A Baby Between Friends

“That’s because it’s my job.” He shrugged and tried to ignore the warmth of her soft palms burning his skin through the fabric of his chambray shirt. “If I don’t get those old bulls to dance with me, a bull rider gets run over.”

“Don’t you have a degree in ranch management?” she asked. “I would have thought you’d be content to stay home and run your ranch instead of traveling around the country playing chicken with a bulldozer on hooves.”

“Yup, I’m a proud graduate of Texas A&M.” He put himself between her and a couple enthusiastically two-stepping their way around the dance floor in an effort to keep them from bumping into her. “But I have a good, reliable foreman I pay quite well to check in with me several times a day. He gives me a full report on how things are going, I tell him what I want done and he sees that it’s taken care of. That frees me up to be out on the rodeo circuit saving knuckleheaded bull riders like Nate and Jaron.”

As Summer gazed up at him, she frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked, but why did you choose to be a rodeo bullfighter instead of a rider?”

“One time when our foster dad, Hank, was teaching us all to rodeo, one of the training bulls got loose and tried to mow down Jaron. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I jumped in the arena and put myself between the two of them to keep that from happening. It turned out that I was pretty good at distracting a bull and getting it to chase me.” He shrugged. “I’ve been doing it ever since.”

“In other words, you like being a hero,” she said, smiling.

Laughing, he shook his head. “Nah. I’m in it for the adrenaline rush, darlin’.” It was an easier explanation than admitting that he had always felt compelled to protect others from danger at the risk of his own safety.

When the song ended, Ryder led her off the dance floor and after finding an empty table for them, made sure she was comfortably seated before he went to get them a couple of drinks. He frowned as he made his way to the bar. His arms still tingled where she had rested her hands, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. That had never happened before. Had his brothers’ ribbing put ideas in his head about Summer?

As he continued to ponder the strange sensation, he looked up to see his brothers watching with no small amount of interest. They all wore the same sappy, know-it-all grin, making him want to plant his fist in all of their guts.

Ryder was extremely grateful that their foster father had instilled a strong sense of family among the boys he helped guide through their troubled teenage years. As Hank Calvert always told them, once they were grown they would appreciate having each other and a little bit of history together that they could look back on since none of them had any other family to speak of. And that’s the way Ryder felt…most of the time. But at other times—like right now—having brothers could be a real pain in the ass.

As Summer waited for Ryder to return with their drinks, she absently watched the dancers form a couple of parallel lines and begin to move in unison to a lively tune. She couldn’t get over how much she was enjoying herself. Normally she turned down all invitations from the men she worked with, no matter what the occasion or the circumstances. But Ryder was different. They had been best friends from the time she took the job as public relations director for the rodeo association southwestern circuit, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, she trusted him. He was honest, didn’t play the games that most men did, and despite his above average height and muscular build, she didn’t feel at all threatened by him.

Of course, that might have something to do with the way he had run interference with some of their more aggressive male coworkers when she first started working for the rodeo association. From the day they met, Ryder had made it a point to remind all of them that she was a lady and should be treated as such. He had shown her nothing but his utmost respect, and it hadn’t taken long before they had developed an easy, comfortable relationship. And not once in all the time she had known him had he indicated that he wanted anything more from her than to be her friend.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same for a lot of the men she knew. Most of them fell into two categories—blatant flirts who made it clear what they wanted from a woman, and the seemingly harmless type who lured a woman into a false sense of security before revealing their true hidden agenda. It was the latter group that was the most dangerous. The flirts were easy to spot and, once rebuffed, usually moved on to set their sights on another female. But the men with hidden agendas were nothing more than predators hiding behind a facade of sincerity.

As she absently stared at the dancers, a shiver slithered up her spine. Regrettably, she had learned that lesson the hard way. But it was one she never, as long as she lived, intended to forget.

“Would you mind if I join you, Summer?” Bria Rafferty asked, from behind her. “After that last dance, I need a minute or two to catch my breath.”

Turning to glance over her shoulder, Summer smiled at the pretty auburn-haired woman. “Please have a seat.” She looked around. “Where’s the rest of the clan?”

“Sam, Nate, T.J. and Lane are in a lively debate about the differences between breeds of bucking bulls and which ones are the hardest to ride.” Bria laughed as she pointed to the other side of the barn. “And Mariah and Jaron are arguing again about whether I’m going to have a boy or a girl.”

“What are you and Sam hoping to have?” Summer asked, smiling when Bria lowered herself into the chair across from her.

“I don’t care as long as the baby is healthy,” Bria said, placing her hand protectively over her still-flat stomach.

“What about your husband?” Summer was pretty sure she already knew the answer. “What does Sam want?”

The woman’s smile confirmed her suspicions. “Sam says he doesn’t care, but I think he’s secretly hoping for a boy.”

Summer smiled. “Isn’t that what most men want?”

“I think it’s because men want a son to do things with, as well as carry on their family name,” Bria answered.

“Not to mention the fact that females of all ages are a complete mystery to most men and they’d rather not have to deal with raising a child they can’t understand,” Summer added.

