Читать книгу The Texas Cowboy's Baby Rescue - Cathy Thacker Gillen - Страница 11

Chapter Four

“So, he kissed you?” Bess asked the next morning at Bridgett’s apartment.

“Shh!” She cast a look over her shoulder at the guys helping her move out. “Yes.”

Her sister grinned. “Did you kiss him back?”

“What does that matter?” she whispered, flushing. Unfortunately, yes, she had kissed him back! For way too long a time! “It was obviously a mistake.”

Bess grinned again. “Sure about that? From what I’ve seen, he’s very sexy. Well regarded in the community. Single and obviously interested in you. And the baby.” She taped shut another box. “And where is Riot, anyway?”

“With Cullen. He took him to work in his truck.” Bridgett selected the clothes she needed to take with her when she left versus those that were going into storage. “Well, the puppy couldn’t be here, obviously, after what happened yesterday with the landlord, and quit looking at me like that!”

Bess chuckled. “What is it they say? Life happens while you were making other plans. Well, while you were trying, rather unsuccessfully, I might add, to adopt a child on your own, a baby and a puppy and a kind, great-looking cowboy all drop in your lap!”

Bridgett thought about what a great and gallant thing it was that Cullen was doing. Not just inviting her to stay with him at his ranch but helping her out with both infant and puppy, too. She looked at her sister. “It’s almost crazy spooky, isn’t it?”

“Fated is the word you’re looking for.”

Bridgett paused. “It may seem that way.”

“I’m telling you...it most definitely is.” Bess pointed at the well-dressed Realtor coming up the walk. “Oh, and speaking of fate...”

Bridgett met Jeanne Phipps at the door. “Did you get the answer from the sellers?”

“Yes.” Jeanne flashed a regretful half smile. “Unfortunately, Bridgett, it’s not the one you want to hear.”

* * *

“WHAT’S WRONG?” CULLEN ASKED, coming through the ranch house door at five that evening.

Bridgett eased the sleeping Robby into the carrier sitting on the kitchen island, strapped him in and brought him into the adjacent family room. “What do you mean?” She knelt down to greet an equally tuckered-out Riot.

He nuzzled her palm, licked it once and then went into the back of his crate and promptly fell asleep.

“You look like you just lost your best friend.” Cullen strode over to the kitchen sink, rolled up his sleeves and washed his arms up to the elbows.

She waited until he’d grabbed a towel and then moved in to wash up, too. “Not exactly,” she murmured.

“Then what, exactly?”

She drew a deep breath. “My plan to be out of here—maybe as soon as this evening—fizzled. At least temporarily.”

He kept his eyes locked with hers.

“The house I have put an offer on is currently empty. I was hoping the owners would allow me to rent it from them until I can close on the property. They told my Realtor, Jeanne Phipps, they would consider it, but only after all the inspections are done and my mortgage application is approved.”

“How long do you think that will take?”

“Three, four weeks minimum. Which means I have to come up with a new plan to get us out of here.”

“Maybe not,” he corrected with a smile.

She regarded him quizzically.

“You could continue to stay here.”

She pressed a hand against her trembling lips and drew a deep, bolstering breath. “After what happened last night?”

He leaned close enough for her to inhale the brisk fragrance of sun and man. “What happened last night?”

She gave him a droll look. He gave her one back.

Ignoring the warmth of his body so close to hers, she reminded wryly, “You kissed me.”

His mouth quirked in masculine satisfaction. “And you kissed me back.”

Boy, had she ever. In fact, she had spent the night dreaming about it. She scowled in renewed embarrassment. “We can’t do that.”

He threw his arm around her shoulders and gave them a companionable hug. “Why not?”

Tingling everywhere he touched and everywhere he didn’t, she averted her glance. “My life is complicated enough as it is.”

He tucked a hand beneath her chin and guided her face back to his. “News flash, Bridgett. It’s always going to be complicated.” His deep voice sent another thrill soaring through her. “That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself.”

“Is that what we were doing?” Her throat was thick with emotion. “Simply enjoying ourselves?” Because to her it felt as if they had been on the brink of much, much more.

He brushed his thumb across her cheek, then dropped his hand at the sound of a car coming up the drive. He went to window, looked out. Swore.

Her pulse jumped again. “Who is it?”

