Читать книгу: «Daddy By Decision»

Chapter One

It was all those damned weddings.

Since the second wedding in the Tyler family, Buck had been as itchy and cranky as a bull stomping and snorting in the pasture. Shoot, who’d have expected ol’ easygoing I’m-arambling-man Hank, the baby of the family, to waltz Jilly Elliott off to the altar in the wake of T.J. and Callie’s wedding?

And all those kids running around! A man couldn’t take two steps without tripping over Gracie or Charlie or Hank’s fifteen-month-old twin terrors, Duke and Gorp. And Hank couldn’t stop patting Jilly’s swollen belly where Flynn-to-be waited to make his appearance.

Buck picked up a package of crackers and a jar of cheese glop, scowling at the boxes of baby diapers stacked in front of him. Babies! Hell, Hank and T.J. were repopulating the whole damned county all on their own. He stared for a moment at the carton. The pink-cheeked infant’s smile was goofily appealing, the sparkle in the chocolate brown eyes—He stopped his thoughts.

Gritting his-teeth, Buck shoved his sweat-stained hat back on his head. Who was he kidding? What he needed couldn’t be found in an all-night convenience mart. He sighed and scratched at the mosquito bite on the back of his neck.

Hell of a note to find himself feeling like an outsider in his own family. He thought he’d gotten over that sense of being on the other side of the fence a long time ago, but there was nothing like a long night alone to bring back all those old feelings, that bottomless pit of loneliness welling inside and pulling him into its emptiness. He rubbed his bristly chin irritably. Maybe what ailed him was nothing more than the full moon making him restless and dissatisfied with his life, with himself.

He’d never missed one of his mother’s birthday parties, and he wouldn’t have missed this one, not really, not even with this blue funk settling over him. But still—

An elbow jostled him. “Sorry,” a husky voice muttered. Caught by the scent of flowers and cinnamon, he glanced up, welcoming the escape from his thoughts, but the woman had vanished behind a towering stack of jars of salsa, leaving behind her only a light fragrance and the memory of that low, soft bedroom voice.

Buck slapped the jar of cheese spread back on the shelf and glared at the bright fluorescence of the Palmetto Mart’s nighttime world.

He’d been a fool to leave the shabby isolation of his motel room. Nothing in that motel room to distract him, that was the problem, and he couldn’t stand staring at that two-bit painting of some pink and green tropical landscape one more second. In the face of those Pepto-Bismol pinks and puke greens, the Palmetto Mart had seemed like an oasis.

“Frankie? Where did you hide the chunky peanut butter?” The husky voice rasped again along Buck’s raw nerve endings, a wet-dog shiver of a reaction.

“Moved it, Miz McDonald. Next aisle over.” Frankie’s voice cracked on the last word.

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” Shoes squeaked against the floor, punctuating the low voice.

Turning into the adjacent aisle as Frankie spoke, Buck saw a slim back and nicely rounded tush moving slowly down the aisle in front of him. And a very nice little tush it was, he decided, gratefully looking away from bright-eyed baby faces to study the slow sway of those curves under paint-spattered cutoffs. The frayed ends dangled against smooth, tanned thighs that curved down to sturdy calves and narrow feet in ragged sneakers and neon purple socks.

Buck blinked. Maybe it was the Palmetto Mart’s lighting. Nope. At second glance, the socks were still blindingly purple. With small black and green race cars stitched into the sides. His gaze lifted to the slim, soft arm reaching for a bottle of orange Gatorade on the top shelf. With a quick stride he closed the space between him and the owner of the sweetest tush he’d seen in years. And then, too, there was that quite remarkable voice that slithered along his skin. Maybe the Palmetto had more possibilities than he’d imagined.

Leaning against the display, one arm balanced along the top, he gestured to the shelf. “Need a helping hand?”

“What I need is to be taller. Or, absent that miracle, I could use a stepladder,” she said with a self-mocking lift of her shoulder. She started to turn toward him and then went very still, her head dipping down.

“No ladders around. Just me.”

“I can manage,” she said in a cool little voice. Threequarters turned away from him, her face averted, she stared at the blue basket holding a loaf of bread and a shrink-wrapped miniature car. Streaky brown hair straggled loose from a scraped-back ponytail. Obscuring his view of her face, curly tendrils flopped, floated, and coiled with her jerky movements. Wild hair, warm brown and gold, the kind that made a man want to twine its strands around his fingers, stroke its silkiness and bury his face in its softness.

