The Rancher And The Baby

She thought it was rectangular—and pink.

You’re losing your mind, Cassidy silently lectured herself.

The next second, her body went rigid as she heard something.

She couldn’t have just heard—

No, that was just her imagination, getting the better of her. That was probably just some animal making that sound. It couldn’t have been—

A baby!

“Damn it,” Cassidy bit out, “that couldn’t be—” And yet, she really thought she heard a baby crying.

You’re really letting your imagination run away with you, she silently lectured.

Even though she was convinced she was wrong, Cassidy knew she couldn’t just shrug it off. She had to look again—just in case.

It wasn’t safe to turn the truck on a saturated road. Cassidy did the only thing she could in order to give herself peace of mind.

She threw her truck into Reverse.

Driving backward as carefully as she was able, she watched the road to see if she could catch sight of the bobbing pink whatever-it-was.

And then, her eyes glued to her rearview mirror, Cassidy saw it.

She wasn’t crazy; there was something bobbing up and down in the water. Something rectangular and, from what she could make out, it appeared to be plastic. A plastic tub was caught up in the rushing waters and, for some reason that seemed to defy all logic, it was still upright and afloat.

If that wasn’t miraculous enough, Cassidy could have sworn that the baby she’d thought she’d heard was in the bobbing pink rectangular plastic tub.

With the truck still in Reverse, Cassidy stepped on the gas pedal, pushing it as far down as she dared and prayed.

Prayed harder than she ever had before.

Chapter Two

The rear of Cassidy’s truck fishtailed, and for one long, heart-stopping moment, she thought the truck was going to slide straight down into the rushing floodwater.

Everything was happening at a blinding speed.

Cassidy wasn’t sure just how she managed it, but somehow she kept the truck on solid ground. Not only that, but with her heart in her throat, she backed up the vehicle far enough so that it was slightly ahead of the approaching bobbing tub—all this while the four-by-four was facing backward.

She knew what she had to do.

If Cassidy had had time to think it through, she would have seen at least half a dozen ways that this venture she was about to undertake could end badly.

But there wasn’t any time to think, there was only time to react.

Throwing open the door on the driver’s side, Cassidy jumped out of the truck and hit the ground running—as well as sliding. The ground beneath her boots was incredibly slippery.

The rain was no longer coming down in blinding sheets. Although it was still raining hard, she barely noticed it. All she noticed, all she saw, was the crying baby in the plastic tub. And all she knew was that if she couldn’t reach it in time, the baby would drown.

It still might.

They very well could both drown, but Cassidy knew she had to do something, had to at least try to save the baby. Otherwise, if she played it safe, if she did nothing at all, she would never be able to live with herself. Choosing her own safety over the life of another—especially if that life belonged to a baby—was totally unacceptable to her.

Cassidy wasn’t even aware of the fact that as she rushed to the water’s edge and dove in, she yelled. Yelled at the top of her lungs the way she had when she and her brothers would engage in the all-too-dangerous, mindlessly death-defying games they used to play as children. The one that came to her mind as she dove was when they would catapult from a makeshift swing—composed of a rope looped around a tree branch—into the river below. Then the ear-piercing noise had been the product of a combination of released adrenaline and fearlessness. What prompted her to yell now as she dove into the water was the unconscious hope that she could survive this venture the way she had survived the ones in her childhood. Then she had been competing with her brothers—and Laredo. Now she was competing against the laws of nature and praying that she would win just one more time.

The water was strangely warm—or maybe it was that she was just totally numb to the cold. She only had one focus. Her eyes were trained on the plastic tub and its passenger as she fought the rushing water to cut the distance between her and the screaming baby.

The harder she swam, the farther away she felt the tub was getting.

Keeping her head above the water, Cassidy let loose with another piercing yell and filled her lungs with as much air as she could, hoping that somehow that would help keep her alive and magically propel her to the baby. There was absolutely no logical way it could help; she only knew that somehow it had to.

