A Baby on the Ranch

Chapter Five

Eli wasn’t sure just when he finally fell asleep. The fact that he actually did fall asleep surprised him. Mentally, he’d just assumed that he would be up all night. After all, this was Kasey’s first night in his house, not to mention her first night with the baby without the safety net of having a nurse close by to take Wayne back to the nursery if he started crying.

Granted, he wasn’t a nurse, but at least he could be supportive and make sure that she didn’t feel as if she was in this alone. He could certainly relieve her when she got tired.

Last night, when it was time to turn in, Kasey had thanked him for his hospitality and assured him that she had everything under control. She’d slipped into the same bedroom she’d used earlier. The crib he’d retrieved from her former home was set up there.

Her last words to him were to tell him that he should get some sleep.

Well that was easier said than done, he’d thought at the time, staring off into the starless darkness outside his window. He’d felt much too wired. Besides, he was listening for any sound that struck him as being out of the ordinary. A sound that would tell him that Kasey needed help. Which in turn would mean that she needed him, at least for this.

He almost strained himself, trying to hear if the baby was crying.

It was probably around that time that, exhausted, he’d fallen asleep.

When he opened his eyes again, he was positive that only a few minutes had gone by. Until he realized that daylight, not moonlight, was streaming into his room. Startled, he bolted upright. Around the same moment of rude awakening, the aroma of tantalizingly strong coffee wound its intoxicating way up to his room and into his senses.

Kicking off a tangled sheet, Eli hit the ground running, stumbling over his discarded boots on his way to his door. It hurt more because he was barefoot.

Even so, he didn’t bother putting anything on his feet as he followed the aroma to its point of origin, making his way down the stairs.

Ultimately, the scent brought him to the kitchen.

Kasey was there, with her back toward him. Wayne wasn’t too far away—and was strapped into his infant seat. Sometime between last night and this morning, she’d gotten the baby’s infant seat out of the car and converted it so that it could hold him securely in place while she had him on the kitchen table.

Turning from the stove, Kasey almost jumped a foot off the ground. Her hand immediately went to her chest, as if she was trying to keep her heart from physically leaping out.

“Oh, Eli, you scared me,” she said, struggling to regain her composure.

“Sorry,” he apologized when he saw that he’d really startled her. “I don’t exactly look my best first thing in the morning.” He ran his hand through his hair, remembering that it hadn’t seen a hint of a comb since yesterday.

“You look fine,” she stressed. No matter what, Eli always looked fine, she thought fondly. She could count on the fact that nothing changed about him, especially not his temperament. He was her rock and she thanked God for him. “I just wasn’t expecting anyone to come up behind me, that’s all.” She took in a deep breath in an attempt to regulate her erratic pulse.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

“Well, I never got into the habit of cooking while I was lying in bed,” she stated, deadpan. “So I had to come over to where the appliances were hiding,” she told him, tongue-in-cheek.

But Eli shook his head, dismissing the literal answer to his question. “No, I mean why are you up, cooking? You’re supposed to be taking it easy, remember?” he reminded her.

She acted mystified. “I guess I missed that memo. Besides, this is how I take it easy,” she informed him. “Cooking relaxes me. It makes me feel like I’m in control,” she stressed. Her eyes held his. “And right now, I need that.”

He knew how overwhelming a need that could be. Eli raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, cook your heart out. I won’t stand in your way,” he promised, then confessed, “And that does smell pretty amazing.” He looked from her to the pan and then back again. He didn’t remember buying bacon. Maybe Alma had dropped it off the last time she’d been by. She had a tendency to mother him. “And that was all stuff you found in my pantry?”

“And your refrigerator,” Kasey added, amused that the contents of his kitchen seemed to be a mystery to him. “By the way, if you’re interested, I made coffee.”

