A Baby on the Ranch

And now that Kasey and her son were here—

And now that they were here, Eli amended, determined to throw this into a positive experience, there was an abundance of sunshine in his life, not to mention a damn good reason to get up in the morning.

There! he thought with a triumphant smile as he concluded the Great Diaper Change. He felt particularly pleased with himself.

The next moment he told himself not to get used to this feeling or the situation that created it. After all, it could, and most likely would, change in a heartbeat.

Hadn’t his life come to a skidding halt and changed just with Hollis banging on his door, abandoning his responsibilities on the doorstep? Well, just like that, Kasey could go off and find her own place.

Or Hollis might come back and want to pick up where he’d left off. And Kasey, being the softhearted woman she was, would wind up forgiving him and take Hollis back. After all, the man was her husband.

But that was later, Eli silently insisted. For now, Kasey was here, in his house with her baby, and he would enjoy every second of it.

Every second that he wasn’t working, he amended.

Picking Wayne up, he surveyed his handiwork. “Not a bad job, even if I do say so myself,” he pronounced.

Ready to go back out, he turned around toward the door with the baby in his arms. He was surprised to find that Kasey was standing in the doorway, an amused expression on her face.

What was she thinking? he couldn’t help wondering. “Have you been standing there long?” he asked.

She smiled broadly at him. “Just long enough to hear you evaluating your job,” she said. Kasey crossed to him and her son. “And you’re wrong, you know,” she told him as she took Wayne into her arms with an unconscious, growing confidence. “You’re being way too modest. You did an absolutely great job.” There was admiration in her voice. “The nurse had to walk me through the diapering process three times before I got the hang of it,” she told him with a wide smile. “You never told me you had hidden talents.”

“Didn’t know, myself,” he freely confessed. “I guess that some people just rise to the occasion more than others.”

She thought about him opening his home to her. They were friends, good friends, but that didn’t automatically mean she could just move in with him. He had been under no obligation to take her in. She certainly hadn’t expected him to do that.

Looking at him pointedly, she nodded. “Yes, they do,” she agreed softly.

For one shimmering second, as he stood there, gazing into her eyes, he felt an incredibly overwhelming desire to kiss her. Kiss her and make a full confession about all the years he’d loved her in silence.

But he sensed he might scare her off. That was the last thing that either one of them wanted, especially him. He needed to put some space between them. He thought about his ever-growing list of things that needed his attention. Just thinking about them was daunting, but he needed to get started.

Eli abruptly turned toward the door.

“Well, I’d better get to work,” he told Kasey. “Or the horses will think I ran off and left them.” But instead of heading outside, the smell of a diaper that was past its expiration date caught his attention. “But the horses are just going to have to wait until I take care of this,” he told Kasey, nodding at the wastebasket and its less-than-precious pungent cargo.

“Don’t bother,” Kasey said. “I’ll take care of that.” To make her point, she placed herself between Eli and the wastebasket. “Go, tend to your horses before they stampede off in protest.”

Instead of getting out of his way, she leaned forward and impulsively kissed his cheek. “Thank you for everything,” she whispered just before her lips touched his cheek. “Now go,” she repeated with feeling.

His cheek pulsated where her lips had met his skin.

Eli didn’t quite remember going upstairs to put on his boots or walking out of the house and across the front yard, but he figured he must have because when he finally took stock of his surroundings, he was on his way to the stable.

It wasn’t as if she’d never kissed him before. She had. She’d kissed him exactly like that a long time ago, before she’d become Hollis’s wife and broken his heart into a million pieces. But back then, she’d brushed her lips against his cheek, leaving her mark by way of a friendly demonstration of affection.

And the results were always the same. His body temperature would rise right along with his jumping pulse rate.

Just being around her could set him off, but that went doubly so whenever she brushed by him, whether it was her hand, her lips or the accidental contact of different body parts.

It made him feel alive.

