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“You must have seen it more than I have.”
“Only because you’re stuck too much in that office.” An impish gleam lit his eyes. “Just look at what you’ve been missing—mud up to your eyeballs, rain pouring down your neck, and your clothes soaked to the skin.”
“I’ll take this over choking dust and heat any day, and you know—” Distracted by a set of headlight beams slashing through the rain curtain, Jessy never finished the sentence. “Who could that be?”
Five feet from the corner upright of the tarpaulin roof, the ranch pickup rolled to a stop and the headlights and engine were switched off. A figure in a hood
ed slicker emerged from the cab and hurried, head down, to the tarp’s shelter at a running walk. The head came up, and a hand pushed the hood partway back to reveal Sloan’s smiling face.
“Hi, Jessy, Laredo.” She crossed to them and cupped her wet hands over the barrel to absorb some of the fire’s warmth. “It is pouring. There’s two inches in the rain gauge at The Homestead, but I’ll bet more than that fell out here.”
Her easy chatter eliminated Jessy’s initial concern that some problem had come up at headquarters. If there was any, she sensed that Sloan was unaware of it.
“With all this rain, I know you aren’t here to get your first look at a roundup.” Jessy smiled. “So I’m guessing you’re here to tell Trey about your doctor’s appointment this morning.”
Sloan’s quick laugh was an admission of sorts. “I knew he’d be late coming home tonight, and I didn’t want to wait. Cat said he’d probably be grabbing a cup of coffee sometime around the middle of the afternoon, so I thought I’d talk to him then.”
“Now that you mention it,” Laredo began, “he’s due for a break about now. I’ll go get him.”
“You don’t have to,” she rushed.
“That’s all right. It’s time we headed back out anyway.” He downed a final drink of his coffee and dumped the remainder on the ground.
“He’s right,” Jessy agreed. “We’ve had our break.”
Sloan watched them disappearing into the rain and waited in eager anticipation for that first glimpse of Trey. A good five minutes passed before she spied his familiar shape approaching the cook shack on foot.
The minute he stepped beneath the tarp’s roof, his hands came up to catch hold of her upper arms while his eyes drank in the sight of her upturned face. The radiance of her smile reached out to him and gripped his throat with an aching tightness. Not for the first time, Trey was reminded of the old claim that pregnancy made a woman seem more beautiful and more desirable. And the soft drape of her raincoat’s hood only seemed to enhance the Madonna-like quality she possessed.
“You crazy little idiot, what are you doing driving out here in all this rain?” His smile made it clear that he was glad she had.
“Surely you didn’t think I’d get lost,” Sloan chided him. “How could I, when I had my map with me?”
The hand-drawn map was her pride and joy, one that she had created herself after studying old aerial photographs and topo maps of the ranch. While not precisely to scale, it was accurate down to the last road. Locations of various camps and landmarks were all marked and identified by name. It was next to impossible now for Sloan to get lost when she ventured from the Triple C headquarters.
“Drove straight to the spot, did you,” Trey guessed, taking a certain pride in the time and effort she had put into the map.
“I did,” Sloan asserted with a jaunty smugness.
“That’s what I thought. So what did the doctor have to say this morning? Momma and baby are doing fine, I hope?”
“We are. But I failed to mention one thing before you left this morning.” Sloan attempted to assume a serious expression, but the deep blue of her eyes never lost its bright gleam.
“And what would that be?” he prompted when she failed to continue.
“I almost don’t want to tell you, because I know how you’re going to gloat. You see, we did an ultrasound this morning—”
“It’s a boy.” Water from his hat dripped onto her face as Trey dipped his head and stole a warm kiss. The love and pride of a father was in his eyes when he drew back. “I knew all along we would have a son. Like I told you, it’s tradition.
“You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you,” Sloan teased.
“Oh, I’m definitely glad it’s a boy, but I would have loved a daughter just as much,” Trey assured her.
“Well, she’ll have to wait, because we aren’t having twins.”
The drumbeat of rain on the tightly stretched canvas tarp picked up its tempo. Runoff cascaded over the edge of its down-tipped front, creating a long, sheer curtain of water. Some distance away, cattle lowed in confusion.
Trey was oblivious to all of it, his attention centered on Sloan. “You don’t mind that it isn’t a girl, do you?”