* * *

WILL LAREDO HAD no idea what he was doing out here. Ordinarily he wasn’t given to following through on dumb ideas, and this was definitely a lapse on his part. For all he knew, the colt he was looking for could have found his way back to the stable and was there now, dry and safe, while he was out here on something that could only be called a fool’s errand.

It was just that when that bolt of lightning had streaked across the sky and then thunder had crashed practically right over the stable less than a minute later, it caused Britches to charge right out of the stable and through the open field as if the devil himself was after him.

Seeing the colt flee, Will ran to his truck and took out after it as if he had no choice.

Will knew it was stupid, but he felt a special connection to the sleek black colt. Britches had been born shortly after he’d returned to take over his late father’s ranch, and he’d felt that if he lost the colt, somehow, symbolically, that meant he was going to lose the ranch—and wind up being the ne’er-do-well his father had always claimed he was destined to be.

It was asinine to let that goad him into coming out here, searching for the colt, when the weather conditions made it utterly impossible to follow the animal’s trail. Any hoofprints had been washed away the second they were made.

Hell, if he didn’t turn around right now, he would wind up being washed away, as well.

His best bet was to take shelter until the worst of this passed. These sorts of storms almost always came out of nowhere, raged for a short amount of time, did their damage and then just disappeared as if they’d never existed.

But right now, he was wetter than he could remember being in a very long time and he wanted to—

Suddenly, he snapped to attention. “What the hell was that?”

The yell he thought he heard instantly propelled him back over a decade and a half, to a time when estrangement and spirit-breaking responsibilities hadn’t entered his life yet. A time when the company of friends was enough to ease the torment of belittling words voiced by a father who was too angry at the hand that life had dealt him to realize that he was driving away the only thing he did have.

There it was again!

Will hit the brakes with as much pressure as he dared, knowing the danger of slamming down too hard. He didn’t feel like being forced to fish his truck out of this newly created rushing river. Opening the door, he strained to hear the sound that had caused him to stop his truck in the first place.

He waited in vain.

The howl of the wind mocked him.

He was hearing things.

“You don’t belong out here anymore, Laredo,” he said, upbraiding himself. “What the hell are you trying to prove by going out looking for a colt that probably has more sense than you do? Go home before you drown out here like some damn brainless turkey staring up at the sky during a downpour.”

Disgusted as well as frustrated, Will leaned out to grab hold of the door handle—the wind had pushed the door out as far as it would go. Just as he began to pull it toward him, he heard it for a third time.

That same yell.

“Damn it, I’m not hearing things,” he swore, arguing with himself.

Getting out of the truck, he squinted against the rain and looked out at the rushing water. Yesterday, this entire length of wet land hardly contained enough water to qualified being called a creek; now it was on its way to becoming a full-fledged raging river.

Will’s square jaw dropped as he realized that he wasn’t looking at debris being swept away in the center of the rushing water. It was some sort of washtub, a washtub with what looked to be a doll in it.

That wasn’t a doll; that was a baby!

He was already running to the water’s edge when his field of vision widened and he saw her. Saw that Cassidy was fighting against the current and was desperately trying to reach the baby.

It hit him like a punch in his gut.

That was what he’d heard!

He’d heard Cassidy screaming out that yell, the one that Cole had come up with so many summers ago. It had something to do with making them band together, giving them the strength of five instead of just one. They’d been kids then.

She wasn’t a kid anymore and there were all sorts of things he wanted to yell at her now, all of them ultimately boiling down to the word idiot.

But that was after he got to her.

And before that could happen, he had to save Cassidy’s damn fool hide. Hers and that baby she was trying to rescue.

Where the hell had it come from?

He had no time to try to figure that out now. Later, that was for later.

Will gave himself a running start, using the increasing speed he built up to propel him as he dove into the water.

He swam the way he never swam before—as if his life depended on it.

As if her life depended on it.

Hers and that baby’s.

