“We believe the infant girl under our protection is your daughter.”
With that, rancher Ryder Wilson’s world turns upside down. But he’s determined to make a home for the baby his late estranged wife left on a stranger’s doorstep. Local lawyer Greer Templeton is there to help, after growing attached to little Layla during the search for her daddy. It’s enough to make Ryder propose a marriage of convenience. But does love factor into his Christmas promise?
Though her name is frequently on bestseller lists, ALLISON LEIGH’s high point as a writer is hearing from readers that they laughed, cried or lost sleep while reading her books. She credits her family with great patience for the time she’s parked at her computer, and for blessing her with the kind of love she wants her readers to share with the characters living in the pages of her books. Contact her at allisonleigh.com.
Also by Allison Leigh
Show Me a Hero
Yuletide Baby Bargain
A Child Under His Tree
The BFF Bride
One Night in Weaver...
A Weaver Christmas Gift
A Weaver Beginning
A Weaver Vow
Fortune’s Homecoming
Wild West Fortune
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk
The Rancher’s Christmas Promise
Allison Leigh
ISBN: 978-1-474-07825-2
THE RANCHER’S CHRISTMAS PROMISE
© 2018 Allison Lee Johnson
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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For my family.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Extract
About the Publisher
Prologue
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Ryder Wilson stared at the people on his porch. Even before they introduced themselves, he’d known the short, skinny woman was a cop thanks to the Braden Police Department badge she was wearing. But the two men with her? He’d never seen them before.
And after the load of crap they’d just spewed, he’d like to never see them again.
“We’re not kidding, Mr. Wilson.” That came from the serious-looking bald guy. The one who looked like he was a walking heart attack, considering the way he kept mopping the sweat off his face even though it was freezing outside. March had roared in like a lion this year, bringing with it a major snowstorm. Ryder hadn’t lived there that long—it was only his second winter there—but people around town said they hadn’t seen anything like it in Braden for more than a decade.
All he knew was that the snow was piled three feet high, making his life these days even more challenging. Making him wonder why he’d ever chosen Wyoming over New Mexico in the first place. Yeah, they got snow in Taos. But not like this.
“We believe that the infant girl who’s been under our protection since she was abandoned three months ago is your daughter.” The man tried to look past Ryder’s shoulder. “Perhaps we could discuss this inside?”
Ryder had no desire to invite them in. But one of them was a cop. He hadn’t crossed purposes with the law before and he wasn’t real anxious to do so now. Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.
His aunt hadn’t raised him to be slob. She’d be horrified if she ever knew strangers were seeing the house in its current state.
He slapped his leather gloves together. He had chores waiting for him. But he supposed a few minutes wouldn’t make much difference. “Don’t think there’s much to discuss,” he warned as he stepped out of the doorway. He folded his arms across his chest, standing pretty much in their way so they had to crowd together in the small space where he dumped his boots. Back home, his aunt Adelaide would call the space a vestibule. Here, it wasn’t so formal; he’d carved out his home from a converted barn. “I appreciate your concern for an abandoned baby, but whoever’s making claims I fathered a child is out of their mind.” Once burned, twice shy. Another thing his aunt was fond of saying.
The cop’s brown eyes looked pained. “Ryder—may I call you Ryder?” She didn’t wait for his permission, but plowed right on, anyway. “I’m sorry we have to be the bearer of bad news, but we believe your wife was the baby’s mother, and—”
At the word wife, what had been Ryder’s already-thin patience went by the wayside. “My wife ran out on me a year ago. Whatever she’s done since is her prob—”
“Not anymore,” the dark-haired guy said.
“What’d you say your name was?” Ryder met the other man’s gaze head-on, knowing perfectly well he hadn’t said his name. The pretty cop’s role there was obviously official. Same with the sweaty bald guy—he had to be from social services. But the third intruder? The guy who was watching him as though he’d already formed an opinion—a bad one?
“Grant Cooper.” The man’s voice was flat. “Karen’s my sister.”
“There’s your problem,” Ryder responded just as flatly. “My so-called wife’s name was Daisy. Daisy Miranda. You’ve got the wrong guy.” He pointedly reached around them for the door to show them out. “So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got ice to break so my animals can get at their water.”
“This is Karen.” Only because she was a little slip of a thing, the cop succeeded in maneuvering between him and the door. She held a wallet-sized photo up in front of his face.
Ryder’s nerves tightened even more than when he’d first opened the door to find these people on his front porch.
