The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (2 page)

“It was all real. I’m really from Silverton, Texas. I really was a basketball coach.
I really did grow up on a ranch, and my name is really Natalie Clark. I really had
this baby nine weeks ago and his name is Joshua and I’m really for damn sure leaving
as soon as I get up from this table. You are a jackass, Lucas Allen, for acting like
this over a baby.”

“You should have told me. Why didn’t you?”

She shrugged. “Because I was in denial.”

He still looked like he could chew up full-grown cedar trees and spit out Tinkertoys.

She went on, “So what are you most pissed about? That I didn’t tell you or that your
homecoming wasn’t perfect?”

He shot a dirty look across the table. “I’m pissed because I thought we were close
enough you could tell me anything.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any secrets that you didn’t tell me, do you?” she asked.

“I don’t have any kids, if that’s what you are asking. Why’d you arrive here early
anyway? I had things planned out a helluva lot different.”

“So did I! I’m part of the surprise. Hazel called me last week and we’ve talked every
day since. She wanted me to be here when you got home and together we were going to
cook up all your favorite foods and fix a banner across the front porch posts welcoming
you home.”

“I don’t believe you. I talked about you to Hazel, but I never gave her your phone
number or email address or anything like that.”

“FYI, honey, there is only one Natalie Clark in Silverton, Texas, and my home phone
number is in the telephone directory.” Her phone rang and she jerked it out of her
pocket. She didn’t even check the ID before she put it to her ear and said, “Hello.”

“Natalie, you sound like shit,” Hazel said.

“Is your hip broken?”

“Hell, no! I’m too mean to break a hip. My daughter says I’m going home with her for
a month to get well. You’ve got to promise me that…”

“He’s home, Hazel. He came early to surprise everyone,” she said.

“Well, shit! Guess it can’t be helped. Is he pissed about the baby or happy?”

“Pissed as hell,” Natalie said.

“You are staying or I’m not going, and if I fall again, this old hip will break. So
he can damn sure get over it. If you don’t stay, they’ll burn down the house trying
to cook and the bathroom will go to mildew and ruin, and I don’t even want to think
about the laundry. Promise me right now, damn it!” Hazel said.

Natalie looked across the table, her blue eyes locking with Lucas’s brown ones. It
would serve him right for being such a self-righteous son of a bitch.

“Promise!” Hazel yelled.

“I’ll think about it until tomorrow morning,” she said.

“Fair enough. I’m supposed to go home with Willa Ruth tomorrow morning. If you go,
I’m comin’ home and he ain’t seen pissed if I have to come home,” she said. “Now give
him the phone.”

Natalie put it on the table and gave it a shove. “Hazel wants to talk to you.”

“Well, shit, Hazel, what was I supposed to think?” he said after a full minute of
listening.

“Okay, okay! I will, but I don’t have to like it.” He shoved the phone back toward
her. “She says that you are staying until she comes home in a month.”

“What do you say?”

“Doesn’t look like my opinion on anything means much around here anymore.”

She raised a shoulder. “That’ll teach you not to leave.”

“Hazel—was she surprised when you showed up with a baby?”

“I told her about Joshua before I came. She said that you had always loved babies
and that you wouldn’t have a problem with him. Guess she didn’t know you as well as
she thought,” Natalie said.

“How’d she fall, anyway? I told her not to get up on that step stool. She gets light-headed.”

Natalie set the bottle to one side and repositioned Joshua to burp him. She gently
patted his back. “She wasn’t climbing on a step stool. We were talking, and she remembered
a cake she had in the oven for supper. She hurried out to the kitchen, tripped over
a chair, and fell. We called the hospital and they sent an ambulance. It took twenty
minutes for them to get here and the whole time she begged me to stay.”

Grady pushed his way in the back door. “There’s a dead coyote out by the dog pens
and them pesky pups are carryin’ on like they killed it.”

“I shot it,” Natalie said.

“Good for you.” Grady noticed Lucas and his blue eyes widened.

Lucas stood up and they met in the middle of the kitchen like two big grizzly bears
in a fierce hug. Finally, Grady pushed back but kept his hands on Lucas’s shoulders
and looked at him from toe to forehead.

