One Tiny Miracle: Branded with his Baby / The Baby Bump / An Accidental Family

Because when Dr. Weston had looked at her, talked to her, the only thing Maura had felt was annoyance. There’d been no sudden pounding of her heart or normally even breaths dissolving into soft little gasps. No heat firing her blood, urging her to touch, to move closer and even closer still.

Had she gone crazy? She’d run from Dr. Weston as though he was the devil incarnate and straight to Quint Cantrell. A man that made the good doctor seem as hazardous as downing a bowl of vanilla pudding.

The next morning, Quint slapped pieces of meat between slices of white bread sopped with mayonnaise, then covered them in plastic wrap and shoved them in a worn saddlebag. For dessert, he smeared peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread, wrapped the lot up and added them to the meat sandwiches. In the opposite saddlebag, he packed cans of beer and soda, then felt enormously proud of himself for remembering to add napkins.

He supposed he should have driven into town and purchased something special for the picnic meal. Like fried chicken and chocolate cake. But he was miles from town. And anyway, he didn’t want to buy Maura’s friendship. He wanted her to like him just for himself. Not because he was rich. Or young. Or good-looking. The last of which he’d never thought of himself, until she’d said such a thing to him the other night.

The other night.

Even now, days later, he could easily recall the way she’d felt wrapped in his arms, the way her lips had tasted against his. For a moment he closed his eyes as images and sensations assaulted his senses, filled him with hunger.

Maybe spending more time with Maura was asking for trouble. For the past four days, he’d been asking himself what he was doing by allowing himself to get so caught up in the woman. He’d not set out to get this involved. He’d only meant to kiss her, to prove to himself that she wasn’t some sort of walking goddess.

But that kiss had done something to him and by the time it had ended he’d felt as though he’d been spun around in a violent whirlwind, then dropped into another world. Everything around him had suddenly seemed different, felt different.

Later, he’d realized he had to find out why she’d affected him so. Why one little red-haired nurse had put a spark in him like no woman he’d ever met.

With the saddlebags packed, Quint carried them down to the barn, where he began saddling two of his most dependable horses. He was tightening the back cinch on the last mount when a male voice sounded behind him.

“Hey, what’s with the horses? You’re not going to ride fence today, are you?”

Groaning inwardly, Quint turned around to see Jake standing a few feet behind him. He wished the other man hadn’t shown up right now. Maura would be here soon and he’d just as soon not discuss his personal life with his old friend.

“No. I have something else planned,” he told the other man.

“Oh. Well, I came by to see if you’d like to drive over to Bonito Lake and do a little trout fishing.”

Resting his arm on the mare’s rump, Quint stared at the other man. “Fishing? Since when have you taken up a rod?”

Shrugging, Jake turned his gaze toward the open doorway of the barn. “I used to like it. When I was young and Dad was still around.”

“You’ve never told me that.”

“No.”

“So what made you want to go fishing today?” Quint persisted.

“Mom has been wanting some fresh trout. And she hasn’t been feeling well.” With a self-deprecating grin, he glanced at Quint. “I don’t always just think of myself.”

Quint figured most people thought of Jake as a rounder, a guy who was only out to have fun, but he knew there was another side to his old friend, one that he kept fairly hidden.

Quint smoothed his hand over the mare’s rump. “Well, I would have liked to go with you,” he said. “But I’m going on a picnic.”

Jake chuckled. “Picnic, hell.”

“Okay, let me rephrase this so you’ll understand. I’m going riding and taking food with me.”

“Man, you’d better get that redheaded nurse back over here to check your temperature. ‘Cause you’re definitely sick.”

Turning back to the mare’s side, Quint began to unnecessarily adjust the latigo. “You don’t need to worry about my health, Jake. The redheaded nurse is going with me.”

Quint could hear the other man’s footsteps drawing closer.

“Maura Donovan? You’re going riding with her?”

“That’s right.”

There was a very long pause and then Jake said, “A man only takes a woman he really likes riding.”

Quint supposed Jake was right. The few women he’d tried to get interested in since Holly, he’d taken on traditional dates like dinner and a movie. During those outings, he been bored and wondering why he’d bothered in the first place.

