Czytaj książkę: «A Child Under His Tree»

For sweet baby David Rae—born the same day I began this story—his parents and his “Glama,” who is my dearest and oldest friend.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Six years ago

“You’re pregnant?”

Startled, Kelly hid her hand down by her side, but it was too late. Her mother had already seen the distinctive plastic stick and snatched it out of her hand.

This is what Kelly got for not waiting until she was back at work on Monday to take the test. But she’d been too anxious. Too worried to wait through the weekend, to wait another two days when she already knew.

After a glance at the stick, where a huge blue plus sign broadcast the results, her mother pitched the test into the faded pink trash can that had been in Kelly’s room since she’d been ten. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

She wished she’d waited until Monday, that’s what she had to say.

She wisely kept the sarcastic thought to herself. Kelly was twenty-three. Old enough to deal with the consequences of her actions, but not old enough to deal with her mother’s reaction.

Evidently unsatisfied with Kelly’s silence, her mom grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. “Well? At the very least, tell me it’s the Buchanan boy’s baby.”

Kelly looked away from her mother’s face. “Why? Caleb and I broke up two years ago.” She was only buying time, though. Because she knew why.

Her mother made a disgusted sound and let her go. “Because you’ll be set for life, obviously!” She propped her hands on her skinny hips. “He’ll marry you. Even when it doesn’t work out, you’ll be taken care of. Those people take care of their own. Always have. Always will.”

Those people.

Kelly felt nauseated. More from her mother’s words than from the baby inside her that hadn’t even existed five weeks ago. By those people, her mother meant anyone connected to the wealthy Clay family. The family who possessed everything that Georgette and Kelly Rasmussen did not.

Money. Plentiful land. Education. Class.

Georgette envied everything they possessed, even as she seemed to hate them for it.

“I don’t want to marry Caleb.”

Her mother made another disgusted sound. “Since when?”

Since he dumped me more than two years ago? Again, Kelly kept that answer to herself. She was over Caleb Buchanan. Had been for a long while now. Sleeping with him thirty-four days ago had been her way of proving it. Convoluted thinking, perhaps, but it was true, nevertheless. Which only seemed to confirm that the Rasmussen nut didn’t fall far from the tree.

“You’ll marry that boy,” her mother said into the silence. She pointed her finger at Kelly’s face. “You’re not going to get stuck raising a baby on your own the way I was. You’ll marry him. He’ll provide for you both.” Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled tightly. “They’ll provide for all of us.”

“You hated when I was dating him when we were teenagers! Now you’re all for me marrying him?” Kelly wanted to throw herself on the twin bed that also hadn’t changed since she was ten and pull the pillows over her head.

“I knew you’d mess it up. Same as I did when I was that age.” Again the disgusted sound from her mother, accompanied by a hand swiping dismissively through the air. “And you did. He went off and found someone else.”

Someone better. That’s what her mom had said at the time.

Kelly pushed away the hurtful memory and put the width of the twin bed between them. “Exactly.” She didn’t throw herself on the bed. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was an adult. With a baby inside her. “He found someone else. A brilliant premed student just like him.” She left out the part that Caleb had also broken up with that woman. “Why on earth would you think this baby is his, anyway?”

“He was home here in Weaver for Christmas. If not his, then whose? God knows you’re not much of a catch. Only boy who ever came sniffing around for you was that Buchanan kid.”

“Ever think that’s because I didn’t want boys coming around here to meet you?” She couldn’t believe the words came out, even if they were true.

“All right, then,” Georgette challenged. “Whose baby is it?”

Kelly’s eyes stung. She wasn’t a liar by nature.

But she lied. She lied because she wasn’t going to get foisted on Caleb Buchanan just because he and his people took care of their own. She wasn’t going to end up a wife out of his sense of responsibility. Not when she’d been raised by a mother who’d only acted out of responsibility instead of love.

Caleb might have wanted her once, but he’d cast her aside.

Until one night thirty-four days ago when he’d wanted her enough to get naked in the front seat of her pickup truck, just like they’d done back when they were in high school. Back before he’d left her and gone off to college. Back before he’d chosen another woman.

“It was just a guy, Mama. Nobody you know at all.”

The determined brightness in her mother’s eyes dimmed, and she got the same disappointed, dissatisfied, discontented look she’d had all of Kelly’s life. She sank down on the foot of the twin bed as if she couldn’t stand the weight of her own body. “The only chance you had of making something of yourself—snagging a fancy, educated surgeon like that Buchanan—and you take up with some guy just passing through town?”

