Justine Davis - Baby's Watch

As for Alberto…she could not forgive herself for that, either.Yes, he was smooth, convincing, but so was her father.

Her baby kicked, mightily, as if the thoughts of traitorous men were unsettling to more than just her. She smiled as she put a hand over the spot.

“Kicking?” Jewel asked.

“Yes,” Ana said, her smile widening. And then, suddenly remembering, her smile vanished. “Oh, Jewel, I am so sorry. It must be terribly hard for you to have me here, to see me, with my baby.”

Jewel waved her to silence. “It’s all right, Ana. I will never get over the loss of my baby, but I don’t expect the world to stop turning and other women lucky enough to be pregnant to hide, just to spare my feelings.”

Ana studied the benefactor who was rapidly becoming a friend. “You are very wise,” she said.

“What I am,” Jewel said frankly, “is very tired.”

“I know,” Ana said. “Is there anything I can do for you? Something else I can take over, so you can rest? Perhaps you might have better luck sleeping in the daytime?”

If Jewel was offended at the suggestion, or bothered by Ana’s knowledge of her sleepless nights, she didn’t let it show.

“I’ll let you know. Thank you.” A smile flashed across Jewel’s face. “Unless you want to go riding with the older girls over at the Bar None this afternoon. I’m sure Clay can find a nice, gentle horse for you. You haven’t left the ranch since you got here.”

Ana was sure by Jewel’s laugh that her fear must have shown in her face.

“Even if I could get this—” she gestured at her own bulk “—into a saddle, I wouldn’t. Horses and I…no.”

“You’re in Texas now, girl. Better learn to love them.”

“I do,” Ana said. “They’re beautiful creatures. But I prefer to admire them from a distance.”

“You’ll get over it,” Jewel predicted. “It’s in the water. And soon,” Jewel warned her with a smile, “I’m going to make you take a break and have some fun.”

Ana retreated to her room after that, wondering if the word fun would ever again be in her lexicon. It seemed a very, very long time since she had done anything but worry and plan and pray.

She stretched, trying to ease her aching back. If Jewel wouldn’t take her advice about a nap this afternoon, perhaps she herself would. Along about three she was usually beginning to feel the strain of the extra weight she was carrying. Her feet would swell, her back would throb, and there would be nothing more welcome than to lie down for a while.

Except then there would be no distraction, nothing to keep her from dwelling on the unpleasant facts of her situation. She was twenty-two, unmarried and not likely to marry. She was about to become a mother, with a past in shambles behind her. But she was determined to build a life for herself and her baby.

She had never felt more alone.

And then the baby moved again. Ana set her jaw and her courage.

She was not alone. She had a tiny, helpless human being depending on her. A child she already loved beyond measure. She would make sure that child had a chance.

She would do whatever she had to to make that happen.

By the time he reached his small, nondescript motel room, Ryder was feeling the too-familiar sensation of physical weariness coupled with being mentally amped up. It would be another day of restless sleep. He was definitely a night owl and used to sleeping in daylight—that was, according to Clay, one of his biggest failings—but doing nothing made him crazy.

“Buenos dias, mijo.”

With his key—no modern card key for this old place—still in the door to his room, he looked over his shoulder to see the source of the “Good morning.” It was Elena Sanchez, the tiny, round woman who ran this place with her husband, Julio. They’d been married, she had told Ryder at one point, nearly fifty years. The concept of being with one person that long boggled him.

“Hola, mamacita,” he said, teasing her about her tendency to mother him, even though she’d only known him a week. She also had amenably adapted her cleaning schedule to his, so that she never disturbed him when he was trying to sleep, but his room was always scrupulously clean; he appreciated that.

“You have been out all night again,” she said.

“Working,” he told her; something about the woman and her easy concern for a stranger made him want to reassure her.

Yeah. Like she’d be really reassured, considering how she feels family is everything, knowing you were out spying on your own brother’s ranch. Better yet, tell her you’re doing it because it got you out of prison, that ought to stop her worrying in a hurry.

“Have you eaten yet?”

“I just got here,” he explained.

“Then you come eat with us. There is plenty.”

“Thank you, but—” He stopped as she waved him to silence. And realized with a little jolt that he liked her worrying about him. That revelation put him off his game, and she won.

“You must eat,” she said briskly, and bustled off, leaving him shaking his head at how neatly she’d trapped him. There was no way for him not to join the couple at their breakfast table yet again without being, in Elena’s eyes, unforgivably rude.

And when the hell did you start worrying about being rude? he asked himself.

He supposed he could chalk that up to Boots, too. For all his rough edges, the man worked hard at doing what he’d never been able to do on the outside—be a decent human being. And that had included befriending a wild, out-of-control kid who’d landed in the adjoining cell.

Ryder’s idea of learning hadn’t included Boots’s lectures, but with him in the next cell, he hadn’t been able to avoid hearing the man. He’d taken to working on his collection of prison-style weapons. This, at least, he saw the need for; the looks and youth that had been a benefit on the outside earned him attention he could do without in prison. He learned fast, and was starting with a shiv made out of a toothbrush handle, since he wasn’t allowed a belt with a buckle to hone to an edge. The work helped him tune out Boots’s seemingly endless supply of reasons to turn his life around.

And that had included, later, convincing him to take the chance he’d been offered to clear his record and get out of prison before he was hardened beyond redemption.

A chance to do something good with his life.

A chance to help put away some guys doing some very nasty things.

A chance that had ended up with him coming full circle, back to Esperanza, where he’d grown up and gotten into trouble in the first place.

A chance that landed him, after following a trail that led all over the Southwest, where he was now. Spying on the Bar None ranch.

Home.

Not that he’d ever felt that way. All he’d ever felt at the Bar None was out of place. And a disappointment to his big brother. His little sister had been better; she had enough fire in her to understand Ryder’s restlessness.

And look where that got her, he told himself. With a kid at eighteen, after she fell for some handsome, sweet-talking city dude. He’d have thought his sassy little sister would have been too smart for that, but some women were just suckers for a pretty face.

Lucky for you, he thought with a wry grimace, knowing that, except for the city part, he could have been talking about himself. He’d loved—well, in the here today, gone tomorrow sense—and left more than one woman, although after Georgie had turned up pregnant at eighteen he’d taken the lesson to heart and been very, very careful. Up until then he figured if a pregnancy ever happened he’d do just what his father had done—have nothing to do with it.