instinctively rocked her body in time with little Jessie’s hiccuping breaths. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry!”
His expression softened into lines of weary sadness, and he cupped his large palm over the infant’s soft burgundy-red curls in an attitude of tender protectiveness. “I made the arrangements. The funeral was Saturday. The neighbors were keeping Jessie, but there’s no other family except me, so I...well, I’m taking her.”
“Oh, Sam!”
His wide mouth tightened with belligerence. “What the hell else was I supposed to do?”
“Oh, Sam, you lunkhead! You misunderstand me.” Roni caught his hand. “Of course you have to take her. I wouldn’t have expected less.”
He hesitated, then sat down beside Roni and gave her fingers a grateful squeeze. “You don’t think I’m addled?”
“Hardly. We’ve been friends since before I could walk, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Sam Preston can be counted on to do the right thing.”
“My judgment might be a bit cloudy right now.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, lines of fatigue making him look much older than his thirty-seven years. For the first time Roni saw how tired he really was. “It’s been a hell of a week.”
“I can imagine.” Roni stroked Jessie’s damp forehead, crooning. “Poor little thing. Poor Jessie. And poor Sam.”
“I’m okay.”
“Remember who you’re talking to, buckaroo?” Roni’s coffee-brown eyes were gentle. “You may come across tough as old rawhide to the rest of the world, but I know your heart is made of molasses taffy. So you want to be a father, do you?”
His mouth twisted. “Seems I got no choice. But I swear I had no idea you had to be Dr. Spock, Mother Teresa and an octopus all rolled together to take care of one little baby girl! And if I don’t get out there first thing in the morning and help Angel load those bulls for the Ferguson shipment, the Lazy Diamond is really going to be up the creek.”
Roni nodded, fully aware that the life on a working ranch never ceased. Angel Morales, Sam’s cow boss, ran the day-to-day care of the herds. Angel gave the cowboys who lived in the handful of cottages and trailer homes scattered around the Lazy Diamond their daily riding orders while his wife, Maria, cooked for the hands, but it was Sam who had to meet the demands of owner, general manager and ranch foreman every day.
Sam ran a hand through his damp hair and turned pleading eyes to Roni. “I’m telling you, Curly, I’m frazzled. You gotta help me!”
“Me? In case you forgot, I don’t know any more about babies than you do.”
Roni couldn’t prevent a grimace at the memory of her on-again, off-again relationship with filmmaker Jackson Dial. It had been an eight-year, coast-to-coast stint in self-inflicted misery, which she’d finally put to an end two years earlier when she’d returned to her little hometown of Flat Fork to lick her wounds and pursue her career as a free-lance illustrator. Thanks to Jackson’s no-commitment policy, she was single, childless and well on her way to becoming an old maid. Although Sam had listened to her cry in her beer about all of that on innumerable occasions, apparently desperation had made him forget she was as limited in the parental experience department as he was.
“Come on, Curly,” Sam begged. “You’ve got to know something—you’re a woman!”
Roni snorted. “Glad you finally noticed.”
“Aw, hell, you know what I mean.” Sam shoved fingers through his hair again and scrubbed a palm down his beard-stubbled face.
“I know you’re a chauvinist at heart.” Roni couldn’t hide a wry smile at his obvious distress. Then she took pity on him. “Well, to start with, she’s soaking wet.”
“What—again?”
Roni shifted the baby, now snubbing sibilantly, and plucked at her own sodden shirt. “And she’s done a fair job of drenching me, too.”
“Damn,” he groaned, reaching for the child. “I’m sorry, Curly.”
“Take it easy, cowboy. No use both of us getting wet. Find me a diaper and a dry shirt or something for her, will you?”
Nodding, Sam reached for a bulging diaper bag decorated with yellow ducks while Roni laid Jessie on the bed. Worn-out from crying, too tired to even crawl, the baby flailed halfheartedly, her fingers still tangled in Roni’s whiskey-colored locks.
But when Roni attempted to detach Jessie’s hold, the child would have none of it, whimpering pitifully. It occurred to Roni that Jessie’s mother must have had long hair, and the baby was finding some comfort in the familiar scent and texture. Her heart melted.
“All right, sweetie, you can hold on.” Ignoring the discomfort of pulled hair, Roni began stripping off the soaked gown and diaper, still talking softly. “Aunt Roni’s going to fix you up.”
“Here.” Sam tossed a clean sleeper on the bed and thrust a disposable diaper at her. “Maybe you can figure out how to keep the damn thing on.”
“I’ve changed Krystal’s youngest a time or two,” she admitted. Krystal Harrison was another longtime friend from high school. She and her husband, Bud, and their three little boys had welcomed Roni back to Flat Fork with open arms.
“I knew you’d been holding out on me,” Sam muttered. He watched uncertainly as Roni smoothed the diaper’s adhesive tabs into place. “Think she’s hungry again?”
“Tired mostly, but a bottle of something might help soothe her.”
Sam nodded again. “Okay. Be right back.”
By the time Roni pulled the dry sleeper onto Jessie’s sturdy little body, Sam had returned with a plastic baby bottle.
“It’s juice. Apple, I think. Mrs. Newton, the lady who was keeping Jessie, fixed a bunch of bottles and stuff to tide me over.”
“That was thoughtful of her.”
“Yeah. She and her husband have five kids of their own. It tore them up about Alicia, and they’re real attached to Jessie. Told me they’d keep her as long as I needed, but they aren’t well-off, and I couldn’t let Jessie be a burden on them. Besides, I felt it was important to get her settled here as soon as possible.”
Seating herself in an old platform rocker whose threadbare upholstery had seen better days, Roni offered the baby the juice. Jessie latched on to the nipple with a sigh, and her fine lashes drifted down against her plump cheeks, one hand still tightly clutching Roni’s hair. Roni set the rocker in motion, then looked up at the tall man watching her.
“Seriously, Sam, what do you mean to do? Taking on a baby is a pretty tall order for a bachelor.”
Jamming his hands into his front pockets, he bowed his head and stared at the floor a long moment. Roni saw his Adam’s apple bob revealingly. “When Roy died, I promised Alicia I’d always look out for her and the baby. I promised.”
At that simple, yet all-encompassing and life-changing statement, Roni’s heart turned over with both admiration and compassion. Simultaneously, a part of her couldn’t help but notice his casual, all-male stance. The way his lean hip cocked, stretching the denim of his jeans provocatively, might have made a more susceptible female’s libido jump into high gear. The thing about Sam was that he truly didn’t understand how potent he could be to the opposite sex. It was one of his more endearing qualities.
He looked up. “I’ll hire a housekeeper, I guess, though where I’ll get the extra money right now I don’t know. Maybe if I can beat Travis King out of that Wichita Rodeo contract...”
He trailed off at the mention of his rival. There was bad blood between them. Though Sam never spoke of it, Roni knew it was due to King’s involvement in the auto accident that had taken Sam’s brother’s life more than a decade earlier. Now he