Fifty Ways To Say I'm Pregnant

Starr blinked and scooted back a little. She had a shivery feeling down inside, a kind of giddy strangeness in her stomach. “No. You don’t really think…”

“Yes, I do. I suspected it then. But now, after seeing the way he’s managed to make something of his own life against near-impossible odds, I’m pretty much positive he said what he said for your sake. He knew he was in big trouble, Starr. His brothers were up to no good, and they’d been battering and abusing him for so long, he had a real hard time standing up to them. He was headed for trouble with the law, and he knew it—and he didn’t want to drag you down with him.”

The hurt, cold place at the center of her heart felt somehow a little bit warmer right then. “You think?”

“I do.” Tess reached out and pressed a loving hand against the side of Starr’s face. “So. Maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive the guy a little?”

Starr took Tess’s cradling hand and gave it a squeeze before letting go. “You know, you are…a real mom to me.”

Tess’s lower lip trembled just a little. “Why, honey. What a beautiful thing to say.”

“It’s only the truth—and I know how you are. So respectful of my mother’s place in my life. So I want you to know it’s nothing against my mother’s memory, I promise.” Starr’s natural mother had lived in San Diego with her much-older, very wealthy second husband—until she’d died in a freeway pileup two years before. When Starr thought of Leila Wickerston Bravo Marks, it was always with a feeling of sad regret—that they’d never shared the kind of closeness that Starr had with Tess, that her mother had never understood her and never had much time for her. Leila had lavished money on Starr, but love and attention were always in short supply.

“My mother was my mother,” Starr said, trying not to sound as grim as the subject always made her feel. “I know that—and about Beau…”

“Umm?”

“I’ll think about what you said. I can kind of see the sense in it. And I do know that Beau has worked hard to make a life for himself after the mess he started out with. I guess he doesn’t need to have me staring daggers at his back every time he comes around.”

Tess leaned close enough to brush a kiss right between Starr’s eyes. When she pulled back, a tear was trailing down her soft cheek. She swiped it away with the back of a hand. “I am so proud of you. And so is your dad.” She reached out again and smoothed a hank of Starr’s hair, guiding it back behind her ear. Then she grinned. “But I have to say, I kind of miss that rhinestone you used wear in your nose.”

Starr gave her a sideways look. “Hey. I’ve still got the navel ring—and a tiny ladybug tattoo right on my—”

“Don’t—” Tess put up a hand “—mention that to your dad.”

Starr wiggled her eyebrows. “He doesn’t ask, I don’t tell…”

Tess laughed at that, a happy, trilling laugh. Starr thought how good it was to know her, that Tess was not only the mother she’d always needed, Tess was also a true friend. Tess jumped off the bed. “Come on.” She brushed at the front of her jeans, as if they’d managed to get wrinkles in them somehow. “There are beans to snap, potatoes to peel—and tonight, if you’re lucky, you, Jobeth, Edna and I will fight to the death in a brutal game of Scrabble.” Jobeth was Tess’s daughter by her first husband. She was eleven now, and right where she wanted to be—out with Zach, who had adopted her that first year he and Tess got together. Jobeth loved every aspect of ranching, from pulling calves to branding to gathering day.

Starr groaned. “It’s a thrill a minute around this place.”

Tess was already at the door. “Coming?”

Starr smiled then. “You know what? It’s great to be home.”

Chapter One

Three years later…

Blame it on that sliver of moon hanging from a star in the summer sky. Blame it on the two beers he had that he probably shouldn’t have. Blame it on the sight of her—that black hair shining like a crow’s wing by the light of the paper lanterns strung overhead, those eyes that unforgettable heart-stopping amethyst-blue. Blame it on the yearning inside him, the yearning that, after all those years, still remained with him, tender as an old wound that never did heal quite right.

Blame it on…

Hell. Blame it on whatever you damn well please.

At the annual Medicine Creek Merchant Society’s Independence Day dance, out under the stars in Patriot Park, after six endless years of keeping strictly away from her, Beau Tisdale decided he would ask Starr Bravo for a dance.

It was no picnic mustering the courage to do it. He stood for a while under the night-shadowed branches of a cottonwood a ways from the bunting-draped temporary dance floor, nursing a third longneck, watching her as he worked up his nerve.