He didn’t want to touch the photograph or examine it. He didn’t need to. He recognized his own face just fine. In the picture, he’d been kissing the wedding ring he’d just put on Daisy’s finger. The wedding had been a whirlwind sort of thing, like everything else about their relationship. Three months start to finish, from the moment they met outside the bar where she’d just quit her job until the day she’d walked out on him two weeks after their wedding. That’s how long it had taken to meet, get hitched and get unhitched.
Though the unhitching part was still a work in progress. Not that he’d been holding on to hope that she’d return. But he’d had other things more important keeping him occupied than getting a formal divorce. Namely the Diamond-L ranch, which he’d purchased only a few months before meeting her. His only regret was that he hadn’t kept his attention entirely on the ranch all along. It would have saved him some grief. “Where’d you get that?”
The cop asked her own question. “Can you confirm this is you and your wife in this picture?”
His jaw felt tight. “Yeah.” Unfortunately. The Las Vegas wedding chapel had given them a cheap set of pictures. Ryder had tossed all of them in the fireplace, save the one the cop was holding now. He’d mailed that one to Daisy in response to a stupid postcard he’d gotten from her six months after she’d left him. A postcard on which she’d written only the words I’m sorry.
He still wasn’t sure what she’d meant. Sorry for leaving him without a word or warning? Or sorry she’d ever married him in the first place?
“You wrote this?” The cop had turned the photo over, revealing his handwriting on the back. So much for vows.
Ryder was actually a little surprised that it was so legible, considering how drunk he’d been at the time he’d sent the photo. He nodded once.
The cop looked sympathetic. “I’m sorry to say that she died in a car accident over New Year’s.”
He waited as the words sank in. Expecting to feel something. Was he supposed to feel bad? Maybe he did. He wasn’t sure. He’d known Daisy was a handful from the get-go. So when she took a powder the way she had, it shouldn’t have been as much of a shock as it had been.
But one thing was certain. Everything that Daisy had told him had been a lie. From start to finish.
He might be an uncomplicated guy, but he understood the bottom line facing him now. “And you want to pawn off her baby on me.” He looked the dark-haired guy in the face again. “Or do you just want money?” He lifted his arm, gesturing with the worn leather gloves. “Look around. All I’ve got is what you see. And it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let a couple strangers making claims like yours get one finger on it.”
Grant’s eyes looked like flint. “As usual, my sister’s taste in men was worse than—”
“Gentlemen.” The other man mopped his forehead again, giving both Ryder and Grant wary looks even as he took a step between them. “Let’s keep our cool. The baby is our focus.”
Ryder ignored him. He pointed at Grant. “My wife never even told me she had a brother.”
“My sister never told me she had a husband.”
“The situation is complicated enough,” the cop interrupted, “without the two of you taking potshots at each other.” Her expression was troubled, but her voice was calm. And Ryder couldn’t miss the way she’d wrapped her hand familiarly around Grant’s arm. “Ray is right. What’s important here is the baby.”
“Yes. The baby under our protection.” Ray was obviously hoping to maintain control over the discussion. “There is no local record of the baby’s birth. Our only way left to establish who the child’s parents are is through you, Mr. Wilson. We’ve expended every other option.”
“You don’t even know the baby was hers?”
Ray looked pained. Grant looked like he wanted to punch something. Hell, maybe even Ryder. The cop just looked worried.
“The assumption is that your wife was the person to have left the baby at the home her former employer, Jaxon Swift, shared with his brother, Lincoln,” she said.
“Now, that does sound like Daisy.” Ryder knew he sounded bitter. “I only knew her a few months, but it was still long enough to learn she’s good at running out on people.”
Maybe he did feel a little bad about Daisy. He hadn’t gotten around to divorcing his absent wife. Now, if what these people said were true, he wouldn’t need to. Instead of being a man with a runaway wife, he was a man with a deceased one. There was probably something wrong with him for not feeling like his world had just been rocked. “But maybe you’re wrong. She wasn’t pregnant when she left me,” he said bluntly. He couldn’t let himself believe otherwise.
“Would you agree to a paternity test?”
“The court can compel you, Mr. Wilson,” Ray added when Ryder didn’t answer right away.
It was the wrong tack for Ray to take. Ryder had been down the whole paternity-accusation path before. He hadn’t taken kindly to it then, and he wasn’t inclined to now. “Daisy was my wife, loose as that term is in this case. A baby born to her during our marriage makes me the presumed father, whether there’s a test or not. But you don’t know that the baby was actually hers. You just admitted it. Which tells me the court probably isn’t on your side as much as you’re implying. Unless I say otherwise, and without you knowing who this baby’s mother is, I’m just a guy in a picture.”
“We should have brought Greer,” Grant said impatiently to the cop. “She’s used to guys like him.”
