Her Baby and Her Beau

That seemed more likely than that Beau Camden could have materialized from the past. At just that moment. And here, of all places.

Yet, as she studied the man outside, she began to see in him small images of the boy she’d once known.

Most definitely in the eyes. Although while the color was the same, the innocence she remembered was lost.

There were also hints of the boy in the features that time had fine-tuned and chiseled, accentuating cheekbones and giving a leaner line to the face that had had more roundness to it fourteen years ago.

At seventeen, Beau Camden had been tall. Maybe not quite as tall as this guy, but close. And his hair had been the same color—though there had been more of it as a teenager that summer.

More hair and far, far smaller muscles...

Still, the longer she looked at him, the easier it was to believe that this was, indeed, Beau Camden.

And with that belief, resentment came back to life.

“Beau...” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not sure where to start,” he said. “Could I come in?”

Had the hospital given her anything that could cause weird flashbacks and hallucinations? Because she just didn’t know how this could possibly be happening.

“Are you for real?” she heard herself ask.

He took a wallet from his back pocket, opened it and held his driver’s license close enough to the window for her to see it.

It looked new and the picture was exactly of the man standing there. Beaumont Anthony Camden.

Beaumont...

She’d teased him about that that summer...

A good memory all twisted up with bad ones, causing a pain that had nothing to do with the escape from the fire.

“Or it’s nice out here—you could come out,” he suggested as he put his wallet away.

Since she didn’t think hallucinations had driver’s licenses, and it began to sink in that he really was who he said he was, she didn’t have reason to fear him. He wouldn’t hurt her—not physically, anyway. And resentment or no resentment, she was curious about what he was doing there, not to mention how and why.

But she couldn’t let him into her room and take the chance that Immy would wake up.

So she said, “Give me a minute and I’ll come out.”

“Take all the time you need.”

Kyla ducked behind the curtains and held them tightly closed in front of her.

Then she opened them just a slit and peeked out again to see if Beau Camden really was out there.

He was. She hadn’t imagined this. She wasn’t hallucinating.

And he was waiting for her, now standing near a big black SUV parked outside her room. Still posture-perfect, with his long, thick, jeans-encased legs spread shoulder width apart and hands behind his back.

Military for sure.

But now that she knew who he was there was no surprise in that.

She closed the drapes tightly again, suddenly realizing that she didn’t know how presentable she was.

She went to the mirror over the small bureau near the bathroom.

Once she got there and took a look at herself she thought maybe she shouldn’t have.

She’d showered at the hospital that morning, but everything she’d brought with her from Northbridge had been lost in the fire. That meant no makeup, let alone anything to camouflage the dark bruise on her temple or any blush to put color into the pallor that the trauma had left her with.

Luckily there was only one bruise on her face—the rest of her injuries were under her clothes.

Her dark amber eyes weren’t blackened or swollen—she counted that as a good thing. Her thin, straight nose was unmarred. And while she wished she had lip gloss, her lips were a natural pink color that hadn’t paled along with the rest of her face.

Basically she looked like what she was—someone who had just finished a hospital stay. But there wasn’t much she could do about that, so she focused on her hair.

It was about an inch longer than chin length, cut to turn under at the ends, with long bangs that she wore swept to one side. She’d had highlights added to its reddish-brown hue just before leaving home, and neither her hair nor her eyebrows had been singed.

But without her own shampoo and styling products or a curling iron, her hair was lackluster and just hung there limply. The best she could do was brush it with the cheap hairbrush she’d been given and sweep it behind her ears.

Oh, she really was pale, she realized. So pale that it made the bruise on her otherwise-unmarred forehead look even worse.

She reached for her bangs automatically with her right hand, forgetting that her wrist was badly sprained until the jolt of pain reminded her.

Then she tried to fluff her bangs with her left hand to cover the bruise. Mostly she just managed to pull them into her face. She wasn’t sure that was an improvement, but she left them anyway.

Eddie’s secretary had been good enough to get her a few basic necessities that included pajama pants and a top to sleep in, and two pairs of loose-fitting sweatpants to go with two baggy T-shirts for daytime. But that was the extent of her wardrobe. So there was no sense changing out of one pair of sweatpants and T-shirt into the other.

She stepped farther back from the mirror and took a look at the whole picture.

If there was a worse way to look meeting Beau Camden again, she couldn’t think of it.

But there was nothing she could do, so she took some small comfort in the thought that if he’d recognized her when she’d poked her head through the curtains maybe she didn’t look too different than she had at sixteen.

It was very small comfort, though. Especially when she recalled how fantastic he looked...

But she refused to let herself care what he might think—or at least tried not to—as she slid her feet into the flip-flops that were her only shoes and reluctantly headed for the door.

