A Baby on the Ranch

Chapter Two

Kasey thought she was seeing things when Eli brought his vehicle to the front of the hospital and she caught a glimpse of what was in the backseat. She could feel the corners of her eyes stinging.

Leave it to Eli.

“You bought him an infant seat.” Her voice hitched and she pressed her lips together, afraid that a sob might suddenly break free and betray just how fragile her emotions were right now.

Eli nodded as he got out of the Jeep and hurried around the hood of his vehicle to her side. The nurse who had brought the wheelchair had pushed Kasey and the baby right up to the curb and stood behind them, waiting for Kasey and her son to get into the vehicle.

Was Kasey upset, or were those happy tears shimmering in her eyes? Eli couldn’t tell. Even though he’d grown up with Alma, he’d come to the conclusion that all women should come with some kind of a manual or at least a road map to give a guy a clue so he could properly navigate a course.

“I got the last one at the Emporium,” he told her. “I know that Rick would cut me some slack if I took the baby home without a car seat, given the circumstances,” he said, referring to the sheriff. “It’s not like there’s a whole lot of traffic around here. But I thought you’d feel safer if Wayne was strapped into his own infant seat when he’s traveling.”

“I do,” she said with feeling, her voice just barely above a whisper as she struggled to keep the tears back. What might have seemed like a small act of kindness to a casual observer threatened to completely undo her. “Thank you.”

Never comfortable with being on the receiving end of gratitude, Eli merely shrugged away her thanks.

He looked down at the sleeping infant in her arms. It almost seemed a shame to disturb him, he seemed so peaceful. But they did have to get going.

While he was fairly adept at holding an infant, strapping one into an infant seat was something else. Eli looked from Wayne to the infant seat in the rear of the Jeep and then slanted a glance toward the nurse. He didn’t like admitting to being helpless, but there was a time to put pride aside and own up to a situation.

“Um…” Eli dragged the single sound out, as if, if he continued debating long enough, a solution would occur to him.

The nurse, however, was in a hurry.

“If you open the door—” the young woman pointed to the side closest to the infant seat “—I’ll strap your little guy into his seat for you,” she offered.

Relieved, Eli immediately swung the rear door open for the nurse. “I’d really appreciate that. Thanks,” he told her heartily.

“Nothing to it.” With a nod in his direction, the nurse turned her attention to the baby in her patient’s arms. “If you’re lucky,” she said to Kasey as she eased the infant from her arms, “he’ll just sleep right through this.”

Cooing softly to the baby that Kasey had just released, the nurse leaned into the Jeep’s backseat and very deftly strapped Wayne Eli Stonestreet in for his very first car ride. Eli moved closer, watching her every move intently and memorizing them.

“You’re all set,” the young woman announced, stepping back onto the curb and behind the wheelchair. She took hold of the two handlebars in the back. “Time to get you into your seat, too,” she told Kasey.

Eli offered Kasey his hand as she began to stand. Feeling slightly wobbly on her feet, Kasey flushed. “I didn’t think I was going to feel this weak,” she protested, annoyed. “After all, it’s been three days. I should be stronger by now.”

“You will be,” Eli assured her. Getting her into the front passenger seat, he paused to thank the nurse again. The latter, holding on to the back of the wheelchair, was all set to leave. Eli flashed her a grateful smile. “Thanks for your help with the baby. I figure it’s going to take me a while before I get good at all this.”

The nurse released the brakes on either side of the wheelchair. “It won’t take as long as you might think,” she told him. “It’ll all become second nature to you in a blink of an eye. Before you know it, you’ll be doing all that and more in your sleep.” She smiled as she nodded toward the back of the Jeep. “These little guys have a habit of bringing out the very best in their parents.”

He was about to correct the woman, telling her that he wasn’t Wayne’s father, but the nurse had already turned on her heel and was quickly propelling the wheelchair in front of her, intent on going back and returning the wheelchair to its proper place. Calling after her wasn’t worth the effort.

And besides, he had to admit that, deep down, he really liked the idea of being mistaken for Wayne’s father, liked the way someone thinking that he and Kasey were actually a family made him feel.

You’re too old to be playing make-believe like this, he upbraided himself. Still, the thought of their being an actual family lingered a while longer.