Her mother was editorializing. Adding details that Kelly had not. Embellishing the story with her own experiences. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. “Caleb has years to go before he’ll be a surgeon! And I don’t need to make someone like him marry me in order to make something of myself, Mama. I’ve got a good job working with Doc Cobb!”

“Sure, answering his phones and putting out the trash. You think that old coot is gonna want his receptionist parading around with a pregnant belly and no ring on her finger? Times may have changed since you were born, but people in this town still expect mamas to be with the daddies. All you’re gonna earn is a lot of gossip and speculation. You ought to have been smarter than to ruin your life the same way I did!”

Kelly stared at her mother and vowed right then and there that she’d make sure her child never heard such hateful words. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Georgette just snorted, not seeming to notice Kelly pulling out her ancient suitcase from the closet until it lay open on the bed. “What fool thing are you doing now?”

“Packing.” Kelly kept moving, pulling open her top drawer and dumping the contents into the suitcase, quickly followed by the second drawer, and the third and last. She had to push down hard on the suitcase when she closed it to get the lock latched, but she managed.

Georgette was watching her with an annoyed look. “Gonna go chase after the guy, I suppose. Fat lot of good that’ll do.”

Kelly didn’t have a second suitcase. But she had an oversize beach bag that managed to hold several pairs of shoes and her favorite pair of boots. “Why? Is that what you did?” She propped the bulging canvas bag against the faded pink suitcase and went back to the closet again. “Fruitlessly chase after my father?” She snatched two handfuls of hanging clothes from the single wooden bar in her closet. “Is that why you’ve always hated me?”

Her mother answered with a huff. “I’ve always said you had a crazy imagination.”

“Yes.” Kelly draped the clothes over her arm. She was leaving behind stuff, but she was beyond caring. “It’s my imagination that I can count on one hand the times you’ve ever shown a lick of caring for me.”

Georgette’s frown deepened. She’d never welcomed other people’s opinions, and Kelly’s was no different. “Kept a roof over your ungrateful head, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did, Mama.” She awkwardly looped the beach bag strap over her shoulder and wrapped her fingers around the suitcase handle, dragging it off the mattress. It bumped hard against her knee. “You did your duty, that’s for sure.” Tears glazed her eyes. “But I’m not going to raise my baby like that.” She shuffled toward the door with her heavy load precariously balanced.

Georgette followed, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Go ahead and think you’re not just like your mama. Was a time I thought I wasn’t just like my mama, too. But here you are. Knocked up by some walk-away joe. Just who do you think is going to take you in when they learn you got yourself pregnant?”

Kelly blinked hard and kept going, carefully navigating the creaking steps that she’d pounded up and down all of her life. “I can take care of myself.” She wasn’t going to allow herself to think otherwise. If she did, she’d want to curl up and disappear. And she wouldn’t do that now, not when she had a fledgling life inside her.

Behind her, Georgette gave that I-told-you-so huff of hers. “Guess you proved that, all right.” She followed Kelly right out to the front porch of the small two-story house Georgette had inherited from her mother.

There was a deep ache inside Kelly’s chest. She blamed it on the weight of carrying all of her belongings in one single trip and quickened her pace down the porch steps. The suitcase banged against her leg, and a few hangers slid out of her grasp. “I guess that’s my problem, isn’t it?”

She stepped over the dresses lying in the dirt, aiming blindly for the pickup truck that had been old even when she’d bought it five years earlier with the money she’d earned working at the grocery store. She set down the suitcase long enough to open the door and shove her hangers and beach bag across the threadbare bench seat.

“When you learn you can’t handle your problem, don’t come crawling back to me,” Georgette yelled.

“Don’t worry, Mama.” Her voice was choked. She hefted the suitcase into the truck bed. It landed with a terrible bang, but at least the latches stayed closed. “I won’t be back.”

Georgette wasn’t listening, though. “You’d be better off at least trying to pass off that kid as Buchanan’s baby! Least you’d get some money outta your mistake!”

Kelly’s chest ached even more.

She got behind the wheel, turned the key with a shaking hand until the engine cranked and drove away. When she dared a glance in the rearview mirror, all she saw was the plume of dust kicked up from her tires.

She swiped a hand over her wet cheek. “I won’t be back,” she said through her teeth.

She didn’t know where she was going.

She just knew that anywhere was better than her mother’s house.

But where could she go? She’d been working at Doc Cobb’s for a year now since leaving the grocery store and had saved up some money, but with a baby on the way, she would need to conserve every penny she could.

She braked when she reached the highway and stared down the empty road toward Weaver.

