The Rancher's Blessed Event by Stella Bagwell Read Free Book Online

came crashing in on both of them.

Chapter Three
    M inutes later at the hay barn, Cooper ordered Emily to stand to one side while he loaded the back of an old work truck with several bales of alfalfa and three hundred pounds of caked feed.
    As she watched him lift the heavy bales of hay, she knew it was a job she shouldn’t be doing. Especially with her history of miscarriage. But she wasn’t about to let Cooper know any part of what had happened to her after he’d left the ranch. Today she would accept his help and be grateful for it and hopefully by tomorrow she could persuade him to leave the Diamond D in her care. Maybe he’d stay away for another ten years.
    If anything, the snowfall had grown heavier. As the old truck jostled over a rutted track toward the feeding ground, the wipers struggled to scrape away the fat flakes of ice sticking to the windshield.
    Any other time, Emily would have enjoyed seeing the sage and pinon decorated in white, but today she hardly noticed the falling snow. Cooper had distracted her to say the least.
    â€œAre you cold?”
    His question caused her to glance across the seat at him. “I’m okay.”
    He twisted the knob on the heater to a warmer setting. “Are you sure this heater even works? The air blowing from the defrost vents feels like it’s coming off the north pole.”
    â€œWhat do you expect in this weather?”
    He expected his brother would have a decent work truck with a heater. In bad weather it wasn’t safe for a person to get this far away from the ranch without a source of heat.
    â€œEverything on this damn place is about to fall apart!” he muttered.
    Including her, Emily thought, as she huddled inside her old wool work coat and jammed her gloved hands between her legs.
    â€œYou’ve just gotten soft,” she told him.
    He snorted. “I admit I’ve been gone from this place for a long time, but since then I damn well haven’t gone soft or lazy. Unlike somebody else around here.”
    Emily whipped around on the seat to face him. “If you’re implying I have, then just keep your mouth shut! You don’t know what I’ve been doing since you’ve been gone!”
    His eyes bored into her. “Well, if you and Kenneth did all that much work, I sure as hell would like to see it. So far there’s not a building, a shed or a fence on this property that looks as though it’s had any attention in years!”
    She didn’t know why he’d suddenly gotten so angry. Just because the heater was lukewarm didn’t warrant this sort of outburst from him.
    â€œI told you Kenneth lost interest.”
    â€œWhat was he doing with his time?”
    The dry look she shot him said, you ought to know. “He spent his time with the horses. Sorta like someone else who used to live here.”
    The sheepish expression stealing over his face told Emily she hadn’t given him the answer he was expecting.
    Muttering a curse under his breath, he braked the old truck to a halt. A short distance away were a group of wooden feed troughs sheltered from the north wind by a stand of juniper and piñon pine.
    â€œYou know,” he said thoughtfully, “I keep wondering why you’ve hung around here for so long.”
    Emily quickly looked away from him and out the window. The cattle were several rises over from them, but the animals had heard the truck and were now making their way in a hungry trot toward the feed grounds.
    â€œLike I told you this morning, I’ve hung around because this is my home. And Kenneth was my husband.”
    He studied the back of her old black hat and the blond braid lying against her ranch coat. The garment had once been dark brown but it had obviously been washed and worn until the color now resembled dead grass. Her hair was still beautiful, but it looked as though she’d trimmed it herself. Cooper wondered how long it had been since she’d