Roz Fox - Mom's The Word

That made it a thousand times more foolish for her to be out here, in Jacob Cooper’s opinion. “You’re pregnant,” he said simply. “Why didn’t you tell me that? It puts a different spin on everything. You can’t stay here!”

Hayley wheeled away from him and extended shaking hands toward the fire. “It’s for me to say what I do, Jacob,” she said with renewed ferocity. “Go away and leave me alone.”

“Damn, Hayley. I worried when I thought it was just you. But you and a baby…It’s craziness for a pregnant woman to be this far from a good road. You need—”

“Thank you very much for your flattering opinion of my capabilities. But I don’t answer to you. It’s my baby. My responsibility. My decision.”

“Oh? So the kid doesn’t have a father?”

Hayley’s face crumpled. “He doesn’t want to be a husband or father. Besides, he forfeited all rights when he walked out on me.”

“I didn’t mean to open old wounds. It’s just—if it was me, I’d want to know I had a baby in the works. A man deserves the chance to do right by his child.”

A haunting smile came and went. “Not all men have your sense of responsibility, Jake.”

Dear Reader,

Before I moved to Tucson, I subscribed to the city’s newspaper because I wanted to find out more about the community. I read an article that intrigued me so much, I cut it out and saved it. The article concerned a woman who’d discovered blue opals on a remote site near the Mexican border. This idea kept nagging at me, insisting there was a story to be told.

This is not Cheri Saunders’s story, although her real-life adventure is, of course, fascinating, and you might learn part of it if you visit Cheri at the Jay-R Opal Mine Art Gallery in Huachuca City, Arizona. My tale about Hayley Ryan and Jake Cooper is totally a work of fiction. I don’t even know where the Jay-R Opal Mine is located; I suspect it’s a well-kept secret.

Any mistakes in descriptions of digging the ore and polishing or setting stones are mine alone. I did visit the wilderness ranch area around the old ghost town of Ruby. It was desolate and, in the true sense of the word, awesome. I think I know how Hayley—a pregnant woman determined to make her way alone—would feel while she camped there.

This is really a story about love. And about how Hayley, left pregnant and destitute by a scoundrel husband, learns to trust Jake with her life and that of her child. I hope you enjoy my efforts on Hayley’s behalf.

I love hearing from readers. You can write me at the address below or e-mail me.

Roz Denny Fox

P.O. Box 17480-101

Tucson, Arizona 85731

e-mail: rdfox@worldnet.att.net

Mom’s the Word

Roz Denny Fox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Denny. I couldn’t have written any of the previous books without your love and support. But with this one I really owe you—for driving to ghost towns where there weren’t any roads. For finding a spring that, according to the map, was supposed to exist but turned out not to be so easily located. And especially for not complaining when the water was too deep to cross and we needed to reach the highway we could see in the distance. You probably felt like leaving me there, but you still had a smile after bouncing twenty long, dusty miles over terrain that was really only accessible on horseback. Thanks, with all my heart.

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

“YOU’RE PREGNANT, Hayley.” Kindly old Dr. Gerrard looked over the top of his half glasses at the young woman seated on the examining table. “Given your circumstances, my dear, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings.”

Hayley Ryan stopped pleating folds in the loose-fitting paper gown and gasped as she spread both hands protectively across her stomach. “But I…I’ve been losing weight. Not gaining. Are you sure your diagnosis is correct?”

The doctor patted Hayley’s suntanned hand. “My practice here in Tombstone may be winding down, child, but I haven’t been wrong in predicting blessed events in thirty years. Why, twenty-six years ago your mama sat in this very room, asking the same question.” He chuckled. “Nine months later out you popped.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that…that you don’t know what you’re doing.” Hayley swallowed hard to keep from crying. “It’s just that this isn’t the best time in my life to be learning I’ll soon have another mouth to feed. I’m not sure how I’ll take care of myself let alone a baby.”

Dr. Gerrard sobered at once. “I know. Gossip’s running rampant about how your husband left town with that sassy-faced Cindy Trent from the nail-painting place.” The doctor removed his glasses and gazed with unfocused sympathy into Hayley’s turbulent eyes. “What kind of man, I’d like to know, leaves his wife while she’s still grieving from burying her grandpa? I said it before, girl, and I’ll say it again—Joe Ryan’s worse than a snake-oil salesman.”

Hayley glanced away. She could do without having that fact driven home. A little more than a year ago, Grandpa O’Dell and many of his friends had cautioned her against marrying Joe. If she had a dime for every person in Tombstone who’d warned her Joe Ryan was the kind of guy who blew into town on his own wind and would likely blow out the same way, she wouldn’t be sitting here now, alone and worrying about how to feed herself and the baby Joe had planted before he pulled his vanishing act. “It’s easier for me to see now that Joe only married me so he could get his hands on the Silver Cloud mine,” Hayley murmured.

“Big Ben O’Dell would turn over in his grave if he knew that four-flushing louse stole his mine and left you in this fix.”

“What’s done is done. There’s no use crying over it, Dr. Gerrard.” Even as the words left Hayley’s lips, tears slid down her cheeks.

