A Conard County Baby. Rachel Lee

“There’s still time. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. Money buys nearly everything, even doctors who will discreetly ignore the law.”

      He finished flipping the bacon, then leaned back to look at her, his arms folded. “I’m sorry. I realize it’s none of my business, but I just can’t get the thinking behind this. It’s like your ex-fiancé is more important than you. Than their own grandchild.”

      “The baby was a problem unless we got married right away. Then I became a problem when I refused to marry Scott and threatened to pitch a public fit if they dragged me to a wedding in front of a judge or notary.”

      “I still don’t get it.”

      “I don’t get it, either. I certainly wasn’t expecting this. I thought when I told them what Scott had done, they’d be on my side.”

      “This can’t all just be about scandal. Even a scandal that might keep Scott from the senate.”

      “You wouldn’t think. But scandal was all I heard about, that and how I wasn’t going to ruin a young man’s promising future with my selfishness. It really got ugly. So here I am. The explanations are theirs not mine.”

      “Do you have any?”

      “Considering how all this blindsided me? No.”

      He went back to making the bacon and started popping toast into a toaster. “Well, whatever is behind it, you know how you were treated. You said you were under house arrest. How the hell did you get away with more than the clothes on your back?”

      “I said I was going to see my Great-Aunt Mary in Austin. I claimed I needed time to think, and they knew she agreed with them. They even made arrangements with her so I’d be properly watched. They thought I was flying and arranged for me to be escorted to my flight by the butler and met on the other end by one of my Aunt Mary’s people. But when they were gone, I loaded my car. Or rather the butler did. Poor man. I hope he still has a job. He thought I’d just decided to take a nice drive instead of flying. I doubt he knew much about what was really going on.”

      “You might be surprised. Maybe he was rooting for you.”

      Amazingly, Hope smiled. She rather liked the idea that the butler might have been her ally. He’d always been good to her.

      Cash scrambled some eggs, and the next thing she knew she was facing a plate with a generous portion of eggs and bacon. A tall stack of buttered toast stood between them.

      She sampled everything before talking again. “This is great. I need to learn how to cook.”

      That brought his head up.

      “I know,” she said, catching his surprise. “I don’t know how to do some of the most important things in life. I’m a babe in the woods and I need a teacher.”

      “Hattie, my housekeeper, might be willing to help you out. I’ve found that people generally love to talk about what they do.”

      “If it wouldn’t add to her burden. Maybe Angie and I could learn together.”

      “Angie may already know something about it.”

      Hope nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re probably right. I’ll ask her first.”

      Angie might like being a teacher to her, Hope thought. It might be one of the first steps in the right direction. “There’s a lot Angie could probably teach me.”

      “And maybe some she shouldn’t,” he said humorously.

      “You could say the same about me,” she replied, without any humor at all. Unwed and pregnant. If she was here very long that would have to be explained to Angie. Given the dimensions of what had happened, she quailed at the very idea. It had been hard enough telling Cash, and he still couldn’t grasp it.

      Come to that, neither could she. From time to time, in her battered heart and brain, a thought would rise up: something else was involved, something she didn’t know about. Something more than social standing, scandal and Scott’s bright future.

      Because it was still very hard for her to believe that her parents thought more of Scott than of her. That they refused to accept that he could have raped her. That it was more important to bury something like that than to protect her. She hadn’t even asked to file charges against him. All she wanted was to end the engagement and keep her baby.

      She almost put her head in her hands, but she had been doing that for too long. She had made good her escape, she was now employed, and while she still had a lot of wounds she was sure she was going to have to deal with, the important thing was to find a way to give this child a reasonably secure future. She could do that. After all, she wouldn’t be the first, or last, single mother in the world.

      Cash spoke. “Frankly, my first thought was that an unwed mother was exactly the wrong person to look after my daughter.”

      Her head snapped up. “Then I’ll leave.”

      “Let me finish. I changed my mind. When the time is right, feel free to talk to Angie about it in whatever terms you prefer. It might be good for her to know that bad things can happen out there.”

      Hope felt torn. Angie had confided to her about a restraining order, and as she heard those words it struck her that Cash hadn’t heard about it. Angie knew bad things could happen out there, although maybe not the depth and degree of some of them. But the girl wasn’t an innocent—certainly not the kind of innocent Hope had been at that age...or even more recently.

      But she had virtually promised that she wasn’t going to pass along anything Angie said—with a mental reservation for anything that seemed truly important for Cash to know. She had to stick to that, and a restraining order from the past against someone who had harassed the girl’s mother didn’t fit that bill.

      “It’s up to you, of course,” Cash said, apparently taking her silence as reluctance. Nor could she correct that impression because it was partly true.

      “Well, something’s going to have to be explained to her before much longer,” Hope admitted. “My jeans are getting too tight. Before long I’ll be showing.”

      “Well, I can take care of the jeans when we go see the doc.”

      She shook her head. “That’s not right, Cash. I have about a hundred dollars, and some things can wait until you pay me.”

      “Not the doc for sure.” He arched his brows at her. “Some things just aren’t right, Hope. Get used to it. I may not understand your family, but I know where my own values lie. Let it be, and let me do what’s right.”

      A pretty remarkable man, she thought as she tried to help clean up after breakfast. Nearly everything was a new challenge to her, even filling a dishwasher.

      That gave her some thinking to do. She had had no idea how much she had failed to learn simply by being raised in the lap of luxury. Her laundry list of ignorance was growing by leaps and bounds.

      In fact, when she thought about it, she decided she had been raised worse than a prize filly and more like a hand-fed lap dog. How very humbling.

      * * *

      “I’ve got a few minutes before I have to get to work,” Cash announced when they’d cleaned up. “I’ll show you the barn, you can meet the horses and see where all the tack is. You can saddle your own horse?”

      “I’m used to English saddles, but I can probably figure it out.”

      He surprised her with a laugh. “English, huh? None of that around here. A pommel is too useful. I’ll show you. Plus, I guess I need to show you the right way to ride Western.”

      “What’s the difference?”

      “There are a couple of things. For example, we don’t use the horse’s mouth to guide it. No pulling on the reins.”

      “Then how...”

      He