Wyoming Special Delivery
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Melissa Senate
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15,9K
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15
Chapter One
Daisy Dawson’s wedding ceremony was supposed to start any minute, and there was no sign of the groom. At nine months pregnant, in a pretty but scratchy white lace maternity dress and peau de soie heels that pinched, standing around wasn’t exactly easy.
She poked her head out the door of the small room where she was getting ready. The special events hall of the Dawson Family Guest Ranch lodge had been beautifully decorated, thanks to her sister-in-law, Sara, who’d gone all out with pink and red roses, white tulle, and a red satin carpet runner to create an aisle. Thirty-six chairs were set up on both sides of the carpet. On the bride’s side, she saw her five brothers in the first row, all decked out in suits and Stetsons and cowboy boots. She saw her colleagues from the ranch. She saw old friends and newer ones.
But the other side of the aisle was still conspicuously empty of guests. No relatives or friends of the groom had arrived. That was really weird. Jacob was late and so were all the people he’d invited to their wedding?
Sure, Daisy. Right.
She poked her head back in and looked in the mirror, reality hitting her right in the nose. Jacob wasn’t coming to his own wedding. And since none of his guests had turned up, it was obvious that he’d let them know in advance that he was calling it off. How kind of him to tell everyone in his life but her.
Everyone who meant something special to her was waiting for her to walk down the aisle. And there wasn’t going to be a wedding. She shook her head, calling herself all kinds of a fool for ever thinking this was going to happen.
Ping!
Daisy eyed her phone on the vanity table with all her cosmetics and the curling iron she’d painstakingly used to get beachy waves in her straight light brown hair. The text was either from one of her brothers asking if everything was okay—since the ceremony was supposed to start at 5:00 p.m.—or it was her fiancé, Jacob, the cowardly fink, not facing her in person.
She grabbed her phone. It was Jacob.
I’m really sorry. But it hit me hard this morning that we don’t love each other and we’ve been forcing it. And I’ve been forcing that I can be a dad. I’m heading back to Cheyenne and might move east. Wish you and the baby all the best. J.
A burst of sadness got her in the heart at the same time that red-hot anger seized her. She stared at herself in the mirror, through her late mother’s beautiful lace veil, which she should have known would be bad luck. She’d tried, at least. Tried, tried, tried all summer to make it work with Jacob—she’d thought they were going to build a future together. A family. But her baby wouldn’t have a father.
She stuffed her phone in her little beaded cross-body purse and stalked out the back door and down the side steps, to where her Honda, with a Just Married sign with streamers on the back, waited to get her out of here.
She quickly got in the car and took a deep breath, flipped back the veil, then texted her brother Noah.
J called off the wedding. Need some time alone.
She reread Jacob’s text. Wish you and the baby all the best. Like he was some distant uncle! How dare he? She banged the phone against the steering wheel and chucked it out the window, then pulled off her engagement ring and threw it out, too. She grabbed the headpiece and veil off her head and tossed them on the back seat.
Then she peeled out, seeing the ridiculous streamers floating behind the car in the rearview mirror as she took off down the drive toward the gates of the ranch.
Where exactly am I going? she wondered, trying not to cry so she wouldn’t swerve into the wildflowers lining the road. She lived in the main house at the guest ranch, and no way could she deal with relative after relative, friend after friend coming to see her, feeling sorry for her. So forget about her sanctuary of her bedroom and pulling the quilt over her head for a few days.
Jacob had booked a weekend honeymoon for the two of them at the Starlight B&B in Prairie City, a half hour away. She supposed she could go there and lick her wounds and order their highly rated room service. Her cravings were insane these days. All she seemed to want was pasta in pink sauce with bacon and peas. And garlic bread. And chocolate cake. All B&Bs had chocolate cake, right?
Thinking of the food almost took her mind off being stood up at the altar and the sudden change to her future.
Not just hers. Her brothers’ futures, too. Four of the five Dawson men had scattered across Wyoming, and she’d been hoping to steer them back home to stay. She’d had big plans for becoming a secret amateur matchmaker at the wedding reception tonight, putting individually irresistible women for the four remaining Dawson bachelors under their unsuspecting noses. But some case she could make to Ford, Axel, Zeke and Rex for sticking around Bear Ridge, finding true love and settling down in their hometown, if not on their home ranch, now.
One of her brothers—Noah—had already done exactly that, which had given Daisy hope for the others. One down, five to go, right? Her wedding had brought them all home when being at the ranch, being in Bear Ridge, made them all feel...unsettled. But they’d inherited the ranch last winter from their father, and only Noah had stayed to rebuild the long-closed, run-down family business. Daisy, then five months pregnant and alone, had joined Noah in the mission, and no one had been more surprised than her when her baby’s father had come after her, saying he was sorry, that he wanted a second chance, that they could do this, after all: be a family. He’d lasted four months.
