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Authors: Stella Bagwell

BOOK: The Rancher's Blessed Event
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“You're right. It will. But wouldn't it make more sense for you to simply hire the work done?”
He shrugged while his eyes made a shrewd assessment of her face. “Actually, the idea of doing some good ol' outdoor manual labor appeals to me.”
“Sure,” she said with dry disbelief. “This from a man who earns his living in eight-second intervals.”
Even though she was being calm enough and sensible enough, Cooper could see that Emily didn't want him here. She either hated him, he concluded, or she was actually worried about what others might think of them living in the same house together.
“You've made it obvious you don't want me here, Emily. And I'll tell you something else. I'm not all that sure I want to be here.” His gray eyes pinned hers. “You and I aren't exactly two people who should be thrown together as partners. But like it or not, we are.”
She put down her fork and crumpled her dirty napkin. “I can live with us both owning the ranch. As long as you're a silent partner.”
He very nearly laughed and for a split second Emily wished that ten years had never passed and she was back in that time when she'd loved and laughed and hoped along with him.
“I never was good at keeping my mouth shut,” he said, while shoveling the last of the potato salad from his plate. “But I'll consider your suggestion. Maybe we can work something out so you won't have to put up with me and I won't have to miss the last of the rodeo season.”
Dear God, she silently prayed, maybe he was finally listening to her. Cooper had to understand the two of them weren't meant to be working partners or partners of any sort. He needed to leave here before the past came crashing in on both of them.
Chapter Three
M
inutes later at the hay barn, Cooper ordered Emily to stand to one side while he loaded the back of an old work truck with several bales of alfalfa and three hundred pounds of caked feed.
As she watched him lift the heavy bales of hay, she knew it was a job she shouldn't be doing. Especially with her history of miscarriage. But she wasn't about to let Cooper know any part of what had happened to her after he'd left the ranch. Today she would accept his help and be grateful for it and hopefully by tomorrow she could persuade him to leave the Diamond D in her care. Maybe he'd stay away for another ten years.
If anything, the snowfall had grown heavier. As the old truck jostled over a rutted track toward the feeding ground, the wipers struggled to scrape away the fat flakes of ice sticking to the windshield.
Any other time, Emily would have enjoyed seeing the sage and pinon decorated in white, but today she hardly noticed the falling snow. Cooper had distracted her to say the least.
“Are you cold?”
His question caused her to glance across the seat at him. “I'm okay.”
He twisted the knob on the heater to a warmer setting. “Are you sure this heater even works? The air blowing from the defrost vents feels like it's coming off the north pole.”
“What do you expect in this weather?”
He expected his brother would have a decent work truck with a heater. In bad weather it wasn't safe for a person to get this far away from the ranch without a source of heat.
“Everything on this damn place is about to fall apart!” he muttered.
Including her, Emily thought, as she huddled inside her old wool work coat and jammed her gloved hands between her legs.
“You've just gotten soft,” she told him.
He snorted. “I admit I've been gone from this place for a long time, but since then I damn well haven't gone soft or lazy. Unlike somebody else around here.”
Emily whipped around on the seat to face him. “If you're implying I have, then just keep your mouth shut! You don't know what I've been doing since you've been gone!”
His eyes bored into her. “Well, if you and Kenneth did all that much work, I sure as hell would like to see it. So far there's not a building, a shed or a fence on this property that looks as though it's had any attention in years!”
She didn't know why he'd suddenly gotten so angry. Just because the heater was lukewarm didn't warrant this sort of outburst from him.
“I told you Kenneth lost interest.”
“What was he doing with his time?”
The dry look she shot him said, you ought to know. “He spent his time with the horses. Sorta like someone else who used to live here.”
The sheepish expression stealing over his face told Emily she hadn't given him the answer he was expecting.
Muttering a curse under his breath, he braked the old truck to a halt. A short distance away were a group of wooden feed troughs sheltered from the north wind by a stand of juniper and piñon pine.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I keep wondering why you've hung around here for so long.”
