The Lawman's Convenient Bride

* * *

Seth stood close to the bed where Jody held her newborn baby.

The doctor got to work cutting the cord and stitching Jody up. Jody paid no attention to what was going on between her legs. She cuddled Marybeth close and cooed in her ear. The nurse, Sandy, approached the bed with a stack of clean linens.

Seth glanced down at the streaks of blood and white stuff on his arms. He could use a little cleaning up, too. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Jody. She didn’t even look up.

In the suite’s bathroom, he rinsed away the blood and the milky white goo that had covered Marybeth. With a wet paper towel, he rubbed the stuff off his T-shirt, too. He leaned close to the mirror, checking for more on his face and neck.

Seth stared in his own eyes and marveled at what had just happened in the other room.

Could a moment change everything? Seth knew that it could. A moment was all it had taken seven years ago in Chicago—a single moment to empty him out to a shell of himself.

And back there in the other room, it had happened again. He’d held Nicky’s baby for a matter of seconds. Those seconds made up the moment that changed his world all over again.

In the space of that moment he saw his own emptiness, and he saw it filled with all he needed, everything that mattered, right there in his arms. Life. Hope. The future. All of it in a tiny, naked, squirming newborn baby still connected to her mother by a twisted, vein-wrapped cord.

As he’d held Marybeth for the first time, the past was all around him. And not just what happened in Chicago.

But also another moment years and years ago, the first time that everything changed.

He’d been fourteen that day, the day his dad brought Seth’s future stepmom, Darlene, to the Bar-Y for the first time. She’d brought her little boy with her, too.

“Nicky,” she’d said, “this is Seth...” Seth looked down and saw the kid looking up at him through giant blue eyes.

At that time, Seth already considered himself a grown-up. He understood life and there was nothing that great about it. He sure had no interest in his dad’s new girlfriend’s kid.

But then the kid in question had held out his small hand.

Seth had taken it automatically, given it a shake and then tried to let go.

But Nicky managed to catch his index finger and hold on. “Tet,” he said proudly. It was as close as he could get to saying Seth at that point.

And that was when it happened, that was the first moment when everything changed.

As Nicky clutched his finger and Darlene chuckled softly, Seth felt a warm, rising sensation in his chest, a tightness, but a good tightness. He kind of liked the little boy and his pretty mother.

He slid a glance at his dad. Bill Yancy, always so sad and lonely and serious, was smiling, too.

What would it be like, to have a mom who made his dad smile, to have a little brother who called him Tet? Seth realized that he wanted a chance to find out.

As soon as Darlene and Seth’s dad were married, Bill legally adopted Nick. Seth finally had a normal, happy, loving family. The years that followed were good ones. The best.

But eventually there was Chicago and the next big moment, the one that added up to the death of his dreams. After Chicago, Seth had come home. He’d taken a job with the sheriff’s office.

But really, he’d only been going through the motions of living. And he only felt emptier with each new loss. Five years ago they lost Darlene to breast cancer. And then his dad, sad and silent and lonely all over again, had pulled up stakes and moved to Florida.

Seth had tried to stay positive. Two years ago, he’d run for sheriff and won. He’d tried to be proud of that, of serving his community and doing a good job of it.

But losing Nicky last November had been the final straw. Since Nicky died, Seth had greeted every empty day with bleak determination to get through it and on to the next one.

Until today.

Until he held Nicky’s baby, and it came to him sharply that while Nicky might be lost, this tiny, living part of him carried on.

* * *

When Seth returned to the main room, the nurse was busy at the sink near the window. The doctor was gone. Jody looked up from Marybeth and into his eyes. “Thanks. For the ride. For being here.”

“Nothing to thank me for. I’m right where I want to be.”

Jody started to say something.