She was careful not to make any noise as she slipped out of the motel room, leaving the door ajar by only an inch in order to be able to hear if Immy cried. And even though it wasn’t easy, she made sure she was standing straight and strong before she turned to face her first love and the person who had hurt her more than anyone in her life.

“I have a two-month-old baby sleeping inside and I don’t want to wake her,” she informed Beau without inflection, staggered all over again by the man he’d become when she looked at him without anything between them.

He gave her a once-over glance that didn’t seem to miss a thing—including the bruise on her temple and the wrist brace that went from mid-forearm to her knuckles. “You look like you need to sit. It’s finally cooling down today, so how about the hood of my car?”

His SUV was big. Normally she wouldn’t have had a problem using the front bumper as a step and climbing onto it. But in her current condition there was no way she could get up there.

“I can give you a hand,” Beau offered as if he knew what she was thinking, holding out that same giant mitt that had pounded on the door earlier.

Okay, sure, there was a part of her that was inclined to slip her hand into his the way she would have that long-ago summer. To see what it was like now.

But it was a very small part of her that was instantly overruled by her sense of independence and her certainty that she would never forgive him for what he’d done.

“No, thanks,” she said curtly as she moved to sit on the SUV’s bumper. “How is it that you’re here?” she asked then.

“There’s a lot that goes into that story,” he answered, sounding confused and bewildered—something that did not seem in keeping with the powerful tower of man standing before her. “There’s a lot—so much—that we need to talk about and I can’t even imagine what you must be thinking...what you must have thought about me all these years—”

“Nothing good,” she told him without compunction.

“Just let me say that fourteen years ago all I knew was that I’d had an unbelievable summer with an unbelievable girl—”

“And then lied about it and left me hanging out to dry with the consequences.”

“Honest to God, Kyla, I didn’t do either of those things. I didn’t even tell anybody about you because I was so wrecked trying to get over you, and I didn’t want to be teased about it by my brothers and cousins—I just let them think I was sorry to be home again.”

Kyla gazed up at him, but before she could accuse him of lying once more, he said, “We need to talk about it all. But right now isn’t the time. Just give me the benefit of the doubt when I tell you that, until a few hours ago, I had no idea you’d tried to contact me after the day we said goodbye in Northbridge.”

Kyla glared at him.

“Honest to God,” he repeated. “And while you certainly don’t owe me anything, not even answers, I just have to ask you one thing—do I...do we...”

He seemed to stand even straighter and stiffer than he had been—although she didn’t know how that was possible—and she thought he was steeling himself.

“Do we have a kid?” he finally asked quietly.

Kyla didn’t want to admit it to herself, but there was an unmistakable tone in his voice that made it sound as if the possibility of that was new to him. Stunningly new to him, shaking this man who appeared to be unshakable.

So she merely answered his question. “No. I...there was a miscarriage—I lost it.” And herself for a while.

His expression went blank and he didn’t seem to know how to respond.

Then he let out a breath that allowed those broad shoulders of his to relax almost imperceptibly and said, “Okay. Can we put a pin in that, then, and deal with it all later so I can just focus on helping you now?”

“Helping me?” she parroted sarcastically. “You’re going to help me now?” In a week of unfathomable things happening, this was the frosting on the cake. “I don’t even know how you got here or why or—”

“My grandmother saw a news report about the fire at your cousin’s house. When she heard your name it rang a bell with her because she’d only recently read some things that my great-grandfather wrote in his journal—along with the letter you sent me. The letter I never got.” He shook his head as if he’d veered off track and was redirecting himself. “Anyway, your name and the fact that the news said you were from Northbridge caused GiGi—my grandmother—to do some digging. She called my brother Seth—”

“Who runs your ranch in Northbridge now—I know,” Kyla said.

“I didn’t know you’d gone back there.”

Kyla shrugged. She didn’t owe him any explanations. He didn’t deserve any.

“Do you know my brother?” Beau asked.

“Only by name. We’ve never been introduced and if he knows who I am—”

“He doesn’t. I told you, I never said anything to anyone, so there’s no way—”

Kyla wasn’t up to arguing this now, so she merely cut him off to say, “No, we don’t know each other. But Northbridge is Northbridge—everybody at least knows of everyone else.” And the belief she’d had for as long as she’d been living in Northbridge that his brother was just pretending not to know who she was held fast.

“That’s what Seth said—that he knew of you. But after GiGi called him he asked around, talked to someone who I guess is your roommate—”

“Darla.”

“She confirmed that you came to Denver to visit family, that you were in a fire, and she said that the only survivors were you and a baby who’s—”

“My cousin’s daughter—Immy. My godchild.”

“Who’s now yours to raise?”

“Rachel and her husband, Eddie, named me as Immy’s guardian in their will.” They’d told her that. She’d taken it only as another honorary position, not thinking for even a minute that the need to actually become Immy’s guardian would ever come about.

“And there’s a business.” He glanced around them. “These truck stops that you’ll need to run until the child grows up and takes over?”