“Interested?” he repeated. “I’m downright mesmerized. That’s what brought me down in the first place,” he told her as he made a beeline for the battered coffeepot that stood on the back burner. Not standing on ceremony, he poured himself a cup, then paused to deeply inhale the aroma before sampling it. Perfect, he thought. It was a word he used a lot in reference to Kasey.

He looked at her now in unabashed surprise. “And you did this with my coffee?”

She merely smiled at him, as if he were a slightly thought-challenged second cousin she had grown very fond of. “Yours was the only coffee I had to work with,” she pointed out. “Why? You don’t like it?”

He took another extralong sip of the black liquid, waiting as it all but burned a path for itself into his belly.

“Like it?” He laughed incredulously at her question. “I’m thinking of marrying it.”

Outwardly he seemed to be teasing her, but it was his way of defusing some of the tension ricocheting through him. He was using humor as a defense mechanism so that she didn’t focus on the fact that he struggled not to melt whenever he was within several feet of her. Though he had brought her here with the very best of intentions, he had to admit that just having her here was all but undoing him.

“Really, though,” he forced himself to say, putting his hand over hers to stop her movements for a second, “you shouldn’t be doing all this. I didn’t bring you here to be my cook—good as you are at it.”

She smiled up at him, a thousand childhood memories crowding her head. Memories in which Eli was prominently featured. He was the one she had turned to when her father had been particularly nasty the night before. Eli always knew how to make her feel better.

“I know that,” she told him. “You brought me here because you’re good and kind and because Wayne and I didn’t have a place to stay. This is just my small way of paying you back a little.”

He shook his head. “This isn’t a system of checks and balances, Kasey. You don’t have to ‘pay me back,’” he insisted. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Oh, yes, I do. More than you can ever guess. You kept me sane, Eli. I hate to think where I’d be right now without you.

Her eyes met his, then she looked down at his hand, which was still over hers. Belatedly, he removed it. She felt a small pang and told herself she was just being silly.

“I know,” she told him. And that was because Eli always put others, in this case her, first. “But I want to.” Taking a plate—one of two she’d just washed so that she could press them into service—she slid two eggs and half the bacon onto it. “Overeasy, right?” she asked, nodding at the plate she put down on the table.

They’d had breakfast together just once—at Miss Joan’s diner years ago, before she’d ever run off with Hollis. At the time, he envisioned a lifetime of breakfasts to be shared between them.

But that was aeons ago.

Stunned, he asked, “How did you remember?” as he took his seat at the table.

She lifted her slender shoulders in a quick, dismissive shrug. “Some things just stay with me, I guess.” She took her own portion and sat across from him at the small table. “Is it all right?” she asked. For the most part, it was a rhetorical question, since he appeared to be eating with enthusiasm.

Had she served him burned tire treads, he would have said the same thing—because she’d gone out of her way for him and the very act meant a great deal to him. More than he could possibly ever tell her, because he didn’t want to risk scaring her off.

“It’s fantastic,” he assured her.

The baby picked that moment to begin fussing. Within a few moments, fussing turned to crying. Kasey looked toward the noise coming from the converted infant seat. “I just fed him half an hour ago,” she said wearily.

“Then he’s not hungry,” Eli concluded.

He remembered overhearing the sheriff’s sister-in-law, Tina, saying that infants cried for three reasons: if they were hungry, if they needed to be changed and if they were hurting. Wayne had been fed and he didn’t look as if he was in pain. That left only one last reason.

“He’s probably finished processing his meal,” he guessed. “Like puppies, there’s a really short distance between taking food in and eliminating what isn’t being used for nutrition,” he told her.

With a small, almost suppressed sigh, Kasey nodded. She started to get up but he put his hand on her arm, stopping her. She looked at him quizzically.

“Stay put, I’ll handle this.” Eli nodded at his empty plate. “I’m finished eating, anyway.” He picked Wayne up and took him into the next room.

She watched him a little uncertainly. This was really going above and beyond the call of duty, she couldn’t help thinking.

“Have you ever changed a diaper before?” she asked him.