It also reminded him that he loved her. Loved her and knew that he couldn’t have her because it was all one-sided.

His side.

But he’d made his peace with that a long time ago, Eli reminded himself as he continued walking. It was enough for him to know that he was looking out for her, that he was ready to defend her at a moment’s notice, Hollis or no Hollis. And because of that, she would be all right. If on occasion he yearned for something more, well, that was his problem, not hers.

During the day, he could keep it all under control, enjoying just the little moments, the tiny interactions between them as well as the longer conversations that were exchanged on occasion.

It was only in his sleep that all these emotions became a good deal more. In his dreams he experienced what he couldn’t allow himself to feel—or want—during his waking hours.

But that was something he could never let her even remotely suspect, because in disclosing that, he’d risk losing everything, especially her precious friendship.

He wanted, above all else, to have her feel at ease with him. He wanted to protect her and to do what he could to make her happy. That couldn’t happen if she thought he might be trying to compromise not just her but her honor, as well.

His own happiness, he reasoned, would come from her feeling secure. That he could do for her. For them, he amended, thinking of the baby.

Reaching the stable, he pulled open the doors. The smell from the stalls assaulted him the moment he walked in. Babies weren’t all that different from horses in some ways. They ate, digested and then eliminated.

Mucking out the stalls would allow him to put changing a small diaper into perspective.

“Hi, guys,” he said, addressing the horses that, for now, made up his entire herd. “Miss me?” One of the horses whinnied, as if in response. Shaking his head, Eli laughed.

Approaching the stallion closest to him, he slipped a bridle over the horse’s head, then led Golden Boy out of his stall. He hitched the horse to a side railing so that the animal would be out of the way and he could clean the stall without interference.

“Well, I’ve got a good excuse for being late,” he told the horses as he got to work. “Wait till I tell you what’s been going on….”

Chapter Six

Eli worked as quickly as he could, but even so, it took him a great deal of time to clean out the stalls, groom the horses, exercise and train them, then finally feed them.

There were five horses in all.

Five horses might not seem like a lot to the average outsider who was uninformed about raising and training quarter horses, but it was a lengthy procedure, especially when multiplied by five and no one else was around to help with the work.

The latter, he had to admit, was partially his own fault. He didn’t have the money to take on hired help, but that still didn’t mean that he had to go it alone if he didn’t want to.

It was understood that if he needed them, he could easily put out a call to one or more of his brothers and they’d be there to help him for the day or the week. He had four older brothers, ranchers all, and they could readily rotate the work between them until Eli was finally on his feet and on his way to making a profit.

But for Eli it boiled down to a matter of pride—stubborn pride—and this kept him from calling any of his brothers and asking for help. He was determined that, as the youngest male in the Rodriguez family, he would turn the ranch into a success without having to depend on any help from his relatives.

Ordinarily he found a certain satisfaction in working with the horses and doing all the chores that were involved in caring for the animals. But today was a different story. Impatience fairly hummed through his veins.

He wanted to be done with the chores, done with the training, so that he could go back to the house and be with Kasey. He really didn’t like leaving her alone like this for the better part of the day.

He sought to ease his conscience by telling himself that she could do with a little time to herself. What woman couldn’t? His being out here gave her the opportunity to get herself together after this enormous emotional roller-coaster ride she’d just been on—gaining a child and losing a husband.

Not that losing Hollis was really much of a loss.

In addition Eli was fairly certain that Kasey wouldn’t want him around to witness any first-time mistakes that she was bound to make with the baby. In her place, he certainly wouldn’t want someone looking over his shoulder, noting the mistakes he was making.

Even if he wanted to chuck everything and go back up to the house to be with her, he couldn’t just up and leave the horses. Not again. Not twice in two days. He’d already neglected their training segment yesterday when he’d gone to bring Kasey and the baby home from the hospital in Pine Ridge.

