Chapter Twenty-One
B ayleigh sat on the edge of the bed the next morning, willing her stomach to settle. She was jittery enough about seeing Lucas again. She’d had bad morning sickness with Ted, but it had resolved right at the three-month mark. She was past that now, just, and hoped this baby would soon give her the same consideration because this nausea was getting old.
Was theirs an affair of the heart, as the priest said? Should she trust that Lucas felt about her the way she felt about him? He was certainly right about it being terrifying.
After half a soda cracker and a sip of flat ginger ale, she managed to drag herself into the shower. All she wanted to do was stay in bed. Had she been this exhausted with Ted? Or was the fatigue she felt this time due to the fact that a lot of years had come and gone since her body had last grown a human?
She dressed carefully in clean jeans and a nice shirt, then blew her hair dry and smooth, touched her cheeks with blusher and slicked on some mascara. Hopefully, when she saw Lucas, she wouldn’t look like death on a stick. She’d intended to greet him when he arrived last night, but simply hadn’t been able to stay awake. She was nervous about their first meeting again. Would he expect a continuation of their fling? Or would they slip safely into the friend zone?
She hated that thought, herself, but what choice did she have? She would tell him once ultrasound confirmed that the pregnancy was viable, but until then, she couldn’t reengage in a romantic relationship with him while keeping this enormous secret from him. Once she’d dropped the bomb, he’d hold all the cards. He could leave, elect not to have anything to do with her or the baby, or they could agree at that point to redefine their relationship.
Bayleigh looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. She hoped Lucas would be as happy about the baby as she was, but realistically, she had to be prepared for a negative reaction.
She wandered into the kitchen, relieved to see that Ted had eaten and left already. He’d been quiet since he’d discovered her pregnancy, and she didn’t have energy to deal with him. Her poor, sweet boy. He’d been through so much already in his young life. Now, he was getting a half brother or sister he hadn’t banked on, on the cusp of his own adult life.
She opened the refrigerator, then closed it again and lit the flame under the kettle. Coffee was out of the question, but tea would work. A cup of weak peppermint, a slice of toast and a banana later, she actually felt like she could face the day.
Facing Lucas was another story. Now, the sensations in her belly had nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with how she’d pretend to be friendly but detached when she saw him.
No time like the present, she told herself.
She jammed a hat on her head and went out the front door, holding the screen door so it wouldn’t slam behind her. She was sensitive to everything these days.
She’d stick to her normal routine. This was a day just like any other, so she headed first for the main barn to chat with Sawyer about the upcoming day. But her breathing quickened when she passed Lucas’s Tacoma. He was here. He might be talking with Sawyer himself, right now. Would that make it easier or harder?
“Morning, boss,” Sawyer said. He had one of their new Clydesdales in crossties in the breezeway between stalls. “Checking Scamp’s feet. She picked up a rock yesterday.”
“Did Piper name this one, too?” Bayleigh asked.
Sawyer laughed. “She knows our target demographic better than either of us.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Bayleigh glanced around, casually. No sign of Lucas anywhere. Maybe he’d arrived late and wasn’t up yet.
“How’s she doing?” she asked, hoping Sawyer wouldn’t notice her distraction.
“Scamp? Or Piper?”
“Oh, I meant Scamp, but of course I always love to hear about Piper, too.”
“The mare is a doll. Very cooperative. I think she’ll be a huge hit with the younger crowd.” He ran a currycomb over the massive animal’s rump, brushing away bits of dirt and straw. “As for Piper, she’s doing great these days.”
After all her early upheaval, she was growing up with her father, her adoptive mother, and her birth mother. Beautiful.
Grand, Montana, was full of miraculous things. Billionaire cowboys, for one thing. You didn’t have to look farther than Endeavor Ranch to find those. Multiples, for another, thanks to Cloda Quinn’s three sets of identical twin daughters. Now, fraternal triplets. But the biggest miracle, to her, was the number of families that were structured outside of the traditional, nuclear format. Kendall McKinley, raising her siblings. Coralee McKinley, once footloose and fancy free, now back to being a single mother, making amends for disappearing. Other single mothers. Grandparents helping with grandchildren or living with their grown children. Friends sharing homes and lives. Single fathers like Lou Monahan and Weldon Scott. Married couples, common-law couples, gay couples, people of different races and religions, different abilities, and skills.