As did his smile.

With his passengers both in the Jeep and safely secured, Eli hurried around the front of his vehicle and slid in behind the steering wheel. A minute later the engine revved and he was pulling away from the curb, beginning the fifty-mile trip to Forever. More specifically, to the small ranch that was just on the outskirts of that town.

His ranch, he thought, savoring the burst of pride he felt each time he thought of the place. He was full of all sorts of big plans for it. Plans that were within his control to implement.

Unlike other things.

Because he didn’t want to disturb the baby, Eli had left the radio off. Consequently, they drove in silence for a while. There was a time that Kasey had been exceedingly talkative and exuberant, but right now she was quiet. Almost eerily so. He wondered if it was best just to leave her to her thoughts, or should he get her talking, just in case the thoughts she was having centered around Hollis and her present chaotic state of affairs.

If it was the latter, he decided that he needed to raise up her spirits a little, although what method to use eluded him at the moment.

It hadn’t always been this way. There was a time when he’d known just what to do, what to say to make her laugh and forget about whatever it was that was bothering her. Back then, it usually had something to do with her verbally abusive father, who only grew more so when he drank.

Eli was about to say something about the baby—he figured that it was best to break the ice with a nice, safe topic—when Kasey suddenly spoke up.

It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear.

“I can’t let you do this,” she told him abruptly, feeling woven about each word.

“Do what?” he asked. The blanket statement was rather vague, although, in his gut, he had a feeling he knew what she was referring to. Still, he decided to play dumb as he stalled. “Drive you?” he guessed.

“No, have me stay at your ranch with the baby.” She turned in her seat to face him. “I can’t put you out like that.”

“Put me out?” he repeated with a dismissive laugh. “You’re not putting me out, Kasey, you’re doing me a favor.”

She looked at him, unconvinced and just a little confused. “How is my staying at your place with a crying newborn doing you a favor?”

“Well, you might remember that I grew up with four brothers and a sister,” he began, stating a fact tongue-in-cheek since he knew damn well that she knew. Growing up, she’d all but adopted his family, preferring them to her own. “That made for pretty much a full house, and there was always noise. An awful lot of noise,” he emphasized. “When I got a chance to get my own place, I figured that all that peace and quiet would be like finally reaching heaven.”

He paused for a second, looking for the right words, then decided just to trust his instincts. Kasey would understand. “Well, it wasn’t. After living with all that noise going on all the time, the quiet got on my nerves. I found that I kind of missed all that noise. Missed the sound of someone else living in the place besides me,” he emphasized. “Having you and Wayne staying with me will help fill up the quiet. So you see,” he concluded, “you’re really doing me a favor.

“Besides,” he continued. “What kind of a friend would I be, turning my back on you at a time like this when you really need someone?”

“A friend with a life of his own,” she answered matter-of-factly.

“You’re right,” he replied with a nod of his head. “It is my life. And that means I get to choose who I want to have in it.” He looked into his rearview mirror, angling it so that he could catch a glimpse of the sleeping infant in the backseat. “And I choose Wayne. Since he’s too little to come to stay with me by himself, I guess that means that I have to choose you, too, to carry him around until he can walk on his own power,” he concluded with a straight face.

Repositioning the mirror back to its original position, he glanced toward Kasey. She hadn’t said anything in response. And then he saw why. Was he to blame for that? “Hey, are you crying?”

Caught, she had no choice but to nod. Avoiding his eyes, she said evasively, “My hormones are all over the map right now. The doctor who delivered Wayne said it’s because I gave birth, but it’s supposed to pass eventually.”

She was lying about the cause behind the tears and he knew it. He could always tell when she was evading the truth. But for the time being, he said nothing, allowing her to have her excuse so that she could have something to hide behind. It was enough that he knew the tears she was crying were tears of relief.

Shifting and taking one hand off the steering wheel, he reached into his side pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Switching hands on the steering wheel, he silently held out the handkerchief to Kasey.

