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Miranda stood for a moment with her eyes shut tight, thinking about her messy ponytail and lack of makeup, the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra under the old T-shirt and the way the seat of the baggy, penguin pajama pants hung down below her butt. Then she opened her eyes and turned around to face him like the adult she was supposed to be.
“Cruz says you finally got something to eat.”
“He keeps a well-stocked refrigerator. Not like mine—I don’t know if I’ve ever used more than one shelf at a time.”
“Cruz is a good cook,” Nan said from the doorway. “Get him to make you his chicken molé sometime. Delicious.” She looked at a point somewhere between Miranda and Cruz. “I’m going to take a nap, then come out about ten to keep an eye on Flora during the night. Call me if something happens before then.”
As soon as Nan left the barn, Cruz stirred. “I didn’t have much to eat this afternoon, myself. Think I’ll go get a bite, then come back to the delivery deck. Is that okay with you, Miranda?”
“That’s—” Cruz was gone before she could finish her answer. Disconcerted, she glanced toward Jud, standing his ground at the front of the barn.
“Sorry to intrude,” he said. “Cruz offered a tour if I walked over. I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Miranda backed toward Flora’s stall. “No, it’s okay. I think I can tolerate five minutes in your company.
I’ll handle the tour…if you’re still interested.”
Jud hesitated, then nodded. “Sure.” He pursued her down the aisle. “How long has Martinez worked here?”
“A little over two years, since Joe Haynes died.”
“I remember old Joe. I got the rough side of his tongue more times than I could count.”
“He was a good man. And a good foreman for Hayseed Farm, since before I was born. Nan wouldn’t have survived those first years after my dad died without Joe.”
“Martinez measures up to the job?”
“He’s conscientious and works hard. What he doesn’t know, he learns fast.”
“He keeps pretty much to himself?”
She frowned at the question. “We’re friends, the three of us. We usually eat dinner together, catch up on the day. Why all the questions?”
“Nosy, I guess.” He looked down as Dusty sniffed at his boots, then pursued a thorough investigation up both pants legs. When she reached his knees, he held out his hand and let her sniff his palm. “Nice dog.”
Miranda nodded. “The best. She goes everywhere I do.”
“Except weddings?”
She turned away from him to avoid returning his smile. “Weddings and funerals.” And wasn’t that a stupid thing to say? “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He shook his head. “No problem.”
Embarrassed yet again, she peered through the grate in Flora’s stall door. “How ya’ doin’, mama? That baby comin’ tonight?”
Jud stepped up beside her, his presence like a wall of high-wattage lightbulbs on her right side. Her face heated up and her breath got short, but she was damned if she’d creep away from him just for a little oxygen.
“Cute mare,” he said quietly, propping his shoulder against the wall. “Is there a reason to be worried? As I recall, most horses drop their foals without help or complications.”
“She’s eighteen, which is old to be having babies. We lost her foal last time, and almost lost Flora. We don’t want that to happen again.” In the stall, the mare flattened her ears, shook her head violently and kicked a hind leg toward her swollen belly.
“So why’d you breed her?”
Worry had already shortened Miranda’s temper. “So much for letting go of the past. You still think I’m dumb as dirt, don’t you?”
He straightened up from the wall. “What the—”
Miranda jerked her attention back to the horse. She caught her breath as Flora dropped to her knees, then rolled to lie on her side. After a motionless minute, the mare struggled to her feet and started pacing again.
“Another process horses seem to handle without help is mating.” Miranda didn’t bother to look at Jud as she spoke. “We came home one afternoon last winter to find Bailey, our stallion, in the same field with Flora. Somebody had left a gate open, then Bailey tore down a couple of fences…and here we are.”
She turned away and reached for the stall door latch, but in the next instant Jud gripped her shoulder with a strong hand and pulled her back around. Standing at her side, Dusty growled low in her throat.
Jud ignored the dog. “Let’s get this out of the way right now. If I ever said you were dumb—and I might well have because I was full of myself back then—you have my sincere apology.”
He watched as surprise dawned on Miranda’s face. She gazed up at him, and he wondered if she was trying to read his mind. In the years since high school, he’d forgotten how intense she could be. But how could he have forgotten those mysterious topaz eyes?
Or had he just never noticed?
Inside the stall beside them, Flora gave a moaning neigh, lay down in the straw again and groaned.
He loosened his hands and Miranda turned to face the stall. “You can do it, mama. Just relax.” She wrapped her fingers in the grate, clinging with a force that turned her skin white. “Push, mama. Push!”
Jud had never been good at waiting. “I should go….”