Not everyone got along, of course. Ignorance and pain were everywhere, after all. But she had to believe that compassion triumphed over bigotry. Once you opened your eyes to it, the evidence was everywhere.
“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said. “Piper’s a great kid.”
“Moving here was the best decision I’ve made in a long time,” Sawyer said.
Bayleigh too had been struck by lightning of the best good fortune in locating her ranch in this community.
Timing, of course, mattered. According to Leila, their birth mother had suffered badly in the few months she’d been in Grand, thanks to people who believed that girls were the property of their fathers until they were handed over to the care of their husbands, that women had no right to determine their own destiny.
How much grief might have been prevented if that young woman had been supported in her pregnancy?
She slipped a hand to her belly. Was she being overly optimistic? Would the people of Grand be supportive of her, having this baby on her own? Ted was already upset. Would she be censured by others? Would Sue Anne Nylund quietly create a salacious narrative to undermine her?
Would it help if Lucas was part of her life? Or would it make things worse?
“Bayleigh.”
She jumped to see Lucas, framed in the wide sliding doorway of the barn.
“Oh!” She backed up, suddenly faint. Do not pass out, Bayleigh Sutherland.
“Whoa,” said Sawyer.
The back of her knees hit the stall door behind her and she braced herself against it, breathing.
Lucas came into the barn, leaning heavily on his forearm crutch. Through the darkness creeping in at the edges of her vision, she registered that his stride was significantly shortened, his gait marked with a side-to-side movement that would take a huge toll on the rest of his musculature. He must be having a bad day. Was it just from the drive? Or was something else bothering him?
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Lucas took her elbow and helped her to a straw bale, where she sat down, grateful, and embarrassed.
“I’m fine.” She wiped a slick of cold sweat off her forehead.
“Liar.” Lucas looked at Sawyer. “Is she sick?”
Sawyer shrugged. “She’s right here, let’s ask her. Bayleigh? You sick?”
She forced a laugh. “No, of course not. I... stumbled on a rock or... something.”
Lucas lifted his eyebrows. “Right. Let’s get you back to the house.”
His hand on her arm felt so good, so warm and comforting, but she slipped out from under it and stood up. “Hi. Sorry I missed you last night. Everything okay in your cabin?”
He frowned. “Yes. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Didn’t eat enough breakfast, I guess.” She looked at Sawyer. “Thanks for the update. We’ve got a couple coming out with their son later this afternoon. He’s on the autism spectrum and their therapist recommended us. I’ll introduce him to the horses today but we won’t do any riding until next week.”
“Sounds good, boss.” Sawyer returned to grooming the mare.
She started down the breezeway to go back to the house. Lucas kept pace with her.
“I hoped to see you last night,” he said. “Maybe have a glass of wine on the patio again.”
The rough gravel of his voice sent prickles shivering up and down her spine. She yearned to lean back into his arms and let him take her right here, on the barn floor and then spend the rest of the day in bed, sheltered by the curve of his body, safe from the world, fearless and secure.
But she had to tell him, first, and now that he was here, she didn’t know how.
“I apologize,” she said. “I was caught up in the office.”
“That’s funny,” Lucas said. “Ted told me you were in bed.”
Damn it. She’d forgotten about Ted.
“Right, well, it’s been hectic around here.” She gave him a bright, slanted smile. “Which is good news, right? But listen, how are you? You’ve got so much going on. I’ve been wondering about your lawsuit and of course, your trip with Leila. I understand it went well?”
They were talking like acquaintances and it felt weird. She didn’t want to be Lucas’s acquaintance.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d love to tell you about it. If you’re interested.”
She turned then, taken off guard by the hurt in his tone. “Of course I’m interested! We’re... friends. Aren’t we?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Friends. Okay.”
She was playing this all wrong. He’d come hoping for more, but what did more mean? More sex? With him going back to Colorado afterward, satisfied with the occasional hookup when he was out this way? Or did more mean more sharing, more commitment? Maybe in it for the long haul? Like, helping her raise a baby?
“I brought a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon,” he said. “Maybe we can catch up over a glass or two later this afternoon. Would that work?”
