His Heart for the Trusting (5 page)

Sara settled
down so close that the scent of her drifted to him, making him dizzy.  What he
was thinking had nothing to do with the baby in his arms and everything to do
with the woman whose smooth and velvety voice took him by command.

“If you think
you'll find the answers you want by going to Baltimore, then that is what you
should do.  But if you look at Jonathan and know in your heart that he is your
son, what more proof do you need?”

Jonathan was
impossibly lost in his arms.  Mitch had helped birth many a farm animal, but
he'd never held something so small and wondrously perplexing in his life.  How
could this tiny creature have come from him?  It just didn't make any sense.

A lump lodged
in his throat and seemed impossibly hard to swallow.  “He does kinda look like
me, doesn't he?”

Sara offered
him a lopsided smile.  “Dead ringer.”

She laughed
softly, and Mitch's head started spinning.  There was something acutely
appealing about a woman who could read a man's mind the way Sara was reading
him right now.  It made him want to scoop her up into his arms and hold her,
make the connection between them physical, real.  This heady emotional zing was
too much.   

There was
this...air between them, sizzling with an electric current that could burn the
room down to ash.  And she was looking up at him with light dancing in her rich
brown eyes.  All Mitch could think about was kissing her.

Jonathan
stirred in his arms, kicking and adjusting himself in his sleep and the
connection was severed.

“You're going
to need to get a bed for him,” Sara said as she lightly stroked the
almost-not-there hair on the baby's head.

Mitch swallowed
hard.  “Mandy had a cradle readied at the house for her baby.  Beau started
building it the moment he learned she was pregnant.  He brought it in to use
tonight.”

“Jonathan won't
be in a cradle for too long.  Babies grow quickly.  Besides, Mandy is going to
need it soon anyway.”

“I'll build him
a crib.”

He didn't know
why, but this moment felt strangely familiar, as if he'd been away on a journey
and had just returned home after a long time.  But that was ridiculous.  Any
familiarity he had with Sara had to be conjured up from memories of when he'd
come to The Double T, before she'd run away. 

He watched from
the other side of the dark room as Sara put Jonathan in his cradle and rocked
him.  She softly sang a tune that was foreign to him; in a tongue he'd only
heard when he was among the Apache people. 

He'd attended
countless rodeos with his grandfather, but only one on the reservation a few
years back when Beau was still riding bronc.  Other than that, and the bits
he'd learned from knowing Alice these last ten years, he knew nothing of the Apache
culture. 

There was
something earthy and pure about Sara, singing in her native tongue, caring for
his son. 

His son. 

He was going to
have to get use to that…fast.

# # #

Chapter Three

It had been
almost two weeks since Jonathan had arrived in his life and Sara had moved into
his home.  Mitch tried to hold onto the belief that this was in fact his son,
but somehow, he just couldn't feel it.  After a day of vaccines and
veterinarian visits for the new horses he'd bought at auction, he was tired and
looking forward to nothing more than going back to the quiet house he'd started
renovating four months ago. 

Proposing that
he take the wild horses he bought at auction, gentling some for use on the
ranch, and some for Beau and Hank's new rodeo school, had changed Mitch from a
ranch hand to a partner at the Double T.  Not only did he have a stake in the
ranch now, he'd moved out of the bunkhouse he'd lived in with the other hands,
and moved into the old foreman's house that was in need of repair.  Mitch
didn't care though.  He had his dreams, and being able to pocket the money from
the sale of horses the Double T passed on made it possible for Mitch to be able
to buy his own spread sooner.  That was his real dream.

Since Beau and
Mandy had passed on Hank's offer to give them the foreman's house, instead
opting to build their own home deeper into the ranch by the old creek, the
house became his.  He never minded the work of gutting it, hammering in new
wallboard, room by room, because it was now his home.  At the end of a hard
day, he went back to the solitude of stripping walls and pulling out whatever
unsalvageable wood and trim that remained. 

