A Texas Kind of Cowboy by Delores Fossen
CHAPTER FIVE
LORELEISATONthe hardwood floor of the nursery and let the worry and darkness wash over her. Something that had been going on most of the night and was now deep into the wee hours of the morning. Something that might continue since she seemed to have no control over it.
Eventually, she had managed to quit crying, mainly because dehydration had kicked in, leaving her exhausted and with a throbbing headache. But even the headache and fatigue hadn’t dulled the grief she was feeling. Grief—yes, that was the right word for it—because the perfect life she’d tried to build for Stellie had been shattered.
And now she might have to fight to keep her baby.
Even if Valerie’s husband and parents didn’t try to take Stellie, they would always be out there. A looming threat, and the grandparents would be able to give Stellie something Lorelei never could. A DNA connection to the woman who’d conceived her, carried her and died giving birth to her. In contrast, Lorelei had wanted her, loved her and signed some papers. She wasn’t sure that would be enough to tip any legal or moral scales if it came down to it.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth to silence the fresh sob that was bubbling up in her throat. Stellie was still asleep, and Lorelei didn’t want to wake her. It was only four in the morning, which meant it’d be at least two and a half more hours before her usual waking time. Once Stellie was up, Lorelei could feed her, rock her and try to hang on to every minute she had with her. It might ease some of the worry just to be able to hold her in her arms.
Lorelei had silenced her phone, but the screen flashed again with another text. It was from Lily this time, but throughout the previous day and now through the night and early morning, every member of her immediate family had contacted her and come over.
Multiple times.
It had taken Lorelei a while to get rid of them by lying to them when she said she was going to get some sleep. Obviously, though, they hadn’t bought that lie because of the nonstop attempts with the texts to make sure she was okay. Since she wasn’t okay, Lorelei had just quit answering, but in a few hours she would owe them reassuring conversations that she’d made it through the night and was doing as well as could be expected.
She jolted when she heard the tapping sound, and her gaze flew to the crib. Not Stellie. She was still sacked out. But Lorelei followed the sound to the window and nearly had a heart attack when she saw the man’s face peering through the glass. Because of that near heart attack and her throbbing head, it took her a moment to realize it was Dax.
What the heck was he doing here?
As if in response to her unspoken question, he popped out the screen from the window and then leaned down to retrieve something from the ground. He lifted two large to-go cups and a “stuffed to the brim” white bag.
Lorelei wanted to shake her head, declining whatever he was offering, but when he continued to motion toward the cups and bag, she got up and went to the window to raise it. She would have snapped out her “what the heck are you doing here” question aloud, but Dax spoke before she could say anything.
“I didn’t want to ring the doorbell and risk waking Stellie, but I figured you’d be up,” he whispered as if that explained why he was tapping on the nursery window at four in the morning.
He thrust the cups and bag at her and then climbed through with all the agility of a cowboy cat burglar. Maybe because he was a pro at hopping onto the backs of bulls. He landed with far more grace and agility than she would have ever managed, and he immediately glanced in the crib.
“Good. She’s sleeping like a baby,” he commented, taking one of the cups and the bag. “I always wondered if that cliché was true.”
“It’s not,” she assured him. “Stellie didn’t sleep through the night for the first six months.” And since this felt way too much like a casual conversation, Lorelei nipped it in the bud. “Why are you here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Thought you probably couldn’t, either, so I brought you some coffee and sugar stuff to get you revving.”
Lorelei didn’t want to rev. She wanted to be alone in this particular pity party, but again he spoke before she could tell him that.
“Don’t ask me to leave,” Dax murmured. “It’s best if neither of us is alone right now.”
She wasn’t so sure of that at all, but then she remembered Dax was no doubt going through his own pity party and that turmoil of not knowing what was looming on the horizon for him. Added to that, the coffee smelled good, and the caffeine might help her headache.
“Is that where you’ve set up base camp?” He tipped his head to the area on the floor where there were several empty water bottles, a small mountain of tissues, a half-empty bag of Oreos and an empty bottle of wine that she’d shared with Lily at some point during the past twelve hours. No glasses since they’d taken turns drinking straight from the bottle.
Lorelei made a sound to confirm that was, indeed, base camp, and she went back to it despite there being a rocker and another comfy chair in the room. “Nothing adds to a pity party ambience like sitting on the floor,” she muttered.
He didn’t argue with her on that, and he sank down next to her while she took the first sip of coffee. It was hot, fresh, and she could almost feel her body sigh with a thank-you. Her stomach got in on the pleasure, too, when she caught a whiff of sugar and cinnamon.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I got an assortment,” Dax explained. “Cinnamon rolls, bear claws and glazed donuts. Your coffee is black because you didn’t add anything to it when you had it at my place.”
It surprised her that he’d remembered that since he’d been in the haze of a hangover, but Dax was a textbook charmer so he likely made a habit of recalling things like that about women. Even if in cases like hers, he didn’t see the women as potential conquests.
“Where’d you get all of this?” she asked, peering into the bag he handed her. “The café and bakery aren’t open yet.”
“I know one of the bakers at For Heaven’s Cake. She owed me a favor so she came in a little early.”
Lorelei looked at him, frowned and wondered if the baker owed him because of the multiple orgasms he’d given her.
The corner of Dax’s mouth lifted in that grin that she suspected was a big gun in his arsenal of charming and seducing. “Not that kind of favor,” he said as if reading her dirty mind. “I got her tickets to the sold-out rodeo in San Antonio.”