She could find a place to live in town. Keep working for Doc Cobb. He was a pediatrician. Nobody liked babies and children more than her genial boss. But whether Kelly wanted to admit it or not, her mother was right about one thing. Gossip was going to dog her every footstep when it became obvious that she was pregnant and there was no daddy standing by her side. More important than that, though, was the baby. And that same gossip was going to follow her child the same way it had always followed her.

She was not going to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

And she damn sure was not going to beg Caleb Buchanan for one single thing.

She exhaled, wiped her cheeks again, looked down the empty highway one more time and hit the gas.

Chapter One

“Dr. C shouldn’t be too long.” The nurse—a young blonde Kelly didn’t know—smiled as she ushered them into an empty examining room. She winked at Tyler. “Be thinking about what color cast you want this time.” She slid the medical chart she’d started for them into the metal sleeve on the door that she closed as she left them alone.

The door had barely latched before Kelly’s son gave her a plaintive look. “How come I gotta get another cast?”

She dumped her purse and their jackets on the chair wedged in one corner of the room. “Because your wrist still hasn’t healed all the way and you cracked the cast you already have.”

“But—”

“Be glad that you didn’t hurt yourself even more.” She’d seen the X-rays herself on the computer screen just a few minutes ago. Not only had Doc Cobb hired several new faces since Kelly’d last been there, but he’d gotten himself some state-of-the-art equipment, as well. She patted the top of the examining room table. The thin paper covering it crinkled. “Want me to lift you up here, or—”

Tyler didn’t wait for her to finish before he scrambled up onto the high table by himself. Then he stuck out his tongue and stared at the cast circling his right forearm. “Stupid cast,” he grumbled.

She brushed her fingers through his dark hair, pushing the thick strands away from his forehead. He needed a haircut, but there just hadn’t been time enough to fit one in before they’d left Idaho Falls. Not between arranging her vacation days, talking to his kindergarten teacher about his absence and packing up what she thought he’d need during the two weeks she’d allotted to get things settled. She had a day before the funeral, though. She’d get him to the barber before then. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before climbing a tree,” she said calmly.

“Had to climb it,” he argued. “Gunnar did.”

“And you have to do everything that Gunnar does?” She didn’t really expect an answer. Her five-year-old son and his best friend, Gunnar Nielsen, were like two peas in a pod. What one did, the other had to do, as well. Fortunately for Gunnar, he had climbed down the tree, whereas her daredevil son had decided to jump.

Thus, the broken wrist.

“So think twice next time about the way you get out of the tree,” she added.

Tyler was swinging one leg back and forth, looking from the closed door of the small examining room to the sink and counter on the opposite side. “What’s in all those drawers?”

“Bandages for little boys who don’t listen to their mothers when they should.” She tapped her finger pointedly against the crack in his cast then pulled a fresh coloring book out of her oversize purse. If she knew Doc Cobb—and she did, even though it had been nearly six years since she’d last seen him—it would be a good while yet before he made his way to Tyler. Given the nature of the doctor’s pediatric practice, the later in the afternoon the appointments were, the farther behind he was likely to be. “Want to color?”

Tyler scrunched his face and swung his leg a few more times before nodding. She set the thin coloring book on the table beside him and rummaged in her purse again until she found the plastic baggie full of the washable markers he preferred over crayons. “Which color first?”

“Red.”

She extracted the red marker and handed it to him. She knew from experience that if she gave him the entire pen collection, he’d have them scattered everywhere within seconds and she wasn’t particularly in the mood to scramble around the floor in her dress and high heels picking them up. She would have changed out of the outfit she’d worn to the lawyer’s office if there had been time before Tyler’s appointment. But they’d worked him into the schedule as a favor when they could have just as easily referred him to the hospital to have his cast repaired.

“Was I born yet?”

“Were you born yet when?”

“When you used to work here.” He stretched out on his stomach and attacked the robot on the page with his red pen.

“You were born in Idaho, remember?”

He giggled. “I don’t remember being born.”

“Smarty-pants.” She pushed the jackets over the back of the chair and sat. “I worked for Dr. Cobb before I moved to Idaho. Before you were born. Before I became a nurse.”

“What was Grandma Gette?”

“Grandma Georgette had the farm,” she reminded him calmly. Small as it had been. Her mother had grown vegetables and raised chickens, though the lawyer had told Kelly the chickens had gone by the wayside a few years earlier. Which explained the broken-down state of the coops now. “The bedroom you slept in last night was my bedroom when I was your age.” She hadn’t been able to make herself use her mother’s room. Instead, she’d slept on the couch. It was the same couch from her childhood, with the same lumps.