Not that he actually neglected the horses themselves. He’d made sure that he’d left food for the stallions and God knew they had no trouble finding the feed, or the water, for that matter. But the stalls, well, they were decidedly more ripe-smelling than they should have been. Breathing had been a real problem for him this morning as he mucked out the stalls.

Raising horses was a tricky business. He knew that if they were left on their own for too long, the horses could revert back to their original behavior and then all the hours that he’d put into training them would be lost.

Now they wouldn’t be lost, he thought with a wisp of satisfaction. But he was really, really beginning to feel beat.

He was also aware of the fact that his stomach had been growling off and on now for the past couple of hours. Maybe even longer. The growling served to remind him that he hadn’t brought any lunch with him.

Usually, when that happened, he’d think nothing of just taking a break and going back to the house to get something to eat. But he really didn’t want to risk just walking in on Kasey. What if she was in the middle of breast-feeding Wayne?

The thought generated an image in his head that had him pausing practically in midstep as his usually tame imagination took flight.

He had no business thinking of her that way and he knew it, but that still didn’t help him erase the scene from his brain.

Taking a deep breath, Eli forced himself to shake free of the vivid daydream. He had work to do and standing there like some oversexed adolescent, allowing his mind to wander like that, wouldn’t accomplish anything—except possibly to frustrate him even further.

Silver Streak, the horse he was currently grooming, suddenly began nudging him, as if clearly making a bid for his attention. The horse didn’t stop until he slowly ran his hand over the silken muzzle.

“Sorry, Silver,” Eli said, stroking the animal affectionately. “I was daydreaming. I won’t let it happen again.”

As if in response, the stallion whinnied. Eli grinned. “Always said you were smarter than the average rancher, which in this case would be me,” he added with a self-deprecating laugh.

Since it was summer, the sun was still up when Eli fed the last horse and officially called it a day. He had returned all five of the quarter horses to their stalls and then locked the stable doors before finally returning to his house.

Reaching the ranch house, Eli made as much noise as he could on the front porch so that Kasey was alerted to his arrival and would know that he was coming in. He didn’t want to catch her off guard.

Satisfied that he’d made enough of a racket to raise the dead, Eli finally opened the front door and called out a hearty greeting. “Hi, Kasey, I’m coming in.”

“Of course you’re coming in,” Kasey said, meeting him at the door as he walked in. “You live here.”

Eli cleared his throat, feeling uncomfortable with the topic he was about to broach. “I thought that maybe you were, you know, busy,” he emphasized, settling for a euphemism.

“Well, I guess I have been that,” she admitted, shifting her newly awakened son to her other hip. “But that still doesn’t explain why you feel you have to shout a warning before walking into your own home.”

He didn’t hear the last part of her sentence. By then he was too completely stunned to absorb any words at all. Momentarily speechless, Eli retraced his steps and ducked outside to double check that he hadn’t somehow stumbled into the wrong house—not that there were any others on the property.

The outside of the house looked like his, he ascertained. The inside, however, definitely did not. It bore no resemblance to the house he had left just this morning.

What was going on here?

“What did you do?” he finally asked.

“You don’t like it,” Kasey guessed, doing her best to hide her disappointment. She’d really wanted to surprise him—but in a good way. Belatedly she recalled that some men didn’t like having their things touched and rearranged.

“I don’t recognize it,” Eli corrected, looking around again in sheer amazement. This was his place? Really?

The house he had left this morning had looked, according to Miss Joan’s gentle description of it, as if it had gone dancing with a tornado. There were no rotting carcasses of stray creatures who had accidentally wandered into the house in search of shelter, but that was the most positive thing that could have been said about the disorder thriving within his four walls.

He’d lived in this house for the past five months and in that amount of time, he’d managed to distribute a great deal of useless material throughout the place. Each room had its own share of acquired clutter, whether it was dirty clothing, used dishes, scattered reading material or some other, less identifiable thing. The upshot was that, in general, the sum total of the various rooms made for a really chaotic-looking home.

