Fifty Ways To Say I'm Pregnant

He chuckled at that and tipped his hat to her. The band started up again, and damn, was he tempted to pull her close for one more dance. But another cowboy stepped in and Beau didn’t challenge him.

Starr whirled off in the other man’s arms. Beau left the dance floor. He stood watching for a little while and then he turned and headed for his pickup parked in the dirt lot on the other side of the trees.

About a half an hour later, he drove into the yard at the Hart Ranch. The lights were on in the kitchen and living room of the main house.

Beau checked the green-glowing dash clock. Not quite eleven. Not real late, but later than Daniel had said he planned to be up. Beau decided he’d better go on in and check on him before heading for the trailer he called home.

Daniel’s dog, Whirlyboy, came off the front porch with a low whine of greeting, his tail wagging hopefully back and forth. “Hey, boy. How’s it goin’?” Beau patted the hound’s smooth head and Whirlyboy bumped companionably against his leg as Beau climbed the wooden steps to Daniel’s front porch.

He paused at the door before he gave it a tap, thinking of Starr again, of her scent that reminded him of jasmine, of her musical laughter on the night air.

Whirlyboy bumped his leg again, eager for a chance to get beyond the door where his master waited.

“We’re goin’, we’re goin’.” Beau gave the dog another pat and set his mind to a more constructive subject: the work he had planned for tomorrow. If Daniel was still up, they could take a moment to confer a little. They wanted to move several head of cattle from one pasture, where they’d eaten the grass down, to another where the grass was still long and thick. And, as always, there were fences to check.

True, they didn’t need to do a whole lot of conferring on stuff that was already decided. But Beau liked sitting in Daniel’s kitchen over a cold drink or a hot cup of coffee, discussing the work ahead, or their plans for the herd. Daniel seemed to enjoy it, too.

Beau tapped on the door. When no answer came, he tapped again, Whirlyboy’s tail beating against his leg in anticipation.

Again, there was no answer, just the sound of the dog’s impatient panting, an owl hooting out by one of the sheds, the chirping of crickets in the grass—and he thought, from inside, the sound of low voices. Maybe the television in the front room?

Beau turned the knob and pushed open the door. “Daniel?” He stepped into the small entry hall. Whirlyboy slid in around him and headed straight for the front room to the left, disappearing through the open double doors. The lights were on in there and Beau could hear those televised voices droning away. “Daniel?”

No answer, just a sharp spurt of canned laughter. And Whirlyboy, whining in bursts of frustrated sound.

“Daniel?” Beau said a little louder than before.

“In here…” The voice was Daniel’s, but tight and low, the words kind of squeezed out around a groan. Beau moved into the doorway—and stopped dead at what he saw.

The worried hound sat whining in canine distress at Daniel’s feet, as the big man squirmed in his easy chair.

Daniel’s gray face ran sweat, his left hand pressed, clawlike, against his barrel chest. “Think…heart attack…”

No, screamed a frantic voice inside Beau’s head. Not Daniel—no! He’d seen his mother die, and his mean old daddy. One of his brothers was dead, too—Lyle got his in a prison-yard fight. It was enough, Beau thought.

Not Daniel. No way. I won’t let him go….

“Just hold on,” he told Daniel, his own voice surprising him, it was so level and calm. “I’ll get help.” Beau spun on his heel for the phone in the hall.

Chapter Two

From the Medicine Creek Clarion,

week of July 10 through July 16

Local Rancher Suffers Heart Attack

Daniel Hart, owner of the Hart Ranch, suffered a heart attack the evening of Friday, July 4. Mr. Hart had been feeling unwell during the day and was discovered by his ranch foreman, Beau Tisdale, in the midst of the attack.

After a swift trip via EMT helicopter to Sheridan, a skilled team of surgeons determined that open-heart surgery was required. “It was touch and go there for a while,” reported the foreman when asked for comment. “But he made it through and he’ll be okay.”