Devilment and the long night stretching emptily in front of him loosened his tongue. Honesty made him admit to himself that maybe, too, he wanted to get a rise out of her after her cool dismissal. So, stretching out the syllables and slouching in the best Clint Eastwood tradition, he drawled, “No problem, little missy.”

Her shoulders tightened, nothing more than a movement under her white shirt, and he wondered if “little missy” was going to stomp on his boots. Diverted, he didn’t move, merely waited to see what she would do.

Not looking at him, she stretched on tiptoe and tilted the bottle next to the one he held. “As I said, cowboy, I’ll manage.”

Cowboy? Intrigued, he straightened. Little missy had a razor-edged tongue. He had an urge to upend a broom, pull out a bit of straw and stick it into his mouth. Or find a chaw of tobacco. Anything to complete the image. With a fair degree of effort, he managed to kill the urge to thicken his drawl into molasses, but he couldn’t resist the impulse to tweak her. “Like I said, sugar, no problem.”

Grabbing the bottle with a small, square hand, she snubbed him with four throaty syllables. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

A peculiar sense of familiarity tugged at his memory and killed the teasing. Frowning, he leaned toward her. “Pardon me, ma’am, but—”

Slipping around the corner of the aisle, she disappeared behind a cardboard drop of Fourth of July sparklers and American flags. Brushed by her hip, one of the flags stirred, moved in the breeze of her passing, then collapsed among the red, white and blues.

Well, damn. Startled by the swiftness of her departure, Buck blinked again.

Her message was real, real clear. A sensible man would have picked up his corn puffs and his beer and hit the road. Buck meant to leave. Hell, he knew that’s exactly what he should do. But he wasn’t quite ready to face Maxie’s Tropical Motel, and, anyway, something about that throaty voice kept nudging him in her direction.

So he wasn’t a sensible man. What else was new?

Watching her progression through the Palmetto Mart in the silvered metal camera in a corner overhead, he ambled back past the cheese spread and crackers, past the diapers and jars of creamed this and pureed that until he reached the middle of the aisle nearest the door and the checkout counter.

Face-to-face with a row of very personal feminine products, he paused and shrugged. Probably not the best spot for him to linger. He moved back down the aisle toward the shelf of roasted, sugared and peppered peanuts. With one eye on the camera’s black-and-white screen and the twitch of little missy’s gray denim, he fumbled for a jar of salted pecans and stuffed it on top of the six-pack under his arm. Manly-man stuff, all right. Cowboy stuff.

Strolling toward the counter, he stepped behind her, waiting patiently as she unloaded peanut butter, white bread, milk, Gatorade and the toy car. Holding herself stiffly, she angled against him, away from him, her narrow shoulders hunched forward, protectively. In the TV screen above them, Buck saw the grainy gray blur of her downcast face.

Frowning, he narrowed his eyes and studied the screen while that scent of cinnamon and pulse-beat warm skin beguiled him.

“You’re gonna need a dollar and fifty-eight cents more. Or you could put something back.”

“Drat.” Gold and brown strands of hair trembled as she dug into her patchwork quilt purse. “I left in a big old hurry, Frankie.” She heaved wallet, daybook and three paperbacks onto the counter. “Fiddle, I can’t even find my checkbook. Phooey.”

The skinny teenager behind the counter lifted his shoulders. “Sorry, Miz McDonald, I’d loan you a couple of dollars, but I’m broke.” His grin was sheepish. “Me and Eva went out last night.”

“Ah, I see. Big date, huh?” A rawhide dog bone joined the stack on the counter. As Buck watched the monitor, she looked up at Frankie and a smile flashed across the screen. In that second Buck had a clear view of a square face with a stubborn jawline, a wide, generous mouth and enormous eyes behind round, metal-framed glasses. The screen blurred again as she scrabbled through her bottomless purse once more, dumping tissues, wads of paper and a yellow squirt gun onto the counter this time.

“Here.” Buck lifted the pistol and carefully placed a five-dollar bill under it. “No reason to hold up the joint. Keep the change.” He thought she’d look his way.

She didn’t. She fingered the jar of peanut butter, brushed the milk jug with a knuckle, and slid the racing car off to the side. “Ring my order up, please, Frankie, without the toy.” She nudged the bill along the counter, back toward Buck. “Not necessary. But thanks. Again.” The chilliness crisping the edges of her warmed-brandy voice was unmistakable.

Even rejecting him, she didn’t turn his way, not even a sidelong glance. Buck’s curiosity was killing him. He wanted to see her face up close, not in the grayness of the monitor. He had a hankering to see if the face matched the voice. If he could see her face, he could quiet that nagging familiarity.