Or at least it had when he’d left for the stables that morning. This evening, he felt as though someone had transported him to a different universe. Everything appeared to be in its place. The whole area looked so neat it almost hurt his eyes to look around.

This would take some getting used to, he couldn’t help thinking.

The hopeful expression had returned to Kasey’s face. She’d just wanted to surprise and please him. She knew she’d succeeded with the former, but she was hoping to score the latter.

“I just thought that I should clean up a little,” she told him, watching his face for some sign that he actually liked what she had done.

“A little?” he repeated, half stunned, half amused. “There was probably less effort involved in building this house in the first place.” This cleanup, he knew, had to have been a major undertaking. Barring magical help from singing mice and enchanted elves, she’d accomplished this all herself.

He regarded her with new admiration.

She in turn looked at him, trying to understand why he didn’t seem to have wanted her to do this. Had she trespassed on some basic male ritual? Was he saving this mess, not to mention the rumpled clothes and dirty dishes, for some reason?

“You want me to mess things up again?” she offered uncertainly.

“No.” He took hold of her by her shoulders, enunciating each word slowly so that they would sink in. “I don’t want you to do anything. I just wanted you to relax in between feedings. To maybe try to rest up a little, saving your strength. Taking care of a newborn is damn hard enough to get used to without single-handedly trying to restore order to a place that could easily have been mistaken for the town dump—”

She smiled and he could feel her smile going straight to his gut, stirring things up that had no business being stirred up—not without an outlet.

Eli struggled to keep a tight rein on his feelings and on his reaction to her. He succeeded only moderately.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she stressed.

She was being deliberately kind. “But close,” he pointed out.

Her mouth curved as she inclined her head. “Close,” Kasey allowed. “I like restoring order, making things neat,” she explained. “And when he wasn’t fussing because he was hungry or needed changing, Wayne cooperated by sleeping. So far, he’s pretty low maintenance,” she said, glancing at her sleeping son. “I had to do something with myself.”

“Well, in case you didn’t make the connection, that’s the time that you’re supposed to be sleeping, too,” Eli pointed out. “I think that’s a law or something. It’s written down somewhere in the New Mother’s Basic Manual.”

“I guess I must have skipped that part,” Kasey said, her eyes smiling at him. His stomach picked that moment to rumble rather loudly. Kasey eyed him knowingly. “Are you all finished working for the day?” Eli nodded, trying to silence the noises his stomach was producing by holding his breath. It didn’t work. “Good,” she pronounced, “because I have dinner waiting.”

“Of course you do,” he murmured, following her.

He stopped at the bedroom threshold and waited as Kasey gently put her sleeping son down. Wayne continued breathing evenly, indicating a successful transfer. She was taking to this mothering thing like a duck to water, Eli couldn’t help thinking. He realized that he was proud of her—and more than a little awed, as well.

He looked around as he walked with her to the kitchen. Everything there was spotless, as well. All in all, Kasey was rather incredible.

“You know, if word of this gets out,” he said, gesturing around the general area, “there’re going to be a whole bunch of new mothers standing on our porch with pitchforks and torches, looking to string you up.”

She gazed at him for a long moment and at first he thought it was because of his vivid description of frontier justice—but then it hit him. She’d picked up on his terminology. He’d said our instead of my. Without stopping to think, he’d turned his home into their home and just like that, he’d officially included her in the scheme of things.

In his life.

Was she angry? Or maybe even upset that he’d just sounded as if he was taking her being here for granted? He really couldn’t tell and he didn’t want to come right out and ask her on the outside chance that he’d guessed wrong.

His back against the wall, Eli guided the conversation in a slightly different direction. “I just don’t want you to think that I invited you to stay here because I really wanted to get a free housekeeper.”

Kasey did her best to tamp down her amusement. “So, what you’re actually saying is that I could be as sloppy as you if I wanted to?”