Sniffing, she took it and wiped away the telltale damp streaks from her cheeks. Eli’s offer of a place to stay had touched her. It meant a great deal. Especially in light of the fact that the man she’d loved, the man she’d placed all her faith and trust in, not to mention given access to the meager collection of jewelry her late mother had left her, had thought nothing of just taking off. Abandoning her at a point in time when she very possibly needed him the most.

And, on top of that, he’d left her and their newborn son virtually homeless.

If Eli wasn’t here…

But he was. And she knew he was someone she could always count on.

“I’ll pay you back for this,” she vowed to Eli. “I’m not sure just how right now, but once I’m a little stronger and back on my feet, I’ll get a job and—”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, cutting her off. “And if you want to pay me back, you can do it by getting healthy and taking care of that boy of yours. Besides,” he pointed out, “I’m not doing anything that extraordinary. If the tables were turned and I had no home to go to, you’d help me.” It wasn’t a question.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he continued, “that’s what friends are for. To be there for each other, not just when the going is good, but when it’s bad. Especially when it’s bad,” he emphasized. “I’ll always be here for you, Kasey.” It was a promise he meant from the bottom of his heart. “So do us both a favor and save your breath. You’re staying at my place for as long as you want to. End of discussion,” he informed her with finality.

She smiled then, focusing on his friendship rather than on Hollis’s betrayal.

“I had no idea you could be this stubborn,” she told him with a glimmer of an amused smile. “Learn something every day, I guess.”

He caught the glimmer of humor. She was coming around, Eli thought, more than a little pleased. With any luck, Hollis taking off like some selfish bat out of hell wouldn’t scar her. But then, above all else, he’d always figured that, first and foremost, Kasey was a survivor.

“There’s probably a lot about me that you don’t know,” he told her as he continued to drive along the open, desolate road that was between Pine Ridge and Forever.

“A lot?” Kasey repeated, then laughed softly as she turned the notion over in her mind. After all, they’d known each other in what felt like close to forever. “I really doubt that.”

He loved the sound of her laughter. Loved, he freely admitted, if only to himself, everything about Kasey—except for her husband. But then, he didn’t have to love Hollis. Only she did.

It was because he’d accidentally found out that she loved Hollis that he’d kept his feelings for her to himself even though he’d finally worked up the nerve to tell her exactly how he felt about her.

But that was back in high school. Back when Hollis, the school’s football hero, had attracted a ring of girls around him, all completely enamored with his charm, each and every one of them ready to do whatever it took to have him notice them.

Hollis, being Hollis, took all the adulation in stride as being his due. He took his share of worshipful girls to bed, too.

Even so, he always had his eye on Kasey because, unlike the others, while very friendly, she didn’t fawn all over him. So, naturally, she was the one he’d had to have. The one he’d wanted to conquer. She’d surprised him by holding out for commitment and a ring. And he’d surprised himself by letting her.

One night, not long after graduation, drunk on far more than just her proximity, Hollis had given her both a commitment and a ring, as well as a whirlwind wedding ceremony in a run-down, out-of-the-way chapel that specialized in them, with no questions asked other than if the hundred-dollar bill—paid up-front—was real.

And just like that, Eli recalled, the bottom had dropped out of his world. Not that he felt he had a prayer of winning her heart while Hollis was busy sniffing around her. But Eli had honestly thought that if he bided his time and waited Hollis out, he’d be there when Kasey needed someone.

And he was.

It had taken eight years, far longer than he’d thought Hollis would actually last in the role of husband. More than anything, Eli wanted to be there for her. He’d take her gratitude—if that was all she had to offer—in place of her love.

At least it was something, and besides, he knew that unless he was dead, there was no way he wouldn’t be there for Kasey.

He heard her sigh. This was all weighing heavily on her, not that he could blame her. In her place, he’d feel the same way.

“I want you to know that I really appreciate this and that I promise Wayne and I won’t put you out for long.”

“Oh, good,” he quipped drily, “because I’ll need the room back by the end of the week.”

His words stopped her dead. Eli spared her a look, one that was a little long in length since he was fairly confident that there was nothing to accidentally hit on this stretch of lonely highway.

“I’m only going to say this one more time, Kasey. You’re not putting me out. I want to do this. I’m your friend and I always have been and this is what friends do, they have each other’s backs. Now, unless you really want to make me strangle you, please stop apologizing, please stop telling me that you’re going to leave as soon as possible. And please stop telling me that you feel you’re putting me out. Because you’re not. It makes me feel good to help you.

