The Rancher’s Baby Bargain Read online

  Ugh. A little plastic dish shouldn’t have so much power over him, but there he was, standing in the kitchen, glaring at it. His heart thundered in his chest. If there was any sign of movement…if Lucy was wrong…he’d be the world’s biggest sucker. Then again, why would she have handed it to him unless she was sure?

  She probably was sure. Aiden had heard plenty about Lucy’s accomplishments over the years. They’d both gone off to college, but unlike Aiden’s life, Lucy’s had only gotten better. She was a darling at Stanford—on prestigious research teams, with the best mentors. She got scholarships and wrote all kinds of scientific papers. She won awards. And that was even before she got her master’s degree. By the time she entered her doctoral program, Lucy had been featured in the local paper no less than eight times for her “contributions to society.” It was either front-page news or the highlight of a column that made Aiden’s throat tight with envy. The column detailed the successes of “children of Lucky Valley.”

  Aiden had been featured there once upon a time, too. For his football scholarship.

  He sighed and forced his thoughts away from that stupid column. He couldn’t begrudge her being good at her job, and anyway, the writing had been on the wall long before she went to Stanford. Even in high school, when for a brief semester they’d been lab partners together, Lucy had…a gift. Yes. She’d had a gift for science that had seemed to him like an affinity for magic. She understood all the things he didn’t, and more than once she’d saved him from a failing grade. She had never failed. Not in that class.

  He picked up his coffee mug from the table, giving himself one last moment to steel himself. And then he approached the counter where the petri dish lay.

  The sunbeam still shone down on it as if it had been beamed down from outer space, or maybe heaven, and it was too bright to see what had gone down inside. He picked it up and held it in his hand.

  There was…nothing there.

  There was the leaf, slightly shriveled.

  But there was no movement.

  Where had the mites gone?

  He put down the coffee mug and raised the petri dish to his eyes.

  They were still there, technically—shriveled little dried husks almost too small and fine to see.

  He turned it over, looking through from the other direction, just in case.

  Lucy had worked magic.

  Again.

  * * *

  Aiden’s sister, Andrea, put her hands on her hips and watched him select the tools he needed from the bench in the barn. She’d driven up early, before she headed to work at her graphic design business in town. It had been obvious from the moment she got out of the car that she wanted to know about Lucy.

  “You’re not going to fess up?”

  Aiden decided between two wrenches and put one in the toolbox he was going to take with him. “Fess up to what, exactly?”

  “I know Lucy Carr’s in town.” Andrea crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I heard,” she said meaningfully.

  “Do you have spies behind every hops plant or what?” It had probably been Jonas, running his mouth at the bar or at the store. News travelled fast in this town.

  “Everybody knows she’s in town.” He could feel Andrea’s eyes on his back. “I knew she was going to come back eventually and sell her parents’ house. I didn’t know she’d come here to talk to you. I didn’t know you two were friends like that.”

  “We’re not friends like anything,” Aiden said, knowing even as the words left his mouth that it wasn’t entirely true. “We’re…old acquaintances. And she wanted to make me an offer.”

  “An offer?”

  “It’s to do with the ranch.”

  Andrea waited.

  “You’re really not going to tell me what it is?”

  “I’m still thinking on it.” He turned and surveyed his younger sister. She’d had it harder than he had, because as much as their mother had relished her career as a real estate agent, she’d wanted different things for Andrea. A house. A husband. Children.

  And Andrea?

  Andrea wanted to do things her own way.

  “Did you need anything else?” Aiden went on. “I’ve got to head out. The irrigation system needs fixing.”

  “To make a bet.”

  “A bet?”

  “I bet you won’t have a week before Mama finds out exactly what you’re doing.”

  “I’ll bet I’m a grown man,” Aiden fired back. “And she’ll know when I want her to know.”

  “My guess is…four days.”

  Aiden shook his head, laughing. “We both know it’ll be less than that, even if I tried.”

  “I’ll put five dollars on it.”

  “All right.”

  Aiden could tell by the set of Andrea’s shoulders that she hadn’t gotten the information she wanted, but that wasn’t his problem. What was his problem was that the irrigation system had stopped working. Again.

  Aiden half expected to find Lucy out by the pumps, fixing it herself. At this point, nothing would surprise him. Maybe she’d become an expert in irrigation systems, too, and the Lucky Valley Times just hadn’t gotten around to writing an article about it.

  He’d pulled the tools he needed out of the barn and taken a four-wheeler to shorten the trip. The pump for the system was way out past the fields of hops, a short distance from the river that wound through a patch of woods on the property. It wasn’t working correctly. Not enough water was getting to the plants.

  It was a big deal, because the last few seasons had been a bit too short on rain for hops…and any other crops he had his eye on. In this region, the sun was out too long during the growing season, and the heat came too early. The family had worked around it with the irrigation system, but it was a relic from the ’70s and struggled to keep up. Some of Aiden’s fondest memories with his dad were days spent fixing the system.

  Maybe not his fondest memories. But it was cooler in the shade of the trees and being out here had left them plenty of time to talk.

