Rancher's Baby Page 7

  “No, I came down to visit a friend,” Tye responded. “I know you didn’t call just to hear the sound of my voice. What have you got?”

  “Well…” Bill’s voice was sly. “How soon do you want to start?”

  He thought quickly. “I’m helping out a friend down here. It’ll be at least three weeks. You’d better give me a month.”

  “A month?” It was a disgruntled squeak. “Hell, you could have gotten five jobs under your belt by then.”

  “Maybe so, but it’ll be that long before I’m free. Can you work something up for me then?”

  “Um-hm, let’s see…rodeo, Dallas. Branding, Rockin’ M. Parimutiiel, Albuquerque Downs, then up to Oregon for a new huntin’ lodge. And you got a gallery showing in Santa Fe you really oughta show for, buddy. Some of your biggest buyers are coming to town, and you know how they like to meet the guy who took the pictures.”

  Tye sighed. “Okay. That all sounds fine. Just get me the itinerary, and I’ll take care of transportation.”

  Bill was silent for a minute. “You don’t seem too thrilled ’bout all this. You got a problem I don’t know about?”

  “Nah.” He wasn’t ready to share Dulcie and Ryan with anyone yet. “I guess being in one place for so long made me start to like it.”

  “Can’t ’zactly blame you for that, buddy. You been doin’ this routine for a lotta years now.”

  Tye was mildly astonished, and his voice showed it. “Am I talking to Bill-the-Money-Maker McNally? Is this the same man who’s hounded me to death to stay out there and make a name for myself for over a dozen years?”

  A chuckle drifted out of the receiver. “Had to whip you into shape, didn’t I? And I did,” he added with a touch of pride. “But I been around enough artsy temperaments now to know that if you ain’t happy, your work’s gonna show it. You think you need a change, you just call old Bill and we’ll make us a new plan, you hear?”

  “I hear.” Tye hesitated. “I’m not unhappy, Bill. I just. have a lot on my mind right now.”

  “Just as long as it ain’t a woman.” Bill chuckled again. “I’ve seen more good men ruined by women than I can count. As long as it ain’t woman trouble, you’ll come through fine.”

  Tye was silent.

  On the other end of the line, Bill heaved a huge sigh. “Hell. It is a woman, ain’t it? Buddy, you better be careful. I ain’t got time to be doctoring your broken heart, you hear?”

  “I hear.” Even to himself, he sounded wimpy. The thought was enough to make a man puke. He straightened from the counter on which he’d been leaning. “Don’t worry, Bill, I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m countin’ on it, buddy. I’ll get this schedule down to you today, okay?”

  “Sounds fine. Be talking to you.”

  Tye set down the receiver thoughtfully. No doubt about it, he definitely didn’t feel the old enthusiasm for his work. Why? He still loved taking photographs, searching out that perfect play of light and shadow, rushing to capture the gritty reality of a workday on a ranch, capturing weariness, eagerness, the death and life that were still the realities of the modern West.

  He hadn’t felt this way in Montana, this desire to stay planted in one spot. In Montana, he’d had only one desire: to get back to Albuquerque and find Dulcie. Now that he had, he wasn’t ready to leave.

  As he hustled out to the barn to begin the day’s work according to Dulcie’s brother’s instructions, he forced himself to squarely face that truth: he wasn’t ready to leave Dulcie and his son.

  He worked with the cowhands all day. Used to the routine, the men chuckled at some of the orders he passed on from their boss as they efficiently accomplished their chores.

  It felt good to be in the saddle again. He hadn’t realized just how good it would feel until he dismounted from the gelding that evening and felt the wonderful stiffness in his legs that told him he’d been out of the saddle too long. His damaged finger was throbbing, but it was a good ache, and he looked forward to tomorrow’s work.

  For the next three days, his routine was unchanged. He rode out with Day’s men in the morning, relayed orders and didn’t come in again until dinnertime. While Dulcie and Angel cleaned up after the meal, he held Ryan and played with him while he gave Day a rundown of the work. By the time they were finished, the women were done in the kitchen, and after Beth Ann went to bed, the adults sat down to watch a television program.

