A Baby on the Ranch

Real Love Is Worth The Wait

When Kasey Stonestreet’s husband walked out on her and their newborn son, her best friend, Eli Rodriguez, was her rock. Eli took them in at his Forever, Texas, ranch without hesitation. As a suddenly single mom with nowhere else to go, Kasey expected to feel out of place. Instead, for the first time in her life, she felt as though she was home.

Eli has secretly loved Kasey since they were kids; he was devastated when she married another man. Now, he’s got a second chance at happiness. The woman of his dreams, and the family he always wanted, are in his reach. But if he reveals his true feelings, it could ruin their friendship, and he’d lose Kasey forever.

How long can Eli and Kasey go on pretending to each other—and to themselves—that they’re still just friends? And what will happen when Kasey’s husband returns? A Baby on the Ranch

“Don’t you want to kiss me, Eli?”

Kasey whispered the words to Eli’s back, knowing that if he faced her, she wouldn’t have the nerve to say them.

Eli stopped, half convinced that he’d imagined her saying words that he would have sold his soul to hear. Releasing the breath that had gotten caught in his throat, he slowly turned around.

“More than anything in the world.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He could have said that he couldn’t kiss her because, technically, she was still Hollis’s wife. Or that he couldn’t because he didn’t want to take advantage of her, or the situation. There were as many reasons to deny himself as there were leaves on the tree by his window. And only one reason to do it.

Because he ached for her.

Dear Reader,

I have this thing about families. When I was little, I wanted three older brothers. Unfortunately, since I was the first born, no amount of my pleading seemed to rectify that. All my parents could give me were two younger ones. Now, because of our ages, I tell people they’re my older brothers, so in essence, it all worked out. Once I began writing, I created those brothers (and sisters) that nature (and my parents) failed to give me. I became caught up in the worlds I was creating and just kept going. What began as a small family—and small town—kept on growing. Which is why Alma, who first appeared in the sheriff’s story, suddenly was given siblings en masse by the time she got her own story (Lassoing the Deputy). I like large families and I like returning to them. So this is Eli’s story, which shows how selfless love is ultimately rewarded. It’s also a story about never giving up hope because if something is meant to be, it will happen.

I hope you enjoy this latest addition to the Forever, Texas saga. As always, I thank you for reading, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie Ferrarella

A Baby on the Ranch

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written over two hundred books for Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Baby on the Ranch

To Kathleen Scheibling,

for wanting to see more.

Thank you.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

“Eli!”

The loud, insistent pounding worked its way into his brain and rudely yanked Eli Rodriguez out of a deep, sound sleep. Eyes still shut, he sat up in bed, utterly disoriented, listening without knowing what he was listening for, or even why.

He’d fallen into bed, exhausted, at eleven, too tired even to undress.

Was he dreaming?

“Eli, open up! Open the damn door, will you?”

No, he wasn’t dreaming. This was real. Someone was yelling out his name. Who the hell was pounding on his door at this hour?

The question snaked its way through his fuzzy brain as Eli groped his way into the hallway and then made his way down the stairs, clutching on to the banister. His equilibrium still felt off.

Belatedly, he realized that it was still the middle of the night. Either that, or the sun had just dropped out of the sky, leaving his part of the world in complete darkness.

His mind turned toward his family. Had something happened to one of them? They were all well as of the last time they’d been together, but nothing was stationary.

Nothing was forever.

“Eli! C’mon, dammit, you can’t be that asleep! Wake up!”

The voice started to sound familiar, although it was still hard to make it out clearly above the pounding.

Awake now, Eli paused for a second to pull himself together before opening the front door.

And to pick up a firearm—just in case.

The people who lived in Forever and the surrounding area were good people, but that didn’t mean that unsavory types couldn’t pass through. There’d been an incident or two in the past five years, enough to make a man act cautiously.

“Dammit all to hell, Eli!”

That wasn’t an unsavory type—at least, not according to the general definition. That was his friend, Hollis Stonestreet. Except right now, he wasn’t feeling very friendly.

With an annoyed sigh, Eli unlocked his front door and found himself face-to-face with Hollis.

A one-time revered high school quarterback, the blond-haired, blue-eyed former Adonis had become a little worn around the edges. Though he was still considered handsome, the past eight years hadn’t been all that good to Hollis.

Eli rested the firearm he no longer needed against the wall. “You trying to wake the dead, Hollis?” he asked wearily.

“No, just you,” Hollis retorted, walking into the front room, “which I was starting to think was the same thing.”

“This couldn’t wait until morning?” Eli asked, curbing his impatience.

Hollis was wearing his fancy boots, the ones with the spurs. They jingled as he walked.

Looking at the boots, Eli started getting a very bad feeling about this. What was Hollis doing here at this hour?

