Page 38 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
Maybe this vulnerability thing was the right move after all, no matter how unsteady it had made him feel.
But there were other things to focus on once they were in Billings.
The address that the girl in Devil’s Gorge had given him led them into a fairly sad sort of neighborhood where all the houses looked on the rundown side of weathered. There were broken-down vehicles in the yards, covered with snow—but not enough to hide the state most of them were in. He found the house he was looking for and pulled up in front.
Then sat there.
Beside him, Ramona reached over and put her hand on his leg. “Are you ready?” she asked, and on this side of last night’s revelations and vulnerabilities, that calm tone of hers was soothing. “It’s okay if you’re not. We don’t have to do this at all and we certainly don’t have to do it now.”
Knox found that his chest was even tighter now. All he could think of was Hailey. The little noises she made. The way she kicked her feet. The sweet, solid weight of her against his chest. The way she looked when she was sleeping, so hard and deep he sometimes checked her to see if she was breathing.
“I think you and I agree that Shoshana is probably in one kind of trouble or another,” Knox said after a moment, his eyes on the little house though he was still thinking about Hailey. About her cold cheeks and the wailing sound she’d made on his porch—and what if she hadn’t? He didn’t like to think about that. So he thought about it all the time. He had to focus to think about Shoshana Delaney now, the reason he was here in Billings. “And she chose me to help with some of the trouble she’s in, so what the hell. Let’s help her with all of it.”
When he glanced beside him, Ramona was smiling at him. And her eyes were so soft that it was like he could feel them inside of him. Turning him inside out whether he liked it or not.
“I think that’s an excellent plan,” she said with a nod, and Knox would have come and done this on his own. He knew that. It was the right thing to do. It was about Hailey, not his feelings about what had been done to her—or what could have happened to her.
But it all settled on him better that Ramona was here, and that she thought he was doing the right thing. He wasn’t sure when her opinion had started mattering so much to him.
Maybe around the time she’d become his first call.
Knox had to order himself to keep his head in the game. When he got out of the truck, she met him at the curb. It was cold, with a sharp wind that made it worse, but they stood there for a moment anyway. She looked up at him and then went up on the toes of her boots and kissed him on his cheek. He leaned into it, just for a second.
Then they walked over the half-heartedly shoveled snow that made a haphazard path toward the sullen front door, all chipped paint and a distinct sense of desolation. This was not a house that anyone had tried to make cheerful. Maybe ever.
Though it was a major upgrade from Devil’s Gorge, all the same.
“I’ll knock,” Ramona said as they got to the front step, and looked back at him for confirmation that he was okay with that.
He understood the strategy. She wanted him to keep his distance at first, in case whoever was on the other side of the door here had an issue with a big cowboy showing up uninvited on the doorstep.
A baby at the door was a lot less intimidating. He got that.
Ramona had to knock more than once, but they could both see that smoke was coming from the chimney. There was the sound of a loud television set inside, though it cut off after the third round of knocking.
And when the door opened, Knox braced himself—
But he recognized her.
The girl who had to be Shoshana Delaney looked to be about the same age as the one he’d seen in Devil’s Gorge. That wasn’t why he recognized her, though. She was skinnier than he remembered—much skinnier than she probably should have been after having a baby in the last two months, though what did he know. Her hair was the same coppery color as the tuft on Hailey’s head, or it was where he could see it coming out from beneath the knit hat she wore.
“Oh my God,” Shoshana whispered, her eyes flying wide. “Is the baby okay? How did you find me? Nothing happened to the baby, did it?”
“Hailey’s fine,” Knox told her. “But are you?”
Shoshana stared up at him, looking stunned, like maybe no one had asked her that question in a while. Since the last time he’d asked her that question, maybe. She was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon character on the front. Her jeans were ripped in a way that suggested use, not fashion. She had tattoos on her hands that looked like she’d drawn them by hand, more earrings than ears, and too much eye makeup.
She didn’t look old enough to be anyone’s mother, though he knew that wasn’t how the world worked.
He shook his head. “I know you.”
“I’m so sorry.” Shoshana’s eyes filled with tears. “You were so kind to me and I didn’t know what else to do.”
Ramona moved closer, then, and put a hand on the girl’s arm. Knox didn’t know how she managed to do that so smoothly. Because she made it seem so unthreatening, so warm, when Shoshana Delaney looked like the very definition of twitchy.
“Why don’t we go inside?” Ramona suggested. “We can talk. Maybe where it’s a little bit warmer?”
Shoshana looked startled. She wiped at her face, and her fingers came away smudged with black. She glanced over her shoulder, like she couldn’t remember what state the room was in.
