Chapter Fifteen
B ayleigh leaned back in her office chair with satisfaction. So far, she’d found two physiotherapists who were trained in equine-assisted therapy. Both were interested in bringing clients out to the ranch to use the horses. She’d contacted local support groups for parents of children with congenital disabilities like cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. She’d talked with a representative from the school board who was interested in offering animal-assisted therapy to students with developmental issues. Her first volunteer, Ashley McKinley, was working out well and Bayleigh had hopes to expand the girl’s responsibilities.
She picked up her cup of cold coffee and went to the kitchen. She thought about making a fresh pot. Maybe a piece of toast. Neither appealed much to her. She was tired. She’d been pushing hard since the day she’d first arrived at the property that was now Belle Vista and it was catching up on her.
Also, she missed Lucas.
Which was ridiculous; they’d had barely a week together. She didn’t know him. Yet, somehow, in those few days, they’d connected more than she had with anyone else since... ever.
Had she and Jeremy felt like this in the early days of their relationship? It was so long ago, it was hard to remember. And they’d been so young. What did they know? What did they have to share? It was sex, sex, sex, and probably not a lot of talking.
She shivered. With Lucas, it had been a lot of sex, too. A lot of very excellent sex. But the talking, the emotional connection wasn’t in her imagination. It had been real.
Too bad he lived in Colorado. Too bad they were in different life stages. He needed a younger partner, someone to build a life with. Someone who wanted to go into the backcountry with him and sleep on the ground, under the stars.
She had a whole marriage under her belt already. She’d raised her child, mostly. She liked her high-thread-count sheets and her jetted tub and the ranch she was building.
It was good that they’d agreed to part amicably. They’d handled it with maturity, she thought. Their text messages were friendly, which was a sign of maturity, wasn’t it? Much better to end like that than to try something that was doomed to fail and end up full of regret and recrimination. She had lovely memories to hold on to now and nothing to resent him for.
Mr. Darcy gave a sudden bark and leaped to the door. “Okay, sweetie,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “That must be Ashley.”
So much for coffee and toast.
The young woman dropped to a squat as soon as she got a glimpse of Mr. Darcy.
“Oh, baby,” she crooned. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“How’s Rocket doing without him?” Bayleigh said.
“I doubt she’s noticed.” She kissed the pup on the muzzle, then straightened up. “I’m glad he’s out here with you. What a great home for him.”
“I love him,” Bayleigh said. “Everyone who comes here does, too.”
“I wish we could have kept the last two puppies, but my mom says Rocket is plenty of dog for us.”
Coralee McKinley had returned recently to resume mothering her two youngest children. Ashley and her brother Jason were young adults, really, thanks to Kendall, who’d taken over the heavy lifting of parenthood when barely a young adult herself. But according to Kendall, when your mom lights off for parts unknown, your dads are out of the picture, and you don’t want child services to take your brother and sister, you step up.
So many ways to come to mothering, Bayleigh thought, with so many results. Kendall had raised her siblings and now insisted she was never having children. Leila, who couldn’t wait to get pregnant with Sawyer, was raising Sawyer’s daughter from another woman. And thirty years ago, a mysterious woman had given three babies to three other families to raise.
“I’m glad I’ll be able to see most of them,” Ashley said, ruffling Darcy’s chocolate mane. “I see Kendall all the time. Leila and Sawyer are just down the road from us, and Diana’s not much farther. Her kids are over the moon to have a dog. And now—” she looked up with a brilliant smile “—I’ll get to see this little darling every week, too.”
Bayleigh laughed, her spirits lifted by Ashley’s energy. “Let’s go to the barn. Mucking stalls isn’t glamorous but it’ll give you a chance to get better acquainted with Ted.”
“Ted?” Ashley said. “We’re already friends. Sort of. We’re in the same Dungeons and Dragons group.”
Bayleigh stopped in her tracks and stared at Ashley. “Ted plays D Leila hadn’t noticed such a reaction in herself, but now she was curious. They’d both always wished for a sibling.
They were both grateful for the parents who had raised them.
“Why are we doing this again?” Lucas asked. “Neither of us needs another mother.”
“Says the man who still has one.” Leila kept her eyes forward as a fully loaded semi flew past them in the fast lane.
He winced. “Sorry. I just meant—”
“I know, I know. Sawyer says the same thing.” She sighed. “I know this is a risk. But I have to know. I can’t explain it any more than that.”
They took turns driving and he had to admit he was more comfortable in her Honda Civic than in his Tacoma, even if it was a bit small. He needed truck power to pull his four-horse Hot Shot trailer, though. The comfort of his animals came first.
“We’ll be there in about an hour,” Leila said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “Are you nervous?”
“No. And I can read the GPS prompts as well as you can.”
She looked across at him. “Not nervous at all?”
“Oh, I’m nervous.” He shook his head. “The adoption agencies were very clear. She does not want to be contacted. We’re not even supposed to know who she is.”
“I don’t care.” Leila’s jaw tightened. “We found her anyway.”
They’d agreed not to tell Brade or Diana about this trip. Diana was too emotionally charged for any more pain and neither of them wanted to cast a shadow over Brade and Kendall’s wedding plans. If things went badly, they didn’t need to know. If things went well, they’d tell them when the time was right.
Lucas watched the power poles fly past him out the passenger seat window, marveling that he was on this venture to find a birth mother he’d never really considered, with a sister who, six months ago, he didn’t even know he had. If nothing else, it distracted him from the mess with Tanya Schneider.
