The Cowboy's Bride, page 14
She texted, “Carrie, it’s Isabella. This is my new temp. phone #. Can u call me when u wake up?”
Almost instantly, her phone rang. Isabella answered it.
“Issa?”
“Carrie! Did I wake you? I’m so sorry.”
“No,” she said. “I’m awake. I’ve been awake most of the night, actually.”
So had she, but probably for different reasons. And there was a beeping sound in the background she couldn’t quite place. “Where are you? Is everything okay?”
“Um, well, yes. Sort of. I’m glad you called me. I wasn’t sure how to get hold of you.”
“I got a cheap phone in Marietta yesterday since I don’t have mine.”
“Marietta?” she echoed. “Montana?”
“That’s right. But you tell me first. What’s wrong?”
“We had a little scare yesterday. I’m … in the hospital.”
Isabella shot up off the porch swing and nearly stumbled into the potted red geraniums. “What? Did you have the baby? But it’s too early, isn’t it?”
“Too early, yes,” she affirmed. “And no, I didn’t. But I did go into premature labor. They were able to stop it, but they put me in here on bedrest. Which I’m apparently on for the rest of my pregnancy. They’re monitoring the baby for a bit before they send me home to bed.”
“Oh, Carrie, no!” She had breezed through her other two pregnancies without issue.
This was like a lightning strike out of the blue. Isabella curled her hands around the porch railing, sensing that that same lightning might have struck her, too.
“I’ll be fine. I really think I will. The baby will be fine. My mother, bless her heart, insisted on coming to stay with the kids so Deke could still go to work. And—”
“Of course, she did.”
“And so she could take care of us. Here’s the rub … she’s in the guest room. Probably for the duration. I know I invited you to stay with us, but I’m so sorry. I wish we had more—”
Yup. Lightning. “Don’t you dare apologize,” she ordered as her brilliant plan for her new future seemed to evaporate in a flash. “That baby and you, you’re all that matters. Don’t even worry about me.”
“I feel horrible. And in your hour of need.”
That sounded practically biblical. How pathetic was she that her best friend was worrying about her silly troubles while going through nearly losing a baby? “No. I’m fine. Really. Listen, that’s why I was calling. We made a pitstop in Montana at his ranch.”
“Whoa, wait. What? Whose ranch?”
She scanned the vast tract of land that surrounded the house. “Will’s.”
“Will’s?” she repeated. “You mean … the limo driver?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
“Hmm. So, this random limo driver, Will, also owns a ranch in Montana? He’s a cowboy-limo driver?”
“Uh-huh. And an ex-pro football player.” She had to admit, his life choices were diverse.
“Okay. You’re giving me a contraction here. Just kidding. What’s … going on?”
She lowered her voice. “It’s all good, really. Except we’re sort of pretending we’re together for his family’s sake, but—”
“Sort of pretending?”
Not exactly pretending. “Yeah. That’s another story. But he’s great. And kind. And he’s saved my sanity this past week and he … Carrie, he has these really … blue eyes.” She sat back down on the porch swing which gave a little creak.
“Uh-oh,” Carried breathed ominously through the phone.
“What, uh-oh?”
“Are you … are you Lamar Odem-ing with Will?”
“No! No, he didn’t want me to face an inquisition from his family about what happened. It’s nothing like that. He’s not … I’m not—Anyway, my point is, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Now I am worried.”
“I’m just here until Lucille forwards my stuff to you and you get it to me. It’s … it’s a pit stop, is all. I already told Lucille to send my things to you. Have you gotten them yet?”
“Not as of yesterday. But when they come, I can have my mom forward them to you, though, when they arrive. Just text me an address. Are you sure you’re all right? I hate that I have to back out on you like this. And I really want you to come to Seattle. I miss you.”
“I’m fine. And that’s still my plan.” Maybe? “I’ll figure it out. Once I have my ID and credit cards, I can fly there and get an apartment or a hotel or something there until I find a job. Whenever I get my things.” A pain lodged behind her breast, quick and sharp at the thought of leaving him forever and ever, amen. “All you need to think about is that baby. All right?”
“Okay. Thanks for understanding. You be careful with Will. Don’t let him hurt you.”
“Don’t worry. And you stay horizontal. Take care of that baby and you.”
“I will. Love you.”
Isabella pressed a knuckle under her nose to keep from crying. “Love you back.” Quickly, she texted Carrie the Hard Eight’s address, then tucked her phone back in her pocket. This whole wedding/trip-idea for her future was snakebit. Staying with Carrie was out. Now what?
She curled into the porch swing, hugging her knees. She’d never felt more lost and at loose ends than she did at this very moment. What in the world was she going to do now?
“There you are.” Will’s voice came from the doorway.
Isabella jumped to her feet. Had he heard any of that?
“Oh. Hi!”
He was dressed and shaved, and looked as good as a man could look at this hour of the day. He was holding a cup of coffee.