But the cop wasn’t listening to Grant. She was looking at Ryder with an earnest expression. “You aren’t just a guy in a picture. You’re our best hope for preventing the child we believe is Grant’s niece from being adopted by strangers.”
That’s when Ryder saw that she’d reached out to clasp Grant’s hand, their fingers entwined. So, she had a dog in this race.
He thought about pointing out that he was a stranger to them, too, no matter what sort of guy Grant had deemed Ryder to be. “And if I cooperated and the test confirms I’m not this baby’s father, you still wouldn’t have proof that Daisy is—” dammit “—was the baby’s mother.”
“If the test is positive, then we know she was,” Ray said. “Without your cooperation, the proof of Karen’s maternity is circumstantial. We admit that. But you were her husband. There’s no putative father. If you even suspected she’d become pregnant during your marriage, your very existence is enough to establish legal paternity, DNA proof or not.”
The cop looked even more earnest. “And the court can’t proceed with an adoption set in motion by Layla’s abandonment.”
The name startled him. “Layla!”
The three stared at him with varying degrees of surprise and expectation.
“Layla was my mother’s name.” His voice sounded gruff, even to his own ears. Whatever it was that Daisy had done with her child, using that name was a sure way of making sure he’d get involved. After only a few months together, she’d learned enough about him to know that.
He exhaled roughly. Slapped his leather gloves together. Then he stepped out of the way so he wasn’t blocking them from the rest of his home. “You’d better come inside and sit.” He felt weary all of a sudden. As if everything he’d accomplished in his thirty-four years was for nothing. What was that song? “There Goes My Life.”
“I expect this is gonna take a while to work out.” He glanced at the disheveled room, with its leather couch and oversize, wall-mounted television. That’s what happened when a man spent more time tending cows than he did anything else. He’d even tended some of them in this very room.
Fortunately, his aunt Adelaide would never need to know.
“You’ll have to excuse the mess, though.”
Chapter One
Five months later.
The August heat was unbearable.
The forecasters kept saying the end of the heat wave was near, but Greer Templeton had lost faith in them. She twisted in her seat, trying to find the right position that allowed her to feel the cold air from the car vents on more than two square inches of her body. It wasn’t as if she could pull up her skirt so the air could blow straight up her thighs or pull down her blouse so the air could get at the rest of her.
She’d tried that once, only to find herself the object of interest of a leering truck driver with a clear view down into her car. If she’d never seen or heard from the truck driver again, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Instead, she’d had the displeasure of serving as the driver’s public defender not two days later when he was charged with littering.
“I hate August!” she yelled, utterly frustrated.
Nobody heard.
The other vehicles crawling along the narrow, curving stretch of highway between Weaver—where she’d just come from a frustrating visit with a new client in jail—and Braden all had their windows closed against the oppressive heat, the same way she did.
It was thirty miles, give or take, between Braden and Weaver, and she drove it several times every week. Sometimes more than once in a single day. She knew the highway like the back of her hand. Where the infrequent passing zones were, where the dips filled with ice in the winter and where the shoulder was treacherous. She knew that mile marker 12 had the best view into Braden and mile marker 3 was the spot you were most likely to get a speeding ticket.
The worst, though, was grinding up and down the hills, going around the curves at a crawl because she was stuck behind a too-wide truck hogging the roadway with a too-tall load of hay.
Impatience raged inside her and she pushed her fingers against one of the car vents, feeling the air blast against her palm. It didn’t provide much relief, because it was barely cool.
Probably because her car was close to overheating, she realized.
Even as she turned off the AC and rolled down the windows, a cloud billowed from beneath the front hood of her car.
She wanted to scream.
Instead, she coasted onto the weedy shoulder. It was barely wide enough.
The car behind her laid on its horn as it swerved around her.
“I hate August!” she yelled after it while her vehicle burped out steam into the already-miserable air.
So much for getting to Maddie’s surprise baby shower early.
Ali was never going to forgive Greer. Unlike their sister, Maddie, the soul of patience she was not. Just that morning Ali had called to remind Greer of her tasks where the shower was concerned. It had been the fifth such call in as many days.
Marrying Grant hadn’t softened Ali’s annoying side at all.
Greer wasn’t going to chance exiting through the driver’s side because of the traffic, so she hitched up her skirt enough to climb over the console and out the passenger-side door.
In just the few minutes it took to get out of the car and open up the hood, Greer’s silk blouse was glued to her skin by the perspiration sliding down her spine.
The engine had stopped spewing steam. But despite her father’s best efforts to teach the triplets the fundamentals of car care when she and her sisters were growing up, what lived beneath the hood of Greer’s car was still a mystery.
