Baby by Midnight?

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry, and a noticeable nonmention of what would make him happy. Alex picked up the roller pan and poured the remaining paint into the bucket, not sure if he even wanted the option of arguing his case right now. Okay, so maybe he’d pushed too hard. Maybe he’d wanted too much, too fast. But Annie, of all people, should know she could depend on him when there was a child at stake. He straightened slowly, looked around for the lid to the paint can. “I’ll pay Koby’s board through October,” he said tightly. “Wouldn’t want anyone stayin’ awake and worryin’ over whether I’ll be around at the end of the month.”

  “Genevieve wouldn’t miss a night’s sleep over you, Alex, believe me. She’d insist I do it.”

  The little catch in Annie’s voice told him she didn’t want him to be angry or upset. But the glint of determination in her eyes assured him she wasn’t backing down, either. She didn’t believe he could stick around long enough to make much of a father...or a husband. Hell, maybe she was right. “I don’t want you losing a wink of your beauty rest over me, darlin’,” he said. “I’ll pay two months ahead if that’s what it takes.”

  “No need to get carried away. You’ll be itching to move Koby out of here by that time. And Genevieve will be thrilled with a whole month’s stall rent. She might even start speaking to you again.”

  Alex offered a smile—a poor excuse for one, perhaps, but still a smile. “On second thought, maybe I’ll pay week to week.”

  Annie’s answering grin was worth the effort. She moved—a bit stiffly, he thought—to the doorway and looked back at the room. “I believe Hoyt is going to like his room,” she said. -

  Alex turned from watching her to the warm color on the walls, the sunny shade of the trim, and a slow-building panic at the thought of the baby whose presence would soon fill every nook and cranny of Annie’s world. “Yep. The Sundance Kid is going to be very happy here.” He looked to the doorway in hopes of sharing both the panic and the anticipation of parenthood.

  But she was already gone.

  LOOSEY TOOK ONE CAUTIOUS, skeptical sniff of Alex’s outstretched hand and fell all over herself with excitement. Here was her rescuer, her savior, her hero. Her plume of a tail, freshly bathed and groomed along with the scrawny rest of her, wagged like the white flag of surrender. Her tongue, rough, pink, and wet, slapped kisses on his hands, his arms, his knees, his face, everywhere he allowed her to reach. Her eyes shone with the adoration in her doggy heart. She might have one neon blue leg cast, but it was clear her gratitude was pure-white and knew no encumbrance. With one rescue, Alex had won her heart until the end of time.

  Annie understood completely...and as she watched the dog’s zealous affection and Alex’s more measured response, she felt a strong dose of sympathy for them both. Loosey, because there would always be hope, but never a promise that she’d be allowed to stay with him. Alex, because he could have had so much love just for the taking... if he hadn’t been so intent on proving he was good enough, worthy enough to receive it.

  After they left, driving off in the decrepit old pickup, the man and his newly acquired companion, Annie wandered back to the baby’s room to lean against the door frame and survey the empty nursery. The paint was drying lighter, as Alex had predicted, and the walls were turning a warm, rusty-tan, brightened by the pale yellow trim. The colors reminded her of something—a pleasurable something—and as she tried to remember what, the child in her womb kicked once, then again, then with a rolling, energetic frequency. “Oh, sure,” she said to him. “Now you’re going to show off.”

  But it was probably best that Alex hadn’t felt the baby kick, that there had been no opportunity for father and fetus to bond, that a moment when the three of them might have forged family ties had slipped away unsung. It didn’t matter if this baby wound up being Sam or Sundance or Billy, his name would sound right with Thatcher. Not McIntyre. She didn’t care if Alex or his entire family was convinced her son belonged in part to them, this child was hers to protect. This was her baby and hers alone. She had determined early on she would be both mother and father to her boy and she was sticking to that promise. No matter how many flat-out lies she had to tell. No matter who did or didn’t believe her. It was her own foolish fault if she allowed Alex to break her heart. It was inexcusable to allow him any chance at all of breaking her son’s.