He pushed through the screen door that creaked on its hinges. “I see you got coffee. I woke up and you were gone. Worried me a little.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
He sat down on the swing beside her. “Were you just talking to your friend in Seattle?”
He had overheard her. “Carrie. Yes. Everything’s … fine. She can’t wait to see me.” It was a lie.
She’d told a lie straight to his face, but she needed time to process this new information. Figure out a plan for the rest of her life. Had she made him come all this way for nothing? Was Seattle even still in her future? How could she even explain this to him?
He nodded. “That’s good. I guess.”
Was it good? Was he relieved after last night that she’d be going soon?
“About last night—”
“We should talk about—” she said at the same time.
They both broke off, embarrassed.
“You go,” she encouraged.
He swallowed hard. “I hope you don’t feel like I took advantage of—”
“We’re both adults. I wanted it, too. And it was nice.”
“It was nice,” he said with an ironic smile. “Better than nice. For me at least. When I woke up and you were gone, I thought—”
“No, I just needed to make that call to catch Carrie up.” She took his hand and kissed his palm. “It was nice for me, too. But I’m not that girl who does things like that. I’ve never been a spontaneous … one-night stand kind of girl.”
“Is that what you think it was?” he asked, looking bothered.
“Well. Wasn’t it kind of that? I’m just saying, I wanted it, too. But we both know how this ends right? I go on to Seattle when I get my things, start my new life and you go back to Dallas, or … or you stay here with your family. And that will be that.” That was the deal. The only deal on the table. And she didn’t want to make him feel obligated to think it was anything else.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she spoke first.
“But I won’t regret last night,” she went on softly. “Ever. I won’t regret any part of this week with you.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Neither will I.” He stared down at his coffee for a moment before taking a long sip, seeming to change his mind about what he’d been about to say. “You up for a ride? I want to show you the ranch.”
Chapter Ten
“Oh, you meant a ride on horseback,” she said, as he led two horses out of the stable—a handsome roan gelding and a brown mare with black stockings who was fishing around Will’s pockets for treats.
“You ever ridden before?”
“Once or twice.” In truth, she’d spent half of her childhood summers riding horses at summer-long sleepaway camps her parents had shipped her off to. The idea of riding around here made her throat constrict with happiness. It had been years since she’d been on a horse. “I think I can figure out how to get on without your help,” she said, rejecting his proffered hand-up.
His brow went up as she managed to do just that. “You’re full of surprises.”
“A girl has to keep a few. Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” He mounted his horse, and they rode south through a pasture that didn’t seem to have any boundaries.
It felt good to be back on a horse again, though her body wasn’t used to it. The horsey smell, the creaking leather, the sound of their hooves across the rain-softened field reminded her of how much she missed riding and the feeling of all that power beneath her. The gelding, whose name was Geronimo, was young and full of energy, but well trained, which was a relief considering how out of practice she was.
Cattle and mustangs mingled here and there, grazing on the newly greening pasture. There were lots of babies, both foals and calves, and Isabella couldn’t help but be distracted by them.
“Looks like your mustang herd is expanding,” she said.
“Not my mustang herd,” he corrected, but didn’t seem to want to continue that line of conversation.
They just rode for almost a half hour until they came to a wide, lazy, river that cut through the land like a sidewinder.
“The Yellowstone,” he told her. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
She was spectacular and not at all what she’d expected. Somehow the Yellowstone conjured up images of canyons and deep ravines. But here, the river was shallow and wide and had cut its own path, feeding the sage-covered prairie beyond its bounds.
Will pulled up at the bank and dismounted. “C’mon,” he said, ground-tying his horse to graze where they’d stopped.
“Where are we going?”
He untied two cases from the back of his saddle that she hadn’t noticed before. “Fishing. There’s always fishing poles ready at the ranch. You ever fly-fish before?”
“Never.”
“Roll up your jeans. You’re gonna get wet.”
*
Forty minutes later, Will watched her cast the rod out over the water as she tried to find her footing in the rocky riverbed. He’d spent the better part of the first half hour teaching her the ropes of fly casting. It wasn’t a chore for him to stand close behind her and guide her casts, or to hear her laughing at her own efforts. He loved hearing that laugh, remembering how this whole trip had begun, with her sobbing in the back of the car. Whatever conflicts he was feeling about making love to her last night dissipated in the current as they simply enjoyed each other’s company.
Watching her stand in this river of his childhood, her jeans rolled up to her knees, looking less like a Dallas elite and more like a girl he could have grown up with here in Montana, made his chest hurt.
Damn. What was she doing to him? When she’d warned him about the ending of their story it had felt like a sucker punch, even though he knew she was right. She was going. He wouldn’t even be able to finish the drive. One day soon, maybe even in the next day or two, she’d pack up and go. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
Unless there was.
By the time he’d caught and released three fat rainbow trout her forty-fifth attempt at a cast finally landed farther than ten feet away, and she shrieked with delight. She then promptly lost her balance and nearly fell in the water. He grabbed her by the elbow and righted her but the two of them laughed so hard they both nearly got dunked.