Divorcing himself from any other thoughts—from anger, fear, astonishment—Will focused entirely on the goal he’d just set for himself. Rescuing the woman who took special delight in filleting him with her tongue whenever the opportunity arose, and the baby he’d never seen before, both of whom had just one thing in common: they had absolutely no business being out here under these conditions.

And they had one more thing in common: both of them were going to die here if he didn’t reach them in time.

* * *

HER ARMS WERE getting really, really heavy, but she knew that if she gave in to the feeling, gave in to the very thought of how exhausted she felt, both she and most likely this baby were not going to live to see another sunrise.

Hell, they weren’t going to live to see another half hour if she didn’t find a way to save them.

Her lungs aching so much that they hurt, she still somehow managed to tap into an extra burst of energy. She stretched out her arms as far as they would go with each stroke, and she finally managed to get close enough to the baby to just glide her fingertips along the lip of the tub.

C’mon, just a little farther, just a little farther, she frantically urged herself.

“Gotcha!” Cassidy cried in almost giddy triumph, her fingertips securing just the very rim of the tub. Her heart pounding madly, she pulled the tub to her. “I’ve got you, baby,” she all but sobbed. “I’ve got you!”

The problem was, she’d used up all of her energy, and, while she’d finally, finally managed to reach the baby, both she and it were still in the middle of the rushing water.

The situation didn’t exactly look hopeful.

And then Cassidy felt something snaking around her waist and holding her fast as it grabbed her from behind. Exhausted beyond belief, unable to turn to see what had caught her, Cassidy still frantically cast about for some way to free herself and the baby before whatever it was that was holding her dragged them down to the bottom of this newly formed river.

With no weapon within reach, Cassidy frantically pulled back her arm and struck hard at whatever was holding on to her with her elbow. Her only hope was to use the element of surprise to drive off whatever creature had ensnared her.

“Ow! Damn it, Cassidy, I should have my head examined for not letting you drown instead of trying to save you,” the deep voice behind her grumbled.

She could feel the words as they rumbled out because the man behind her had such a tight hold on her; his chest was pressed up against her back closer than the label on a jar of jam.

“Laredo?” she cried, absolutely astonished even as she struggled to keep the very last ounce of energy from seeping out of her body. Confusion vibrated through her. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

“I thought that was rather obvious,” he bit off coldly, both his breath and his words grazing the back of her head. “I’m trying to save you from drowning in this damn flash flood.” Before she could offer any sort of a protest, he turned the tables on her. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

She had a death grip on the baby’s tub, which in turn kept the baby from being swept away by the river. “What does it look like I’m doing?” she challenged angrily.

“Proving me wrong,” he answered, still keeping one arm firmly secured around her torso as he continued to slowly, powerfully, make his way back to the bank.

“Okay, I’m waiting,” Cassidy retorted weakly, mentally bracing herself.

Whatever was coming was not going to be flattering. She knew him too well to expect anything else. She also knew him well enough to know he was bound to save her because of the same ingrained sense of honor they all shared.

“Why are you wrong?” she gasped when he didn’t say anything.

“Because you can still find new ways to mess up, just when I thought you’d exhausted all the available possibilities.”

Anger appeared out of nowhere, giving her an unexpected surge of energy. She knew it wouldn’t last, so she talked quickly.

“There was a baby in the river. What was I supposed to do?” she demanded weakly. “Wave at it?”

“No, but drowning with it wasn’t exactly going to help anything,” Will snapped as he finally managed to reach the riverbank with both of them in tow.

The baby was still crying. It was loud enough to almost drown out the sound of their voices.

“I wasn’t drowning,” she informed him.

She meant to snap the answer at him, but all she could manage was an indignant gasp. Her last surge of energy was all but gone. But he had a way of making her so angry, she still felt compelled to argue.

“I had everything under control. I didn’t need your help.”