“If you’re asking if I like Maura, I do.”

“Hmm. You gettin’ serious about her?”

Faint unease stabbed Quint as he combed his fingers through the mare’s black mane. “Me? Get serious about a woman? You know me better than that, ol’ buddy.”

“Yeah. How could I forget that you’re a warped man? You don’t have a decent thing to offer a woman.”

Turning from the horse, Quint glared at the other man. “Don’t you think you’d better head on to the lake? You can’t catch a fish in the middle of the day.”

Jake chuckled. “Aren’t you lucky that term doesn’t apply to a woman?”

Before Quint could make a retort, the other man turned and headed toward the open doorway.

“See you in the morning,” he called out.

As Jake disappeared from view, Quint wondered if catching Maura was what he really wanted. If he did catch her, what would he do, besides the obvious? He didn’t want a wife. At least, he didn’t think he did. To be a good husband, a man had to invest a hell of a lot of himself.

At one time, when he’d been engaged to Holly, he’d thought that way of life was the way he wanted to go. His father, Lewis, had been a great husband and father. He’d been a happy man and he’d loved his wife until the last second of his life. Quint had wanted to follow his example. He’d wanted that same deep connection with a woman that his father had shared with his mother. But Quint had failed at a real love. Why the heck would he want to risk going through all that pain and humiliation over again?

Because your house is empty. Your bed is empty. Your heart is empty.

“Quint? Are you in here?”

Maura’s voice jerked him back to the present and he looked around to see she’d entered the cavernous barn. The sight of her was like a sudden ray of sunshine and at that moment he decided that today he wasn’t going to analyze or fret over his motives toward Maura. A man didn’t have to have a good reason to simply enjoy himself.

“Over here,” he called to her.

Spotting him, she walked to the middle of the wide alleyway and stood while he led the horses over to her.

As he drew near, she asked, “Have you been waiting on me?”

The smile on her face was bright and lovely and made Quint feel so unexpectedly happy that he could have waited on her for hours and not complained.

“Not really. I’ve just now finished saddling the horses. And Jake came by for a few minutes.”

“As I was driving in, I met a truck on the road,” she commented. “I thought you might have had company this morning.”

He grinned. “Jake isn’t company. He’s family.”

“Yes. We Donovans have family like that, too,” she said, then peered around his shoulder at the two horses. “Beautiful horses. Which one is mine?”

“The roan mare, Pearl. She’s very smart and very mannerly. So I think you’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I will.”

As she’d promised, she was dressed ruggedly in boots and blue jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back against her forearms. Her long hair was tied back from her face with a pale pink scarf and earrings made from polished cedar beads hung from her earlobes. Short of his mother, she was the only woman he knew that looked strong, yet utterly feminine at the same time, and in spite of himself he was totally drawn to her.

Using his head, he motioned toward the open doorway. “Shall we go? Do you have everything you’ll need with you?”

“I brought saddlebags packed with a few things. They’re just outside the barn door,” she told him.

Once they were outside, Quint tied Maura’s saddlebags onto the back of Pearl’s saddle.

“I thought we’d ride over to Chillicothe. That’s about five miles from here. Think you can go that far before we eat?”

She chuckled. “Shouldn’t you be asking if I can make it that far? Period?”

He turned to face her and Maura was completely taken with the easy smile on his face, the fetching dimple in his cheek.

“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking that you might not be hardened to riding. Can you make it that far?” he asked.

“I think so. If not, just tie me to the saddle and swat Pearl on the rump. The two of us will end up somewhere,” she joked.

“I wouldn’t think of putting Pearl through that sort of torture,” he teased back, then added in a serious tone, “Don’t worry. We’ll take a break or two before we get there.”

He handed her the mare’s reins and she took a few moments to let the horse get accustomed to her smell.

“So where or what is Chillicothe?”

“A ghost town. It was built back in the mid-eighteen hundreds, when the Golden Spur was thriving. The old mine is just a short distance away from the town. I thought you might enjoy looking it all over.”

“I’m sure I’ll love it.”

