Baby Enchantment Read online

  “When Justine said I was supposed to squire you around, she didn’t mention anything about Cedrella Pass, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t say anything to her about going there.”

  “I suppose Justine will have a fit if I don’t take you.”

  “Oh. Well, in that case, what time tomorrow do you want to leave?”

  He gazed off into the night, at the mountain range in the distance. Deep in its shadows lay Cedrella Pass and the Tyson Trail. He heaved a sigh. “The earlier the better.”

  “Before dawn?” She started up the steps to her door and turned when she reached the top one. Since she was a good deal shorter than he was and was standing on the top step, her face was a little higher than his. She noticed that he had to tip his head back to look her in the eye.

  He rested one boot on the lower step. “We could leave around seven,” he said.

  “In your truck?”

  “I’ll borrow Stumpy’s Jeep. It’s a better off-road vehicle.”

  “Fine. Knock on the connecting door when you’re ready. Better yet, come over and have coffee with me.”

  He appeared startled at the suggestion, and she had the fleeting thought that maybe not too many people knew him well enough to offer simple friendship.

  “That’s not necessary,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He shifted uneasily and removed his foot from the step. “I told you I’m not the kind of guy you want to get involved with.”

  She heaved a sigh of impatience. “Look, Cord, it was only a simple invitation.”

  “All right. Coffee in the morning. I take mine black.”

  “Fine. I’ll call the kitchen and ask them to provide a picnic lunch.” They could pick it up before they left.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, his voice slightly this side of gruff and sounding rusty.

  “Great. I’m looking forward to going to Cedrella Pass.”

  He didn’t say that he was, but she didn’t mind. He reached up and, gravely courteous, tipped his hat to her before opening his door and going into his own place.

  Bemused by their whole exchange, Brooke stepped inside her apartment, switching on lights as she hurried to her desk. It was still early, so she sat down and turned on her computer. She needed to get to work, but somehow Leo and Felice and Fling and the promised interview with Malcolm Jeffords seemed far, far away and not important in the scheme of her life. What was important was this baby she was going to have, and learning to love it, and learning to love—yikes! She had almost added Cord McCall’s name to that list.

  The only importance he had in her life, she reminded herself sternly, was to provide information. But in a flash of insight she acknowledged that she could remind herself of his unimportance as often she liked, the hard part was making herself believe it.

  THE DAY HAD BEEN A LONG ONE, and Cord was more than ready to hit the sack. But tonight his double bed looked too big for one person and far too lonely. As he went around straightening things in his apartment, he forced himself to stop thinking about the lush curve of Brooke’s lips, the gentle sweep of her neck above her collar. He reminded himself that she was going to have a baby. Soon, her body would be swollen with pregnancy, heavier and rounder by far. She would have that ripe, glowing look that was so attractive in women who were about to have a child. At least, he found it attractive. Pregnancy gave women a certain voluptuousness that they couldn’t attain otherwise.

  He heard the wood floor creaking next door as Brooke moved around the apartment. He couldn’t help wondering how long it would take her to settle down and get to bed. Would she jump in a shower? Wash her hair? Eat a snack? He flashed on her first day here, when he’d surprised her by trespassing in her apartment and had found her in bed nearly naked. He’d seen her nipples through the thin sheet—big brown ones, the kind he liked best, the kind that he’d bet would harden and tighten at the slightest touch. He ached to touch them—and all of the rest of her.

  Never mind how long it would be until Brooke went to bed; for him, it would be a while. With the image of her still emblazoned on the inside of his eyelids, he headed to the bathroom for a shower. A very cold one.

  BROOKE, sitting at her computer, stared at the line she had written that morning.

  There is nothing special about Rancho Encantado.

  Her lead still hadn’t led into anything. She didn’t know enough about Rancho Encantado to proceed. That could be because she hadn’t done a lot of the things that clients were urged to do. The oasis hot pool, for instance. According to the Rancho Encantado registration literature, the natural rock-lined hot tub, located in the date-palm grove was fed by one of the hot springs in the area. She ought to go there.

