A Conard County Baby Read online

  He got that, but what he’d never wanted to admit, except in the depths of his heart, was how much that hurt. She was his daughter. He should have been part of her life, and she of his. He’d tried to get her to spend summers or holidays here but she had always refused.

  So now she was here for good, like it or not, and apparently angry about everything. He couldn’t blame her for most of it, but he sure wished he had some kind of magic wand that could at least give them a chance to make a connection.

  As for Hope...well, young though she was, that was one brave woman. A lot of backbone stiffened that pretty package and he admired that.

  But he was certain her life didn’t lie here. Eventually she’d be ready to move on, and he’d encourage her to find her own way. He was sure she could. So this longing that kept plaguing him needed to be stamped out. Doused. Quashed.

  Neither of them needed this complication, and after what he’d said tonight, he wouldn’t be a bit surprised to wake in the morning and find her waiting with packed bags when he was supposed to take her to the doctor.

  He rolled over, punching the pillow. He was used to being alone, so why did he suddenly feel lonely? Why the craving for things he couldn’t have?

  He didn’t have the answers. So what was new? As far as he could tell, pushing closer to forty hadn’t made him one whit wiser.

  Chapter Five

  In the morning, shortly after Angie had caught the school bus, Cash helped Hope into his truck and set out for town.

  “Aren’t you too busy to take me to the doctor?” she asked.

  “I have time.”

  “But...” Again she hesitated. “Maybe we should have driven Angie to school?”

  “I didn’t want to answer questions about where I was taking you. It’s up to you to decide when and how you want to tell her you’re pregnant.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to tell her at all.” Her hands curled into fists as another wave of anger at Scott rolled through her, along with a contradictory excitement about having a baby. That excitement hadn’t had room in her thoughts before, mainly because she’d been so overwhelmed by what had happened, by the threats that had shockingly become a daily diet, by a need to escape both marriage to her tormentor and any possibility of losing this child.

  She’d been hunkered in survival mode, but even as the anger soured her mouth, she realized she was happy about her child. Talk about a mishmash, she thought, unable to explain it even to herself.

  For the past couple of years, she’d been looking forward to getting married. The idea of children had been put on hold. Both she and Scott had agreed they should wait a year or two before starting a family. Time, he had said, for the two of them to settle in with each other and enjoy their relationship before dealing with the demands of children.

  Except now she wondered about that. The demands of children? Was that his innate selfishness speaking, because she now knew just how selfish he could be. Of course, she understood that having a child would change a lot, but in their circles it didn’t have to change that much. Everyone had some kind of nanny, and Scott must have expected they would have one.

  She admonished herself to stop thinking about Scott. No point in it. She had thought she knew him; now it was clear she never had. Asking herself questions about him and why he had done some things would never get her any answers. Not now. Maybe if she’d still been with him, asking him would only have revealed that he didn’t have any answers, anyway.

  She certainly had few about herself. Trying to get out of her own head, at least temporarily, she turned her attention back to Cash. “So you think it was being confined by having a small child that made your wife leave? But she must have known all along how hard you have to work.”

  “What is this? Therapy?”

  She might have withdrawn and apologized, except his tone had betrayed amusement.

  “We dated when my dad was still alive and managing the ranch. So I had more time. Never occurred to me I might be raising false expectations. Anyway, about the time Angie was born, my dad had a serious heart attack. He became unable to do any real work, so it all fell to me. Then a few months later he died in his sleep. That left me to handle everything. So between all the work of a new baby and me being occupied pretty much every hour of the day, I’m not surprised she felt abandoned.”

  “You’re making excuses for her.”

  “No, I’ve just had a lot of time to think about what went wrong. I take my full share of the blame.”

  She didn’t see much blame under the circumstances. It wasn’t as if he had set out to create the situation, and as he had remarked, Sandy was ranch-bred. She must have had some idea of the work involved.

  Still. Hope closed her eyes and allowed memories to come. She and Scott hadn’t been living in each others’ pockets. Throughout their dating and engagement, their relationship had been reserved for weekends when one or both of them didn’t have to be somewhere else. Her own parents had lived that way, meeting at social gatherings, or over breakfast, then going their own ways. It had seemed normal to her.

  But Sandy had been in a different situation, she realized. Her own parents had always been busy with other people, whether it was her dad going to work, or her mother to committee meetings or out with friends. Sandy had had none of that.

  Hope sighed quietly, the sound lost in the rattle and roar of the truck as it bounced over bad roads. The future, she reminded herself, couldn’t be predicted. Cash couldn’t have known that his father would die at probably the worst possible time for his marriage. Maybe it wouldn’t have fallen apart if Cash had taken over once Angie was older and Sandy could get around more.

  Or maybe other things had been going on, things he didn’t know about. Regardless, marriage was a leap of faith no matter how you felt about your partner. She could only be glad that she had discovered Scott’s ugly side before she’d taken her vows. If she thought she’d faced opposition the way things were, she could only imagine what would have happened if she’d decided she had to get away after they were married. Especially if he had been in the middle of a campaign.