He sincerely doubted if the woman had ever experienced a sloppy day in her life, but that was the general gist of what he was trying to get across to her. She could leave things messy. He had no expectations of her, nor did he want her to feel obligated to do anything except just be.

“Yes,” he answered.

Kasey shook her head. The grin she’d been attempting to subdue for at least five seconds refused to be kept under wraps.

“That’s not possible,” she told him. “I think you have achieved a level of chaos that few could do justice to.”

Somewhere into the second hour of her cleaning, she’d begun to despair that she was never going to dig herself out of the hole she’d gotten herself into. But she’d refused to be defeated and had just kept on going. In her opinion, the expression on Eli’s face when he’d first walked in just now made it all worth it.

“How long did you say you’ve lived here?” she asked innocently.

He didn’t even have to pause to think about it. “Five months.”

Kasey closed her eyes for a moment, as if absorbing the information required complete concentration on her part. And then she grinned. “Think what you could have done to the house in a year’s time.”

He’d rather not. Even so, Eli felt obligated to defend himself at least a little. “I would have cleaned up eventually,” he protested.

The look on her face told him that she really doubted that, even though, out loud, she humored him. “I’m sure you would have. If only because you ran out of dishes and clothes.” Now that she thought of it, she had a feeling that he’d already hit that wall several times over without making any lifestyle changes.

At the mention of the word clothes, Eli looked at her sharply, then looked around the room, hoping he was wrong. But he had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t.

“Where did you put the clothes?” he asked her, holding his breath, hoping she’d just found something to use as a laundry hamper.

“Right now, they’re in the washing machine.” Where else would dirty clothes be? Kasey glanced at her watch. “I set the timer for forty-five minutes. The wash should be finished any minute now.”

She’d wound up saying the last sentence to Eli’s back. He hurried passed her, making a beeline for the utility room.

“What’s wrong?” she called after him, doubling her speed to keep up with Eli’s long legs.

Eli mentally crossed his fingers before he opened the door leading into the utility room.

He could have spared himself the effort.

Even though he opened the door slowly, a little water still managed to seep out of the other room. Built lower than the rest of the house, the utility room still had its own very minor flood going on.

Right behind him, Kasey looked down at the accumulated water in dismay. Guilt instantly sprang up. She’d repaid his kindness to her by flooding his utility room.

Way to go, Kase.

Thoroughly upset, she asked, “Did I do that?”

“No, the washing machine did that,” Eli assured her, his words accompanied by a deep-seated sigh. “I should have told you the washing machine wasn’t working right—but in my defense,” he felt bound to tell her, “I wasn’t anticipating that you’d be such a whirlwind of energy and cleanliness. Noah could have really used someone like you.”

“It wouldn’t have worked out,” she said with a shake of her head. “I have no idea what a cubit is,” she told him, referring to the form of measurement that had been popular around Noah’s time.

Although she was trying very hard to focus on only the upbeat, there was no denying that she felt awful for compounding his work. She’d only wanted to do something nice for Eli and this definitely didn’t qualify.

“I’m really very sorry about the flooding. I’ll pay for the washing machine repairs,” she offered.

Kasey wasn’t sure just how she would pay for it because she had a rather sick feeling that Hollis had helped himself to their joint account before leaving town. But even if everything was gone and she had no money, she was determined to find a way to make proper restitution. Eli deserved nothing less.

Eli shook his head. “The washing machine was broken before you ever got here,” he told her. “There’s absolutely no reason for you to pay for anything. Don’t give it another thought.”

There had to be at least two inches of standing water in the utility room, Kasey judged. The only reason it hadn’t all come pouring into the house when he’d opened that door was because the utility room had been deliberately built to be just a little lower than the rest of the house—more likely in anticipation of just these kinds of scenarios.

“But I caused this.” She gestured toward the water. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t filled up the washing machine, poured in the laundry detergent and hit Start.