The Cowboy, The Baby And The Bride-To-Be

The man squatted down, ignoring the substance on his boot. He took Nicky’s tiny shoulders in both strong hands and scanned his face, and then touched his forehead quickly with the back of his hand.

Turner scooped up the boy with easy strength, tucked him into his shoulder. “Better come in. He’s got a bit of a fever.”

The calm in his voice quelled the panic in the pit of her stomach.

She froze, looking at them together. Nicholas’s coloring was different from Turner’s, darker and more exotic, but the bone structure was identical.

She had the sudden sinking sensation that Maria had not sent her to the boy’s uncle after all.

Turner MacLeod was Nicholas’s father.

And he didn’t know it.

Love at first sight and he was an utter cad.

She could almost see her mother sniffing triumphantly. Hear her voice in her mind saying, “Don’t you trust hormones or hearts to make those really important decisions, Shayla. This is your mother talking. Use your head. That’s what the good Lord gave it to you for.”

Well, her head was saying run, and run fast. But her feet were following his long stride toward his porch. She couldn’t very well leave Nicky here with a perfect stranger. Even if it was his father.

“I better get him to a hospital,” she said frantically.

He shot her a quick look over his shoulder. “Ma’am, the nearest hospital is a long, long way from here.”

He said it quietly, patiently, even, but she could sense a judgment, and a harsh one. Outsider. City slicker. Not aware of the realities of life in these big empty spaces.

He slipped off his boots at a jack on the porch outside his screen door. Then he opened the door and held it with a foot, indicating for her to follow him.

“I don’t even know you,” she said, hesitating.

He shot her an incredulous look. “You might have thought of that a couple of hundred miles ago.” The door squeaked and closed behind him.

“How do you know how far I’ve come?” She suddenly felt even more suspicious. Oh great, she had driven hundreds of miles to walk straight into the clutches of the only ax murderer in Montana.

“The license plates say Oregon, ma’am. That’s one hell of a pile of time to give some thought to what you’re doing.”

“Back then I thought you knew Nicky!”

“Nicky,” he repeated it slowly. He held the caterwauling boy back, and studied his face.

Nicky was making a lot of noise but not crying. Shayla had noticed the little boy had a particularly tough streak in him. He never cried.

A light came on in Turner MacLeod’s face as he studied the boy. A light, followed by a look of bewildered tenderness that completely erased her worries about the position of the nearest ax.

“Geez,” he breathed under his breath. He looked up at her, his eyes pinning her with intense blue light. “Who’s his mama?”

Just how many beds had his boots been under? she wondered, borrowing a phrase from a song she wished she had written.

“Maria Gerrardi,” she said tightly. She added silently—a good Catholic girl, whose life lies in ruins because of you, you handsome devil you.

Something tightened in his features.

With another look at Nicky’s face, he sighed and disappeared into the darkness of his house.

Chapter Two

She was standing out on his porch deciding whether or not it was safe to come in, he thought wryly.

She was probably from a big city—an alarm on her key chain, a half dozen dead bolts on her doors, a penchant for watching evening news that scared her silly.

She probably thought he had an ax in here.

He set the boy down on a chair. “Stay,” he said sternly.

The little boy continued caterwauling, but looked at him with huge startled eyes. Turner noticed, for all the noise, the kid was dry-eyed.

He had eyes, huge and coal dark, just like Turner’s brother, Nicholas. Even the same name. Nick. A strange coincidence that the boy was here now. He hadn’t seen Nick for nearly four years. And then a couple of days ago the satellite dish had decided to work, and he’d caught the tail end of the news when they did the human interest stuff.

And there was Nick, in a park uniform, talking about grizzly bears and living alone on some godforsaken mountain, studying them.

The reporter, a pert little blond in a miniskirt, asked the typical question of a hermit. “Don’t you crave human company?”

If Turner wasn’t mistaken, there might have been just a hint of invitation in the question to his handsome brother.

“Only one,” Nick had said slowly, missing the invitation. “And I lost her a long time ago. I’ve learned something on this mountain. If you want something with your whole heart and soul, don’t listen when other people try to tell you it doesn’t make sense, don’t listen when they tell you no.”

Of course, he’d been the SOB who told his little brother no to Maria Gerrardi.

Though, from the look of this young pup in front of him, he hadn’t said no quite soon enough.

The interview had opened old wounds. Made him wish he’d done some things differently, made him wish you could go back and try it again. Only with more patience and wisdom—the patience and wisdom that the painful estrangement from his brother had given him.

Turner had been seventeen years old when he was thrust into a man’s world, had had to shoulder a man’s responsibilities. His parents had been killed when their private plane crashed, leaving him to cope with a huge ranch and two younger siblings.

It had been scary and hard. The scary part he never showed, and the hard part he got too good at. He’d been so busy trying to keep everything together, trying to keep Nick and Abby out of trouble, that he hadn’t noticed he wasn’t exactly communicating with them.

And if he had noticed, he probably wouldn’t have known how to change it, anyway. Seventeen. What do seventeen-year-olds know about communicating?

Taking charge. Taking control. Snapping orders. That’s what he’d gotten good at. Too good.

When Nick left he’d shouted angrily at Turner, “No one’s even allowed to breathe around here without your say-so.”

The words still stung.

But now this. His brother’s son here. Did that mean he was going to get a second chance? Was he so much better at communicating now, that he could say, “Nick, it was always for love.” He’d wanted the best for them. For his brother and sister.

Abby knew. But Nick had decided grizzly bears were better than an overbearing brother. Who had meant well. Why hadn’t that part come through?

He sighed. Probably because of Maria. Nick had just finished college. He’d been way too young. He had his whole life ahead of him.