Last he’d heard, Hollis had been missing for almost a week now. At least according to his wife, Kasey. She’d said as much when she’d called him two days ago, apologizing for bothering him even though they’d been friends forever. Apologizing, and at the same time asking that if he wasn’t too busy, would he mind driving her to the hospital in Pine Ridge because her water had just broken.

“The baby’ll be coming and I don’t think I can drive the fifty miles to the hospital by myself,” she’d said.

He’d known by the tone in her voice that she was afraid, and doing her best not to sound like it.

His pulse had begun to race immediately as he’d told her to hang in there. Five seconds later, he’d torn out of his ranch house, dashing toward his Jeep.

That was the first—and the last—time he’d let the speedometer climb to ninety-five.

The following day, when he’d visited Kasey and her baby—a beautiful, healthy baby boy—he knew boys weren’t supposed to be beautiful, but in his opinion, this one was—Hollis still hadn’t shown up.

Nor had he come the next morning when Eli had gone back to visit her again.

And now, here he was, pacing around in his living room at 2:00 a.m.

What was going on? Why wasn’t he with Kasey, where he belonged? He knew that he would be if Kasey was his wife.

But she wasn’t and there was no point in letting his thoughts go in that direction.

“No, it can’t wait,” Hollis snapped, then immediately tempered his mood. He flashed a wide, insincere grin at him. “I came by to ask you for a favor.”

This had to be one hell of a favor, given the hour. “I’m listening.”

“I want you to look after Kasey for me.”

Eli stared at the other man. If he wasn’t awake before, he was now. “Why, where are you going to be?” Eli asked. When Hollis didn’t answer him, for the first time in their long relationship, Eli became visibly angry. “Did you even bother to go see Kasey in the hospital?”

Pacing, Hollis dragged a hand through his unruly blond hair. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I saw her, I saw the kid.” Swinging back around, Hollis watched him, suddenly appearing stricken. “I thought I could do it, Eli, but I can’t. I can’t do it,” he insisted. “I can’t be a father. My throat starts to close up when I even think about being a father.”

Eli dug deep for patience. Hollis had never thought about anyone but himself. Because of his looks, everything had always been handed to him. Well, it was time to man up. He had a wife and a baby who were counting on him.

“Look, that’s normal,” Eli said soothingly. “You’re just having a normal reaction. This is all new to you. Once you get the hang of it—”

He got no further.

“Don’t you get it?” Hollis demanded. “I don’t want to get the hang of it. Hell, I didn’t even want to get married.”

No one had held a gun to his head, Eli thought resentfully. If he’d backed off—if Hollis had left town five years ago—then maybe he would have had a chance with Kasey. And that baby she’d just had could’ve been his.

“Then why did you?” he asked, his voice low, barely contained.

Hollis threw up his hands. “I was drunk, okay? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Look, I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving and nothing you say is going to stop me.” He started to edge his way back to the front door. “I’d just feel better if I knew you were going to look after her. She’s going to need somebody.”

“Yeah, her husband,” Eli insisted.

Hollis didn’t even seem to hear as he pulled open the front door. “Oh, by the way, I think you should know that I lost the ranch earlier today.”

Eli could only stare at him in disbelief. “You did what?”

Hollis shrugged, as if refusing to accept any guilt. “I had a straight—a straight, dammit—what’re the odds that the other guy would have a straight flush?”

Furious now, Eli fisted his hands at his sides, doing his best to keep from hitting the other man. “Are you out of your mind?” Eli demanded. “Where is she supposed to live?”

The question—and Eli’s anger—seemed to annoy Hollis. “I don’t know. But I can’t face her. You tell her for me. You’re good like that. You always know what to say.”

And then he was gone. Gone just as abruptly as he’d burst in less than ten minutes ago.

Eli ran his hand along the back of his neck, staring at the closed door.

“No,” he said wearily to the darkness. “Not always.”

Chapter One

When she turned her head toward the doorway, the expression on Kasey Stonestreet’s face faded from a hopeful smile to a look of barely suppressed disappointment and confusion.

Eli saw the instant change as he walked into her hospital room. Kasey hadn’t been expecting him, she’d expected Hollis. Hollis was the one who was supposed to come and pick her and their brand-new son up and take them home, not him.

“Hi, Kasey, how are you?” Doing his best to pretend that everything was all right, Eli flashed her an easy smile.

He had a feeling that for once, she wasn’t buying it or about to go along with any pretense for the sake of her pride.

Kasey pressed her lips together as a bitter disappointment rooted in the pit of her stomach and spread out. When he left her yesterday, Hollis had told her that he’d be here at the hospital long before noon. According to the hospital rules, she was supposed to check out at noon.

It was past noon now. Almost by a whole hour. When the nurse on duty had passed by to inform her—again—that checkout was at noon, she’d had no choice but to ask for a little more time. She hated the touch of pity in the woman’s eyes as she agreed to allow her a few more minutes.