Twice, she danced with Barnaby Cotes, the sneaky weasel who ran Cotes Clothing and Gift on Main Street and was too old for her by half. Then Tim Cally, a hand on the Rising Sun for decades, led her out on the floor. Beau smiled at that. Tim was nearing sixty and a little stiff in the joints, but he could still do a fair two-step. He held Starr lightly and not too close. Beau didn’t mind watching that—not that he had any right to mind or not to mind where Starr was concerned.

He tipped up the longneck and took a deep drink. Just one damn dance, he was thinking. What can it hurt?

Stupid question. It’d hurt plenty if those violet eyes went to ice on him, if she turned him down flat. A man does have his pride, after all.

But he didn’t guess she’d begrudge him a dance. She’d seemed civil enough to him in the last few years. When he’d pass her on the street or see her on the Rising Sun, she’d give him a cool smile and a nod, anyway. If he was lucky, he’d even get a plain, politely spoken, “Hi, Beau.”

She never seemed overjoyed to set eyes on him, but it wasn’t near as bad as it had been those first couple of years after he got off the honor farm. In those years, when she looked at him, he felt knee-high to a skunk and twice as foul-smelling. She’d hated him then, pure and simple, for the hard and heartless things he’d said to her that day in the yard at the Rising Sun.

But she didn’t seem to hate him anymore. Maybe she’d figured out a few things. Or maybe it was just a long time down a dusty road and what some cowboy had said to her six years ago when she was still a girl didn’t mean a thing to her now.

No, he couldn’t say she was exactly falling all over herself to get next to him in recent years. But if he asked for a dance, he figured he had at least a fifty-fifty chance she’d say yes….

She sat out the next dance, another two-step, strolling instead over to one of the picnic tables not far from the bandstand to take her place with Tess and Zach and Jobeth. Zach’s cousin Nate Bravo sat with them, along with his wife Meggie May, who was round as a corn-fed hen with their third child. Zach had told him the other day that Tess was pregnant, too. “Three months along,” Zach had said quietly, pride and happiness glowing in his eyes.

As Beau watched, Jobeth ducked low, hunching her shoulders to the table, as if she’d like to melt right on through the rough wood planks. And Starr, sitting next to her, threw back her shining head and laughed.

Beau stood transfixed at the free, joyous sound. The band played on, a fast one, but Starr Bravo’s laugh was a whole other kind of music, the very sweetest kind. Jobeth elbowed her stepsister in the side and Starr made a show of composing herself. Jobeth straightened. In the light of the red, white and blue lanterns overhead, Jobeth’s face looked more than a little bit flushed. She said something snappish to Starr, who leaned sideways enough to bump her shoulder in the affectionate way that a sister will do. Jobeth still looked mulish, but Beau could see the reluctant smile that twitched the corners of her mouth.

About then, Beau caught sight of Nick Collerby lurking near the Bravo table. The dark-haired kid was about Jobeth’s age and had teased and tormented Starr’s sister from elementary school onward. Maybe Jobeth was worried he might ask her to dance.

And the toe-tapping song was ending. If he didn’t hustle his butt over there, some other lucky cowhand would be getting the next dance with Starr. Beau drained the last of his beer and chucked the empty in a recycling can as he went by. He walked fast, hoping speed would get him where he was going before he lost his nerve. As a result, in no time at all, he found himself standing right there by the table full of Bravos.

Tess and Meggie beamed up at him.

“Hi, Beau.”

“How’re you doin’?”

His throat felt like it had a fence post lodged in it. He cleared it, raising his hat in a polite salute and then settling it back in place. “Well, I’m fine. Just fine.”

“Nice night,” said Zach.

“Yeah. Real nice.”

About then, Jobeth giggled into her hand. A sideways glance and he saw that Starr was the one giving her the elbow, that time.

“Where’s Daniel?” asked Tess. “He always enjoys a celebration. I’d have thought he’d come out tonight.”

To keep his gaze from lingering too long on Starr, Beau made himself focus on Zach’s pretty wife. “Daniel’s feeling a little under the weather.” Beau had left the older man in his ancient easy chair, reading Western Horseman, looking kind of pale, vowing there was nothing wrong with him that a few antacids and a good night’s rest wouldn’t cure.

Twin lines of concern formed between Tess’s smooth brows. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“He says he’s just tired. But I’m keeping my eye on him.”