She knew from experience there was no point in checking her cell phone for a signal. There were about four points on the thirty-mile stretch where a signal reliably reached, and this spot wasn’t one of them. If a Good Samaritan didn’t happen to stop, she knew the schedules of both the Braden Police Department and the Weaver Sheriff’s Department. Even if her disabled vehicle wasn’t reported by someone passing by, officers from one or the other agency routinely traveled the roadway even on a hot August Saturday. She didn’t expect it would be too long before she had some help.
She popped the trunk a few inches so the heat wouldn’t build up any more than it already had and left the windows down. Then she walked along the shoulder until she reached an outcrop of rock that afforded a little shade from the sun and toed off her shoes, not even caring that she was probably ruining her silk blouse by leaning against the jagged stone.
Sorry, Ali.
* * *
Ryder saw the slender figure in white before he saw the car. It almost made him do a double take, the way sailors did when they spotted a mermaid sunning herself on a rock. A second look reassured him that lack of sleep hadn’t caused him to start hallucinating.
Not yet, anyway.
She was on the opposite side of the road, and there was no place for him to pull his rig around to get to her. So he kept on driving until he reached his original destination—the turnoff to the Diamond-L. As soon as he did, he turned around and pulled back out onto the highway to head back to her.
It was only a matter of fifteen minutes.
The disabled foreign car was still sitting there, like a strange out-of-place insect among the pickup trucks rumbling by every few minutes. He parked behind it, but let his engine idle and kept the air-conditioning on. He propped his arm over the steering column and thumbed back his hat as he studied the woman.
She’d noticed him and was picking her way through the rough weeds back toward her car.
He’d recognized her easily enough.
Greer Templeton. One of the identical triplets who’d turned his life upside down. Starting with the cop, Ali, who’d come to his door five months ago.
It wasn’t entirely their fault.
They weren’t responsible for abandoning Layla. That was his late wife.
Now Layla was going through nannies like there was a revolving door on the nursery. Currently, the role was filled by Tina Lewis. She’d lasted two weeks but was already making dissatisfied noises.
He blew out a breath and checked the road before pushing open his door and getting out of the truck. “Looks like you’ve got a problem.”
“Ryder?”
He spread his hands. “’Fraid so.” Any minute she’d ask about the baby and he wasn’t real sure what he would say.
For nearly five months—ever since Judge Stokes had officially made Layla his responsibility—the Templeton triplets had tiptoed around him. He’d quickly learned how attached they’d become to the baby, caring for her after Daisy dumped her on a “friend’s” porch.
Supposedly, his wife hadn’t been sleeping with that friend but Ryder still had his doubts. DNA might have ruled out Jaxon Swift as Layla’s father, but the man owned Magic Jax, the bar where Daisy had briefly worked as a cocktail waitress before they’d met. He would never understand why she hadn’t just come to him if she’d needed help. He had been her husband, for God’s sake. Not her onetime boss. Unless she’d been more involved with Jax than they all had admitted.
As for the identity of Layla’s real father, everyone had been happy as hell to stop wondering as soon as Ryder gave proof that he and Daisy had been married.
Didn’t mean Ryder hadn’t wondered, though.
But doing a DNA test at this point wouldn’t change anything where he was concerned. It would prove Layla was his by blood. Or it wouldn’t.
Either way, he believed she was his wife’s child.
Which made Layla his responsibility. Period.
The questions about Daisy, though? Every time he looked at Layla, they bubbled up inside him.
For now, though, he focused on Greer.
It was no particular hardship.
The Templeton triplets scored pretty high in the looks department. He could tell Greer apart from her twins because she always looked a little more sophisticated. Maddie—the social worker who’d been Layla’s foster mother—had long hair reaching halfway down her back. Ali—the cop who’d shown up on his doorstep—had blond streaks. And he’d never seen her dressed in anything besides her police uniform.
Greer, though?
Her dark hair barely reached her shoulders and not a single strand was ever out of place. She was a lawyer and dressed the part in skinny skirts with expensive-looking jackets and high heels that looked more big-city than Wyoming dirt. She’d been the one who’d ushered him through all the legalities with the baby. And she was the only one of her sisters who hadn’t been openly crying when they’d brought Layla and all of her stuff out to his ranch to turn her over to his care. But there’d been no denying the emotion in her eyes. She just hadn’t allowed herself the relief of tears.
For some reason, that had seemed worse.
Ryder had been uncomfortable as hell with so much female emotion. Greer’s most of all.