“But then we went to Idaho.”

“Yes.” It had been one of the best decisions she’d ever made in her life. She held up the baggie. “Want another color yet?”

He stuck the tip of his tongue in the corner of his mouth, considering. “Green.”

They exchanged the markers. “Your robot is going to look like a Christmas robot.”

He grinned, clearly liking that idea. “Santa robot.” He held up his cracked cast. It, too, had started out a bright red. But in the weeks since he’d gotten it, the color and the various drawings and signatures on it had all faded considerably. “Santa’s gonna know where I am, right?”

“Santa doesn’t come until Christmas. That’s almost two months away. We’ll be home long before then.”

“Not before Halloween, though.”

She shook her head. Halloween was less than a week away. “I don’t think so, buddy. I’m sorry.”

“Gunnar’s gonna trick-or-treat without me.”

“I know.” She rubbed Tyler’s back. “I’ll figure out something for us to do on Halloween.” It wouldn’t be answering the door to trick-or-treaters, that was certain. Even back when she’d been a kid, children didn’t voluntarily knock on Georgette Rasmussen’s door. Not unless they were on a dare or something.

“I wish we didn’t have to come here.”

“I know.” She propped her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. “I wish that, too. We’ll only be here in Weaver for a little while, though.”

It felt like months since she’d had a moment to draw breath, when it had really only been three days since she’d gotten the call about her mother. One day to absorb the news that the woman she hadn’t spoken to in six long years had died of a sudden heart attack. One day to pack up and drive nine hours from Idaho Falls to Weaver, Wyoming. One day to meet Tom Hook, the attorney who’d contacted her in the first place.

That’s the way she meant to continue. Dealing with things one day after another until she and Tyler could go back home where they belonged in Idaho. Then she could examine her feelings about losing the mother who’d never wanted to be her mother in the first place.

She pushed away the thought and started to cross her legs, but the doorknob suddenly rattled and she heard muffled voices on the other side of the door. She sat up straighter and brushed Tyler’s hair back from his eyes again. “You’ll like Doc Cobb. He’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever known.”

“Is that why my middle name is Cobb?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Considering everything her onetime boss had done for her, she should have stayed in better contact with him. She held up the baggie. “Put your marker away for now.”

Tyler rolled onto his side and sat up but missed the bag when he dropped the marker. It rolled under the table.

“Good aim, buddy,” she said wryly and crouched down to reach blindly beneath the metal base.

She heard the door open behind her just as her fingertips found what she was looking for. “Sorry for the wait,” she heard as she quickly grabbed the marker.

She was already smiling as she straightened and turned. “Doc—” The word caught in her throat, and all she could do was stare while everything inside her went hot.

Then cold.

Not because good old Doc Cobb, with his balding head, wildly wiry gray eyebrows and Santa-size belly was standing there.

But because he wasn’t.

Instead, the man facing her was six-plus feet of broad shoulders and very lean, un-Santa-like man. Sharply hewn jaw. Unsmiling mouth. Dark, uncommonly watchful eyes. Even darker hair brushed carelessly back from his face.

Seeing Caleb Buchanan was like being punched in the solar plexus.

She hadn’t seen him face-to-face in nearly six years. But there was no mistaking him now.

And no mistaking the fact that—while she was blindsided at the sight of him here in Weaver, when he should have been a surgical resident somewhere else by now—he didn’t seem anywhere near as surprised by the sight of her.

Well, duh, Kelly. Her name was written plainly in Tyler’s medical chart. How many Kelly Rasmussens could there be, particularly in the small town of Weaver?

The young blonde nurse stepped between them as she rolled the cast saw unit into the room.

Panic suddenly slid through Kelly’s veins and she snatched up their coats from the chair.

“You can stay,” the nurse assured, looking as cheerful as ever. “The machine looks more intimidating than it really is.”

Kelly’s mouth opened. But the assurance that she was perfectly comfortable with the saw stuck in her throat. She didn’t dare look at Caleb. And Tyler was starting to look alarmed.

How could she explain to any of them her urgent need to flee?

Caleb took a step past her, approaching the exam table. “I’m Dr. C, Tyler. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

The nurse patted Kelly’s arm comfortingly as she moved the saw next to Caleb. “He’s going to cut off your cast and put the new one on,” she chirped. “Did you decide what color you want?”

“Red.”

“Again?”

“I like red.”

One part of Kelly’s brain observed the scene. The other part was imagining herself grabbing Tyler and running for the hills.

“I was expecting Dr. Cobb,” she blurted.

