The Rancher And The Baby

WRANGLIN’ WITH THE RANCHER?

Cassidy McCullough can’t remember a time when rancher Will Laredo wasn’t a huge (albeit handsome) pain in her backside. In this small Texan town, their bickering is almost legendary. When they rescue a baby during a flash flood, however, Will and Cassidy suddenly find themselves temporary guardians of a child…together.

Will has a hard time holstering his temper around Cassidy. Now they’re both responsible for a lost baby, and darned if they can’t stop arguing. The only way to make it through is to declare a cease-fire. And Lord help them both if that happens…because then Will might just discover he’s falling for his enemy.

“Stop being so agreeable… That’s not like you.”

That damn sexy smile of Will’s was back.

“Maybe it is,” he contradicted.

She didn’t like these new rules. “You’re just messing with my mind,” Cassidy accused.

Will inclined his head. “If you say so.”

She clenched her hands in her lap, curling her fingernails into her palms. She was doing what she could in order to ground herself.

His smile told her that he was enjoying this, enjoying getting under her skin, getting in the last word, because, she reminded herself, that was the way Will Laredo was built. You can’t change the spots on a leopard, she insisted. Even a leopard with a very sexy smile.

Especially a leopard with a very sexy smile.

The Rancher and the Baby

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA is a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author who has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

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To

Michael & Mark,

who were once my

younger brothers,

but through the

miracle of creative math,

are now my

older brothers

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“Mind if I cut in?”

Instantly pulled out of her mental wanderings—a defense mechanism she employed when whoever she was with was boring her out of her mind—Cassidy McCullough looked up, focusing on the man who had just tapped her dance partner’s shoulder.

Not that she really needed to.

Despite the fact that he had been absent from Forever for the better part of four years, she would have recognized that voice anywhere.

It popped up in her nightmares.

Will Laredo.

Will had been her brothers’ friend for as far back as she could remember—until his estrangement with his father had taken him to parts unknown, simultaneously bringing peace to her own corner of the world.

As she looked back, it felt as if her peace had been far too short-lived. Especially since, for reasons that were beyond her understanding, all three of her brothers liked this six-foot-one-inch, dirty-blond-haired irritant on two legs—which was why Cody had not only invited him to his wedding, he’d made Will one of his groomsmen.

To her surprise, Ron Jenkins, her fawning partner on the dance floor, seemed all too ready to acquiesce to Laredo’s casual query. Under normal circumstances, she would have celebrated getting a different partner—but not this time.

Ron might be willing, Cassidy thought, but she damn well wasn’t.

“He might not mind,” Cassidy retorted defiantly, “but I do.”

Rather than taking his cue and backing away, Will remained exactly where he was. Not only that, but his mouth curved in that annoying, smug way of his that she had always hated.

“Your brothers seemed to think I should dance with you.”

“Maybe you should dance with one of them since they all seem to be so keen on the subject of dancing,” Cassidy informed him.

Looking increasingly more uncomfortable, Ron seemed ready to fade into the shadows. “No, really, it’s all right,” he assured both her and Will nervously. A slight man, he appeared more than ready to surrender his claim to her.

Cassidy’s eyes narrowed as she froze her partner in place. “You stop dancing with me, Ron Jenkins,” she warned the man, “and it’ll be the last thing you’ll ever remember doing.”

Rather than slow down, Cassidy sped up her tempo.

Instead of being annoyed or embarrassed at this obvious rejection, Will laughed. “You’d better do as she says, Ron. Most men around here would sooner cross an angry rattlesnake than Cassidy. I hear that her bite is a lot more deadly.”

Struggling to hold on to her temper, Cassidy tossed her head. Several blond strands came loose and cascaded to her shoulders. She ignored them.

“If I were you, Laredo, I’d keep that in mind the next time you think about cutting in,” she informed him, her eyes blazing.

Will inclined his head, the same amused smile slowly curving his lips. “There’s not going to be a next time,” he assured her.

