looked at her as if she had just said she’d landed from another planet. “You are flat-out crazy!”
“You’re welcome to think so,” she calmly informed him. “However, the attorney general of this state, being a perceptive woman, considers it a great idea.”
Ryder chewed that over for a second. “And where did you happen to bump into her?” he asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“At a charity fund-raiser during Super Bowl celebrations a few years ago. We’ve kept in touch for quite a while. She loves the Sassy Lady line, by the way.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.”
“Believe what you want, but the end result is that she’s willing to help me deal with all the bureaucratic regulations involved in this type of thing. If she’s as good as her word, which I don’t doubt for a minute, the center should be up and running in a couple of weeks.”
Ryder sat down on the edge of the desk, looking so disgusted she almost felt sorry for him. Almost. “Is the first lady, or maybe the Queen of England, in on this too?”
She had to smile. “No, they both missed that fundraiser.”
“What other big shots do you know?”
She searched for someone who would truly impress him. Unfortunately she’d never run into Clint Eastwood. “Well, I did meet Brad Pitt once.” For about thirty seconds.
After studying her for a long moment, Ryder blew out a resigned breath. “You’re not making any of this up, are you?” Since it wasn’t really a question, she remained silent. “This isn’t a bad dream. You really are going to turn this place into a Bonanza for babies—the old TV show with a big twist.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “if you want to put it that way. My plan is to give new mothers who can’t afford other forms of day care a chance to either work or go back to school. The service will be free of charge, but if it allows even one woman to keep a child she wants to keep, I’ll consider myself well paid.”
Something in her voice must have alerted him. His gaze was suddenly probing. “This is personal, isn’t it, Eve?”
She turned to walk toward the window, saw the sun low on the horizon. Sunsets here, she’d already discovered, could be spectacular. “Yes, it’s personal,” she replied quietly. “I want to help mothers keep children, because mine didn’t keep me.”
Eve lifted a hand and rubbed a dark smudge from the glass. “The thing was, she wanted to keep me, which I only learned a few years ago. She wasn’t married when I was born. She is now. Her husband seems like a good man. They lived in Tucson when we all met for the first time, in probably a nicer area of the city than I suspect she once lived in. Now they’ve moved to El Paso. I stopped by to see them again on the drive here. They have three children. It appears to be a very happy family. I might have been part of it, if the woman who gave birth to me had had the resources at seventeen to care for a baby.”
“What happened after she gave you up?” Ryder asked softly.
Eve switched back to face him. “I was lucky. Two great people adopted me. When I was old enough to understand, they were straightforward about the adoption, and I was comfortable with it because I never doubted they loved me. I grew up in a middle-class area of Dallas, had lots of friends. I was happy. Yet something was always…missing. A link with the past, I suppose you could say. For instance, my adopted parents were small in stature—I was taller than both by the time I was thirteen. Where had my height come from? I often wondered. Then, too, I loved to draw almost from the time I could walk. Crayons were far more treasured than toys. Neither of the people who raised me had any artistic leanings. I learned from my birth mother that she’d always loved to draw. And my biological father, who didn’t stay around long enough to see the child he’d created, gave me my height. Apparently, he was a very tall man.”
Ryder ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, I guess I can understand this whole thing a little better now. But why here? A nursery setup on a ranch?”
“One that’s close enough to the city to allow a mother to bring her child here if she has access to a car,” Eve pointed out. “If she doesn’t, I’m willing to provide transportation. As far as babies are concerned, they don’t care if they’re being cared for in the biggest skyscraper or the smallest hut on the planet. A full tummy, a dry diaper, someone to hold them—that’s their world.” She paused. “You may think I’m crazy again, but after meeting my birth mother I took a drive. I needed some time alone before I went to the airport for the flight back to Dallas. Somehow I wound up on Creedence Creek Road. I saw the ranch in the distance and—I’m not sure how to explain it—something just clicked. Right from that moment I wanted to live here.”
She smiled faintly. “Perhaps there’s a homesteader, or maybe a cattle rustler, in my family tree. Anyway, I asked a local real estate agency to let me know if the property ever went on the market. You know the rest. Long before I signed the purchase papers, though, one of my goals was to establish a free day care facility someday, somewhere. It seemed as though fate was working in my favor when I was able to do it here.”
“I’m glad fate’s working in someone’s favor,” he muttered, seemingly more to himself than to her.
She’d been going on and on, she abruptly realized. This man now knew a good part of her life history, and she knew practically nothing about him. Except that he’d wanted the ranch just as much as or maybe more than she had. Perhaps far more.
“Why did it have to be the Creedence Creek, Ryder?”
She’d struck a nerve. The way he stilled completely for an instant told her that. He didn’t pretend not to know what she referred to. And he didn’t respond immediately. Several silent seconds passed before he spoke.
“It’s a long story.”
A civil way of saying, Mind your own business, she knew. And she would. Yet she couldn’t help wondering.
“Well, all my cards are on the table now, and I suppose I should give you a last chance to back out.” She stepped forward, held out a hand. “Do we still have a deal, cowboy?”
Ryder studied her for a long moment before he took her hand in his for a firm handshake. “We still have a deal, lady.”
JUST OVER A WEEK LATER, Ryder watched a large truck pull up to the back of the ranch house. Although he was more than fifty yards away, standing near a corral, he had no trouble making out what two uniformed deliverymen quickly began to unload. One sparkling white baby crib after another was hauled out and lined up in a long row.
“You got to do something, Ry. The woman’s a pure menace.”
Ryder clamped a companionable hand around the sturdy shoulder of the person standing beside him. “Hang in there, Pete. I told you she won’t be here long.”
And he didn’t plan on revising that statement, Ryder reflected. No, not for a minute. Eve Terry was sincere about the whole thing, he had to give her that. She’d meant everything she’d said before they’d shaken hands to seal their agreement. But she hadn’t changed his mind about anything. She wouldn’t be able to stick it out.
Right now he had to hope Pete Rawlins could dredge up enough patience to make it through until the inevitable happened, well aware that to the solidly built man on the far side of sixty only four things in life
