Fifty Ways To Say I'm Pregnant

She blinked. “Well, yeah. Sure.” She kind of frowned and smiled at the same time. “What? Beau, what is it?”

“Just, you know, between you and me…”

“Of course, if you want it that way.”

“Yeah. I do. It’s not something the whole county needs to know.” There would be talk, when it came out. He was not blood kin to Daniel. He’d been in prison. And his name was Tisdale. In Medicine Creek, most anyone could tell you that the Tisdales were no good. A lot of folks would disbelieve—and disapprove—when they heard. But that wouldn’t be for years yet. Daniel was going to pull through just fine. And Beau planned to see that the older man took care of himself, just like a real son would.

“I will not tell a soul,” she vowed.

So he said it. “Today Daniel told me that he’s leaving the ranch to me.” He sat up, hooked an elbow on either knee and looked at the clear, sparkling stream for a moment. Then he slanted a glance at Starr. “I gotta tell you, I’m having some trouble believing it’s true.”

“Oh, Beau…” Her voice trailed off. Her face seemed to glow. She looked so happy. Happy for him.

He grunted. “Pretty hard to believe, huh?”

She gave him a firm shake of her head. “No. No, it isn’t. Not hard to believe at all. But very good news. And, well, kind of right, you know?”

“You think so?” His own voice surprised him. He sounded just like he felt—young. Hopeful as a kid at Christmas. He’d learned early in his life that it didn’t pay to let anyone know how you felt.

But this was Starr he was telling. From the first, he’d found it way too easy to show her what was going on inside him.

Now she was nodding. “Oh, yeah. I do think so. My dad’s always saying how hard you work for Mr. Hart. And how great it’s turned out, him taking you on.”

“Zach’s been real good to me, too. I’m grateful.”

“So is Mr. Hart, don’t you think? I mean, that you came along. After all, he’s got no blood family left. And now, it’s kind of like you’re his family, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said, still marveling at the way it all worked out. “That’s how I feel about it. It truly is….”

She reached across the small distance between them and laid her soft hand on his arm. A warm glow seemed to radiate from the place where she touched him. The wind whispered through the trees and the cottonwood fluff blew around in the air and the warm sun glinted off the rushing stream.

Eventually, she let go, but it seemed to Beau that he could still feel the warm clasp of her hand. With a small, contented sigh, she stretched out on the grass and laced her fingers behind her head. She stared up at the fluttering leaves of the cottonwood that sheltered them—and beyond, to the wide, blue sky overhead.

Beau set his hat aside and stretched out beside her. For a while, they just lay there, watching the leaves above move in the wind, listening to the happy, bubbly sound of the stream at their feet and the occasional soft coo of a mourning dove somewhere nearby.

“Beau?” He turned from the view of the trees and the sky to meet her waiting eyes. She looked thoughtful and maybe a little bit anxious. “There’s been something I’ve been wishing I could ask you for a few years now.”

He had a pretty good idea where she was headed. “So ask.”

He watched her smooth throat move as she swallowed. “That day Tess caught us in the barn together, those horrible things you said to me out in the yard…”

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean them?”

Beau lay still, one hand on his stomach, the other cradling his head. She shifted, turning toward him on her side, propping her head on her hand. All that black hair spilled over her palm and fell along her arm to kiss the green, green grass.

“Well…” Her mouth trembled a little. “Did you?”

“No,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean those things I said. Those things were lies, pure and simple.” He felt the pained smile as it twisted his mouth. “And I put a lot of effort into being a convincing enough rat-bastard that you would think they were true.”

She let out a long sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath and just remembered to let it out. “I knew it. But I did want to hear you say it—just like I want to hear you tell me why you said those things…”

“Hell,” he replied, as if that was any kind of answer. All these years he’d nursed a hopeless yearning that someday they’d talk about this. Someday when she was a grown woman and he’d come through the bad things he’d done, come through to make himself another, better kind of life. And today, here they were, and it was happening just the way he’d always dreamed it might….

One hell of a day, this one. The day Daniel said he considered Beau as his son. The day Starr showed up with offerings of food from her family—and now seemed reluctant to leave.

He said, “I only knew then that I was headed for a bad place and I had to make sure you didn’t try to follow me there.”