“My folks.” He grimaced.

“Want me to make myself scarce?”

He caught her wrist before she could escape. “Nope. There’s a chance—a remote one—your being here will help them censor their remarks.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were scared of them, Cullen Reid McCabe.”

He shoved his hands through his hair. “In awe, maybe. And you’d be damned right.” He swung open the front door before they had a chance to ring the bell and wake the little ones. “Hey. Frank. Rachel. You-all know Bridgett?”

As always, the handsome couple radiated warmth and good cheer. The petite blonde Rachel smiled. In a cardigan set, skirt and heels, a strand of pearls around her neck, she looked as if she had come straight from her work as a tax attorney. Frank’s jeans, shirt and vest indicated he had left his work on the ranch. “Actually, we know her entire family,” Rachel said. A long, awkward pause followed.

Cullen nodded at the picnic hamper in his dad’s hand and the long wicker basket stuffed with baby things in his stepmother’s. “What do you have there?”

“We heard about what happened,” Rachel said gently, “and we brought by some dinner and a few baby items to help out in the interim.”

It was a nice gesture. Or would have been, Bridgett thought, if Cullen obviously didn’t resent the interference.

Frank frowned as Cullen ushered them inside. “We were disappointed you didn’t call us to tell us about the situation yourself.”

With a sober nod, he relieved his father of the basket of food and carried it back to the kitchen. “How’d you hear?”

His dad glanced into the family room where baby and puppy were sleeping. “I think the question is who didn’t call to let us know about the note left with the baby.”

Ouch, Bridgett thought as she took the Moses basket from Rachel with a grateful smile.

“Can we see the baby?” Rachel asked eagerly.

Cullen tensed. “If you promise not to wake either of them.”

Who was sounding like a daddy now? Bridgett wondered.

Everyone tiptoed toward the baby carrier.

Robby was sound asleep. He’d worked one arm out of the swaddling—it rested on the center of his chest. A blue knit cap covered most of his dark curly hair. His cheeks were slightly pink, his bow-shaped lips pursed. He was the epitome of sweetness and innocence.

On the floor opposite the Pack ’n Play, Riot was curled up in his crate, eyes closed, chin resting on a stuffed toy. He, too, was slumbering away.

“Adorable,” Rachel whispered approvingly.

For Frank, the emotions seemed more complex.

They trooped back out of the family room. Cullen grabbed four bottles of sparkling water from the fridge and ushered everyone out onto the screened-in back porch, leaving the door to the kitchen open so they could hear.

Everyone sat.

He waited.

“I’m just going to be blunt,” Frank said, looking at his eldest son. “Rachel and I both understand why you might have felt awkward about coming to us with this. It had to have been a shock, finding out about Robby the way you did. But surely you’d know that I would understand, better than anyone, what it’s like to get news like this after the fact.”

Cullen held up a staying hand. “Before you continue, you both should know, he’s not mine.”

Frank and Rachel exchanged concerned looks.

Finally, his stepmom cleared her throat and said kindly, “What we’re trying to tell you, Cullen, is that it would be okay, if he was. A McCabe is a McCabe. Part of our family, no matter how they come into it. Whether it’s by marriage.”

“Or illegitimacy?” Cullen challenged.

Frank leveled Cullen with a disappointed look.

Silence fell once again, more awkward and fraught with emotion than ever.

Finally, Cullen bit out, “Have you talked to Dan?”

Frank nodded. “He said attempts are being made to find the mother, but without her DNA, the child’s true parentage may never be known. And that would be a shame, son. For everyone.”

His words hung in the air, simultaneously an indictment and a plea to come clean.

Uncomfortable, Bridgett rose. “I really don’t think I should be here for this.”

Cullen put a hand on her shoulder. “This concerns you, too.”

Not wanting to contribute to what increasingly felt like an emotional melee, Bridgett eased back into the chair.

Cullen turned back to Frank and Rachel. “I am not dissembling when I tell you and everyone else the child could not possibly be mine. Obviously, I’ve been tapped to be the responsible party. Why, I have no clue. Yet. But I will figure this out. And when I do—” he turned back to his parents and finished heavily “—you-all will be the first to know.”

* * *

“ARE YOU OKAY?” Bridgett asked, short minutes later, after his father and stepmother had left.