Since Lorelei knew both bakers at For Heaven’s Cake and knew they were both stunners, she thought maybe an orgasm or two had also been involved. Still, she bit into a cinnamon roll—mercy, it was still warm—and she let the sugar rush begin. Dax opted for a bear claw.
“We should have the DNA test results later this morning,” he said. “I asked the lab to text me as soon as they’re done.”
Lorelei held back on the second bite of the roll and glanced over at him. He’d said that so casually as if it were more small talk, but since he was here sitting on the floor with her, there wasn’t anything casual about it. She wanted to ask what he would do if the test came back that he was the father, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. No. Best not to deal in what-ifs here, especially since no scenario was going to give her the peace of that picture-perfect life that she’d planned with Stellie.
It wouldn’t be the same for Dax. Once he had those test results, he’d have a clearer path. Well, a path, anyway. He could celebrate a non-match and go back to his charming ways and use this as a cautionary tale to make sure he practiced safe sex. A match, however... Well, that was straying into what-if territory so Lorelei clamped down on that.
“You know that favor I did for you when you were eleven doesn’t mean you owe me anything now,” she commented as they ate.
He nodded. “But it was a big favor.” He paused a heartbeat. “I saw you at the hospital that day when Nola and Wyatt had their daughter.”
Of all the things Lorelei had expected him to say, that wasn’t even on the conversational radar. He was talking about the child that they’d had to give up for adoption. And yes, Lorelei had gone to the hospital the day Marley had been born. She’d sneaked in to get a peek at her niece even though Nola had insisted on not seeing the child.
“I remember,” Lorelei admitted. “You were on one side of the hall of the hospital nursery, and I was on the other.”
Dax and she had both “borrowed” scrubs to try to blend in so no one would ask them to leave before they got that peek. No one had even though they likely hadn’t fooled anyone with their sneaking around since she’d been barely eighteen and Dax had only been thirteen.
“That’s when I knew I wanted to adopt a baby,” Lorelei admitted.
And here came the flood of emotions that went with that date seventeen years ago. Nola had been emotionally broken right to the ground. Every part of her sister had been a train wreck. Wyatt hadn’t been faring any better. But even though they were just sixteen, they’d known they couldn’t do what was best for their little girl. So, with their selfless, heart-wrenching decision, they’d handed her over to someone who could.
“I wanted to be the person who could give a child the best when his or her parents couldn’t,” Lorelei explained.
She’d thought that’s what she had done with Stellie, and she had to hold on to the hope she had been right about that.
Dax made a soft grunt, maybe acknowledging that he understood. “I just thought somebody in the family ought to see the kid,” he admitted. “I knew Nola and Wyatt couldn’t, so I did.” He shook his head. “It didn’t make me want to adopt or have kids, though.” He’d tacked on that last part as sort of a haha, light addition, but it didn’t work.
“Thanks,” she muttered for his attempt. “For the coffee, the sugar carbs and the conversation, but there isn’t anything that can cheer me up tonight.”
He made another of those sounds. “Sometimes, a rider draws a bull that’s a big ball of nerves. I mean, you can just tell that he’ll buck the hell out of you simply because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.”
Lorelei was certain she gave him a confused look because she was, indeed, confused. She had no idea what this had to do with paternity tests or maybe losing a child she couldn’t lose.
“Are you comparing me to a bull?” she came out and asked.
He grinned again. “Well, there’s one similarity in a general kind of way. You’re a big ball of nerves, and that means you’ll be ready to buck the hell out of Valerie’s family when they show up here in a couple of hours. That’s probably not the best approach to take with them.”
“Oh?” And, yes, there was a tinge of anger and annoyance in her voice, which probably proved his “ready to buck” theory.
“Not the best approach,” he confirmed, setting his coffee aside. “They need to see that you’re Stellie’s mom, that you’re doing one hell of a job raising her. That she’s in really good hands. Because you are and she is.”
Lorelei wanted to argue with all of that. She wanted to snap, snarl and, yes, maybe even buck. Again, it proved Dax’s point.
“To stand a chance of getting that best approach,” he went on, “you should try to relax. This is how I settle a revved-up bull.”
She would have laughed if he hadn’t touched her. Before Lorelei could bat him away, Dax slid his hand onto her back, inching her away from the wall.
“I don’t want you to do this,” she snapped.
But her demand was somewhat counteracted by the sigh that immediately followed when Dax curled his hand into a fist, and applying pressure with it, he used his little finger to stroke her spine.
He must have located some kind of chakra or a spot on her body that she’d been totally unaware of because the stroking and the pressure seemed to slide right through her. Much the way heat and lust could. Except this didn’t arouse. This was more like a “Dax fist” sedative.
“Normally, I sing the bull a little song,” Dax went on, his voice as soothing as his magic finger. “Something like ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’ Hard to stay snorting mad when hearing that. Sometimes, I go with ‘Frosty the Snowman.’”
She frowned or rather did that mentally because it was difficult now to move her slack jaw. But Dax sang stupid Christmas carols to a bull? That definitely didn’t mesh with his “hot rodeo star” image, and it made her wonder what other mysteries lay beneath all that too charming, too good-looking hotness.
Despite the fresh hits of sugar and caffeine she’d just had, Lorelei felt her eyelids start to drift down. She also made a few more sighs and moans. She wanted to tell Dax that he had the magic touch. That it was no wonder he was a rodeo champion, what with this particular skill set. But she couldn’t form words.
Apparently, her head was too heavy to stay upright as well because it lolled down onto Dax’s shoulder.
“I can’t sleep,” she managed to mumble.
But Dax proved her wrong.