Page 51 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
They had long since exchanged all the gifts, but that wasn’t the point of it.
“The point,” Belinda was muttering at him as she charged around that morning, putting things to rights, “is all of us spending time as a family. This time, with extra family.”
Zeke suspected that might be the real issue igniting his beloved today. Once Ramona’s parents heard that their daughter was going to marry a Montana cowboy and truly settle down with him in Cowboy Point, they hadn’t wasted any time making plans to come out and visit.
It turned out that Belinda and Bettina Taylor knew each other from childhood. Belinda had actually babysat for Bettina, which had made all the brothers laugh—and then demand that Ramona’s mom tell them what Belinda had been like as a bossy older girl who could tell Bettina what to do.
That was effectively the Belinda experience, Bettina had said, earning the Careys’ affection forever.
Belinda, on the other hand, had ordered them all outside to shovel the yard and the drive, so that their guests would feel more comfortable.
Her justice was always swift.
It had been a purely delightful New Year so far, Zeke thought, as he settled in at the kitchen table and waited for his family to come pouring in.
The little twin girls, Holly and Ivy, weren’t giving their parents much sleep but they were so cute that it was hard to be resentful. Zeke and Belinda had hated seeing the older boys go back home, but they took comfort in the fact that theirs was the kind of family that spent a lot of time with each other. Those boys would grow up running back and forth between their parents’ house and their grandparents’ house. Soon enough, their sisters would join them.
“Or outrun them,” Belinda liked to say with a sniff.
Harlan and Kendall had announced only the other day that they were pregnant again, though it was early days. Little Kiel was only four months old but both Kendall and Harlan looked so pleased with themselves that it was impossible not to cheer them on.
“There’s a reason that folks like at least eighteen months between babies,” Belinda liked to mutter as she banged around in her kitchen. “I preferred two years.”
“Maybe they just want a lot of babies,” Zeke usually felt compelled to reply.
Wilder and Cat were focused on her studies, and a whole lot of aunting and uncle-ing around the ranch. Boone and Sierra were focused on the dairy and the big plans they had for the new summer season.
And Knox, the baby of the family who no one had really believed would ever settle down, had officially become Hailey’s only legal parent following the termination of Shoshana Delaney’s parental rights.
Zeke was proud of the fact that Ramona and Knox had offered the girl help to build her own life, and she’d been strong enough and determined enough to take it. They’d gotten her out of her questionable living situation and into somewhere safer and better. The last he’d heard, Shoshana was working on finishing high school.
And who knew what she would do then.
Knox had also made it clear that there was an open door for the girl whenever she wanted to see the baby she’d given him. It was up to her.
Zeke admired it.
At the same time, pretty much the day after Shoshana’s parental rights had been revoked, Ramona had started the adoption process. Everyone had told them that it would take a long time, so they might as well begin sooner rather than later.
Shoshana had given the doctor a hug and offered her wholehearted blessing.
In the meantime, Knox and Ramona were planning a wedding at the end of June right here in Cowboy Point—something Bettina had perhaps had a little trouble with, but she was coming around after staying in her father’s old house for a couple of weeks and seeing the town as a grown woman, not the eighteen-year-old who had left. The two lovebirds wanted the whole thing on Mountain Mama’s patio, on the two-year anniversary of the day they’d met.
Zeke couldn’t wait to dance at the last wedding of his last single son.
But that brought up another pressing issue.
That being, his continuing-to-not-die thing.
He noticed how careful everyone was to talk about the future in his presence—meaning they were shutting him out of things for his own protection, and he hated that—and he knew the time had come.
Besides, his work was done.
“I’m still considering telling them that the cancer is in deep remission,” he told Belinda as they heard the sounds of voices outside and truck doors slamming shut.
“You do that,” his wife replied, making a ruckus on her stovetop. “Or you could be the Zeke Carey I married and own up to what you did.”
Then she looked over her shoulder and grinned at him in that wicked way of hers, and he knew that she had absolutely no intention of owning up to anything.