She’d thought she was getting married today. She’d thought she could convince her brothers that true love really did exist, even if it hadn’t for their father and various mothers—there were three moms among the Dawson siblings. She’d thought the Dawson clan could start fresh here together. She’d thought she could use the wedding festivities to show them they could be happy here. Among the guests she’d invited were at least eight women who would seriously appeal to each single brother for one reason or another. Falling in love would be just the ticket back. But after seeing their sister stood up at the altar—nine months pregnant with their little niece or nephew—the four remaining Dawson bachelors would hightail it out of Bear Ridge, which had always meant bad luck to all of them. Family was everything to Daisy. And not only had her dreams of building her own family with her baby’s father gone poof, but Ford, Axel, Zeke and Rex would most likely leave tonight or tomorrow and come back for her baby’s birth, then leave again after a day or two and return for Christmas. Maybe.
Family: the way it wasn’t supposed to be.
Daisy let out a sigh and kept driving, teary acceptance and pissed-as-hell fighting for dominance. Fifteen minutes later, the two still going at it, she drove down the service road on the outskirts of Bear Ridge that would eventually lead her to the freeway. But then her car made a weird sputtering sound. Crunch-creak. Then another. Crunch-creeeeeeeak.
Oh no. She quickly pulled over, turned off the engine, then tried to restart. Nothing.
“Nooo!” she yelped, hitting the steering wheel. Someone tell me this is all a bad dream. She looked around, out the windshield and both passenger windows. She was on some rural stretch, hay bales for acres on either side of her. Not another car in sight. She tried the ignition again. Dead. One more time, because you never knew. Still dead.
She rested her head against the steering wheel for a moment, the stretch tearing the side of her wedding gown. Fine with her. The minute she got to the Starlight, she’d be rolling it up in a wad and setting it on fire in a garbage can out front like she was Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale.
This really wasn’t her day after all.
Daisy grabbed her purse to get her phone to call for help, then grimaced. “Oh hell, that was stupid.” Her phone was behind the rosebushes on the side of the lodge. With her engagement ring. Her mom had often said, Daisy Rae Dawson, acting first and thinking later is gonna be your downfall, sweetcakes. Her beloved mother was right about that. Especially now.
She sat there for a second, taking another breath when she was hit with a strange, pulling sensation low in her belly. That was weird. She grabbed her stomach and started breathing the way she’d learned in Lamaze class. A minute or so later, it hit her again. Oh no. No, no, no. Were these contractions? Maybe they were the false early ones the Lamaze teacher had mentioned yesterday, when Jacob was there breathing deeply beside her, making her believe he was really committed to her and their child. She wasn’t due for another three weeks!
The pain got more intense. She stared at her silver watch with the mother-of-pearl face, a gift from her brothers for Christmas last year. The sweeping second hand told her the contractions were coming every minute and a half.
She was in labor. Left-at-the-altar, three-weeks-early labor.
Without a phone. On the side of the road. In rural Wyoming.
She got out of the car as another contraction sent her gripping the side of the door for support. She stared up and down the road, praying a vehicle would come by. Without an ax murderer in it.
She started pacing, keeping one hand on the car, but it was July and eighty-two degrees and the car was hot. Contraction! She bent over and let out the scream bursting from her. “Owww-weeee!”
Breathe, breathe, breathe, she reminded herself. She heard the sound of rushing wheels in the distance. A car! Yes! It was coming closer! She managed to pick up her head to look. Oh, thank God. Someone was coming and stopping behind her car.
A fancy silver SUV with Wyoming plates. Not one of her brothers’ cars. Or anyone she knew. One of the guests at the ranch had a fancy silver SUV, now that she thought about it.
“Owww-weeee!” She yelped and doubled over as the contraction seized her.
She heard a car door open and close, footsteps rushing toward her.
“I’ll help you get in my SUV,” a male voice said, coming closer. “I’m not a stranger,” he added quickly as he bent down where she stood to sort of make eye contact. “I’m a guest at Dawson’s ranch.”
She glanced up. It was him. He might not be a stranger or an ax murderer, but he was kind of mysterious. He’d been at the ranch for two days yet didn’t seem remotely interested in the horses or activities. She’d even mentioned to Noah, the foreman, that something was up with the guest who’d booked Cabin No. 1, which slept four, all for himself, and then hadn’t gotten on a horse the entire time he was here.
