The Rancher And The Baby

“Maybe you should come stay at our place,” she suggested to Cassidy.

“And interfere with your plans for the fireplace? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Cassidy responded with a grin. “I’ll be fine. See you in the morning, boss.”

The rain seemed to only grow fiercer, coming down at an angle and lashing at anyone brave enough to venture out of their shelter.

Taking two steps toward her vehicle, Olivia turned toward her intern. “Last chance!” she called out to Cassidy.

Rather than answer her, Cassidy just waved her hand overhead as she made a dash for her four-by-four. Reaching it, she climbed in behind the wheel and pulled the door closed behind her.

Utterly soaked, Cassidy sat for a moment, listening to the rain pounding on the roof of her vehicle. This really was pretty bad, she silently acknowledged. Half of her expected to see an ark floating by with an old man at its helm, surrounded by two of everything.

Well, she couldn’t just sit here, she told herself. She needed to get home. Pulling the seat-belt strap up and over her shoulder, she tucked the metal tongue into the slot.

“I better get going before Connor and Cole come out looking for me,” she murmured. Connor got antsy when he didn’t have anything to do.

Starting her vehicle, Cassidy turned on her lights and put the manual transmission into Drive before she turned on the radio.

Apparently music wasn’t going to be on the agenda that afternoon, Cassidy realized with a sigh. The reception was intermittent at best—and hardly that for the most part. When a high-pitch squawk replaced the song that kept fading in and out, Cassidy gave up and shut off the radio.

With the rain coming down even harder, she turned the windshield wipers up to their highest setting. The blades all but groaned as they slapped against the glass, fighting what was turning out to be a losing battle against the rain.

Exercising caution—something, to hear them talk, that all three of her brothers seemed to believe she didn’t possess—Cassidy reduced her speed to fifteen miles an hour.

Three miles out of town, her visibility went from poor to next to nonexistent.

At this rate, it would take her forever to get home, and the rain was just getting worse. She needed to hole up someplace until the rain subsided. Remembering an old, empty cabin she and the others used to play in as kids, Cassidy decided that it might be prudent to seek at least temporary shelter there until the worst of the rain let up.

The cabin was less than half a mile away.

If the rain didn’t let up, she thought when the cabin finally came into view, then she would be stuck there for the duration of this downpour with nothing to eat except for the half consumed candy bar she had shoved into her bag.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had skipped lunch.

Leaning forward in her seat, she looked up at the sky—or what she could make out of it.

“C’mon, let up,” she coaxed. “The forecast specifically said ‘rain.’ It didn’t say a word about ‘floods’ or the end of the world.”

Cassidy sighed again, even louder this time. She held on to the steering wheel tightly as she struggled to keep her vehicle from veering off the trail. Ordinarily, veering off wouldn’t have been a big deal, but just as Olivia had predicted, the rain had become ferocious, turning what was normally a tiny creek into a rapidly flowing river.

One wrong turn on her part, and her truck would be in that river.

And then, just when it seemed to be at its very worst, the rain began to let up, going from what had all the characteristics of becoming a full-blown monsoon to just a regular fierce downpour. Even so, Cassidy knew she needed to get her truck onto higher ground before she found herself suddenly stuck and unable to drive—or worse.

The cabin was still her best bet. From what she remembered—and she really hadn’t paid all that much attention to this aspect when she was a kid—the cabin was on high ground.

Most likely not high enough to enable her to get a signal for her cell phone, she thought darkly. What that meant was that she wouldn’t be able to call Connor to assure him that she was all right. As much as she talked about being independent and being able to take care of herself, she didn’t like doing that to her big brother. Connor had been both mother and father to the rest of them for the last ten years. What that had entailed was giving up his own dreams of a college education and a subsequent career. He’d done it in order to become their guardian when their father died three days after Connor had turned eighteen.

While she was grateful to Connor for everything he had done and appreciated the fact that he cared about her and the others, she was equally convinced that Connor needed a family of his own—a wife and at least a couple of kids, if not more—to care for and to worry about.

About to turn her truck in order to get it to higher ground, Cassidy thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was bobbing up and down in the swollen water.

She thought it was rectangular—and pink.

You’re losing your mind, Cassidy silently lectured herself.

The next second, her body went rigid as she heard something.

She couldn’t have just heard—

No, that was just her imagination, getting the better of her. That was probably just some animal making that sound. It couldn’t have been—

A baby!

“Damn it,” Cassidy bit out, “that couldn’t be—” And yet, she really thought she heard a baby crying.

You’re really letting your imagination run away with you, she silently lectured.

Even though she was convinced she was wrong, Cassidy knew she couldn’t just shrug it off. She had to look again—just in case.

It wasn’t safe to turn the truck on a saturated road. Cassidy did the only thing she could in order to give herself peace of mind.

She threw her truck into Reverse.

Driving backward as carefully as she was able, she watched the road to see if she could catch sight of the bobbing pink whatever-it-was.

And then, her eyes glued to her rearview mirror, Cassidy saw it.

She wasn’t crazy; there was something bobbing up and down in the water. Something rectangular and, from what she could make out, it appeared to be plastic. A plastic tub was caught up in the rushing waters and, for some reason that seemed to defy all logic, it was still upright and afloat.

If that wasn’t miraculous enough, Cassidy could have sworn that the baby she’d thought she’d heard was in the bobbing pink rectangular plastic tub.

With the truck still in Reverse, Cassidy stepped on the gas pedal, pushing it as far down as she dared and prayed.

Prayed harder than she ever had before.

Chapter Two (#uc2df5cce-d16c-578b-b10f-3fd1cae7cf4e)

The rear of Cassidy’s truck fishtailed, and for one long, heart-stopping moment, she thought the truck was going to slide straight down into the rushing floodwater.

Everything was happening at a blinding speed.

Cassidy wasn’t sure just how she managed it, but somehow she kept the truck on solid ground. Not only that, but with her heart in her throat, she backed up the vehicle far enough so that it was slightly ahead of the approaching bobbing tub—all this while the four-by-four was facing backward.

She knew what she had to do.

If Cassidy had had time to think it through, she would have seen at least half a dozen ways that this venture she was about to undertake could end badly.

But there wasn’t any time to think, there was only time to react.