Cowboy with a Secret, page 21
Alyssa was being kept in the hospital pediatric ward for observation, so Colt and Bethany stopped off to see her. She was sleeping peacefully in a crib, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows on her round cheeks, and the nurse in charge said that she had eaten well both last night and this morning.
“She’s a lucky child,” said the nurse, and they couldn’t help but agree.
When they finally dragged themselves away from Alyssa, they went to see Marcy, who burst into tears when she saw them. She was propped up on pillows in her bed, an IV tube leading into one hand. Her face was bruised and cut in two places, and although Colt and Bethany had been assured by her doctor that the facial injuries were superficial, she looked as if she’d been through a terrible ordeal.
“Oh, Colt, I didn’t mean to wreck your car!” Marcy wailed.
Colt brushed her hair back off her face and kissed her swollen cheek. “I know,” he said.
Marcy glanced at Bethany. “I guess you hate me. I guess you think I’m a terrible mother.”
“No,” Bethany said. “No, that’s not what I think.”
“Well, I thought if I could get back to Oklahoma City, I could talk to my friend who works at the coffee shop with me? Jan? She’s got a baby girl, too, and I could maybe move in with her. We could babysit each other’s kids. But I got to thinking while I was driving, and I thought, why would Jan want me? It’s a tiny apartment, not that much room. I’ve got a good thing going while I stay with Casey and her parents, and now here I’d gone and taken Alyssa with me and had no place to go with her. So I started crying and everything, and I couldn’t see, and I’m not used to driving a car with a stick shift, and next thing I knew I was rolling over in the ditch.” She began to cry, great gulping sobs.
It was clear to her that Marcy was beside herself with regrets, and Bethany took one of her hands. Colt, on the opposite side of the bed, took the other.
“Marcy, if there’s anything we can do to help, please say so,” Bethany said.
Marcy wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet. “I’ve been doing some serious thinking. Not like before, when I wasn’t thinking past the next five minutes or so. No, this time I’ve really been through hell, and I know I could have hurt her. My baby, I mean. Alyssa.” She began to cry again, this time silently, letting the tears run down her cheeks unheeded.
“What I want is for you to take her. Both of you.” She looked from Colt to Bethany, a beseeching look.
“Take her?” said Bethany.
“We can’t—” Colt began, but Bethany silenced him with a glance.
“Let her talk,” she said.
“You have such a nice bunch of people on the ranch. Frisco would be like a grandpa to Alyssa, and Eddie like an uncle. I don’t know Dita very well, but didn’t she treat Alyssa kind of like she would a grandchild? And you, Bethany, you should be her mother. Not me. I’m not nearly ready to make a home for her. Colt, you’re perfect to be Alyssa’s father. You’ve always taken time to help me and steer me through difficult times. Alyssa couldn’t ask for better.”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say,” Colt said slowly.
“I want you and Bethany to adopt my baby. Give her a happy home like you and I never had, Colt. Will you? Will you take her?” Marcy was painfully direct, and her grip tightened on Bethany’s hand.
Bethany squeezed back. “Marcy, the two of us can’t adopt Alyssa. Maybe one of us could, but I’m not sure that two people who aren’t married can adopt a baby in this state.” She wanted to adopt Alyssa; after all, she had already thought about it fleetingly. At that time, she’d thought that Alyssa would be reclaimed by Marcy. She hadn’t realized how immature Marcy was and how unready to be a mother.
“You two are in love, anyone can see that!” Marcy exclaimed. “I mean, you could get married.” Her words fell into a vast silence.
Colt cleared his throat. “The same thought has occurred to me,” he said. He’d had plenty of time to reflect that he loved Bethany, that he wanted to take care of her no matter what, that he wanted to be there for her through any kind of trouble as Dita and Frisco were for each other.
Bethany looked at Colt over the narrow expanse of the hospital bed, and in that moment, everything else in the room faded away. There was no hospital, no Marcy, no IV, no sounds of rattling carts being wheeled down the corridor. There was only Colt, only her, and the look in his eyes that spoke the words she had never heard him say.
“Will you, Bethany? Will you marry me?”
“To give Alyssa a home? Is that why you’re asking me?” She could hardly speak, and for a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her.
