Rancher's Baby Read online

  He might be over six feet tall, but all she could see was the hurting little boy who’d wanted desperately to know he was loved. She was overly emotional right now anyway, courtesy of postpregnancy hormones, and she felt tears welling in her eyes as she imagined his childhood. “What a horrible thing to do to a child.”

  Rather than soothing him, her words had the opposite effect. “Don’t waste your pity on me,” he said, his eyes blazing. “My uncle raised me. He and my aunt and my cousins were my real family, and even if I’d had both parents, I probably wouldn’t have had it so good. They treated me like a son, even indulged my passion for photography from the time I first started foolin’ around with a camera.”

  “Still,” she persisted, “I’m sure there were moments when you felt alone, when you felt that you didn’t really belong. It would have been only natural.”

  The silence was so taut she could have snapped it like a strip of rotten rubber. He looked so furious that for a single moment she was afraid she’d overstepped the bounds of his tolerance and unleashed a cougar. Flee! urged a small voice in her head, but she squashed it as fast as she acknowledged it. And not only because she trusted Tye to conquer his rage.

  She’d always preferred to face her nightmares rather than trying to outrun them. And she knew she couldn’t outrun Tye if he chose to hunt her down.

  As the last thought flashed through her mind, his expression changed. As quickly as it had built, his inner storm seemed to spend itself and his anger drained away.

  Gruffly, he said, “Yeah. I guess it’s natural for kids to be curious about their parents.”

  Anxious now to reassure him, she said, “I hope you know that Ryan will never have any reason to question my love for him.”

  He looked startled for a moment. “Dulcie, the one thing I don’t doubt is your love for our son.” He paused. “But have you thought about how Ryan will feel if he ever learns that you refused to give him a father, even when his father was ready and willing to assume the role?”

  Oh, he was good. The knife slipped in between her ribs so smoothly that she didn’t even feel it until he twisted. Swallowing her own uncertainties, she replied, “Whether or not we marry, Tye, I know you care about Ryan. I have accepted that you are going to be a part of his life. He’s going to grow up with the love of two parents.”

  “But it would be better if we were a family,” he pressed.

  She shook her head. “Not necessarily. If we can’t stick together after the wedding, what’s the point?”

  Tye grinned, a flash of white teeth against tanned flesh, and her knees suddenly weakened at the sensual knowledge in his gaze. “Duls, the one thing I’m not worried about is how well we stick together.”

  She blushed. She couldn’t help it. His lazy drawl and the memories of just how well they’d “stuck together” played through her mind, sending streamers of excitement through her body, softening and moistening her for the age-old conclusion to this kind of flirtation.

  Hurriedly, she said, “That’s not what I meant.”

  The look he slanted in her direction made her shift her body, pressing her knees together to assuage the throbbing between her legs. His gaze narrowed, and she knew he hadn’t missed the small motion, but she gathered her common sense and ignored him.

  “I was referring to your work.”

  He looked blank. “What does my work have to do with marrying you?”

  Impatience replaced the desire simmering in her blood. “Dammit, Tye, you know as well as I do! I already was married to a man who left me for months on end. I’ll never do it again.”

  “I can’t just change my job because the hours don’t suit you.”

  “I’m not asking you to!” She flounced to the other side of the room and threw herself down on the couch. Reaching for the television remote, she punched the buttons with unnecessary force.

  The TV came on too loud, and she reduced the volume, then sat gazing with unseeing eyes at the program. Tye came over and sat a few feet from her, but she ignored him. What a mess! Why couldn’t he understand how she felt? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? She wasn’t going to fight him about seeing Ryan; why couldn’t he be satisfied with that?

  “I have a showing at a gallery in Santa Fe next month,” Tye said quietly. “And I’ve reserved some time in a darkroom to develop the film I’ve been shooting. It will take a couple of days.”