“Don’t look too worse for the wear. You’re early. We had a big welcome home all planned
out. Did you sign the papers sayin’ you are finished with all that soldier shit?”

A big grin covered Lucas’s face.

That was her Lucas.

Not the brooding one who’d scared the bejesus out of her in the backyard.

“Yes, they are signed, sealed, and delivered. My guard time is officially over. I
won’t be reenlisting this time,” Lucas said.

“Well hot damn! I’m too old to run this ranch for a whole year by myself.” Grady was
near six feet tall, slim as a rail fence, and gray-haired. His face was a study in
wrinkles of every length and depth with bright blue eyes set deep in a bed of crow’s-feet.

“You didn’t run it by yourself. Dad and Gramps helped. But you could run it standing
on your head and cross-eyed.”

Grady looked over at Natalie. “Surprised you, did he?”

Natalie nodded. “Yes, he certainly did.”

Grady went to the cabinet and poured a mug of coffee. “What’d Josh think of him? Lucas
has always been good with babies and animals.”

“He’s being pissy,” Natalie said.

Grady’s smile got bigger. “Lucas or Josh?”

“Lucas.”

“Stop tattling,” Lucas said.

“I’m not tattling. I’m stating facts. You
are
pissy.”

Lucas threw up both palms. “Well, Jesus, I’ve got a right to be, don’t I? Come home
and no one is here and you got a baby you didn’t tell me about.”

“Trouble in paradise.” Grady chuckled.

“Trouble in hell. She’s a she-devil,” Lucas said.

“Well, darlin’ you are definitely not an angel,” Natalie said. “So stop pouting.”

“I do not pout.” He accentuated each word with a poke of his forefinger toward her.

She slapped his hand and heat radiated from her fingers all the way to the core of
her being. Shit fire! It was a damn good thing he hadn’t kissed her or the whole ranch
would have gone up in instant blazes.

“Don’t you slap me,” Lucas said.

“Quit acting like a child,” she said.

Grady clapped his hands. “My turn if you two can stop carryin’ on like teenagers.
Jack called a few minutes ago. Hazel is bossing everyone in the hospital, so he’s
coming on home before the snowstorm hits big-time. You hungry, Lucas? He gets real
touchy when he’s hungry, Natalie. All us Allen men are like that. We ain’t fit to
live with if you don’t keep us fed. That’s probably why he’s so irritable.”

“I’m starving because I didn’t eat supper. I wanted home-cooked Hazel-type food,”
he said.

“Well, it ain’t Hazel food but it’s damn sure good. This little lady made lasagna
for supper and let me tell you, cowboy, it’s better than that stuff you buy in a restaurant,”
Grady told him. “Come on over here and take a look.”

Lucas followed him.

Grady reached up into the cabinet and handed him a plate. “We’re lucky she was here
when Hazel fell. Reach over there under that towel and get a chunk of that Italian
bread she stirred up from scratch. Did she tell you that she’s been cookin’ since
she was a little girl?”

“She mentioned it.” He dug a slab of lasagna out from the dish sitting on the back
of the stove.

Of course she’d mentioned it! They’d shared all kinds of information about each other
in the past months. She knew what kind of food he liked, that he woke up grouchy every
morning, that he liked strawberries but hated blueberries, and that he loved basketball
but wasn’t a big football fan.

Grady carried his coffee to the table and sat down. “So y’all have met each other
now. You going to work through this first shock or what?”

***

Lucas couldn’t tell Grady how disappointed he was.

“Well?” Grady asked.

“We’re
still
in shock.” Natalie bent to pick up the baby and there was a perfectly rounded bottom
staring right at Lucas. The way she filled out those jeans created a stirring both
physically and emotionally. He could have worked past the surprise if it hadn’t been
for that baby. “I’m going to take Joshua back to the bedroom and settle him down for
the night.”

Grady set his coffee cup on the table and hurried over to her side. “I’ll take the
crib back there for you. Lucas needs to eat before that lasagna gets cold. Got to
admit though, it’s good enough that I’d eat it right out of the fridge.”

Lucas had only taken two bites when Grady was back at the other side of the table.
“What in the hell is the matter with you? I’ve never seen you so rude or seen you
pout before in your whole life.”