“Three of them, I’ve been told,” Kyla said.

“Your roommate said you don’t know anybody else in Denver.”

“Eddie’s secretary has done a few things for me and she contacted his attorney who came to the hospital, but no, I don’t really know anyone...”

“And you’re hurt...” He looked her up and down again.

“Not as badly as I could have been,” she said.

“But still...how are you taking care of a baby with that?” He nodded at her wrist. “Your fingers are sausages—that can’t feel good.”

It actually hurt tremendously whenever she had to use any part of her wrist, hand or fingers to do anything with Immy. But she didn’t need or want his sympathy, so all she said was, “I manage.”

“Here?” he asked, with another glance around that took in the motel and the rest of the truck stop. “On your own?”

He was stating the obvious, so she didn’t respond to it.

“Seth said you aren’t married, your roommate told him you aren’t involved with anyone and don’t have any family to come up here to lend a hand—”

“My parents died seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And I guess the school year just started in Northbridge, so your roommate has to be there and can’t come, either—”

“I teach kindergarten. Darla teaches fifth grade. They got a sub for me, but yes, classes started last Thursday and Darla can’t be gone, too.”

“So here I am,” he concluded. “And I want to help.”

He was not going to be her knight in shining armor, if that’s what he thought.

“I don’t know how you could,” she said flatly.

“For starters, this is no place for you and a baby to be staying, let alone recuperating. I have a house—a big house—that’s more comfortable, not to mention much quieter than this.” He nodded toward the sounds emanating from the bustling travel center. “You can have your own room with a private bathroom, and there’s another room that the baby can go into. I don’t know squat about taking care of a baby—”

“Join the club,” Kyla said under her breath.

“—but I’m more able-bodied than you are right now, so I can lend a hand with...what’s the baby’s name? I know you said it, but—”

“Immogene—but her mom and dad call...called...her Immy.” Kyla fought a fresh wave of grief at the thought that that was past tense.

“I can lend a hand with Immy,” Beau went on, “and you can rest and let me help you get back on your feet. Camden Superstores can provide both of you with everything you need to start over—”

“Darla is just waiting for me to give her an address and she’s sending my own things to replace what I lost,” Kyla informed.

“Still, I’m sure there are a few things you could use to tide you over, and I’ll get the baby outfitted with whatever it is babies need. Then, if you’re open to it, when you’re better, I can also maybe give you some help with the business side of things, overseeing these truck stops. My own family was left in a situation not too different than this—Camden Incorporated had to be run for a while by people other than Camdens after H.J. died and before the rest of us were old enough to take it on. If you need help with that—maybe you don’t...”

A weak, wry, overwhelmed laugh shot out of Kyla and from her muddled emotions came a blurted confession. “I know what to do with five-year-olds, not with babies. I don’t know anything about being a single parent. And when it comes to business...I was raised by people who rarely had two dimes to rub together, and if they did, they squandered them. I definitely don’t know the first thing about running any business. And now I have what I’m told is a huge one on my hands. I think Immy might already hate me, and if I’m as bad with finances as my parents were, I could ruin everything Rachel and Eddie left her before she’s old enough to read, much less take over for herself—”

“So you do need help.”

“I don’t know what I need,” Kyla lamented, fighting the breakdown that she felt on the verge of. But whatever she needed, it couldn’t be Beau Camden.

And yet Beau Camden was the only one standing there, offering.

Damn it all, anyway...

Kyla blinked back tears that threatened again, though she couldn’t help slumping slightly against the SUV’s grille.

“We’ll just take it one step at a time,” Beau said in a consoling and less stilted voice. “And I’ll be there with you the whole way.”

It was what he should have said to her fourteen years ago.

And hearing it, Kyla felt the anger and hurt and confusion she’d felt then, surprised that after all this time and even under the current circumstances the feelings could be as strong as they were.

“Please,” he said into her negative thoughts, once more as if he could read them. “Let me do this for you now and we’ll sort through the past later.”

It went against everything in Kyla to accept help from anyone. Ever.

And if she were on her own there was no way she would accept anything from him.

But she had Immy.

And she really was alone in Denver.

Eddie’s secretary had been kind, but she was new to the job, barely nineteen, and she already had her hands full dealing with the chaos at the office.

One of the volunteers at the hospital was also a volunteer with the Red Cross and had come to see her. But once the volunteer found out there were resources available to her and Immy through the truck stops Immy now owned, that was the last of the volunteer or the Red Cross.

Eddie’s estate attorney had come to the hospital to talk to her and he’d let her know that even though Eddie and Rachel’s wills needed to go through probate, he could likely persuade a judge to release funds from the estate for the care and well-being of Immy, as well as for Kyla as Immy’s guardian. To tide them over until he accomplished that, he’d advanced her three hundred dollars from his own pocket.

