The Rancher and the Baby Read online

  Will’s eyes had grown huge. “Whose wedding?”

  Dan decided that, for now, he’d said enough.

  Opening the cabinet door in the first exam room, he took out a supply of disposable diapers he kept on hand for his littlest patients. After stacking them on the exam table, he took out several cans of formula as well, plus a blanket. He put them all into a sack and handed it to Will.

  “This should be enough to last Cassidy for at least a couple of days. By then, maybe she can get some from the store, or if that’s still closed, Cody’s wife might be able to spare some,” the doctor suggested.

  “This is more than generous, Doc,” Will told him. Rather than argue with the doctor, which he knew Dan was wont to do if he raised the point about payment again, Will discreetly left a twenty on the exam table when he took the bag Dan gave him and then followed the doctor out of the room. It didn’t begin to cover everything, but for now, it was all he could spare.

  Chapter Six

  “Ready to go?” Will asked Cassidy as he walked back into the reception area directly behind the doctor.

  Cassidy was slowly pacing the room, gently rocking the baby in her arms and hoping that the ongoing motion would continue to keep him quiet and calm. She’d taken care of Cody’s little girl on several occasions, but she felt way over her head right now—and was determined not to show it.

  “Oh, more than ready,” she answered.

  Will nodded. “Okay, just let me load these baby survival supplies into the truck, and then I’ll come back for the two of you,” he told her. The next moment, he walked out of the clinic.

  “Well, this has to be a first,” Dan commented, almost more to himself than to the other adult occupant in the room.

  Cassidy looked in the doctor’s direction. “What is? A possibly homeless baby?”

  Dan shook his head, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “No, you and Will working together.”

  Given her feelings toward Laredo, Cassidy was not about to admit to something like that. “We might just be occupying the same space, Doc, and we might have the same general goal. But I guarantee that we are not ‘working’ together.”

  “There, that’s what I mean,” Dan told her. “Everyone in Forever is accustomed to seeing the two of you at odds with each other the second you’re within in the same half-mile radius. But this—” he nodded at the dozing baby she was holding “—is bringing out something different from the two of you than your normal mode of behavior.”

  Dan had always been very nice to her and her family. The man probably didn’t have a mean bone in his body, so she didn’t want to pay him back by offending him. But she really found it difficult to go along with his view of what was going on.

  “Yes, well, as soon as Laredo gets me back to my truck, life will go back to normal again,” she promised with a little too much conviction.

  Dan heard her out and smiled. “You go right on thinking that, Cassidy.”

  She raised her chin, the way she always did when she anticipated a fight, or at least an argument. “I will, because it’s true.” Because she didn’t want to come off as combative with the doctor, she decided to redirect his attention toward something far more important than some artificial truce between her and Laredo. “How old do you think Adam is?”

  He looked at the boy, quickly reviewing the exam in his mind. “Best guess is about two to three months old.”

  “And you’ve never seen him and his mother or father before?” Cassidy pressed. After all, a lot of patients came through this clinic every day. How could he remember every one of them?

  But looking at the baby’s face, Dan shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Maybe Dr. Alisha saw them?” she suggested. Granted, a few people did pass through Forever now that there was a hotel in town, but if they did, they did it during the summer months, not this time of year. It was nearing the end of November; nobody came here in the winter.

  “It’s not that big an office,” Dan pointed out, looking down at the sleeping baby. “I would have recalled seeing this little guy and his mother or father if they ever came in here.”

  “Well, if you don’t recognize him, I guess Adam and his parents were just passing through,” Cassidy decided.

  “There’s another possibility,” Will stated as he came back into the clinic. He was almost directly behind Cassidy.

  She almost jumped. She hated when Will caught her off guard like that. “Okay, what?” she asked, sparing him a disdainful glance.

  Will addressed his answer to the doctor rather than to her. “It’s possible that he could be from the reservation. They’ve always had their own way of dealing with things. If this little guy was born on the reservation, there would have been no reason for you to have ever seen him or his mother before.”

  They all knew that the residents of the reservation rarely sought out the doctors at the clinic. They did on occasion, but those occurrences were few and far between. Nothing short of an outbreak of some sort of contagious disease brought the reservation residents to the clinic, seeking the help of the medical staff.

  As if to contradict Will’s theory, Cassidy pointed out, “He has blue eyes.”

  “Maybe one of Adam’s parents wasn’t Native American. Who knows?” Will looked at Cassidy. She was stubborn to a fault, and what she was the most stubborn about was admitting that he might be right. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask around.”

  Cassidy frowned. She supposed Laredo might have a point. If anyone else had suggested that possibility, she would have readily agreed. But every word out of Will’s mouth just seemed to irritate her beyond belief.

  She pulled the blanket a little tighter around the baby.

  “I’ll mention it to Cody when I see him,” she said dismissively. And then, glancing over her shoulder at Dan just before she left, Cassidy said, “Thanks again for everything, Doc.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Dan told her.

