Cowboy With A Secret

She stepped into the room, thinking to leave the sheets on the bed. But before she could set them down, she saw a photograph resting on the mattress. It was tattered around the edges, as if someone had repeatedly taken it out of a wallet for a closer look.

The picture was one of those glamour photos. It was of a young woman with dark hair teased into what Bethany thought of as Mall Bangs and deep soulful eyes made comical by too much eye makeup. Despite the hair, eyes and the studded leather jacket with the collar turned up, there was something arresting about the girl’s expression. She looked as if under all that bravado she was hiding an underlying sorrow. Then again, it might be the photographer’s lighting. Whatever it was, she was very pretty.

Bethany was so absorbed in the photograph that she didn’t hear Colt until he entered the room. She wheeled around, startled. And then she saw him.

Her new ranch hand was buck naked and dripping from the shower. His hair was slicked back, darker wet than it was dry, and the water had curled the hair on his chest into tight little burrs. He looked as startled as she felt—thank goodness, certain strategic body parts were modestly hidden by the towel he held in front of him.

She dropped the sheets. Also the pillow. She was totally unprepared for the wave of lust and helplessness that washed over her at the sight of him. Colt McClure was magnificently built, from the solid muscles of his arms and chest to the hard rippling ridges of his abdomen. And below that—she looked away, refusing to speculate on what was behind the towel.

Their gazes caught and held. Bethany could not pull her eyes away. Colt, completely unabashed, merely quirked his eyebrows and said, “Hand me the jeans on that hook behind the door, would you?”

The spell broken, Bethany groped behind her, felt cloth and yanked blue denim. She tossed the jeans to him and bent over to gather up the sheets. When she straightened, he’d wrapped the towel around his waist.

“I—um—well, I brought the sheets,” she said, swallowing hard.

Colt cleared his throat. “I think you better excuse me for a few seconds,” he said, and he disappeared into the bathroom.

She wanted to run, but that would betray her embarrassment. She told herself that the thing to do was act as if nothing unusual had happened. This was a ranch. She was accustomed to stallions mounting mares, to bulls servicing cows, to misguided but amorous female dogs seeking out Jesse James.

But she wasn’t used to naked men.

When Colt emerged from the bathroom, she was nonchalantly shaking dust off the previously clean sheets and pillow.

“These got a little messed up,” she said, wondering if her cheeks were flushed. They certainly felt that way, and the air blowing across the ice cubes in the pan didn’t help much.

Colt wore only jeans, and his hair was still wet. It was wavy, something she hadn’t noticed when it was dry.

He reached for the sheet she was folding, and the fragrance of fabric softener and dried lavender wafted up from the soft percale. The scent brought back memories so sweet that they pierced her to the heart and left her aching inside. Justin had always liked the way she folded dried lavender sprigs from her little garden into the sheets, and they had spent many, many nights making love on those sheets in their double bed beneath the eaves of the bedroom they’d shared in the ranch house, the same room where his father had been born.

She surrendered the sheet. “I’d better be going,” she said as she watched Colt’s big hands smooth wrinkles out of the fabric. Thankfully she heard footsteps on the stairs and backed toward the door. She knew it wasn’t Frisco because the tread was too even to fit his unsteady gait, and for a moment, Bethany thought it might be Dita. But it was only Eddie, toting a bucketful of ice cubes.

“Mom sent these,” he said, holding out the bucket.

Colt grinned at him, man-to-man friendly. “Much obliged, Eddie. Set the bucket by the table.”

“Anytime you want ice or company, Mom says hang your red bandanna out the window.” Eddie brushed fine pale hair out of his eyes and turned to Bethany. “Hi, Bethany. Dancer wants a carrot and I don’t have one.”

Bethany was flooded with relief. Eddie had provided a rescue of sorts. She pulled the carrot out of her back pocket. “You’re in luck,” she said, dangling it in front of him.

Eddie grabbed at it, eyes asparkle. “Can I give it to her?” He was like a child, all enthusiasm. It was one of the things Bethany loved about him.

“Of course you can.”

She turned to say goodbye to Colt, but he had scooped the photograph up from the bed and was sliding it into his wallet. He looked preoccupied, thoughtful.

Bethany didn’t speak after all, just high-footed it out of there. Colt called out a goodbye, but not until she and Eddie were most of the way down the stairs.