Exhausted himself from fighting against the current, Will fell back against the bank. It was still raining, but at this point, he was hardly aware of it.

“Right.” The single word mocked her.

She would have peppered him with biting rhetoric if she only had the energy. As it was, taking in a full breath was about all she could manage. She couldn’t remember ever being this exhausted.

The moment she had at least an ounce of extra energy to spare, she would direct it toward the baby whose cries had turned into subdued whimpers—and that, in reality, worried her more than the cries did.

So, for the moment, all she could say in response to Will as they both lay on the bank, getting wetter and silently grateful that neither one of them would become a statistic today in this latest battle with Mother Nature, was, “Thanks for the thought, though.”

“Any time,” he murmured.

In the distance, as the rain began to swiftly retreat, he could have sworn that he heard a horse whinnying.

Or maybe it was a colt.

His mouth curved ever so slightly.

Britches was safe after all.

Chapter Three

Cassidy hated to admit it, even if it was just to herself, but there was no getting away from it. Laredo had a great smile that warmed up a cold room and could easily set even the coolest heart on fire, at least momentarily. It was exactly for this reason why she would never even allow him to suspect that she felt this way.

Ever since she could remember, Will Laredo attracted the female of the species as if they were thirsty jackrabbits and he was the only watering hole for more than two hundred miles. Cody and Cole—and even Connor on occasion—seemed to think that was one of Laredo’s attributes. She, on the other hand, viewed it in an entirely different light.

It just gave the man an even bigger head than he already had.

When she saw the corner of his mouth curve just now as they both lay on the bank, gasping for breath, all these other thoughts came crowding into her head. Like how this resembled the aftermath of a marathon lovemaking session with the two of them lying so close together, breathless and grateful.

She was delirious, she angrily upbraided herself.

Cassidy squelched her thoughts. She was exhausted and consequently—although she would have rather died right here on the spot than admit it—vulnerable. This was definitely not the time to have thoughts like that marching through her brain.

People did stupid things when they felt vulnerable—even her. Stupid things that would go on to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Well, not her.

“What are you smiling about?” she demanded breathlessly, expecting him to say something about getting to play the superhero to her damsel in distress—or something equally irritating.

She braced herself to lash out and put him in his place.

But Laredo surprised her by saying, “Britches made it.”

Britches? Her eyes narrowed into probing slits. Right now, the baby they had saved was quiet, and she was beyond grateful for that.

Was Laredo referring to the baby?

“Is that some kind of a nickname?” she challenged.

Was this yet another way to talk down to her? Even so, she had to admit that she was glad Laredo had showed up when he did. Despite her defensive words to the contrary, she really wasn’t 100 percent convinced that she would have been able to make it back to the bank with the baby without Laredo’s help.

But if she even hinted at that, he would never let her live it down.

“No, it’s a name,” Will told her mildly, “for my colt.”

“Your colt?” she repeated.

Was he talking about his father’s old gun? As she recalled, Jake Laredo had kept an old Colt .45 that he claimed had belonged to his great-great-grandfather, handed down to him by Stephen Austin, the man who’d founded the Texas Rangers. There was more to the story, but she’d always pretended to be disinterested whenever he mentioned it. In her opinion, Laredo’s head was big enough. She didn’t need to add to it by acting as if she cared about anything he had to say.

“A colt’s a male horse under the age of four,” he told her patiently.

Some of her energy had to be returning because she could feel her back going up. Heroic endeavors or not, Laredo was talking down to her again, Cassidy thought, annoyed.

“I know what a colt is,” she snapped, or thought she did. Afraid of scaring the baby again, she lowered her voice. “I just didn’t know you had one.”

“It’s a horse ranch,” he reminded her, referring to the property that his father had left to him—something she was aware of since she was in Olivia Santiago’s office when he’d been called in and told about his father’s will. The fact that his father had left it to him had rendered Will speechless. She’d almost felt sorry for him—almost. “What else am I going to have?”

“Debts.”