Cassidy turned her face up to her partner’s and said in a voice intentionally loud enough for Will to overhear, “Dance me by the champagne table, Ron. Now I’ve got something else to celebrate besides my brother Cody’s wedding.”

“I would,” Ron told her dryly, “if you’d let me lead for a change.”

Cassidy could have sworn she heard Will laughing in the background.

She wasn’t going to cause a scene, she promised herself. Not here. This was the first wedding in the family, and it was Cody’s day. But the moment it was over, she was going to find out which of her three brothers had put Will Laredo up to this, and they were going to pay dearly for it. They knew how she felt about him.

She’d been incensed when she found out that Cody had gotten in contact with Will and asked if he would come and be in his wedding party. When he’d told her about it, she’d almost withdrawn herself, but Connor had talked her out of it, appealing to her sense of family.

“Cassidy,” Ron said, raising his voice.

She realized by the look on the man’s face that this was not the first time that Ron had tried to get her attention.

“What?” she snapped, then cleared her throat and repeated the word in a more subdued tone—silently damning Laredo. The man had the ability of messing with her mind and ruining any moment just by his being there. “What? Am I leading again?”

“I don’t care about that,” Ron said, which told her that she was guilty of doing just that. Again.

“Then what?” she asked.

“You’re crushing my hand.” He looked positively pained.

Embarrassed, as well as annoyed, Cassidy released Jenkins’s hand. A more accurate description would have been that she threw it aside and out of her grasp.

To the casual observer from across the floor, had Ron’s hand been detached, it would have most likely bounced on the floor and gotten wedged somewhere.

“Man up,” she ordered Ron through gritted teeth and then walked away from him just as the band began to play another song.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Laredo shaking his head. He made no effort to hide the fact that he was observing her. She felt herself growing angry. Had they not been at her brother’s wedding, she would have marched right up to him and demanded to know just what he thought he was shaking his head at.

But they were at Cody’s wedding, so she couldn’t cause a scene, couldn’t hold Will accountable or wipe that smug look off his pretty-boy face. It wouldn’t look right for the maid of honor to deck one of the groomsmen at her own brother’s wedding.

That didn’t change the fact that she really wanted to.

Cassidy squared her shoulders and went to get a glass of punch.

Hang in there, she told herself. Come tomorrow, Will Laredo was leaving Forever, going back to wherever it was that he disappeared to when he’d initially left. And then life would go back to being bearable again.

Twelve more hours, she thought. Just twelve more hours.

It felt like an eternity.

Chapter One

Noise had never been a distraction for Olivia Blayne Santiago. She had learned how to effectively tune it out long before her law school days.

Rain, however, was another matter.

While noise, from whatever source, had always been an ongoing part of her day-to-day life and as such could be filed away in the recesses of her mind and matched later to an entire catalog of different sounds, rain demanded immediate attention.

Because rain in this part of Texas could sometimes come under the heading of being a life-or-death matter.

As the first lawyer to open a practice in Forever, Texas—a practice she now ran jointly with Cash Taylor with an eye out for further expansion—Olivia put in rather long hours. This despite the fact that she was married to the town sheriff and had a young, growing family. Between them, she and Cash handled all the legal concerns for the residents of Forever, be those concerns large or small. For the most part, Olivia could do that in her sleep.

But rain was something that always made Olivia pause, especially when it seemed to give no indication of stopping. What that meant was that a downpour could turn into a flash flood—often without any warning.

Olivia had learned to be leery of the sound of rain on her roof. It had been raining since early morning and gave no sign of stopping.

“This storm looks like it’s going to be a bad one,” she commented, looking at Cassidy.

Cassidy McCullough had been interning at the law firm for close to four months now, and she saw a great deal of herself in the young woman. Granted she was the firstborn in her family while Cassidy was the last, but Cassidy possessed a spark, a drive to become someone. She wasn’t one to just allow herself to float along through life, enjoying each day but never having any sort of an ultimate game plan other than making it through to the end of another week. A go-getter, Cassidy was working for her as an intern even as she was taking online courses at night to complete her postgraduate degree.