He’d rather have to deal with the general animosity Daisy’s brother clearly felt for him. That, at least, was straightforward and simple. Grant’s sister was dead. Whether he’d voiced it outright or not, he blamed Ryder.
Since Ryder was already shouldering the blame, it didn’t make any difference to him.
Now Greer was shading her eyes with one hand and holding her hair off her neck with the other. Instead of asking about Layla first thing, though, she stopped near the front bumper of her car. “It overheated. I saw steam coming out from the hood and pulled off as soon as I could.”
He joined her in front of the car. He knew the basics when it came to engines—enough to keep the machinery on his ranch running without too much outside help—but he was a lot more comfortable with the anatomy of horses and cows. “How long have you been sitting out here?”
“Too long.” She plucked the front of her blouse away from her throat and glanced at the watch circling her narrow wrist. “I thought someone would stop sooner than this. Ali’ll think I’m deliberately late.”
The only heat from the engine came from the sun glaring down on it. He checked a few of the hoses and looked underneath for signs of leaking coolant, but the ground beneath the car was dry. “Why’s that?”
“We’re throwing a surprise baby shower for Maddie today. I’m supposed to help set up.”
“Didn’t know she was pregnant.” He straightened. It was impossible to miss the sharpness in Greer’s brown eyes.
“Why would you, when you’ve been avoiding all of us since March?”
“Some law that says I needed to do otherwise?” He hadn’t been avoiding them entirely. Just...mostly.
It had been easy, considering he had a ranch to run.
She pursed her bow-shaped lips. “You know my family has a vested interest in Layla. At the very least, you could try accepting an invitation or two when they’re extended.”
“Maybe I’m too busy to accept invitations.” He waited a beat. “I am a single father, you know.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, her eye actually twitched.
She’d always struck him as the one most tightly wound.
It was too bad that he also couldn’t look at her without wondering just what it would take to unwind her.
He closed the hood of her car with a firm hand. “You want to try starting her up? See what happens with the temperature gauge?”
He thought she might argue—if only for the sake of it—but she opened the passenger door. Then he had to choke back a laugh when she climbed across and into the driver’s seat, where she started the engine. Her focus was clearly on her dashboard and he could tell the gauge was rising just by the frown on her face.
She shut off the engine again and looked through the windshield. “Needle went straight to the red.” She climbed back out the passenger side.
“Something wrong with the driver’s-side door?”
She was looking down at herself as she got out, tweaking that white skirt hugging her slender hips until it hung smooth and straight. “No, but I don’t want it getting hit by a passing vehicle if I open it.”
He eyed the distance between the edge of the road and where she’d pulled off on the shoulder. “Real cautious of you.”
“I’m a lawyer. I’m always cautious.”
“Overly so, I’d say.” Not that he hadn’t enjoyed the show. She was a little skinny for his taste, but he couldn’t deny she was a looker. He pulled off his cowboy hat long enough to swipe his arm across his forehead. “I can drive you into town, or I can send a tow out for you.” He didn’t have time to do both, because he had to be back at the ranch before the nanny left or his housekeeper, Mrs. Pyle, would have kittens. “What’s your choice?”
* * *
Greer swallowed her frustration. Considering Ryder Wilson’s standoffishness since they’d met, she was a little surprised that he’d stopped to assist at all.
As soon as she’d realized who was driving the enormous pickup truck pulling up behind her car, she’d been torn between anticipation and the desire to cry what next?
It was entirely annoying that the brawny, blue-eyed rancher was the first man to make her hormones sit up and take notice in too long a while.
Annoying and impossible to act on, considering the strange nature of their acquaintance.
All she wanted to do was ask Ryder how Layla was doing. But Maddie had been insistent that none of them intrude on him too soon.
They’d all been wrapped around Layla’s tiny little finger and none more than Maddie, who’d been caring for her nearly the whole while before Ali discovered Ryder’s existence. Yet it was Maddie who’d urged them to give Ryder time. To adjust. To adapt. They knew Ryder was taking decent care of the baby he’d claimed, because Maddie’s boss, Raymond Marx, checked up on him for a while at first, so he could report back to the courts. Give Ryder time, Maddie insisted, and eventually he would see the benefit of letting them past his walls.
Didn’t mean that it had been easy.
Didn’t mean it was easy now, not dashing over to the truck to see Layla.
She didn’t know if it was that prospect that made her feel so shaky inside, or if it was because of Layla’s brown-haired daddy. She wasn’t sure she even liked Ryder all that much.
Yes, he’d been legally named Layla’s father and yes, he’d taken responsibility for her. But there was an edge to him that had rubbed Greer wrong from the very first time they met. She just hadn’t been able to pinpoint why.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.