“Now, I don’t want to hear anything more about this. My home is your home for as long as you need a place to stay—and maybe for a little bit longer than that.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Understood?”

“Understood,” she murmured. Then, a bit more loudly and with feeling, she promised, “But I will make it up to you.”

“Good, I’m looking forward to it,” he told her crisply. “Now, moving on,” he said deliberately. “You have a choice of bedrooms. There are two to choose from, pretty much the same size,” he told her, then stopped when a thought occurred to him. “Maybe I should let you have the master bedroom. We can put the crib in that room, so you can have Wayne right there—unless you’d rather have him stay in his own room, at which point you can take one of the bedrooms and place him in the other.”

Kasey felt as if she was still stuck in first gear, her brain fixated on something he’d said to start with. “The crib?”

Why did she look so surprised? he wondered. “Well, Wayne’s got to sleep in something, and I thought a crib was better than that portable whatchamacallit that you had at your place. Or a dresser drawer,” he added, recalling stories his father told him about his being so small to begin with, they had tucked him into the bottom drawer of a dresser, lined with blankets and converted into a minicrib. He’d slept there for a month.

Kasey pounced on something he’d only mentioned in passing. “You were there?” she asked eagerly. “At our ranch?” The our in this case referred to her and Hollis. When he nodded, her mind took off, fully armed to the teeth. “So that means that I can still go over there and get—”

He shook his head. The man who had won the ranch from Hollis had made it very clear that he considered everything on the premises his. Still, if she had something of sentimental value that she wanted retrieved, he would be there in less than a heartbeat to get it for her. The new owner would just have to understand—or be made to understand.

“The guy who won the ranch from Hollis is living there,” he told her. “I had to talk him into letting me come in and get some of your things. Actually—” never one to take any undue credit, he felt he needed to tell her “—having Rick and Alma with me kind of gave me the leverage I needed to convince the guy to release your things so I could bring them to you.”

“Rick and Alma,” she repeated as that piece of information sank in with less than stellar results. “So they know? About Hollis leaving me?” she asked in a small, troubled voice.

He knew that she would have rather kept the fact that Hollis had walked out on her a secret, but secrets had a way of spreading in a small town the size of Forever. And besides, the sympathy would all be on her side for reasons beyond the fact that she was a new mother with an infant to care for. Everyone in and around the town liked her.

That couldn’t be said of Hollis.

“They know,” Eli told her quietly. “I figured they—especially Rick, since he’s the sheriff—should hear it from me so that they’d know fact from fiction, rumors being what they are in this town,” he added.

Kasey felt as if there was a lead weight lying across her chest. There was a very private, shy woman beneath the bravado. A woman who wanted her secrets to remain secrets.

“How many other people know?” she asked him.

“For now, just Rick and the deputies.”

For now.

“Now,” she knew, had an exceptionally short life expectancy. As Eli had said, rumors being what they were, she had a feeling that everyone in town would know that Hollis had taken off before the week was out—if not sooner.

It was a very bitter pill for her to swallow.

But she had no other choice.

Chapter Three

“I guess you’re right. No point in pretending I can hide this,” Kasey finally said with a sigh. “People’ll talk.”

“They always do,” he agreed. “It’s just a fact of life.”

Fact of life or not, the idea just didn’t sit well with her. She wasn’t a person who craved attention or wanted her fifteen minutes of fame in the spotlight. She was perfectly content just to quietly go about the business of living.

“I don’t want to be the newest topic people talk about over breakfast,” she said, upset.

“If they do talk about you, it’ll be because they’re on your side. Fact of the matter is, Hollis more or less wore out that crown of his. People don’t think of him as that golden boy he once was,” Eli assured her. Over the years, he’d become acutely aware of Hollis’s flaws, flaws that the man seemed to cultivate rather than try to conquer. “Not to mention that he owes more than one person around here money.”

Kasey looked at him, startled. Her mouth dropped open.

Maybe he’d said too much, Eli thought. “You didn’t know that,” he guessed.