The answer came out before Cassidy could censor herself. It was Laredo’s fault. He had that sort of effect on her. The next moment, remorse set in. He was the bane of her existence, but he didn’t deserve that.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Sure you did.” Instead of being annoyed, he let her words pass. “Because it’s true,” he admitted matter-of-factly.

Everyone in town knew that his father had had money troubles. They’d only gotten worse over time. There was no reason to believe that anything had changed just before he died. Jake Laredo had sought refuge in the bottom of a bottle, drinking to the point of numbness, after which he’d pass out. Subsequently, the ranch had fallen into disrepair and ruin. When he’d gotten the letter from Olivia about his father’s death, he’d returned only to put the old man into the ground. He’d been surprised that the ranch was still standing and that there were a couple of horses—rather emaciated at that—still in the stable.

Will saw it as a challenge.

“It’s probably why he left the place to me,” Will was saying, more to himself than to her. “It was his final way of sticking it to me.”

Still lying on the bank, Cassidy turned her head toward him. She decided it had to be what she’d just gone through. The experience had to have rattled her brain to some degree because she was actually feeling sorry for Laredo—a little, she quickly qualified. But the feeling was there nonetheless.

“Someone else would just walk away,” she pointed out to him.

“Someone else isn’t me,” he told Cassidy. “Besides, I can’t walk away. If I did, that old man would have the last laugh.”

The last laugh would have meant that he couldn’t do the honorable thing, couldn’t pay off his father’s debts, couldn’t make a go of the ranch. In effect, it would have made him no better than Jake Laredo had been. Or at least that was the way Will saw it.

“I don’t think he’s laughing much where he is now,” Cassidy said quietly.

Meaning hell, Will thought. He almost laughed at that but checked himself in time. “Well, I see you haven’t lost it.”

Her eyebrows drew together in a puzzled look. She was actually trying to be nice to the man. Served her right. What the hell was he talking about?

“Lost what?” she asked.

“That knack of saying the first thing that comes into your head without filtering it,” he told her.

Cassidy had to admit that she felt more comfortable sparring with the cocky so-and-so, receiving stinging barbs and giving back in kind.

She could feel the adrenaline starting to rush through her veins again. She was definitely coming around, Cassidy thought.

“Hey,” she cried, bolting upright as the realization suddenly hit her. “It’s stopped raining.”

“And that baby’s stopped crying,” Will added. “It’s like Nature’s taking a break.”

The moment he said it, Cassidy’s head snapped back around. What had struck her subconsciously now hit her head-on. Laredo was right; the baby in the tub was no longer crying.

Was that because...?

Her heart froze as she looked down at the infant in the tub again. And then she exhaled the breath she’d just sucked in and held a second ago.

Wonder of wonders, the baby was sleeping. For a moment, she’d thought the worst.

“I guess all that crying took everything out of him—or her,” Cassidy added as an afterthought.

“Him or her? You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl?” he asked her incredulously.

Rather than answer him directly, she said, “Well, it was crying so hard I couldn’t think, so it’s probably a male,” she speculated.

He was trying to nail Cassidy down, something that had never been easy to do. “Then you’ve never seen this baby before?” he questioned.

“Well, I haven’t been to the new-baby store recently, so no, I’ve never seen this baby before. Not until I saw it floating by in that flash flood that used to be a creek,” Cassidy added.

Laredo looked at her skeptically, which indicated that he didn’t believe her. But then, she supposed that just this once she couldn’t really fault him. If she were in his place, she wouldn’t have believed him, either.

“No, seriously, I’ve never seen this baby before.” She looked at the sleeping infant and shook her head. The whole thing seemed almost macabre as well as incredible. “Who sticks a baby into a plastic tub?” she asked.

“Someone trying to save its life would be my guess,” Will said, speculating. “Maybe it was someone who’s new to the area. They were driving through and got caught up in the flash flood—this could have been their last-ditch attempt to save the baby.”