  He couldn’t afford to replace the system wholesale. So this patch of woods was still a regular destination.

  Aiden set to work on the ailing pump, pulling tool after tool out of the basket in back of the four-wheeler and tossing them back in to give himself a break from kneeling.

  This was all going to be a huge waste of time if he couldn’t fix the spider mite problem.

  He felt more than a little stupid for not recognizing the specific breed of mites. He shouldn’t have been so shocked to be wrong. He wasn’t, after all, an expert in that kind of thing, and other people….

  …namely Lucy…

  …they were the experts. Though Jonas Mills should have had a clue since he was the one who’d been dumping pesticides week in and week out the entire time.

  Aiden’s knee started to ache, so he hauled himself off the ground and went to sit on the four-wheeler. He’d put a small cooler with some stainless-steel water bottles and a ham sandwich in the back with his tools, and he pulled out one of the waters and twisted off the cap. From here, he could see most of the ranch. The thing he was trying to save, all laid out for his viewing pleasure. And his guilt.

  He couldn’t accept Lucy’s help for free. It wasn’t the right thing to do.

  At the same time, it would be pointless to keep planting new crops if, over and over, the leaves would simply be eaten by those infernal pink mites.

  Still…she had insisted that it wasn’t free. She’d called it a gift, then changed her mind and described it as a trade.

  And he just didn’t know if he could go through with it.

  A baby he’d never see? He assumed that was what Lucy meant. He would act as a donor for the baby’s DNA, and she’d take it back to the city with her. He’d be left with an intact ranch and a way to get out of his debt. But a child of his would be out there in the world without him. And anyway, Aiden wasn’t sure he was ready for the weighty responsibility of creating life and setting it free in t
he world. Even if she wanted the child for herself, with no involvement from him…

  How could he forget such a thing and move on?

  But the question he’d been grappling with for months now, for years now, was right in front of him in the rolling hills and the fields of hops and the red barn under the clear blue sky.

  What would he give to keep his ranch alive and in the family?

  What wouldn’t he do?

  It had belonged to the Harpers for generations. Aiden’s great-grandfather had doggedly farmed the land even through the Great Depression, even if it meant that they’d rationed their food and went to bed hungry some nights. Even if it meant eating only what they could grow when things got tight. It hadn’t only been for the family, either—the Harpers had fed plenty of people fleeing the city during those years.

  Aiden’s grandfather had kept that torch alive, too. When the county went through the longest drought it had experienced in over a century, he’d put together his own makeshift irrigation system, a precursor to the one he’d install with his son.

  Aiden’s father.

  His father had had his share of struggles. The economy turned up and down on a dime, and there had been times when Aiden was growing up that there hadn’t been enough people to do the work the ranch required. He’d spent his summers out in the fields or in the barn fixing equipment—whatever was necessary.

  And what? He was going to turn his back on it now?

  Three generations before him had gone through their share of suffering for the land, and he felt their presence as keenly as ever, out here by the broken irrigation system. A few minutes ago, it had seemed completely pointless to fix it at all, and now Aiden felt like the giants of the family tree were glaring at him from a short distance away in utter disapproval.

  He had been looking at the mite problem as the end of the road. But that was the wrong point of view. This was only his Great Depression, though he wouldn’t say things were bad as all that. It was almost comparable to the drought, and it was no worse and no better than the labor shortage his father had faced.

  This was his own personal challenge to overcome.

  And the men in his family overcame challenges. That was their calling card. In fact, after things had gone so wrong in college, he’d come back here knowing that it was important work. Sure, the injury had been devastating, but that didn’t mean he could quit.

  Aiden tossed the water bottle back into the four-wheeler’s basket and climbed out, grabbing a wrench on the way. He could fix the problem with the ranch. He could work with Lucy. He could agree to the trade she wanted and be secure in the knowledge that he had saved his family’s legacy.

  He set to work on the pump again, kneeling on the ground next to the system’s installation.

  It was true. It was right. He would not let the ranch fail on his watch. Not after all that had come before him. Not when so much more could come after him. He was only one link in the chain, and he would not be the one to break under pressure.

  And yet.

  Yet.

  The price was high.

  The price to keep the ranch alive was literally his firstborn child.

  Would he give that child up for the ranch?

  He made one more adjustment to the irrigation pump and turned it back on. Water flowed freely. He’d brought it back from the dead yet another time.

  His firstborn child.

  Would he pay that price?

  Yeah, he thought to himself. He would. Tradition dictated that he had no other choice.

  Six

  The rest of the living room was a different story from the desk.

  The house, Lucy knew instinctively, would never sell with the living room the way it was. It had been renovated sometime in the ’90s, which meant that shabby chic decor had been all the rage, and her mother had made sure it was as girly as possible. Ruffles. Ruffles for days. Ruffles for years, even.

  She’d woken up in the morning and set about the problem of the ruffles.

  It was true that Lucy had eclectic interests. Her childhood bedroom was proof enough of that. But honestly, the ruffles were too much. As much as they reminded her of her mother’s own eclectic tastes, she could also see them the way other people would see them. And first impressions made a difference. She knew that much from her research on how to sell houses.

