A Baby on the Ranch: A Baby on the RanchRamona and the Renegade Read online

  Real Love Is Worth The Wait

  When Kasey Stonestreet’s husband walked out on her and their newborn son, her best friend, Eli Rodriguez, was her rock. Eli took them in at his Forever, Texas, ranch without hesitation. As a suddenly single mom with nowhere else to go, Kasey expected to feel out of place. Instead, for the first time in her life, she felt as though she was home.

  Eli has secretly loved Kasey since they were kids; he was devastated when she married another man. Now, he’s got a second chance at happiness. The woman of his dreams, and the family he always wanted, are in his reach. But if he reveals his true feelings, it could ruin their friendship, and he’d lose Kasey forever.

  How long can Eli and Kasey go on pretending to each other—and to themselves—that they’re still just friends? And what will happen when Kasey’s husband returns? A Baby on the Ranch

  “Don’t you want to kiss me, Eli?”

  Kasey whispered the words to Eli’s back, knowing that if he faced her, she wouldn’t have the nerve to say them.

  Eli stopped, half convinced that he’d imagined her saying words that he would have sold his soul to hear. Releasing the breath that had gotten caught in his throat, he slowly turned around.

  “More than anything in the world.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  He could have said that he couldn’t kiss her because, technically, she was still Hollis’s wife. Or that he couldn’t because he didn’t want to take advantage of her, or the situation. There were as many reasons to deny himself as there were leaves on the tree by his window. And only one reason to do it.

  Because he ached for her.

  Dear Reader,

  I have this thing about families. When I was little, I wanted three older brothers. Unfortunately, since I was the first born, no amount of my pleading seemed to rectify that. All my parents could give me were two younger ones. Now, because of our ages, I tell people they’re my older brothers, so in essence, it all worked out. Once I began writing, I created those brothers (and sisters) that nature (and my parents) failed to give me. I became caught up in the worlds I was creating and just kept going. What began as a small family—and small town—kept on growing. Which is why Alma, who first appeared in the sheriff’s story, suddenly was given siblings en masse by the time she got her own story (Lassoing the Deputy). I like large families and I like returning to them. So this is Eli’s story, which shows how selfless love is ultimately rewarded. It’s also a story about never giving up hope because if something is meant to be, it will happen.

  I hope you enjoy this latest addition to the Forever, Texas saga. As always, I thank you for reading, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

  All the best,

  Marie Ferrarella

  A Baby on the Ranch

  Marie Ferrarella

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written over two hundred books for Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  1329—THE SHERIFF’S CHRISTMAS SURPRISE ‡‡

  1338—RAMONA AND THE RENEGADE ‡‡

  1346—THE DOCTOR’S FOREVER FAMILY ‡‡

  1369—MONTANA SHERIFF

  1378—HOLIDAY IN A STETSON

  “The Sheriff Who Found Christmas”

  1402—LASSOING THE DEPUTY ‡‡

  SILHOUETTE ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  1503—A DOCTOR’S SECRET **

  1511—SECRET AGENT AFFAIR **

  1515—PROTECTING HIS WITNESS *

  1528—COLTON’S SECRET SERVICE

  1556—THE HEIRESS’S 2-WEEK AFFAIR

  1571—CAVANAUGH PRIDE *

  1575—BECOMING A CAVANAUGH *

  1580—THE AGENT’S SECRET BABY

  1587—THE CAVANAUGH CODE *

  1596—IN BED WITH THE BADGE *

  1612—CAVANAUGH JUDGMENT *

  1616—COLTON BY MARRIAGE

  1623—CAVANAUGH REUNION *

  1644—IN HIS PROTECTIVE CUSTODY **

  HARLEQUIN ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  1664—PRIVATE JUSTICE

  1675—THE DOCTOR’S GUARDIAN **

  1683—A CAVANAUGH CHRISTMAS *

  1688—SPECIAL AGENT’S PERFECT COVER

  1699—CAVANAUGH’S BODYGUARD *

  SILHOUETTE SPECIAL EDITION

  1910—DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH ***

  1917—THE BRIDE WITH NO NAME ***

  1941—MISTLETOE AND MIRACLES ***

  1946—PLAIN JANE AND THE PLAYBOY ‡‡‡

  1958—TRAVIS’S APPEAL ***

  1977—LOVING THE RIGHT BROTHER >

  1983—THE 39-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN

  2006—A LAWMAN FOR CHRISTMAS ***

  2017—PRESCRIPTION FOR ROMANCE †††

  2031—DOCTORING THE SINGLE DAD ††

  2041—FIXED UP WITH MR. RIGHT? ††

  2060—FINDING HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER ††

  2084—UNWRAPPING THE PLAYBOY ††

  2107—FORTUNE’S JUST DESSERTS†

  HARLEQUIN SPECIAL EDITION

  2117—A MATCH FOR THE DOCTOR ††

  2122—WHAT THE SINGLE DAD WANTS… ††

  2131—THE BABY WORE A BADGE †

  2167—FORTUNE’S VALENTINE BRIDE ‡

  2192—ONCE UPON A MATCHMAKER ††

  ‡‡Forever, Texas

  *Cavanaugh Justice

  **The Doctors Pulaski

  ***Kate’s Boys

  ‡‡‡The Fortunes of Texas: Return to Red Rock

  †††The Baby Chase

  ††Matchmaking Mamas

  †The Fortunes of Texas: Lost…and Found

  †Montana Mavericks: The Texans are Coming!