  But not tonight. She was still too keyed up over the evening, still thinking about Cord. Who would have known that the man liked babies? Who would have dreamed that he was so thoughtful? She recalled the determined look on his face as they drove from the restaurant in Sonoco to the Smiths’ home. And then there was his patience with the cow and her calf. He had been so caring, so unruffled. He seemed like a gentle man.

  There is nothing special about Rancho Encantado, except Cord McCall.

  She stared at the words. Had she actually typed that last part? Oddly enough, she had no recollection of doing so. She stared so long in disbelief that the words grew blurry on the screen. And then, she saw other words faintly inscribed behind those that she had written. She had never seen anything like them before—pale, almost indecipherable lines of print.

  She reached for her reading glasses and perched them on the end of her nose. Leaning forward, she peered through the lenses at the screen of her laptop. The faint lines behind her words wavered and glimmered, making them impossible to read.

  “Computers!” she exclaimed. “It’s always something.” Like, needing to install a new memory card last month. Like, having her printer repaired only a week ago. Of course she hadn’t typed that part about Cord McCall. It was a computer error. A glitch.

  By this time she was so sleepy that she could hardly keep her eyes open. That was pregnancy for you, she reminded herself with resignation. There was no point in trying to work when she felt so tired, so she put on her nightgown and crawled into bed. She thought about Cord, whose bed would be on the other side of this wall. Tentatively, she placed her palm against the wall, wondering if he might be doing the same thing. The wall felt warm, and for a moment she had the sensation that the barrier had disappeared and Cord was reaching out to her from his bed, touching her hand, twining his fingers between hers.

  It seemed so real, his touch. In fact, in that instant she believed that she could guide his hand to her breast, curve it around the contours rounded with pregnancy, and that his hand was cool against the heat of her nipple. But it was only fantasy, only a wish.

  Yet this was Rancho Encantado, Where Dreams Come True. Would her dream come true? No. It wasn’t a dream that she had any business having.

  She yanked her hand away and turned over, putting her back to the wall. Still, maybe if she listened carefully, she might hear the creak of bedsprings on the other side.

  But she heard nothing, because she immediately fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Late that night, the strident ringing of the telephone woke Cord from a deep sleep. He groped for the phone, elbowing himself up against the headboard of the bed and wincing at the pain that always accompanied his waking. The red numerals of the digital clock indicated that it was five in the morning.

  “Cord! Cord!” It sounded like Jonathan.

  “Jonny?”

  “Cord, I remember you said that if I needed to talk to you, I should push the button on the phone.”

  “What’s wrong, Jonathan?” Cord had programmed their phone to dial his number when someone punched the button next to his picture. This must be an emergency.

  Fully awake now, Cord ran possible scenarios through his head. Mattie had fallen and hit her head. Mattie had gone ou
tside and not come back. Lots of things could happen to a woman her age who suffered from high blood pressure and arthritis.

  “I heard something, Cord. I heard a noise.”

  “What kind of noise, son?”

  “Like—like a thump.”

  “Where is your granny now?”

  “She went in the bathroom. I talked to her. She won’t come out.”

  “All right, Jonathan. Take the phone with you and go knock on the bathroom door. I want to talk to your granny.” He was already sliding his T-shirt over his head. He had left his jeans on the closet floor, and, moving stiffly, he went to get them.

  As he struggled to pull them on with only one hand, he heard rustling on the other end of the line, then voices. In a few moments Mattie picked up the phone.

  “Mattie? What the hell is going on?”

  “Oh, Cord, it’s nothing. I woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up to go to the bathroom and ran into the chair I moved yesterday.”

  She sounded sleepy, not to mention annoyed. He couldn’t figure out if she was glossing over something serious or telling the truth.

  “What chair?”

  “That rocker that used to be in the living room. I moved it into the bedroom earlier today so I could sit beside the reading lamp next to the bed while I let out the hems of Jonathan’s dress pants. He’s growing so fast, you know.”

