Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) by Victoria Pade

“You’d better go.”
    He didn’t move, but she could feel him staring at her again; she could feel his confusion, his anger. After a moment he said, “I’ll clean up here first. You’ve had a long day. Put your feet up and watch some TV or go to bed.”
    It was a direct order, given in a voice tight with control. But Beth decided to obey it just to finally put the needed distance between them.
    She didn’t say good-night or thank him for lunch or dinner or clearing the mess. She simply straightened her shoulders and walked out.
    Because to say anything else, to do anything else, to even raise her eyes to his one more time, could all too easily have put her back in his arms.
    Where a part of her wanted much too badly to be.

Chapter Four
    “R obert Yazzie here.”
    “That sounded very official, old man,” Ash answered his grandfather’s telephone greeting affectionately, when he reached the elderly Indian at the offices of the Blackwolf Foundation early the next morning.
    Robert laughed as if he’d just pulled off a good joke. “It’s this big chair of yours. Makes me feel like the president.”
    Ash had asked his maternal grandfather to oversee the foundation during his absence. Robert Yazzie was not a businessman, but he had common sense and an easygoing nature that let him handle things without panicking. Plus, Ash knew he wouldn’t try tackling anything beyond figurehead status. And the elderly man enjoyed brief interruptions to his retirement.
    “How’s that bum knee of yours?” Ash asked, settling down on his unmade bed to talk.
    “It’s keeping me off the golf course or I wouldn’t be making your apologies for you to all those people you’re standing up,” Robert answered with yet another laugh that made him sound as jolly as Saint Nick.
    Ash had been raised by both his grandfathers, but his relationship with Robert was the closer of the two. He’d stayed with Robert the majority of the time, going to work with him on weekends and during vacations from school. As the less temperamental of the two grandfathers, Robert had seemed to enjoy having his grandson’s company, and Ash had preferred to be with him, too.
    It was Robert who had instilled in Ash the importance of family and Indian ways and community. But most of all, the old man was just plain fun to be around. His love of life was infectious. Ash counted him not only as grandfather, mentor and teacher, but also as his best friend.
    “You aren’t driving Miss Lightfeather too crazy, are you?” Ash teased him back, sitting against the headboard and swinging his feet onto the mattress to cross them at the ankle.
    “I don’t think that woman likes me,” Robert confided in a lowered voice as if the secretary might overhear.
    That made Ash laugh. “Miss Lightfeather doesn’t like anybody.”
    “Except you. I think she had a crush on you. But I told her about the baby the way you wanted me to and it didn’t sit well with her. She even asked me if I was sure it was yours, like she was hoping it wasn’t.”
    “It’s mine.”
    “That’s what I told her and I got cold coffee the rest of the afternoon yesterday because of it.”
    “Don’t let her get away with that. Be firm with her.”
    “Ha! She might hurt me.”
    Again Ash laughed. His grandfather was over six feet tall and weighed upward of two hundred pounds. Compared to that, even the pudgy Miss Lightfeather was a bantamweight. “How’s everything else going?”
    “Fine, but where is everybody? Don’t you have a staff of some kind?”
    “Not really, you know that.”
    “I knew you didn’t have any full-time help, but I thought you at least had some part-time people. Nobody’s been around but Miss Lightfeather and me.”
    “I don’t schedule my part-timers regularly, only as I need them. I do as much as I can myself—or should I say, Miss Lightfeather and I do as much as we can. It cuts costs, and that way, rather than putting a lot of money in salaries, I can spread