His broad shoulders flexed against the soft chambray of his shirt. Exasperation colored his low tone, resentment his eyes. “What do you think?”

Knowing that he needed her support, whether he realized it or not, she ignored his curt reply. “You really don’t have any idea who did this, do you?”

An awkward silence fell. “You’re just now figuring this out?”

Hating the fact he thought she had betrayed him in some way, she gave in to impulse and caught his arm before he could turn away. “I can see why the accusation—never mind an anonymous one—would be upsetting, Cullen.” The hard curve of his biceps warmed beneath her fingertips. “But I can also see it goes much deeper than that.”

He didn’t take his eyes off her. “Let me guess,” he muttered. “You want to talk about my illegitimacy, too.”

She blinked, taken aback. Dropped her grasp and moved away. “Were you born illegitimately?”

“You don’t know?”

“How would I?” When he’d been a junior in high school, she’d been in sixth grade. Way too young to hear that kind of talk.

His dark brow furrowed. “I thought everyone in the county knew.”

“Obviously they don’t,” she returned, equally blunt, “or I would have heard about it.”

A skeptical silence fell.

She folded her arms in front of her. “All I do know is that you’re Frank’s son, conceived several years before he married Rachel, and you came to live with him after your mother died when you were a teenager. That you were here for almost two years, went off to college, lived elsewhere for most of the last decade and then came back.”

His eyes held hers for a long, discomfiting moment.

Ignoring the fluttering in her middle, she trod even closer. “I had no idea your mother and father were not married when you were born, but really, Cullen, in this day and age, is that such a big deal?” After all, she was attempting to adopt as a single parent! There were plenty of families where the parents were divorced, too.

Jaw set, he spun away and strode toward the front of the house where his office was. “It is a huge deal, even in this day and age to have ‘unknown father’ on your birth certificate.”

Okay, she thought, reeling at the implications. Maybe that was a little different. She watched him check the security screens, find nothing amiss. “Are you saying your mom didn’t know who sired you?”

Cullen dropped down into his desk chair, deep frown lines bracketing his mouth. “No. She knew. She just didn’t want anyone else to know that she had a child by one of the Texas McCabes.”

Bridgett leaned against the front of his desk, facing him, and took a moment to absorb that. Her denim-clad thigh almost touching his, she peered at him closely. “So, what did she tell you then?”

He rocked back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him, looking sexy as all get-out. “Nothing—except that it wasn’t important who my biological father was. She was parent enough.”

“And that was a problem because...?”

“She refused to accept the shame in the continued public perception that she ‘had no idea’ who her baby daddy was, and instead, cast herself as the lead in some romantic, ongoing stage play of life.” He shook his head in obvious regret. “Raising me on her own was all part of the drama and the angst.”

“She made you feel like a burden?”

“It wasn’t her intention. But it was definitely the outcome.” His expression didn’t change in the slightest, yet there was something in his eyes. Some small glimmer of sorrow. “My mother worked as a ranch-house chef. She never had a problem getting jobs, because she was very talented. But she never stayed in one more than a year or so, because by then her romance of the moment would have fizzled out, and she would need a fresh start and move on.”

Bridgett began to see how this had all played out for Cullen. “Taking you with her.”

He gave a terse nod. “To another small, rural town, often in yet another state, where I would again have to register for school.” His lips thinned in frustrated remembrance. “And to do that, I would have to provide my formal birth certificate. The administrators would see I had ‘no known father.’ My mother would tackle the subject head-on. Treat it as a joke and wear it as a badge of honor.”

Gently, Bridgett said, “That must have been difficult for you to deal with at such a young age.”

Cullen accepted her empathy with a downward slant of his mouth and a harsh exhalation of breath. “Pity was the most common reaction.” He shook his head sadly, recalling, “I just felt embarrassed and degraded. To the point I begged my mother to tell me the truth.”

The pain in his eyes matched his voice.

“I wanted her to get the name on the birth certificate and be done with it. I even promised her I would never contact my father.” He walked to the windows overlooking the front of the house, then paced to another window, another view. “I just didn’t want to go through the rest of my life wondering who I was, where I came from. But—” he spun around and flung out a hand “—she wouldn’t budge.”

Bridgett’s heart broke for him. Yet she had to ask, as she edged closer yet again. “Is it possible she really didn’t know?”