  Lucy pulled several garbage bags from the roll under the sink—it had clearly been purchased in bulk—and moved them into the living room.

  She started with the sofas.

  She’d considered briefly the fact that she might have to cut the ruffles themselves off, or, failing that, drag the entire sofa out to the curb. “What are you thinking?” she asked herself aloud. If the ruffles were permanently attached, the sofa would go to the curb, and she’d buy a new one. Or…rent one, for staging purposes. Lucy didn’t exactly need the proceeds from the house, but didn’t she owe her parents her best efforts?

  She did. No question about it.

  So she was delighted when the ruffles came off the sofa with a few quick tugs. They were not, as she had feared, permanently attached. Instead, they belonged to a pink slipcover.

  Underneath, the couch was leather.

  Lucy stared at it. “We had a leather couch, a nice leather couch, and you hid it with a pink ruffled slipcover?”

  Unsurprisingly, her mother didn’t answer, but Lucy heard the sound echoing in her ears as if from far away. I never wanted to get paint on it, she imagined her saying. I meant to take the slipcovers off when I got neater. Again, that laugh. Her mother had never become particularly neat when it came to her art. Lucy let herself feel the heaviness in her heart. The sofa was safe now. She wished it was still in peril of getting ruined by a painting.

  The two recliners were also wearing similar slipcovers, and into the bag they went. Though they were frankly unacceptable in terms of selling the house, her mother had maintained them well, and someone at the local resale shop might find a use for them. Or at least for the fabric.

  The pillows had suffered a similar fate, but underneath they were just as fluffy as they’d always been. The curtains in front came down. Lucy caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the window pane. She was wearing her “SMART-ASS” shorts and an *NSYNC concert tee. She jumped up and down in front of the window and pretended to cheer.

  The concert had been one of the best times of her life—even if she did go with her mother who had sat a few rows behind Lucy and her friends. They’d sung along at the top of their lungs, and by the end of the evening Lucy had lost her voice. That hadn’t stopped her from whisper-singing along with Justin Timberlake all the way home.

  It was funny, how far she’d gone, only to circle back to this same living room. Only now she was outfitting it for another life. A life she wouldn’t be part of. Things hadn’t turned out exactly how she’d planned.

  Lucy got the spray bottle of glass cleaner from under the kitchen sink and sprayed it on the giant picture window newly released from its ruffle prison, then wiped it down with a handful of wadded-up paper towel. She’d planned on taking the traditional route. Go to college. Graduate. Find a guy in graduate school. Date. Get married between her master’s program and her PhD program. Have a baby. The timing on the baby was a little more relaxed. No, it wasn’t. She laughed at the thought of that. Lucy had planned to be four months pregnant when she defended her dissertation. That way, she’d have time to find and accept a position before the baby was born.

  Obviously, she had not made that deadline.

  Oh, Lucy had defended her dissertation, and it had gone well. Very well. But she hadn’t aced her last relationship. She had been complacent and assumed that everything would work out between them. One day, they’d have a baby. Her cheeks reddened with the shame of it—the shame of failing. She knew, deep down, that her ex hadn’t been right for her.

  Still.

  The facts were the facts. Lucy was running out of time. She was past running out of time to even a
ttempt the traditional schedule. The entire thing took far too long. Dating for two years, with an average engagement in the United States at one year…

  She simply couldn’t wait that long. Even if she found the perfect man today, it made her too nervous to delay starting her own family for another three years. Most days, Lucy still felt like she was twenty-five, but she was thirty-two. With every year that passed, her fertility declined. At least, it did according to the best research that Lucy could find. Secretly, she held out hope that she was a medical anomaly who would defy all odds and whose body would continue to act as it had in her twenties forever.

  It just made sense, having a baby with Aiden. Or…with Aiden’s help. Her next fertile window was coming up, and they could get started as soon as possible.

  It made sense for him, too. Aiden was the kind of man who put a lot of stock in family traditions, and she’d seen that seriousness in his expression back on the ranch. The men around here didn’t like to accept help, but some of them, like Aiden, weren’t so stubborn that they’d sacrifice their own livelihoods on the altar of being right.

  Hopefully. If he did turn out to be that stubborn, Lucy would have to start over in her search. And Aiden would have to find a job, and fast, because without her pesticide, his ranch was going down.

  An old NSYNC song had wedged itself back into her mind, and Lucy hummed it as she gathered up the garbage bags and surveyed the living room. What next? The carpet? That would be a job. And she’d have to move all the furniture first. Though the carpet did probably have to go if she was going to have any hope of selling the place.

  As she thought, the song took over. Lucy swayed her hips to the beat in her mind and broke out into full voice. And frankly, she was nailing it.

  She came down hard on the final chorus, throwing her arms into the air, giving it everything she had.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Lucy tossed the paper towels into the air and struck a final pose. If the door-knocker had seen her through the window, well, it was too late anyway. No need to blush about it.