But Frankie bagged her purchases with surprising efficiency, and she was out the door, leaving behind her a tantalizing scent of cinnamon on the humid night air circling into the Palmetto Mart.

“Hang on, Frankie. I’ll be back.” Buck shoved his beer and peanuts to the side, strode to the door and caught it before it swung closed.

Outside, damp air pressed against his skin, filled his lungs with heavy wetness. The air smelled of earth and kerosene from a distant plane. Low on the horizon, the golden moon cast fitful shadows across the concrete. He didn’t see the woman who’d intrigued him out of his funk, but headlights from a dark van suddenly switched on, blinding him, and he glimpsed a silhouette in the driver’s seat.

He knew it was the woman from the Palmetto. The engine idled, as if she were waiting, like him, indecisive, and Buck stood there, staring into the darkness of the van, his attention focused on that small shape behind the windshield. The lights from her van bridged the moonlit darkness between them, connected them in a curiously intimate way.

Brassy darkness and silence.

Heat rising from the dark pavement, the smell of cinnamon and jasmine floating on the wet air.

And the two of them at each end of that path of light, his blood pounding in his ears.

Shielding his eyes, Buck strained to see through the shimmering whiteness of the car lights. He needed to see her. Holding his hand up, he walked slowly toward her, from the darkness at the Palmetto’s exit into the lights of her van. Slowly, slowly, both hands hanging to his sides now, he walked toward her, blinded.

“So long, cowboy!”

The tinge of satisfaction in the throaty voice stopped him. Puzzled, he shoved his hat farther back on his head. As he did, the van reversed, smoothly turning toward the frontage road and the entrance to the highway. The left-turn signal winked triumphantly at him.

He could have loped across the parking lot and intercepted the car at the stoplight. But that edge of intimate hostility in her actions held him in place, thinking, as the light changed and the van turned left toward town.

She hadn’t been afraid of him. He knew that because she’d waited, watching him, even as he approached her. No, it wasn’t fear of him that caused her prickly wariness. Something altogether different. A kind of amused taunting, as if she’d proven something to herself.

“Well, well, well.” Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, he watched until the red lights vanished into the hot darkness.

And then he smiled.

In the moments when his eyes adjusted back to darkness before she’d turned onto the frontage road, he’d seen the van’s license plate. Gopher 1. Not a license plate he’d be apt to forget.

Back in the Palmetto Mart, Frankie’s scowled warning greeted him. “I was watching you, mister. I’d a called the cops if you bothered Miz McDonald.”

“Good for you, Frankie,” Buck said gently, defusing the bristling animosity radiating from the spindly boy. “That was exactly the right thing to do. You did good.”

“Sorry if I was rude, man,” Frankie muttered, checking prices, “but I didn’t know what you was up to. And I wasn’t gonna let you hurt her.”

“That wasn’t my intention.” Buck handed over a twenty, took his change.

“It’s late. I didn’t know what you had in mind.”

Buck laughed. “To tell you the truth, Frankie, I don’t know what I had in mind, either. I was—interested, that’s all. Miz McDonald is an interesting woman.”

Frankie’s face reddened. “Yeah. She’s nice.”

“I’m sure she is. I could tell.” Buck watched Frankie’s face turn a brighter shade of beet.

“Yeah, well, I’m the night manager, and my customers are my responsibility. I take care of Miz McDonald when she comes in.”

Buck recognized the signs of a teenage crush when he saw one. Hell, he’d lived through T.J. and Hank’s frequent throes of love. Then T.J. met Callie Jo, and everything changed for both his brothers. Buck had always had his suspicions about Hank’s feelings toward Callie Jo, but Hank, the most open man in the world, could keep his own counsel when he wanted. Anyway, Hank worshiped Jilly and their kids, so the past was the past.

In the meantime, the bantam across from him was scratching for a showdown. Shoot, the kid wouldn’t break a hundred and thirty pounds, but his heart was in the right place. Buck tried not to smile. The kid didn’t deserve that.

“Nobody’s going to mess with her while I’m here.” Frankie squared narrow shoulders defiantly and tried to stare Buck down.

Looking away, casually, easily, he gave Frankie the move, letting the kid save face, the same way he’d yielded to the heat of his younger brothers when they’d been on the brink of manhood. “She’s lucky you’re in charge, Frankie. I could tell she likes your store. I’ll bet she comes here a lot?”