  ‡The Fortunes of Texas: Whirlwind Romance

  All backlist available in ebook. Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Baby on the Ranch

  To Kathleen Scheibling,

  for wanting to see more.

  Thank you.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prologue

  “Eli!”

  The loud, insistent pounding worked its way into his brain and rudely yanked Eli Rodriguez out of a deep, sound sleep. Eyes still shut, he sat up in bed, utterly disoriented, listening without knowing what he was listening for, or even why.

  He’d fallen into bed, exhausted, at eleven, too tired even to undress.

  Was he dreaming?

  “Eli, open up! Open the damn door, will you?”

  No, he wasn’t dreaming. This was real. Someone was yelling out his name. Who the hell was pounding on his door at this hour?

  The question snaked its way through his fuzzy brain as Eli groped his way into the hallway and then made his way dow
n the stairs, clutching on to the banister. His equilibrium still felt off.

  Belatedly, he realized that it was still the middle of the night. Either that, or the sun had just dropped out of the sky, leaving his part of the world in complete darkness.

  His mind turned toward his family. Had something happened to one of them? They were all well as of the last time they’d been together, but nothing was stationary.

  Nothing was forever.

  “Eli! C’mon, dammit, you can’t be that asleep! Wake up!”

  The voice started to sound familiar, although it was still hard to make it out clearly above the pounding.

  Awake now, Eli paused for a second to pull himself together before opening the front door.

  And to pick up a firearm—just in case.

  The people who lived in Forever and the surrounding area were good people, but that didn’t mean that unsavory types couldn’t pass through. There’d been an incident or two in the past five years, enough to make a man act cautiously.

  “Dammit all to hell, Eli!”

  That wasn’t an unsavory type—at least, not according to the general definition. That was his friend, Hollis Stonestreet. Except right now, he wasn’t feeling very friendly.

  With an annoyed sigh, Eli unlocked his front door and found himself face-to-face with Hollis.

  A one-time revered high school quarterback, the blond-haired, blue-eyed former Adonis had become a little worn around the edges. Though he was still considered handsome, the past eight years hadn’t been all that good to Hollis.

  Eli rested the firearm he no longer needed against the wall. “You trying to wake the dead, Hollis?” he asked wearily.

  “No, just you,” Hollis retorted, walking into the front room, “which I was starting to think was the same thing.”

  “This couldn’t wait until morning?” Eli asked, curbing his impatience.

  Hollis was wearing his fancy boots, the ones with the spurs. They jingled as he walked.

  Looking at the boots, Eli started getting a very bad feeling about this. What was Hollis doing here at this hour?

  Last he’d heard, Hollis had been missing for almost a week now. At least according to his wife, Kasey. She’d said as much when she’d called him two days ago, apologizing for bothering him even though they’d been friends forever. Apologizing, and at the same time asking that if he wasn’t too busy, would he mind driving her to the hospital in Pine Ridge because her water had just broken.

  “The baby’ll be coming and I don’t think I can drive the fifty miles to the hospital by myself,” she’d said.

  He’d known by the tone in her voice that she was afraid, and doing her best not to sound like it.

  His pulse had begun to race immediately as he’d told her to hang in there. Five seconds later, he’d torn out of his ranch house, dashing toward his Jeep.

  That was the first—and the last—time he’d let the speedometer climb to ninety-five.

  The following day, when he’d visited Kasey and her baby—a beautiful, healthy baby boy—he knew boys weren’t supposed to be beautiful, but in his opinion, this one was—Hollis still hadn’t shown up.

  Nor had he come the next morning when Eli had gone back to visit her again.

  And now, here he was, pacing around in his living room at 2:00 a.m.

  What was going on? Why wasn’t he with Kasey, where he belonged? He knew that he would be if Kasey was his wife.

  But she wasn’t and there was no point in letting his thoughts go in that direction.

  “No, it can’t wait,” Hollis snapped, then immediately tempered his mood. He flashed a wide, insincere grin at him. “I came by to ask you for a favor.”

  This had to be one hell of a favor, given the hour. “I’m listening.”

  “I want you to look after Kasey for me.”

  Eli stared at the other man. If he wasn’t awake before, he was now. “Why, where are you going to be?” Eli asked. When Hollis didn’t answer him, for the first time in their long relationship, Eli became visibly angry. “Did you even bother to go see Kasey in the hospital?”

  Pacing, Hollis dragged a hand through his unruly blond hair. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I saw her, I saw the kid.” Swinging back around, Hollis watched him, suddenly appearing stricken. “I thought I could do it, Eli, but I can’t. I can’t do it,” he insisted. “I can’t be a father. My throat starts to close up when I even think about being a father.”