She led Pearl up a few steps, then lifted the reins over her head. As she put her foot in the stirrup, she felt Quint’s hands wrap around the sides of her waist. She wasn’t expecting him to help her into the saddle and she glanced around with surprise.

“Pearl isn’t that tall. I can manage,” she assured him.

“My father always helped a lady into the saddle. So just in case he’s watching I don’t want to disappoint him.”

With her toe still in the stirrup and her weight balanced on one boot, she paused long enough to allow her gaze to slide warmly over his face. “I’m very glad you invited me out today, Quint,” she said softly.

“I’m very glad you’re here,” he replied, his gaze locking onto hers.

Feeling suddenly quite breathless, she cleared her throat and turned back to the horse. Taking her cue, he helped her into the saddle. Once he was confident that she was in control, he moved away and mounted his horse, a big brown gelding with a stripe down his nose.

“Chillicothe is to the northwest. This way,” he said, motioning slightly to their left. “Not far from here, we’ll hit the old road that led to the town. It’s just a dim path now, but it makes for easy riding.”

“Sounds great.”

As they moved away from the barn, Maura swung Pearl alongside the big brown and the horses set out in an easy trot toward a pasture full of jumping choya. It was the time of summer for the plants to be in full bloom and the pink and yellow blossoms made for a pretty sight as they maneuvered their way through the prickly cacti.

“All of this area needs to be cleared away for pasture,” Quint told her. “That’s one of the things I’ll be doing now that most of the barn and outbuildings are nearly finished.”

“Oh, what a shame. The flowers are so beautiful.”

“Yes, but there would be triple the amount of grass without them.”

Maura cast him an impish look. “You’re a practical man, aren’t you? And not very much like Abe.”

“Oh, I can loosen up—when I need to,” he added.

She laughed. “Well, if you put a third less cattle on this particular range, then you could keep the flowers,” she suggested.

Normally, Quint would have been quick to shoot down such a suggestion, calling it ridiculous and wasteful. But something about the pleasure she was gleaning from the cactus roses made him happy, made him reconsider even the smallest things around him.

“I’ll think about that,” he said.

Halfway through the ride to Chillicothe, they stopped near a deep arroyo. A shallow amount of water covered the rocky bottom while desert willows and twisted juniper grew at precarious angles from its loamy banks.

They rode down into the mini canyon, then dismounted and led the horses to the water’s edge. The day had grown exceptionally warm and while the horses drank deeply, Quint shared his canteen with Maura.

Once the animals had their fill of water, they led them over to the bank and tethered the reins loosely around a willow limb.

After they were certain the horses were secured, Quint said, “I see a nice flat rock over there. Let’s sit a few minutes before we head on to Chillicothe.”

“Sounds good to me,” she agreed. “Right now my legs feel like two pieces of rubber.”

He offered his arm to her. “Here. You’d better hang on to me. Just in case you stumble.”

“Thanks.” She wrapped a hand around his forearm, then quickly moved her clutch higher toward his elbow. “This is your cut arm,” she explained. “I don’t want to injure it again.”

She could have torn the cut wide open again and Quint probably wouldn’t have noticed. Just having her touching him again, walking close by his side, her body brushing against his was enough to send his libido into overdrive.

“Was my grandfather okay with you being gone from Apache Wells today?” Quint asked as he helped her get seated on the big boulder.

Smiling contentedly, she stretched her legs out in front of her. “He was more than okay. He was very happy.”

He eased down beside her on the rock. “Hmmph. That’s not surprising,” he admitted. “Abe thinks I should show more interest in women. And he gets very disgusted with me when I don’t.”

Sighing, she looked up toward the sky. What had started out as nothing but bright blue sky this morning was now filled with fluffy white clouds.

“I know the feeling. Since my divorce, my mother thinks I should be out searching daily for another man.” She shook her head. “She’s been married to my father for nearly forty years. She has no idea how scary it would be without him.”

Quint cast a curious glance her way. “Is it scary for you to be without your ex-husband?”