“Oh,” she said so softly, the way a woman might exclaim upon unwrapping some beautiful and priceless gift. And then she called it exactly that—a gift. “Life is so strange, isn’t it?” she whispered, a certain reverence in her low voice. “I mean, what you did was so brave, really. It turned out to be like a…gift. It hurt so damn much when you did it, but my life turned out different—so much better than the direction I was headed in then, because you said those awful things to me, because they made me think, and think hard, about my life. Made me reach out to my family. Made me see I had to make some changes, or I could end up…” She didn’t seem to know how to finish.

So he did it for her. “…following the wrong guy down the road to nowhere and never finding your way back?”

Tears welled in her eyes, making them shine all the brighter. She didn’t let him see them fall, but sat up, quickly, turning away. Touched in the deepest part of himself, he left her alone until she could get it together.

Finally, she turned to him again, her eyes still suspiciously shiny-looking, but her soft cheeks dry. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s it. But look.” She raised her hands, palms up, as if to include everything—the rushing water, the summer sky, the trees whispering in the warm wind—even the faint cooing of that lone mourning dove. “I didn’t go down that road. And you…well, Beau. You have done it. You’ve found your way back.”

Chapter Three

For a while, they just sat there, side by side, staring off toward the stream and the open pasture that rolled away from them beyond the trees on the other side. Eventually, she picked up her tea, drained the last of it and tossed the remaining melted slivers of ice out into the water.

He put on his hat and got up, holding down a hand. She took it, tugging on it lightly as she rose. He felt a much stronger tug, down inside him—an ache for what might have been, if only he were someone that he would never be. Once she was on her feet, he made himself let go.

They hesitated, facing each other there on the bank, both knowing they should turn for the house, but neither making a move.

“Back then, all those years ago,” she said softly, “I’d never felt…oh, I don’t know. Accepted, I guess. I’d never felt accepted, or at home, with anyone. Not until I met you. For that short time we had, I felt I could tell you anything and you would understand. That you wouldn’t judge me, that you knew who I really was, deep down. And that you liked that person.”

“I did like that person.” The words came out before he even realized he would say them. “I liked that person a whole hell of a lot. I still do.”

Her smile was so shy. It trembled at the edges. “I’m glad to hear that. And you know, today, after so much time has gone by…I feel just the same. That I could sit right back down in the grass again with you and we could talk forever. That I could tell you everything that’s in my most secret heart and know I was telling it all to someone I can trust. I don’t think I want to give that up right now, Beau. Not when I’ve just found it again.” She bit her still-quivering lip to make it be still. “I guess what I’m getting at is…do you think that we might…?” Her words trailed off, but he knew where she was headed.

And it was impossible. “Starr—”

“Oh, wait,” she cried. “Can’t I finish?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets to keep them from doing something they shouldn’t. “Go ahead.”

“Well, it’s just…” She looked down into her empty glass, then up at him again. “I do know we’re going in different directions now. And I haven’t forgotten the things you said once. That all you wanted in life was a real home and a chance to work hard every day building something that was your own. Against all the odds, you’ve got what you wanted. And I’m off to New York in the fall, to start a new job. In a few months, I’m gone. Off to live the life I’ve been studying and planning for. I’m not saying either of us should change, or start thinking about giving up the lives we’ve worked hard to make. I’m not really talking about anything permanent. I’m just saying that, well, there’s a whole summer stretching out ahead of us. Why couldn’t we spend a little time together, now and then, before I go?”

“Be…friends, you mean?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Friends. That’s what I mean.”

How could she ask for that? She had to know it would never work. He couldn’t even stand next to her on Daniel’s porch without wondering if she still had that navel ring, without wanting to grab her and kiss her—and to maybe get his chance to see that secret tattoo.

But she was so sweetly, adorably hopeful, so damned impossibly beautiful as she stood there in front of him, asking him why they couldn’t just be summertime friends. He didn’t have the heart—let alone the will—to say no.

And why the hell should he say no, a darker voice down inside him was whispering? Why shouldn’t he see her if she wanted to see him? He was a straight-ahead guy now, an upstanding citizen who put in an honest day’s work for his pay.