  Cord supposed this story made sense, but as an ex-seamstress, Mattie had an area set up in the unused dining room where she usually did her sewing. That is, when her fingers weren’t too swollen to prevent her from using a needle and thread.

  “You ran into the chair and woke Jonathan?” The boy slept in the bedroom next to Mattie’s.

  “Apparently. I told him I’d be right out of the bathroom, but he called you anyway.”

  “Cord said to,” Jonathan piped up in the background. “He said.”

  “Put him on, Mattie, please.”

  Mattie handed the phone over, and he heard Jonathan say anxiously to her, “Am I in trouble, Granny? For calling Cord in the night?”

  Cord hastened to reassure him. “No, Jonny, you are not in trouble. I’m glad you called. I want you to be my eyes and ears at Jornada Ranch.”

  “Okay, Cord. I will.”

  Jonathan handed the phone to Mattie, and Cord said to her sternly, “I think you should move that chair back where you got it.”

  “All right, Cord. When are you coming over here?”

  “Today,” he said. He slid his keys across the dresser before pocketing them.

  “So soon!”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  He wanted to get over there and reassure himself that she was really all right. It had been almost a week since he’d made an appearance, and that was too long.

  After he was in his truck and rolling toward the highway, he remembered with a start that he was supposed to take Brooke to Cedrella Pass in the morning. Well, they could leave a little later than they had intended, that was all.

  It was still dark out, and there were few other cars on the highway. This gave him plenty of time to think, and what he thought was that it would be pleasant to have Brooke riding along beside him, watching the first pale fingers of dawn reach up from the mountain range in the east.

  BROOKE ROSE around six-thirty that morning and started the coffeemaker before she jumped in the shower. She put the butter out to soften before she plugged in the toaster, and she set two mugs on the counter. The fragrant aroma of coffee filled the air, and she wondered if Cord could smell it in his apartment. As she toweled herself dry, she listened to see if she could hear him next door. It was quiet over there…too quiet.

  While she was putting on makeup, she thought about the strange dream she’d had last night. Something about the priest, Father Luís. She’d dreamed that she’d read a message from him on the screen of her laptop computer, something about someone who was going to help her. Oh, well, that would be Cord—no big shocker there. But she felt uneasy about the dream nonetheless.

  Her uneasiness disappeared during a moment of true despair while she was dressing. Her jeans wouldn’t snap. She was gaining weight already, and she thought she detected a slight change in the contour of her abdomen. Sighing, she pulled the bottom of her turtleneck out of the jeans and left the snap unbuttoned underneath, but her despair faded as she began to anticipate seeing Cord today. Somehow, he made her forget the things that were wrong with her life and reminded her of the things that were good. She needed to be reminded of those things, and often.

  In the kitchen, she was suddenly overtaken by a wave of nausea, which abated almost as suddenly as it had arrived. All right, she thought. No coffee and no breakfast for her this morning. Instead, she nibbled on saltines and glanced at the clock. It was six forty-five.

  She still heard no sounds coming from Cord’s apartment, which was odd considering that they had agreed upon seven o’clock for coffee. She went to the connecting door and listened for a few moments, and when she realized that no one was moving around on the other side, she called, “Cord?”

  There was no answer, so she knocked, and then she knocked again more loudly. Nothing. No one.

  She opened the door. “Cord, are you here?”

  By this time, it was clear that he wasn’t. She hadn’t heard him leave in the middle of the night; not that she necessarily would have, but she sometimes heard his door opening and closing when he came in or went out. Acting on a hunch, she hurried to the window and checked for Cord’s truck.

  It was gone.

  She moved away from the window, bewildered. They’d made a date. She had been counting on his showing her Cedrella Pass, and he’d agreed, albeit reluctantly. Disappointment washed over her, followed quickly by anger.

  Knowing that she was intruding and sure that Cord wouldn’t approve, she walked slowly through his shadowed apartment, taking note of the unmade bed in his bedroom. The last time she had seen that bed, on the night he’d given her the books to read, it had been neatly covered by a quilted bedspread. If Cord had gone out last night, wouldn’t the bed still be made? Of course, she didn’t know if he made his bed every day. Some people didn’t.

