Page 17 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
The proof of that was also in the way he was singing to little Hailey as he changed her, as if he had nothing better to do in the whole world but cater to this little baby who had been literally abandoned and left at his door. He’d tossed himself into this without any hesitation. That didn’t strike her as the kind of man who would shirk his duty. Especially not if he had any reason at all to believe that the baby might be his.
She didn’t move from where she was curled up in a ball, a deliciously cozy throw blanket draped over her, because she wasn’t ready to face him. Not just yet.
Because it was one thing to believe him, but a whole other thing to think about what that meant.
He had said that he hadn’t slept with anyone else in the time they’d been doing their on-and-off thing, so the whole of the past year and a half. Neither had she, of course.
And she should have known better by now than to do this. To make things that he said into whole declarations when he’d simply been stating facts. She knew by now that he never meant things the way she wished he did.
But still. She took that information away and held it close, because it made her feel good. Because it made her heart beat a little bit harder and a whole lot sweeter.
She wasn’t breaking her stretch of Knox Carey sobriety if she acknowledged that it felt good to hear that from him. This was already the first interaction they’d ever had without a sexual component. She thought she was doing great.
Ramona sat up and stretched, and then turned around to find Knox standing over in the kitchen part of the great room with its high, pitched ceiling and grand windows, watching her with that brooding look on his face.
“Merry Christmas,” she said. He frowned at that, so she pressed on to more pressing matters. “I don’t suppose the weather’s cleared up?”
Meaning, could she go home now? She ignored the little pang inside when she thought about leaving.
“The winds have died down in the past hour or so,” he told her. “But the snow keeps on coming.” She tried to keep her face impassive, but she obviously failed, because his mouth curved. “It’s supposed to turn to freezing rain for a while and then temperatures are supposed to plummet this afternoon.”
She knew what that meant. The snow might stop, but the freezing rain was treacherous, and when the temperature dropped it would all turn to ice. Making those roads she’d barely made it over last night into death traps.
Like it or not, she was stuck here.
Something she’d known was possible when she’d driven out here, but that didn’t make her any happier about it now.
Ramona took a breath, then nodded. “Looks like you have that diaper change down already,” she said, putting the focus on the baby, where it belonged. “You picked that up fast.”
“Harlan said that no one was allowed in his house after Kiel was born unless they knew how to change a diaper,” Knox said, his eyes gleaming. “Turned out, I’m the only one who needed teaching. Everyone else changed mine.”
Ramona shook her head. “I’m sure they all brought that up as often as possible.”
“Nonstop,” he replied.
It wasn’t until they both laughed that Ramona remembered herself. She looked away, clearing her throat. “I’m going to go clean up,” she said. “Then, if you don’t mind, I might see if I can rustle up some breakfast. I’m starving.”
“Sounds like a plan,” was all Knox said.
And it was an odd little Christmas, and not what she’d expected—but in some ways, Ramona thought it was one of the sweetest she’d ever had.
Knox talked to his brothers and his parents. Rosie had given birth to the new set of Carey twins—girls, this time—and they were all safe and sound down in the hospital in Marietta. The rest of the Careys agreed to hunker down where they were instead of getting together the way Ramona thought they all clearly wanted to. There was a lot of talk of potentially snowshoeing up to the ranch house, but Belinda herself finally called it.
“Our Christmas celebration will have to be postponed,” she announced. Ramona could hear her voice clearly through the phone that Knox had carried into his office. “It doesn’t make sense to have it without Ryder and Rosie and the new babies anyway.”
It was clear that all the brothers thought this was a good plan.
Knox didn’t circle any of his family in on what was happening with little Hailey. Ramona didn’t blame him for that. What was there to say without more information? And why blow it all up on Christmas when no one could do anything about it anyway?
Besides, for all they knew, the mysterious Shoshana Delaney would come back.
She cooked breakfast, then called her parents and checked in with their quiet festivities back in New Hampshire. Later, Knox made lunch. They traded turns with the baby without discussing it. They made notes about her sleep and feeding habits in the little notebook Ramona put on the coffee table after Knox produced it from his office.
When evening fell again outside, dark and bitter cold and early, they made dinner, too. It turned into something of a feast. He grilled a few steaks and some vegetables out on the grill that he had to shovel a path to. She threw together ingredients that she found in his cupboards and freezer to make a simple crumble.
He poured them both a little bit of spiced rum—more a tasting sample than a drink, clearly a nod to the infant that was the reason they were together right now, because they had certainly let alcohol lead them down all kinds of paths before—and they sat and ate before the fire with the baby gurgling in between them and playing with her toes.
Ramona had planned to spend Christmas the way she had last year. Tucked up in her cozy upstairs space in her grandfather’s old house that she’d painstakingly renovated herself, eating the delicacies she’d picked up down in Marietta earlier in the week, and watching holiday movies on repeat. Or catching up on podcasts, like her current favorite—a local one on true crime that the Cowboy Point deputy sheriff’s sister, Esther, had been hosting for a few years now. Or losing herself in the stack of brightly colored novels that she’d bought from Rosie’s book shop—some from her pop-up Airstream at the Farm & Craft Market in the summer and some from her new location in one of the Lodge’s cottages this fall, before she’d had to do some bed rest ahead of the new twins’ arrival.