  Eli dug deep for patience. Hollis had never thought about anyone but himself. Because of his looks, everything had always been handed to him. Well, it was time to man up. He had a wife and a baby who were counting on him.

  “Look, that’s normal,” Eli said soothingly. “You’re just having a normal reaction. This is all new to you. Once you get the hang of it—”

  He got no further.

  “Don’t you get it?” Hollis demanded. “I don’t want to get the hang of it. Hell, I didn’t even want to get married.”

  No one had held a gun to his head, Eli thought resentfully. If he’d backed off—if Hollis had left town five years ago—then maybe he would have had a chance with Kasey. And that baby she’d just had could’ve been his.

  “Then why did you?” he asked, his voice low, barely contained.

  Hollis threw up his hands. “I was drunk, okay? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Look, I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving and nothing you say is going to stop me.” He started to edge his way back to the front door. “I’d just feel better if I knew you were going to look after her. She’s going to need somebody.”

  “Yeah, her husband,” Eli insisted.

  Hollis didn’t even seem to hear as he pulled open the front door. “Oh, by the way, I think you should know that I lost the ranch earlier today.”

  Eli could only stare at him in disbelief. “You did what?”

  Hollis shrugged, as if refusing to accept any guilt. “I had a straight—a straight, dammit—what’re the odds that the other guy would have a straight flush?”

  Furious now, Eli fisted his hands at his sides, doing his best to keep from hitting the other man. “Are you out of your mind?” Eli demanded. “Where is she supposed to live?”

  The question—and Eli’s anger—seemed to annoy Hollis. “I don’t know. But I can’t face her. You tell her for me. You’re good like that. You always know what to say.”

  And then he was gone. Gone just as abruptly as he’d burst in less than ten minutes ago.

  Eli ran his hand along the back of his neck, staring at the closed door.

  “No,” he said wearily to the darkness. “Not always.”

  Chapter One

  When she turned her head toward the doorway, the expression on Kasey Stonestreet’s face faded from a hopeful smile to a look of barely suppressed disappointment and confusion.

  Eli saw the instant change as he walked into her hospital room. Kasey hadn’t been expecting him, she’d expected Hollis. Hollis was the one who was supposed to come and pick her and their brand-new son up and take them home, not him.

  “Hi, Kasey, how are you?” Doing his best to pretend that everything was all right, Eli flashed her an easy smile.

  He had a feeling that for once, she wasn’t buying it or about to go along with any pretense for the sake of her pride.

  Kasey pressed her lips together as a bitter disappointment rooted in the pit of her stomach and spread out. When he left her yesterday, Hollis had told her that he’d be here at the hospital long before noon. According to the hospital rules, she was supposed to check out at noon.

  It was past noon now. Almost by a whole hour. When the nurse on duty had passed by to inform her—again—that checkout was at noon, she’d had no choice but to ask for a little more time. She hated the touch of pity in the woman’s eyes as she agreed to allow her a few more minutes.

  Excuses came automatically to her lips. Life with Hollis had taught her that. “He’s stuck in traffic,” she’d told the other woman. “But I know he’ll be here
any minute now.”

  That had been more than half an hour ago.

  So when the door to her room finally opened, Kasey had looked toward it with no small amount of relief. Until she saw that the person walking in wasn’t Hollis. It was Eli, her childhood friend. Eli, who always came when she needed him.

  Wonderfully dependable Eli.

  More than once she’d wondered why Hollis couldn’t be more like the man he claimed was his best friend. It went without saying that if she had asked Eli to come pick her up before noon, he would have been there two hours early, looking to help her pack her suitcase.

  Unlike Hollis.

  Where was he?

  The disappointment evolved into a feeling of complete dread, which in turn spilled out all over her as she looked up at the tall, muscular man she’d come, at times, to think of as her guardian angel.

  When her eyes met his, the fear she harbored in her heart was confirmed.

  “He’s not coming, is he?” she asked, attempting to suppress a sigh.

  Last night or, more correctly, Eli amended, this morning, when Hollis had left after delivering that bombshell, he’d suddenly snapped out of his fog and run after Hollis barefoot. He’d intended to either talk Hollis out of leaving or, that failing, hog-tie the fool until he came to his senses and realized that Kasey was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  But it was too late. Hollis was already in his car and if the heartless bastard saw him chasing after the vehicle in his rearview mirror, Hollis gave no indication. He certainly hadn’t slowed down or attempted to stop. If anything, he’d sped up.

  His actions just reinforced what Eli already knew. That there was no talking Hollis into acting like an adult instead of some errant, spoiled brat who did whatever he wanted to and didn’t stick around to face any consequences.

  Eli looked at the young woman he’d brought to the hospital a short three days ago. She’d been on the very brink of delivering her son and they had just made it to the hospital in time. Had she waited even five minutes before calling him, Wayne Eli Stonestreet would have been born in the backseat of his Jeep, with him acting as an impromptu midwife.

  Not exactly a notion he would have relished. He had a hunch that Kasey wouldn’t have been crazy about it, either.