Kasey’s throat felt horribly dry, as if she’d been eating sand for the past half hour.

“No,” she answered, her voice barely above a shaken whisper. “I didn’t know that.”

If she didn’t know about that, it was a pretty safe bet that she certainly didn’t know about her husband’s dalliances with other women during the years that they were married, Eli thought.

Hollis, you were and are a damn fool. A damn, stupid, self-centered fool.

He could feel his anger growing, but there was no point in letting it fester like this. It wasn’t going to help Kasey and her baby, and they were the only two who really mattered in this sordid mess.

“Are you sure?” Kasey asked. She’d turned her face toward him and placed a supplicating hand on his upper arm, silently begging him to say he was mistaken.

It was as if someone had jabbed his heart with a hot poker. He hated that this was happening to her. She didn’t deserve this on top of what she’d already gone through. All of his life, he’d wanted nothing more than to make life better for her, to protect her. But right now, he was doing everything he could. Like taking her to his ranch.

Dammit, Hollis, how could you do this to her? She thought you were going to be her savior, her hero.

The house that Kasey had grown up in had been completely devoid of love. Her father worked hard, but never got anywhere and it made him bitter. Especially when he drank to ease the pain of what he viewed as his dead-end life. Carter Hale had been an abusive drunk not the least bit shy about lashing out with his tongue or the back of his hand.

He’d seen the marks left on Kasey’s mother and had worried that Kasey might get in the way of her father’s wrath next. But Kasey had strong survival instincts and had known enough to keep well out of her father’s way when he went on one of his benders, which was often.

Looking back, Eli realized that was the reason why she’d run off with Hollis right after high school graduation. Hollis was exciting, charming, and fairly reeked of sensuality. More than that, he had a feeling that to Kasey, Hollis represented, in an odd twist, freedom and at the same time, security. Marrying Hollis meant that she never had to go home again. Never had to worry about staying out of her father’s long reach again.

But in Hollis’s case, “freedom” was just another way of saying no plans for the future. And if “security” meant the security of not having to worry about money, then Hollis failed to deliver on that promise, as well.

Eli had strong suspicions that Kasey was beginning to admit to herself that marrying Hollis had been a huge mistake. That he wasn’t going to save her but take her to hell via another route.

Most likely, knowing Kasey, when she’d discovered that she was pregnant, she had clung to the hope that this would finally make Hollis buckle down, work hard and grow up.

Eli blew out a short breath. He could have told her that Hollis wasn’t about to change his way of thinking, and saved her a great deal of grief. But lessons, he supposed, couldn’t be spoon-fed. The student could only learn if he or she wanted to, and he had a feeling that Kasey would have resisted any attempts to show her that Hollis wasn’t what she so desperately wanted him to be.

Eli tried to appear as sympathetic as possible. As sympathetic as he felt toward her. This couldn’t be easy for her. None of it.

“I’m sure,” he finally told her, taking no joy in the fact that he was cutting Hollis down.

Kasey shook her head. She felt stricken. “I didn’t have a clue,” she finally admitted, wondering how she could have been so blind. Wondering how Hollis could have duped her like this. “What’s wrong with me, Eli? Am I that stupid?”

“No, you’re not stupid at all,” he said with feeling. “What you are is loyal, and there’s nothing wrong with you.” To him, she’d always been perfect. Even when she’d fallen in love with Hollis, he hadn’t been able to find it in his heart to take her to task for loving, in his opinion, the wrong man. He’d just accepted it. “Hollis is the one who’s got something wrong with him. You’ve got to believe that,” he told her firmly.

Kasey lifted her slender shoulders in a helpless shrug and then sighed again. It was obvious that she really didn’t want to find fault with the man who’d fathered her child. The man whom she’d loved for almost a decade. “He was just trying to get some money together to make a better life for us,” she said defensively.

The only one whose lot Hollis had ever wanted to improve was his own, Eli thought grudgingly, but he knew that to say so out loud would only hurt Kasey, so he kept the words to himself.

After pulling up in front of his ranch house, he turned off the engine and looked at her. “Until you’re ready, until you have a place to go to and want to go there,” he added, “this is your home, Kasey. Yours and Wayne’s. What’s mine is yours,” he told her. “You know that.”

