The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(35)

He looked at her like she might grab the baby and run away.

“I’m not going to steal the baby,” she said.

He reluctantly handed the bundle to her. She rushed into the living room and laid the baby down on the leather couch. She unwrapped the blanket slowly and looked at her.

A little girl.

She was wearing a white onesie and pink-striped socks, but nothing else.

She had a shock of dark hair on her head—just the standard newborn fuzz that could become any color, really, because most likely it would all fall out.

She was new. So new.

And her mother had left her. Mallory’s heart clenched tight. The idea that she had simply been... Shoved into Colt’s arms and discarded...

She’s not well.

It might have been the kindest thing Cheyenne could do for the baby right now.

That was true. If she was having some kind of an episode, than making sure the baby was under someone’s else’s care was probably a wise decision.

“She looks healthy. But of course I don’t know her birth weight or anything like that. I have a scale, though, up at my house. We can weigh her, and then after we feed her... We can continue to track her progress, anyway. But I still think we need to call Child Protective Services.”

“Why?” Colt asked.

“Colt, she abandoned her baby with you. And you still haven’t explained sufficiently to me why she would’ve done that. What your connection is.”

“I’m her godfather,” he said gruffly. “I’m the person that’s supposed to be left with the baby, aren’t I?”

Her stomach dropped, and she looked back down at her hands, momentarily unsure of what to say or do, which she didn’t like at all.

She liked to feel in control in these situations. The shock of it was what brought her own trauma back, when she’d spent a long time figuring out exactly how to do this work without overpersonalizing it.

Difficult situations had a healing effect for her. She could share her experiences without reliving them. She could help, which did something to soothe the helplessness that still resonated inside of her.

She hadn’t been able to save her own child.

But she’d saved countless others.

It was the legacy of her pregnancy that had never been meant to be, and she accepted that. Jared had never been all that supportive of her getting into midwifery. He’d thought she was hanging on to her pain, punishing herself. She’d never seen it that way. It was giving herself a chance to experience birth in a different way than she had herself. To be there. To be the one to bring babies, crying and breathing, into this world when she hadn’t been able to do that with her own.

“Oh,” she said. His claim he was the child’s godfather successfully shocked her. She hadn’t expected... That.

“Can’t a mother leave her baby with the baby’s godfather?”

“Well... Yes. I suppose so. But that didn’t look planned or... Or happy or anything.”

“It wasn’t,” he bit out.

“Can you just explain it to me?”

“Her dad’s dead,” Colt said.

And suddenly, Mallory realized. His friend. His friend who had died. The reason he was here.

“Oh... I’m sorry.”

He looked at her with a strange light in his eye.

“Iris told me,” she said.

“Great,” he said, his mouth a grim line. “Are you sure you didn’t tell her we had sex?”

She laughed, but not because she thought it was funny. Because it shocked her. “I did not tell her we had sex, Colt. Because that’s our business. Hell, I would say that’s barely our business. Because we are persistently not dealing with it, which seems like it should be a great idea. It should be the best thing to do. Because it shouldn’t keep continually being a problem. I rent a cabin from you up the top of the damn mountain. We should not have to deal with each other this often.”

“Go then,” he said.

“No,” she responded. “Babies are what I do.”

“You’re a midwife. You’re not a pediatrician.”

She bit back a litany of tart responses. Because they would not be beneficial or helpful. And what was needed right now was help.

“No. But this baby is less than six weeks old. And I do home visits and check out on babies up until this age. I have the basic equipment to do a medical check. And no, I’m not a pediatrician, but as long as the baby is healthy—and I have no reason to believe she’s not—then I am perfectly qualified to handle this.” She breathed out a long, hard breath. “Anyway, it’s not like I became a midwife because I don’t like babies.”

“Why are you a midwife?”

Well, this was getting closer to her issues than she wanted him to get. She had an answer that didn’t include exposing the whole story of her past, but right now she couldn’t think of it.

“I like to take care of people.”

That was part of it.

And for some reason right now it didn’t feel less loaded than the whole truth. Like the response that had risen up inside of her in the bakery with Iris over her thoughts about Griffin, Jared and the past decision she’d made, the answer suddenly felt like it was made of creeping, treacherous roots. Roots that might drag her down, and she didn’t want that. Not now. She had to be competent. She had to be midwife Mallory, not slightly a mess just changed her entire life Mallory.