is your family, Ty. She’s carrying your baby.”
Ty sank onto the log next to his brother. “Tell me about it.”
“So, I ask you again,” Harry said with that calm bigbrother voice of reason of his. “What are you going to do? You need a game plan, bro. Because we both know that when Dad finds out you’ve gotten a Northern girl pregnant out of wedlock, he’s going to hit the roof.”
“Of all the stupid, irresponsible stunts that boy has pulled, this one tops them all!”
Ty winced. Yep, Harry had been right. His father was hitting the roof. Ty had barely stepped back into the house from his ride with his brother and didn’t really have his game plan formed. He’d wanted to talk to Ellie prior to doing that. To tell her his thoughts and how he felt about her, to ask what her thoughts were, what she was feeling.
Unfortunately, he doubted he was going to get the opportunity. At least, not before a confrontation with his father.
His mother replied in her usual steady voice, encouraging her husband to calm down, that having another grandchild was a good thing.
Good ole mom, always coming to his defense.
“The boy is living in New York City. What kind of place is that to even consider raising a family? Too many people, too much pollution, no grass to grow beneath one’s feet.”
Ty felt his father’s shudder as much as he heard it.
“And rather than have a real man’s job, he takes care of babies for a living.” Another shudder, this one much more pronounced. “What kind of example is that going to be for my grandchild?”
A new jab poked into an old wound. Hadn’t this been exactly the argument that had led him into leaving Swallow Creek? Into swearing he wouldn’t return? He didn’t have to be a rancher to be a real man.
Except in his father’s eyes, that was.
Ty took a deep breath and prepared to go into the kitchen where his parents were talking. Might as well get this over with rather than leave his mother to take all the flak.
No doubt she’d taken enough of that over the years since he had moved away.
“A good one.”
Pausing in midstep on his way into the room, Ty’s ears perked up at the steady voice that responded to his father’s question.
Not his mother’s voice, as he’d expected, but Ellie’s.
“What did you say?” His father’s voice boomed, obviously shocked and awed that someone dared speak up.
Ellie’s voice didn’t waver, neither did it stutter. God bless her. “I said Ty would be a good example for our child.”
His father harrumphed. “A good example would be for that boy to get his act together and get his butt home so he can help take care of family responsibilities.”
Without so much as a pause, he heard Ellie’s sweet voice continue to defend him.
“He has new family responsibilities now. To me and our baby.”
“To you? Hell, woman, he’s not even got a ring on your finger and you’re knocked up. I don’t think he can be accused of facing his family responsibilities or doing right by you.”
Ty cringed, wondered why he was still standing just outside the room, yet he wanted to hear what Ellie would say. He needed to hear what she would say.
“Ty is a man of honor.”
His heart swelled at her confident words. God, he would do his best to do right by her. Somehow. Some way. He would do right by Ellie and their baby.
“A man of honor doesn’t abandon his family to move out of state to take care of babies.”
“A man I admire and respect,” she continued as if his father hadn’t spoken. “A man who works hard and gives all he has to help those around him, a man who will be a good father and not judge our child based upon outdated, chauvinistic ideas that a man has to live off the land to be a real man.”
Pride surged at Ellie’s staunch defense. Knowing how her anxiety tended to flare, he was again amazed that not once had she stuttered. Hell, he’d seen his father make grown men stutter and quake in their boots. Yet Ellie was standing her ground, defending him.
Ty closed his eyes, picturing her in his mind, her smile, her eyes, the way she looked at him when he kissed her.
The way he knew he looked at her. As if she meant the world to him.
Because she did.
“You’ve known him, what, a few months? Don’t pretend you know my son better than I do.”
“Harold, don’t do this,” Ty’s mother begged, speaking up for the first time since Ellie had come into the conversation. “Don’t say such things.”
“You know I’m right. That foolhardy boy always had his nose in a book when he should have been doing other things.”
“Other things such as being like you, Dad?” Ty hadn’t consciously decided to step out of the shadows, but he couldn’t risk his father launching into Ellie. He wouldn’t risk it. She was too fragile.
Too precious.
As timid as she’d always been around the hospital, recalling how panicked she’d been at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, he was amazed at how she’d defended him, at how her shoulders were high and her gaze bright, confident. Had she been wearing a long red cape and the wind blowing in her hair, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Ellie was his heroine.
His father’s lips pursed and his gaze narrowed as it settled on Ty. “A boy could do worse than to grow up to be like his old man.”
True. His father was a hardworking man who had always provided for his family, had always given as much as he demanded of others. But that didn’t mean Ty had to follow in his footsteps.
“I’m not like you, Dad.”
“Ty,” his mother began, her nervous gaze going back and forth between her husband and her younger son, “perhaps we should have this conversation later.”
“Why, so that we can sugarcoat the fact that my own father is disappointed in me?” Had he ever said those words out loud before? He didn’t think so. Maybe he’d never even mentally acknowledged them, but something about Ellie’s defense of him made him acknowledge a lot of things.
“No, thanks. We’ve been doing that for years and it’s not helped one bit. And if it’s for Ellie’s benefit, don’t bother. She’s already seen how he feels about me. Hearing the words only confirms what she has already figured out.”
“Don’t you be rude to your mother, boy.”
“I’m not a boy,” he countered, not really thinking he’d been rude to his mother and certainly not intending to have disrespected her in any way. But his father’s chest puffed up and his gaze narrowed.