  Her hand reached to switch off the bedroom light, the shy memory pounced, and she found herself thinking about the kitten Alex had given her one long-ago autumn. The runt of the litter, Boots, was barely a half pound of rusty-colored fur, dotted with black eyes and a pink nose, with front paws capped in mottled white. Alex had rescued the little guy from certain starvation—when the mother cat had rejected him in favor of his plentiful, more robust littermates—and brought him to Annie, who’d nursed him to health with an eyedropper and the sheer power of love.

  Boots had been her first real patient, her first knowledge of vocation, her first true glimpse into the exceedingly sweet tenderness in Alex’s then thirteen-and-gawky teenage heart. It hadn’t been his fault. Boots died a few weeks later. It was just one of those things. Uncle Dex said it wasn’t always a kindness to save the runt, but Annie hadn’t believed him then. Or even now, when she understood that technically, medically speaking his statement had some basis in fact.

  Alex had taken the kitten’s death hard, blamed himself somehow, even though he’d denied he cared one way or another. When she’d said she wanted to give Boots a proper funeral, Alex had made no bones about his opinion. It was just a silly cat, he’d said. She’d hoped he would change his mind, show up at the designated time, put his arm around her shoulders while she cried for that small, silly, sweet cat. But he hadn’t...and she’d held the graveside service by herself in Uncle Dexter’s pasture.

  Annie flipped the switch, cloaking the rusty-tan walls in nothing but moonlight, but still she lingered in the doorway. Boots had had a funny, half squawk, half meow that sounded more like a bluejay than a barn cat. He’d slept on her pillow, played tirelessly with her hair, drunk from the faucet and loved her with all his small might. And when she’d gone back the following spring to try to find his grave, she’d discovered that someone had marked it with a polished stone and scattered wildflower seeds. Seeds that had bloomed into a sunny blanket of soft, pale yellow all around Boots’s grave.

  There were times, Annie thought as she turned away, when she could forgive Alex anything.

  Chapter Six

  Alex hadn’t driven a mile before Loosey had wedged herself against his side like a pesky clocklebur. Another mile had her muzzle and the uninjured front paw on his thigh. Two miles more and she’d managed to wriggle most of her body across his lap, squeezing into the open space between him and the steering wheel. At this rate, by the time he reached the S-J gates, the silly mutt would be driving.

  He didn’t know why he didn’t just stop the truck and forcibly put her back on her side of the seat. Most dogs would have stuck their nose through the window he’d rolled down a few inches for that very purpose. But Loosey wasn’t interested in the night scents outside or in sniffing out where she was headed. She was only concerned about getting as close to him as he and the logistics of the pickup truck would permit.

  “You’re trespassin’ on my good nature, Footloose,” Alex said, absently brushing his hand across her black-and-tan fur. “What kind of name is that for a dog, anyway? I’ll bet Annie made it up just to see if she could set my hat to spinnin’. Which explains how she could come up with a name like Hoyt for a baby.”

  Loosey’s tail flopped against the cracked vinyl seat covers, acknowledging the sound of his voice, if not her agreement.

  “I ask you, Loose, don’t you think Sundance has Hoyt beat all to pieces when it comes to naming a boy?”

  Again, the thump, thump of her approval.

  “Me, too.” Alex draped his hand over the wheel, at home as long as he was on the move. “Who ever heard of anything ever being named afte
r Hoyt? Sundance. Now there’s a name for you. Got an outlaw, a film festival, a catalog and at least one ski resort named Sundance. ‘Course, I’m not really meanin’ I want to name my son after an outlaw or a catalog, you understand. If it was left to me, I’d probably settle on Sam. But it’d be nice to have some say-so, don’t ya think?”

  Loosey apparently thought so, too, because she wiggled her hips and gained another inch of lap, all but taking over the driver’s seat.

