spinning stories and rationalizations until a person couldn’t remember her own name, forget about any information she might be trying to squeeze out of him. His particular gift had come in handy when he was still in school, but for personal relationships, those who knew and loved him found it frustrating in the extreme.
“Sorry. What was the question again?”
She might have thought he was being a smartass—he had always been pretty darn good at that, too—if not for the utter exhaustion on his features, the gray cast to his normally dark tanned skin.
When he swayed a little and had to catch himself with his free hand on the edge of the kitchen table, Easton finally set the shotgun on the table and reached for the baby, so they both wouldn’t go down if he toppled over.
She tried to ignore the sharp little gouge to her heart as the little girl giggled a greeting, at the soft, sweet weight of her.
“When was the last time you slept?”
He blinked at her, the lines around his mouth and eyes looking even more pronounced than they had a few moments earlier. “What day is it?”
She had a strong suspicion he wasn’t joking. “Wednesday. And if I had to guess, I would say by your bleary eyes, it was probably Sunday or Monday when you last had the luxury of sleep.”
“Not quite true. I slept a little on the plane.”
The baby patted her little chubby hands on both sides of Easton’s face and giggled again. She smiled in response, then shifted to glare at Cisco.
“What were you thinking? You could have been killed, driving when you’re obviously exhausted. And with a baby in the car, too!”
“I was fine.” He gave her a forced smile. “You know me. I can always manage to find my second wind somewhere.”
No. She didn’t know him. Not anymore. Once he and his foster brothers Brant Western and Quinn Southerland had been her best friends, sharing secrets, trading dreams. She had adored Cisco from the moment he arrived at Winder Ranch.
And then everything changed.
The baby grabbed a lock of Easton’s hair and yanked. Everything inside her wanted to weep—and not at the physical pain. She couldn’t shake the image of another beautiful dark-haired baby whom she had held for only a brief moment.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this, East. I should have called, but it was late when we got into Salt Lake.”
Again, no real explanation about what he was doing there with a strange baby. He had become even better at evasive tactics, it that were possible.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” he continued. “Any chance you have room for us here at the ranch for a few days?”
She wanted to shut the door firmly against him—and especially against this little girl in her arms who dredged up old sorrows. But she straightened her spine. She was tougher than this. If she could run a cattle ranch by herself, surely she could handle a few days with Cisco del Norte and this mysterious child.
“You know you don’t have to ask. It’s only me in this big rambling house. There’s plenty of room. And anyway, you know you own a part share of the ranch, just like Brant and Quinn. I can’t kick you out.”
“Even when you’d like to?”
She opted to ignore his wry tone as the baby beamed at her with a grin that showed off two tiny pearl teeth on her bottom gum.
“Is she yours?”
She was relieved to see a little color return to the gray cast of his tired features.
“No. Hell, no!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you think I would have told you guys if I had a kid somewhere?”
She refused to think about the bitter irony of that. “You keep everything else from us. Why not this, too?”
Anger briefly broke through the exhaustion and flickered in his hot cocoa eyes. “She’s not mine.”
“Then where did she come from and what are you doing with her?”
His mouth pursed. “That is a really long and complicated story.”
She said nothing, just waited for him to expound. That was a trick she had learned long ago from her Aunt Jo, who had always been eerily effective at letting her foster children dig their own graves with their words.
Cisco apparently wasn’t immune to the technique. After a moment he released a heavy breath. “Her parents were friends of mine. Her father was killed right before she was born and her mother died last week. Belle’s paternal aunt lives in Boise. Before she died, her mother begged me to bring her to the States to her family. Only problem is, the aunt’s not available to take her for a couple of days.”
She could find enough holes in his story for her to drive her shiny new Kubota through, but he was literally swaying on his feet. She had a feeling that meager information was all she would be able to squeeze out of him for now.
She really didn’t want him here. Most days, she liked to think she was strong and capable, in full control of her little world here. Cisco only had to walk back through the door to dredge up all those feelings she worked so hard to fight back the rest of the time. She would have liked to tell him to find a hotel room somewhere, but she couldn’t. Winder Ranch was as much his home as hers, even if he seemed to want to forget that.
“We can talk about this after you have a chance for some rest,” she said. “Let me run up and put fresh sheets on your bed. Tess and Quinn have turned Brant’s old room into a guest nursery for Little Joe when they visit and Abby uses it when she naps. Isabella should be able to stay in the crib there.”
“You don’t have to make the bed. I can take care of it. And right now I’m so tired, I would stretch out right here on the tile floor of the kitchen if I had half a chance.”
“I know where everything is and you know you’ll sleep better on clean sheets. Just relax for a few minutes while I take care of it, if you can stay awake that long.”
“Thanks, East.”
He gave her a guarded smile that didn’t reach his eyes and she hated all over again the awkwardness between them, the tension that always seemed to hum between them like a tightly strung electric fence.
Nothing she could do about that now. She had lived with it for the last five years, since her uncle’s death and the events surrounding it. She could live with it for a few more days in order to provide Cisco and the baby a place to crash.
She took a moment to take off her nightgown and robe and throw on a pair of Wrangler and a T-shirt, then brushed her teeth and pulled her hair into a quick braid before she headed for his old room.
Her Aunt Jo and Uncle Guff hadn’t had the dozen children they had dreamed about to fill all the bedrooms of the old ranch house, so they had instead taken in troubled boys. Cisco hadn’t been the first or the last, but the three of them—Quinn Southerland, Brant Western and Cisco—had been closer than real brothers. Their rooms had always been kept at the ready for their visits home.
She