  She couldn’t let him see that bothered her—the thought of his leaving. Even if it was only for a few days. That’s what Lyle had always said, too. But then she’d get the phone call. and the days would stretch into a week, a month and more. Stiffly, she said, “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Save your explanations for Ryan. As he gets older, it will be hard for him to accept his daddy being gone for months at a time.”

  “It’s a few days, Dulcie, not months.” Tye’s voice was sharp. “I’m not your husband, so why don’t you quit punishing me for the things he did?”

  That wasn’t what she was doing, she wanted to protest. I’m only trying to protect myself! The thought was startling. Protect herself from what?

  Tye spoke again and his tone had softened. “Besides, I wasn’t just trying to explain myself to you. I have something to ask you.”

  She waited, but he didn’t speak until she had turned her head and met his gaze with her own.

  “Would you come with me to Santa Fe? I’d like you to be there for my opening so you can get a feel for some of what my work involves.”

  “I can’t—I couldn’t possibly leave Ryan.” She seized the first thought that came into her head. She didn’t want to spend any more time with Tye than she had to. Being able to visualize all the things he did while he was gone would only make it harder, would only make her feel worse when he left for good.

  “I didn’t expect you to leave Ryan.” Tye was oblivious to all the conflicting emotions clamoring for attention within her. “We’ll take him along. There’s no place that he can’t go with us. You can even bring him to the opening.” He grinned. “In fact, I insist. I haven’t told my agent I have a son. It’ll throw him into a total tailspin.”

  Her breath had caught in her throat at the sudden lightening of his handsome features. His eyes danced and his strong white teeth flashed as he anticipated the moment. She remembered the first time she’d seen him unlocking the door of the neighboring apartment in Albuquerque. Her response had been one of those purely chemical reactions; she’d had to work to keep from drooling when he’d seen her and come across to introduce himself. He’d been perfectly correct when he’d learned that she was married, and she’d felt safe, so safe that she’d even gone for sandwiches with him several times while Lyle was out of town. Purely neighborly outings.

  Safe, ha! Her judgment was in serious need of some fine-tuning, obviously. She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t going to Santa Fe, but he was leaning toward her at the same moment, his gaze on her mouth as he drew closer…and every thought in her head evaporated under the heat of that mouth as he pressed his lips to hers.

  “It’s settled, then,” he said against her mouth. “I’ll take care of the reservations.”

  She couldn’t answer. Every brain cell was focused on the sensations of warm, moist heat whispering over her lips, the slick promise of his tongue whisking across her lower lip, the rougher, salty taste of his skin as he raised his head and placed his finger against her still-pursed lips.

  “Hold that thought.” He was grinning again as he got to his feet. As he ambled across the room and headed for the stairs, she could almost see the satisfaction oozing out of him. The louse.

  Then she realized that she was still sitting there, the tips of her fingers lightly touching the lips he had kissed. Why was she calling him names?

  * * *

  She had just put Ryan in his infant seat and turned to start breakfast the next morning when Tye clomped into the kitchen.

  “Your brother awake yet?”

  “Good morn
ing.” She smiled too sweetly to remind him of his omission. “I slept well, thank you for inquiring. And no, I haven’t seen Day yet.”

  Tye smiled, but he looked distracted. “Good morning to you, too. Would you mind going and getting Day?” He walked over to Ryan and easily lifted him into his arms, talking quietly to the baby as she turned and ran up the stairs.

  A few minutes later, Day was in the kitchen. He yawned and rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw, looking significantly at the clock, which didn’t even register 6:00 a.m. yet. “What’s up?”

  “Three of those heifers you looked at last night went into labor a little while ago.”

  “Three at once? Hell,” Day said with disgust. “I thought we still had a good week to wait.”

  Tye nodded, setting Ryan back in his little carrier. “How’re your ribs feelin’?

  “Sore. But I guess if I have to pull a calf, they’ll just have to get a little sorer.”

  Tye shook his head. “I can handle it, unless we have two problems at once. Then I’d say we’re in trouble.”