Tess smiled her gentle smile. “Good. He needs someone to look out for him a little. He pushes himself too hard sometimes.”

“That he does.” The band struck up the next number. A slow one. It was now or never. “Ahem. Starr, I wonder if I might have this dance?”

The second the words were out, he wanted to suck them right back in. They couldn’t have sounded stiffer if he was a damn corpse. He’d meant to be casual and easy. How ’bout a dance? maybe, or Come on. Let’s dance….

Jobeth giggled again. If he’d had a pistol on him, he’d have fired a shot past her head just to shut that girl up. And then the giggle ended on a sharp, startled, “Oh!” She scowled at her sister and he put it together. Starr must have kicked her under the table.

And Starr was…getting up. It was going to happen. He would have his dance. “Sure, Beau. That would be nice.” God bless America, was there ever a woman so blasted beautiful? She’d let that inky hair, once chopped and spiky, grow long. It flowed past her shoulders when she wore it loose, but tonight it was anchored up at the back, little wisps of it kissing her velvety cheeks. And those eyes…

They were the eyes he saw in his dreams, lupine-blue. His breath was all tangled up in his chest. His heart stopped—and then set to pounding like a herd of spooked mustangs.

She walked around the table toward him, not smiling exactly, but friendly enough. Her snug red top hooked at one shoulder, leaving the other bare, revealing skin so pure and fine-textured, it seemed to glow in the lantern light.

She held out her hand and the mustangs in his chest started bucking and snorting. Damn, he was a sad case for certain.

Her hand was slim and smooth and cool. His own felt hot and he knew it was rough. But she didn’t seem to mind.

Her smile bloomed wide. The wild horses inside him went suddenly calm as he smiled back. “Come on, then,” she said. He let her lead the way across the flattened grass of the clearing and up the two steps to the dance floor.

She tucked herself into his arms as if she’d been born to be there. Between that red top and her low-riding jeans, a narrow section of bare waist tempted him. She was never going to know how powerfully he wanted to ease his fingers under the stretchy material and wrap his hand around that silky inward curve….

Uh-uh. He grasped her waist lightly, and his fingers didn’t stray where they had no right to go. He breathed in the scent of her. It was as he remembered it, hinting of some wonderful exotic flower, causing an old memory to stir…

Jasmine, he thought. She smells like jasmine.

Years and years before, when he was six or maybe seven, his mother had dared to try and leave his father. She’d taken Beau with her, to her people in Arkansas. On the cyclone fence in his grandmother’s side yard, grew a lush green vine thick with tiny trumpet-shaped flowers, the sweet scent so heady he would ignore the bees that swarmed over it, just to get close and breathe in their perfume. “That’s jasmine, Beau, sweetie,” his mother had told him, bending close, that heart-shaped gold locket she always wore falling out on its chain, gleaming in the sunlight.

His father had come after them soon enough and brought them back. And Beau had never smelled jasmine again.

Until Starr.

Careful, he thought. Don’t hold her too close….

For a moment or two, they simply danced, her head tucked against his shoulder, her scent enticing him, the feel of her under his hands making all his senses spin.

Then she lifted her head and met his eyes. “So…how’ve you been?” It was a safe, general-type question and he found he was grateful to her for asking it. Talking was good. It kept him from getting too lost in the feel and the smell of her.

“Working,” he said. “Keeping my nose clean.”

She tipped her head to the side. The wisps of midnight hair stirred against her cheeks. “Happy?”

The question, for some reason, seemed unbearably personal—intimate, even. As if she asked for the secrets in his deepest heart. His gut tightened and he almost missed a step. But he recovered. He pulled her a bit closer and felt the tips of her full breasts brush his chest. His Wranglers got tighter. Down, damn it, he thought. “I’m doin’ okay.” It sounded easy and offhand. Relief curled through him that his voice had not betrayed him. He relaxed again. “You?”

She shrugged, one slim shoulder—the gleaming bare one—lifting, her slim waist shifting a fraction beneath his careful hand. “Yeah. I am.” She grinned, as if the thought pleased her. “I’m happy.”

“Heard you graduated from C.U. last month.”

“That’s right. B.A. in journalism. Dean’s honor list.” She chuckled. “And yes, I am bragging.”