They had instantly hit it off, and Olivia had taken an interest in Cassidy from the first day she had walked into the law office.

Since Cassidy hadn’t said anything in response to her comment, Olivia raised her voice to get the young woman’s attention. “Why don’t you call it a day and go home?” she suggested.

Stationed at a small desk in the corner of Olivia’s office—a desk that was piled high with stacks of paper—Cassidy glanced up from the report she’d been compiling since she’d come in that morning.

Her brow furrowed slightly as she replayed Olivia’s words in her head.

“I can’t leave now. I’m not anywhere near finished with this.” It wasn’t something she would have normally advertised since she took pride in being fast as well as thorough, but if Olivia was considering sending her home, it was something the lawyer needed to know.

Olivia listened again to the rain as it hit the windows. Was it her imagination, or had the rain gotten even more pronounced in the last five minutes? If it got any worse, she wondered if the windows could withstand it.

“If you don’t leave now,” Olivia warned her, “you may have to sleep on that desk, and I promise that you won’t find it very comfortable.”

“Why?” Cassidy asked, puzzled. “I mean, I can see why the desk wouldn’t be comfortable, but why would I have to sleep on it if I went on working?” She glanced at her watch. “It’s not late.”

“It’s later than you think,” Olivia responded, then looked at the younger woman seriously. “Don’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Cassidy asked uncertainly, scanning the room.

“That.” Olivia pointed toward the window when she saw she wasn’t getting through to her intern. “The rain,” she added for good measure just in case she wasn’t making herself clear.

Enlightened, Cassidy nodded. “Oh, that. Of course I hear the rain,” she acknowledged. As far as she was concerned, a storm was no big deal. There was always going to be another one. “It was raining when I came in this morning.”

“Not like this,” Olivia insisted. “This sounds like it’s only going to get worse, and you know what that could mean.”

Cassidy nodded. “Yeah. Connor’s going to be stomping around the ranch house, muttering that he can’t do any of his work because it’s raining too hard.”

Olivia shook her head. Her intern was misreading the situation. “I think you should go home,” she said.

Cassidy still saw no need for her evacuation. “To watch Connor stomping around?”

“No, to keep from being washed away,” Olivia insisted. “You should know better than I do just how quick these flash floods can hit.”

“I know,” Cassidy agreed, “but there hasn’t been one in a couple of years and even that one was over before it practically started.” She waved away what she felt was Olivia’s needless concern. “Besides, I can take care of myself.”

Olivia sighed as she rolled her eyes. “Lord, did you ever pick the right profession. Someday, you are going to make one hell of a lawyer, but in order to do that, Cassidy, you’re going to need to stay alive. Now, I might not be a native to this area, but I’ve seen what a flash flood can do—”

“I can swim,” Cassidy insisted stubbornly.

“All well and good,” Olivia replied patiently as she began to pack up some things on her desk, “but your truck can’t. Now, I’m not going to spend the next hour arguing with you. I’m your boss and what I say goes. So now hear this—go home.”

Cassidy retired her pen and the stack of papers she’d been going through with a sigh. “Okay, like you said, you’re the boss.”

Olivia smiled at her. “Yes, and I’ve been arguing a lot longer than you have. Although, given what your brother said to me at the wedding a few weeks ago, you were born arguing.”

Cassidy paused to give her boss a penetrating look. “Which brother was that?” she asked conversationally.

Olivia wasn’t being taken in for a moment. Finished packing her briefcase, she snapped the locks into place. Behind her, the wind and rain were rattling the window. “I never reveal my sources.”

“Isn’t that what a journalist usually says?”

“Where do you think they got it from?” Olivia asked with a smug smile. Packed, she rose from her chair. “I’m not sure if my kids can recognize me in the daylight. Although...” She glanced out the window again. The world outside the small, one-story building that housed her law firm had suddenly become shrouded in darkness. “There’s not all that much daylight to be had, and it’s getting scarcer by the minute.”