He saw her biting her lower lip and knew she was waging an internal war with herself. Kasey hated the idea of being in anyone’s debt, but he wasn’t just anyone, he silently argued. They were friends. Best friends. And he had been part of her life almost from the time they began forming memories. There was no way he was about to abandon her now. And no way was he going to place her in a position where she felt she “owed” him anything other than seeing her smile again.

“Don’t make me have to hog-tie you to make you stay put,” he warned.

The so-called threat finally brought a smile to her lips. “All right, I won’t.”

Feeling rather pleased with himself, at least for the moment, Eli unfolded his lanky frame out of the Jeep and then hurried over to Kasey’s side of the vehicle to help her out. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have even thought of it. She’d always been exceedingly independent around him, which made her being with Hollis doubly difficult for him to take. Kasey couldn’t be independent around Hollis.

Hollis enjoyed being in control and letting Kasey know that he was in control. That in turn meant that he expected her submission. Because she loved him, she’d lived down to his expectations.

Unlike Hollis, he was proud of the fact that Kasey could take care of herself. And also unlike Hollis, he liked her independent streak. But at the moment, that had to take a backseat to reality. It was obvious that her body was having a bit of difficulty getting back in sync after giving birth only a few days ago. Eli just wanted to let her know that he was there for her. Whether it meant giving her a hand up or a shoulder to cry on, she could always rely on him.

She knew he meant well, but it didn’t help her frame of mind. “I don’t like feeling like this,” she murmured, tamping down her frustration.

Eli took her hand and eased her to her feet. “It’ll pass soon and you can go back to being Super Kasey,” he quipped affectionately.

Just as she emerged from the passenger side, the tiny passenger in the backseat began to cry.

“Sounds like someone’s warming up to start wailing,” Eli commented, opening the rear door. “You okay?” he asked Kasey before he started freeing Wayne from all his tethers.

She nodded. “I’m fine.” A sliver of guilt shot through her as she watched Eli at work. “I should be doing that,” she said, clearly annoyed with herself. “He’s my responsibility.”

“Hey, you can’t have all the fun,” he told her good-naturedly, noting that she sounded almost testy. He took no offense, sensing that she was frustrated with herself—and Hollis—not him.

The baby was looking at him, wide-eyed, and for a moment he had stopped crying. Eli took that to be a good sign.

“Hi, fella. Let’s get you out of all those belts and buckles and into the daylight,” he said in a low, gentle voice meant to further soothe the little passenger.

In response, the baby just stared at him as if he was completely fascinated by the sound of his voice. Eli smiled to himself, undoing one belt after another as quickly as possible.

Behind him, he heard Kasey say, “I’m sorry, Eli.”

He looked at her over his shoulder, puzzled. “About what?”

“About being so short with you.” He was being nothing but good to her. He didn’t deserve to have her snapping at him.

“Can’t help being the height you are,” he answered wryly.

“I meant—”

He didn’t want her beating herself up about this. God knew she had reason to be upset and short-tempered.

“I know what you meant,” he told her, stepping back from the Jeep and then straightening. Holding Wayne securely in his arms, he changed the subject. “I can’t get over how little he is. It’s like holding a box of sugar. A wiggling box of sugar,” he amended as the baby twisted slightly.

He saw that the infant’s lips were moving. “Rooting,” he thought the nurse had called it on one of his visits to hospital. It was what babies did when they were hungry and searching for their mother’s breast.

“I think your son is trying to order an early dinner,” he told her. Wayne had latched on to his shirt and was sucking on it. Very gently, he extracted the material from the infant’s mouth.

Wayne whimpered.

Eli was right, Kasey realized. The nurse had brought her son to her for a feeding approximately four hours ago. She needed to feed him.

Kasey took the baby from Eli and Wayne turned his little head so that his face was now against her breast. As before, he began questing and a frustrated little noise emerged from his small, rosebud mouth.

“I think you’re right,” she said to Eli, never taking her eyes off her son.

She still wasn’t used to Wayne or the concept that she was actually a mother. Right now, she was in awe of this small, perfect little human being who had come into her life. Holding him was like holding a small piece of heaven, she thought.