The Rancher And The Baby

Throwing open the door on the driver’s side, Cassidy jumped out of the truck and hit the ground running—as well as sliding. The ground beneath her boots was incredibly slippery.

The rain was no longer coming down in blinding sheets. Although it was still raining hard, she barely noticed it. All she noticed, all she saw, was the crying baby in the plastic tub. And all she knew was that if she couldn’t reach it in time, the baby would drown.

It still might.

They very well could both drown, but Cassidy knew she had to do something, had to at least try to save the baby. Otherwise, if she played it safe, if she did nothing at all, she would never be able to live with herself. Choosing her own safety over the life of another—especially if that life belonged to a baby—was totally unacceptable to her.

Cassidy wasn’t even aware of the fact that as she rushed to the water’s edge and dove in, she yelled. Yelled at the top of her lungs the way she had when she and her brothers would engage in the all-too-dangerous, mindlessly death-defying games they used to play as children. The one that came to her mind as she dove was when they would catapult from a makeshift swing—composed of a rope looped around a tree branch—into the river below. Then the ear-piercing noise had been the product of a combination of released adrenaline and fearlessness. What prompted her to yell now as she dove into the water was the unconscious hope that she could survive this venture the way she had survived the ones in her childhood. Then she had been competing with her brothers—and Laredo. Now she was competing against the laws of nature and praying that she would win just one more time.

The water was strangely warm—or maybe it was that she was just totally numb to the cold. She only had one focus. Her eyes were trained on the plastic tub and its passenger as she fought the rushing water to cut the distance between her and the screaming baby.

The harder she swam, the farther away she felt the tub was getting.

Keeping her head above the water, Cassidy let loose with another piercing yell and filled her lungs with as much air as she could, hoping that somehow that would help keep her alive and magically propel her to the baby. There was absolutely no logical way it could help; she only knew that somehow it had to.

* * *

WILL LAREDO HAD no idea what he was doing out here. Ordinarily he wasn’t given to following through on dumb ideas, and this was definitely a lapse on his part. For all he knew, the colt he was looking for could have found his way back to the stable and was there now, dry and safe, while he was out here on something that could only be called a fool’s errand.

It was just that when that bolt of lightning had streaked across the sky and then thunder had crashed practically right over the stable less than a minute later, it caused Britches to charge right out of the stable and through the open field as if the devil himself was after him.

Seeing the colt flee, Will ran to his truck and took out after it as if he had no choice.

Will knew it was stupid, but he felt a special connection to the sleek black colt. Britches had been born shortly after he’d returned to take over his late father’s ranch, and he’d felt that if he lost the colt, somehow, symbolically, that meant he was going to lose the ranch—and wind up being the ne’er-do-well his father had always claimed he was destined to be.

It was asinine to let that goad him into coming out here, searching for the colt, when the weather conditions made it utterly impossible to follow the animal’s trail. Any hoofprints had been washed away the second they were made.

Hell, if he didn’t turn around right now, he would wind up being washed away, as well.

His best bet was to take shelter until the worst of this passed. These sorts of storms almost always came out of nowhere, raged for a short amount of time, did their damage and then just disappeared as if they’d never existed.

But right now, he was wetter than he could remember being in a very long time and he wanted to—

Suddenly, he snapped to attention. “What the hell was that?”

The yell he thought he heard instantly propelled him back over a decade and a half, to a time when estrangement and spirit-breaking responsibilities hadn’t entered his life yet. A time when the company of friends was enough to ease the torment of belittling words voiced by a father who was too angry at the hand that life had dealt him to realize that he was driving away the only thing he did have.

There it was again!

Will hit the brakes with as much pressure as he dared, knowing the danger of slamming down too hard. He didn’t feel like being forced to fish his truck out of this newly created rushing river. Opening the door, he strained to hear the sound that had caused him to stop his truck in the first place.

He waited in vain.

The howl of the wind mocked him.

He was hearing things.

“You don’t belong out here anymore, Laredo,” he said, upbraiding himself. “What the hell are you trying to prove by going out looking for a colt that probably has more sense than you do? Go home before you drown out here like some damn brainless turkey staring up at the sky during a downpour.”

Disgusted as well as frustrated, Will leaned out to grab hold of the door handle—the wind had pushed the door out as far as it would go. Just as he began to pull it toward him, he heard it for a third time.

That same yell.

“Damn it, I’m not hearing things,” he swore, arguing with himself.

Getting out of the truck, he squinted against the rain and looked out at the rushing water. Yesterday, this entire length of wet land hardly contained enough water to qualified being called a creek; now it was on its way to becoming a full-fledged raging river.

Will’s square jaw dropped as he realized that he wasn’t looking at debris being swept away in the center of the rushing water. It was some sort of washtub, a washtub with what looked to be a doll in it.

That wasn’t a doll; that was a baby!

He was already running to the water’s edge when his field of vision widened and he saw her. Saw that Cassidy was fighting against the current and was desperately trying to reach the baby.

It hit him like a punch in his gut.

That was what he’d heard!

He’d heard Cassidy screaming out that yell, the one that Cole had come up with so many summers ago. It had something to do with making them band together, giving them the strength of five instead of just one. They’d been kids then.

She wasn’t a kid anymore and there were all sorts of things he wanted to yell at her now, all of them ultimately boiling down to the word idiot.

But that was after he got to her.

And before that could happen, he had to save Cassidy’s damn fool hide. Hers and that baby she was trying to rescue.

Where the hell had it come from?

He had no time to try to figure that out now. Later, that was for later.

Will gave himself a running start, using the increasing speed he built up to propel him as he dove into the water.

He swam the way he never swam before—as if his life depended on it.

As if her life depended on it.

Hers and that baby’s.

Divorcing himself from any other thoughts—from anger, fear, astonishment—Will focused entirely on the goal he’d just set for himself. Rescuing the woman who took special delight in filleting him with her tongue whenever the opportunity arose, and the baby he’d never seen before, both of whom had just one thing in common: they had absolutely no business being out here under these conditions.

And they had one more thing in common: both of them were going to die here if he didn’t reach them in time.

* * *

HER ARMS WERE getting really, really heavy, but she knew that if she gave in to the feeling, gave in to the very thought of how exhausted she felt, both she and most likely this baby were not going to live to see another sunrise.

Hell, they weren’t going to live to see another half hour if she didn’t find a way to save them.

Her lungs aching so much that they hurt, she still somehow managed to tap into an extra burst of energy. She stretched out her arms as far as they would go with each stroke, and she finally managed to get close enough to the baby to just glide her fingertips along the lip of the tub.