Raising her voice, Olivia called out to her partner. “Cash, we’re locking up.”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the lights overhead went out.

“None too soon, if you ask me,” Cash Taylor commented, poking his head into the office. “Is it just us,” he asked, flipping the light switch off and on with no change in illumination, “or do you think the whole town’s lost power?”

“Lord, I hope not,” Olivia commented with feeling. “The only thing worse than cooking over a hot stove is not having a hot stove to cook over.”

“You have a fireplace, don’t you?” Cassidy asked as she gathered a selected stack of papers together so she could review them that evening.

As far as Olivia was concerned, a fireplace was good for one thing and one thing only. “Yes, but that’s for cuddling in front of with my husband after the kids are asleep in bed.”

Cassidy grinned at this human glimpse into her boss’s life. “In a pinch, it can also be used for cooking dinner as long as you’re not trying to make anything too elaborate.”

“Elaborate?” Olivia echoed. “I’d just settle for it being passably edible.”

Now that she thought of it, Olivia had never made any reference to a meal she’d taken pride in preparing. The woman’s talents clearly lay in another direction.

“Maybe you should stop at Miss Joan’s on your way home,” Cassidy suggested tactfully.

Cash seconded the suggestion. “It’ll give my stepgrandmother something to talk about.”

“No offense, Cash, and I obviously haven’t known her nearly as long as either one of you have, but I’ve never known Miss Joan to ever be in need for something to talk about. She’s everybody’s go-to person when it comes to getting the latest information about absolutely everything.”

There was a sudden flash of lightning followed almost immediately by an ominous crack of thunder, causing all of them to involuntarily glance up.

“Well, if we don’t all get a move on, this rain just might turn nasty enough to give everybody something to talk about—provided they’re able to talk and aren’t under five feet of water,” Cash observed.

With one hand at each of their backs, Cash ushered the two women out of the main office and toward the front door.

The moment she opened the front door, Olivia knew that she’d made the right call to have them leave early. The rain was coming down relentlessly.

It was the kind of rain that placed raising an umbrella against the downpour in the same category as tilting at windmills. Olivia turned up the hood on her raincoat. Cash did the same with his jacket. Cassidy had come in wearing her Stetson, a high school graduation gift from her oldest brother, Connor. She held on to it with one hand while pressing her shoulder bag with its newly packed contents against her with the other.

Locking up, Olivia turned away from the door. She was having second thoughts about her estimation of the rain’s ferocity.

“Maybe you should come stay at our place,” she suggested to Cassidy.

“And interfere with your plans for the fireplace? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Cassidy responded with a grin. “I’ll be fine. See you in the morning, boss.”

The rain seemed to only grow fiercer, coming down at an angle and lashing at anyone brave enough to venture out of their shelter.

Taking two steps toward her vehicle, Olivia turned toward her intern. “Last chance!” she called out to Cassidy.

Rather than answer her, Cassidy just waved her hand overhead as she made a dash for her four-by-four. Reaching it, she climbed in behind the wheel and pulled the door closed behind her.

Utterly soaked, Cassidy sat for a moment, listening to the rain pounding on the roof of her vehicle. This really was pretty bad, she silently acknowledged. Half of her expected to see an ark floating by with an old man at its helm, surrounded by two of everything.

Well, she couldn’t just sit here, she told herself. She needed to get home. Pulling the seat-belt strap up and over her shoulder, she tucked the metal tongue into the slot.

“I better get going before Connor and Cole come out looking for me,” she murmured. Connor got antsy when he didn’t have anything to do.

Starting her vehicle, Cassidy turned on her lights and put the manual transmission into Drive before she turned on the radio.

Apparently music wasn’t going to be on the agenda that afternoon, Cassidy realized with a sigh. The reception was intermittent at best—and hardly that for the most part. When a high-pitch squawk replaced the song that kept fading in and out, Cassidy gave up and shut off the radio.

With the rain coming down even harder, she turned the windshield wipers up to their highest setting. The blades all but groaned as they slapped against the glass, fighting what was turning out to be a losing battle against the rain.

