Christine Rimmer - The Rancher's Christmas Princess

He frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m getting there. I promise I am. But could you just...” She sighed, shook her head. “Do you remember Anne?”

He stiffened. And he looked at her steadily for several awful seconds. But then he shrugged. “Sure I remember her. I liked her. Why?”

* * *

Pres had no idea why they were suddenly talking about Anne Benton.

He’d hardly known the woman, though he had liked her. She’d told him she was getting a doctorate in anthropology. A couple of times he’d gone riding out near the caves where she and the others in her group were working, cataloging the artifacts and pictographs in the caves, they said. Pres would stop. Visit a little with them—and with Anne especially. He remembered she was friendly, with an easy, open way about her.

It hadn’t been anything romantic. He’d just liked her, that was all.

He’d rested his elbows on the chair arms, his hands folded between. He looked down at them. “I...spent an evening with her once, just before she left town.” He hadn’t realized he would say that out loud until he heard the words coming out of his mouth.

“Spent an evening?” Belle prompted softly.

Pres didn’t like this. Not one bit. He ought to be the one asking the questions—and she should be coming up with the answers.

But somehow, she brought out the truth in him. She made him want to open up to her, to tell her all the things he’d never told a living soul. “It was a bad time for me that summer. I was going to get married. My fiancée dumped me for another guy.”

Belle made a low sound, of sympathy. “Oh, Preston...”

He went on, “She married that other guy on the second Saturday in September, which was right at the end of Anne’s stay in Elk Creek. I ran into Anne that night, at a certain roadhouse not far from town.”

Belle drew in a slow, careful breath. “You were with Anne on the night your fiancée married another man?”

“That’s right. I was trying to drown my sorrows. Anne was with her scientist friends, celebrating the end of their dig. She was drinking, too. Almost as heavily as I was. I’m ashamed to say, I drank enough that my memory of that night is pretty much a blur. I didn’t go home. I wasn’t safe to drive. I got a room in the motel adjacent to the roadhouse. I think I remember Anne being there, in the motel room, with me. But maybe I just imagined that.”

“Imagined it?” Belle was frowning.

He raised both big hands, palms up. “I don’t know. I know that when I woke up in the morning, there was no sign of her and I was alone. I pulled myself together and came home.”

Belle studied his face. She seemed to be looking for answers there.

He had no answers. And what in the hell was this all about anyway? It was time—well past time—she came out with it. “I think I’ve said enough, a damn sight more than enough. And you’ve told me nothing. What’s Anne Benton got to do with anything? Are you telling me you know her? Did she mention me or something?”

“Oh, Preston. Yes. Yes....”

“What? Yes, you know her? Yes, she mentioned me?”

“I...both. Anne has been my dearest friend in all the world. We met at Duke University. She was getting her undergraduate degree and I was studying nursing. She had no extended family, but her parents had been wealthy. They adored her. She was their only child and she never wanted for anything. Her father died when she was eight. And her mother raised her alone—and then died the year Anne graduated from high school. She was on her own in life by the time I met her. And I was far from home. She and I...we became like sisters.”

He still didn’t get it. What did any of this have to do with him? “What are you saying? Anne wants to talk to me, is that it?”

“I...oh, I really am trying to explain. I’m not doing a very good job and I realize that...”

He felt that need again, the one he seemed to have around her—to go to her, to hold her, soothe her, tell her that everything was going to be all right.

How could he tell her that? He didn’t know that. He was the one in the dark here. “Just go ahead, okay? Just...continue.”

“Oh, sweet Lord...” She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, steadied herself, lowered it. “I’m sorry to tell you, so sorry. Not long ago, Anne was diagnosed with ALL—acute lymphocytic leukemia. I went to her, took care of her, but she didn’t make it.”

He tried to wrap his mind around that one. “You’re telling me that Anne is dead?”

She swallowed, convulsively. Her eyes brimmed. She shook her head, blinked the tears away. “Yes. She died ten days ago.”

“My God.” It seemed impossible. “She was such a great woman. So young, so full of life...”

“Yes. And she...had a little boy. His name is Benjamin. He’s eighteen months old.”

Pres remembered. “The boy folks in town say you brought with you to Elk Creek?” He watched her head bob with her swift nod. She swallowed hard again. And right then, as he stared into her wide, wounded eyes, he made the connection. He raised both hands, palms out, shook his head. “Wait a minute. I still don’t even know for certain if she...if we...”

“I know.” Belle’s voice had gained strength again. She spoke firmly now. “Anne would never claim you were Ben’s father if she didn’t know beyond a doubt that you were. She named me his legal guardian. She knew I would always take care of him and that I would give him all the love in my heart and an excellent start in life. She also knew she should have contacted you. She realized that both you and Ben deserve to know each other, that Ben needs his father and you have a right and a duty to be with your son. So she set me the task of making that happen.”

Pres was not keeping up with this flood of information. He was still stuck back there with the fact that, apparently, he actually did have sex with Anne Benton on the night that Lucy married Monty Polk. “Damn it to hell. If it happened, it was only one night.”

Beautiful Belle gave him a sad little smile. “Sometimes one night is all it takes.”

“Dear God.” He realized he was on his feet. And his knees didn’t want to hold him up. He sank to the chair again. “A boy. A little boy...Ben, you said? His name is Ben?”

“Yes. Ben.” Belle produced an envelope from the pocket of her skirt. Her hands were shaking. “She gave this to me two days before she died. It was tucked inside a note she wrote to me. She told me to...” The tears welled again. She pressed her lips together, forced herself to go on. “...to read the note addressed to me after she was gone. That note told me who you were and where to find you. Also in that note, she asked that I give you this.” She extended the envelope across the coffee table toward him.

He took it from her trembling fingers. Struck with a sense of complete unreality, he tapped the end on the table, tore off the other end and removed the single sheet of folded paper within. He unfolded the thing, stared down at the words on it, words written in a hand that didn’t appear to have been all that steady. Those words ran together at first, kind of wiggling, like a caravan of ants trudging without direction across the paper, refusing to take any recognizable form. With effort, he read it through once.

And then again.

And finally, on the third time through, the ragged writing made sense to him.

He dropped the letter onto the coffee table and tossed the envelope on top of it. And then he made himself speak, although his voice sounded rough, ill-used, raggedy as Anne Benton’s handwriting. “She says the boy is mine. She says she woke up in that motel by the roadhouse with me and...she didn’t know what she would say to me. So she just...left. She says when she found out she was having my baby, she didn’t know how to tell me. She kept meaning to do it, but she never managed to work up the courage.”