A Baby Changes Everything (5 page)

“Leave it,” she told him, guiding the plate back to the table. “They'll keep.”

Rising to her feet, she took his hand and began to walk toward the stairs.

He surprised her by abruptly stopping in the foyer before the staircase, just shy of the living room. When she turned around to look at him quizzically, Cruz took her into his arms.

Ever so slowly, he began to sway with her, in time to the music.

“We danced that first night, remember?” He enveloped her hand with his own, pressing it against his chest as he danced.

Against his heart, she thought, feeling the rhythm of its beat.

“On the terrace,” he continued. “Music from the party was drifting out of all the opened windows, and we danced the last time you wore this dress.”

That he remembered such a small detail thrilled her beyond measure.

“Yes,” she said softly, leaning her cheek against his chest, “I remember.”

Anticipation paired off with adrenaline, creating all sorts of delicious havoc within her body as she moved to the strains of the slow love song. She was happy enough to cry.

Damn her hormones, she thought. The smile didn't leave her lips.

“This was a good idea.” Cruz's breath wafted through her hair.

Raising her head, she looked up at him. She loved him so much, she thought, that it hurt. “Glad you liked it.”

The song ended and he kissed her. Lightly, briefly, whetting both their appetites. Releasing her, he made no effort to step back.

She sighed and their breath mingled. Something in his belly tightened. Cruz glanced toward the stairs.

“As I remember, you were leading me somewhere before I stopped to claim a dance.”

Her eyes were fairly dancing themselves as she smiled, taking his hand again. “Yes, I was.”

This time they made it up the stairs.

As they crossed the threshold into their bedroom, Cruz again pulled her into his arms. “I believe I have a promise to make good on.”

“Wait,” she cried, placing her hands against his chest. “Give me some time.”

With an impatient sigh, Cruz released her. “I
have
been waiting,” he pointed out. “And the way I see it, time is now being wasted.”

She thought of the nightgown she'd hung up so carefully on the back of the bathroom door. The one that was going to make his jaw drop. “I want to put something on.”

A small, perturbed frown appeared on his lips. Maybe he just wasn't following her. “I thought the object was to take something off.”

She laughed, giving him a quick kiss. “Trust me, this is worth waiting for.”

Cruz sighed again, but the look of impatience was gone. “Just don't make the wait too long, Savannah,” he warned. He let his eyes slide down the length of her body. There was no way anyone would have suspected she was pregnant. She looked just the way she had that first night. His own body tightened again in response as thoughts filled his head. “I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to hold out.”

She laughed just before she slipped into the bathroom. “Just don't start without me.”

The moment the door was closed, Savannah quickly stripped off her dress. She hung it carefully on a hanger and then slipped on the sexy blue nightgown she'd bought just for this moment.

Stepping all the way back against the far wall, she critically surveyed her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror one last time.

All the right curves were still there, she thought with satisfaction.

She'd worked hard at getting herself back into shape after Luke was born. It had been worth all those endless hours of exercise she'd managed to string together.

She was going to knock Cruz on his ear.

Running a comb through her hair, she placed it back into the medicine cabinet and then opened the door.

“Here I come, Cruz,” she announced. “Ready or not.”

There was no answer.

Puzzled, Savannah stepped into their bedroom. Cruz was lying down on the bed with his back to her. The television had been turned on, though the sound was low. He'd obviously decided that she was going to be in there for a while.

A lot he knew, Savannah thought fondly. She needed this time with him probably even more than he needed to be reminded that he'd shirked his “duties” as a husband.

“You can turn that off now, Cruz, I'm ready.” Standing on the other side of the bed, she waited for him to comply and turn around.

She waited some more.

“Cruz?”

He made no reply.

Disappointment dropped over her like a dripping wet towel as she rounded the bed. Standing between Cruz and the television, she saw that his eyes were closed. He was breathing evenly.

He was asleep.

She pressed her lips together. Leaning over, she placed her hand on his shoulder and shook him.

Nothing. She tried harder, and still there was no response.

He was completely dead to the world.