  Maybe it was all for the best.

  As they pulled into the parking lot at the doctor’s office, she became nervous. This was going to be hard. Hard to explain why she hadn’t seen a doctor yet. She didn’t want to go through all that again. Didn’t want to have to explain the rape. She also feared that she was going to get deservedly scolded for her negligence. But mostly, she realized as her hands cramped into fists, she was worried about her baby. She’d been able to endure this long because so far she hadn’t had any obvious problems. She’d shepherded a few friends through their pregancies, and had reassured herself that if anything was seriously wrong she would get some sign. Now she wasn’t able to delude herself any longer.

  Cash once again proved to be remarkably perceptive. “What’s wrong?” He turned off the ignition and swiveled to face her.

  “How did you get to be so good at reading people?”

  “Am I? Maybe it comes from having to pay such close attention to the signals my animals make. I don’t know. So what tightened you up?”

  “I’m nervous. I’m afraid he’ll find something wrong. I’m afraid of getting yelled at for not having seen a doctor sooner.”

  “Brad isn’t like that. You’ll see. His primary interest is going to be ensuring that you have a healthy pregnancy.”

  He climbed out and came around to help her out. “Deep breath,” he said with a smile. “You’ll like him, and next time you won’t be worried about seeing him.”

  Dr. Brad, as he preferred to be called, turned out to be as nice as Cash promised. He didn’t question her delay in seeing a doctor but talked to her gently, checked her out and assured her that everything seemed fine. She left his office with a bottle of prenatal vitamins, an appointment for next month and
a question about whether she wanted a sonogram. She refused, explaining she couldn’t afford it.

  “We can do something about that,” he said with a smile. “Think about it.”

  Cash paid the for the examination, leaving her truly embarrassed. “Take it out of my pay,” she asked when they were back in his truck.

  “Like hell. You need to be building a nest egg for that baby. Next stop Freitag’s Mercantile. You need either some looser clothes or some maternity clothes.”

  “But...”

  “Hush. It’s the least I can do, and I’m not planning to go overboard.”

  Freitag’s both fascinated her and surprised her. It smelled as old as it looked, with creaky wood floors from an earlier era. She wasn’t swarmed by well-dressed women only too eager to find her the “perfect” outfit, but faced instead with crowded racks and stacks on long tables. One saleswoman in her fifties pointed them to the maternity clothes where the selection was adequate but hardly eye-catching. There were some business clothes, but mostly these were clothes designed for ranchers’ wives. Businesslike in another way, she supposed. Plenty of jeans, heavy-duty slacks and tops that seemed not to want to get in the way with so much as a ruffle.

  She kind of liked it. Practical. A word she had to learn all over again because now it had a new meaning in her life.

  At Cash’s insistence, she was able to find several pairs of jeans with stretch panels on the front that fit, and five maternity tops that she liked. They looked more like work shirts, and that appealed to her, snaps down the front, a couple in chambray and others in plaids she liked.

  Cash disappeared when the kindly saleswoman started pushing undergarments on her. “Whatever she needs,” he said, heading for the front of the store.

  In the fitting room, as she tried on bras because her cup size was increasing, the woman said, “I didn’t know Cash had a new lady friend.”

  At once Hope’s cheeks flamed, and for the first time she wondered what kind of gossip this little trip might cause. She could easily imagine that a small town like this might have quite a gossip mill. Why not? The circles she had used to run in certainly had.

  “I’m not with Cash,” she said. “I just started working for him. We only met a week ago.”

  That brought an arched brow, but no more questions emerged from the woman. Now she guessed they’d indulge in all kinds of speculation about her, but she didn’t care about that. She knew no one here, and had no idea how long she would remain. Cash could easily let her go at any time. Or she might decide she needed to move on.

  Angie would be the determining factor in that, she thought as Cash paid for her purchases. If she couldn’t get through to the girl in some way, Cash might decide he needed someone else. So far, though, he hadn’t seemed to expect a miracle, but it had been little more than a week.

  Back at the ranch, Cash grabbed a couple of peanut butter sandwiches then headed to work. Hope went upstairs to change into her new clothes, and breathed a sigh of relief that the waistband of her jeans no longer bound her tightly.

  But as she was jamming her feet into her riding boots, she had a thought. If that woman at Freitag’s gossiped, if anyone had seen Cash taking her into the gynecologist’s office—well, Angie would probably hear about it soon. And not in a nice way.

  She straightened, staring at the wall, feeling trepidation rise. She would have to tell Angie, and telling Angie was going to be hard. The girl wasn’t a total naïf, but this? This might ruin the tenuous strands that were just beginning to grow. Angie could easily feel she had been lied to by Hope’s concealment of the truth for the past ten days.

  A few cusswords that she had never been allowed to use floated into her brain.

  For a fact, her realities had been shifting so rapidly that she wondered if she was dealing at all. For so long she’d been drifting along, her biggest problem the occasional disagreement with a friend. Life had been like a lovely, warm river, just carrying her from one new vista to the next. There had been nothing important to worry about, ever. Well, except for what others thought of her. That had been drilled into her from her earliest age.

