to tell me you were pregnant with our child?” His voice was husky and still held an edge to it which Rebecca couldn’t decipher. “Or were you just going to leave me in the dark?”
He was clearly unhappy with the news of the pregnancy. Did he not want a baby, other than the child clinging to his leg who was yet another stranger to Rebecca?
Was that why she’d left him? Because she’d wanted a family and he didn’t? But somehow, that didn’t seem right, either.
It was just so weird. Tanner was her recently estranged spouse and the father of her baby. And yet his face was that of a stranger. She felt no intimacy there.
It was too much for Rebecca to take in all at once and her emotions were going haywire.
And what about the little girl peeking out from behind his leg?
Who was she?
Their daughter?
There was no spark of recognition in Rebecca’s heart regarding this little girl. She wasn’t experiencing any kind of gut instinct suggesting she’d ever even seen the sweet preschooler before today, although that was a definite possibility, since the child appeared to be very comfortable not only with Tanner, but with Rebecca’s mother, as well.
But the child wasn’t hers. Surely she would remember that.
She might not remember who she was. She might have left Serendipity—and Tanner—for reasons she couldn’t now fathom, but she would never abandon her own child.
She didn’t need total recall to tell her that.
She crouched down to the girl’s level and smiled.
“My name is Rebecca,” she said softly. If only she knew more, if there were more for her to say. She wished the little girl didn’t immediately draw away from her as if she were a stranger. For some reason, that hurt her heart.
“This is Mackenzie,” Tanner said warily. “She’s my sister Lydia’s child. Your niece. You were with me at her christening, but I guess she’s grown up a lot since then, so you probably wouldn’t recognize her.”
Rebecca stood and slanted Tanner a look. Was he mocking her, or giving her a way out of an uncomfortable situation? It was the not knowing that made her heart feel as if it were being squeezed by a fist.
“I think we’d better find someplace quiet to talk,” her mother suggested. She threaded her arm through Rebecca’s, as if to reassure herself Rebecca was real and that she wouldn’t be running away again.
That physical link reassured Rebecca, as well. She was not as all alone in the world as she currently felt.
Tanner gestured toward the community green, where many of the townsfolk had already spread out picnic blankets and were happily lunching together. It was becoming more crowded by the moment as the auction started to wind down.
“We aren’t going to get any privacy here,” he said. “This isn’t the kind of conversation I want my neighbors to overhear.”
“You’re right. Besides, none of us has a picnic basket, anyway,” Peggy pointed out. “I hadn’t planned to bid on anyone today. Shall we go back to the ranch where we can talk in private?”
“The ranch?” Rebecca echoed.
We live on a ranch? Like with cows?
Dawn had told Rebecca she was a schoolteacher. Middle school math, although she was trained to teach anything from middle school through college. She remembered numbers and equations, and that had sounded good and right to her. It was instinctual. Numbers were solid. They didn’t change.
But a ranch?
Talk about feeling way, way out of her comfort zone. She couldn’t believe she would actually choose to marry a cowboy.
“Rebecca, did you drive here?” her mother asked, concern flashing across her gaze. And it was no wonder. An amnesiac driving a car was a frightening thought, indeed.
Rebecca shook her head. “I used a car service.”
“Super. Then you can ride back to the ranch with me. I’m living out there with Tanner now to help take care of the little one,” she said by way of explanation. “And soon now it will be two little ones. How exciting.”
Tanner’s gaze met Rebecca’s for a moment, and she doubted exciting would be a word either one of them would use right now. But her mother didn’t appear to notice and continued speaking.
“Tanner, you take Mackenzie with you in your truck and we’ll meet you back at the ranch.”
Back at the ranch.
A place she didn’t remember, but which she had evidently once called home.
How could God do this to them?
Tanner gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was trying to control his breathing so he didn’t scare Mackenzie, but it wasn’t easy to do. The air was coming in gasps and burning his lungs.
How could God let this happen to one family? It was almost more than he could bear.
He felt as if he were on some kind of nightmarish merry-go-round and he didn’t know how to get off. He’d been half expecting to be served with legal documents soon, since his communication with Rebecca had been completely cut off—which he now regretted and for which he privately admitted at least partial responsibility. If he hadn’t hung up when she’d reached out to him...
Instead of acting like a rational, mature adult, he’d let his anger, ego and pride get the best of him.
And now this.
Now he knew why she hadn’t returned his phone calls and texts. She’d been in the hospital recovering from a horrible car crash.
She—and their baby. He still wasn’t certain what to do with the knowledge that they were expecting a child.
At the moment, all he could do was feel perplexed.
And amazed.
No matter what their past, it gutted him that Rebecca had been injured, could even have been killed. Thank God He’d taken care of them and things hadn’t been worse than they were now.
Rebecca still suffering from the many physical injuries she’d sustained—and their unborn child somehow still safe in her womb.
Oh, dear Lord. Their baby.
And Rebecca’s apparent amnesia—
What was he supposed to do about that? It was all so surreal. He didn’t think things like that happened in real life. That was the stuff of television detective shows.
He pulled his truck up next to the ranch house and let Mackenzie out of her car seat in the back of the dual cab. He couldn’t help but smile when she wrapped her trusting little arms around his neck so he could help her out of the vehicle.
The moment her little feet hit the ground, she squealed and went straight toward the herd of goats, her favorite ranch animal in all the world, she’d told him on multiple occasions. She held her hands out wide as if to hug the nearest goat. She giggled hysterically when one of the larger goats grabbed ahold of the hem of her shirt in its mouth and tugged.
The silly goats got into everything and drove Tanner crazy, but at least they kept the grass around the house under control.
It had been Rebecca’s idea to get the herd in the first place. Like Mackenzie, Rebecca also loved those mischievous animals and often saved the dinner scraps for them—or at least, she’d used to, before she’d left him.
Before