  Dulcie was always the first one to head for bed, right around the time Ryan needed another feeding, so he hadn’t gotten to exchange a single word with her in private for several days. He was conscious of time slipping by. In three weeks he had to leave again.

  It ate away at him relentlessly. Ryan would grow two feet in his absence. Already he was starting to wriggle his little body all over when Tye came in and talked to him. Did he recognize his daddy? Was there some biological homing device that clued in his son or was it just the unfamiliar voice and presence? Ryan didn’t do it for Day, he noticed with a certain amount of gratification. Only for his daddy.

  Of course, Ryan’s mother didn’t wriggle for Day, either. The thought made him grin as he came in and washed up on the fourth night of his temporary job.

  Five

  If anybody lit a match, the room would go up in flames faster than dry prairie grass, Tye thought later that evening. Angel had announced that she wasn’t feeling well immediately after dinner and had gone up to her room. Day had followed her less than half an hour later, leaving Dulcie alone with Tye in the living room, if he didn’t count Ryan’s presence.

  It had taken him about three seconds to sense her discomfort.

  When he moved to settle his feet on a hassock, she jumped.

  He cleared his throat, and her head whipped around toward him so fast that he bet she’d wrenched her neck. Ryan, probably sensing the tension, began to fuss, and she sprang to her feet, pacing the room with him and patting his back.

  Given what had happened the last time he’d kissed her, Tye figured she was right to be a little nervous after this most recent episode. Trying to get her to relax, he cast about for a topic of conversation. His gaze lit on photos of Day and Dulcie during their childhood.

  “I wonder if Ryan’ll look like that when he gets a little older.” He gestured to a photo of Dulcie as a fat, drooling baby, a wide grin showing her toothless gums.

  She turned at the sound of his voice. Looking back and forth between the picture and her son, she smiled tenderly. “He really doesn’t look much like me. I bet if we compared him to your baby pictures, we’d see a big resemblance.”

  “Then he oughta grow up to be a fine-lookin’ man.”

  She laughed. “And modest, just like his daddy.”

  She was relaxing by the minute. To keep the conversation going, he said, “And his uncle. I take notice of how modest your brother is, too.”

  That really got her going. She chuckled. “Day doesn’t have a modest bone in his body.” The smile softened to a tender expression around the edges. “But I couldn’t ask for a better brother. He’s always been there when I needed him.”

  Tye nodded, deliberately rubbing his palm against the side of the jaw Day had punched. “So I’ve noticed.”

  She got his meaning. “He does overdo the protectiveness once in a while. But I really can’t blame him. He thinks of himself as more of a father than a brother to me.”

  She had never shared much about her home with him, even when they were in Albuquerque, going out as friends. “Why is that? I know there are a few years between you, but it’s not like he’s a totally different generation.”

  “It wasn’t that. He’s only six years older. But both our parents died before I was out of school. After that, Day raised me.”

  He knew what it was like to grow up without parents. It marked a person, made ’em different from all the other kids in a way only somebody who’d been through it could understand. “That’s tough. I guess you don’t have such great memories of your childho
od.”

  She looked at him oddly. “Well, losing Mama and Daddy was rough, but I was fortunate in so many ways. I wasn’t uprooted from home, and Day was determined to do everything just like they had…. It could have been worse.”

  He nodded, wanting her to continue.

  “The ranch means so much to me. I never realized until I moved away how badly I would miss it.”

  “You talked about it constantly in Albuquerque.”

  She nodded. “When Lyle and I separated, I couldn’t wait to come home. And afterward—” she blushed a little and he knew she was remembering what had happened between them “—I knew I needed to come home. Back to the ranch.”

  “You seem very happy here.”

  “I am.” She looked at him squarely. “I belong here. And I don’t plan to leave again. Ever.”

