Jacey rolled her eyes. “You really need to work on that overprotectiveness. You should probably see someone.”
“Ha-ha.” Mindy watched as Jacey settled Caitlin in the Plexiglas nursery bed.
“Seriously, thanks for coming over.” Jacey embraced her sister. Despite their differences, they loved each other dearly. “I know how hard it is for you to get away.”
Mindy returned the embrace warmly. “I’d do anything for you. You know that.” Mindy drew back to look into her eyes. “You call me as often as you can and let me know how you’re doing. Promise?”
Jacey nodded, her throat thick with emotion. “Promise,” she said huskily.
Mindy bent and kissed her niece goodbye, then headed out. Jacey was so busy watching her sister go, she forgot for a moment they weren’t alone.
“So, who’s Cash?” a low male voice asked from behind her.
Jacey turned. Rafferty was standing next to the window, one shoulder braced against the glass, his arms folded in front of him. He looked sexy and indomitable. “You heard that?”
“Couldn’t help it.” Undisguised interest lit his handsome face. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
Jacey began gathering up the rest of her things. She folded them neatly and put them in her overnight bag. “He’s a friend of mine, who donated the sperm for my baby.”
Rafferty narrowed his eyes. “You talking literally?”
“It was done in a doctor’s office, if that’s what you’re asking.” She could tell by the way Rafferty was looking at her that he was thinking back to the conversation they’d had during her delivery, about the baby’s daddy—or lack thereof. “Cash and I agreed from the outset that he would not be responsible for this child.” There were, in fact, legal documents verifying this.
Rafferty stepped closer. Arms still folded in front of him, he looked down at the sweetly sleeping Caitlin. “So he’s never even going to see this baby?” He looked stunned.
Jacey inhaled. “I’m sure he will at some point.”
“But you’ve got no plans—”
“To call him? I don’t even know where he is right now. Last I heard he was headed for the wilds of Alaska to do some dogsledding.”
Rafferty regarded her, an increasingly inscrutable expression on his face.
The unexpected intimacy of the conversation left her feeling off kilter. Heart pounding, Jacey picked up her baby and held her close to her chest. “Let me guess. You don’t approve.” If so, he wasn’t the first, and she was sure, he wouldn’t be the last.
Ignoring the baby, Rafferty looked her square in the eye. “If you think it’s going to be that simple,” he concluded gruffly, “you’re fooling yourself.”
“WHAT’D YOU SAY to tick her off?” Eli asked an hour and a half later.
Rafferty noted his dad’s arthritis had eased up, along with the rain. He was moving around a lot more comfortably. But then, that was the way the disease worked. One day his dad would be chipper and spry and ready to saddle up with the rest of them, the next Eli’d be so stiff and sore he’d barely be able to get around. There was just no predicting. Which was why he’d had to retire—and do physical ranch work only sporadically.
However, his dad’s intellect, his ability to take in everything around him down to the smallest detail, remained intact.
Bracing himself for a possible lecture, Rafferty rocked back in his desk chair. “What do you mean?”
“I saw the look on Jacey’s face when she came in the front door. This should be a very joyous day for her. She was happy when I spoke with her at the hospital yesterday. Now she looks like she wants to punch something. Namely you.”
Rafferty went through the day’s mail, tossing the junk and stacking the rest. “She told me she had her baby via sperm donor.”
Eli sat down. “How in the world did that come up?”
Not easily, Rafferty thought. “I sort of asked her.”
“Sort of?”
“Okay, I asked her.”
Eli exhaled loudly, his frustration apparent. “Since when are you curious about other people’s personal lives?”
Never, Rafferty knew. “I was just making conversation,” he fibbed. When, in actuality, he’d had to know the truth. Why, he wasn’t sure. It shouldn’t matter to him who Caitlin’s daddy was, or what that guy might or might not mean to Jacey.
“You need to go apologize,” Eli reprimanded.
Rafferty didn’t see why. “She didn’t have to tell me what she did,” he pointed out calmly.
“But she did.” Eli thumped the arm of the chair with the flat of his hand. “And as long as she’s working here and living in this house—”
“Which is the second bad idea you’ve had,” Rafferty interrupted.
Eli scowled, prompting, “The first being…?”
“Hiring her,” Rafferty retorted. He would have had a hard enough time forgetting Jacey Lambert as it was. Now, how the hell was he supposed to pretend she was just the new ranch cook since he had shared one of the most intimate emotional experiences of her life when he’d delivered her baby girl into the world?
“She’s an excellent cook. The men love her. We’re lucky to have her. As far as where she bunks—” Eli’s finger stabbed the air emphatically “—there’s no way I’m having a woman and her baby in the bunkhouse. Period. So you need to get used to that.”
He was going to have to get used to a lot of things, Rafferty decided. The foremost of which was the way his father was suddenly taking over the domestic front, while still letting Rafferty do whatever he wanted with the cattle business.
His father had a point about one thing. For all their sakes, he did need to steer clear of Ms. Jacey Lambert. Rafferty grunted. “Fine. I’ll go tell her I’m sorry I offended her.”
And that, he promised himself, was the last thing he would have to do with the dark-haired beauty in quite a while.
Thankful that at least his dad had possessed the good sense to put Jacey and her baby in the opposite wing of bedrooms than the one he and his dad stayed in, Rafferty strode through the ranch house to the bedroom where Jacey would be sleeping.
The door was shut.
Hoping she was already asleep and wouldn’t respond, Rafferty rapped lightly.
“Come in. The door’s unlocked,” she said.
Reluctantly, Rafferty pushed open the door…and practically sunk through the floor at what he saw.
Jacey was seated in a rocking chair, her feet propped up on the footstool in front of her. The zip front of the city-chic pink-and-gray sweats she wore was open. The clinging T-shirt beneath pushed up above her ribs, revealing an expanse of luminous, creamy-soft skin. And although she had a pink baby blanket draped across her shoulder, obscuring all but the baby’s feet from view, it was easy to see that Jacey was nursing.
“Sorry.” Rafferty told himself to back out of the room—now—but his feet seemed glued to the floor. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s okay.” Curious now, she said, “What did you want?”
Seriously? Rafferty thought. You. And that shocked him, too. He hadn’t wanted a