“I’m asking you because I love you. I’m asking because you’re the best woman I’ve ever met. I’m asking because I want a future with you, Bethany Burke, and I think you want one with me, too.”
In that moment, she couldn’t believe that he was actually proposing. Or that she was actually going to accept.
But she did.
Her eyes never leaving his, she reached across the hospital bed and so did he, and he gripped her hand so tightly that she didn’t think she could ever let go. Or would want to, for that matter.
“Wow! Does that mean you’re getting married? Really?” Marcy looked awestruck, amazed. Bethany couldn’t really blame her.
“Yes, really,” Bethany said. “As soon as we can.” Her eyes filled with happy tears.
“Aren’t you two going to kiss or something?” Marcy asked.
Colt let go of their hands and walked around the bed. He placed his hands on Bethany’s shoulders and gazed deep into her eyes to her very soul. “I love you, Bethany,” he said softly. “I will be a good husband to you.” The emotion in his voice warmed her, told her that he meant what he said with all his heart.
She thought about his caring for Alyssa, who wasn’t even his baby. She thought about his gentle way with Eddie and how he’d slowly worked Frisco over to his side. She thought about how he’d looked galloping down the driveway on the day he’d arrived and how he’d made her life special. And she thought about how he’d given her something she hadn’t had for a long, long time: hope.
“And I will be a good wife,” she whispered. Together they would be good parents to Alyssa and to whatever other children blessed their lives.
“I love you, cowboy,” she said, words she had wanted to say for a long time, words that she would be saying to him for the rest of her life. There were a lot of other things she wanted to say to him, too, but he hushed her with a kiss.
“Wow,” Marcy said. “You’re really getting married and all.”
Colt wrapped his arms around Bethany and held her even closer. She could hear his heart beating in his chest, strong and steady, and the answering beat of her own heart.
“Yes,” Colt said, his voice firm and sure. “I reckon we really are.”
Bethany pulled away slightly. “You’ll come home with us, Marcy, both you and Alyssa.”
“But I’ll be starting school soon.”
Colt rested a hand on her shoulder. “Stay until then.”
“And on vacations,” Bethany added. “The Banner-B will be your home place as well as ours.”
“My home place,” breathed Marcy. “I like the sound of that.”
“I do, too,” Colt said, gazing at Bethany.
“I think she wants you to kiss her again,” prompted Marcy.
“Well,” said Colt, pretending to think it over, “I don’t mind if I do.”
And he did.
EPILOGUE
IT WAS BETHANY’S WEDDING day. In less than three hours, she and Colt would be husband and wife. And she and Colt and Alyssa would be a family.
During a lull when she thought she would have a slim chance of being missed, Bethany slipped away from the ranch house and the wedding preparations and went to her special place beside Little Moony Creek. She lowered herself to the bench that Justin had built for her and sat hugging her knees to her chest. A plane flew high overhead; an ant crawled across the toe of her sneakers. Bethany buried her head in her arms and listened to her heartbeat.
Love never dies, said a voice in her head. She lifted her head sharply, almost believing that she’d heard it out loud. But no, there was no one around, only a blue jay that fluttered down briefly from the cottonwoods and just as quickly flew away.
“I will never stop loving you,” she whispered into the peacefulness, hoping that somehow, some way, Justin would hear. “Never. It’s just that I have other people now to love, too.”
In the moments that followed, a wonderful sense of calm overtook her. She knew that Justin would have understood that she wasn’t forsaking him or his memory. She was simply getting on with her life, which would help her keep her promise to him. She would keep the Banner-B Ranch, and she and Colt would make a success of it. Nothing could stop them now, nothing at all.
“Bethany?”
She looked up, and there, as if by magic, was Colt. She held both hands out to him in welcome. “Come sit with me for a minute,” she said.
He sat down beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I told you we should have eloped,” he said. “Those women in the house are going to turn this wedding into a circus.”
She smiled up at him. “No, they won’t, my love. They’re so happy for us that they want to make everything go off without a hitch, that’s all.”
“Even if it doesn’t, I’m still a happy man. I’ve got you, and Alyssa, and the adoption’s final in a few months.”
