Warrior's Baby

“I forgot how beautiful Montana is,” Melanie said, kneeling beside the stream.

“This is my favorite spot.” Colt moved toward her with long-legged grace, the ends of his shoulder-length hair fluttering like sleek, black wings. He placed a water flask on the ground between them and followed it down. “I feel content here.”

“I can see why.” She picked up a pinecone and studied it. “I used to collect these all year, then paint them at Christmas-time. I still make all my own ornaments.” Suddenly the need to move back to Montana grew fierce. “After all these years, waking up at the beach on Christmas morning still feels strange. That’s when I miss snow the most.”

He drew his legs up and leaned his elbows against his knees. A Stetson as dark as his eyes rested on his head, a blue denim shirt covered the broad expanse of his chest. Melanie glanced down at her own shirt; it was denim too, only it yielded a designer’s label. Colt’s probably came from the Western Emporium in town. He was a wealthy man but a simple one. She had heard his grandfather had made some sound investments, leaving Colt with quite a nest egg.

He looked over at her. “Do you ever visit your foster family during the holidays?”

Melanie cupped the pinecone and met his curious gaze. “No. They moved away years ago. Besides, I only lived there for a couple years, during high school. I’d been shuffled around a lot. Mostly city homes. I didn’t really grow up in Mountain Bluff, but I fell in love with it.” Because you were here. “And I was lucky enough to live next door to Gloria. Her family treated me like one of their own. I tell people this is my hometown because Gloria’s still here.” And so are you.

“I guess that explains why we never met. I pretty much know everyone who grew up around here or have at least heard of them, but if you only lived here for a few years...” He grinned. “You really are a city girl, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am.”

“You mentioned Saint Theresa’s the other night. I used to know some girls who went there.” Colt paused, then shrugged. “But I can’t recall their names. It’s been a while.”

She remembered a few girls from her high school had briefly dated some of Colt’s buddies. She had always thought that they had spread her despised nickname around Colt’s elite circle.

“You’re such a mystery,” he said, leaning forward to skim his hand across the water. “I’m an open book...but you—”

“Then come to California with me,” Melanie blurted.

Beneath the Stetson, his features startled. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all.” She assumed her “sales pitch” posture, squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin confidently. She didn’t want to be so much of a mystery that it hindered his final decision. Colt seemed suspicious by nature, or had acquired the habit after his wife had kidnapped their daughter. Apparently trust didn’t come easily. That thought saddened her. Colt had been so trusting in the past, free spirited with a sense of humor. She intended to bring that part of him back.

“I’m assuming that if you were considering a surrogate who lived in Montana, you’d visit her home, see how she lived, meet her husband and kids. Of course, with me, there’s no husband, no kids and no home to visit, at least not in Montana. But if you come back to California with me, you could see for yourself who I really am. Clear up the mystery and ease your conscience.”

A majestic hawk circling overhead made a breathtaking sight but Colt didn’t appear to notice. He continued swishing the water as though deep in thought. Melanie fixed her gaze on the shadow of his bronzed hand beneath the surface of the stream. The water swirled around his fingers in clear, blue circles.

“We can’t drag this decision on forever,” she said, continuing her rationale. “Figure it this way—if we go to California together and you feel comfortable about my background, then I can tie up my loose ends there and come back here for the insemination.”

Colt lifted his gaze, removed his wet hand and dragged it across his jaw. “There’s something about me I think you ought to know. Something I should have told you before now.”

She flashed a teasing smile. She knew all she needed to know. In her eyes this man was perfect “I thought you were an open book—”

“I’m a recovering alcoholic.”

Colt’s startling admission rammed her like a fist, jolting her mind with disturbing images of her youth. They filled her with despair: the pungent smell of cheap liquor permeating a dingy apartment, stale bread for lunch, nothing for dinner, unkind men frequenting her mother’s rumpled bed. She remembered ironing her own tattered clothes and getting herself off to school while the woman who had given her life lay in a drunken stupor. The day the authorities had placed her in foster care, her mother had solemnly promised to “do better.” She never had. Melanie had remained in the system until her eighteenth birthday.

“You drink?”