She spared him a second of thought. “Before you do, find the phone in the feed room across the aisle, right by the door. Punch two for Mom, three for Cruz. Get them down here.”
In less than five minutes, Nan Wright came running, and Martinez showed up within ten. By then, Jud would have fought anyone who tried to kick him out. The four of them stood in silence outside the stall, watching the mare labor. Miranda’s dog paced in the barn aisle behind them.
Finally, the bluish white amniotic sac appeared beneath Flora’s tail. Martinez swore. “That’s a rear hoof. The foal’s coming out backward.”
“We have to turn the baby. Get Doc Shaw on his cell phone.” Miranda dropped her jacket where she stood and opened the stall door. First, she knelt at Flora’s head, stroking the heavy forelock back from the mare’s eyes, smoothing her hands over the sweat-lathered neck and murmuring encouragement.
Then, carefully, she moved to the horse’s rear end. Cruz went for the phone.
Nan stood in the open doorway. “Miranda was there when Flora was born,” she said when Jud looked at her. “The mare trusts her more than anyone else.”
Carrying the phone, Martinez came to stand beside Jud. “I’ve got Doc Shaw,” he said. “He’s on his way.”
“What do I do?” Miranda looked up, and her gaze caught Jud’s for a second before shifting to Cruz. “He has to coach me.” Face sheened with sweat, eyes wide, she looked desperate. Terrified.
Flora strained, then relaxed. Miranda took hold of the hooves just visible through the amnion and pushed them back into the mare. “It’s tight,” she said through gritted teeth. “Mom…”
Nan knelt beside her and the two of them worked through the next contraction. Then again, and again. Martinez conveyed instructions from the veterinarian in a low, tense tone. Despite the December chill outside, the humid air in the barn made breathing a chore.
Jud watched for what seemed like eternity as Nan and Miranda pressed and pushed against the mare’s belly, trying to manipulate the body within. Though he’d grown up with horses, spent years riding rodeo broncs, he’d never witnessed a breech birth, never seen anyone turn a baby in the womb. He had no idea whether to expect success—or tragedy.
Headlights flashed in the darkness outside the front of the barn. A car door slammed and then an older man with a surprisingly full head of dark brown hair came striding down the barn aisle. “How’s it going?”
Martinez said, “Not good,” just as Flora groaned with palpable force. Nan and Miranda shouted at the same time. When Jud looked into the stall, he saw the two women flattened against the wall…and two horses where before there’d only been one.
“Looks like I’m too late,” the vet said, grinning. “Miranda does seem to make things happen fast, don’t she?” He shot Jud a sideways glance as he brushed by. “Jud Ritter. Never thought I’d see you in this town again. Can’t find anywhere else to cause trouble? Now what’s going on with this baby?”
Miranda was gently rubbing the dark bay foal with towels provided by Martinez. “He’s sluggish,” she said, frowning. “You better come in, Doc.”
The vet moved into the stall as Nan stepped out, rubbing her face with a towel. “Damn, I don’t know why I go through this torture every year.”
“Because you love watching them grow,” Martinez said with a smile. “What would spring be like without a couple of weanlings driving us all crazy?”
“Peaceful? Worry-free? Profitable, without all the medicines to pay for?” She gave a tired grin.
A gasp from Miranda drew Jud back to the stall. Flora was on her feet again, nuzzling the foal as it clumsily, precariously levered itself to stand. With a few nudges from its mom and a guiding hand from Miranda, the baby latched on to a teat and began to suck.
Jud squeezed his eyes shut to clear his suddenly blurred vision.
Once the vet had checked over the colt, Miranda and Dr. Shaw came out of the stall. Miranda turned to slide the door shut and Nan stepped up and put her arms around her daughter’s waist from behind. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
“Bailey makes great babies. What are we going to name him?”
Nan glanced at Martinez again. “Espresso?”
He tilted his head. “Cocoa?”
Miranda looked at Jud. “Bailey is Baileys Irish Cream.”
“Ah. How about Kahlúa?”
They all looked at the dark brown foal, and back at Jud. “Perfect,” Nan said. “I love it. Don’t you, Miranda?”
Miranda had buried her face in a towel. She mumbled words that might have been anything and continued to hide behind the red terry cloth.
The veterinarian left with promises to return in the morning to check up on Kahlúa, and Martinez walked him to his truck before heading back to his place. After a short argument, Miranda agreed to let her mother take the first watch on the new arrival, with Dusty for company.
“I’ll be out at three,” she promised, walking toward the barn door, rubbing a hand over the nape of her neck. Jud studied the sway of her hips, the cling of her thin, damp T-shirt to the smooth curves of her back, and felt a hollow develop under his ribs. This reaction to Miranda Wright was something else he hadn’t remembered. Wasn’t prepared for.