  Grabbing the rain slicker he’d discarded when he’d let them in, Dan now followed the couple out of the clinic and locked up for a second time.

  Will’s truck was still parked directly in front of the clinic where he’d first left it. Cassidy hurriedly made her way over to the vehicle. But Will’s stride was longer, and he beat her to it without even trying. He proceeded to open the door behind the driver’s just before she reached it.

  Cassidy pressed her lips together, biting back the desire to tell him that she could have opened her own door, thank you very much. Instead, she muttered a barely audible, “Thanks.”

  Will greeted the choked out verbal offering with a grin. His eyes were almost dancing as he asked, “Almost hurts you to say it, doesn’t it?”

  Cassidy got on without so much as looking at him. “Just get me to my truck,” she ground out.

  Rather than getting into the front seat, Will leaned over her to help her with her seat belt, just as he had the first time. But this time Cassidy was faster than he was. She grabbed the end of the belt from him.

  “I can buckle my own seat belt, Laredo,” she informed him.

  “Just trying to make things easier for you,” Will answered cheerfully.

  Cassidy never skipped a beat. “That would involve disappearing off the face of the earth.”

  Will climbed into the cab of the truck behind the steering wheel. “Your brothers would miss you,” he said.

  He knew damn well what she meant. “I was referring to you.”

  “Maybe later,” he replied glibly, and then he turned the key, starting his truck.

  The next moment, they were back on the road.

  The rain was starting again, Cassidy noted, but the sky didn’t look nearly as foreboding as it had earlier, so she crossed her fingers and hoped for the best, praying that history didn’t repeat itsel
f. The last thing in the world she needed right now was to become stranded somewhere with the baby and with Laredo.

  Neither one of them spoke for the first few minutes, with only the rain cutting into the silence. But the stillness within the truck was very short-lived.

  Will was the first to break it.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked.

  She should have known the silence was too good to last. That she actually welcomed the break was something she would have gone to her grave before ever admitting it to him. “Was that supposed to be some kind of a crack?”

  “No,” Will replied mildly, his eyes all but glued on the road in front of him. He was taking no chances on driving into an unexpected sinkhole; they had been known to occur after a heavy rain. “That’s just a question. I mean, quite honestly—” he raised his eyes for a second to meet hers in the rearview mirror “—I can see you wearing a hell of a lot of hats, but I never thought of you as the maternal type.”

  She frowned. It was a crack. Not that she had any driving need to have him think of her in any sort of a positive light, but she didn’t particularly care for what she viewed as his put-down.

  “Just because I have this constant, overwhelming desire to hit you over the head with a two-by-four doesn’t mean I don’t have any maternal instincts. I do.” Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him in the mirror. “Just not any toward you.”

  “Which, don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful about.” Had Laredo stopped there, she could have accepted it, giving it no more thought than she would have given another bad, incorrect weather forecast.

  But he didn’t stop there.

  Will continued, saying, “I never wanted you to think of yourself as my mother.”

  She was having a hard time not saying what was on her mind, but she knew an explosion would have the kind of consequences she was not looking for—it would have set off the baby. Any moment that the baby wasn’t wailing was another moment to be savored and enjoyed—even if Will was there to share it with her.

  “I don’t know if you accidentally meant that as a compliment,” she told him, “or if it was another crack, so I’m just going to leave that alone.”

  She heard him laugh shortly to himself. At her expense. She was starting to suspect that just the sound of his breathing was enough to set her off.

  “Good thinking,” Will commented.

  “Is that another accidental compliment?” Cassidy challenged.

  He undoubtedly hadn’t meant it that way, but she wanted to needle him, and this was her only opportunity. He owed her after having ripped through the foundations of her world with that kiss he’d laid on her earlier.

  That she owed him because he had jumped into the water when he didn’t have to and thus could have, very possibly, saved her life, not to mention the life of the baby who she in turn was trying to save, was beside the point and not something she wanted to dwell on at the moment.

  That was something she’d reexamine some sleepless night—or maybe the reexamination of that would turn it into a sleepless night. She didn’t really know, but in any event, she didn’t want to think about either case right now.

  “No, just another observation,” Will replied.

  He was really getting under her skin now, and while she couldn’t exactly explain why, she knew she wanted him to stop doing it. Now.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need you to ‘observe’ anything with your running commentary if you don’t mind. All I want is for you to get me back to my truck so we can both go our separate ways.”

  “Not a good idea,” he told her mildly.

  Didn’t the man ever just say yes and let the matter go? Cassidy wondered in exasperation.

  “What’s not a good idea?” she demanded. “Getting me back to my truck?”

  “That, and you driving off on your own,” he added mildly.

  That really got her angry. “I drive better than you do,” she retorted.

  “That is a matter of opinion—although you don’t,” Will said. “But either way, that’s not the point right now.”

