A Baby on the Ranch

“Well, in case you didn’t make the connection, that’s the time that you’re supposed to be sleeping, too,” Eli pointed out. “I think that’s a law or something. It’s written down somewhere in the New Mother’s Basic Manual.”

“I guess I must have skipped that part,” Kasey said, her eyes smiling at him. His stomach picked that moment to rumble rather loudly. Kasey eyed him knowingly. “Are you all finished working for the day?” Eli nodded, trying to silence the noises his stomach was producing by holding his breath. It didn’t work. “Good,” she pronounced, “because I have dinner waiting.”

“Of course you do,” he murmured, following her.

He stopped at the bedroom threshold and waited as Kasey gently put her sleeping son down. Wayne continued breathing evenly, indicating a successful transfer. She was taking to this mothering thing like a duck to water, Eli couldn’t help thinking. He realized that he was proud of her—and more than a little awed, as well.

He looked around as he walked with her to the kitchen. Everything there was spotless, as well. All in all, Kasey was rather incredible.

“You know, if word of this gets out,” he said, gesturing around the general area, “there’re going to be a whole bunch of new mothers standing on our porch with pitchforks and torches, looking to string you up.”

She gazed at him for a long moment and at first he thought it was because of his vivid description of frontier justice—but then it hit him. She’d picked up on his terminology. He’d said our instead of my. Without stopping to think, he’d turned his home into their home and just like that, he’d officially included her in the scheme of things.

In his life.

Was she angry? Or maybe even upset that he’d just sounded as if he was taking her being here for granted? He really couldn’t tell and he didn’t want to come right out and ask her on the outside chance that he’d guessed wrong.

His back against the wall, Eli guided the conversation in a slightly different direction. “I just don’t want you to think that I invited you to stay here because I really wanted to get a free housekeeper.”

Kasey did her best to tamp down her amusement. “So, what you’re actually saying is that I could be as sloppy as you if I wanted to?”

He sincerely doubted if the woman had ever experienced a sloppy day in her life, but that was the general gist of what he was trying to get across to her. She could leave things messy. He had no expectations of her, nor did he want her to feel obligated to do anything except just be.

“Yes,” he answered.

Kasey shook her head. The grin she’d been attempting to subdue for at least five seconds refused to be kept under wraps.

“That’s not possible,” she told him. “I think you have achieved a level of chaos that few could do justice to.”

Somewhere into the second hour of her cleaning, she’d begun to despair that she was never going to dig herself out of the hole she’d gotten herself into. But she’d refused to be defeated and had just kept on going. In her opinion, the expression on Eli’s face when he’d first walked in just now made it all worth it.

“How long did you say you’ve lived here?” she asked innocently.

He didn’t even have to pause to think about it. “Five months.”

Kasey closed her eyes for a moment, as if absorbing the information required complete concentration on her part. And then she grinned. “Think what you could have done to the house in a year’s time.”

He’d rather not. Even so, Eli felt obligated to defend himself at least a little. “I would have cleaned up eventually,” he protested.

The look on her face told him that she really doubted that, even though, out loud, she humored him. “I’m sure you would have. If only because you ran out of dishes and clothes.” Now that she thought of it, she had a feeling that he’d already hit that wall several times over without making any lifestyle changes.

At the mention of the word clothes, Eli looked at her sharply, then looked around the room, hoping he was wrong. But he had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t.

“Where did you put the clothes?” he asked her, holding his breath, hoping she’d just found something to use as a laundry hamper.

“Right now, they’re in the washing machine.” Where else would dirty clothes be? Kasey glanced at her watch. “I set the timer for forty-five minutes. The wash should be finished any minute now.”

She’d wound up saying the last sentence to Eli’s back. He hurried passed her, making a beeline for the utility room.

“What’s wrong?” she called after him, doubling her speed to keep up with Eli’s long legs.

Eli mentally crossed his fingers before he opened the door leading into the utility room.

He could have spared himself the effort.

Even though he opened the door slowly, a little water still managed to seep out of the other room. Built lower than the rest of the house, the utility room still had its own very minor flood going on.

Right behind him, Kasey looked down at the accumulated water in dismay. Guilt instantly sprang up. She’d repaid his kindness to her by flooding his utility room.

Way to go, Kase.

Thoroughly upset, she asked, “Did I do that?”

“No, the washing machine did that,” Eli assured her, his words accompanied by a deep-seated sigh. “I should have told you the washing machine wasn’t working right—but in my defense,” he felt bound to tell her, “I wasn’t anticipating that you’d be such a whirlwind of energy and cleanliness. Noah could have really used someone like you.”

“It wouldn’t have worked out,” she said with a shake of her head. “I have no idea what a cubit is,” she told him, referring to the form of measurement that had been popular around Noah’s time.

Although she was trying very hard to focus on only the upbeat, there was no denying that she felt awful for compounding his work. She’d only wanted to do something nice for Eli and this definitely didn’t qualify.

“I’m really very sorry about the flooding. I’ll pay for the washing machine repairs,” she offered.

Kasey wasn’t sure just how she would pay for it because she had a rather sick feeling that Hollis had helped himself to their joint account before leaving town. But even if everything was gone and she had no money, she was determined to find a way to make proper restitution. Eli deserved nothing less.

Eli shook his head. “The washing machine was broken before you ever got here,” he told her. “There’s absolutely no reason for you to pay for anything. Don’t give it another thought.”

There had to be at least two inches of standing water in the utility room, Kasey judged. The only reason it hadn’t all come pouring into the house when he’d opened that door was because the utility room had been deliberately built to be just a little lower than the rest of the house—more likely in anticipation of just these kinds of scenarios.

“But I caused this.” She gestured toward the water. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t filled up the washing machine, poured in the laundry detergent and hit Start.

“I want to make it up to you,” Kasey told him earnestly.

He had a feeling that he just wasn’t destined to win this argument with her. Besides, she probably needed to make some sort of amends to assuage her conscience.

Who was he to stand in the way of that?

But right now, he really had a more pressing subject to pursue.

“You said something about having to make dinner?” he asked on behalf of his exceptionally animated stomach, which currently felt as if it was playing the final death scene from Hamlet.

“It’s right back here,” she prompted, indicating the plates presently warming on the stove. “And I don’t have to make it, it’s already made,” she told him.

“That’s perfect, because the washing machine was already broken. Looks like one thing cancels out the other.” Satisfied that he’d temporarily put the subject to bed, he said, “Let’s go eat,” with the kind of urgency that only a starving man could manage. “And then I’ll fix the washing machine,” he concluded. “That way you get to keep Wayne in clean clothes,” he added.

And you, too, she thought as she nodded and led the way back to the kitchen. I get to keep you in clean clothes, too.

She had no idea why that thought seemed to hearten her the way it did, but there was no denying the fact that it did.

A lot.