He’d also contacted the truck stop and arranged for their motel room, and for the convenience store and the diner to run tabs for whatever food she ordered and whatever she could use out of the convenience store.

But from there he’d said only that he’d be in touch.

The diner food was salty, greasy and very heavy, but more problematically, the one choice of baby formula from the convenience store wasn’t the organic stuff Immy was used to. Kyla thought it was possible that the newborn didn’t like it and so was refusing to eat. That potentially had contributed to the problems this evening and could ultimately lead to Immy feeling sick or having digestive ailments.

Kyla’s driver’s license and credit cards were lost in the fire, so she couldn’t rent or drive a car to go outside the truck stop, and she had no idea if taxis were equipped with child car seats to allow her to attempt to get anywhere else.

Plus she didn’t even know where she was or where to go from here to try to find Immy the formula Rachel had used.

And besides all of that, Kyla was well aware that she was not only inexperienced and inept with Immy, she also wasn’t physically up to caring for the baby altogether on her own. She’d overestimated the strength of her sprained wrist the first time she’d had to lift Immy and nearly dropped her. And even though she was more careful now, using her wrist and hand was still painful and they were very weak.

So while Kyla was inclined to hold her chin high and refuse even an iota of help from Beau, for Immy’s sake she didn’t think she could look a gift horse in the mouth.

Even if that gift horse was the same person who had left her pregnant and alone with that problem once upon a time.

Still, it meant going to stay at his house. With him...

“Do you have a wife or someone I’d be imposing on?” she asked when that suddenly occurred to her. And made her feel yet another thing she didn’t want to feel—a twinge of jealousy.

“No wife. No girlfriend. It’s just me,” he assured her. “And it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

“Immy cries and needs to be fed in the middle of the night. And tonight she just cried for a long time for no reason I could figure out,” she warned.

“I’ve been through worse,” he said with a hint of the smile she’d never forgotten, a smile that had haunted her. “So what do you say?”

It was galling not to be able to tell him off the way she had in her head many, many times over the years.

But she had to think of Immy. To put her first. And she knew that Immy would be better off if there were two of them to care for her—even two people who didn’t know what they were doing seemed better than one, one who was struggling with injuries to boot. And Beau had the use of both hands and a car, so he could go out and find the formula Immy was accustomed to. Plus if they went to his home Immy wouldn’t be breathing air polluted with exhaust fumes.

So the bottom line was that Beau’s offer was one she just couldn’t refuse, Kyla decided. For Immy’s sake, if not for her own.

But even as she came to that decision she vowed that the minute—the exact second—she could pack up Immy and handle everything on her own, she’d leave Beau Camden in her dust. Not unlike the way he’d left her.

“Okay,” she conceded ungraciously. “But as soon as I get some things in order, we’ll be out of your hair.”

All he said to that was, “There’s a Camden Superstore down the street—I can go there now and get a car seat and whatever else we need and come back—”

The thought of disturbing Immy sent renewed panic through Kyla. “No, not tonight!” she said in a hurry. “You don’t know what it took to get Immy to sleep. Tomorrow—we can move tomorrow.”

“How about I stay here tonight, then?”

In her room? With her? What was this guy thinking?

Then he said, “The rooms on either side of yours look empty. I can check into one of those, probably hear the baby if she wakes up...”

There would be someone else to see to the baby if the crying started again and wouldn’t stop.

It was tempting.

But Kyla shook her head, her independent streak somehow demanding that she draw at least that line. “We’ll be all right for tonight,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “But Immy does have to have a car seat—Eddie’s secretary borrowed one to pick us up from the hospital.”

“I’ll have one by the time I get here—and I’ll get here any time you say tomorrow morning. But you’re sure you’ll be all right tonight?”

She wasn’t.

But she also wasn’t willing to let him see that. “I’ll be fine,” she said, hoping she was wrong about Immy not liking the formula she had for her—or at least that the baby would put up with it for now.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“I ordered something from the diner. Most of it is still left, if I get hungry.”

He nodded and as she watched him do that she thought, Geez, he’s good-looking...

Then she realized what had gone through her mind and she pushed it out of her head.

“I suppose I should let you go in and get some rest,” Beau said then.

Kyla stood, trying not to flinch as she did, and faced him as he took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “My cell phone number is on this. If you need anything—anything—just call.”

Again, words that were fourteen years too late.

Kyla accepted the card without comment.

“So I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure that was the right course. “What time?”

“Nine maybe...” she suggested aloofly and with no real knowledge of how that would work for Immy. Then she moved to the motel room door again.

“I really—really—am sorry, Kyla,” Beau said quietly to her back.

Too little, too late, she thought. But all she said was, “Tomorrow,” before she went into her room, closing the door on him.

And wondering what incredible twist of fate had put her in the position she was in.

To be rescued by Beau Camden of all people.