  “And what is the point?” she asked him in a tone that could only be described as haughtily angry.

  If she was trying to get him to lose his temper, she was failing miserably. He seemed determined to remain on an even keel as he spoke with her, no matter how much she poked the proverbial stick at him.

  “Same thing that was the point when I drove you to the clinic,” he told her, his tone mild, as if he was talking to someone who was slow-witted and had trouble following him. “You can’t drive and hold on to that baby at the same time. It’s not safe for either of you, although I’m more concerned about the baby than I am about you.”

  If he said that to get a rise out of her, she wasn’t about to let that happen. Instead, she murmured, “At least you’re honest.”

  Will nodded, again never missing a beat. “Always. I also have a point,” he told her, stressing the words as he glanced up into the rearview mirror again to catch her eye. “You can’t just stick the baby in the backseat and drive.”

  If he wasn’t driving, she would have hit him. But as it was, she had to work at keeping her temper—at least for now.

  “I know that. What about my truck?” she asked.

  He tried to recall where she’d left it. “Barring another flash flood, it should be safe,” he told her. “After you get everything set up for the baby and do whatever it is you have to do to make that happen, you can go with one of your brothers to bring it back.

  “Or I could just take Connor there now after I drop you off.” Except for the time he’d left Forever, he and Connor, as well as her other brothers, had been friends for as far back as he could remember. “I expect he’s probably pacing around right about now, looking for something to do.”

  Although he was right, she didn’t like what he was saying about her oldest brother. It made Connor sound like some sort of wimp.

  “You were out in this,” she reminded him. “The rain didn’t stop you.”

  “I was out in this because of the rain,” Will reminded her.

  “Oh.” The matter of the baby had driven the information out of her head, but she remembered now, remembered what he’d told her. “That’s right, you were looking for that colt.”

  For just a brief moment, Cassidy’s guard came down and she experienced concern for the animal’s welfare. What if something had happened to the horse because he’d stopped to help her?

  “I’m sorry. Do you think you’ll still be able to find him after all this time?”

  “I’ll find him,” he told her. There was no bravado in Will’s voice, much as she might have wanted to accuse him of that. There was just confidence in his own abilities. “I can be stubborn if I have to be, just like you.”

  She raised her eyes again, expecting to meet his, but Will was once again strictly focused on the road ahead. She felt something weird for a second.

  “Are we having a moment here?” she asked him.

  Will wasn’t able to read her tone of voice and decided that the wisest thing was just to acknowledge her words in the most general possible sense.

  “I suppose that some people might see it that way,” he said.

  Cassidy shook her head. “Typical.”

  “Come again?”

  Cassidy raised her voice. “I said your answer’s typical. You’re a man who has never committed to anything.”

  “Not true,” Will contradicted before he could think better of it.

  “Okay, name one thing,” she challenged.

  She was not going to box him in if that was what she was looking to do, he thought. At least, not about something that was way too personal to talk about out loud with her. Besides, he did just fine having everyone think that he was only serious about
any relationship he had for a very limited amount of time. That way, if he brought about the end himself, he never had to publicly entertain the sting of failure.

  “I’m committed to restoring my father’s ranch, making it into the paying enterprise it should have been and still could be with enough effort,” he told her.

  “You mean that?”

  Rather than say yes, he told her, “I never say something just to hear myself talk.”

  “There’s some difference of opinion on that one, but—”

  “Look,” he began, about to tell her that he didn’t want to get into yet another dispute with her over what amounted to nothing, but he never had the opportunity. The one thing that Cassidy admittedly could do better than anyone he knew was outtalk everyone.

  “—if you’re really serious about that,” she was saying, “I can probably manage to help you out a few hours on the weekends.” The way she saw it, she did owe it to him for helping her save the baby, and she hated owing anyone, most of all him.

  Will spared her a glance before he went back to watching the road intently. Cassidy had managed to do the impossible.

  She had rendered him completely speechless.

  Chapter Seven

  It took him a minute—more like two—but he finally found his voice.

  “Wait, did you just actually offer to help me?” Will asked incredulously.

  Cassidy was beginning to regret the offer already, although she knew what he had to be facing—exactly what Connor had faced when their father died suddenly, leaving them all orphaned and in debt.

  “Don’t sound so stunned. I didn’t just say I’d marry you,” Cassidy said brusquely. “I said I could give you a few hours on the weekends to help you get the ranch back on its feet. It’s what neighbors do, right? They help each other. You’re not the only one who can come through,” she informed him. “As a matter of fact, I have to help you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I refuse to be in your debt.”

  “Oh.” She was talking about his diving in to rescue her and the baby. This was her way of admitting that he’d saved her, he realized. “Okay, well, now it all makes sense,” he allowed. “For a second there, I thought maybe I’d slipped into some alternate universe. You know, one where we’re actually friends,” he said with just a touch of sarcasm, even though he was smiling.