And to her.

Short of jumping up and down on him, she thought, there was no waking him tonight.

A ragged sigh broke free as she turned off the television and then walked back into the bathroom to change. This time she put on a nightgown that had seen more than its share of sleep.

As she left the room, she looked over her shoulder one last time, hoping to find him stirring. But Cruz continued sleeping.

Fighting back tears, she went downstairs to clear the table.

“I
fell asleep last night, didn't I?”

Cruz's voice surprised Savannah as she walked into the kitchen the next morning.

She hadn't expected to find him home, nursing a cup of coffee at the table. Most days, he was gone by the time she got up. When she'd woken this morning to find the space next to her empty, she'd just assumed that it was business as usual for her husband.

The fact that it was, that he'd just shrugged off what had happened last night—or not happened, as the case was—had hurt. But she was getting accustomed to that.

“Yes,” Savannah replied quietly as she crossed to the stove, “you did.” She'd promised herself that she wasn't going to say anything, because doing so never changed things. But the words refused to remain held captive by common sense. Turning from the cabinet, a pot in her
hand, she added, “Just like you have every other night in the last, oh, I don't know, maybe three months now. Maybe longer.”

The apology Cruz was about to stumble through disappeared as he frowned. The last three months had been busier than usual. As his wife and his bookkeeper, she knew that.

“Look,” he said, trying to hold in his temper, “it's not my fault that the mare died giving birth and that I had to play mother to her colt.” That had been just one added chore on top of all the others. The herd he owned was far from large. It only numbered twenty-five, but each horse required a great deal of work. Combined, they took up his day. “It takes a lot to run a ranch. I thought you understood that.”

Hurt turned to anger and Savannah struggled to rein it in. She held her tongue so as to not say something that would cause irreparable damage to a situation already tottering dangerously.

“Yes, I understood that. I understand a lot of things, Cruz.” She enunciated each word carefully. “Like if we don't work at this marriage, it's not going to make it.”

Marriages didn't take work, Cruz thought. They were what you sought shelter in
from
work. His parents had done that. Marriage was what was supposed to keep you sane in a world that often overwhelmed you. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

Savannah put the pot down on the stove a little too hard. The noise reverberated through the kitchen. “Us, Cruz. I'm talking about us.” She felt a sob hitch in her throat. With effort, she did her best to keep it down. “Except that there is no ‘us' anymore, there's just Luke and me, and you and the ranch.”

Cruz never could understand the drama that overtook women. He was sorry he'd fallen asleep last night. He'd really wanted to be with her. But she was making far too much of the incident. After all, he hadn't done it on purpose. He was just tired. “You're talking crazy, Savannah.”

His accusation stung. Eyes blazing, Savannah planted her fists on her hips, fighting a strong urge to take a swing at him.

What was happening to her? She felt as if she was falling apart. “Am I? Well, maybe that's what single wives do.”

“Single wives?” Now she really was talking crazy. “What the hell is that?”

“Women who are married but never see their husbands.” She glared at him accusingly. “Me, Cruz, me.”

He spread his hands, at a complete loss how to deal with this. “Never see their husbands? Then what is this?” He gestured to himself.

She threw up her own hands in exasperation. “A hologram for all I know. Someone who stops to have a piece of toast in the morning before leaving and comes home at night too tired to talk, too tired to spend time with me or with Luke.”

They'd danced to this tune before. He didn't have time for it. “I said I'll make it up to you. To both of you.” He took a breath, trying again. He hadn't waited here just for her to argue. He'd wanted to clear the air, not pollute it with anger. “Just wait until things slow up a little. I'm good for it.”

Savannah laughed shortly, shaking her head. And where had she heard that before?

“At the moment you're so far in arrears, you'd have to spend every waking minute with us from now until Christmas to make up for all the lost time. Oh, wait, that's not
possible because as soon as you're awake, you're outside with your horses.”

She looked at him, angry tears threatening to fall. Desperate to regain her footing in his life, to have things the way they were before they began to fall apart, she moved toward him.