“You got the right. It’s a big accomplishment.” A few years before, with Daniel’s encouragement, he’d managed to pass his high school equivalency. But he didn’t say that. Yeah, it was a major step for him. He hadn’t made it past the ninth grade and he’d never expected to get a chance to go back. But a high school diploma looked pretty puny alongside a college degree. “I think Zach mentioned you were heading to New York City in the fall….”

“That’s right. Grandmother Elaine pulled some strings.” Zach’s parents lived in New York. “CityWide Magazine,” she said. “It’s a weekly. I’ll start as an editorial assistant right after Labor Day.”

“Well,” he said, striving for words that were brilliant and meaningful and finding nothing but, “that sounds just great.”

“And for the summer, as usual, I’ll be at Jerry Esponda’s beck and call.” For as long as Beau could remember, Jerry had been publisher, editor-in-chief, reporter and printer of the local weekly The Medicine Creek Clarion. No doubt he appreciated Starr’s help every summer.

“Jerry’ll be real sorry to see you go.”

“Well,” she said pertly. “I’m not gone yet.”

“Soon enough, though.”

“Yeah,” she softly agreed. “Soon enough.” She tucked her head back into his shoulder and they danced the rest of the song without speaking.

As they swayed to the music, he thought about how much things had changed since the last time he’d held her in his arms. She greeted the world with an open, easy smile now. She had her college degree and he had no doubt she would make it in the big city. And he…

Well, he was as free as a man can ever get from the wrongs he’d done in the past. He’d paid his debt to society and lived straight with the law and his neighbors—and himself—for five years now.

The music ended. Their dance was over.

She lifted her head from his shoulder and he released her, his arms dropping to his sides. Better to let go quick. She would never be his to keep. “Beau,” she said in a musing tone, “you have the strangest look on your face….”

Nearby, couples broke apart, some of them leaving the floor, others waiting, milling around a little, till the next song began. Still others climbed the steps in pairs from down on the grass.

He said, “I was thinking that we’ve done okay, you and me….”

She looked at him, real serious, for a second or two, and then she gave him a slow, dazzling smile. “Yeah, and who woulda thought it, huh?”

He chuckled at that and tipped his hat to her. The band started up again, and damn, was he tempted to pull her close for one more dance. But another cowboy stepped in and Beau didn’t challenge him.

Starr whirled off in the other man’s arms. Beau left the dance floor. He stood watching for a little while and then he turned and headed for his pickup parked in the dirt lot on the other side of the trees.

About a half an hour later, he drove into the yard at the Hart Ranch. The lights were on in the kitchen and living room of the main house.

Beau checked the green-glowing dash clock. Not quite eleven. Not real late, but later than Daniel had said he planned to be up. Beau decided he’d better go on in and check on him before heading for the trailer he called home.

Daniel’s dog, Whirlyboy, came off the front porch with a low whine of greeting, his tail wagging hopefully back and forth. “Hey, boy. How’s it goin’?” Beau patted the hound’s smooth head and Whirlyboy bumped companionably against his leg as Beau climbed the wooden steps to Daniel’s front porch.

He paused at the door before he gave it a tap, thinking of Starr again, of her scent that reminded him of jasmine, of her musical laughter on the night air.

Whirlyboy bumped his leg again, eager for a chance to get beyond the door where his master waited.

“We’re goin’, we’re goin’.” Beau gave the dog another pat and set his mind to a more constructive subject: the work he had planned for tomorrow. If Daniel was still up, they could take a moment to confer a little. They wanted to move several head of cattle from one pasture, where they’d eaten the grass down, to another where the grass was still long and thick. And, as always, there were fences to check.

True, they didn’t need to do a whole lot of conferring on stuff that was already decided. But Beau liked sitting in Daniel’s kitchen over a cold drink or a hot cup of coffee, discussing the work ahead, or their plans for the herd. Daniel seemed to enjoy it, too.

Beau tapped on the door. When no answer came, he tapped again, Whirlyboy’s tail beating against his leg in anticipation.

Again, there was no answer, just the sound of the dog’s impatient panting, an owl hooting out by one of the sheds, the chirping of crickets in the grass—and he thought, from inside, the sound of low voices. Maybe the television in the front room?

Beau turned the knob and pushed open the door. “Daniel?” He stepped into the small entry hall. Whirlyboy slid in around him and headed straight for the front room to the left, disappearing through the open double doors. The lights were on in there and Beau could hear those televised voices droning away. “Daniel?”