Maybe he was an ax murderer.
“No time,” she managed to croak out as she dropped to her knees, then backward onto her butt. “The baby...is...coming! Owww-weeee!”
Over her earsplitting yelp, she still heard him gasp and saw him grab his phone, then listened to him frantically explain the situation to the 911 dispatcher.
“Okay,” he was saying into the phone with accompanying nodding. “Okay. Okay. Okay, I think I can do that. Okay.”
“Owww-weeee!” she screamed, eyes squeezed shut as she bore down.
“Oh God,” he said, rushing to kneel in front of her.
He lifted up her wedding dress and cast it over her knees. She heard him run away and thought noo, don’t leave me, but then he was back, and she realized he was cutting off her ridiculous lace maternity undies with a Swiss army knife.
She had the urge to bear down again. And grunted and did.
“The ambulance is coming,” he assured her. “Just hang on, Daisy.”
“I’ll try,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “But I can’t!” she croaked out, opening her eyes. “You’re...about...to...owww-weeee...deliver my...baby!” she yelped.
Harrison McCord’s brain fought to catch up with what was happening. Not forty-five minutes ago, he’d seen Daisy, all decked out in bridal wear, walk into the ranch lodge with another woman who he recognized as her sister-in-law. Now, Daisy was still in the wedding dress, which was dirty in some spots along the bottom. But she was alone, no rings on her finger, he noticed, on the side of a road. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, in labor. What the heck had happened between then and this minute?
“What can I do?” he asked, his voice frantic.
“Get...these pinching shoes...off me!” she barked out before leaning back and shouting, “Owww-weeee!” That was followed by four fast breaths. Then four more.
He took the white shoes off her feet, and her face relaxed for a second, then the panting, grunting and yelping, and breathing started again.
“The baby. Is. Coming!” she screamed. She scrunched up her face.
“Oh God,” he said. Again he lifted the long lacy gown and flung the edge up over her knees. He could see the baby’s head. Whoa.
He forgot everything the dispatcher had said. What the hell do I do? Instinct must have taken over, because he took off his dress shirt and held it carefully under the head as he guided the baby—a boy—out. He then gently wrapped the messy newborn in his shirt and handed him to Daisy.
“It’s a boy!” he announced.
Her mouth opened in a kind of wonder as she took the newborn and held him against her, tears running down her cheeks.
He heard sirens in the distance, coming closer. “That’s the ambulance,” he said, relief flooding him. It pulled up in front of Daisy’s car, and two guys and a woman jumped out, one wheeling a stretcher. An EMT took the baby while the other two helped Daisy onto the stretcher.
“Thank you so much,” she said to Harrison, her blue eyes misty. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” His heart was beating a zillion miles a minute. He had to sit down before he passed out.
“Call my brother Noah, the foreman at the ranch,” she shouted out to him as the EMTs loaded her into the back of the ambulance.
“Will do!” he called back.
He’d just delivered a baby. On the side of the road. He was grateful he’d been wearing a T-shirt under his dress shirt or he’d have helped bring the newborn into the world half-naked.
The ambulance making a racket as it drove away, he was stirred to action. He pulled out his phone and called the guest ranch and asked for foreman Noah Dawson’s cell phone number, adding that it was an emergency. He’d been watching Noah the past couple of days. Daisy, too. Watching everything. Unfortunately, the Dawsons seemed like good people. But as his dad used to say, that was neither here nor there.
He punched in Noah’s number. He answered right away.
“Noah Dawson. What’s the emergency?”
“This is Harrison McCord from Cabin No. 1,” he said. “I just helped deliver your sister Daisy’s baby on the side of the service road onto Route 26. She doesn’t seem to have a phone with her. The ambulance took her to Prairie City General.”
“What?” Noah bellowed. “Is the baby okay? Is Daisy okay?”
“They both seemed fine,” he said. “It’s a boy, by the way.”
“We’re on our way. Thanks for helping Daisy.”
Harrison pocketed his phone and got back in his car, just sitting there behind the wheel for a moment, barely able to process what had just happened. A single workaholic businessman, he had no siblings to provide baby nieces and nephews, and he didn’t think he’d ever held a baby in his life—until today.
He drove the fifteen minutes to Prairie City and pulled into a spot in the hospital parking lot, then stopped in the gift shop. There were congratulations balloons, get-well balloons and an entire section devoted to stuffed animals, big and small. He eyed a soft and squishy medium-sized light brown teddy bear with a plaid bow tie and bought it, then followed the signs to Maternity.