Frankie nodded.

“She must feel safe. With you around, watching out for her. And for the rest of your customers.” Sticking a finger through the plastic loops of the six-pack, Buck smiled, tipped his hat with a finger, and strolled toward the door. “Nice meetin’ you, Frankie. Take care now, hear?”

“Sure thing, man.” Frankie held his shoulders so far back Buck could have clipped them together with a clothespin.

Kids. Sheesh. Buck stepped outside into the steamy night. Rolling his head back and forth, he considered his choices. Maxie’s in town? Out to T.J.’s ranch? Or get in the Jeep and haul rear half the night south, back to Okeechobee and his own ranch and groves?

The road, glistening black under the low-lying moon, stretched in front of him. Truth was, he had nowhere he wanted to go, nothing pulling at him, no one to help him while away the lonely night hours. A light breeze tugged at his hat, filtered through the straw brim, brushed against his cheek like a feathery kiss. Scraps of paper on the concrete lifted, stirred, floated to his feet. One was a receipt from the Palmetto. He reached down to pick it up. Eggs, vanilla ice cream, milk.

Not hers.

He crushed the receipt between his fingers, holding it for a moment, staring off into the thick, empty night.

Impulse and the memory of red lights winking off toward town made him about-face back into the Palmetto.

Jessie’s hands were slippery with sweat on the plastic steering wheel. Even with the windows of the van down and the wind whipping in, perspiration pooled along her spine, slid to the waistband of her shorts. Skeezix, her shaggy mutt of undetermined origins with the temperament of an angel, eased up from the back. Sidling in next to her, he stuck his nose out her window. “Come on, you big lug. Scoot over to your own side, will you?” She pushed at the dog until he moved over and stuck his head out the passenger window.

She. wondered if Jonas Buckminster Riley had recognized her in spite of her careful attempts not to look his way. Even though he’d always been shrewd and fast on the uptake, a lot had changed in the last five years, most of all her.

He hadn’t recognized her. He would have said something if he had. But maybe not. A complicated man, he liked playing games. Tiny shivers slipped over her skin. And in her innermost soul, she knew it wasn’t fear running through her. The frisson skipping along her nerve endings was a remnant of another life, another Jessie, not this Jessie barreling down the highway in a van filled with the smell of dogs and take-out hamburger. She’d left that other Jessie behind, a long time ago.

As she unwrapped the cold hamburger and nudged it toward the dog, Skeezix moaned happily and pulled his head inside. She sneezed as dog hair drifted toward her. “Good dog! But you silly fool, why didn’t you eat it when it was hot?” She rubbed the dog’s head and scratched behind his ears. Slopping paper and hamburger bits over the seat, Skeezix collapsed onto her thighs with a wiggle of contentment. “Guess who I ran into tonight, Skeez?” Skeezix wiggled closer, his tongue lapping wetly against her cutoffs. “A ghost from my past, and you didn’t even let out a howl? For shame. Some dog you are. Would you have defended me if I’d needed you, you big mutt?” Skeezix rolled his head and thumped his heavy tail a couple of times. “Oh, sure, that’s what you say now. But where were you ten minutes ago, buster?”

She was glad her ghost hadn’t remembered her. Of course she was.

But.

“So long, cowboy!” The sound of her last words lingered in her ears. Surely she hadn’t wanted him to stop her with a flood of for-old-times’-sake memories? Had she?

But, her unruly tongue running ahead of her brain, she’d called out, “So long, cowboy!” Had that been a note of challenge, of “gotcha” in her voice? Had she wanted him to recognize her? Had some deep perversity ruled her in that last second? Surely not.

But she’d called out. In that last, crucial second, she’d called out to him.

In the light from her headlights, he’d looked bigger, tougher. A little mean with his eyes narrowed like that, a little baffled but thinking hard as he’d stared back at her from the darkness. Even sitting yards apart from him, she’d felt the insistent beating of his will against her, his determination to solve the puzzle she represented to him. That insatiable curiosity, that inability to turn away from an unanswered question—that quality had made him a brilliant lawyer.

He’d been fearsome, his cross-examinations stripping away evasions until a witness sat as vulnerable as a deer caught in the cross hairs, waiting. And then Jonas Buckminster Riley would deliver the killing blow, gently, cleanly, so elegantly that the witness seemed almost to welcome the coup de grace that put finish to the relentless, unending questions delivered in Jonas’s chillingly polite drawl.

