A Baby Changes Everything Read Free Page B

Savannah said under her breath, but Cruz was too far away to hear.
    Angry tears stung her eyes as she began to clear the table.

Two
    S avannah made it upstairs less than half an hour later, after clearing the table and putting away all the untouched food. She’d gone to the trouble of cooking mainly for Cruz. The way her stomach was behaving, it didn’t welcome eating no matter what time of day she tried. The best she could hope for was to keep down a few crackers at a time.
    Crossing the threshold into their room, she found him facedown on the bed, his face pressed against a pillow. Cruz was sound asleep.
    She sighed. Her husband looked as if he’d crashed on the bed the second he came into the room. His body was sprawled on top of the covers, his opened shirt fanned out on either side of him like denim wings. Savannah shook her head. Cruz hadn’t even bothered getting undressed, except for his boots.
    The air in the master bedroom was oppressively heavy. It felt sticky, still ripe with the day’s humidity. Savannah walked to the windows on either side of the king-size bed and opened them as far as they would go, hoping to get a little air circulating through the room.
    Nothing happened. If there was a breeze in the vicinity, it was avoiding them.
    Not bothering to shed the loose-fitting sundress she had on, Savannah lay down on the other side of the bed and pretended that all was well in her life.
    Â 
    â€œWhy didn’t you put your nightgown on last night?”
    It was the first question she heard when she walked into the kitchen the next morning.
    Savannah felt groggy. Her stomach was just now inching its way down from her throat after being lodged there for the better part of the last fifteen minutes, as she’d knelt over the toilet bowl. She’d then crept down the darkened stairs, making her way through the all but pitch-black house, guided by the light coming from the kitchen.
    Cruz was sitting at the table, eating. He’d fixed his own breakfast. Again.
    So now she felt useless as well as harried and ignored.
    â€œYou noticed.” Savannah hadn’t meant to let the cryptic words escape, especially in that tone, but they had.
    A piece of toast raised to his lips, Cruz looked at her as if he thought her pregnancy had somehow loosened a few screws in her head.
    â€œOf course I noticed. You were lying right there beside me.”
    Savannah shrugged as she opened the refrigerator andmoved a few things around. “Since you were wearing your clothes, it seemed like the thing to do.”
    Taking out a container of milk, she poured the glassful she forced herself to drink every morning. As she raised it to her lips, she felt her stomach tighten in rebellion.
    Taking her words to be a criticism, Cruz did his best to stifle the annoyance that rose up like a tidal wave inside of him. He’d never had a long fuse, but lately his temper was exceedingly short. “I was exhausted.”
    Savannah put the container back in the refrigerator and sat down at the table, joining him. “You’re always exhausted.”
    His back went up, even though he continued eating. “Running a ranch takes a lot out of a man.”
    Savannah set the glass down after only two sips. She absolutely hated milk. “Then let someone help you run it.”
    He used the edge of his toast to coax the last of his scrambled eggs onto his fork. “You mean like you?” He shook his head as he took another bite. “You’re already doing the bookkeeping. And you’ve got Luke and the house, not to mention that you’re—”
    Savannah cut him off. How could someone so smart be so thick? “I know exactly what I’ve got to do.” The words rang a bit too sharply in her ears, but she couldn’t seem to control the tone of her voice this morning. “And I didn’t mean me. I meant one of the hands.” She thought a second. “What about