He took a step forward, only to trip over her jacket, still lying on the floor. With his next stride he grabbed the coat and kept walking until he caught up with Miranda outside.
“You forgot this.”
She looked dazed as he handed over the garment. “Oh. Thanks. It’s cold out here.”
A full moon poured light over the winter grass, the white clapboard house and Miranda herself. As she shrugged into the jacket, Jud could see just how chilled she’d been in the pucker of her nipples against the inadequate T-shirt.
That hollow inside threatened to swallow him. He drove his fists deep into the pockets of his jeans.
When he continued to walk beside her toward the house, Miranda stopped and faced him. “What are you doing?”
“Just escorting the lady home.”
“I am home. This whole spread is my home.”
“You never know what might come out of the dark.”
She walked on. “So I’ve learned,” she said in a dry voice.
He deserved the comment, so he didn’t say anything. At the back porch, he opened the door to the house and ushered her in. “Thanks for letting me watch tonight.”
She climbed the steps, then faced him from just inside the threshold. “At least you weren’t totally useless. You made the phone calls, and you brought me my coat.”
Jud gave a short laugh. “So happy to be of service. You might yet be glad you changed your mind and let me stay.” The question remained as to whether he would come out of the experience intact. He doubted it.
“I doubt it,” she echoed, retreating into the kitchen shadows. “Just keep out of my way, unless you want me to change it back.” The thud of the house door punctuated her order.
“Good idea.” Jud walked across the open ground toward the foreman’s cabin, about a quarter mile down the gravel drive. “The last thing I need in my life is an argumentative, bossy, overbearing…”
He glanced over his shoulder just as a light in the corner upstairs room of the farmhouse winked out. He thought about that lavender lace bra.
“…warmhearted, sexy and absolutely untouchable woman.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JUD SLEPT LATE the next morning and had to break the speed limit driving into town in order to reach the church steps as the steeple bell rang the beginning of the Sunday service. Once inside, he leaned back against the door for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness of dark wood and stained glass. He felt too dressed up when he saw the open-collared shirts and slacks worn by most of the men—an interesting change from the days when every little boy put a noose around his neck for church on Sunday.
His suit and tie were not, he was quite sure, the reason several people gawked at him over their shoulders, then leaned toward their neighbors to pass the news. Before the whispering could drown out the music of the organ, he planted himself in the first empty seat he saw, as near to the back of the church as possible.
When he looked to his right, he found Miss Frances Haase, the town librarian, on the other end of the pew, staring down her nose at him as if he were a fifth grader who’d forgotten to return his library book. Jud sent her a smile and got a sniff and a frown for his effort. Facing forward again, he immediately recognized the slope of the shoulders, the set of the ears and the wave in the hair of the man in front of him. Ethan and his family were sitting in the very next row.
Jud didn’t doubt Ethan knew he was there. The tension across the two feet between them felt like an electric field, sure to scorch skin if he tried to reach through. Ethan’s wife, Kayla, glanced over her shoulder several times, once with an almost-smile. Three kids on her other side stole peeks at him throughout the service. The one little girl looked enough like Kayla to be her daughter, but Ethan hadn’t been married even a year, so Jud didn’t know where the other girl and the boy had sprung from. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get a chance to ask Ethan about them…or anything else.
Yet here he sat—on a hard wooden pew that provoked his leg and chest to throb in protest— betting his brother wouldn’t blow him off with the congregation watching.
The service did bring back memories from child-hood—those endless hours spent squirming between his mom’s disappointed frown and the vise of his dad’s grip on his shoulder. Holden Kelley, Noah’s dad, had led the church back then, preaching hellfire and brimstone sermons which had fallen on hard ground as far as Jud was concerned. But then, Father Kelley had always predicted a bad end for that oldest Ritter boy.
Noah, on the other hand, delivered an accessible, generous message on forgiveness and old-fashioned charity. Though surprised to see the groom in the pulpit on the morning after his wedding, Jud found himself chuckling at the young minister’s words.
Ethan sat stiff as a board through the entire message.
Standing for the final hymn, Jud knew he would get only seconds, at most, to connect with Ethan. What could he say that might compel his brother to listen?
Noah pronounced the final grace in everyday language, and the organ came to life. Jud reached out to tap Ethan’s shoulder, but a crisp voice from his right deflected his attention.
“Well, Jud Ritter, I heard you’d returned.”
He stifled a groan and turned to meet his fate. “Yes, ma’am. How are you, Miss Haase?”
“As well as could be expected. What have you been up to all this time?”
“I’m with the police department. Down inAustin.”