AFTER THEY’D FED DANCER half of the carrot and given the other half to Colt’s horse as a kind of welcoming present, Eddie started back toward the Neilsons’ and Bethany headed for the stand of tall cottonwoods beside the creek. There she sank down on the mossy bench Justin had built for her during her first year at the Banner-B.

Sometimes she’d had to get away from the heat and dust and cattle and the rowdy hands they’d employed in those days, and this was where she’d sought refuge. Here, where the Little Moony Creek meandered slowly around slippery boulders and purled over shiny rocks; here where she could pull off her boots, spraddle her legs in unladylike fashion and dabble bare feet in the cool, refreshing water. In the spring, cottony seeds drifted down from the trees and caught in her hair, and in the summer, shiny triangular leaves cast welcome shadows across her upturned face. At night, myriad stars peeped through the lattice of foliage above, and now they were winking at her against the backdrop of a velvety blue sky. Winking seductively, it seemed to her tonight.

“Well, now what?” she said out loud. Frisco would have called it dingbat behavior, but sometimes Bethany talked to Justin in this special place. It kept her from getting too broody, too introspective. And it was a way to think over the pros and cons of a thing, like the time early on when she’d gotten it into her head to sell the ranch to Mott. She’d been disabused of that notion when Mott came to call and suggested that he could warm her on cold nights, which was when she had worked herself into such a hot temper that she’d thrown him out.

She was much too young for all the responsibility the inheritance of this ranch had placed on her, and she was the first one to admit it, though she excelled at putting up a brave front. After Justin died, she hadn’t thought she could go on without him. She’d had to grow tough and hard in order to cope. Sometimes she got tired of being tough and hard, she longed to be soft and sweet the way she used to be. That sweetness was what Justin had loved about her, and she wondered if he’d still love her now that she was a different person. But then, love didn’t die, Justin had always said. He had been positive of that, and because Bethany was the one he’d loved, she’d been sure of it, too. That undying love was why she liked to think that maybe Justin heard her out when she had a problem.

The problem was Colt McClure. Maybe she should have known better than to resort to the mail-order method of hiring, but what was she to do? Mott Findley was telling everyone that she couldn’t pay her bills. No hand worth his salt dared to take the chance of not being paid for services rendered at the Banner-B when there was plenty of work available on nearby ranches. It further complicated matters that she was a woman and Frisco was a grouch.

Whatever, she’d be better off not thinking about it, not talking out loud when no one else was present, and not allowing herself to be fascinated by Colt McClure. She’d be better off watching TV, which functioned as her mind-numbing drug of choice on nights when the stars seemed too near and her body seemed too deprived. This was definitely one of those nights.

Steady, said the voice in her head that she sometimes heard when she sat here. Steady.

That was all it said. She didn’t know for sure if the voice came from Justin or not. Maybe it was merely her own thoughts rattling around inside her brain. Whatever it was, it gave her heart. It gave her the will to go on.

After a while she stood and followed the path along the creek until it bisected the driveway about a half mile from the house. She was walking along, hands in pockets, mulling, when she saw a small car cut out of the driveway onto the blacktop highway. They’d had a visitor, then. She didn’t recognize the car at first, but as she watched it she thought it resembled the light-colored sedan that she’d seen moseying past when she was talking to Colt that afternoon out in the far pasture.

The car’s presence made the pit of her stomach feel hollow, which was ridiculous. It was just a car, perhaps someone visiting the Neilsons or lost on this remote stretch of highway after taking a wrong turn from town. She squared her shoulders and ignored the feeling that something was wrong.

Chances were that the car was driven by one of Mott’s minions, who might be checking out anything from the new hand to the line of fence posts going up along her property line. Well, let Mott look. She wasn’t ready to declare bankruptcy yet. Or to sell. He and his vultures would have a long wait.

She strode forward, head down, preoccupied with calculations. She’d ship cattle to the feed lots later in the month, and she’d be able to pay her bill at Kraegel’s after they were sold at auction. Fred Kraegel had thrown in an extra bag of feed today, she thought because he liked her and wanted her to succeed. Or maybe he just didn’t like Mott, which was not all that unusual in these parts.