  Neither man stuck around for breakfast. As soon as the rest of the hands had been fed and the dirty dishes cleaned up, Dulcie packed a basket of food and a large thermos of coffee and headed for the barn.

  The minute she stepped inside, she could tell something was wrong. Tension hung in the air and settled in the rigid shoulders of the men gathered around a large box stall at the far end of the barn. Two heifers with new calves occupied other stalls as she passed them, but in the third stall, a cow was down.

  Her brother balanced on crutches against the rail. Two other hands stood in the doorway of the stall, but she didn’t see Tye until she got into the open doorway. Then she saw him, hunkered down in the straw beside the straining heifer. The cow had lost a lot of blood and was clearly exhausted. She lay panting on the straw, too weak even to bellow as labor contractions tightened the girth of her pregnant belly. As they watched, a tiny hoofed leg protruded from the cow’s birth canal.

  All the men swore in unison. Dulcie silently echoed their feelings. The baby was turned wrong; chances were good that they were going to lose both the heifer and her calf.

  Tye was unbuttoning his shirt rapidly as he turned and spoke to Day. “I’m going to have to go in. I called the vet almost two hours ago but we can’t wait.”

  Day nodded grimly, never taking his eyes from the cow as Tye got flat on his belly behind her. The other two hands guarded her legs, ready to rope her if she got a second wind and tried to fight, but even when Tye inserted a hand into the birth canal after a contraction, shoving the tiny limb back inside, she didn’t fuss much.

  It was a long and messy process. Every time a contraction hit, Tye stopped and waited for it to pass before easing his arm farther inside the cow. She saw him set his teeth against the pain she knew he was feeling, like a giant hand squeezing his arm beyond tolerance. The poor heifer looked as if she was already gone, except for the shallow movement of her flanks and the increasingly weak contractions that rippled through her.

  Day kept up a running commentary, firing question after question at Tye as he tried to maneuver the calf into proper position within the birth canal.

  “It’s a foreleg,” Tye reported. “I’ve got my hand around the skull now but I can’t get a grip….”

  Finally, just when Dulcie thought they were going to have to admit defeat, Tye gave a grunt of satisfaction. “There! Now if she can just help a little bit, we can get this baby movin’.” He changed position, planting his boots against the floor and preparing to pull.

  A few minutes later, the calf slipped into the world. While the two other men tried to get the exhausted heifer on its feet, Tye examined the baby. “Nothing looks broken or dislocated,” he said with some surprise. “Of course, I can’t tell for sure.”

  Dulcie knew he was hesitant to handle the little calf too much until the mother had accepted it…if the mother lived long enough to do so.

  “Go get cleaned up,” Day told him. “We’ll keep an eye on things here.”

  Tye nodded. He caught Dulcie’s eye as he turned to leave and beckoned her over.

  She flew to his side, forgetting for the moment that she would be better off if he wasn’t around. “Are you all right?”

  Tye flexed his shoulders. “My arm might be bruised, but it can’t be any worse than being hit by a truck.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve had a lot of practice pulling calves.”

  He gave her a sidelong look. “I told you I was raised on a ranch. Didn’t you believe me?”

  She ignored the question, turning on the water and going to a cupboard for a towel. “It’s quite a switch from ranching to photography. What got you started?”

  He shrugged as the water sluiced over his arm and shoulder. “One of my cousins got a camera for Christmas the year I was ten. She was older than I was, but that camera set in a corner and collected dust until summertime, when I discovered it and asked if I could take a few pictures.” He smiled, and she wondered if he knew how pleasant the memories were. “And that was pretty much that. My uncle encouraged me once he saw how interested I was. I got a camera of my own the next Christmas.”

  “So you realized you enjoyed taking pictures more than rounding up smelly old cows.”

  Tye’s smile faded. “I didn’t have much choice. My uncle had two daughters of his own. I didn’t expect that I’d have a place at the ranch indefinitely.”

