgeous and sexy from day one.”

  “Those three have hides like an elephant,” he said dismissively. “My talk’s not going to faze them. Besides, they were never as cute as Lizzy. She’s her daddy’s girl. Top of her class every year.”

  Amused by his bragging, she teased, “Don’t you suppose just maybe she inherited some of her intelligence from her mother? Janet is an attorney, after all, and a very good one.” In fact, Janet Runningbear Adams had built a national reputation for her work on behalf of Native American causes.

  He grinned. “Much as it galls me, I suppose I can share some of the credit with her.” He looped an arm around Angela’s shoulders. “Come on down and see them. Jenny’s not here yet, but the others are waiting. Lizzy was ecstatic when we told her about the baby. She’s tired of being the youngest. Cody and Jordan should be turning up soon with their broods. You won’t believe how grown-up all my grandbabies are.”

  The thought of facing them all made her palms sweat. Overwhelming uncles, rock-steady aunts and rambunctious cousins. It promised to be too much.

  “You go on ahead,” she suggested. “I’m not quite ready.”

  Ignoring her hesitance, he declared, “You look fine to me. Another touch of powder on your nose isn’t going to make you one bit prettier.”

  “It’s not that. I...” She gazed into his eyes, pleading with him to understand.

  His expression softened at once. “You’re scared, aren’t you?” he said bluntly. “Or ashamed. Which is it?”

  When she said nothing, he captured her face between his work-roughened hands and met her gaze evenly. “Darling girl, there’s no need to be. Family’s all that’s important to us. Everyone here has made more than their share of mistakes. Everyone here loves you, no matter what. Don’t you know that by now? All that matters to us is that you’re home again.”

  She nodded, tears welling up. Maybe it was his words, maybe her wacky hormones, but she felt like bawling. “I’ll be there in a few minutes, I promise. I’m not going to duck out the back door.”

  His eyes twinkled. “What about that tree by your bedroom window? You thinking of climbing down that the way you did when you were a girl so you could sneak off to see your friends?”

  She laughed at the memory, as well as the impossibility of resorting to such an escape now. She patted her belly. “Like this? I don’t think so. I’ll be down to face the music, and I’ll use the stairs like a proper, grown-up lady.”

  “You’d feel braver with me by your side,” he said lightly. “Nobody’s going to mess with my darlin’ girl with me around.”

  She grinned at that. “You can’t protect me from everything, Grandpa.”

  “I can sure as hell try,” he said fiercely. “I love you, angel. Don’t make any mistake about that.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his weathered cheek. “I love you, too. And I didn’t realize until now just how much I’d missed you.”

  He cast one last worried look in her direction, then retreated downstairs. Angela stared after him for what seemed an eternity, trying to work up the courage to join everyone.

  “Facing your family’s harder than you expected, isn’t it?” Clint said, exiting the guest room across the hall.

  “Is it necessary for you to spy on me?” she snapped, then recalled that she was supposed to be trying to win the man back, not offend him. “Sorry. It’s just that seeing Grandpa Harlan shook me more th
an I’d expected it to. He acts as if I haven’t done anything wrong, when I know perfectly well he must be furious.”

  “More likely with me than with you,” Clint suggested. “Want to go downstairs with me and protect me?”

  She glanced up at him with astonishment and saw the sympathy and understanding in his eyes. She knew perfectly well he wasn’t one bit terrified of her grandfather or any man. Despite their battle the night before, he was offering her his support. She thought she had never loved him more than she did at this moment. It really was too bad that everything between them had gotten so messed up. At heart he was a decent, sensitive man. Maybe if she’d remembered that and given him time to adjust to the idea of being a daddy, things would never have gotten so out of hand.

  For just a moment she allowed herself to imagine the way it could have been. Arriving home as Clint’s wife, their first baby on the way, would have turned the holidays into something unforgettable.

  Instead, there was bound to be an endless amount of tension and strain as everyone tiptoed around the subject of their relationship. She didn’t envy Clint his role as an outsider, not with everyone bound to feel especially protective of her. He had no idea what he had let himself in for by accepting her mother’s invitation to stay on through the holidays.

  “I wonder if he knows yet that you’re here,” she murmured thoughtfully.

  “I doubt it. I haven’t heard any explosions since he arrived, have you?”

  “My father might have warned him.”

  “Oh, somehow I doubt that,” he said with a wry expression. “Your father would probably be delighted if your grandfather took one look at me and ripped me to shreds. Luke can’t do it himself because we declared a truce yesterday.”

  She studied him curiously. “I wondered about that. How did you win him over?”

  “I didn’t say I’d won him over, just that we’d agreed not to brawl. I’m on probation. He’s waiting for me to make just one tiny mistake and then, I guarantee it will be his pleasure to chase me all the way back to Montana.”

  She regarded him impishly. “One tiny mistake, huh?”

  He scowled at her. “Don’t go getting any ideas, angel. I have no intention of treading on anyone’s toes until I can claim my child.”

  She ignored the subtle reminder of his threat. She would deal with that when the time came. Instead, some thoroughly outrageous instinct, probably left from her days as Hattie, made her link her arm through his. Now was as good a time as any to start her scheme to win him back.

  “Let’s go,” she said with a wink. “Let’s see just how much trouble I can get you into, if I try.”

  There wasn’t so much as a twinkle in his eyes when he met her gaze evenly. “That works both ways, sweetheart. You’d do well to remember that.”

  The deliberate taunt jangled her nerves, just as he’d obviously intended. It reminded her that she was playing games with a master.

  At the top of the stairs, before Clint’s quick retort had evened the score, her promise of troublemaking had seemed like a fine idea. She’d expected to sail into the midst of her family with restored confidence.

