Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) by Victoria Pade Page A

it around where it can do more good.”
    “Ahh. I’ve been hearing a lot about cost effectiveness and money, that’s for sure,” Robert said. From there the elderly Indian brought him up-to-date on the proceeds from a benefit dinner the night before to raise money for the homeless. He told him about a bequest that had been left to the foundation by a Native American woman who had just died, and related several other, smaller events, as well as news of the trial of the boy in Alaska whom Ash had hired legal counsel for.
    “So how’s our little Beth?” Robert asked when he’d finished.
    Ash knew his grandfather and Beth were close. They’d shared interests in several things and Robert had taken her under his wing. “She’s too skinny.”
    “That’s not good. We’re a family of big babies. She’s going to need her strength and some meat on her bones when it comes time to deliver your son.”
    Ash smiled. “You’re sure it’s a boy, are you?”
    “Just hoping. It’s good to have a boy to carry on the name.” Robert paused and then ventured cautiously. “Now that the shock has worn off, how do you feel about this?”
    “A little giddy,” he admitted what he wouldn’t admit to anyone but his grandfather.
    Robert chuckled. “Then you’re not unhappy about it?”
    “I’ve surprised myself by how excited I am.”
    “Babies will do that. There’s something magical about them.” This time Robert cleared his throat. “So, uh, what’re you going to do about it?”
    “What am I going to do about what?”
    “Well, you know, babies have a right to be born into a loving house complete with a mother and a father.”
    “This one will be born into two loving homes, one with a mother and one with a father. It gets a bonus,” Ash said, trying to make light of what he really didn’t see that way.
    “Is that how you want it?”
    “We’re divorced, Pap, that’s just how it is.” Ash didn’t have to be in the same room with his grandfather to see him nodding his head in that sage way that accepted what he said and still managed to disagree with it.
    “I surely do miss that girl,” Robert said. “She plays a mean gin rummy. Haven’t had as good a game as she gives me since she left.”
    “Are you telling me you’re sorry she didn’t get custody of you in the settlement?” Ash joked.
    “Just saying I miss her. Thought you did, too, the way you were grumbling around here when you moved in. You sleepin’ nights yet?”
    “I sleep fine,” Ash lied.
    “And here I was thinking all those times I heard you up walkin’ around were because your bed was too lonely without her.”
    “I’ve slept in plenty of beds without her.”
    “Humph. Maybe too many. Sometimes it seemed like she spent more time with me than she did with you.”
    “She never complained about it. But if you have something to say to me, old man, spit it out.”
    “Only thinking that with a baby coming now, maybe she’d take you back.”
    “She acts like she can’t stand the sight of me.”
    “Must have kept her eyes closed to get that baby in her belly, is that what you’re tellin’ me?”
    “She must have.”
    “So what’re you doing there?”
    “Claiming what’s mine.”
    “The baby, you mean.”
    “The baby.”
    “Are you sure that’s all that’s yours? Maybe Beth could be, too, if you handled things right.”
    “Maybe you ought to come here and handle things and I should just stay on the reservation and run the foundation. I think she likes you better anyway.”
    “Maybe. We had some good times together, me and that little girl.”
    Ash said, “Look, Pap, I have to go. You have the number here at the lodge and the one at the ranch, in case you need me, right?”
    “We’ll be fine. Between Miss Lightfeather and me, we could run the world. It’s Beth who needs you now.”
    “That’ll be the day.”
    “Don’t be too sure of it.”
    Ash exchanged goodbyes with his grandfather rather than comment on that and