Cullen shook his head, certain. “No. She was very much a one-man woman for as long as she was with someone. That was part of her own moral code. And, besides, I knew her. I could see that she knew my father’s identity. She just wasn’t going to tell me.”

Bridgett stood opposite him, her shoulder braced against the window. She hadn’t expected him to reveal this much about himself. Now that he had, it had opened up the floodgates of emotion within her, too. “Then how did you end up with Frank?” she asked curiously.

“My mom died in a car accident when I was fifteen. I was put in foster care for about a year, which was a horrendous experience, mostly because I was so angry about the fact that now I was never going to know who my dad really was or have the chance to meet him.”

He exhaled. “Luckily, I had a social worker who understood how torn up I was about that, so she got a detective on the local police force to help. He used my birth records and my mother’s work history to figure out where she had been employed when I was conceived.” He grimaced. “From there, he found out she’d had a romantic relationship with Frank McCabe that lasted almost a year.”

She studied the sober lines of his handsome face. Thought about the hell he’d been put through, not just after he’d been orphaned, but throughout his entire childhood.

“Frank apparently wanted to get married. Mom didn’t, so they broke up, and she took off for parts unknown.”

She listened empathetically, unsure how to help. Cullen’s eyes took on a stormy hue. “A couple years after that, Frank married Rachel and no one ever gave my mom another thought. Until the social worker told Frank her suspicions.”

“How did you verify it?”

“I had some belongings of my mom’s. A hairbrush still had some of her hair in it. So they used that and Frank’s DNA to determine I was their child.” His manner guarded, he continued, “Frank immediately brought me to Texas. Rachel welcomed me as part of the family. And so did my five half siblings.”

She shot him a commiserating look, guessing, “No one in Laramie made you feel demeaned...?”

“Of course not.” He straightened and moved away from the window. “I was part of the legendary Texas McCabes. But they wouldn’t have, even if I hadn’t been from a well-known Texas family,” he said gruffly. “Laramie isn’t that kind of place.”

“No. It’s not.” It was why she loved it so.

“Here, it’s all about neighbor helping neighbor,” he continued. “Everyone feeling like family, even if there isn’t an actual biological connection.”

“That’s why I’ll never leave here. Because it was that kind of community support after my own parents died when I was in middle school that helped me move on.” He nodded and she touched his arm gently, feeling the kinship between them grow. “Is that why you came back to Laramie County? Because you wanted to live in a warm and welcoming place again?”

Was he perhaps more sentimental and idealistic than he wanted to admit? Was it possible they could connect on that level, too? Because if so...

Unfortunately, he hesitated just a second too long for comfort. Finally, he said, “My family all wanted me here.”

Bridgett’s heart sank as she read the reluctance in his expression. “But you didn’t really want to come back home, did you?”

* * *

CULLEN WASN’T SURE how to answer that. Not in a way a woman like Bridgett would understand, anyway. Finally, he said, “I hoped being with my dad and his family—as an adult, this time—would give me the kind of peace I’ve never had. Instead, it just feels like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something to happen. Some evidence that I am just as much my heartless, irresponsible, overly sentimental mom as I am my strong, hardworking, responsible father.”

Bridgett let out a slow breath, the warm understanding in her eyes a balm to his soul. “And now it’s happened. With this baby and this puppy.”

Keeping his gaze meshed with hers, he confided ruefully, “On the surface, at least to other people, including Frank and Rachel and the rest of the McCabes, it would certainly seem so.” He leaned in closer. “Which is why I have to find out who Robby’s real parents are. Otherwise...”

Bridgett stared at him unhappily. “I’ll convince DCFS that I’m the right mom for Robby and Riot, and foster-adopt them and they’ll both be loved and cared for and have an amazingly happy life?”

He regretted the angry flush in her cheeks. “I know it hurts you to hear this.” He captured her wrist before she could turn away. “But it’s true. Robby will never be as happy as he could be unless the mystery is solved and he knows who he is, what his past is and why his mother or father—or whoever it was—left him and Riot at the fire station to be given into my care.” He gave a ragged sigh. “And you won’t be happy, either, if you and Robby and Riot have to live the way I have all my life, just waiting for the truth to finally come along and blow your life to smithereens.”