Exercising caution—something, to hear them talk, that all three of her brothers seemed to believe she didn’t possess—Cassidy reduced her speed to fifteen miles an hour.

Three miles out of town, her visibility went from poor to next to nonexistent.

At this rate, it would take her forever to get home, and the rain was just getting worse. She needed to hole up someplace until the rain subsided. Remembering an old, empty cabin she and the others used to play in as kids, Cassidy decided that it might be prudent to seek at least temporary shelter there until the worst of the rain let up.

The cabin was less than half a mile away.

If the rain didn’t let up, she thought when the cabin finally came into view, then she would be stuck there for the duration of this downpour with nothing to eat except for the half consumed candy bar she had shoved into her bag.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had skipped lunch.

Leaning forward in her seat, she looked up at the sky—or what she could make out of it.

“C’mon, let up,” she coaxed. “The forecast specifically said ‘rain.’ It didn’t say a word about ‘floods’ or the end of the world.”

Cassidy sighed again, even louder this time. She held on to the steering wheel tightly as she struggled to keep her vehicle from veering off the trail. Ordinarily, veering off wouldn’t have been a big deal, but just as Olivia had predicted, the rain had become ferocious, turning what was normally a tiny creek into a rapidly flowing river.

One wrong turn on her part, and her truck would be in that river.

And then, just when it seemed to be at its very worst, the rain began to let up, going from what had all the characteristics of becoming a full-blown monsoon to just a regular fierce downpour. Even so, Cassidy knew she needed to get her truck onto higher ground before she found herself suddenly stuck and unable to drive—or worse.

The cabin was still her best bet. From what she remembered—and she really hadn’t paid all that much attention to this aspect when she was a kid—the cabin was on high ground.

Most likely not high enough to enable her to get a signal for her cell phone, she thought darkly. What that meant was that she wouldn’t be able to call Connor to assure him that she was all right. As much as she talked about being independent and being able to take care of herself, she didn’t like doing that to her big brother. Connor had been both mother and father to the rest of them for the last ten years. What that had entailed was giving up his own dreams of a college education and a subsequent career. He’d done it in order to become their guardian when their father died three days after Connor had turned eighteen.

While she was grateful to Connor for everything he had done and appreciated the fact that he cared about her and the others, she was equally convinced that Connor needed a family of his own—a wife and at least a couple of kids, if not more—to care for and to worry about.

About to turn her truck in order to get it to higher ground, Cassidy thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was bobbing up and down in the swollen water.

She thought it was rectangular—and pink.

You’re losing your mind, Cassidy silently lectured herself.

The next second, her body went rigid as she heard something.

She couldn’t have just heard—

No, that was just her imagination, getting the better of her. That was probably just some animal making that sound. It couldn’t have been—

A baby!

“Damn it,” Cassidy bit out, “that couldn’t be—” And yet, she really thought she heard a baby crying.

You’re really letting your imagination run away with you, she silently lectured.

Even though she was convinced she was wrong, Cassidy knew she couldn’t just shrug it off. She had to look again—just in case.

It wasn’t safe to turn the truck on a saturated road. Cassidy did the only thing she could in order to give herself peace of mind.

She threw her truck into Reverse.

Driving backward as carefully as she was able, she watched the road to see if she could catch sight of the bobbing pink whatever-it-was.

And then, her eyes glued to her rearview mirror, Cassidy saw it.

She wasn’t crazy; there was something bobbing up and down in the water. Something rectangular and, from what she could make out, it appeared to be plastic. A plastic tub was caught up in the rushing waters and, for some reason that seemed to defy all logic, it was still upright and afloat.

If that wasn’t miraculous enough, Cassidy could have sworn that the baby she’d thought she’d heard was in the bobbing pink rectangular plastic tub.

With the truck still in Reverse, Cassidy stepped on the gas pedal, pushing it as far down as she dared and prayed.

Prayed harder than she ever had before.