Her brows arched with faint surprise, she looked at him. “No. I know how to take care of myself. I just meant that it’s scary to think about dating again. I guess—after Gilbert I don’t trust men,” she said, then swiftly shook her head. “That didn’t exactly come out the way it should have. What I was trying to say is that I don’t trust myself to pick the right man.”

Oh, Lord, there had been so many times he’d felt that very same way, he thought. Choosing Holly had been one of the worst mistakes he’d ever made. And though Holly had done the cheating and the leaving, he still considered the whole affair as his mistake.

It had taken Quint quite a while to finally understand and admit to himself that he’d been blind and young where Holly had been concerned. He’d not been mature or wise enough to see that she’d been wrong for him in the first place.

Picking up a few pieces of gravel, he began to toss the tiny pebbles toward the pool of water. “You probably wouldn’t want to tell me what happened to your marriage, would you?”

Even though he could only see her profile, it was enough to tell him that her expression had become shuttered.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said, then glancing at him, her lips twisted sourly. “Gilbert married me for my money. I didn’t know that at first. In fact, I didn’t know it with certainty until the very end of our marriage. You see, he was a great actor.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Maybe I should start from the first to explain,” she told him. “I’d been working at a clinic in Alamogordo when I first met Gil. We dated for about four months before I finally decided to accept his marriage proposal. Which was impulsive for me. Up until I met Gil I was very cautious about my relationships with men. But he’d come along at a time when I wanted to get on with my life and he’d been so attentive, so considerate of my needs and wants. He kept reassuring me that he wasn’t interested in my money and I foolishly believed him. After all, he earned a good salary of his own and he never asked me for anything that was connected to finances.”

“You’re a rich woman, Maura. You never had suspicions about his motives?” His brows pulled together. “Damn, you must have been a trusting soul.”

She groaned with regret. “That’s what I meant about being a good actor. Gil was the sort that could make a person believe the sun was shining in the middle of a rainstorm. Even Mother believed he was sincere. But Daddy totally disapproved of him. He described Gil as slicker than an oil pit. At that time I thought Daddy was just being overly protective with his daughter. But unfortunately, it turned out that Daddy was right and I was the naive one. I believed Gil truly loved me.”

He caught the sound of self-deprecation in her voice and was amazed at how much that sound depicted his own feelings.

“So how did you learn he’d married you for your money? Weren’t there signs on the wall that you could have read?”

Maura answered ruefully, “There was nothing about Gil that appeared out of line. Until after we were married. And even then I didn’t think it suspicious when he wanted to use our money—or technically you could call it my money—to buy luxury items like vehicles and boats and exotic vacations. He always reasoned the purchases away by insisting he wanted me to have the best of things. Because he loved me. Because I worked so hard as a nurse that I deserved them.” Full of shame, she looked at him. “I couldn’t see through him, Quint. I wanted to believe that he loved me so much he merely wanted to spoil me with gifts. I didn’t want to consider, even for a moment, that he was in the marriage for ulterior reasons. But as time went on I couldn’t ignore his lavish spending. Then finally I started asking myself if he was really buying these things for himself and using me as an excuse.”

“How did you discover the truth?” he asked gently.

She let out a long sigh. “It all happened over the course of two or three years,” she told him. “But the turning point began when I wanted to get pregnant and have a child.”

Struck by that, he turned toward her. “He didn’t want children?”

Shaking her head, she said, “Gil’s job had him traveling at least three or four days out of the week, sometimes more. We both agreed that wasn’t conducive to raising a family. So I promised to wait and he promised to put in for a desk job that would allow him to stay home. But year after year began to pass and everything stayed the same. He always came up with excuses as to why he couldn’t change jobs within the company.”

His expression stern, he said, “Maybe he resented the fact that you were working at a career you liked while you expected him to change jobs? What did he think about you working?”

“He did resent me asking him to change—but I didn’t find out about that until—” She paused, then went on bitterly, “Well, until later. But as for me working, he was all for it. My job kept me occupied and out of his way. So that he’d be free to do his own thing.”

“I think I see,” he said thoughtfully. “So what did you do?”