No answer, just a sharp spurt of canned laughter. And Whirlyboy, whining in bursts of frustrated sound.

“Daniel?” Beau said a little louder than before.

“In here…” The voice was Daniel’s, but tight and low, the words kind of squeezed out around a groan. Beau moved into the doorway—and stopped dead at what he saw.

The worried hound sat whining in canine distress at Daniel’s feet, as the big man squirmed in his easy chair.

Daniel’s gray face ran sweat, his left hand pressed, clawlike, against his barrel chest. “Think…heart attack…”

No, screamed a frantic voice inside Beau’s head. Not Daniel—no! He’d seen his mother die, and his mean old daddy. One of his brothers was dead, too—Lyle got his in a prison-yard fight. It was enough, Beau thought.

Not Daniel. No way. I won’t let him go….

“Just hold on,” he told Daniel, his own voice surprising him, it was so level and calm. “I’ll get help.” Beau spun on his heel for the phone in the hall.

Chapter Two

From the Medicine Creek Clarion,

week of July 10 through July 16

Local Rancher Suffers Heart Attack

Daniel Hart, owner of the Hart Ranch, suffered a heart attack the evening of Friday, July 4. Mr. Hart had been feeling unwell during the day and was discovered by his ranch foreman, Beau Tisdale, in the midst of the attack.

After a swift trip via EMT helicopter to Sheridan, a skilled team of surgeons determined that open-heart surgery was required. “It was touch and go there for a while,” reported the foreman when asked for comment. “But he made it through and he’ll be okay.”

Mr. Hart will be recuperating at Memorial Hospital in Sheridan “for as long as they make him stay,” the foreman said. “He wants to get home the minute they’ll let him out of here.”

Prayers and good wishes are greatly appreciated.

“Beau’s moving into the front bedroom at the house,” said Tess. “So he’ll be there at night. And they’ve hired a day nurse to look after Daniel for the first week at home.” Tess stood at the counter rolling out pie dough.

Edna, at the stove, slid a heavy crock of beans onto the rack in the oven, pushed the rack in and shut the oven door. “I’m just not sure they should be sending him home.” She clucked her tongue, a thoroughly disapproving sound. “Hardly more than a week since that heart attack. And what was that operation he had? A triple bypass?”

“Quintuple,” Tess corrected.

“Well, see what I mean? When I had that coronary vasospasm seven years back, they kept me up in Sheridan for the same amount of time Daniel is staying there. And what I had wasn’t even a true heart attack, let alone the fact that in my case there was no surgery involved.”

From her place at the sink cleaning up after breakfast, Starr could see the tiny smile that tugged at Tess’s mouth. “Well, now, Edna. Every case is different. And I’d imagine they’ve made some big strides in medical science in the last seven years. I think we’ll just have to trust that the doctors know what they’re doing.”

“Humph,” said Edna and trotted over to the pantry door, vanishing inside.

“Rrrrooom, rrrrooomm.” Ethan appeared from the short hall that led to the stairs and the great room. He was flying his favorite plastic jet.

“Ethan,” said Tess, “Did you put those blocks in the bin like I told you?”

“Rrrrooom, rrooom, rooommmm…” Ethan kept his jet airborne.

“Ethan John,” said his mother, pausing in the process of sprinkling flour on a half-flattened ball of dough. “Stop flying that plane and answer me.”

Ethan let his hands drop to his sides, plane and all, and made a big show of slumping his four-and-a-half-year-old shoulders. “Aw, Mommmm…” Tess pointed her rolling pin at him and gave him a narrow-eyed scowl. With a put-upon groan and a tragic expression, Ethan stomped back out the way he’d come.

Edna emerged from the pantry. She held two full Mason jars, one in each hand. “How about blackberry—and this nice apple butter I put up last fall?”

“Perfect,” said Tess.

Edna carried the jars to the table and set them down. “So. We’ll take the three pies and the beans and the jam over there. What else? We have some of last year’s tomatoes….”

As the two older women launched into a discussion of what else should go to the Hart place to welcome Mr. Hart home, Starr wiped up the sink and hung the breakfast pans on their hooks. She poured herself another cup of coffee at about the same time Tess and Edna decided that last year’s tomatoes would do just fine. And a couple of loaves of fresh bread, too. Edna would start on the bread right away.