  She was silent for a minute, wondering about the logic of that. “But obviously you were welcomed when you went home last year.”

  “My uncle needed someone to direct the troops,” he told her. “Both my cousins are married now and their husbands work the ranch, but they aren’t the kind of men who could manage the whole operation.”

  It sounded to her as if Tye had a home and people who cared for and about him, regardless of what he thought. But she sensed that he wasn’t willing to listen to that, so she didn’t pursue it.

  “Did you study photography after you graduated?”

  He shook his head. “I took some photography classes in high school, but since then I’ve been selftaught.” He stopped and grinned at her, the charming expression she remembered so well from their early encounters when they had talked casually for hours. “You’ll be sorry if you encourage me to talk about my work.”

  She smiled back. “I doubt that.” And it was true. Lyle had never shared anything to do with his work with her. In this respect, at least, Tye was totally different. She had been woolgathering, but gradually she realized that she was still watching Tye. He’d cleaned the blood and dirt from his upper body and was using a towel to blot up the water as he tossed a lock of dark hair back from his forehead.

  Her gaze lingered on the curl that fell defiantly over his broad brow, then followed the towel as it whisked across one smooth broad shoulder and down into a circular pattern that buffed both of his flat male nipples into small tight peaks. She recognized and accepted the ribbon of sexual awareness that shivered through her. How could she have forgotten what he looked like? The muscles in his neck were thick and strong, his arms rippled with hard-earned sinew over smooth, golden flesh to which water droplets clung. What she wouldn’t give to be one of those drops right now—

  The towel dropped to the floor, and she averted guilty eyes from his body. Too late she realized that he was walking across the squeaking floorboards toward her. Hastily, she looked past him at the doorway, measuring the space she would have to cross. But before she could command her body to leave, to escape the hot intent glowing in his gaze, he reached out and clasped her shoulders between his large hands.

  “Kiss me,” he muttered in a deep, hoarse voice that brooked no refusal.

  She would have resisted, she told herself. Of course she would have. But his lips were warm and firm and sure as he plundered her mouth with fierce, bold strokes of his tongue, demanding her response with every silken stroke. His hands slid purposefully down her back to cup her bottom
, dragging her up against him until she was barely touching the floor, and she gasped, sliding her arms up around his neck and into his hair, deepening the kiss in helpless submission as the firm thrust of his arousal settled into the sensitive cradle at the apex of her thighs. She was engulfed in an electrical storm of sensation generated by his need.

  Why had she ever thought he was civilized? With the exception of venting his justifiable anger about her failure to tell him of her pregnancy, he’d been the soul of decorum and patience. So patient that she’d been lulled into forgetting.

  And how could anybody forget this? Her body certainly hadn’t. His mere touch ignited an uncontrollable fire within her. Her breasts tingled, begging for his experienced fingers, and she shifted herself against him, creating a pleasurable friction that was just short of pain.

  “When do you go back to the doctor? I want to make love to you.” His voice was little more than a growl against her neck. He nipped once at the tender flesh, hard enough to make her yelp in surprise. “Don’t tell me no again. I’ve waited a year already.”

  She didn’t want to wait any longer, either. But his mention of the doctor reminded her that it wasn’t possible, that she wasn’t healed enough yet. She tried to pull away from him but only succeeded in wedging her arms between them when he didn’t release her. “Tye, I—oh, damn!”

  Her shirt was soaked. The tingling she’d felt in her breasts had been her let-down reflex, stimulated by an arousal different from that of her son’s suckling, but with the same result. Her breasts were leaking milk like no tomorrow.

  Tye still had his arms loosely around her. He was looking down at the large wet circles on the front of her shirt with an annoyingly silly grin on his face. “I guess I’m not the only one who needs a dry shirt.”

  She knew her face was red. She crossed her arms over her traitorous breasts, clamping her forearms firmly against her breasts to stop the let-down just as Tye placed a gentle finger under her chin, lifting her face to his.