Oh, she wanted nothing more. She wanted to hear it all. She wanted to be his sounding board, his soulmate, wanted him to share the miracle growing within her.
“Sure,” she said. She touched his arm, then fled to her office.
Lucas was a good man. He cared for her. Instinct said she could trust him.
But could she trust her instincts?
*
As it turned out, Bayleigh had been too busy to meet with him that afternoon, to Lucas’s disappointment. He wasn’t happy with how their first conversation had gone, but it wouldn’t do to scare her away. He was determined to talk with her after she was finished working today, but in the meantime, he went to the courthouse. He wanted to do a little searching for JP Malone.
Heather believed he was gone, dead. But if that was the case, surely there was a record of the man, somewhere. JP Malone had been a rodeo cowboy and ranch hand, moving with the seasons, following the work. There had to be a record of him somewhere.
The fact that Heather had loved the man who’d sired them had lifted an enormous weight of dread from his heart. She’d been through so much but knowing that they had been conceived in love was something they could all cling to. Heather believed that Malone had died. To have disappeared so completely told Lucas that he might not have been using his legal name. Nicknames among cowboys were common. Itinerant cowboys often got paid cash under the table, so there wouldn’t necessarily be record of where he’d worked or when.
Maybe he’d been in prison. That would certainly take a man out of circulation pretty solidly.
He called the detective Brade had hired to see if there was an update. The detective, a man named Mack—first name or last, Lucas didn’t know, and case in point about the anonymity of nicknames—didn’t have anything new. But now that they had another data point to use for seeking paternity, Mack was confident they’d find the man soon. People didn’t just disappear.
At noon, he got up, hungry and in need of a stretch. He’d do a lap or two of the boardwalk and find something to eat while he was there. He left a message for Brade. He’d spent a lot of time with Leila on the Chinook trip; he wanted to spend some more time with his brother, too. Lucas had not shown Brade his best side that first week. Now that he knew they were in fact true, full siblings, he could trust that building something with Brade had a purpose.
After a few blocks, his leg was feeling better. Now, unfortunately, his shoulder was aching. That was the thing about his disability. Yes, it was mild. Yes, he was lucky to be as functional as he was. But even a minor change in gait—say, from a pebble in a shoe, or a bad back—resulted in compensatory imbalances. A person protected their weaker leg by putting more weight on their stronger leg. They put more stress on this joint, to keep that joint immobilized. They used the outside of their foot to protect a stubbed toe and ended up with a sprained ankle.
For him, his walking aids were a godsend, giving him something to brace on in the event his bad leg decided to spasm suddenly. But he leaned on it with his arm, of course. It threw his upper body out of balance and if he spent too much time on his feet, the muscles in his mid-back rebelled, he might get a headache, and even his wrist complained.
On horseback, these things didn’t bother him. The motion of riding eased his low back, in fact. It opened up his spastic hip joint, passively making the leg move in exactly the position it resisted. The flexible leather, warm from the animal’s body heat, and the rhythmic rocking motion all encouraged locked-up muscles and joints to relax.
He didn’t have anything planned for tomorrow. Maybe he’d see if Brade was free for another ride into the Badlands. Or maybe he could ask Bayleigh if there was a horse he could rent.
Bayleigh.
Something was wrong with her. There was a fragility he hadn’t seen before that worried him. That hadn’t been a stumble that he’d witnessed in the barn. She’d almost passed out. If that straw bale hadn’t been there, she’d have ended up on the barn floor—he’d put money on it.
And she was avoiding him. When he’d come by the house with his bottle of wine yesterday, she’d blown him off, saying she had an appointment she’d forgotten about. Something was up, but he had no idea what it was. He’d hoped they could pick up where they left off, but maybe she’d been serious about them just being friends from here on out. That’s what they’d agreed on, of course, but that was before he knew he’d be coming back.
Lucas gave his head a shake and returned to his search for JP Malone. The county courthouse had nothing for him, but it occurred to him that the hospital might have treated him, if he’d been injured during a local rodeo. He spent an hour convincing a clerk to ask a supervisor to ask another supervisor for permission and in the end, due to the length of time that had passed, he was shown to a storage room deep in the bowels of the hospital.
