The Cowboy and the New Year's Baby. Sherryl Woods
deed goes unpunished. Between his reputation and his bank account, it looked as if he were going to take a real hit.
Then he thought of the baby and the sassy woman who’d been forced to trust him with their lives. What if they did cost him a few bucks? What if he took a little ribbing for a few weeks? It would pass soon enough.
And in the meantime he could remember forever that he’d been part of a miracle, the kind of unexpected miracle that a bachelor was unlikely to experience, the kind of miracle that assured a man of God’s presence. What price could he put on that?
Chapter Three
The last thing Trish remembered was falling asleep, her baby in her arms, as the stranger rushed her to the hospital. She’d been exhausted, but she had never before felt such contentment, such an incredible sense of accomplishment.
She woke up to bright lights and chaos as three people swept her from the truck, wheeled her into the emergency room, then took her baby from her arms and clucked over her bravery. Once she was inside, there was no further sign of her reluctant hero. He vanished just as quickly as he’d appeared earlier. She hadn’t even had time to thank him properly, to apologize for the grief she’d given him.
No one seemed to stay still long enough for her to ask a single question. Finally she latched on to the sleeve of a pretty, dark-haired woman whose bedside manner had been gentle, cheerful and briskly efficient. She read the name printed on her tag: Lizzy Adams-Robbins, M.D.
“Doctor, is my baby all right?” she asked. “She was a couple of weeks early, and I was in the middle of nowhere when she decided to come. The man who helped was wonderful, but he wasn’t a doctor…” She realized she was babbling but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Your baby is perfectly healthy,” the woman assured her. “She weighed in at a respectable seven pounds, three ounces. Terrific lung power. Despite the circumstances of her untimely arrival, I’d say everything turned out just fine.”
Trish remembered the baby’s wails and couldn’t help smiling. “She already has a lot to say for herself, doesn’t she? No wonder she was so anxious to get here.”
The doctor grinned, then patted her hand sympathetically. “Right this second you may find that charming, but take it from me, you won’t feel that way a week from now when she’s been waking you out of a sound sleep a couple of times a night. By the way, have you decided on a name for her?”
Trish hadn’t given the matter of naming the baby a lot of thought. Despite the increasing size of her belly, the routine of prenatal visits and regular kicks from an active baby, she had somehow gotten the idea that she had forever before she had to decide on anything as important as a name. She’d been too busy trying to plan her escape and steer clear of her father, who was dead set on having her marry the baby’s father.
Even now with the baby a reality and the future uncertain, she still knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t marry Jack Grainger if he were the last man on earth. On the same day she’d found out she was pregnant, she had also discovered that he’d been seeing at least two other women—intimately—while he was supposedly engaged to her.
Even if those two pieces of news hadn’t collided headfirst, she would have wriggled out of the engagement. She’d discovered that Jack bored her to tears, maybe because he was so busy with his other women that he hadn’t had time for her. She suspected he hadn’t been any more overjoyed by the prospect of marriage than she had been. He’d just been too much in awe of her father—or her father’s fortune, more likely—not to go along with Bryce’s plans for the two of them.
Very methodically she had gone about quietly selling her business to a friend who’d expressed interest in it. She’d put her furniture in storage and slipped out of Houston. She’d been heading west to start the new year and a new life…someplace, when she’d gone into labor. The fact that her daughter had arrived early did not alter her determination to move ahead with her plans, and they definitely did not include Jack or any of the Delacourts.
The baby was her responsibility, and she was going to do right by her. That started with giving her a name she could be proud of, honoring someone who deserved it. Certainly not Jack. Certainly not anyone in her own family, since they’d all been far more concerned about convention than about her well-being or the baby’s. Assuming that the marriage was a foregone conclusion, her mother had pleaded with her more than once to rush the wedding so that her pregnancy wouldn’t show. When Trish had made it plain that there was to be no wedding despite her father’s wishes, her mother had been appalled.
“What will we tell people?” she had demanded.
“That your daughter had better sense than to marry a man she didn’t love.”
“What does love have to do with it?” her mother had asked, genuinely perplexed. “I thought the two of you got along well enough. Jack is suitable. You’ve known him for years now. He has a place in your father’s company, the promise of a vice presidency after the wedding.”
That, of course, had been Jack’s incentive. She’d had none, not any longer. “I’ve only known the side of him he wanted me—wanted us—to see. I certainly didn’t know about the other women.”
Ironically, her mother hadn’t seemed nearly as surprised or dismayed about that as Trish had been. “You knew, didn’t you?” Trish had charged, stunned that her mother would keep something like that from her.
“There were rumors,” her mother admitted, then waved them off as unimportant. “You know how it is. A handsome man will always have women chasing after him. It’s something you get used to, something you just accept.”
“True,” Trish agreed. “The difference is an honorable man, a man who actually cares about his fiancée, doesn’t let them catch him.”
“You’re being too hard on him, don’t you think? He was just having a little premarital fling.”
“Or two,” Trish said, wondering for the first time whether her father’s behavior was responsible for her mother’s jaded view of marriage. As far as she’d known, her father had never strayed, but maybe she’d been blind to it.
“Never mind,” Trish had said finally. “It’s clear we don’t see eye-to-eye on this. Bottom line, hell will freeze over before I marry Jack. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to get used to the disgrace of it, Mother.”
Of course she hadn’t. Straight through until Christmas Day, with Trish’s due date just around the corner, Helen Delacourt had remained fiercely dedicated to seeing Trish and Jack married. Without informing Trish, she had even included him on the guest list for the family’s holiday dinner. When he’d arrived, Trish had promptly developed a throbbing headache and excused herself. Even as she went to her room, she could hear her mother apologizing for her. If she hadn’t already been planning to leave town, overhearing her mother’s pitiful attempts to placate the louse would have spurred her to take off.
“Hey, where’d you go?” the doctor asked gently.
Back to a place she hoped never to set foot in again, Trish thought to herself. “Sorry. I guess my mind wandered for a minute. What were we talking about?”
“Naming your baby.”
“Of course.” She thought of the man who’d helped her. He might have been caught off guard. He might not have wanted any part of the crisis she had thrust him into, but he’d pulled through for her. She and her baby were fine, thanks to him. “Do you happen to know the man who brought me in?” she asked the doctor.
“Sure. He works at my father’s ranch.” She chuckled. “I’ve got to tell you I’ve never seen a man so relieved to get to a hospital in my life.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hardy Jones. I’m not sure where the nickname comes from. I’ve heard Daddy say it has to be short for hardheaded because he’s resisted every single attempt