  “Scoot over,” he said, shifting her hind legs back onto the seat and getting a little room to drive. “We may as well get a few things straight right up-front, pooch. First off, you’re no lapdog. Second, if Annie hadn’t taken a shine to you, and if she hadn’t got the notion it’d be good for me to have to take care of you, you’d be out there thumbing a ride—which is what got you into this predicament in the first place. So no matter what anybody else tells you, you’re lucky to have me, understand?”

  Loosey licked his sleeve.

  “Third and most important, I wasn’t lookin’ for a pet when I found you, so don’t go gettin’ any ideas on that score. Where I grew up and where we’re headed, animals serve a useful purpose or they don’t stick around. Get the picture? Josie was always trying to sneak kittens in from the barn, but Willie caught her every time. The thing about dogs, you see, is they’re harder to sneak in and a lot harder to hide. Believe me, I know. Willie likes animals, don’t get me wrong. She just doesn’t think they belong in the house. Now I’m willing to sneak you in, but after that, it’s gonna be up to you to keep a low profile, if you know what I mean.” Alex looked down at the dog in his lap, realized he was rubbing the silky underside of her ear, an action she seemed real happy about. “Willie catches you and you’re on your own. Got it?”

  Loosey closed her eyes and sighed happily, apparently convinced that as long as she could get him to scratch her ear, she could take on the world.

  “What am I doing talking to you?” he asked, although he knew the answer. There wasn’t anyone else to listen to him. He hadn’t exactly spent his life talking out his problems with other people. “All you care about is having something to eat and a place to sleep and gettin’ your ear scratched. You don’t care that my horse pulled a tendon today or that if he’s not ready for the futurity, my whole future goes sprintin’ off like a wolf after a rabbit. You certainly don’t care I’m about to become a father, and the mother of my baby can’t locate enough faith in me to even admit I had something to do with it.”

  Loosey looked at him as if she did care, as if she did understand.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been fooled by that soulful look in a female’s eyes before,” he told her. “You’re going to have to do something pretty spectacular if you want me to believe you’re concerned about anything other than getting your ears rubbed.”

  She barked. Once. Like Lassie, only not so energetically.

  “Sure. Sure. I hear you. But what’s that supposed to mean? That you understand? Ha.”

  The singular syllable reminded him of Annie, of the way she’d scoffed at the idea her baby might take after him. What was she thinking, anyway, making up some imaginary guy to be the baby’s father? The smart thing for her to do would be to claim Alex as the father—whether he was or not—and marry him. The McIntyre name wasn’t anything to sneeze at—even if it didn’t go well with Hoyt. And while he knew marriage to him might not be a picnic, he sure didn’t believe it would be a lifetime in purgatory, either.

  She was just being stubborn, he decided. Paying him back for all the times he hadn’t been there when she’d wanted him. He would admit he hadn’t always been Johnny-on-the-spot. He’d messed up a few times—times when it counted. He deserved some tough negotiations to earn her forgiveness. That part he knew. What he didn’t understand was her denial. Flat, uncompromising denial. Was it possible the baby wasn’t his?

  But it had to be. The timing was all wrong, otherwise. He knew Annie Thatcher the same way he knew the geography of northern Wyoming. He knew she wouldn’t have spent one night with him and the next with another man. It wasn’t in her nature. Lying to him for what she considered a good cause? Yes. Hopping from one bed to another in the space of a week? No. Definitely no.

  Plus he’d seen no sign, nothing to indicate the presence of another man in Annie’s life. No pictures lying around, no postcards or gifts from faraway places, no soft, wistful sighs, no dreamy look in her eyes, no sense that there was—or ever had been—anyone else. No matter what she said, the facts didn’t add up to another man. She wouldn’t admit the baby was his because she didn’t want him in her life. Hard as that was to swallow, he couldn’t figure out any other plausible explanation.

  Annie had been mad at him more times than he could recall over the years. Often, with good reason. But he just couldn’t believe he’d ever done anything so terrible she’d feel she needed to protect his son from him. It was true he’d missed some important events in her life. Sometimes for no better reason than he believed she’d be better off without him. But at worst his sins were of the omission variety, not of the inseparable-damage sort. Certainly nothing to have given her the idea he would be such a terrible father that any child was bound to suffer for his influence.