“I am not pouting, Grady. Eleven months that woman and I have been talking almost
every day and she didn’t say a word about that baby. Now she says she was in denial,
whatever the hell that means. Maybe she doesn’t even know who the kid belongs to and
that’s why she didn’t tell me.” The words spewed out like hot lava.

One of Grady’s shoulders hiked up a few inches. “You’ll have to ask her that for yourself.
I figured you two told each other everything the way you talked about her all the
time.”

“I thought we had. Now I wonder if it was all just a bunch of lies.”

“She don’t strike me as the type to tell a pack of lies, and there might be a reason
she didn’t tell you about Joshua. Ask her and stop your brooding,” Grady said.

“I don’t pout and I can’t think of a single reason that she’d keep something as big
as a baby secret.”

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway. A good strong machete couldn’t have
sliced through the tension between them. Her cobalt blue eyes flashed and her jaw
worked like she was chewing gum. He checked to see if she had that pistol still stuck
in her waistband, but it was gone, thank God.

“I’ve got something to say,” she said through clenched teeth.

He pushed back his plate and followed her into the dark den just beyond the big country
kitchen. She stopped in the middle of the floor and turned around so quick that he
plowed right into her. Her hands went instinctively to his chest and electricity lit
up the room as sparks sizzled around them like lightning streaks. His hands wrapped
around her waist, but as soon as they were both steady he took two steps back.

“So?” he asked.

She shut him up when she shoved one finger under his nose and said, “I’m not a liar.
Everything we shared was the gospel, honest truth. The only sin of omission I have
to repent for is Joshua. And I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t believe it myself.
Then I didn’t know how to tell you. There I was six months pregnant and you damn sure
wouldn’t believe me when I told you that I’d been in denial about it. You’d have thought
I was one of those cyber bimbos that lie about everything.”

“And you’re not?” he asked.

Natalie really did not like him right then. He’d been such a sweetheart the past eleven
months. Lord, she’d have curled up and died without him to talk her through the tough
times. How in the devil could a man as sensitive and kind as Lucas change because
of a little baby?

“I am not, and I do know who Joshua belongs to. Believe me, I know very well,” she
said in a high voice. “It takes a big man to accept a single mother and a baby. I’d
hoped you’d be that big. I was wrong. I’m going to call Hazel and tell her to come
home instead of going with her daughter. I won’t live under the same roof with you
for a whole month.”

Her finger annoyed him worse than all the sand in Kuwait. He pushed it away. “Grow
up. We don’t have to like each other for you to take on the job of cook and housekeeper.
And who is the father?”

She whispered, “After the comment you made, you don’t deserve to know. You really
are a jackass, but I couldn’t have made it through this past eleven months without
you. You were my stability. Even when times got tough, I could depend on you to be
there just before I went to bed at night. Without that I don’t know that I could have
ever lived through Drew’s death or losing my job. He’d been my best friend since we
were toddlers and I still miss him so much. Good night.” She brushed the flowing tears
from her cheeks with the back of her hand and headed out of the room in long strides.

He watched her go and knew exactly how she felt. Drew had been his best friend from
the time that the man settled into the bunk right above his. The camaraderie over
there was something that civilians could never understand. Drew talked about Silverton,
Texas, a little town up on the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon and being able to see
nothing but cotton fields and sky in that part of the country. But mostly he’d talked
about his best friend, Natalie Clark, those next two weeks. He’d told them stories
about her that sounded outrageous, but after the pistol, the coyote, and the way that
she didn’t back down an inch from him, Lucas believed every one of them now.

Lucas eased down into his favorite recliner and for the first time he felt like he’d
come home. What in the hell was he going to do? The attraction was there just like
he’d thought it would be, but he could fight that until Hazel came back home.

He shut his eyes. Damn, that woman was a spitfire!

“Overwhelmed?” Grady asked from the doorway.

“Yes,” he said softly.

***

Natalie curled up in a ball on the bed and wept into a pillow. She needed Drew to
tell her what to do and he wasn’t there. He was buried at Arlington and his oldest
sister had gotten the medal they gave him posthumously.