A Baby Changes Everything

He felt more dead than alive, but he remembered to stomp his boots on the doormat with its faded Welcome sign. He knew how Savannah hated having dirt tracked into the house.

Lately, there seemed to be a lot of things Savannah hated, he thought.

He followed the trail of lights, shutting them off as he went. Electric bills didn’t pay for themselves.

He found her sitting at the table in the small dining room. She turned her face toward him as he entered. The table was set for two.

A sad smile twisted his lips. Savannah had given up setting it for three. Luke had long since gone to bed.

Cruz missed his son. Missed his wife. Missed enjoying his life. But sitting back and enjoying things was for dreamers. Not for men with responsibilities.

Someday, he promised himself, he would be able to kick back a little and enjoy the fruit of his labors, like the Fortune men he’d grown up with. Right now was his time to prosper.

But only if he kept after it.

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Hi,” he said wearily.

Savannah forced a smile to her lips. He looked as tired as she felt, she thought. “You made it home,” she murmured.

His broad shoulders moved in a careless shrug beneath a faded denim work shirt that was damp with sweat. “I always do.”

He said that as if he resented coming home to her, she thought. She took a breath. “Hungry?”

Yes, he was hungry. Hungry for a lot of things. Hungry for more than food. But all his body begged for was some place to drop so that it could finally, finally rest. Cruz shook his head.

“No, I’ll just turn in.”

She looked at the food, which had long since cooled, waiting on his arrival. After leaving Vanessa’s, she’d returned home, determined to be more patient. To be the loving wife she wanted to be. That had entailed making an elaborate Mexican dish her mother-in-law had taught her how to prepare. “But I made your favorite.”

Cruz forced a smile to his lips only because he was too tired to do it naturally. He looked at the meal. Chewing took more effort than he could give it.

“Thanks. Save it for tomorrow.”

She struggled to hide her hurt. He was rejecting her. Again. “It won’t taste the same.”

“You made it. It’ll still taste good.” Cruz felt his temper threatening to spike. It took all the energy he could muster to keep it in check. “Look, I’m exhausted. If you don’t mind, I’m going to turn in.” He was already walking away from her toward the stairs.

“Yes, I do mind,” Savannah said under her breath, but Cruz was too far away to hear.

Angry tears stung her eyes as she began to clear the table.

Two

S avannah made it upstairs less than half an hour later, after clearing the table and putting away all the untouched food. She’d gone to the trouble of cooking mainly for Cruz. The way her stomach was behaving, it didn’t welcome eating no matter what time of day she tried. The best she could hope for was to keep down a few crackers at a time.

Crossing the threshold into their room, she found him facedown on the bed, his face pressed against a pillow. Cruz was sound asleep.

She sighed. Her husband looked as if he’d crashed on the bed the second he came into the room. His body was sprawled on top of the covers, his opened shirt fanned out on either side of him like denim wings. Savannah shook her head. Cruz hadn’t even bothered getting undressed, except for his boots.

The air in the master bedroom was oppressively heavy. It felt sticky, still ripe with the day’s humidity. Savannah walked to the windows on either side of the king-size bed and opened them as far as they would go, hoping to get a little air circulating through the room.

Nothing happened. If there was a breeze in the vicinity, it was avoiding them.

Not bothering to shed the loose-fitting sundress she had on, Savannah lay down on the other side of the bed and pretended that all was well in her life.

“Why didn’t you put your nightgown on last night?”

It was the first question she heard when she walked into the kitchen the next morning.

Savannah felt groggy. Her stomach was just now inching its way down from her throat after being lodged there for the better part of the last fifteen minutes, as she’d knelt over the toilet bowl. She’d then crept down the darkened stairs, making her way through the all but pitch-black house, guided by the light coming from the kitchen.

Cruz was sitting at the table, eating. He’d fixed his own breakfast. Again.

So now she felt useless as well as harried and ignored.

“You noticed.” Savannah hadn’t meant to let the cryptic words escape, especially in that tone, but they had.

A piece of toast raised to his lips, Cruz looked at her as if he thought her pregnancy had somehow loosened a few screws in her head.

“Of course I noticed. You were lying right there beside me.”

Savannah shrugged as she opened the refrigerator and moved a few things around. “Since you were wearing your clothes, it seemed like the thing to do.”

Taking out a container of milk, she poured the glassful she forced herself to drink every morning. As she raised it to her lips, she felt her stomach tighten in rebellion.

Taking her words to be a criticism, Cruz did his best to stifle the annoyance that rose up like a tidal wave inside of him. He’d never had a long fuse, but lately his temper was exceedingly short. “I was exhausted.”

Savannah put the container back in the refrigerator and sat down at the table, joining him. “You’re always exhausted.”

His back went up, even though he continued eating. “Running a ranch takes a lot out of a man.”

Savannah set the glass down after only two sips. She absolutely hated milk. “Then let someone help you run it.”

He used the edge of his toast to coax the last of his scrambled eggs onto his fork. “You mean like you?” He shook his head as he took another bite. “You’re already doing the bookkeeping. And you’ve got Luke and the house, not to mention that you’re—”

Savannah cut him off. How could someone so smart be so thick? “I know exactly what I’ve got to do.” The words rang a bit too sharply in her ears, but she couldn’t seem to control the tone of her voice this morning. “And I didn’t mean me. I meant one of the hands.” She thought a second. “What about Paco?”

Cruz could literally feel annoyance creasing his brow. In the next minute it was gone as he reined in the frustration that seemed to appear more and more quickly these days whenever he was home.

“I told you before, Paco left.” Impatience returned despite his best efforts to keep it in check. “Don’t you listen to me?”

“I listen to you,” she said with indignation. “I can count every word you’ve said to me in the last month. There haven’t been many.”

Was she going to start in on that again? “Look, Savannah—”

She didn’t want to argue. She wanted to find a solution. Desperately, she went over the names of the other ranch hands. “What about Hank?”

Cruz stopped and stared at her. Just what was his wife up to? “Hank?”