“You said you met him at a bar in Fort Worth. Which one? Billy Bob’s?”
“Why? What difference could it possibly make?” The instant Cat asked the question, a cold shaft of suspicion pierced her. “You’re going to hire someone to look for him, aren’t you?”
He didn’t deny it. “Your child should have a name.”
“My child will be a Calder,” she flared. “I can’t think of a better name than that.”
Chase straightened from the desk and walked around it to once again take his seat. Only then did his level gaze return to her. “Being a Calder is difficult enough without being born a bastard, father unknown.”
From the entryway came the sound of the front door closing, followed by the approaching footsteps and the rattling chink of spurs. Deaf to all of it, Cat stepped up to the desk, her body rigid with anger.
“Don’t you dare look for him, Father.” Her voice vibrated with barely contained fury. “If you do, I swear I’ll walk out of this house and I won’t come back. You’ll never see your grandchild. Do you hear? Never!”
Ty paused in the doorway, his glance running from one to the other with a puzzled look. “What are you talking about, Cat? What grandchild?”
She swung half around, throwing him a white-hot glare. “The one I’m having,” she snapped. “Father can give you all the sordid details. I’m not up to another inquisition.”
She delivered the last as she swept past him out the door, the heels of her boots striking the floor in hard, quick taps. Ty’s gaze followed her, then swung back to examine the grim set of his father’s features. Frowning, he took off his hat and ventured into the study as the slamming of the front door resounded through the house.
“What Cat just said—” Ty began warily, sensing trouble.
“It’s true.” A long, disgruntled sigh whispered from him. With a wave of his hand, Chase motioned Ty into a leather-covered chair and related the situation. Ty listened, breaking in now and then with a sharp question of his own. The answers didn’t please him any more than they had Chase.
Disturbed and irritated, Ty rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair and sank against the tall chair back. “Damn her,” he muttered in a windy rush. “What the hell was going through her mind? Didn’t she consider the consequences—” He stopped and shook his head, releasing a humorless laugh. “Cat never considers the consequences, only what she wants at the moment. When the hell is she going to grow up?”
“Give her some slack, Ty,” Chase replied in mild censure. “Youth is a time for making mistakes. We’ve all made our share—and, hopefully, learned from them.”
The memories of a few of his own flashed through Ty’s mind and took away some of the heat toward his sister. “What are you going to do now?”
“See if I can’t find out who the father is. Discreetly, of course,” he added when Ty’s eyebrows shot up.
“As stubborn as Cat is, if she finds out you’re looking for him, she’s likely to do what she threatened and walk out.”
“She might,” Chase agreed with a nod. “Which means I’ll have to take steps to make certain she doesn’t.”
“It won’t be easy, unless…” Ty paused, a sudden thought occurring to him. “Are you planning to send Cat away to have the baby? If she was gone long enough, you might be able
to pass the baby off as Repp’s. People around here would accept that and not be so quick to condemn her.”
“That’s a choice Cat will have to make.” Lying went against the grain. As much as Chase wanted to protect his daughter, that was an option he would never suggest to her. “Where’s Jessy?”
“They drove the horses out to winter pasture.” Ty glanced at the wall clock. “She should be back any time now.”
“Let her know what’s happened,” Chase told him. “I have a feeling Cat could use a woman to talk to now.” He paused, his mouth quirking. “Ironic, isn’t it? I always thought you and Jessy would give me my first grandchild. Instead, it’s Cat.”
The sharpness of the wind stung Cat’s cheeks as she crossed the ranch yard. The coldness of its breath warned of winter’s fast approach and took much of the heat from her anger. Slowing her steps, Cat turned up the collar of her coat and glanced at the leaden clouds overhead. The threat of snow was in them. She wasn’t surprised. Winter came early and stayed late in the northern plains. This year she had the feeling it would be the longest winter in her life. Despair came crowding in. Cat pushed it back and struck out for the long building and its attendant small paddocks that doubled as both a first-aid center for the workers and an animal hospital.
A stocky, wide-hipped cowboy sat atop the fence rail of an outside pen at the hospital barn. Recognizing Wyatt Yates, the manager of the horse-breeding operation, Cat angled away from the barn’s entrance toward the pen.
“How is Sandstone?” she asked without preamble and stepped onto the bottom rail to look inside the pen. The pregnant sorrel mare stood in the far corner, her head drooping in a dull and listless pose, the injured back leg lifted off the ground.
“No better. Her temperature’s higher than it was this morning.” Wyatt raised a cigarette to his mouth, his hand cupping it to protect the burning tip from the wind.
“The infection has spread through her system, then,” Cat murmured more to herself than to Wyatt. She glanced at the swollen area near the mare’s hock, the site of the small cut that had initially seemed so harmless.
Wyatt nodded once, somewhat grimly. “Doc Rivers is coming out to look at her. There isn’t going to be any choice, though. We’ll have to start pumping some heavy doses of antibiotics into her.”
“She could lose the foal.” For the first time Cat thought about the new life growing inside her own body.