“If it was a woman, Cruz, I'd know what to do. I'd find a way to compete with her. But I can't compete with a ranch, with a dream. I don't know how.”

As subtly as he could, he glanced at his watch. He was already late. He'd hung around in the hopes that she'd come down so that he could apologize to her. That obviously wasn't going too well.

He'd certainly had better ideas, Cruz decided, upbraiding himself.

Women had always been a mystery to him. They were soft and accommodating, and he'd sought pleasure in them while giving them pleasure. For him, that was enough—until he'd fallen for Savannah.

They'd been so in sync before. He didn't know how their relationship had become so unraveled.

“There is no competition, Savannah,” he assured her. “You always come first. You and Luke. It's just that if I slack off, we're going to fall behind. Bankers and all the people who expect to be paid every month don't like excuses.”

“After a while, neither do I.”

He sighed, at the end of his rope. He wanted the woman he'd married to emerge again, instead of this woman who only found fault with him.

“C'mon, Savannah, I'm counting on you to be in my corner. This is for us, for Luke.” He brushed a quick kiss against her cheek and picked up his hat from the table,
where he'd placed it. “I promise it's not always going to be like this.”

No,
she thought as she watched him leave the room,
it's going to be worse.

She'd heard this promise before, and it always
had
gotten worse. Because Cruz did not know how to delegate, how to let go.

Unless he was forced to.

With a sigh, she dragged her hand through her hair. She might as well get ready to go pick up Luke.

 

The doorbell rang just as Vanessa had picked up her purse and gotten her car keys out. She paused for a second. As far as she knew, she wasn't expecting anyone this afternoon.

She was on her way to Savannah's for an impromptu visit. Nothing had been arranged, but theirs was a friendship that allowed them to drop over casually.

Not that there had been very much of that taking place in the last few months. It was as if, with the advent of her second pregnancy, Savannah had crawled into herself.

Vanessa was worried about her best friend. Savannah had been looking pale lately. Pale and sad. That was one of the reasons behind her visit. If the woman was hitting a rough patch with Cruz, the least she could do was give her a shoulder to cry on.

And a few hours of peace by taking Luke off her hands wouldn't exactly hurt, either.

There was a new children's movie opening up today at the Red Rock Multiplex, and although the thought of sitting in a crowded theater with a slew of kids wasn't overly appealing to her, helping Savannah was.

Besides, she loved Luke.

Even so, she had to admit she didn't know how Savannah managed it. The boy was into absolutely everything. Exploring, taking things apart on purpose, asking an endless amount of questions. Fearless as he was, the little boy had made her heart stop on several occasions with his exploits. She could just imagine what Savannah had to be going through, putting up with this kind of thing on a daily basis.

If she had Luke 24-7 she wasn't all that sure she could survive. Savannah had a great deal more inner fortitude than she.

Murmuring “Just a minute,” Vanessa swung open the door. The smile on her perfectly made up face froze.

Standing on her threshold were Gabe Thunderhawk, a local policeman, and Andrea Matthews, a detective who, in Vanessa's opinion, thought too highly of herself. What were they doing here?

It wasn't that she didn't like Gabe; she did. The policeman was an amiable man who had slipped into the post effortlessly, despite some prejudice against him from some of the older citizens because of his Native American heritage. But none of her family saw him that way. Gabe was extremely well suited to his job and, unlike some, he hadn't allowed his position to fill his head with false delusions of grandeur and power.

Ordinarily, there wasn't all that much for a local police officer to do in a town the size of Red Rock. Mostly he or one of his other two counterparts would settle a few domestic disputes, mediate over claims that A had taken something from B, be it a horse or a head of cattle or a sheep, always by “mistake.”

The only real bit of excitement had happened last summer when he'd been the one to find Sarah Jenkins. The eighty-seven-year-old had wandered away from her home in the middle of the night. Somehow, the woman had managed to get beyond the town limits and, judging from the direction she'd taken, was on her way to San Antonio—barefoot and in her nightgown. Gabe had spent all night and part of the next day looking for her, tracking her the way his ancestors had once tracked their supper.