Excuses came automatically to her lips. Life with Hollis had taught her that. “He’s stuck in traffic,” she’d told the other woman. “But I know he’ll be here any minute now.”

That had been more than half an hour ago.

So when the door to her room finally opened, Kasey had looked toward it with no small amount of relief. Until she saw that the person walking in wasn’t Hollis. It was Eli, her childhood friend. Eli, who always came when she needed him.

Wonderfully dependable Eli.

More than once she’d wondered why Hollis couldn’t be more like the man he claimed was his best friend. It went without saying that if she had asked Eli to come pick her up before noon, he would have been there two hours early, looking to help her pack her suitcase.

Unlike Hollis.

Where was he?

The disappointment evolved into a feeling of complete dread, which in turn spilled out all over her as she looked up at the tall, muscular man she’d come, at times, to think of as her guardian angel.

When her eyes met his, the fear she harbored in her heart was confirmed.

“He’s not coming, is he?” she asked, attempting to suppress a sigh.

Last night or, more correctly, Eli amended, this morning, when Hollis had left after delivering that bombshell, he’d suddenly snapped out of his fog and run after Hollis barefoot. He’d intended to either talk Hollis out of leaving or, that failing, hog-tie the fool until he came to his senses and realized that Kasey was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

But it was too late. Hollis was already in his car and if the heartless bastard saw him chasing after the vehicle in his rearview mirror, Hollis gave no indication. He certainly hadn’t slowed down or attempted to stop. If anything, he’d sped up.

His actions just reinforced what Eli already knew. That there was no talking Hollis into acting like an adult instead of some errant, spoiled brat who did whatever he wanted to and didn’t stick around to face any consequences.

Eli looked at the young woman he’d brought to the hospital a short three days ago. She’d been on the very brink of delivering her son and they had just made it to the hospital in time. Had she waited even five minutes before calling him, Wayne Eli Stonestreet would have been born in the backseat of his Jeep, with him acting as an impromptu midwife.

Not exactly a notion he would have relished. He had a hunch that Kasey wouldn’t have been crazy about it, either.

The doctor who’d been on duty that night had mistaken him for the baby’s father and started to pull him into the delivery room. He’d been very quick to demur, telling the doctor that he was just a friend who’d volunteered to drive Kasey here.

He’d almost made it to the waiting area, but then Kasey had grabbed his hand, bringing his escape to a grinding haul.

On the gurney, about to be wheeled into the delivery room, Kasey had looked at him with panic in her eyes. “Eli, please. I’ll feel better if you’re there. I need a friend,” she’d pleaded. Her own doctor was out of town. With Hollis not there, she felt totally alone. “Please,” she repeated, her fingers tightening around his hand.

The next moment he’d felt as if his hand had gotten caught in a vise. Kasey was squeezing it so hard, she’d practically caused tears to spring up in his eyes. Tears of pain.

Kasey might have appeared a fragile little thing, despite her pregnant stomach, but she had a grip like a man who wrestled steers for a living.

Despite that, it wasn’t her grip that had kept him there. It was the look of fear he’d seen in her eyes.

And just like that, Eli had found himself recruited, a reluctant spectator at the greatest show in town: the miracle of birth.

He’d taken a position behind Kasey, gently propping her up by her shoulders and holding her steady each time she bore down and pushed.

The guttural screams that emerged from her sounded as if they were coming from the bottom of her toes and he freely admitted, if only to himself, that they were fraying his nerves.

And then, just as he was about to ask the doctor if there wasn’t something that could be done for Kasey to separate her from all this pain, there he was. The miracle. Forever’s newest little citizen. Born with a wide-eyed look on his face, as if he couldn’t believe where he had wound up once he left his nice, safe, warm little haven.

Right now, the three-day-old infant lay all bundled up in a hospital bassinet on the other side of Kasey’s bed. He was sound asleep, his small, pink little lips rooting. Which meant he’d be waking up soon. And hungry.

Eli took all this in as he cast around for the right way to tell Kasey what he had to say. But he hadn’t been able to come up with anything during the entire fifty-mile trip here, despite all his best efforts. Consequently there was no reason to believe that something magical would pop up into his brain now as he stood in Kasey’s presence.

Especially when she usually had such a numbing effect on him, causing all thought to float out of his head, unfettered. It had been like that since kindergarten.

So, with no fancily wrapped version of a lie, no plausible story or excuse to offer her, Eli had nothing to fall back on except for the truth.

And the truth was what he offered her, hating that it was going to hurt.

“No, he’s not coming,” he confirmed quietly. “Hollis asked me to pick you up because he said that the hospital was discharging you today.” He offered her a smile. “Guess that means that you and the little guy passed the hospital’s inspection.”

His attempt at humor fell flat, as he knew it would. He hated that she had to go through this, that Hollis had never proven worthy of the love she bore him.