The nurse blinked, clearly surprised. Kelly felt an insane urge to laugh hysterically. The practice was still clearly Cobb Pediatrics. The sign on the outside of the building said so. When Kelly had called for an appointment, that was the greeting she’d received.

“He’s on sabbatical,” Caleb said. “Put your coats down, Kelly. It’s been a long time, but you’re here and your son’s cast needs to be replaced.”

Your son.

She let out a careful breath, finally daring to glance his way as he set the medical chart on the counter next to the sink before flipping on the water to wash his hands. He was wearing an unfastened white lab coat over blue jeans and an untucked black shirt. “How’d you break your cast, Tyler?”

“Sliding down the banister at my mother’s house,” Kelly answered before Tyler could say a word. She knew it was silly not to want her son talking to Caleb, but she couldn’t help it. And she felt sure that Caleb would have already read the information the nurse had recorded in Tyler’s chart. “I would have taken him to the hospital if I’d known the doctor was away,” she said to the nurse.

“No need for that.” Just as Kelly had spoken to the nurse, Caleb aimed his comment at Tyler. “Banisters are pretty cool. How’d you break your arm in the first place?”

“Jumping out of a tree,” Kelly answered again. Even though it took her closer to Caleb than she wanted to be, she edged closer to Tyler. Every day that she looked at her boy, she could see his father in him. How could Caleb miss the similarities that were so obvious to her? “Sabbatical where?”

“Florida,” the nurse provided. “Six more months yet. He’ll miss all of Weaver’s lovely winter.” She widened her eyes comically. “Poor guy.” She draped a blue pad over Tyler’s lap. “You’re lucky today,” she told him. “Dr. C is going to take your cast off himself. He doesn’t do that for just everyone.”

Kelly’s nerves tightened even more. But she could see Tyler’s alarm growing as he stared at the saw. She dumped the coats on the chair again and rubbed her hand down his back. No matter what she felt inside, her son’s welfare was first and foremost. “It’s a special kind of saw, buddy. Only for cutting through casts. It won’t hurt a lick.”

His eyes were the size of saucers. “How do you know?”

“I had a broken wrist once, too. Remember I told you that?”

“She did,” Caleb concurred. In a motion steeped in familiarity, he reached out his long arm and snagged two gloves from a box next to the sink. “She was fourteen years old.” As he worked his fingers into the blue gloves, she hated the fact that she noticed he wore no wedding ring. Not that the absence of one proved anything.

Not that she cared, either way.

The lie was so monumental she felt herself flushing.

“Flew right over the handlebars of her bicycle,” he was saying. “Saw the whole thing. I’m sure your mom remembers that day very well, too.” His eyes snagged hers for the briefest of moments, and she looked away.

The nurse handed him the saw. “This’ll be loud, Tyler, but your mom’s right. It won’t hurt,” Caleb said. He turned it on and the loud whine filled the room.

Kelly didn’t want to, but she moved out of the way so he had more room to maneuver. Only then did she realize she was still clutching the plastic marker. She it inside her purse then moved back to the opposite corner near the door.

The noise from the saw was short-lived. After only a few minutes, Caleb turned it off and handed it back to the nurse. Then he used the long-handled spreader to separate the gap he’d just cut in the fiberglass cast. “Doing okay there, Tyler?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Tyler was obviously over his alarm and watched as Caleb worked. “You knew my mom before I was born?”

The knot in Kelly’s throat doubled in size.

“Sure did.” He took up a pair of scissors and began snipping through the padding next to Tyler’s skin.

“That was a long time ago, huh.”

“Sure was.” Caleb flicked another glance her way. What he was thinking was anybody’s guess. As a young man, she’d been able to read every thought he had.

Now his expression was completely unreadable.

Could he recognize his own eyes looking up at him from Tyler’s face and not show any reaction at all?

Then he focused on Tyler again as he pulled open the fiberglass cast and slid it gently away from Tyler’s forearm. “Still doing okay, buddy?”

“His name is Tyler,” Kelly said tightly. She was the one who called her son “buddy.”

“Tyler Cobb Rasmussen,” Tyler piped proudly. “That’s my whole name.”

“Cobb!” The nurse exclaimed. “What a coincidence.”

Hardly that. But Kelly had no desire to explain anything to the nurse. As it was, she wondered just how close Caleb and Doc Cobb had gotten over the years. Even though the elder physician had been the one to refer Kelly to a professional associate of his in Idaho Falls, she had never told him why she’d been so anxious to leave Weaver. Aside from her mother, Kelly had never told anyone in Weaver that she’d been pregnant when she’d left.