“And something else I haven’t told you yet, Colt.”
“If there’s anything I need to know before we go through with this, you better let me in on it now.” He was grinning, though, and she bit her lip.
“Well,” she began, wondering whether she should just blurt out the news or bring it up in a more roundabout way.
Colt kissed her forehead. “Sounds ominous,” he said. “Sounds as if you might be having second thoughts.”
She slid an arm across his chest and rested her head on his shoulder. “My only second thoughts are that this is the right thing to do. I love you, Colt. More and more every day.”
“I love you, too, my darlin’. So—out with it.” He looked down at her questioningly.
Bethany drew a deep breath. “Colt, I’m pregnant. I did one of those home pregnancy tests this morning, and—”
“A baby? You’re sure?” He looked stunned.
She pulled away so she could see the expression on his face. “Yes, I didn’t want to say anything before, and I thought I was, I think it happened about a month ago when we came back from Oklahoma City and knew that Alyssa was going to be ours forever and you made love to me so tenderly in my bed for the first time.”
“You’re going to have another baby?”
“I never had one before,” she reminded him with a twinkle. “Alyssa isn’t ours.”
“I keep forgetting that. It seems like she’s always been our child. It seems like I’ve been with you forever, and now we’re going to have a baby!” He was astonished, and he couldn’t believe it. Bethany was going to have his baby!
“Yes,” she murmured as he turned to take her in his arms.
He held her close, noticed that their two hearts beat as one. And that would be the way it was from now on, two of them one. Three, counting Alyssa. Four, counting the new baby. He was humbled by the turn his life had taken in the months since he had left prison. Humbled and overjoyed that this woman had made his life worth living again.
“Oh, my sweet Bethany. How much I love you,” was all he could say as he buried his face in her hair.
It was only hours later that Bethany, wearing an ivory lace dress that she’d ordered from a bridal catalog, joined Colt in the living room of the ranch house. Rubye played the wedding march on the old upright piano, tuned especially for this occasion, as Frisco, who had done nothing but grouse about having to wear a tie since the moment he’d put one on, walked Bethany down the aisle.
Dita had been thrilled to stand up as Bethany’s only attendant, and Eddie was delighted to be given the honor of serving as Colt’s best man. Loreen held Alyssa in the front row, beaming her approval along with the others. Even Jesse James, bathed and beribboned for the occasion, was allowed to sit on the carpet beside Loreen, and no one minded that the thump of his tail occasionally punctuated the nuptial proceedings. The only one of their invited guests who wasn’t able to attend was Marcy, who had recently enrolled in a community college in Oklahoma City the week before and had sent her regrets along with the signed forms that released Alyssa to them for adoption.
“Dearly beloved,” began the minister, and Bethany thought, yes, these people are all dearly beloved, catching herself up short as the minister paused and asked her if she would have this man for her lawfully wedded husband.
“I will,” she said, gazing deep into Colt’s eyes, and she was surprised to see tears in those eyes, tears of happiness.
Colt squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. It seemed right that they were promising to be together for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as they both shall live; they were the type of people who kept promises, as Colt said, no matter what.
The rest of the ceremony was a blur to Bethany. It went by too fast. At the end, when the minister directed the groom to kiss the bride, Colt took her in his arms. He looked at her for one long searching moment, a moment of indescribable joy, before he kissed her.
Loreen stood on cue and handed Alyssa to Colt. And then he and Bethany greeted their guests as husband and wife and child—a family.
And a family, people who cared about you, was one of the things, Bethany reflected from within the circle of her husband’s arm, that you couldn’t order from any catalog.
Announcement from the Gompers Gazette, May 2, 2001
BIRTHS
On April 25—To Mr. and Mrs. Clayton McClure (Bethany Carroll Burke) and daughter Alyssa of the Banner-B Ranch, a son and brother, Clayton McClure, Junior. Clay weighed 7 lbs. 6 oz., and mother and baby are doing fine. Bethany says thanks for sending over all the fine casseroles, and she and Colt hope you’ll all stop by real soon to meet the newest member of their family.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8271-1
COWBOY WITH A SECRET
Copyright © 2001 by Pamela Browning
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Pamela Browning, Cowboy with a Secret