She’d left the house before dark, so the porch light wasn’t on. When she started up the porch steps, lost in her musings, she almost tripped over the wicker basket.

Bethany’s first thought was that Dita had left her laundry on the front porch, which was a natural assumption because Bethany and the Neilsons shared one washer and dryer located in the utility room off the kitchen. But the kitchen was in the back of the house and had its own porch, so it was highly unlikely that Dita had left her basket in the front of the house.

And then she heard the whimper. Something inside the basket moved.

To her utter amazement, a small pink fist flailed the air. The whimper swelled to a cry, and when Bethany bent over to look, she saw a tiny baby wrapped in a print blanket. No, it must be a doll. It couldn’t be a baby. People didn’t really leave babies on peoples’ doorsteps. Certainly they didn’t leave them on her doorstep.

But it wasn’t a doll. It moved. It was crying, its face screwed up and its legs kicking emphatically under the blanket. Bethany dissolved into total bewilderment, half thinking this must be some trick of Mott Findley’s, yet knowing in her heart that it couldn’t be.

Jesse, who among his many failings never bothered to bark at strangers, loped over from the barn, tail wagging, tongue lolling, and looking doggily curious. And, ominously, much too happy.

Before the dog could proceed with his self-appointed mission to water the world, Bethany yanked the basket out of harm’s way. She nudged the front door open with the toe of her boot and carried the baby inside, letting the door slam in the perplexed Jesse’s face.

“Mercy me, what on earth!” she said to the baby, which only wailed more loudly.

Bethany pushed aside a stack of catalogs to set the basket on the narrow hall table and unpinned an envelope from the baby’s blanket. The outside of the envelope was blank, so she opened it and unfolded the note inside.

COLT, it said in printed block letters. PLEASE TAKE CARE OF ALYSSA FOR ME. I’LL BE BACK WHEN I GET SOME MONEY. I LOVE YOU, MARCY.

CHAPTER THREE

“WELL, I’LL BE,” SAID Frisco.

“Is the baby going to live with us?” Eddie asked. “Like a sister?”

“I don’t know, son,” Dita said as she slid an arm around his shoulders. Though she was a native of Mexico, her voice bore little trace of an accent; she’d lived in the States for more than twenty years.

“Colt?” Bethany stood with her arms folded across her chest, reminding herself to be tough. As soon as she’d realized that this baby wasn’t about to be leaving the premises right away, she had summoned Frisco and Dita and Eddie with a quick phone call. Eddie, goggle-eyed, had hurried to get Colt, who ran all the way from the barn. Now the five of them hovered over the wicker basket, and the baby was cooing and laughing up at them, putting on a show.

“I—well, I sure didn’t expect this,” Colt said. His voice rumbled deep in his throat, prickly as a cocklebur.

“The note was addressed to you.” In Bethany’s mind, Colt had some explaining to do.

Colt frowned at the bit of paper, then folded it and stuffed it down into his jeans pocket. He wore only jeans, a T-shirt and boots, and the T-shirt was wrinkled as if he’d just pulled it out of his bedroll. “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

“It’s a very nice baby,” Eddie said.

“Yes, it is. But it’s not our baby,” Bethany replied firmly, her irritation building.

Colt cleared his throat and looked from one of them to the other, his gaze stopping when it reached Bethany. The pause lengthened, stretched, hung there. “I know whose baby it is,” he said finally.

“Would you mind telling us?” Frisco growled.

Colt seemed to stew over this before shaking his head. “I can’t,” he said.

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Bethany asked, sharp as all get-out. She recalled the well-worn photo on Colt’s bed and figured that the girl in the picture was Marcy.

“I just can’t say right now, ma’am. Mrs. Burke.” Colt had the good grace to look embarrassed, but he met her gaze squarely.

“Call me Bethany,” she said.

“Bethany,” Colt repeated. He drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask your patience. And your understandin’. I’ll look after the baby.” He looked away for a moment as if considering. “The baby can stay in my apartment for tonight,” he added.

“There’s barely room in your apartment for one, much less a baby, and there’s no air,” Dita said. She tended to have a blunt manner, which people sometimes misunderstood.

“She could stay with us,” Eddie suggested, looking hopeful.

“Absolutely not,” Frisco huffed. “We ain’t set up for a baby.”

At that the baby puckered up her face and began to wail.