Mr. Hart will be recuperating at Memorial Hospital in Sheridan “for as long as they make him stay,” the foreman said. “He wants to get home the minute they’ll let him out of here.”

Prayers and good wishes are greatly appreciated.

“Beau’s moving into the front bedroom at the house,” said Tess. “So he’ll be there at night. And they’ve hired a day nurse to look after Daniel for the first week at home.” Tess stood at the counter rolling out pie dough.

Edna, at the stove, slid a heavy crock of beans onto the rack in the oven, pushed the rack in and shut the oven door. “I’m just not sure they should be sending him home.” She clucked her tongue, a thoroughly disapproving sound. “Hardly more than a week since that heart attack. And what was that operation he had? A triple bypass?”

“Quintuple,” Tess corrected.

“Well, see what I mean? When I had that coronary vasospasm seven years back, they kept me up in Sheridan for the same amount of time Daniel is staying there. And what I had wasn’t even a true heart attack, let alone the fact that in my case there was no surgery involved.”

From her place at the sink cleaning up after breakfast, Starr could see the tiny smile that tugged at Tess’s mouth. “Well, now, Edna. Every case is different. And I’d imagine they’ve made some big strides in medical science in the last seven years. I think we’ll just have to trust that the doctors know what they’re doing.”

“Humph,” said Edna and trotted over to the pantry door, vanishing inside.

“Rrrrooom, rrrrooomm.” Ethan appeared from the short hall that led to the stairs and the great room. He was flying his favorite plastic jet.

“Ethan,” said Tess, “Did you put those blocks in the bin like I told you?”

“Rrrrooom, rrooom, rooommmm…” Ethan kept his jet airborne.

“Ethan John,” said his mother, pausing in the process of sprinkling flour on a half-flattened ball of dough. “Stop flying that plane and answer me.”

Ethan let his hands drop to his sides, plane and all, and made a big show of slumping his four-and-a-half-year-old shoulders. “Aw, Mommmm…” Tess pointed her rolling pin at him and gave him a narrow-eyed scowl. With a put-upon groan and a tragic expression, Ethan stomped back out the way he’d come.

Edna emerged from the pantry. She held two full Mason jars, one in each hand. “How about blackberry—and this nice apple butter I put up last fall?”

“Perfect,” said Tess.

Edna carried the jars to the table and set them down. “So. We’ll take the three pies and the beans and the jam over there. What else? We have some of last year’s tomatoes….”

As the two older women launched into a discussion of what else should go to the Hart place to welcome Mr. Hart home, Starr wiped up the sink and hung the breakfast pans on their hooks. She poured herself another cup of coffee at about the same time Tess and Edna decided that last year’s tomatoes would do just fine. And a couple of loaves of fresh bread, too. Edna would start on the bread right away.

Mug in hand, Starr turned from the coffeemaker and leaned against the counter. “Who’s going to take all this stuff over there?”

Tess carefully guided the flattened dough over a waiting pie. “Well, we thought we’d do it together, Edna and me.”

Casually, Starr blew across the top of the steaming mug. “Why don’t you let me?” She dared a hot sip as a thoroughly annoying glance passed between Edna and Tess.

Starr knew they were both thinking about all that mess with Beau in the past. But come on, she was a grown woman now and had a right to make to her own decisions when it came to men—not that there was any decision to be made about Beau. There was nothing between them anymore.

Yeah, she’d danced with him on the Fourth. One dance. And she felt really good inside about that dance. They’d talked like two old friends, and laughed together. When she thought of Beau now, there was no bitterness. All that old garbage was over for good. That dance, to Starr, had signaled true peace between them. She felt really good about that.

But peace between her and Beau didn’t mean she meant to run over there and jump the man’s bones or anything. Taking the food was a neighborly gesture, and she wanted to do it—and who could say if Beau would even be at the house when she got there?

“Don’t you have to work?” asked Edna.