Cathy Thacker - A Baby in the Bunkhouse

He held the front door for her and motioned her inside. She walked into a spacious great room, with a long wooden table and chairs on one side, a huge stone hearth in the middle—with a dying fire—and a grouping of overstuffed chairs, sofa and large-screen television on the other side. There were three closed doors on each side of the large gathering room that looked like the entrance to private bedrooms or quarters. All was dark and quiet.

“Kitchen’s to the rear if you need anything. Help yourself,” Rafferty Evans leaned down to whisper in her ear.

Taking her by the elbow, he guided her toward a door. Just as she had suspected, it opened onto a nice-size bedroom, with dresser, chair and private bath. A stack of clean linens sat on the end of the unmade bed.

“I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning,” he said.

Then he turned on his heel and left.

ELI WAS WAITING for Rafferty when he walked back in the ranch house. “Get everything all taken care of?”

Rafferty exhaled, not surprised his dad had not gone on to bed, as directed.

He hung his wet hat and slicker on one of the hooks on the wall and stalked into the kitchen. “Not exactly.” He got a beer out of the fridge, twisted off the cap and flipped it into the trash.

He took a long pull of the golden brew before continuing, “The bridge is underwater—which, thanks to the fog, we weren’t able to see until we got right up on it. When we were backing up, the woman got her car stuck in the mud, so we’ll have that to look forward to in the morning.”

Eli paused to take this all in. “Where is she?” he asked eventually, brows furrowing.

As far away from me as possible under the circumstances.

Rafferty took another pull on his beer, trying not to think how incredibly beautiful the woman was. “Cook’s quarters in the bunkhouse.”

Eli did a double take and surveyed his son with a critical eye. “You put a lady in the bunkhouse?”

Worse than that, Rafferty thought, he put a pregnant lady in there.

Figuring his father didn’t need to know that part of the equation yet, Rafferty shrugged and ambled back to the fridge. He rummaged around for something to eat, trying hard not to think of Jacey Lambert’s ripe madonna-like figure and drenched state.

The bunkhouse was plenty warm. She had two blankets, a stack of sheets and towels, a warm shower if she wanted it and an overnight case that undoubtedly held dry clothing. There was no reason for him to worry. She’d be fine. If she wasn’t, well, he had no doubt she was just as capable at calling for help and waking all the cowboys up as she had been backing her car into the ditch. They’d let him know. In the meantime, he needed to put her and everything else he still preferred not to think about, out of his mind.

“She seemed okay with it,” Rafferty said. Deciding he needed some food in his stomach, too, he grabbed a slice of precut cheddar.

“That’s not how we do things around here,” Eli reprimanded in his low, gravelly voice.

Didn’t he know it. Rafferty downed his snack, and another quarter of his beverage. Avoiding his dad’s look, he walked over to the recycling bin. “Look. She was dead tired—she’s probably already asleep.” He dropped the empty bottle into the plastic bin. “Which is what I plan to do.” Go to bed. Forget everything.

“We’re going to talk about this in the morning,” Eli warned.

Rafferty imagined they would. But not now. Not when he had so many unwanted memories trying to crowd their way back in.

“’Night, Dad.” Rafferty gave his dad a brief, one-armed hug and headed down the hall that ran the length of the seven-thousand-square-foot ranch house.

It was only when he reached his room that the loss hit him like a fist in the center of his chest.

But instead of the image of his own family in his mind’s eye, as he stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers and went to brush his teeth, he saw the trespasser he had encountered in the pouring rain.

She had glossy brown hair, a shade or two darker than his, that framed her face with sexy bangs and fell around her slender shoulders like a dark silky cloud. If only her allure had ended there, he thought resentfully. It hadn’t. He’d been held captive by a lively gaze, framed with thick lashes and dark expressive brows.

Everything about the woman, from the feisty set of her chin and the fact she was stranded late at night, pregnant and alone, to the way she carried herself, said she was independent past the point of all common sense.

Thank God she’d be leaving in the morning, as soon as he could get her station wagon out of the muck, Rafferty thought as he got into bed.

The sooner she left, the sooner he could stop thinking about Jacey Lambert’s merry smile and soft green eyes.

Now all it had to do was stop raining.

Jacey woke at dawn, her body aching the way it always did when she’d spent too long behind the wheel of a car, her stomach rumbling with hunger.

She opened her eyes, and for a second as she looked around the rustically appointed room, she had trouble recalling where she was.

Then she remembered the rain—which was still pounding torrentially on the roof overhead—the jagged slash of lightning across the dark night sky, thunder so loud it shook the ground beneath her. And a man in a black hat and a long yellow rain slicker coming to her rescue.

Jacey closed her eyes against the image of that ruggedly handsome face and tall, muscular frame.

She didn’t know what it was about Rafferty Evans. She’d seen plenty of men with soft, touchable brown hair and stunning blue eyes. Taken item by item, there’d been nothing all that remarkable about his straight nose and even features. So what if every inch of him had been unerringly masculine and he’d been six foot three inches of strength and confidence? Just because his shoulders and chest had looked broad enough to shelter her from even the fiercest storm was no reason to tingle all over just remembering the sight of him, or the gentle, deferential way he’d helped her out of her car.

But she was. And that, Jacey decided, was not good.

She had a Volvo station wagon that was still stuck in the mud. And a baby inside her needing nourishment.

Padding barefoot to the private bathroom where she’d taken a warm shower the evening before, she slipped inside and began to dress in the long, pine-green maternity skirt and cream-colored sweater. Needing to feel a lot more put together than she had the evening before, she took the time to apply makeup and sweep her hair into a bouncy ponytail high on the back of her head.

She slipped her feet back into a pair of soft brown leather stack-heeled shoes that were going to be woefully inadequate for the conditions and repacked her overnight case. Leaving it on the bed for the moment, she opened the door to the main cabin of the bunkhouse and stared at what she saw.

Five genuine cowpunchers of varying sizes and ages, all staring at her. Waiting, it seemed. “Hi. I’m Jacey Lambert.” Awkwardly, she held out her hand.

The beanpole-thin cowpoke who was nearly seven feet tall was first to clasp her hand. “Stretch.”

Jacey could see why he was named that.

“I’m Curly.” A mid-twentyish man with golden curls and bedroom eyes was second in line.

Obviously, Jacey thought, as they clasped palms a bit too long, he was the self-proclaimed lady-killer of the bunch.

“Everyone calls me Red,” said a third.

The youngest cowhand couldn’t have been more than nineteen, Jacey figured, and had bright red hair and freckles.

“I’m Hoss,” said a big fellow with a round belly and a receding hairline.