She clung to his arm for balance, looking so pretty in the morning sun he wanted to kiss her again. So, he did. He kissed her with an easy hunger, asking for nothing more.
He loved kissing her. Feeling her open to his lips, respond to his kiss, and even smile against his mouth—it cracked something inside him that had long ago hardened with shell-like resistance to anything approaching what was happening between them. He not only wanted her, he wanted her—beside him, with him, around him. He knew she meant to go but letting her go might be the biggest mistake of his life.
Yet, even as he kissed her there in the river, that little voice warned him “Be careful. Protect yourself. Nothing good happens this fast.”
She broke the kiss, studying his face for a moment, before laughing down at the freezing cold river. “My feet are totally numb. So, I say we quit fishing before I take you down with me.”
“That last cast… That was nearly a professional Montana ranch-girl cast.”
“Thank you, sir. And now, I am giving all those trout I didn’t catch a reprieve.” She waved a regal hand over the current. “I grant you clemency! Swim free! Worry not about my sorry fishing line! As I … hobble back to shore.”
Chuckling, he helped her back to the grassy bank where she collapsed, rubbing her reddened feet. “If we ever do this again, I have one word for you. Waders.”
He sat down beside her on the shore, near where their horses were still grazing. If we ever do this again. But the odds of that were slim, considering how little time the two of them had left together.
She flopped backward on the grassy bank, staring up at the blue, cloudless sky. “It’s so beautiful here. So different from Texas. And yet, kind of the same.” Overhead, a hawk circled on a lazy air current, eyeing them.
Will joined her, lying back on the ground. “It’s easy to forget just how pretty it is.”
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” She turned her head his way. “About staying or returning, I mean?”
“Maybe it’s not an either-or choice.”
“Really?”
“Maybe. I still don’t know what they’re going to choose. I called Kevin this morning and asked him if he’d be interested in having his wedding here at the ranch if we could work it out and he and Emmaline were over the moon excited about it. So, that was a yes. Now it’s up to the family. It could be the start of something.”
“That’s good, right?”
He nodded. “All of this is a big undertaking. I don’t think the family will do it if I leave. I think that’s kind of the point.”
“The alternative?”
“Sell. I don’t think any of them want that. I just think they want … different.”
“And you?” she asked. “Do you want different?”
“Maybe.” Maybe I do.
For a few minutes, they just lay, staring at the sky. June was one of the prettiest months in Montana, not too hot yet, and winter was firmly in the rearview mirror. The ice was gone on the river, and elk grazed along its banks along with all the wildlife the prairie supported. The air smelled of sage and grass and sweet Montana air.
But the sound he heard next made him sit up to pay attention.
“What was that?” Isabella asked, sitting up, too.
Will got to his feet. “That was a newborn calf. And it sounds like we’d better find it.”
They packed up the poles and got back on their horses, exploring the gullies and stands of scrub trees nearby until they found the source of the crying. It was, indeed, a newborn calf that some cow had recently birthed and apparently rejected. It was alone and in trouble.
“Why would she abandon this baby?” Isabella asked, kneeling down beside it. All black with a white star on its forehead, the calf wasn’t standing, but curled under a tree, crying inconsolably. The fresh umbilical cord was still attached.
“Sometimes, first-time mothers are clueless about mothering. Other times, they know there’s something wrong with the baby. In some cases, there’s just no telling.” He bent down and lifted the calf in his arms. “But we better get this little one back quick or he won’t make it.”
*
“This is the third calf this season,” Liam said ruefully a few minutes later, rubbing the chilled calf with the blanket they’d wrapped it in as Shay prepared some calf formula to bottle feed it. “Taking care of them is a twenty-four-seven job that none of us has time for. But there’s really no choice.”
“What if you find the mother? Would she take it back?” Isabella asked, petting the calf on the forehead.
“Not likely. And we don’t have much luck with surrogates, unless the timing is perfect. Sometimes, if a cow has just calved, she will take on another. Especially if we can disguise the interloper calf with her own calf’s scent. Not going to happen here.”
Shay said, “Ryan will take a shift. So will I. We can alternate nights.”
“I’ll help,” Isabella volunteered. “While I’m still here.”
Will didn’t look at her, or say anything, but she felt some tension rising between them.
How had she let this happen? Carrie was right. She’d stumbled into something that was going to break her heart again.
The morning’s events played back in her mind over and over, seeing him in his element carrying that calf back to the barn on horseback, fishing like he was born to it. Kissing her. The look in his eyes when he talked about his future. His sharing those things with her at all. Compared to their first couple of days when trying to pull any information from him was a struggle.
“I’ll give Gus Claymore, Ander’s new large animal vet, a call and get him to come out and take a look,” Liam said, pulling her out of her reverie. “Newborn calves like this who’ve been left alone for God knows how long can go downhill quick for a million different reasons.”
