Lone Star Winter: The Winter Soldier

“Shut up!” chorused the two men.

Belinda Jessup Craig opened the front door and peered out at the tableau. “He’s very drunk,” she pointed out, and wondered why they looked so belligerent. “You’d better bring him inside, Luke. We can sober him up in the kitchen. You can’t leave him stumbling around like that. I’ll phone the Master’s Inn and see if they’ve got room for him.” She glanced at Cy’s puzzled expression. “It’s a halfway house for alcoholics. They offer treatment and continued support.”

“She wants to save the world,” Luke muttered, but he grinned at her.

“And he wants to control it,” she shot back with a wink. “Care to come in for coffee, Mr. Parks?”

“No, thanks,” he replied. “I have to get home.”

“I’m sorry about the trouble,” Luke said.

“Your heart was in the right place. She’s special,” he added in spite of himself.

Luke smiled slowly. “Yes. She is.”

Cy cleared his throat. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Luke answered.

“Good night!” the cowboy echoed before Luke propelled him firmly into the house.

Chapter Two

Cy took his medicine and had the first good night’s sleep he’d enjoyed in days. He’d sent a capable, older cowboy over to Lisa’s ranch the night before to sleep in the bunkhouse and keep an eye on things. He’d also arranged covertly for sensitive listening equipment to be placed around her house, and for a man to monitor it full-time. He might be overly cautious, but he wasn’t taking chances with a pregnant woman. He knew Manuel Lopez’s thirst for revenge far too well. The drug lord had a nasty habit of targeting the families of people who opposed him. And Lopez might not know Lisa was pregnant. Cy wasn’t willing to risk leaving Lisa out there alone.

The next day he drove over to Lisa’s house and found her struggling with a cow in the barn, trying to pull a calf by hand. He couldn’t believe she was actually doing that!

He’d barely turned off the engine before he was out of the big sports utility vehicle and towering over her in the barn. She looked up with a grimace on her face when she realized what a temper he was in.

“Don’t you say a word, Cy Parks,” she told him at once, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “There’s nobody but me to do this, and the cow can’t wait until one of my part-timers comes in from the lower pasture. They’re dipping cattle…”

“So you’re trying to do a job that you aren’t half big enough to manage. Are you out of your mind?” he burst out. “You’re pregnant, for God’s sake!”

She was panting, sprawled between the cow’s legs. She glared up at him and blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. “Listen, I can’t afford to lose the cow or the calf…”

“Get up!” he said harshly.

She glared at him.

For all his raging temper, he reached down and lifted her tenderly to her feet, putting her firmly to one side. He got down on one knee beside the cow and looked at the situation grimly. “Have you got a calf-pull?”

She ground her teeth together. “No. It broke and I didn’t know how to fix it.”

He said a few words under his breath and went out to his truck, using the radio to call for help. Fortunately one of his men was barely two minutes away. Harley, his foreman, came roaring up beside Cy’s truck, braked and jumped out with a length of rope.

“Good man, Harley,” Cy said as he looped the rope around the calf’s feet. “If we can’t get him out our selves, we can use the winch on my truck. Ready? Pull!”

They were bathed in sweat and cursing when they managed to get the calf halfway out.

“He’s still alive,” Cy said, grinning. “Okay, let’s go again. Pull!”

Three more firm tugs and the calf slipped out. Cy cleared his nose and mouth and the little black-baldy bawled. The cow turned, gently licking away the slick birth membranes covering her calf.

“That was a near miss,” Harley observed, grinning.

“Very near.” Cy glowered at Lisa. “In more ways than one.”

“Excuse me?” Harley asked.

“It was my cow,” Lisa pointed out. “I thought I could do it by myself.”

“Pregnant, and you think you’re Samson,” he said with biting sarcasm.

She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “Go away!”

“Gladly. When I’ve washed my hands.”

“There’s a pump over here,” Harley reminded him, indicating it.

“You go ahead, son,” Cy muttered, glancing at his stitched arm. “I’ve got a raw wound. I’ll have to have antibacterial soap.”

Harley didn’t say anything, but his face was expressive. He thought his poor old crippled boss was a real basket case, barely fit to do most ranch work.

“Antibacterial soap, indeed. The germs would probably die of natural causes if they got in you!” Lisa muttered.

“At least my germs are intelligent! I wouldn’t try pulling calves if I was pregnant!”

Lisa almost doubled over at the thought of a pregnant Cy Parks, which only served to make him angrier.

“I’ll get back to your place and start the men culling cattle for the next sale, boss man. I can wash up there!” Harley called, and didn’t wait for an answer. The amused expression on his face was eloquent—he wanted to get out of the line of fire!

“Craven coward,” she muttered, staring after the cloud of dust he and the truck vanished in. “Are all your men like that?”

He followed her into the kitchen. “He’s not afraid of me,” he said irritably. “He thinks I’m pitiable. In fact, he has delusions that he’s soldier of fortune material since he spent two weeks having intense combat training with a weekend merk training school,” he added with pure sarcasm. “Have you got a hand towel?”

She pulled one from a drawer while he lathered his arms, wincing a little as the water and soap stung the stitches.

“You don’t want to get that infected,” she said, studying the wound as she stood beside him with the towel.

“Thanks for the first-aid tip,” he said with failing patience. “That’s why I asked for antibacterial soap!” He took the towel she offered, but his eyes were on her flat belly even as he dried away the wetness. “You take chances,” he said shortly. “Dangerous chances. A lot of women miscarry in the first trimester, even without doing stupid things like heavy lifting and trying to pull calves. You need to think before you act.”

She studied his quiet, haunted face. Discussing pregnancy didn’t seem to make him feel inhibited at all. “You must have been good to your wife while she was pregnant,” she said gently.

“I wanted the baby,” he replied. His face hardened. “She didn’t. She didn’t want a child until she was in her thirties, if then. But I wouldn’t hear of her terminating the pregnancy,” he added, and there was an odd, pained look in his eyes for an instant. “So she had the child, only to lose him in a much more horrible way. But de spite everything, I wanted him from the time I knew he was on the way.”

She felt his pain as if it were tangible. “I won’t have anyone to share this with,” she said, her voice husky with remembered loss and pain. “I was over the moon when they did the blood test and said I was pregnant. Walt wouldn’t even talk about having children. He died the night after I conceived, but even if he’d lived long enough to know about the baby, he would have said it was too soon.” She shrugged. “I guess it was.”

She’d never told that to another soul. It embarrassed her that it had slipped out, but Cy seemed unshockable.