But his home
wasn't the same as it was four months ago.  In fact, it was a far cry from
anything he'd imagined.  Things had changed.  Drastically.  Everything now
revolved around a little boy who, at the moment, was as scared and disjointed
as he felt. 

Now, instead of
being able to work at his leisure, Mitch couldn't run power tools in the house
if the baby was sleeping.  And Sara seemed to bring color and life to his
sparse decor with odds and ends she'd brought back with her from Los Angeles.

“A child's mind
is stimulated by color and music,” she'd said when she asked if she could put
up a few things to give the place some interest.

Mitch had to
admit the house did look more inviting, not to mention lived in.  Since he'd
always taken his meals with the rest of the hands at the main house, he didn't
feel the need to fill his cabinets with too many dishes or glassware.  Now his
kitchen was filled to overflowing with breakables; crystal, fancy china and
vases. Who would have thought?

He heard Sara
singing softly when he walked through the door.  She immediately stopped as
soon as she saw him.

“Did you
already have something to eat?” Mitch asked.

“No, I was
waiting for you.  Jonathan kept me busy and I wasn't able to get started until
a little while ago.”

He peered down
at the dinner already placed on the table in the middle of two place settings. 
“You made this for me?”

“It's going to
be a few more months before Jonathan can eat steak and potatoes.”

The table was
set with white linen, and napkins that had a sewn on design, and silverware
that he knew hadn't come from his kitchen.

“These are
different.  Are they new?” he asked, picking up one of the napkins.

“No.  More
boxes arrived from California today.”

“More?”

She chuckled at
what must have been a funny expression he'd made.  “This is the last of it.  I
promise you.  Are you sure you don't mind me putting these things out?  You
didn't have a table cloth and—”

“No, it looks
nice.”

She smiled her
pleasure and something warm and wonderful spread through him.  Was it always
going to be like this?  Sure, he found Sara attractive.  Okay, in a big way he
was attracted to the woman.  He could admit it.  But his palms didn't have to
get all sweaty just because she was in the room.  He didn't have to go dizzy
just seeing her face light up with a smile.

“It was fun opening
the boxes, and taking out the china and fine linens.  It made things seem real,
you know?  Like, 'I'm no longer in Los Angeles, I'm home.'  Feels kind of
good.”

“I guess that
would bring it home, wouldn't it,” he said lamely. 

Miss
Hollywood.  That's what she was.  She may have grown up on a reservation, but
Sara had changed into a different woman than most of the girls he knew around
these parts.  A certain glamour about her was strikingly her.  She appreciated
the kind of fine things that only money could buy. 

Yeah, he liked
nice things too, but that could come later when he got his business breeding
and training horses up and running.  He didn't care much about the frilly
things most women enjoyed.  He just liked the women in general.  But since Jonathan's
arrival, there hadn't been much opportunity to enjoy anyone but the woman with
him right now.  Somehow, that suited him just fine.

He took the
time to wash up before they both sat down to eat.  The meal of steak and
potatoes was a welcome sight and had his stomach making all kinds of noises as
he breathed in the inviting smell.  The first night Sara had cooked dinner,
she'd made some fancy dish with squid that had a name Mitch still couldn't get
right, and an appetizer with uncooked fish.  He was hungry and it tasted good
enough, but he could tell she knew it wasn't his thing. 

Tonight she'd
grilled a steak and prepared mashed potatoes; a hardy meal.  After that first
night, he wasn't quite sure what to expect from someone who ate raw fish on a
regular basis, but steak and potatoes tasted like it always did. 

Things were
getting back to normal again.

The
conversation during dinner was mostly small talk about her plans to open a
preschool on the reservation and bring back the stories of her Apache culture. 
Mitch talked of his experience gentling horses and changes in the ranch over
the past year. 

After dinner,
when all he wanted to do was head out into the workshop to finish up Jonathan's
crib, Sara instead shooed him out of the kitchen to take a shower and change so
he could give Jonathan his nightly bottle-feeding.  Mitch knew what she was
doing, forcing this quality time thing.  Bonding is what she'd called it.