She turned her palm upward in a helpless gesture. “I began to question him and he promptly accused me of nagging.” Bending her head, she said in a strained voice, “Most women want to bear a child, Quint. That’s all I wanted. But he couldn’t even give me that much.”

The pain in her voice stabbed him right in the middle of his chest. What kind of man would want to hurt this woman, lose this woman? he wondered.

“That’s why you divorced him?”

She grimaced. “That was only a part of it, Quint. I found out…at the clinic where I worked, I accidentally overheard a couple of nurses discussing us. They were saying how sorry they felt for me because he’d had so many women during his travels and I didn’t seem to know.”

“What they were saying could have been unfounded gossip,” he reasoned.

“That’s what I wanted to think. But I confronted Gilbert about it and he confessed. He’d never intended to take a desk job or have a family. He liked things as they were. In short, he wanted his fun and a rich wife on the side.”

“Sounds like a real nice bastard.”

Her expression was stark as she turned her head and looked at him. “See. A man like that—I should have known all along. From the very first my father tried to warn me about Gilbert. But I was so blinded I wouldn’t listen to him. I let love lead me around by the nose. And now—well, I’m not going to let that happen again.”

Her firm vow sounded like so many he’d made to himself. And yet he had the strangest urge to tell her she shouldn’t be bitter or wary. She was a gentle and lovely woman and some man would eventually come along and love her. Really love her. So why wasn’t he thinking that about himself? he wondered wryly. He was a good and honest man. Why didn’t he believe a good, sincere woman would come along and love him?

Quint couldn’t answer that question. He didn’t even try. Instead, all he could say was, “I understand where you’re coming from, Maura.”

Twisting her body toward his, she reached over and clasped his hand between hers. The unexpected touch warmed him, excited him in ways he’d couldn’t explain.

“Do you, Quint? You and Holly—”

“Weren’t compatible,” he finished for her. “Mainly she wanted a different lifestyle than me. A rancher’s day-today grind wasn’t glamorous enough for her.”

Maura frowned. “Everyone around here knew you would always be a rancher. Surely she didn’t think you would change that for her.”

Grimacing, he shook his head. “No. We’d been dating since high school, but when we got engaged we were both in our senior year of college and I was earning a degree in agriculture business. She had hopes that I would put that to use in other ways than a hands-on rancher. She saw me becoming an executive for some cattle-buying firm or working my up to a prestigious position in the equine business. Or even just sitting back and managing the ranch from an office.”

A faint smile curved her lips. “I can’t see you doing any of that. You’re an outdoor man.”

He grunted cynically. “Holly never understood that about me. She also believed we’d make our home at the Chaparral. I explained that I considered that my parents’ home and I wanted something of my own. And when I made it clear that I wanted something far more modest than the Chaparral, she didn’t hide her disappointment in me. In her opinion, I gave her plenty of reasons to look elsewhere. And maybe I did. But a man can’t compromise his basic roots.”

“Well, if I remember right the Johnsons were well-off,” Maura reasoned. “I guess Holly’s parents had always given her whatever she wanted. That’s never a good thing.”

Quint grimaced. “I thought her family being well-off meant that she couldn’t be interested in my money. Not when she already had her own. I was a fool for not realizing that people like Holly always want more. I suppose when she met that rich real estate guy up in Denver she saw her chance to get everything she wanted. It didn’t matter that he was nearly twice her age.” Sarcasm twisted his features. “She would consider my little house on the Golden Spur a shack. But you know what, it’s me and I like it. I wouldn’t change it for her. For anyone.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” she said softly.

Her fingers moved gently over the top of his hand as though she wanted to console him in some way. But Quint could have told her that he didn’t need that sort of comforting from her. He wanted her lips fastened to his, her body crushed beneath him. The thought of making love to this woman was beginning to consume him and make everything else seem very unimportant. That couldn’t be healthy. But he’d already gone past the point of stopping it.

He sighed. “Since Holly, I’ve met a few women who thought they could change me. In a way, I guess I’ve had the same sort of problem that you had with your ex. Most of the women I’ve dated seemed to equate Cantrell money with easy living. But that’s not what I’m about, Maura.”