Cathy Thacker - The Rancher's Christmas Baby

The clerk ringing up Amy’s groceries agreed. “You’ve got the envy of quite a few women in this town.”

Unfortunately, Amy didn’t feel lucky. She felt foolish. Naive. And less in-the-spirit-of-Christmas than ever as she walked out of the store and drove back to her ranch.

Hoping she’d have some time to pull herself together before facing her new husband again, she turned into the lane and stopped at what she saw. Teddy was already there. Once again, taking over in a way he never had during all the years they had been “just friends.”

Temper simmering at the assumptions he had obviously made, she parked her truck next to the barn, got out with the grocery bags in hand and crossed the gravel.

He’d had a shower since she’d seen him last, and the fragrance of soap and shaving cream clung to his skin. His layered reddish-brown hair curled up slightly where it brushed the nape of his neck.

Despite the chill in the air, he wore only a tan chamois shirt, long-sleeved undershirt and jeans. His sheepskin-lined suede jacket and hat lay next to the open toolbox on the ground beside the stoop.

Teddy stopped hammering long enough to give her a welcoming smile.

Ignoring the way her heart skittered in response, Amy stopped just short of him. She made no effort to keep the incredulity out of her voice. “What are you doing?”

He kept right on hammering, easy as you please. Every thwack stretched the fabric across his brawny shoulders and delineated the bunched muscles in his chest. His jeans were doing equally amazing things for his thighs and butt, and despite her earlier promise to keep their relationship strictly platonic for now, Amy felt her mouth go dry.

“Exactly what it looks like,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to be undertaking. On her ranch, no less! “I’m installing a satellite dish.”

Amy drew a deep, bolstering breath. She dropped the grocery sacks in the grass and struggled to keep her emotions under control.

“I can see that,” she said with a great deal more patience than she actually felt. “Why?”

Teddy straightened slowly. As he faced her, his superior height seemed more pronounced than ever. “Because you only get two channels out here with a rabbit-ear antenna, and there’s no cable this far out in the country.” Ignoring her irritation, he picked up the instructions and scanned them briefly.

Amy stomped closer and glared at him. “I don’t need more channels.”

He put the paper down, laconic as ever, and picked up a wire. “There’s the rub, darlin’.” He paused to give her a long, telling look. “I do.”

Darlin’! When did he call her “ darlin’”? Teddy called his girlfriends that. Never her.

Aware it was all she could do not to kick him in the shin, Amy doubled back and picked up her groceries. “For what?”

Teddy mugged comically, as if the answer to that were obvious. “Football play-offs. The Super Bowl. Not to mention the Dallas Stars or the Mavericks.”

Fortunately, he had satellite at his ranch. “I don’t watch hockey, Teddy. Or basketball, either.” And she detested football!

His teeth flashed white in an infuriating smile. She was pretty sure he knew he was irritating the heck out of her and was determined to keep right on doing it. “That’s the beauty of it,” he told her in a soft, sexy voice that did funny things to her insides. He tapped her on the chest. “ You don’t have to.”

Now, that was debatable, Amy thought, given the tiny space in her travel-trailer.

“I’ll hear it,” she complained.

Teddy shrugged his broad shoulders. “If it bothers you,” he said, looking no closer to backing down than she was, “I’ll get headphones for the TV.”

“Or just watch at your place,” Amy suggested with a sweetness meant to set his teeth on edge.

His attention focused more on his task than on her, Teddy attached the wire to the dish. “I’d be glad to do that,” he responded amiably, “if you’d come to your senses and agree to let us live at the Silverado one hundred percent of the time.”

So that was what this was about!

Amy exhaled loudly. “I explained why it wouldn’t be good to do that.”

“Actually—” his expression mirrored her exasperation “—you didn’t. But I’ll let that one pass for now. In the meantime,” he said, looking around with male satisfaction, his lips twitching upward into a smile, “thanks to my work here, I’ve got many more channels for us both to watch. And,” he added, “another surprise inside, too.”

With the deeply inbred courtesy of a Texas gentleman, he walked ahead to hold the door.

Amy stubbornly stayed right where she was. She wasn’t sure she wanted any more “surprises,” if they were of the ilk that he was assuming the role of head of the household and taking over her life.

“What else did you do?” she demanded.

Teddy came back down the steps and removed the grocery sacks—which were getting heavier by the minute—from her hands.

“Why are you so wary all of a sudden?” he asked, beginning to look a little irked, too.

Amy huffed. “Why are you so…bossy…suddenly?”

A frown etched deep grooves on either side of his sensual lips. “I’m not bossy.”

Hah! She begged to differ. “It looks like you’re trying to take over here.”

He shook off her displeasure and nudged her toward the stoop. “You’ll feel better when you have a hot meal.”

Amy only wished she could sit down and eat dinner and watch some TV. Not sports. But maybe something else she didn’t get, like the Home and Garden or the Cooking channel.

Unfortunately, she had cookies to bake. “That’s going to have to wait,” she warned, getting weary just thinking about it.

“Not necessarily,” Teddy replied smugly.

Before she could formulate a response, a high-pitched beeping began inside her trailer.

“What the…?” Amy said, dread springing up inside her as she recognized the sound. “That’s my smoke alarm!”

Looking equally stunned and on edge, Teddy dropped her grocery sacks. Together, they raced for the door. Teddy got there first and swung it open. Choking swirls of dark gray smoke poured out.

“What in the world…?” Amy swore, waving the smoke away so she could see. She hadn’t left anything on that she knew of.

Only Teddy seemed to have a clue how this could be happening.

“Stay there…” He pushed her back and entered the trailer ahead of her.

He charged past the sofa and table, straight to the tiny galley kitchen. Muttering a string of words that weren’t fit for polite company, he jerked open the miniscule oven door. More smoke poured out, along with a noxious smell.

Grabbing a pair of mitts, he pulled a charred black pie pan from the oven and set it on top of the stove.

Amy grabbed a chair, climbed on top of it and yanked the smoke alarm from the wall. Blessed silence followed.

Teddy leaned across the kitchen sink to open a window. Then another. While Amy could only stare at the ruins in mounting disbelief.

OKAY. THIS WAS DEFINITELY NOT going the way he had planned, Teddy thought, staring into Amy’s brown eyes. But then, so far nothing about their hasty marriage was meeting expectations.

Which didn’t mean he couldn’t set things to right. Eventually.

He watched her pick up an aluminum cookie sheet and wave smoke toward the open window with big imperious motions that only seemed to underscore what a moron she thought he was.

Glad she wasn’t crying—crying would have made things worse—he explained calmly, “I wanted to surprise you.”

Her expression remaining unreadable, Amy frowned at the foot of countertop she had on either side of her two-burner stove. “You’ve done that, all right.”