Hell, that was
fine.  Jonathan was his son after all.  But Mitch couldn't help his feelings no
matter how many bottles of formula he fed the baby.  To Mitch, Jonathan still
seemed so foreign.  Still so strange, it scared him.  

When he'd
finished giving Jonathan his nightly bottle, and the baby was deep into a
formula-induced sleep, Mitch set him in the cradle in Sara's room, paying
particular care that Jonathan was propped up on his side as Sara instructed. 
Then he went down stairs intending to go to the workshop, but found his way
into the kitchen.  He found Sara there, seated at the table with a pile of baby
clothes covering it.

“You're getting
better at it,” Sara said, not looking up at him when he walked in.

He took a moment
to look at her.  Really look at her.  Her hair was pulled back in some sort of
a wide white headband that made a striking contrast to her almost black hair
and the gold hoop earrings she wore.  The silk blouse and flowing slacks
billowed, hiding the slender curves he knew were there.  On her feet, she wore
a pair of gold sandals. 

For the first
time, he realized he had never seen Sara in a pair of blue jeans.  He was going
to have to buy her a pair of cowboy boots just to keep her from killing herself
walking around the ranch in those sandals.

“How can you
tell?” he finally asked.

“You didn't
call me once to come rescue you.”  She lifted her face to him then and he saw
the slight tilt in her full lips.  His head went into a cataclysmic spin and
his heart hammered.  How could one woman affect him so strongly?

“Maybe he's
getting used to me.”

“He's not the
only one.”

Mitch couldn't
help but smile.  He liked that about Sara.  He never wondered what she was
thinking.  She'd let you know in her subtle way.  It was a far cry from all the
secrets Lillian had kept from him.

“What are you
doing?” he asked as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of
orange juice.

She kept her
concentration on the clothes, cocking her head to one side as she placed one
outfit on top of another, then discarding one only to do it all again with
another outfit.  When she decided on a piece, she started cutting it into a
square.

“Jonathan
doesn't fit in this outfit anymore.”

“Already?” 
He'd practically croaked out the word.  “They haven't even been washed once.”

She chuckled. 
“Twice actually.  Babies grow fast at this age.  I could change his outfit
every time I change his diaper just to get some wear out of his clothes and
he’d still outgrown them before they wear out.”

“So what are
you doing with them?”

“I thought I'd
start a quilt.  I can cut squares out of the clothes that don't fit him
anymore.  It won't be long before I have enough fabric to finish it.  Years
from now you'll be able to look back on this quilt and picture him as he is
now, so tiny and innocent.  It'll help you keep your sanity when he's bent on
destroying the place and getting into trouble like most young cowboys.”

Mitch hooked
his thumbs in the front pocket of his jeans and leaned against the counter. 
“Not my boy,” he said, a bit of pride making him grin.

“Yeah, right.”

Miss Hollywood.

“What did you
say?”

Sara was
looking at him directly now, having abandoned the swatches of fabric she'd been
intent on cutting and arranging when he walked into the room.  Mitch hadn't
realized he'd said the words aloud until Sara lifted her wide brown eyes at
him, casting him a cautious, quizzical look.

“You're not
like the girls I've know from around here.  You dress like a model out of some
glamour magazine.”

“Really?  I
hadn't seen any of those magazines lying around the house,” she said dryly.

“All I need is
eyes.  And I have two very healthy ones.”

“I'm sure.”

“You're sitting
there all fancy while you're cutting squares for a quilt.  It's quite a
contrast.”

He'd upset
her.  That much was evident by the sudden tightness in her voice and the
stiffness in her movement.

“Clothes are
just the outer shell.  There's much more to me.”

“I'm sure there
is.  That's something I'd like to discover.”

“That's not
likely to happen.”

He shook his
head at his stupidity.  “I offended you and I didn't mean to.  I'm sorry about
that.  I just...hadn't pictured having a woman as beautiful as you in my home
making a baby blanket for my kid.”

“Backpedaling
won't help.”

“How about
this, Sara?  I find you very intriguing and I'd like to get to know you
better.”