A Father's Promise. Helen Myers R.

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      HELEN R. MYERS

      is a collector of two- and four-legged strays, and lives deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. She cites cello music and bonsai gardening as favorite relaxation pastimes, and still edits in her sleep—an accident, learned while writing her first book. A bestselling author of diverse themes and focus, she is a three-time RITA^® Award nominee, winning for Navarrone in 1993.

      For Linda Varner, an ever-gentle, classy friend.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter One

      He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t ready for any of it. Even so, John Paladin carried his ten-day-old son out of Dusty Flats Community Hospital with the same brisk step that he’d entered, and tugged his Stetson and blue denim jacket farther over and around the baby to protect him from the driving wind and rain.

      “Hang tough, pardner,” he muttered, squinting against the sharp needles that still managed to angle under the wide brim and prick at his face. “It’ll get worse before it gets better.” After hearing what he had inside, and considering the prospects for their future, it seemed about the only thing he could promise.

      The wind lashed harder at them. Damn, but it was cold, he thought, and it wasn’t even November yet. By the look of things, he and every other west Texas cattle rancher had a heckuva winter ahead of them. If they didn’t float away first. “Dusty Flats” his soggy boots. The community had already surpassed its yearly rainfall average back in August; no telling what the rest of fall would bring.

      But at the moment he had more important things to worry about, and he no longer had the stamina to take on more than one calamity at a time. It was just as well that there was nothing he could do about the weather; right now he faced the challenge of a lifetime—getting his boy back to the ranch, then changing and feeding him.

      All right, so he figured he could handle the first task, regardless of the gusting wind that kept trying to knock him off his feet. But the rest…the rest turned his insides into quivering jelly.

      It was all those instructions the nurses had spewed at him like that last adding machine he’d had that would churn out a half mile of paper whenever it got stuck in some crazy mode. Sure, he understood that they’d needed their bit of fun. Even as he’d been walking through the front door they’d determinedly escorted him like some military color guard, calling out advice and loading him down with enough booklets and junk to keep him reading until Thanksgiving. But he wasn’t in any shape to retain any of that book—learned nonsense. His mind was already so cluttered, he’d forgotten half of what he’d been told. Besides, even a grown man could starve to death if he had to read through the pamphlets jammed in his pockets before he was allowed to cook himself something to eat. A tiny scrap of stuff like his boy would be plumb out of luck.

      Worst of all, though, were the directions about changing the kid’s diaper and giving him a bath.

      “Don’t you worry about a thing, Big John. You’ll get the hang of it.”

      “Now, Big John, it’s not as though you’ll have to worry about him kicking or biting like one of those beef critters of yours.”

      “There’s just something about them being your own that makes it easier, Big John.”

      Bull. Not one of those women had listened, really listened to what he’d been trying to tell them. What did any of them know about how it was going to be for him? The way he figured it, caring for babies was as natural to women as stringing a barbed-wire fence was to him. But he knew nothing about fueling up anything this small, let alone dealing with cleaning out the rascal’s oil pan or anything.

      From inside the wool cocoon and the down vest he’d wrapped the boy in, he heard a tiny protest. Jeez, he thought, could the kid be suffocating? Maybe everyone had been wrong about covering his face. Or maybe he was holding him too tight and smushing his toothpick-fine bones. Maybe the wind was getting at him and sucking the very breath out of the little guy. Blast it all, the head nurse had been right—he should never have taken the boy out in such conditions in the first place.

      His heart beat a frantic tattoo as he accelerated his pace—but he didn’t quite break into a run. Better not risk it, he thought. The rain had turned everything slick, and the soles of his leather boots didn’t have good traction on asphalt. If he fell, he could make mush out of the chick-pea in his arms.

      How the devil could those women have told him that the child was going to grow up every bit as big as him? What did they see that he couldn’t?

      He finally reached his mud-splattered pickup truck. “Now, comes the next easy part,” he grumbled to himself as he opened the driver’s door.

      Once again he had to secure the infant in a vehicle that wasn’t prepared for a virtual newborn. He respected and approved of the recent law that made seat belts mandatory. However, when he’d first carried his boy out to the truck, he’d realized accommodating that regulation was going to be a challenge, considering the danged buckle was nearly as big as his baby’s head. Too late he’d remembered the proper infant carrier that should have been purchased ages ago. But between problems with Celene, and his unusually heavy work load at the Long J, the last thing on his mind had been shopping excursions, let alone buying a bunch of baby things.

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