  So was she protecting his son? Or protecting herself?

  Either way, Alex had to change her mind. Had to prove he wasn’t the risk she apparently believed him to be. Which was more than she would have asked of any other man. “Why do I have to prove anything?” he asked aloud, causing Loosey to freeze her persistent inching onto his lap and look up at him. “And don’t even think about taking her side in this,” he instructed the dog, although he knew that on this topic, there was probably no one who would line up to support his cause.

  Why should he be surprised about that, either? He’d rebelled against authority and expectations since childhood. Maybe he hadn’t been born the natural athlete Matt was, and maybe he’d never been as book smart as Jeff...or maybe he’d never been able to figure out just why he should put out the effort. Teachers complained he didn’t apply himself to schoolwork. His parents complained he didn’t apply himself to ranch work. His brothers complained his escapades got them in trouble. Whatever the demand on his time and energies, Alex had had to find a way to complicate it—either to keep from being bored or merely for the attention value.

  His parents were hardworking, goal-oriented, practical individuals who took great pride in their children’s accomplishments and didn’t know what to make of Alex’s restless need to push the boundaries, probe the limits, explore the possibilities. His too-tender heart had toughened up early under the two-against-one teasing Matt and Jeff delivered in their shared role of big brother. His achievements were always overshadowed by one of theirs, often even by Josie’s little-girl-cute antics. Alex would be the first to admit he hadn’t been an easy child, but then, how could he have known the difference between easy and difficult if he hadn’t been told again and again?

  A little more trust and a little less criticism would have been nice. On the other hand, maybe he had—as Willie had once said—been born on the cusp of the new moon and just never quite got his life’s bearings. Whatever the reason for his skittish nature, it was time to pay the piper.

  Because no matter what any of them expected, he was home, and home he was going to stay. Where else did a man belong except in the place his heart had always resided? Annie would see. He’d show her he was a handy man to have around. He’d show Matt and Jeff that he knew more about cutting horses than they’d ever learn. And he’d prove to them all that he was man enough to be a good father to his son.

  After all, he had nearly three whole months before the futurity.

  Three months before the baby was due.

  Three months before he had to decide what happened if somehow proving himself a man turned out to be more task than he was equal to.

  JEFF’S CAR PARKED near the house was hardly an unusual sight at the S-J. Alex didn’t think much about it—just
wondered what had brought his brother to the ranch and what had kept him so late at night. It was past ten when Alex walked in through the back door and tossed his hat toward the rack, where it missed a hook and swan-dived to the floor. Picking it up, he set it square on the peg, then turned to explore what might have been left over from dinner. It wasn’t until he pulled back the aluminum foil on the plate Willie had left warming in the oven that he realized the day, Friday, and the import of his favorite dish, stuffed pork chops and stewed apples, neatly packed in the divided sections of the warming tray. Tonight was the party Willie had planned for the family, the dinner she’d made especially for him.

  Disappointment sluiced through him and settled into a sick feeling in his gut. How could he have forgotten something so important? And how would he ever be able to make it up to Willie?

  “You’re a little late for dinner,” Jeff observed as he walked in from the other part of the house. “We waited until eight for you to show up, but...” His voice faded and he gave a little whistle of surprise as he caught a glimpse of the skinny dog hobbling along behind Alex’s every move. “You are living dangerously tonight, little brother.”

  Alex leaned down to pat Loosey on the head, hoping to keep at least one someone on his side. “I thought I might be able to slip her in without Willie noticing. I can’t leave her outside. Her leg’s broken.”

  “You may be in similar circumstances unless you steer clear of Matt for a few days. He’s a tad riled that you missed dinner.”

  “I forgot,” Alex said simply, feeling like the worst kind of heel. No wonder they all had such low expectations of him. He delivered inexcusable behavior like clockwork. “I had a lot of things on my mind this evening—what with Koby and Annie and all—and I just plain forgot about Willie’s little get-together.”