Read The Rancher's Blessed Event Online
Authors: Stella Bagwell
The Rancher's Blessed Event (13 page)
Roy glanced at Justine, who was trying to smile even though she was missing her son terribly, especially with it being a holiday. “We wish he could have been here, too. But he's been working on a case that's kept him pretty much tied down.”
Across the room, Caroline chuckled slyly. “That's just what my brother is telling our parents,” she told Cooper. “Frankly I think it's a woman that has him tied up.”
“If that's the case,” Justine spoke up, “then I forgive him for staying in Texas. I'm beginning to think that boy will never find a woman who'll put up with him.”
Roy slid his arm around Justine's shoulders and gave his wife an affectionate squeeze. “It's because he's trying to find a perfect one like his mother.”
Everyone groaned and laughed and swapped a few more remarks about Charlie, then the men eventually gravitated to the living room to have coffee. As Emily watched Cooper leave with them, a pang of regret coursed through her heart. He seemed to fit in with her family as though he'd always belonged to it. Whereas Kenneth had always been moody and distant whenever he'd been around the Murdock clan. The difference between the two men was as great as night and day and she was beginning to see more and more what a drastic mistake she'd made ten years ago when she'd fallen in with Kenneth's idea to get married.
Once the men were gone from the kitchen, Justine turned to Emily and slung a loving arm around her shoulders. “Emily, you look absolutely beautiful,” Justine exclaimed. “I can't get over your hair. Isn't it lovely, Rose?”
“It is. But I'm still in shock over the coat. Where did you get it?” her mother asked.
Emily felt a blush rising to her cheeks. “Well, actually Cooper went shopping for me and this is one of the things he thought I needed.” She unbuttoned the red coat and handed it to her Aunt Chloe who had yet to say anything, but was giving her a knowing little smile.
“Emily!” Rose whirled away from the gas range to give her daughter's dress a closer look. “That dress. It looks like cashmere!”
Laughing, Chloe patted Emily's rotund middle. “It feels like cashmere, too. I'll bet our little girl in there just loves it.”
“How do you know it's going to be a girl?” Anna asked her mother as she, Ivy and Caroline pulled china and silverware from an antique buffet.
“I'm just guessing,” Chloe answered her daughter's question. Justine stepped up and placed her hands on Emily's tummy as though she were calculating the ripeness of a watermelon. “You're wrong, sis. It's a boy. See how low she's carrying it.”
Emily groaned, yet the smile on her face said how much she was enjoying the attention. “Oh, for goodness' sake, you'd think none of you had ever seen a pregnant woman before.”
“Well, we haven't seen one in a while,” Chloe exclaimed.
Laughing, Justine motioned to the three younger women. “We're still waiting for the tables to be set.”
“But we wanted to ask Emily about Cooper,” Anna complained as she waved a handful of forks at her mother. “He's gorgeous.”
“And much too old for you,” Chloe told her.
Anna turned to Emily. “Mother said he rode broncs in the PRCA, is that true? She said he was a champion!”
“That's true,” Emily said, not a bit surprised at her young niece's interest in Cooper. He had that something about him that made women, young and old, look and wonder and sigh.
“Gosh, he must live an exciting life,” Anna said with a sigh. “And to think he came back to be with you. I can't imagine a man doing that for me.”
Chloe rolled her eyes at her daughter's exaggerated comment. “That's because you haven't met the right man yet. Now you girls go get the tables ready. The food is going to get cold if we have to keep waiting on you three.”
The young women, who all happened to be different shades of redheads like their mothers, left the room. Once they were out of sight, Emily made a helpless gesture with her hands. “I should have told Anna that Cooper didn't come home for me. But I guess she'd have romantic notions in her head no matter what I said.”
“She is that age,” Chloe agreed with a resigned shake of her head. “And now that her piano concerts have her traveling from coast to coast, I can only hope she doesn't lose her head over the wrong one.”
“The same goes for my Caroline,” Justine added, then glancing to make sure there was no one else in earshot except her sisters, she said to Emily, “Okay. The girls are gone now. So you can tell your mother and your aunts how things really are.”
“Really are?” Laughing awkwardly, Emily walked over to the gas range where the baked turkey was keeping warm on a huge platter. She sniffed the delicious aroma. “Things are just what you see,” she told her. “Cooper is trying to get the ranch back in shape and I'm helping him up to a point. He won't let me do much without an argument.”
“How long is he going to stay?” Chloe asked. “He has a career men would pull their eyeteeth for. We're all surprised he's stayed away from it this long.”
Rather than look at the three older women, Emily examined every dish of food on the cabinet counter. Along with the turkey there was baked ham, candied sweet potatoes, corn bread dressing and giblet gravy, plus an endless number of salads and vegetables.
Eventually she said, “Cooper is going to stay for a while yet. Until the baby comes.”
“And what then?” Justine questioned.
Emily knew her aunts loved her very much and they were only asking her these questions out of concern for her. But Emily didn't want to talk about Cooper leaving. She didn't like to think how quiet the house would be without him. Or how it would be to get up every morning and not see his face or hear his voice. At night when she went to bed, he wouldn't be in the bedroom across the hall.
“He's going to hire a man to run the place and he's...going back to rodeoing, I guess.”
“Hmm, that doesn't make much sense to me,” Chloe said thoughtfully. “If he plans to go back to his career in rodeo, looks like he'd do it now before the finals in Las Vegas. He could hire someone to work on the ranch now as well as later. If he stays here with you, he stands to lose a lot of money.”
