Cowboy Take Me Away (Rough Riders 16)
Page 123Carolyn had spread out the ranch books on the dining room table, lost in numbers and contracts, knowing she had to get it all straight before she could start plugging the information into the computer.
The front door slammed and she didn’t bother to look up, figuring it was Carson.
Footsteps—angry ones by the sounds of it—echoed and stopped.
Aha! There was that lease. She squinted even though she had her cheater eyeglasses on. Wait a minute. This document was supposed to have three pages, not just one. As she shuffled through another stack, she heard the liquor cabinet open.
“Sweetheart, you must be having an awful day if you’re hitting the Jameson before noon.”
“I feel a celebration is in order, but mostly I just need a f**kin’ shot to calm my nerves.”
Carolyn’s head came up so fast her glasses slid off her nose and bounced against her chest, caught by the chain. “Kimi? Ah, why are you breaking into my liquor cabinet when I know there’s booze at your place?”
Kimi scowled and knocked back a shot.
“Are you and Cal fighting?”
“You know Cal and I don’t fight.”
“Which would explain why you’re so upset and why you’re sucking down my whiskey.”
“You quit smoking thirty-some years ago. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m a grandma.”
Now she pinpointed the source of her sister’s agitation: her son. “Did Kane just spring this ‘you’re gonna be a grandma’ thing on you?”
Kimi shook her head. “That’s where it’s screwed up. It’s not Kane. It’s Kade. And it’s not ‘I’m gonna be a grandma’; it’s I am a grandma. To a baby girl. I saw her today, Caro. A beautiful, perfect three-month-old girl with dark hair and the second I saw those blue eyes I knew she was a McKay.”
“Where’d you see her?”
“In Sundance, but I guess they live outside of Moorcroft.”
Confused, Carolyn said, “They? Who is the mama?”
“Skylar Ellison. She owns Sky Blue, that all-natural beauty product place. Her sister is that tattoo artist India from India’s Ink. Anyway, Skylar is the one who broke Kade’s heart last year and why he volunteered to leave. He had no idea she was pregnant. Since this is Kade, I believe him because no way would he walk away from a woman carryin’ his child even if she stomped on his damn heart. No way. So I just stormed into the house and blew the whole thing about him bein’ a daddy. Now he’s on his way into town to deal with her and meet his baby girl.”
“Kimi, that’s a good thing. Kade will happily own up to his responsibilities. You know that.” She squeezed her sister’s hand. “A baby girl! How fun will that be?”
Kimi smiled. “Damn straight it’ll be fun. We need to go shopping. Wait.” She patted her face. “Do I look like a grandma? Lord, do I look as old as you?”
“Oh, hush. You know you look good, way better than me. Which ain’t fair. You should have ten times more frown lines and gray hair since you had three times as many kids as me.”
“I feel it most days.” She leaned back in her chair. “Does Cal know?”
She shook her head. “I came straight here. I figured after Kade talked to Skylar and saw his daughter, he’d call and let me know the details.”
“Think Cal will be shocked?”
“Yeah. ’Cause like you said, I’d see Kane in this situation long before Kade.”
Carolyn helped herself to a shot glass and filled hers and Kimi’s with whiskey. Then she held her glass up for a toast. “Congrats.”
They both knocked back their shots.
Kimi cocked her head. “And…?”
“And what?”
“I know you were gonna say something else.”
“Oh, piss off.”
“But it’s true,” Carolyn said. “You and Cal went on what? Five dates and then you were pregnant?”
“Something like that. But there’d been a spark between us since the first time we met before you married Carson.” She wagged her finger in Carolyn’s face. “Although Cal swears he wasn’t a monk pining for me, he claims he was waitin’ for me to grow up and come back here.”
After their mother’s death, and after Kimi had graduated from St. Mary’s, she’d sworn she wasn’t returning to Wyoming. She worked in Alaska for a few years, until she finally got homesick. By that time Carolyn and Carson had two boys and no room for an extra houseguest so Kimi ended up staying with Cal. She’d pretty much moved in with him and had never left.
While at first Carolyn had been worried because Cal seemed to have a revolving door to his bedroom, she realized Cal really did worship her little sister. Oddly enough, so did Jed McKay. He had no issue with Cal and Kimi’s hurry-up wedding. And after Jed’s second heart attack, Kimi was the one who suggested he live with her and Cal and the twins.
Carolyn knew part of the reason Kimi had offered was because Carolyn had taken care of their mother the last year of her life. While Carson hadn’t agreed with Carolyn’s insistence on keeping Clara West’s dire diagnosis from her children, he’d honored the request—only after having words with Eli that forced him to hire part-time health care to alleviate the stress on Carolyn.
“What’re you thinkin’ about, Caro?”
She looked at her sister. “Mom dying. Then getting pregnant with Cord and how lucky we are that neither of us inherited her health problems. And I’m thankful that our husbands have always had our backs when it comes to the West/McKay family crap.”
“True. I’m glad that Dad didn’t ignore his McKay grandkids.”
“I think he did enjoy spending time with our boys.” Carson had told her many times to wash her hands of her father. But after having her own children, she’d come to understand how far a parent would go to protect those children. Like most men of his generation, her father’s communication skills were lacking; he just expected his word to be law with no discussion. She remembered one time her Aunt Hulda had told her that Eli West didn’t act out of maliciousness, just ignorance. That didn’t explain away his behavior, but it’d allowed Carolyn to forgive him and move on from the past.