In the elevator he stared at the bear, unable to fully comprehend how he’d ended up here, holding this stuffed toy, about to visit a new mother he hadn’t more than nodded at while seeing her at the ranch the past couple of days. A new mother who would hate his guts when she found out why he was really at the ranch.
Daisy was in room 508. He sucked in a breath and peered in the open door. Now in a hospital gown with a thin white blanket covering half of her, she was alone—well, except for the baby in her arms, her gaze so full of wonder as she stared at the infant that he felt he was intruding. He was about to turn around and flee when she said, “You! My hero!”
Harrison offered what had to be an awkward smile and walked fully into the room.
She smiled at him. “I’m sorry—as guest relations manager of the ranch, I’d normally know your name, where you’re from, if you like decaf or regular for your cabin, but I took this past week off for the wedding. I wasn’t even thinking I’d need to start my maternity leave so soon.” She smiled a dazzling smile. Wow, she was pretty. All glowy and happy. “But I do recognize you as one of our guests. Guess you didn’t expect your day to go quite like this.”
He had to laugh. “Nope. Definitely not. But I’m glad I happened to be driving down that road. You didn’t have a phone to call for help?”
She frowned and glanced down at the baby. “As you probably figured out from my outfit and the dumb sign on the back of my car, I was supposed to get married today. The groom, my newborn son’s father, didn’t show and sent me a Dear Jane text. I got pissed and chucked my phone out the window of my car. Dumb, I know.”
The father of her baby had left her at the altar? When she was nine months pregnant?
“Sorry about the wedding,” he said, unable to even imagine what that must have felt like. He’d never come close to marrying. Or proposing to anyone. But he’d been betrayed before and knew what that felt like.
“I’m sure I dodged a bullet. We weren’t right for each other, and we both knew it.”
So did he, despite not even having met her before today. Because he’d been keeping watch over the Dawson family and the only two of the six siblings who worked at the ranch, he’d made a point of taking a tailing walk whenever he noticed Daisy strolling a path with the fiancé, a surfer-cowboy type. Their body language was always so awkward. They never held hands or kissed, though they did take a lot of walks on the paths, which was how he managed to spy on them so often. He’d wondered about their relationship because they barely seemed like a couple, yet he’d overheard her tell the fiancé it was time to get to Lamaze yesterday, and off they’d gone.
She waved a hand in front of her. “Anyway. That is old news. This,” she said, smiling down at the baby, “is breaking news and all that matters.”
The love and reverence and sincerity in her voice caught him by surprise, and for a moment, he just gazed at the baby with her. Finally, he cleared his throat. “My name is Harrison McCord,” he said, stiffly sitting down in the chair by her bed. “I got you a little something. Well, I got him a little something,” he added, gesturing at the tiny human lying alongside her arm. The newborn was skinny and cute with wispy brown curls. His eyes were closed at the moment. “I’m in Cabin No. 1 at the ranch. I booked it for the week.”
“But it’s just you?” she asked. “Cabin No. 1 sleeps four.”
“Just me,” he said.
She waited a beat, as if she expected him to elaborate, but now was certainly not the time or the place. He’d wait a couple days, give her a chance to settle back at the main house at the ranch with the baby, and then he’d ask for a meeting with her and her brother. And drop a bombshell. The timing wasn’t good, but that couldn’t he helped.
“So what’s his name?” he asked.
“Tony. After my late grandpa, Anthony Dawson. I haven’t decided on a middle name,” she said. “Given what you did for me—for us—I’d like to use your middle initial.”
He gaped at her. No, no, no, no, no. Noooo. “That’s very thoughtful, but there’s no need for that.”
“You came to our rescue, Harrison. You helped bring this little guy into the world. I’d like to honor that.”
He swallowed, his T-shirt suddenly tight around his neck. “Um, I...don’t have a middle name,” he lied. He actually did—Leo. “I’d better get going,” he added, bolting up. “I did call your brother. He’s on the way.” He put the teddy bear on the table beside her bed.
She tilted her head at him. “Oh. Okay. Well, thanks again. For everything.”
As she turned her attention back to the baby, he took one last look at her, not wanting to leave—but how could he stay? Now that he’d met Daisy Dawson under these unusual circumstances—like delivering her baby and calling her brother and visiting her in the hospital and bringing baby Tony a teddy bear and hearing how she’d been left at the altar—he felt something of a connection to the new mother. The news he planned to deliver in a couple days wouldn’t be as cut-and-dried as he’d expected.
It’s just straight-up, on-paper business, he reminded himself. Nothing personal.
She wanted to give her baby his middle initial!
Things with Daisy Dawson had suddenly gotten very personal.