Frisco pounced on this development. “You see? Babies cry, and they make messes. Babies are a lot of work. We can’t have the baby at our house, and that’s that.” He stumped over to the door and stood looking out toward the barn.

The baby’s squalling roused a maternal instinct in Bethany. She found herself absolutely incapable of listening to the baby’s screams. Before she’d even thought about it, she had slid her hands beneath the tiny body and lifted Alyssa out of the basket. She halfway expected the child to fill her arms like a minisack of feed grain, but she wasn’t at all like that. Alyssa had less heft to her, and bones. Not only that, but the baby stiffened every time she screamed, clutching her little fingers into wildly brandishing fists and contorting her face into a tight red knot of anger. Instinctively and with only a slight hesitation at first, Bethany rocked the baby back and forth.

“Shh,” she crooned softly. “It’s all right. We won’t hurt you.” Her motherly instinct, or whatever it was, billowed full-blown. It took only a moment to decide what she had to do. She looked around at the others and spoke over the baby’s cries. “Alyssa can stay with me tonight. In the extra bedroom.”

“Great,” said Frisco. “Peachy. I’m going home to watch TV. Too much noise around here.” He slammed outside and down the stairs.

The noise of the door’s banging distracted Alyssa so that she suddenly stopped screaming. Dita touched the baby’s cheek. “So soft,” she said. “So sweet. Look, Eddie, at her little fingers. Have you ever seen anything so perfect?”

“Never,” Eddie breathed in awe.

“Dita, how old do you think she is?”

“A month or two, I’d guess.”

Colt rummaged under the blankets in the basket. “There’s canned formula and a bottle here,” he said, setting them on the table. “And enough disposable diapers until I can get more. And a pacifier.”

“Eddie and I can bring the old family cradle over,” Dita said. “It’s stored in the attic. Oh, and you’ll want cornstarch. I have that, too.”

“Cornstarch?” Bethany said blankly.

“It prevents diaper rash,” Dita told her.

“Goodness gracious,” she said, embarrassed. “I guess I don’t know much about babies.”

“No reason you should,” Dita said. She chuckled and patted Bethany on the shoulder. “I’ll dig out that cradle right now,” she said, and then she and Eddie left, Eddie chattering excitedly all the way out the door.

When it was quiet, Bethany stopped rocking the baby, who in turn regarded her solemnly. The baby’s hair looked like downy dark chick fluff, and her breath smelled milky. Bethany thought about how it might have been to hold her own baby like this, to have someone to care about more than anything in the world. More than the ranch, even.

“All this time I’ve been learning how to run the Banner-B while other women my age are having children,” she said, half to herself.

“Sounds like that bothers you.”

Colt’s words startled her. She had momentarily forgotten that he was there.

“My husband and I always wanted kids,” she said. The baby was staring intently up at her, searching her face for—what? Its mother? What kind of mother would leave a baby on someone’s doorstep?

Bethany found herself growing angry on the baby’s behalf. A baby deserved parents who cared enough about it to keep it safe. A baby deserved better than being dropped on someone’s doorstep, prey to anything that came along, like abusive kids or coyotes or—well, peeing dogs.

“Here, why don’t you let me take her,” Colt said. Wordlessly she let him lift the baby from her arms. Although his hands were big and rough, he was surprisingly gentle. Bethany thought, maybe Colt McClure has the same feeling for babies that he has for horses.

For some reason, this was a disturbing thought. Or was it the way Colt’s hands adjusted the baby’s blanket, or maybe the unaccustomed softness of expression that flickered brief as heat lightning across his rough-hewn face? Or the way he offered the pacifier and his look of relief when the baby accepted it?

Maybe none of this was so surprising. The baby was his. Had to be. Why else would this Marcy, whoever she was, be leaving a baby here?

Her anger burgeoned to include Colt. And yet there wasn’t much she could do if he’d earlier abandoned this Marcy and their baby to come to the Banner-B. It wasn’t her fault. She reminded herself that Colt was the one who’d advertised for work. She’d only answered the ad. It wasn’t as if she was the one responsible for his irresponsibility.