He steadied his gaze, spearing her with his guilt. “Used to. Partied a lot when I was a kid, got drunk for the hell of it, like teenagers do. It didn’t appear to be a problem, though, because I grew out of that phase when Meagan came along.” His fingernails scraped the dirt, imbedding the ground with catlike scratches. “But after she died... I hit the bottle pretty bad. The year she was missing I lived on hope...after I buried her, there was nothing left... nothing mattered. I’ve been sober, going on five years now, but it’s been a rough road, and I’m not sure I could have made it without Shorty. He never gave up on me.”

Melanie couldn’t think of anything to say. Because of her mother, alcoholics had always been intolerable in her mind. Yet this was Colt, the man who had helped heal her wounded teenage heart. If someone as beautiful as him had defended her, she used to tell herself, then she must be special, worth much more than her biological mother had thought her to be.

Colt’s humble voice interrupted the silence. “I hope this doesn’t affect your decision. Because I want you to know, no matter what hardship comes my way, I won’t choose alcohol as a remedy. I was a disgrace to my daughter’s memory, as well as to myself. I’d never consider bringing another child into my life if I had the slightest doubt about my sobriety.”

Melanie looked at the man questioning her gaze and did something she had hoped never to do in his presence. Burst into tears.

For a long uncomfortable moment, Colt just stared, uncertain of what to do. Although his first instinct was to draw her into his arms, he refrained. If he touched her and she shattered, broke into a million vulnerable little pieces right there in his arms, he’d be tempted to kiss the hurt away. To place his lips on every salty drop and taste her sadness. He recognized tears that ached, he’d shed enough of them.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No...yes...I don’t know...” She covered her face with trembling hands.

He moved closer, knelt down beside her and cursed his knotting stomach. He tamed horses. This sweet little creature was a woman. “I’m sorry if I said something to upset you.”

She dropped her hands. The dark smudges of mascara around her eyes made her look like a blue-eyed raccoon. Adorable, yet destructive to a man’s conscience—the kind of trophy he’d feel guilty about later.

“I wish she’d have cared enough to stay sober,” Melanie muttered bitterly.

“She?”

The dam looked like it might break again. Another flood of tears gathered in her eyes. “My mom.”

Colt swallowed. “Your mom was an alcoholic?”

She nodded. “My childhood wasn’t easy.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You deserved better.”

“Yes, I did.” She blinked her tears back. “But it took a long time for me to believe that. I waited for my mom to change, to take me back home and live a normal life.” Her distraught gaze avoided his as her hand nervously picked at the pinecone, chipping pieces off. “But that never happened.”

“Is your mom still alive?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve lost touch with her. Is yours?”

“No.” Colt couldn’t contain the sadness in his tone. “My mom died of cancer when I was still a boy.”

She looked up and dropped the broken pinecone sending it into the stream. “I’m sorry.”

Colt removed the bandana around his neck, dipped a corner of it into the stream and gently cleaned Melanie’s mascara stained cheeks. The stricken blue gaze belonged to the neglected daughter of an alcoholic, the chic California girl hidden somewhere deep within. For one brief moment his lonely heart tagged after both.

“Life is hard sometimes,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” she whispered.

When they both fell silent, the beauty around them intensified: the morning sun teasing the jagged rocks, gold-tipped leaves rustling through the trees, the rush of cool water, his admiring gaze, her smooth skin.

Colt tucked her hair behind her ear and handed her the red cloth. She dabbed her runny nose with the dry portion. “I feel better now,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Good.” He smiled and reached for her hair again. The fire-lit strands slipped through his fingers like ribbons of silk. When she leaned toward his caressing hand, he realized how intimate their gestures were. “Are you still willing to be my surrogate?”

“Yes.” Her breathless voice sent a surge of sensual heat coursing through his veins.

Colt shuddered. He wouldn’t permit this to happen. He wouldn’t confuse his need for a child with desire for the woman willing to carry it. That’s what was happening, he told himself. He was vulnerable and so was she. Their physical compulsion to produce a baby was creating false intimacy. His urge to taste her citrus-scented skin and run his hands through her thick, autumn hair would go away once his seed was planted. Artificially, of course.