Grinning, Bria nodded. “Well, there is that.”

While one of her guests stopped to congratulate Bria on her pregnancy, Summer couldn’t help but feel envious. Nothing would please her more than to have a child of her own—a son or daughter to love and to love her in return. She had been so lonely since her parents died that she craved that sense of belonging again, that connection with a family. Having a child of her own would help restore some of those ties and if the plan she had come up with over the past six months worked, she would accomplish just that.

“When is your baby due?” she asked as the guest moved on.

“In early spring.” Bria glowed with happiness and Summer knew it had to be because she had just entered her second trimester. Ryder had mentioned that almost a year ago Bria and Sam had lost a baby in the early weeks of pregnancy—a baby they had both desperately wanted.

“It won’t be too much longer and you’ll know for sure whether you’re having a girl or a boy.” She hoped one day in the very near future to experience the joys of expecting a child herself and learning if she would be having a son or daughter.

“Sam and I have decided we don’t want the doctor to tell us.” Bria laughed. “But the closer it gets to having the sonogram, the more I think Sam is going to change his mind.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He keeps asking me if I feel like I’m carrying a boy.” The woman rolled her eyes. “Like I would know.”

“Men just don’t have a clue.” Summer marveled at the misconceptions some men had. “If there’s a bigger mystery to a man than a woman it has to be pregnancy.”

Grinning, Bria nodded. “Exactly.”

“Would you like for me to get you something to drink, Bria?” Ryder asked, returning to the table. He handed a soft drink to Summer, then set a bottle of beer on the table in front of the empty chair beside her.

“Thank you, Ryder. But I think I’m going to go see if Sam is ready to cut that humongous cake he insisted we had to have.” Bria rose to her feet. “I’m pretty sure he wanted to support the old saying that everything is bigger in Texas.”

Summer glanced over at the giant, four-tiered cake in the center of the refreshment table. “The cake is beautiful, but I have to agree with you. It’s definitely worthy of the axiom.”

“I hope you have plenty of room in the freezer,” Ryder added, chuckling as he pulled out the chair and sat down. “From the size of it, I’d say you’re going to have about half of it left over.”

Nodding, Bria flashed a smile. “I won’t have to make a birthday cake for any of you for at least another year. I can just thaw out some of this one, put a candle on it and sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“She makes each of us a dinner and a cake for our birthday,” Ryder explained as Bria walked across the barn toward her husband. “All of us that is except for Jaron. He’s crazy for her apple pie, so she makes a couple of those for him and sticks a candle in the middle of them.”

“I think it’s wonderful that you’re all so close,” Summer said wistfully.

Having spent the past several years alone on her birthday and holidays, she coveted Ryder’s family gatherings. She was sure if he had known, he would have insisted that she join them. But she hadn’t let on because she didn’t want that, hadn’t wanted to be reminded of all that she had lost. That was the main reason she had taken the job of the on-site PR person for the rodeo association. She was constantly on the move from one town to the next coordinating the many rodeos held throughout the southwestern circuit, and she was always so busy that she didn’t have time to think of how lonely her life had become. She was, however, glad that Ryder had invited her to his family’s celebration tonight. It made her more certain than ever that she had made the right decision to start her own family.

“Did your foster father celebrate with you all before he passed away?” she asked, curious to hear about how they had come together and bonded as a family.

“Bria made sure to include Hank and her sister, Mariah, in all of our get-togethers,” Ryder replied. “Family is everything to Bria and we all appreciate that. It helps us stay close and in touch with what’s going on with each other.”

Watching Ryder from the corner of her eye, she admired him and his foster brothers for the change they had made in their lives and the tight-knit bond they had formed. They might have been brought together because of their troubled youth, but with the help of a very special man, they had all learned to let go of the past and move forward. Through dedication and hard work, all six of them had become upstanding, highly successful men, and in the process, they had remained just as close, if not closer, than any biological siblings.

When Bria and Sam finished cutting the beautiful Western-themed cake, then invited their guests to have some, Ryder rose from the chair beside her. “I’ll go get us a piece of cake, then if you’d like we can dance a few more times before I take you back to the hotel.”

“That sounds like a pretty good plan, cowboy,” she said agreeably.

He had invited her to spend the weekend at his ranch, but she had decided against it, opting to stay in a hotel room in a nearby town instead. For one thing, speculation about their friendship had already surfaced with some of the other rodeo association contract personnel on the circuit, and she didn’t feel the need to supply the busybodies with more fodder for their rumor mill. And for another, she wanted to discuss her future plans with Ryder on the drive back from the party. Depending on his reaction, staying at the Blue Canyon Ranch with him could become a bit awkward.

An hour later, after congratulating the Raffertys once again on their renewed nuptials and Bria’s pregnancy, Summer let Ryder help her into the passenger side of his pickup truck, then anxiously waited for him to come around and climb into the driver’s seat. This was the part of the evening she had anticipated for the past two weeks—ever since making the decision to ask for his help.

“Are you cold?” he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat. “I can turn on the heater.”