  Instead, standing in the doorway to the living room with a circle of inquisitive faces staring at them, she realized she’d miscalculated. Walking into that room on Clint’s arm hadn’t been the masterstroke she’d anticipated. It had simply quadrupled the speculation and added to the pressure. Now it wouldn’t be just her folks and Consuela anticipating a wedding, but this whole roomful of relatives. Why hadn’t she seen that she should have locked the man in a closet until after New Year’s?

  Since she couldn’t seem to find her tongue, it was Clint who worked his way around the group, introducing himself with an ease that she found thoroughly annoying. Why wasn’t he feeling the same kind of intimidation that she felt? This was her family, after all. Right this second he seemed more at home than she did.

  He slowed when he got to her grandfather. She saw the two men taking each other’s measure. Everyone seemed to be holding their collective breath, waiting to see what Harlan Adams would do or say to the man who had gotten his grandchild into the fix she was in.

  Her grandfather’s expression was unreadable, but he was the first to hold out his hand. “Welcome, son. It’s good to have you with us for the holidays.”

  The palpable tension in the room eased.

  “Thank you, sir,” Clint said with just the right amount of deference. “I’ve heard quite a lot about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  Who’s lying now? Angela thought bitterly. Up until the day before yesterday, Clint Brady hadn’t even known this family existed, yet he was treating them all as if they were people he genuinely cared about getting to know.

  Worse, they were falling for it, toppling like dominoes under the warmth of his natural charm.

  She sighed and tried to be grateful for the fact that his presence had shifted some of the attention away from her for the moment. She was able to slip from the room and head for the kitchen to get her bearings before yet another carload of exuberant Adamses showed up.

  She was surprised to find the kitchen deserted. There was no sign of Consuela, even though preparations for that night’s feast were well underway. Expecting the housekeeper to return at any second, she filled a glass with milk and sank down into a chair at the table where she had spent many an afternoon as a girl talking out her problems, sometimes with Consuela, just as often with her mother. This room had heard a lot of secrets over the years.

  When the door swung open, she glanced up and saw that it was her step-grandmother who’d followed her. Angela’s smile was genuine as she surveyed the tall, slim woman with the shoulder-length black hair and sparkling brown eyes. She had always admired the strong, feisty lawyer who’d stolen her grandfather’s heart. Janet Runningbear Adams exuded the kind of quiet serenity Angela wished she could attain. It had taken a woman with amazing self-confidence to stand up to Harlan Adams strong will and become his partner in life, as well as his mate.

  Janet rested a hand on her shoulder, when Angela would have risen to hug her. “Stay where you are. I know how difficult it is to get up and down at this stage of pregnancy. Are you feeling OK?”

  “As well as any blimp could be expected to feel,” Angela told her. “Did you come in here looking for Consuela? Or a snack, maybe?”

  “Actually I came to see you.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was your grandfather’s idea that we have a talk. He got it into his head last night after he spoke to your father and heard that Clint was here. Naturally he practically shoved me out of the living room just now, instead of letting me wait a bit.”

  Angela regarded her warily. “What did he want you to talk to me about?”

  “He thought you might need some legal protection.”

  “Legal protection? From Clint? You mean like a restraining order or something?”

  Her incredulity made Janet smile. “Actually, I think he was thinking more along the lines of a prenuptial agreement.”

  “Oh.” Given the lack of real wedding plans and her own financial circumstances, the idea struck her as just as ludicrous. Besides, she’d always thought that starting a marriage by figuring out the financial ins and outs of ending it showed a certain lack of faith in the relationship.

  “Why on earth would he think I needed something like that?”

  “I’m not recommending it,” Janet said hastily, clearly reacting to the defensive note in Angela’s voice. “Your grandfather and I had quite a few words over that very subject when we got married. We ripped up a lot of paper, but a prenuptial agreement does serve a purpose. It can protect what’s yours or his.”

  “You may not have noticed, but I don’t have a lot,” Angela said dryly. “My savings account is virtually empty. So’s my checkbook. As for Clint, his ranch is hardly the kind of p
lace that needs protecting from my greedy little grasp.”

  “But you’re an Adams,” Janet reminded her as if that alone explained the need for such an agreement.

  “He’s hardly likely to try to steal my name.”

  Janet grinned. “No, but you stand to inherit this ranch. You have a sizable trust fund from your grandfather that will be yours in another couple of years.”

  Neither of those things had ever crossed her mind, maybe because she’d figured her parents and grandfather would live forever. “Clint not only doesn’t know about that, he wouldn’t care if he did,” she said with absolute certainty.

  “Are you so sure? I was under the impression that there was a time when he wasn’t the least bit interested in marrying you or claiming his baby. Now he turns up here and does a one-eighty. Maybe that’s honestly motivated,” Janet said reasonably. “Maybe not, but you ought to be sure before you risk everything that will one day be yours.”

  Angela shuddered. “I don’t know. That seems so cold and calculating. It’s not like Clint at all. Besides, none of this ever mattered to me, anyway.”

  “Possibly not, but you should think about this baby you’re carrying. You should protect what’s yours for your child’s future. Will you at least consider what I’ve said?”

  Angela nodded reluctantly. Janet reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “If there’s anything else you need to talk about, I’m available, not as a lawyer, but as a friend. Remember that. Sometimes it takes an objective outsider to help sort things out.”

  “You’re hardly an outsider,” she reminded her.

  “I wasn’t born an Adams,” Janet said wryly. “In the end it makes a difference. An Adams is single-minded when it comes to family. On occasion I have to remind Harlan that there are two sides to most stories.”

  Angela grinned. “I imagine you do. Thank you. Maybe one of these days when I figure out what all the questions are, I’ll see if you have any answers.”