Page 35 of The Cowboy's Miracle Baby

His dark brows drew together. “You know, even though that sounds like a trick question, I will venture into that dangerous territory to say, yeah, it’s pretty much an invitation for a date. Unless you’re specifically opposed. You. Me. Dinner and a secret Christmas gift?”

She laughed. “I’d, uh, have to check my schedule.”

“Sure.”

“How’s Wednesday?”

“Done,” he said. “Barring any four-legged medical—”

“Emergencies, floods, or super-volcano eruptions,” she finished. “I know. And pageant disasters or Lolly complications on my end. But let’s just call it a friendly get-together.”

“Deal.”

She shivered, snuggling a tiny bit closer and tugging the blanket up toward her cold nose. “You know, I don’t think the insulation value of hay is all it’s cracked up to be.”

He lifted his arm, inviting her closer. She obliged and he closed his arm around her shoulder.

As the sound of the horse’s hooves against the frozen ground lulled them into quiet, they listened to Ryan and Ella chat about the stars, pointing at a shooting star that fell into the universe hundreds of light-years away. Perhaps that star even fell thousands of years ago and just now they were able to catch sight of it. In the blink of an eye, it came and went, and Ella and Ryan saw it together. She and Gus saw it, too.

If she were the kind of person who believed in signs—she wasn’t—she might have imagined that seeing that shooting star together meant something deeper. That it somehow drew them all together or served as some kind of portent for the future. But, alas, shooting stars were just shooting stars and it meant no more to their lives than the owl hooting across the valley right now, or the way the snow glittered in the moonlight, dusting the boulders that edged the ridge.

But she would take this snuggle for exactly what it was—a kindness from a kind man.

Chapter Eight

In the middleof the night, in the middle of a dream about Gus riding beside her across the ranch on horseback, holding her hand as if they’d done it a thousand times before, Cami heard a sound she couldn’t recognize. A wolf’s howl, she realized at last, and she looked to find that giant gray and silver canine perched high on a rocky outcrop, staring down at them.

“He won’t hurt us.” Gus tightened his warm fingers around her cold ones. “I know him.”

“But… how can you be sure?” She didn’t scare easily. But that wolf scared her. “He’s…wild.”

“He’s just telling us he sees us.” Gus’s calm in the face of this creature confused her as the wolf howled again and from somewhere in the distance, others joined in.

“So, you speak wolf?” she asked as if that was totally possible.

“I understand him,” he said, and leaned his head back to howl back at the one on the rocks.

Which was when she woke up. To the sound of Lolly crying.Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Rousing herself reluctantly from the pleasure of that dream, she shook it off and stumbled over to the baby where she slept in the new bassinet Cami had bought her. How long had she been crying while she was dreaming about wolves and paranoia?

She seriously needed some sleep.

Lolly’s little howl was hungry. She was a good baby, as newborn babies went, Cami decided. Not that she knew what a newborn should be like. But she cried when she was hungry or wet, and otherwise she seemed… content to sleep or observe the crowd at the Hardesty ranch.

She lifted Lolly from the basinet and cuddled her for a few minutes to soothe her. Almost instantly, she stopped crying, focused on Cami. She spoke to the baby softly as she changed her wet diaper and put on a fresh sleep sack gown. Lolly smiled up at her as she worked to get her fist into her little mouth.

“I know you’re hungry. Let’s warm up a bottle for you.”

Carrying her into the kitchen, she did just that, then settled down in a comfy chair to feed her. Lolly took the bottle eagerly and quieted, working to empty the contents.

Cami rubbed a thumb across the baby’s soft arm, feeling a strange surge of maternal rush pour through her. She spent most of the year being a teacher to dozens of third graders who, while adorable, had never inspired the kinds of hormonal chaos inside her that holding Lolly did. Did all newborn babies have this effect on women of childbearing age? Was it purely hormonal? Was this suddenly the ticking clock she’d heard about for so long from her teacher friends? The one so many had succumbed to?

Succumbed was a strong word. The wrong word, actually. But she’d always somehow thought she was immune to that ticking clock. Maybe it was because she’s spent most of her life trying to fix things in her own family, between her late, difficult father and everyone else; between Liam and Will and being there for Shay as she raised Ryan alone. Not to mention her mother, whose broken heart was only just beginning to heal.

So, the children she taught had seemed enough. Until now.

She ran a finger along Lolly’s velvety-soft cheek and felt the baby lean into her touch. As the little buzz of bubbles in the bottle told Cami that she was doing everything right, she was still very aware that everything about this was wrong. It wasn’t this baby’s fault that everything had gotten messed up in her little life. Or that she’d had no choice in the matter about being held in Cami’s arms right now. But since this was where they were at, she was going to be the best surrogate mom she could be—until she’d exhausted all options to keep her.

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