She thought if she didn’t get away from him she might say something she’d regret. “The baby’s probably hungry. I’ll go pour this formula into the bottle,” she said through clenched teeth. She pivoted abruptly to go into the kitchen, the air in her wake sending a picture of Justin clattering to the floor. Quickly she bent and picked it up, carefully examining the frame to see if it was broken. The picture had been taken during the first year of their marriage, and Justin was smiling into the camera lens. Smiling at her. Bethany had taken the picture.

She carefully returned the picture to its hallowed place on the hall table. “Your husband?” Colt said.

“Yes.” She didn’t want to talk about Justin with this man, but when she went into the kitchen, Colt followed.

“I reckon it’s none of my business, but how long have you been a widow?” he asked in a conversational tone.

“You’re right. It’s not your business.” Any more than it’s my business how a baby came to be left on my doorstep for you. Or who Marcy is, she almost added.

“Sorry,” Colt said.

Suddenly it seemed important to her to let this drifter, this man who’d abandoned his own child, know exactly what responsibility was. “Justin died five years ago after a tractor accident, and I’ve been running the ranch ever since.”

“That’s no easy job.”

“Right,” she snapped. “The most important things in life aren’t.” She could have told him plenty about how hard it was, how she’d had to learn computer management programs and read up on cattle breeding and deal with creditors and, of course, fend off Mott—but she wouldn’t.

If he felt the sting of her words, Colt gave no sign. He didn’t reply, but sat down on a kitchen chair and hoisted Alyssa so that her face rested against his shoulder. The baby was alert, sucking vigorously on the pacifier. Colt looked pensive for a moment and drew a deep breath before he spoke.

“I want you to know that I’ll do my best to find Alyssa’s mother, and as soon as possible.”

“And if she can’t take the baby back?”

“I don’t rightly know whether she can or not.”

“There’s always foster care,” Bethany said.

“No!” Colt said forcefully.

Bethany hadn’t expected her casual and matter-of-fact suggestion to provoke such an outburst. She swiveled and looked at Colt in ill-concealed surprise. His expression had gone all dark and forbidding.

“Never. No matter what. I’d leave and take her with me before I’d let her go to a foster home,” Colt said fiercely. His arms tightened protectively around the baby.

Bethany hid her dismay. He could have talked from hell to breakfast and not said that part about leaving when the last thing she needed was to lose a ranch hand.

It took a moment for her to recover. “All right, then. We’ll manage for now,” she replied in a level tone, not wanting him to know he’d rattled her. She ran hot water into a pan and set the bottle in it to warm.

When she heard Dita and Eddie outside, she opened the back door and they came in. They presented the cradle for inspection by depositing it in the middle of the kitchen floor and setting it to rocking. “It’s a family heirloom Frisco and I brought from Mexico,” Dita said. She grinned at Bethany. “Frisco’s not half as hard-hearted as he seems, you know. He already had the cradle out and was cleaning it when Eddie and I walked in the house.”

“I’ll take it upstairs,” said Eddie. He was strong and proud of it.

“Put the cradle in the blue bedroom, Eddie,” Bethany told him.

“Blue bedroom. Okay.” He lifted the cradle and departed.

“Here’s the cornstarch,” Dita said as she set the small yellow box on the kitchen table. “Anything else you need?”

“No, Dita, I think we’re all set.”

They heard Eddie clattering down the stairs. “I put the cradle by the window,” he said.

“Thanks, Eddie,” Bethany told him.

“Well, Bethany, I’ll see you in the morning. Eddie, let’s go. Your dad’s about to pop a movie into the VCR.” Dita kissed Bethany briefly on the cheek and left, Eddie following close behind.

When they had gone, Bethany turned her attention back to Colt. Cowboy and baby made an incongruous sight; Colt was concentrating on his task, his brow furrowed slightly, and Alyssa slurped hungrily at the bottle, her tiny fists curved like pink seashells against Colt’s broad chest.

Bethany thought how pretty the baby was, and how helpless. And she still couldn’t understand how anyone could have left such a beautiful child on a strange doorstep. Or how the father of such a lovely child could leave her behind somewhere to take a job on a ranch like this one.

“She’s stopped drinking,” Colt announced, interrupting Bethany’s thoughts.

“I think that means she’s had enough.”

He looked up at Bethany, his eyes troubled. “I won’t let the baby be a problem. I’ll look after her tonight. She’ll have to be fed and diapered, and I can get up with her and do it. You need your sleep.”