Emily quickly looked away from him and out the window. The cattle were several rises over from them, but the animals had heard the truck and were now making their way in a hungry trot toward the feed grounds.
“Like I told you this morning, I've hung around because this is my home. And Kenneth was my husband.”
He studied the back of her old black hat and the blond braid lying against her ranch coat. The garment had once been dark brown but it had obviously been washed and worn until the color now resembled dead grass. Her hair was still beautiful, but it looked as though she'd trimmed it herself. Cooper wondered how long it had been since she'd spent time just for herself, doing those feminine things women do with their skin and hair and nails.
A faint scowl on his face, Cooper said, “It appears to me as if he wasn't being all that good of one. Or is that simply what you want me to believe?”
His question caused tears to collect in Emily's throat. More than anything she didn't want to belittle Kenneth to him. At one time the man had seemed to love her. And up until the past couple of years, he'd been a decent husband to her. It hadn't been his fault that she'd failed him somewhere along the way.
“Your brother was a good man,” she said quietly. “He did...the best he could.”
Before Cooper was able to respond, Emily climbed out of the truck and hurried around to the tailgate. She was reaching for a sack of feed when his hands came down on her shoulders.
“Move out of the way. I'll do this.”
Digging in her boot heels, she twisted her head around enough to see his face. “You're supposed to be helping. Not giving orders.”
“When did you get so damn stubborn?”
Her lips parted to answer, but suddenly his grip on her shoulders eased. The expression on his face softened and she forgot all about his question. For the first time in years, Cooper was touching her as though he really meant it and all Emily wanted to do was turn and bury her face in his chest, beg him to hold her and never let her go.
“Cooper, I—”
Troubled by the sudden charge of awareness between them, Cooper quickly thrust her aside and slung the fifty-pound sack of feed over his shoulder.
“If you want to do something, follow me and start spreading the cake while I get the other sacks,” he said gruffly.
Relieved that he'd snapped her back to reality, Emily started after him. He set the sack of feed at one end of the nearest trough, then started to rip the string to open it.
“I'll do that,” Emily quickly offered. “You go get the rest of the sacks before all the cattle get here. With this bit of snow on the ground they're going to be hungry and rowdy.”
“Are any of them mean?”
“No,” she assured him. “I promise you won't have to make a mad dash for the truck.”
To Emily's surprise he grinned. “I'll keep an eye out anyway,” he told her.
In a matter of moments the bawling steers reached the feed grounds and swarmed Emily. Working her way through the hungry cattle, she poured a long string of hard green pellets down the center of the wooden trough.
Once the sack was empty, she began walking to the next trough where Cooper had already placed another sack.
In their eagerness to be fed, the steers trotted ahead and around her. Emily pushed several animals out of her path, but before she was aware of the danger behind her she was sent sprawling to the ground.
The instant Cooper saw Emily fall, he tossed the sack from his shoulder and ran to her. She was lying facedown. A few feet away her hat had been stomped into the dirt and snow.
His heart pounding with fear, Cooper knelt over her and gently touched the back of her head. “Emily! My God, are you all right?”
Groaning, she tried to lever herself off the frozen ground. Her lungs were on fire and her head whirled like a kaleidoscope.
“I think... I...”
Carefully Cooper eased her onto her back, then cradled her head in the crook of his arm. “Try to breathe a little,” he instructed. “It'll come back to you.”
Her shocked lungs finally managed to draw in more oxygen. As they did, her scrambled senses began to settle back into place. She glanced at the motley herd of cattle milling around them, then up at Cooper's face.
“What happened?”
Gently he brushed the tangled blond hair away from her face. “A steer hit you from behind and knocked you down. How do you feel now? Do you think you're okay? Does anything feel broken?”
Broken? Oh dear Lord, the baby! What had the fall done to it?
What little bit of color that had been returning to Emily's face instantly vanished. “I don't know!” she said in a panicked rush.