“We haven’t digitized these yet,” the clerk told him, opening the padlock to the chain-link-enclosed area. “Good luck.”
The whole place was sectioned out into rabbit-warren-like passages, lined with endless padlocked areas. Some, like this one, were filled with boxes. Others contained office furniture, medical and surgical equipment, hospital beds, and assorted unidentifiable devices, all crammed together in a seemingly random hodgepodge.
It was a hoarder’s delight.
It was a claustrophobe’s nightmare.
Lucas, who’d grown up under the blue inverted bowl of sky with endless rolling hills beneath his feet, set about surveying the dusty boxes as quickly as possible. There were dozens of them, packed from floor to low, concrete ceiling. The air was dank and still, the lighting less than optimal, but he was pleased to see that the boxes were clearly marked with dates, all facing out.
Heather had given them the dates she’d met with JP, and Lucas had cross-referenced those with rodeo events in Grand. It didn’t take long before he’d found the corresponding boxes. He pulled them down, blew off years of dust and—after a brief coughing fit—began paging through the records.
After about five minutes, he pulled out a few more boxes to use as a seat, stretching out his bad leg. The old cardboard dented under his weight, but the relief was worth it.
The folders were organized by month, week, and day, with patients listed alphabetically within them. It was tedious work. How were so many people sick and injured in such a small town?
But he continued, his hands getting drier and dirtier with every new box he opened. After a couple of hours, he admitted defeat. No Malone listed anywhere, anytime.
He piled the boxes back up in their original order, closed the padlock on the chain-link fence and returned to the fresh air and light of the above-ground world.
“Thanks, anyway,” he said, handing the key back to the relieved clerk.
On the way back to Belle Vista, he wondered about his next step. Leila was preoccupied with telling Brade and Diana about Heather, though she had yet to convince the woman to visit Grand. Brade was preoccupied with making wedding plans with Kendall. The event was set to occur on the grounds of their waterfront heritage house, and they had a lot of work to do before it would be ready.
Notwithstanding the detective Mack, neither Brade nor Leila seemed particularly concerned with finding the man Heather said was their father. Or maybe, because they’d been at the search longer than him, they’d made peace with the likelihood of never meeting him.
Lucas had not made peace with that and was not ready to quit searching. Something about the old anguish in Heather’s eyes, that heartache she’d never fully been able to let go of, fueled him. She needed closure. If JP Malone had died, she ought to know. If he hadn’t died, then what happened to him? Heather was steadfast in her assertion that they’d been in love, that JP wouldn’t have simply left her.
Lucas wasn’t so sure. A lot of men told women what they wanted to hear, in order to get them into bed. Maybe some of those men even believed their own lies. In the dark heated frenzy of primal need, rational thought often took a back seat.
He understood that, had stretched the truth himself a few times, only to backtrack once the thrill of the hunt was over. Much truth was revealed in the cold light of day. Not once had a woman tempted him to look past the lies.
Until now.
Instead of celebrating that he’d escaped the clutches of yet another woman, he was desperate for Bayleigh’s smile, her touch, her voice in his ear, her gaze meeting his. He had no right to want this. He had no reason to want it. They’d agreed to keep things simple, after all. He should be relieved.
But hadn’t their agreement been built on the understanding that neither of them wanted more? So, what happened when one of them decided differently?
He had to know. But the thought of asking her outright turned his guts to ice. More than anything, he dreaded that soft look of pity that accompanied rejection. He didn’t want to hear it’s not the right time or place for us . If love conquered all, as the legends said, then time and place was immaterial. The old it’s not you, it’s me was a waste of words because however the speaker hoped to soften the message, it was still breakup language.
He frowned. Love.
Love?
Is that what he felt for Bayleigh? When she’d stumbled in the barn, he’d been filled with fear that he was about to learn that something was wrong with her. That she was sick, that she was in pain, that she was struggling beneath the weight of something she couldn’t bear on her own, something he wanted to lift off her narrow shoulders.
Is that what love was?
But what if she didn’t feel the same way about him? Would she allow him to help her, even if she was no longer interested in him romantically?
Would he still want to help her, in that case?
He didn’t care, he realized. All he wanted was for this woman who’d touched his heart to return to her former vibrancy. He’d do whatever it took to make that happen.
Even if there was nothing in it for him.