  That reality had shattered after Scott’s attack. Escape had led her into a whole new reality, different from anything that had come before. She needed to wrap her head around it, and start becoming proactive in her own life, at least as much as she could.

  Yes, fighting with her parents to save her baby and not marry Scott had been proactive. So had running away, but since she had arrived here she seemed to be looking for a way to drift again. Looking for additional work to do around here didn’t necessarily mean she was coping with anything. She had to make plans of some kind for a future.

  She had to deal with Angie. Somehow. She had to deal with Cash. His admission last night that he wanted her had shaken her to her core, surprising her in part because she hadn’t been horrified, afraid or anything else she would have anticipated after being raped. Astonishing her, because her own response to him had been nagging at her only to be swiftly dismissed. Now it was hard to dismiss because he reciprocated.

  A small, wild urge arose in her, whispering that she should take advantage of her desire and Cash’s to find out if she was still essentially okay after Scott, or if she’d run screaming at a man’s touch.

  Well, that wouldn’t do at all. Not at all. It wouldn’t be fair to Cash to use him like a crash test dummy. Plus, it would be totally stupid. She had no surety of a life here, so why wreck the goodness she’d found by taking it further? Additionally, she might risk cementing Angie’s anger forever.

  She was touched, though, that Cash had told her that. He must have guessed she’d suspect it sooner or later, so he’d promised she could leave at any time and he’d make sure she had the wherewithal to do so. A remarkable man in so many ways. He had given her a chance when she most needed it, and now he was caring for her like a member of his family.

  The things Cash had done for her meant far more than the dozens of red roses, the fancy restaurants, the expensive plays and parties Scott had showered on her. Scott had indulged her with just about anything money could buy, but he hadn’t showed her the respect she deserved. Cash had probably seriously dented his bank account with the doctor’s visit and the clothes just this morning, but asked nothing in return. His gift to her was the greater by far, and the more so because he hardly knew her and expected nothing more from her than that she do the job he had hired her for.

  Scott had all kinds of expectations for her. That she be available when he needed her to go to some function with him. That she find ways to make new connections for him in political circles. Once, the one time they had really fought before the rape, he’d even suggested she needed to step up her workouts at the gym because he thought she’d put on a few pounds. As it happened, she hadn’t and had been infuriated.

  God, he’d made her feel like a utensil, a wind-up doll to go in whatever direction he wanted.

  And she’d been too stupid to realize it. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she looked back gloomily and then snorted when she realized that he’d probably have been after her to have plastic surgery by the time she was thirty to correct any signs of aging. Oh, yeah, he would have. The first question he’d always asked when they were out in daylight was, “Did you remember your sunblock?”

  She got that Texas could age a woman fast if she wasn’t careful. The strong sun, the heat, the wind... That had been drilled into her like everything else. But to be asked by her fiancé? At the time she had thought he was just caring for her, but now she didn’t believe it.

  Shaking her head, she went to her closet and pulled out her makeup kit. She was as outfitted in that department as any model, but she hadn’t at all minded skipping the ritual since she got here. Yes, she still put on her sunblock, but left the rest of it in her bag.

  Frankly, she thought she looked younger
without all that paint, but she had an idea for it, and a girl of just the right age to love it.

  Something she could try to do with Angie.

  Smiling again she headed downstairs. Hattie had been bustling about when they got back and she could help with that. Then when Angie came home... Nodding to herself, her smile deepened.

  * * *

  Cash got back to the house just in time for dinner. Hope and Angie had heated it and set the table, and it turned into another quiet, if frigid, meal. He figured it was a good sign that Angie was helping a bit, and he wondered if Hope’s restrained and polite behavior was rubbing off on the girl. She could choose a worse role model, he supposed. Angie’s table manners had even improved.

  “Leave the dishes,” Hope said when he rose and started to clear his place. “Angie and I will take care of them.”

  To his amazement, Angie didn’t argue. What the hell? For four months she’d refused to do a damn thing to help around here, and all she had seemed interested in was being able to ride. Now this? Improvement by osmosis?

  “I know you still have work to do,” Hope said. “Go on. We’ll have fun.”

  Angie looked a little mutinous, he thought as he headed for his office. He wondered what would happen after he left the kitchen. Outright war?

  But then he heard something that caused him to pause in the hallway. Hope said, “I have a surprise for you after we get the kitchen cleaned.”

  Surprise? He didn’t know if he liked the sound of that. Maybe Hope was going to tell her about the pregnancy. If so, shouldn’t he be nearby to help deal with it? Then it struck him that nothing about Hope so far indicated that she wanted to cause Angie any more problems. He might just turn into a problem if he was there. Especially since Angie was barely tolerating him, for all her open hostility had been controlled.

  Sighing, he entered his office but left the door open, wanting to hear as much as he could of what was going on. Damn, he felt as if he was being cut out of his own life, not that that was fair. He’d been cut out of Angie’s for quite a while.