He frowned “What do you mean, you don't know? Can't you tell me whether you're hurting or not?”
“I'm not hurting.”
He looked relieved. “Then do you want to try to stand up now?”
She shook her head and tears suddenly collected in her eyes. The baby was everything to her. She couldn't lose it now! “I'm afraid,” she whispered.
“Emily, you're not making sense. What are you afraid of? I'll keep the cattle away.”
Shaking her head, she bit her lip and glanced away from him. She had to tell him. She couldn't keep her condition from him now. God help her, she might need medical attention. “I'm afraid—for my baby.”
He stared at her in stunned disbelief. “Baby? My Lord, are you telling me you're pregnant?”
Slowly she turned her head until her blue eyes were gazing straight into his. “Yes.”
His face like granite, Cooper silently. lifted her in his arms and carried her to the truck.
 
“Emily, the best thing you can do now is go home, relax and try not to worry. The results of the ultrasound tell me your baby's heart is beating normally and everything appears to be intact.”
Clutching the paper gown against her, Emily looked worriedly up at Dr. Bellamy. The physician was in his seventies, completely white headed and possessed a kindly face, which could normally put the most harried hypochondriac at ease. He'd been her aunt Justine's boss for nearly twenty-five years and during that time he'd delivered her daughter, Caroline, and Emily's younger brother, Ethan. He'd also delivered her aunt Chloe's daughter, Ivy.
“Does that mean the fall didn't hurt the baby?”
Smiling, he gently patted her shoulder. “That's exactly what I'm saying.”
With everything inside her, Emily prayed he was right. To have a child of her own was what she'd dreamed and longed for down through the years. If something happened now she didn't know if she could go on.
She tried to relax and swallow the lump of fear in her throat. “But I fell so hard the wind was knocked from me. I can't believe it didn't hurt something.”
Seeing her need for extra reassurance, Dr. Bellamy shook his head. “Emily, even though we doctors have all sorts of new technology and knowledge at our fingertips, there's still a lot of things we'll never know. Especially when it comes to pregnancies. A fall on a feather bed can cause some women to miscarry, while others are unaffected by car wrecks and falls from high places. Just be grateful that you appear to be in the latter category.”
“But I've miscarried before,” she countered in a voice hushed with fear. “Doesn't that mean—”
The doctor folded his arms across his chest and made a tsking noise with his tongue. “It simply means something was wrong with that particular pregnancy,” the doctor interrupted her worried argument. “It doesn't mean anything will be wrong with this one.”
Walking over to a cabinet counter, he picked up her file. “Now get dressed and go home. Unless something unexpected comes up, which I very much doubt, I'll see you at your next regular checkup.”
Emily nodded that she would obey, then thanked him as he went out the examining room door.
Once she was dressed, she found Cooper in the waiting room. From the stoic look on his face it was impossible for Emily to tell what he'd been thinking, however, the moment he spotted her he rose and walked to meet her.
“I'm ready to go home,” she told him.
“What did the doctor say?”
Emily figured his question was more perfunctory than anything. From the moment she'd told him about her pregnancy, she'd felt him pulling away, distancing himself from her. She didn't really understand why. Unless it was because he thought she'd cheated Kenneth out of having a child by waiting so late in life to have one. As if she'd had any control over the matter, she thought bitterly.
“He said to go home and relax. He thinks I'm going to be fine.”
His expression didn't alter. “Thinks? He doesn't know?”
“Well, he feels pretty certain the both of us are going to be okay. But of course doctors can't always be a hundred percent sure. Especially where pregnancies are concerned.”
She walked over to a hall tree and took down her coat. Once she'd pulled it on and buttoned it, she walked back to him. “We can go now. There's nothing else I need to do here at the clinic.”
“It's all right for you to walk?”
“I can do anything I want except lift heavy objects.”
As if that answered his question completely, she turned and started out of the clinic. Cooper followed and after she'd climbed onto the bench seat in his pickup, he took his place behind the wheel.

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