  He sensed she was spoiling for a fight, and he knew exactly what was the matter. In her eyes, he had a lousy track record when it came to staying in one place, just like her husband. But he wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so he ignored her aggressive words and instead said, “Ranching suits you. You don’t hesitate to get your hands dirty if you’re needed.”

  Her sober mood seemed to lighten again. Against her shoulder, Ryan had ceased his fussing and his little head lolled in slumber. “When I was born, my daddy bought me a brand of my very own, along with a heifer. Every year since then, I’ve gotten a heifer for my birthday. Every other calf out of my heifers gets my brand. Day keeps a separate record of them—I think there are close to a hundred head now.”

  She gently patted the back of the baby in her arms. “I’m going to get him a brand and do the same. That way, when he’s grown, he’ll have a head start on a herd of his own. When he’s older, he’ll have to learn to ride and rope, to pull calves and give shots and brand his animals. I learned it all firsthand,” she went on, and he could hear the pride in her voice, “And although I don’t spend much time out now that I’m needed in the house, I could do it if I had to.”

  “I guess you were a dedicated 4-H’er in your day.”

  “You betcha.” She pointed to an album resting on a shelf below the photos, and her voice took on a self-conscious tone. “That’s my scrapbook with the ribbons sticking out of the top. Too bad those blue ribbons didn’t translate into skills that would help me as an adult.”

  Now her voice sounded defeated, just like she’d sounded when he’d first met her. She’d been alone then, stuck in a city apartment while her husband trotted off without her. Now she was here, in the bosom of her family, with a child at her breast and a herd of her own, and she was still alone. He wondered if she knew it.

  He stood, and she immediately backed up a step. “I, uh, should go and put Ryan down.”

  “May I say good-night to him?” His question stopped her in the act of rushing from the room.

  She half turned, so the baby’s soft features and slack little mouth were facing him. “If you like.”

  He walked toward her. When he was close enough to touch, he stopped, sliding one of his fingers beneath Ryan’s far tinier ones. “Sweet dreams, cowboy,” he said, bending to touch his lips to his son’s forehead. “See you in the morning.” He lifted his head and looked at Dulcie, a heartbeat away over the sleeping child. “It’s early. Will you come back down for a while?”

  She hesitated.

  “We need to have some time to talk,” he pressed.

  “All right.” It was a quiet agreement to his demand as she turned away. “Let me settle him.”

  While she was gone, he wandered over to the bookshelf to get a better look at the photographs. Her childhood scrapbook drew him like a magnet, and he slowly slipped it from the shelf, feeling as if he was prying, though he told himself she wouldn’t have pointed it out to him if she minded him looking at it.

  She’d been loved—that much was obvious. Even if her parents hadn’t lived to see her grown, they’d loved her. The pictures were evidence of that. When she was a gap-toothed grade-schooler, the photos with her parents in them stopped abruptly. For a year or two, so did her smiles.

  But gradually, he could see the healing, and by the time she was a teenager she was glowing with good health and adolescent beauty. Interspersed with the photos were blue ribbons, county-fair programs with her entries heavily underlined and grainy newspaper photos yellowed now with age showing Dulcie with champion heifers. The blue ribbons and the many others she’d accumulated were largely for roping and calf raising at first, but as she got older, he was surprised to see an equal number of first-place wins in food entries for preserves and pies.

  The next few pages were devoted to high school graduation and then her wedding. She looked happy, he thought. Apparently she hadn’t had any concerns about her husband-to-be at first. He studied the groom. It was only the second time in his life he’d ever seen the guy close up, but he wasn’t impressed. Lyle Meadows looked…soft. Not nearly the kind of man Dulcie needed.

  “Seen enough?”

  Startled, he slapped the book closed and said the first thing that came into his head. “You got first place for your pecan pie just last summer. And you took second in the canning category.”

  “Yeah.” She took the book from him and replaced it on the shelf. It seemed to him that she fiddled with it a while longer than necessary.

  “Well, that’s great,” he said. Already, she was as uptight as she’d been earlier.

