Page 18 of The Cowboy's Miracle Baby

She was out of the car and running to the door before Gus and Eloise had even come to a stop. Inside, the deputy, Dominic Braehill, who had been out to their place before, stood with her mother, Shay and Izzy, who was holding the baby fiercely.

“Ah. Here she is now,” Sarah said as Cami barged in breathlessly. Her mom madehelp-me!eyes at her.

“What?” Cami said, heading for Lolly. “What is this?” But she knew. She already knew why he was here.

Braehill, all decked out in his official winter gear, complete with a holstered gun at his hip and lots of leather accoutrement under his thick jacket, uncrossed his arms and took a step in her direction. “Maybe you should tell me, Cami,” he said. “Your mama, here, has been trying to explain exactly why this foundling child is here at the Hard Eight instead of in the custody of child protective services, as she should be. Considering her circumstances.”

Cami took the baby from Izzy, holding her protectively. “I can explain.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Gus and Eloise walked in the door at that point and the expression on Gus’s face was a perfect reflection of the sinking feeling in her chest. The sheriff nodded to Gus but didn’t look at all intimidated by the growing size of the crowd surrounding him.

“I was going to call on Monday. After the weekend. It was a Friday night, after hours. I didn’t want to just—it didn’t feel right to just dump her with—” Her shoulders sagged. “How did you even know I had her?”

“Phone call from an… anonymous party. Said you found that child on a church pew last night and just took her?”

Who would have called—

Her stomach knotted. There was only one person in that crowd last night she could think of who would go so far as to report her. Claire Deitmore. Harrison’s mother.Of courseit would be her. She’d been sitting in her car outside the church on her cell as they’d walked out. If not for that darned bloody nose…

“I was there when the baby was found,” Gus said, stepping into the fray. “I’m just as guilty as Cami is in this. But, frankly, I think she did the right thing, taking the child home.”

Cami’s heart squeezed at his kindness.

Dominic slid a look Gus’s way.

“Can we just consider the alternative? With nowhere for her to go? Or a last-minute foster care situation. But aside from all that, there’s a note from the baby’s mother.”

Eloise chimed in. “It was for Ms. Hardesty.”

Cami tipped her chin up. “Look, I know this whole thing is totally irregular. It’s not like I planned for any of this to happen or that I wanted to break the law. But she’s just a tiny baby who’s lost her mother, who, for whatever reason, found it impossible to keep her.”

“It’s against the law to abandon a child. We have safe drops for unwanted children.”

“No one said she was unwanted. I believe her birth mother wanted her very much.”

“We want her!” Eloise said.

Dominic sighed. “That seems beside the point as she did, in fact, abandon her.”

“She left me a note. Specifically, for me, asking me to take care of her and… well, I can’t just ignore that. Whoever she is, she must have been in a terrible circumstance to have left her baby to me. But she was warm and safe at that church. Well fed. She was left behind, but not exactly abandoned.”

“Sounds like semantics to me,” Dominic said, looking considerably less sure of himself than he had a moment ago.

Cami bounced the baby who had started to fuss, against her shoulder. “Maybe to you, it does. But she isn’t a… a stolen car or a lost pair of pearl earrings. She’s a tiny human being who’s just had all the odds stacked up against her.”

“I’m well aware,” the deputy said, shifting his feet on her mother’s kitchen floor. “But the sheriff sent me over to—”

“Once she goes into the system, it’s almost impossible to get her out. Even you must know that.”

“But you know that’s where she belongs,” he told her.

“No, I don’t,” Cami said. “I-I don’t. I don’t have an end game here, Dominic, really, I don’t. Not yet anyway. But I think a little pause is in order for this child. I think if we had a little time, we could find Lolly’s real mother and try to help her. I know she loves her daughter. And she didn’t want to do this. But somehow must have felt she had no choice.”

“And you know all that how?”

Cami set her purse down on the table and pulled out the note that had come with the child. “Because of her own words.”

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