  Perhaps there was an emergency somewhere on the ranch and his presence was required. But why wouldn’t he have left her a note? Or called her to let her know? He presumably knew how to use a telephone.

  Maybe there was no emergency at all. Maybe he had gone to Miss Kitti-Kat’s. That was one of the options, Brooke figured. Certainly, that was what the local gossips would want everyone to believe.

  Cord had convinced her that she couldn’t go to Cedrella Pass by herself. It was probably too late to hire someone to take her there. With a crushing sense of letdown, she realized that she’d have to find something else to do today. Underlying her disappointment was her indignation at being stood up.

  She was seething by the time she left the apartment. When she next saw Mr. Cord McCall, she’d give him a piece of her mind.

  WHEN CORD ARRIVED at Jornada Ranch, it was barely light out. Jonathan was watching TV in the big living room and eating dry Cheerios from a bowl. Cord let himself in quietly, but as soon as Jonathan spotted him, the boy bade him an enthusiastic welcome.

  “Cord! I knew you’d come! I’ve missed you!”

  He picked the boy up and tossed him into the air. “How’s the man of the house, huh?”

  Jonathan’s dark eyes sparkled. “I’m fine. Granny’s fine. At least, I think so. She’s in the utility room.”

  “Let me check with her, and then I’ll come back and watch TV with you for a while.”

  Jonathan returned to the cartoon on the screen, while Cord went through the kitchen to the utility room.

  “Mattie?”

  He saw her slumped in a chair beside the washing machine and rushed to her side. She looked up in surprise and started to rise when she heard his footsteps. Her hair, steel gray now, framed a face that sagged with fatigue. She had on a rum
pled housecoat, not her usual immaculate slacks and shirt, and she wasn’t wearing lipstick. He didn’t think he had ever seen her without it.

  Cord didn’t like the look of her. “Mattie, don’t get up. What’s wrong?”

  She eased back on the chair and forced a smile, and in that smile he could see vestiges of the pretty woman she had been long ago. “Nothing is wrong, Cord. I decided to sit down for a few minutes before I took the clothes out of the dryer is all.”

  “You don’t look so good, Mattie.” Dark circles rimmed her eyes.

  Mattie summoned up a sparkle. “Is that any way to talk to your favorite girl?” With some effort, she pushed herself up from the chair and opened the dryer. She began to pull clothes out and drop them into a basket on the floor.

  Cord sat down on the chair. “If you aren’t well, you should tell me. I’ll hire someone to help you.” She had an infinite number of nieces and nephews who could be pressed into service if necessary.

  Mattie shot him a playful glance. “Help me? Don’t be silly. Jonathan and I can handle any business that arises just fine, thanks.”

  He couldn’t have accomplished nearly as much without Mattie to take care of things. Due to her help, he had been able to keep his Rancho Encantado job and renovate Jornada Ranch at the same time.

  She was looking a bit sprier now that she was folding laundry. Maybe he should give her the benefit of the doubt. “All right, Mattie. If you’re really okay, I’ll go take a gander at the new roof.”

  “You do that. Then you’d better focus your attention to the bunkhouse. Pack rats have built a nest in there again.”

  He’d dealt with pack rats before. They were a big nuisance in the desert, and they were hard to dissuade. He’d better get rid of them as soon as possible, because he needed the place habitable. Then he could get the state licensing agency’s seal of approval and welcome his first guests. He sure didn’t want to turn away any more boys like Brandon.

  “Before I get rid of the pack rats, I’ll spend some time with Jonathan,” he told Mattie. He became aware of the aroma of coffee wafting in from the kitchen. “Mind if I help myself to a cup of hot brew?” He felt a stab of guilt about Brooke. He’d better give her a call from here and attempt some explanation, though he couldn’t get too explicit without telling her where he was, and such was his habit of secrecy that he didn’t want to do that.