Jingle-Bell Baby. Линда Гуднайт

had. She hadn’t cussed him or the baby, either.

      Dax tasted gall as the old humiliating memory thrust itself into his consciousness.

      The little mama shifted slightly, emitting a murmur of dread. Another contraction must be on its way.

      He gently rubbed her toes. She captured his eyes; a tiny smile lifted the corners of her mouth. Dax felt oddly heartened.

      Here they were in about as intimate a situation as he could think of, and he didn’t even know her name. What if something went wrong?

      No, he wouldn’t think of that. Even if his life was ruled by Murphy’s Law, he was not going to allow anything bad to happen to this gritty little lady.

      “Name’s Dax,” he said. “You feel like telling me yours?”

      Something odd flickered behind pain-clouded eyes. She licked dry lips. Then her gaze slid away.

      Before Dax could decide if her silence was fatigue or reluctance, the wave of nature took over again. As her shoulders rolled forward, straining, she whispered, “I wanted to be brave, but I’m so scared. Don’t let anything happen to my baby.”

      The admission touched Dax somewhere in the cold lump he called a heart. “You’re doing fine, little mama.”

      He wanted to say a lot of other encouraging things, to tell her how courageous he thought she was, but with the blood rushing in his temples and his gut twisting with anxiety at the huge responsibility before him, he just patted her pretty foot and muttered nonsense.

      He didn’t know how long he’d been there. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes though it felt like a lifetime when suddenly she gave one last heaving groan and it was over. She fell back against the car seat, her exhausted breathing loud in the quiet.

      A baby, the smallest thing Dax could imagine, slipped into his waiting hands. He’d expected her to be pink and squalling the way Gavin had been. Instead, the tiny form was silent, limp and purplish.

      His heart, already jumping and pumping to beat Dixie, rose into his throat. He glanced at the little mama and then down at the infant.

      Please God, no. Not this.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE BROWN-HAIRED BOY barreling across the yard of The Southpaw in cowboy boots and an open jean jacket lifted Dax’s flagging spirits. The last few hours had been rough to say the least.

      “Daddy!”

      A swell of love bigger than his fifteen-hundred acre ranch expanded in Dax’s chest. He stopped in midyard and hunkered down. The sturdy little boy, smelling of pizza and backyard dirt, slammed into him. Small arms encircled his neck and squeezed.

      Dax pressed the slender body to him, clinging to the thought that his son was alive and well. He didn’t know what he would do if anything should ever happen to Gavin, a fact that had come home to him with a vengeance during these last few hours with the little mama.

      Life was fragile. His thoughts flashed to the tiny newborn baby. Real fragile.

      “Where you been?” Gavin was saying. “Rowdy had to stay a long time.”

      Dax looked up at the young ranch hand ambling lazily toward them, his usual crooked smile in place. Dax figured you could punch Rowdy Davis in the nose and he’d still grin. Sometimes the man’s smirky cheer was downright irritating.

      “Everything all right, boss?” Rowdy asked, clearly curious. “You were kind of short and not-too-sweet on the telephone. Had us worried some.”

      Short and not-too-sweet. Yep, that was him, all right. He’d simply told Rowdy to be at the house when the school bus delivered Gavin from kindergarten and stay there. Then, he’d hung up, too wrung out to explain that he was at the emergency room fifteen miles away with a strange woman whose baby he’d just delivered.

      “Boys, do I have a story to tell. Let’s get in the house first. I could use a cold drink.” Since playing doctor on the side of the road, his appetite was gone but he still wanted a cold soda pop and that hot shower.

      Gavin wiggled back from his embrace. “A story about Wild Bill and the buffaloes?”

      “No, son,” Dax said. “Not that kind of story.”

      He rose, lifting the five-year-old up with him. Gavin looped an arm over his dad’s shoulder and patted his opposite cheek. Dax felt that quivery feeling in the center of his chest. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve Gavin, but he was grateful. Without the boy, he would have given up on life long ago. As it was, he clung to the edges of hope, fighting off his own dark tendencies in an effort to give the motherless boy a decent upbringing. It wasn’t easy. Gavin wasn’t easy. And at times Dax no more understood the boy than he could understand Chinese.

      A frown cut a deep gash between Gavin’s black eyebrows. “It won’t be scary, will it?”

      Times like these. The boy was scared of his own shadow. Since hearing a ghost story at a fall party he’d been especially nervous.

      “No, Gavin, it’s not scary.” He tried, but failed, to keep the annoyance out of his tone. The boy was skittish as a deer. The teacher had had to peel him away from Dax’s side the first day of kindergarten. And Gavin had cried, an occurrence that both worried and embarrassed his father. A sissified kid wouldn’t survive in today’s mean world, but Dax didn’t know how to change his child’s disposition.

      By now, they’d made the house and were inside. Dax tossed his hat at a heavy wooden end table, shrugged out of his jacket, and collapsed with an exaggerated heave onto a chair. The living room was enormous, compliments of his ex-wife who had insisted on a house big enough to entertain. Trouble was she’d done her entertaining while he was out working. He liked the house, though, liked the warm, golden-brown stone and wood fireplace and the wine-colored leather furniture.

      He propped his boots on a squat ottoman. “You ever deliver a baby, Rowdy?”

      Rowdy, who had ventured off to the kitchen, reappeared with a glass in hand. “What? Are you serious?”

      Dax accepted the glass and gulped the icy drink in three long gulps. “Crazy afternoon. A young woman ran her car through my fence between here and Jake’s windmill. I stopped to see what the problem was and she was having a baby.”

      Rowdy slithered into a chair, the grin forming a surprised O. “Man.”

      “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

      “Everything go okay? I mean, you delivered the baby and everything.” As the reality of what Dax had done sank in, Rowdy leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “Holy smoke, Dax. Are they all right? The mama and baby, I mean?”

      “The baby was kind of blue and not moving at first. I thought she was gone.” Running a finger around the rim of the glass, he didn’t mention how scared he’d been. The telling sounded a lot calmer than the actual event. “Then I thought about how calves are born with a lot of mucous sometimes, so I wiped her nose and mouth off with Gavin’s bandana….” He patted the boy’s knee. Gavin curled up next to him, listening to every word. “Just as I was getting ready to turn her upside down and swat her bottom, she let out a howl.” Sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

      “Man.” Rowdy said again, seemingly devoid of intelligent comment. Dax understood. He’d been speechless himself at the time. As soon as the baby had cried, he’d wrapped her in the old blanket and made sure the mama was all right. Then he’d jumped behind the wheel of the car, forced the little economy onto the road and sped like a NASCAR racer to the emergency room.

      “Where is she, Daddy? Why didn’t you bring her home? I want to see her.”

      “She and her mama are in the hospital in Saddleback.” He rattled the ice in his glass, shaking out a few more drops of cola.

      Beneath a