Snowed in at the Ranch

Ty stopped, contemplated the situation. Jamey pitched himself into the hesitation, grabbed the hem of the wet coat and pulled himself up.

“Papa.”

Looking very much as if he was reaching out to a full-grown tiger, Ty rested a reluctant hand on Jamey’s nest of red curls.

“Hey. Little fella. Jamey.”

“Papa,” Jamey crooned, leaned into the jacket without letting go, and plopped his thumb in his mouth.

“Why does he think I’m his papa, for heaven’s sake?”

“Don’t take it personally. He calls every man that.”

“Why? Where is his papa?”

Ty looked at her then, and his gaze seemed uncomfortably all-seeing.

“Are you running from something?” he asked softly.

She actually shivered from the fierce look that crossed his face. She told herself not to take it personally. He would just be one of those men with a very traditional set of values, thinking women and children—much as he disliked the latter—were in need of his extremely masculine self for protection.

Amy hated that the old-fashioned notion actually filled her with the oddest sense of comfort.

“What would make you think I’m running from something?” she hedged, because of course that was uncomfortably close to the truth.

“Less than a week before Christmas, and you’re looking for a new home?”

“It’s just the timing,” she said. “The McFinleys wanted to be in Australia by Christmas.”

He did not look convinced, but he did not look as if he cared to pursue it, either.

“Where’s his papa?” he asked again, patting Jamey—who was showing absolutely no sign of losing interest in him—with surprising gentleness, on the head.

“I’m a widow,” she said quietly. “Jamey’s father was killed in an accident three months after he was born. It’s nearly nine months ago now.”

Some shadow passed over his face and through the depths of those amazing sapphire eyes. She felt as if Ty Halliday could clearly see the broken place in her.

She could feel his awkwardness. It was obvious from his house that he was a man alone in the world, and had been for a long time. There was not a single feminine touch in this place. It was also obvious he was a man allergic to attachments. There were no pictures, no family photographs. There was no ring on his finger.

On arriving, she had thought the McFinleys had taken their personal touches down so that she could put up her own and feel more at home. But she had not even asked herself about the unlocked door, the lack of curtains, or throw rugs or little lace dollies. She had not asked herself about the dresser still filled with neatly folded clothes.

Now, feeling his eyes on her, Amy knew it was way beyond this solitary cowboy’s skill level to know what to say to her. She was touched when he tried.

“That seems to fall squarely into the life-is-unfair department,” he said gently.

She lifted her chin. “I stopped expecting life to be fair a long time ago.”

He frowned. “No, you didn’t.”

“Pardon me?”

“That sounds like something I would say. And you’re not like me.”

“And what are you like?”

“Cynical. World-weary.”

“That’s me exactly!” she protested.

A small smile teased the devastating curve of his lips. “No, it’s not,” he said. “You just wish it was. It’s evident from looking at you, you are nothing of the sort.”

“You can’t possibly know that about me on such a short acquaintance.”

“Yes, I can.”

“How?” she demanded, folding her arms over her chest, some defense against what he was seeing. No, what he thought he was seeing.

She was not the naive girl she had once been, so reliant on the approval of others, begging for love, so desperate for a place to call home that it had made her overlook things she should have seen. Amy Mitchell was on a new path now.

She was going to be fully independent. She was not going to rely on anyone else to make a home for her and her baby.

Looking after the McFinley house, venturing so far from the familiar, expanding her website, Baby Bytes, into a viable business from there, were all part of her new vision for her life.

She hated it that a complete stranger thought he could see through it.

She hated it even more that her first day of her new life was turning into something of a fiasco.

Thankfully, no one but Ty Halliday ever needed to know.

She had called her in-laws as soon as she stepped in the door to let them know she had arrived safely.

She had heard her mother-in-law’s disapproval, so like her son’s had been.

“For heaven’s sake, Amy, give up this harebrained scheme. John and I are delighted to look after you and Jamey. Delighted.”

Delighted to control and criticize her, just like their son had done. Delighted to keep her dependent on them. She shivered. Wouldn’t they love to see the predicament she was in now?

But they never had to know. In a little while she would be where she was supposed to be, none the worse for the wear, no one to question her competence.

“By the way,” she said, “before I forget, I owe you money for a phone call. My cell phone wouldn’t work here. Now, how can you know so much about me?”

“No one with a truly jaded soul would offer me money for a phone call I wouldn’t even know you made for a month. And no one truly fed up with life arrives at a new home and makes it their first priority to put up a Christmas tree,” he said.

“Oh.”

“I don’t even know where you found this stuff. The tree is obviously too big to have arrived in your shrimpy little car.”

That shrimpy little car was the first major purchase she had ever made on her own. Her mother-in-law, not aware that Baby Nap had just signed up to be a sponsor on the website, had not thought it was a sensible use of funds.