  “It’s nothing special,” she said.

  He didn’t like hearing her put herself down. “It is special. Superb baking and cooking can be just as much a talent as roping and barrel racing. You must be proud of those ribbons.”

  She didn’t answer. Her sudden lack of confidence brought back a vivid memory of the dispirited woman he’d met in Albuquerque. Apparently, her ex hadn’t gone out of his way to shower her with compliments.

  As he watched, she pulled another album from the shelf and extended it to him. “You might be interested in this one.”

  When his eyebrows rose in query, she added, “I’ve begun keeping a baby book for Ryan.”

  He reached for the keepsake slowly, fighting the unexpected rush of feelings that ran through him at her words.

  Dulcie watched his face as he leafed through the little book. It was obvious that he was fascinated by anything to do with Ryan. His big hands moved across the pictures, tracing the memories she’d recorded for her son. Slowly he scanned the album, and she wondered what he was thinking as he took in the photos Angel had taken in the delivery room of Ryan screaming his head off while the nurses checked him over, on the scales, in his first bath. When he came to the line on which she had recorded his name as Ryan’s father, he nodded once, an abrupt motion that he cut off in mid nod.

  A thick packet of photos in a folder fell out of the back of the album. Mesmerized by his long, strong fingers and the curling chestnut hairs liberally sprinkled over the backs of his hands, she didn’t realize immediately what he was looking at.

  “Wait,” she said belatedly. “Those aren’t of Ryan—” Too late.

  Tye already had withdrawn the photos and was staring at the one on the top. In it, she was mucking out a stall in the barn. She had a pitchfork in her hand and a bandanna around her head. She was wearing dirty overalls but the side buttons wouldn’t meet. It had been taken when she was about six months pregnant.

  As he flipped through the rest of the stack, the tension in the room grew. She could see a muscle ticking in his jaw and she rushed into meaningless chatter to get them past the awkward moment.

  “Every time I turned around, Angel was taking pictures of me. I wasn’t real thrilled and I promised her that when her turn comes, she can expect a payback. Only trouble is, when her turn comes, Angel won’t look like a big ol’ heifer past her due date. Tall women always carry babies well. It’s the short ones like me that have these huge bellies sticking out in front, clearing the path before us.” She knew she was running on too much, but the sadness clouding his eyes was
making her feel so guilty that she couldn’t stand still. His hands hung limp, and she gently took the photos from him, slipping them back into their envelope and replacing them in the back of the album.

  “Look, Tye,” she said quietly, “I’m as sorry as can be that you weren’t here for—and before—Ryan’s birth. I guess I was thinking like an ostrich. if I just buried my head in the dirt long enough, all the problems would blow over. But what’s done is done. I guess now we just have to go on from here.”

  “Go on?” The words exploded from his lips.

  Too late, she realized that anger had replaced regret, and that she was the closest target at hand.

  “How in the hell can we go on when you won’t marry me?” he snarled. “My son is illegitimate. Nothing you can do or say can change that fact. And the one thing that could is the one thing you won’t consider.”

  He spun on his heel and stalked to the other side of the room, rubbing the back of his neck with one tanned hand. “Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal, but I think different. I know different.”

  Her hackles rose and she opened her mouth to blast him. But before she could spit out her thoughts, his words brought back in a rush the things he’d said to her in Day’s study the night he’d arrived. He’d shouted at her, told her he knew what it was like to be a kid without a legal father, though he hadn’t phrased it so delicately. He’d been so furious he’d been shaking.

  He probably hated her for putting him in this position.

  She had no right to shout at him. She’d done him a great wrong. Setting aside her own feelings, she chose her words carefully. “From what you said the other night, I gather you didn’t know your father at all.”

  He snorted, an ugly, mirthless sound. “Hell, I don’t even know who my father was. And if my mother knew, which is a real big if, she never said. She took off when I was six and we never heard another word from her until somebody sent her belongings home after she died, so I’ll never know.”