But this wasn't about anything that could make an interesting, amusing anecdote to be shared with friends on a warm night over a cold drink. This was something entirely different.

The town of Red Rock and its citizens had themselves a genuine, honest-to-goodness dead body. One courtesy of Lake Mondo, which had washed the body up onto the bank. According to the papers, the body had been in the lake for three days.

So far all they knew was that it wasn't one of the locals. No one was missing. The identity of the corpse was still a mystery. Who had killed him was a bigger one.

Without leads, both Gabe, who'd been the first on the scene, and Andrea, who was the primary on the case, had struck up a temporary, albeit uneasy alliance. Gabe didn't like taking orders from women. Andrea didn't like men who thought themselves too good to take orders from women. It wasn't a match made in heaven.

Determined to get one up on the other, they had worked hard, dug deep, looking for some kind of link or starting point. Because of the unusual birthmark they'd found on the body, they had temporarily connected the
dead man to Vanessa's father, a fact that made her furious. Everyone knew Ryan Fortune was a pillar of the community.

They had already dragged him out to the lake and fired questions at him, as if they could get him to admit to something by overwhelming him with inquiries.

Vanessa viewed both people on her doorstep with less than friendly regard. She held the door ajar, when normally she would have thrown it open and welcomed in at least Gabe, whom she knew better. Andrea had always been reserved, a woman with something to prove. Vanessa found she couldn't relate to her. They moved in different circles.

“Hello, Gabe. Detective Matthews.” She nodded at both, her hand remaining on the door, barring both of them from entering.

Gabe looked slightly uncomfortable about the reason that had brought him and one of Red Rock's top detectives there. The Fortunes were not people to come up against lightly, and that was just what he was doing. Confident in his abilities and determined to one day make the grade as a detective himself, the twenty-nine-year-old police officer had no trouble fitting into the world of the white man, as his grandfather still referred to anyone outside of their tribe.

Gabe glanced at the purse and keys in Vanessa's hand. “Going somewhere?”

“Yes, as a matter-of-fact, I am.” She looked toward her car in the driveway. “And I'm running late.” The last was a lie, but she didn't feel like having to put up with what she thought was ahead.

“We won't keep you long,” Andrea told her crisply. She looked over Vanessa's shoulder into the house. “Mind if we come in?” It wasn't really a question, Vanessa knew.

In so many words, Andrea was telling her she wanted them to be admitted.

Vanessa bit back the “yes, I do mind” that was hovering on her lips, but she didn't bother suppressing a sigh as she stepped back and opened the door.

Andrea walked in first, followed by Gabe, who flashed an apologetic smile at her as he crossed the threshold.

By nature Vanessa was outgoing and cooperative. She was also extremely protective of those she loved, and this investigation, for some unfair reason, seemed to be targeting her father, a man who wouldn't have hurt a fly unless that fly was totting a six-shooter aimed directly at him. And even then he'd try to disarm the fly first.

Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the two interlopers, neither of whom had ever been inside her house before. “What can I do for you?”

Gabe got down to it. He didn't know any other way. “Has your father been acting strangely lately?”

Her first instinct was to voice a denial. The problem was, however, that Gabe's question did have some merit. Her father
had
been acting strangely of late. He'd been unusually closemouthed for a while now. So much so that she and her siblings were concerned that something might be wrong.

Their speculation in no way pointed toward the ludicrous idea of murder. They thought that perhaps his marriage to Lily, his third wife, who had coincidentally also been his childhood sweetheart, wasn't working out for some reason, causing their father pain and concern.

Sometimes, she knew, the dream was better than reality.

But she wasn't about to give Gabe or the curly-haired
brunette he was with anything to work with. If for some reason her father's marriage wasn't working out, it was none of their business.

“My father has been acting like my father. There's nothing strange about his behavior.” Her tone indicated that she considered the subject closed.

She might have, but apparently Andrea didn't. The woman took a small notepad out of her jacket pocket and referred to notes she'd taken earlier.