“I've pointed all that out to him, Aunt Chloe. But he has his own ideas.”
“And I think all those ideas are about you,” Justine remarked.
Emily groaned. For the life of her she didn't know why her relatives had these romantic ideas about her and Cooper. “You don't know what you're talking about.”
Justine rolled her eyes. “Oh, no? Just take another look at the dress you have on,” she told Emily.
Emily glanced down at the teal green sweater dress, which was cut to gently drape her growing figure. “I can see it's very nice.”
“Nice!” Justine burst out with disbelief. “I wish Roy had that much taste. The last thing he bought me was two sizes too small and was a garish orange color. He thought it would go with my hair. But I did my best to act like I loved it.”
Emily sighed. “Believe me, Cooper bought clothes for me simply because he knew I needed them. That's all there is to it. There's no other underlying reason. So please, no more trying to link the two of us together. It just isn't going to happen. Now when are we going to eat?”
As if on cue Ivy stuck her head over the batwing doors leading into the kitchen. “The tables are ready and the men are getting restless.”
“Okay honey,” Chloe told her. “We're bringing the food out now.”
Relieved the interrogation about Cooper was over, Emily picked up a bowl of fruit salad and hurried out of the room. She had almost reached the dining table when her mother caught up to her and took her to one side.
“Don't be upset with your aunts, darling,” she said in a voice for Emily's ears only. “They don't understand.”
Emily looked into her mother's gentle face. “Understand what?”
“How much you really love Cooper.”
Dinner was a long affair with as much conversation as there was food. By the time the meal was over and the dishes were being scraped, Emily was completely stuffed and terribly drowsy.
The second time she yawned, her mother waved her out of the kitchen. “We have plenty of help with the cleaning up. Go take a little nap.”
Emily followed her mother's suggestion and left the noisy kitchen, but she had no intentions of taking a nap. She found her coat and slipped out a back door of the house. The weather had warmed since early morning and though the wind was brisk on her face, it wasn't stinging cold as it could be in New Mexico at this time of year.
Jamming her hands deep into her coat pockets, she ambled out toward the cattle pens, then on toward the stables. When she entered one of the horse barns, she was surprised to find Cooper strolling down the long, sawdust covered alleyway.
The big door creaked as she shut it behind her. Hearing it, Cooper turned, then seeing it was her, he stood and waited until she caught up to him.
As Emily made her way down the alleyway to where he was standing, she couldn't help but notice how sexy he looked today in a collarless white shirt, blue jeans and brown lambskin jacket. But even when Cooper was dressed in flannel shirts, rough-out chaps and muddy boots he managed to stir her senses.
“I thought you were watching the football game with the rest of the men folk,” she said.
“I was. But after the score became one-sided I got bored.”
She cast him a knowing little grin. “And you got an itch to look at the horses.”
He chuckled. “Okay, a little itch.” He walked over to the nearest stall and peered over the gate at a paint yearling. “What a beauty this one is going to be. Does your Aunt Chloe race very many horses now?”
Emily joined him at the stall. “She holds it down to only the bigger futurity races. Which is quite a job in itself. But Chloe would be lost if she wasn't working with her horses.”
He looked away from the paint and over the rest of the building. “I don't think I've ever seen such a magnificent ranch. Does it belong solely to Wyatt and Chloe now?”
Emily shook her head. “Even though Chloe and Wyatt are the ones who live here, Mom and Justine are still part owners, too. It's a joint family thing with the sisters and their husbands. Between the six of them, they've turned it into a fine ranch.”
“Fine,” he said with a grunt of amusement. “This place is more than fine, it's something else. They must be very proud of it.”
Sighing, she rested her shoulder against the stall door. “When I first saw this ranch it wasn't anything like it is now. In fact, my mom and her sisters were very close to losing it. I'm sure I've told you about the twins' birth mother setting fire to the place. Hundreds of acres were scorched black. I was only thirteen then, but I still remember it vividly. Those were rough times.”
And she was still having rough times, Cooper thought as he looked at her quiet face. It was no wonder she'd grown bitter. After a while a person had to harden themselves just to survive.
“You know, Emily, thisâ” he made a motion with his hand around the stables “âis what I always wanted the Diamond D to be. When I was much younger, I had all sorts of dreams to make the old Dunn place grow. That's why I left, to earn the money.”
For long moments his eyes searched hers. “Why do you think I was such a jerk for wanting more than what I had?”
“Because you were enough for me, Cooper. I wanted to be enough for you. The rest... if we needed it... would come later.”
If Cooper had known what he knew now, he probably would have made different choices back then. Especially knowing she'd been pregnant with their child. Yet he refused to feel guilty about his wants. They had all been for her. Even now there were so many things he would like to give her. To him, that was a part of loving someone.
“I don't want to argue about this, Emily. I didn't mean to get into any of it in the first place.”
“So why did you? Today of all days, we're supposed to be thankful and happy for what we have.”
Emily was right, Cooper thought. But something about being with Emily's family today had reminded him of all the wonderful things he'd missed. And all those he would never have.
“Tell me, Emily, what do we have? Sure, we have our health. I do thank God for that. We both own a run-down ranch. And you have a baby on the way. But we don't have each other. And we never will.” His expression bitter, he made a motion with his hand toward the direction of the house. “We'll never have what your parents have. Or your aunts and uncles.”
Fury rose inside Emily and begged her palm to slap his face. “And whose choice was that, Cooper?”
“Yours! You made it ten years ago when you married my brother!”
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