It also distracted him from Bayleigh.
He missed her. Maybe he should let her know that he’d be back in Grand in a few days and would like to see her again. He’d be returning from time to time to see Leila and Brade and get better acquainted with Diana, maybe meet her family. If he and Leila found their mother in Chinook, they’d all have to deal with this together, wouldn’t they?
He hoped Leila wasn’t going to get her stubborn heart broken by whatever reception they met with in Chinook. She’d created a story in her head that likely had no resemblance to the reality of thirty years ago.
“How much did your parents tell you about your adoption?” he asked.
Leila thought for a moment. “My mom’s kidney disease made it too risky to have children. Of course, it made adoption unlikely, too. But according to them, a miracle happened one summer day. A social worker called to say a baby girl was available and did they want her. The mother had signed away her rights and requested all records be sealed. They celebrate August fifteenth as my homecoming day, as well as my birthday. You?”
“Both my parents are healthy but other than that, pretty much the same.”
All three had been born May third, but Lucas hadn’t gone home with his parents until mid-September. There likely wouldn’t have been evidence of his cerebral palsy yet but he must have been a fragile infant.
He didn’t like thinking about that.
“Brade and I were in a hospital in Billings,” Leila continued. “You were in Denver. But from what Brade found out, our birth mother was here in Grand for at least some of the time before we were born. Don’t you wonder who our father is? If he’s someone here?”
“Len Landry is my father,” Lucas said. “Whoever donated the sperm is beside the point.”
She looked over at him, her pretty brows lifted in surprise. “Okay. I totally get that. I feel the same way about my dad. But aren’t you curious? Even a bit?”
Of course he was curious. But those answers were even more likely to be unpalatable. If you had enough feelings to sleep with someone, surely you had enough to take responsibility for the results. What kind of man abandoned a woman to deal with it alone? Especially when she was pregnant with multiples, though the guy might not have known that. Or maybe that’s why he split?
There were so many bad possibilities, he hated speculating. But they needed to be prepared.
“He could be a rapist, or a pimp,” he said, finally. “Our birth mother could have issues with substance abuse, mental illness.”
“She was functional enough to marry Weldon Scott,” Leila countered.
“We all know how well that turned out. Nothing about whatever happened to her with the man who provided his genetic material to us suggests he was a fine upstanding citizen.”
“Maybe they were both just very young and naive. Maybe they were in love.”
“This isn’t Romeo and Juliet , Leila.”
She threw him an obstinate look. “You don’t know. Looks like a tragic ending to me. Maybe we can turn that around.”
He sighed and turned to the window again. His hip hurt like a bastard. Maybe he should have tried to talk Leila out of this trip. What would Bayleigh think about this? He should have dropped her a line when he was in Grand. Did she think about him? Did she miss him the way he missed her? How did she feel about him?
He had a great idea how her body felt, and his body missed it, every night. He could still smell the sweet rainwater scent of her skin in his memory.
But her emotional condition? She’d been stoic and clear. She was exorcising her old, repressed self with him. He’d served a purpose, nothing more. A boy toy.
Was being used as a boy toy better than being dismissed as inadequate? The nights he’d spent in her arms were the best, the most peaceful, the most thrilling, of his life.
Leila sighed. “Sawyer’s worried I’m getting my hopes up too high.”
“Smart man.”
“What does Bayleigh think?”
For a moment, he froze. Then he turned and said, as casually as he could, “Bayleigh Sutherland? Why would you mention her?”
Leila shrugged. “No reason. I thought I saw a spark between you two, is all.”
A spark. That was the understatement of the year.
“She’s a nice person,” he said.
“Oh, my God,” Leila said with a laugh. “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met. And I live with an eight-year-old.”
Heat flew into his cheeks. “What? She is nice. Belle Vista is awesome.”
“Okay, brother. Then tell me why, every time someone brings up her name, you get all silent and broody, but your eyes have fire burning in them.”
“I do not!”
“Ha. You’re just like Brade. Diana and I knew there was something going on with him and Kendall way before he did. Or at least, before he admitted it. You’re telling me you don’t like Bayleigh?”
He was caught. “I said she was nice, didn’t I? She was a... a great host.”
“Did you sleep with her?” Leila asked.
“Leila.” Lucas ground out the words. “If I did, it’s none of your business. Just because we’re brother and sister doesn’t give you the right to get all up in my personal life. I’d like to remind you that we don’t know each other very well. Thirty years ago, we shared a placenta or whatever. Since then, we’ve been apart. My sexual partners are not your business.”
His supremely annoying sister nodded in satisfaction.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Oh, for—” He bit back the profanity. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, you know?”
“I’m a hell of a lot smarter than you, though, if you can’t see how great she is.”
There was some acid in her tone now, which only irritated him more.
“I know she’s great. I said that, didn’t I?”
“How come you didn’t tell her about this trip? How come she had to learn about it from Sawyer?”
She knew he’d been in town? Damn it. He should have called her.
“How come,” Leila continued, “she has no idea if she’ll ever see you again?”
“Because that’s how she wanted it!” He stopped, wishing he could reel back the words. “I mean, it was mutual. We agreed.”
It’s just, he’d suggested it first, and she jumped all over it, so what else was he going to do? It made sense. He wasn’t about to beg any woman to care for him. He didn’t need a pity relationship.
“Oh, Lucas.” Leila’s voice was gentle, as she took the highway off-ramp leading to Chinook. “You are such a dolt.”
“Thanks very much. Can we leave it alone now? I’d like to focus on one crisis at a time.”