His attention was drawn to the sleeping infant in the bassinet. He lowered his voice so as not to wake Wayne. “Hey, is it my imagination, or did he grow a little since I last saw him?”

“Maybe.” Kasey struggled not to give in to despair, or bitterness. She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

It was clear that she was upset and struggling not to let her imagination take off.

But it did anyway.

Still, Kasey tried to beat it back, to deny what she felt in her soul was the truth. Her last sliver of optimism had her asking Eli, “Is he going to be waiting for us at the ranch?”

Dammit, Hollis, I should have taken a horsewhip to you instead of just let you walk out like that. You’re hurting her. Hurting the only decent thing in your life. She deserves better than this. Better than you, he thought angrily.

It hurt him almost as much to say it as he knew it hurt her to hear it. “No, Hollis isn’t going to be there.”

Suspicion entered eyes as blue as the sky on a summer’s day, momentarily blocking out her fear. “Why? Why are you so sure?” she asked, struggling to keep angry tears from falling.

When Hollis had come to see her, not on the first day, but on the second, he’d been full of apologies and even more full of promises about changing, about finally growing up and taking responsibility for his growing family. All right, he hadn’t held Wayne, hadn’t even picked him up when she’d tried to put the baby into his arms, but she told herself that was just because he was afraid he’d drop the baby. That was a normal reaction, she’d silently argued. First-time fathers had visions of their babies slipping right out of their arms and onto their heads.

But he’d come around, she’d promised herself. Hollis would come around. It would just take a little time, that was all.

Except now it seemed as if he wasn’t going to come around. Ever.

She felt sick.

“Why?” she repeated more sharply. “Why are you so sure?”

He didn’t want to say this, but she gave him no choice. He wasn’t good at coming up with excuses—with lies—on the spur of the moment. Not like Hollis.

“Because he came by at two this morning and asked me to look after you and the baby.”

“All right,” she said slowly, picking her way through the words as if she were navigating a potential minefield that could blow her apart at any second. “Nothing he hasn’t said before, right?” Her voice sped up with every word. “He’s just probably got a job waiting for him in another town. But once that’s over, he’ll be back.” A touch of desperation entered her voice. “He’s got a son now, Eli. He can’t walk out on both of us, right?” Her eyes searched his face for a confirmation. A confirmation she was silently begging for.

More than anything in the world, Eli wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear. That she was right. That Hollis had just gone away temporarily.

But he couldn’t lie, not to her. Not anymore.

And he was tired of covering for Hollis. Tired of trying to protect Kasey from Hollis’s lies and his infidelities. Tired most of all because he knew that he would be lumped in with Hollis when her anger finally unleashed.

He looked at her for a long moment, hoped that she would find it in her heart to someday forgive him, and said, “I don’t think that he’s coming back this time, Kasey.”

She didn’t want to cry, she didn’t. But she could feel the moisture building in her eyes. “Not even for the baby?”

The baby’s the reason he finally took off, Eli told her silently.

Rather than say that out loud and wound her even more deeply, Eli placed his hands very lightly on her slender shoulders, as if that would somehow help soften the blow, and said, “He said he was taking off. That he wasn’t any good for you. That he didn’t deserve to have someone like you and Wayne in his life.”

Yes, those were lies, too. He knew that. But these were lies meant to comfort her, to give her a little solace and help her preserve the memory of the man Kasey thought she’d married instead of the man she actually had married.

“‘Taking off,’” she repeated. Because of her resistance, it took a moment for the words to sink in. “Where’s he going?”

Eli shook his head. Here, at least, he didn’t have to get creative. He told her the truth. “He didn’t tell me.”

She didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense to her. “But the ranch—with Hollis gone, who’s going to run the ranch?” She was still trying to recover from the delivery. “I’m not sure if I can manage that yet.” She looked back at the bassinet. “Not if I have to take care of—”

This felt like cruelty above and beyond the norm, Eli couldn’t help thinking, damning Hollis to hell again. “You’re not going to have to run the ranch,” he told her quietly.

Because this was Eli, she misunderstood what he was saying and jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Eli, I can’t ask you to run the ranch for me. You’ve got your own spread to run. And when you’re not there, I know that you and your brothers and Alma help your dad to run his. Taking on mine, as well, until I get stronger, would be too much for you.”

He stopped her before this got out of hand. “You’re not asking,” he pointed out. “And I’d do it in a heartbeat—if there was a ranch to run.”

“If there was…” Her voice trailed off, quaking, as she stared up at him. “I don’t understand.”

He might as well tell her all of it, this way he would pull the Band-Aid off all at once, hopefully minimizing the overall pain involved. As it was, he had a feeling that this would hurt like hell.

Eli measured out the words slowly. “Hollis lost the ranch in a card game.”