“This isn’t something I’d normally suggest—” Dr. Gerrard hesitated “—but you might think about terminating the pregnancy. I don’t perform the procedure, but I’ll recommend a reputable clinic in Phoenix. I calculate the child is due around Christmas.” He turned and picked up a calendar. “Let’s see, it’s June. You’re eight to ten weeks along. You’ll have to decide soon. The surgery does carry some risk, but you’re still within the limits set by the state.”

Hayley looked horrified and linked her fingers across her stomach. “I appreciate your concern, really I do. But the good Lord entrusted me with a new life. I expect He’ll eventually put my feet on a path that’ll allow me to take care of myself and this baby.”

“I wish I had your faith, Hayley. If the Man upstairs takes care of His own, He shouldn’t have let Joe and that floozy forge your name on the Silver Cloud’s deed. Wasn’t more’n six months ago that Ben told me he felt so poorly he’d decided to sign it to you. Joe was sittin’ right here. If you ask me, that’s when the lowlife hatched his plan.”

“Probably so. Then I suppose you could say I brought this mess on myself,” she said glumly. “Gramps didn’t like Joe to drive him to his breathing treatments. That day, Dee Dee Johnson phoned and asked me to go to the gem show in Tucson with her. I’d never been to a gem show, even though I’ve lived in Arizona all my life. I practically begged Joe to take Gramps for me.”

“Don’t be taking the blame, girl. Joe’s the bad apple. He and that deputy-sheriff pal of his would steal a cross from the church if they thought they could melt it down and sell it for a dollar.”

“You don’t mean Shad Tilford?” Hayley frowned.

“The very same.”

“He…he’s in charge of my complaint. Sheriff Bonner assigned Shad to my case when I asked the law to go after Joe for half the money from the mine sale. Shad hasn’t been very helpful. He insinuated it was Joe’s right, as my husband, to sell the Silver Cloud. He finally said he’d issue a warrant to bring Joe in for questioning.”

“Humph! I’ll wager Tilford got a cut of the money Joe received from the deal. I’ve suspected for some time that our deputy’s a little shady. How he ever wound up wearing a badge is beyond me.”

“Francesca said he was an L.A. city cop before he came to Tombstone.”

“Just ’cause a chicken’s got wings don’t mean it can fly. I know Francesca has her fingers in a lot of pies in town, but how does she know Tilford didn’t dummy up those fancy recommendations he flashed at the city council meeting?”

Francesca Portolo was one of the former lady friends of Big Ben O’Dell, and as such, she’d had a hand in raising Hayley. Hayley’s dad had died in a mining accident when she was only a few weeks old. When she was three, her mother succumbed to breast cancer. Hayley’s maternal grandfather, Ben O’Dell, a local prospector who’d—more than once—lost his shirt mining for silver, gold and copper, became guardian and caretaker of his grandchild. He, in turn, relied on the women who fostered dreams of becoming the second Mrs. Ben O’Dell to raise Hayley.

She had a soft spot in her heart for all of them, but Francesca, owner of the local fabric store, had taught Hayley how to sew and cook. In addition, she’d shown a lonely little girl tricks she needed to know about becoming a woman. So Hayley tended to believe Francesca.

“Like I said, Dr. Gerrard, I’m in a fix and it’s not likely to change. Gramps had more downs than ups, but he was never a quitter. Nor am I. To tell you the truth, I’m relieved to hear it’s a baby making me sick and not cancer, like killed Mama. If my health’s otherwise okay, I’ll get by without Joe.”

“You’re fit as a fiddle, Hayley, though a mite on the skinny side. Ask Esther at the front desk for the booklet I give all my prospective mothers. Tells you pretty much everything you need to know about prenatal care. Follow the book’s advice and eat right. You’ll have a healthy baby.”

“Thanks, Dr. Gerrard. I guess my biggest worry, then, is how to earn the money to keep the rent paid, eat right and pay for my delivery.”

“Your grandpa and I went back a long way. I’ll arrange terms to make it easy on you, Hayley. Tell Esther that, too.”

Hayley smiled, the first real smile since her grandfather’s chronic asthma facilitated a persistent bacterial pneumonia from which he never recovered. Thank God, she thought, the world still held a few good men like Dr. Gerrard.

As Hayley left the clinic with the booklet and a supply of prenatal vitamins clutched in her hand, she set her sights on doing whatever was necessary to make a life for herself and the new life growing inside her.

Which seemed easier said than done when she returned home and found the mail had brought overdue notices on her utilities. Not only that, rent on the house was due in three days. She phoned Sheriff Bonner and voiced her concerns about Shad. Bonner said she had to be patient. They’d issued a warrant for Joe. It seemed he’d disappeared.

On hanging up, Hayley reviewed her options. She had the thousand dollars’ guilt money Joe had left on the kitchen table. In the note he’d clipped to it, he’d said the money should tide her over until she found work. Of course, Joe ignored the fact that in a community-property state, he owed her half of the two hundred and fifty thousand he’d received from a mining consortium. Even so, it wasn’t his taking the money that hurt so much. It was his betrayal. Never very outgoing, Hayley hadn’t made a lot of friends her own age before Joe had come to town selling mining explosives. She’d been flattered by his interest. He was good-looking and charismatic. And he’d centered his attention on her.