No, the Palmetto Mart cowboy in the cream-colored straw cowboy hat and scruffy jeans might be as curious as ever, but he was not the man she remembered. Long, rangy muscles and sloping shoulders replaced the reed-thin frame she’d known; that thin, hard body covered by suits so expensively sumptuous that one time, driven by some crazy impulse as she’d passed in back of him, she’d stroked the baby-soft fabric of a jacket left casually hanging on the back of his chair.

He’d known, of course. He’d looked up at her in that moment when her index finger glided against the sleeve, slipped inside to the lining still warm from his body, and lingered against the silk.

“You like that, huh?” he’d asked and smiled, his brilliant blue eyes blazing her into ashes.

Lifting one eyebrow, she’d run her finger carelessly over the lining. “A bit too uptown for me. But then clothes make the man, so they say.” Brushing her hands together, knowing he was watching her every twitch and movement, she’d walked away, into her own office, her heart slamming against her ribs with each step.

“Do they really? Say that?” His whispery drawl had tickled the hairs along the back of her neck, sent goose bumps down her arms, her chest. “And what do you say, Ms. Bell?” His smile turned edgy, his narrowed gaze assessing, as he swiveled his chair toward her and focused all his fierce intelligence on her, pinning her in the searing beam of his gaze.

She’d smiled in return, lifted one eyebrow, and shut her door, leaving his question unanswered.

She wasn’t that Jessica Bell anymore. That woman seemed alien to her now. If she were different now, so, too, must he be. Inside. Outside. They weren’t the same people at all. So why was her heart still pumping so hard she felt as if she’d run a race? What possible impact on her life could a chance encounter at the Palmetto Mart mean at this point in her life?

Diddly. That’s what.

She braked the car in the driveway. Home. Hers. One she’d bought and paid for by herself. Downstairs in the family room a solitary splash of blue-white from the television broke the thickness of the night. Skeezix lumbered out behind her, woofing and circling her, weaving in and out between her legs until she laid her hand on top of his head. “Quiet, dopey. You want to wake up the whole neighborhood?” Two different canine greetings answered Skeezix.

The front door opened. A tiny silhouette in the rectangle of the doorjamb tilted his head and scrubbed at his eyes. “Hey,” he said sleepily.

“Hey yourself, sugar.” She swung him up over Skeezix and into her arms. “It’s mighty late. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Me and Aunt Lolly waited for you. But we was hungry, so we ate all the pizza. Ev’ry last bite.” He spread his arms wide and clasped her around the neck, his chubby bare arms tight against her. “Loofah chewed the cheese off the cardboard.”

“Bad dog.”

“She was hungry, too.”

“I guess that’s okay, then.” Jessie nuzzled the warm, sweaty neck of her son. “C’mon, sugar, let’s say good night to Auntie Lolly and get you to bed.”

“‘Kay.” His soft hair tickled her nose as he leaned against her and fixed her with eyes as blue as her own. “But I am not at all tired.”

“No?”

“Nope. Not sleepy at all.”

Jessie stumbled against Skeezix, who’d crowded in behind her as she closed the door. Gopher tilted over her arm and blew a kiss at the dog. “Night, Skeezes. Sleep tight.” Her son glanced shrewdly up at her. “Skeezes isn’t sleepy. Me and Skeezes’ll sleep better together, right?”

Laughing, Jessie scrunched him to her. “Is that so, sugardoll?”

“Yep,” he said with satisfaction as his head drooped against her breast and his thumb found its way to his small mouth. “That’s so.”

Waiting inside the arch to the family room, her neighbor and honorary aunt Lolly rolled her eyes. “He did take a long nap. But he’s been going nonstop since he woke up. Can you give me some of whatever you’re feeding him? So I can keep up?” Her bony freckled face was cheerfully rueful. “We’ve dug worms, we’ve walked the dogs, we’ve made brownies. And taken three baths. Lord love a duck, Jessie, how do you keep up with him?”

“Practice.” Jessie anchored Gopher higher on one shoulder and slid open her desk drawer, reaching inside for her checkbook. “Hang on for a minute while I carry him up to bed, will you? And then I’ll write you a check if that’s okay?”

“You don’t have to pay me, Jess. I told you, I love staying with Gopher. Anyway, what else do I have to do most nights?”

“Take the check, Lolly. It’s better this way. Your time’s valuable, too, you know, no matter what you choose to do with it.” With her hip balancing the weight of her son and one arm curled around his rear, Jessie scribbled on a check. If she didn’t, Lolly would be gone before Jessie could come back downstairs. “And who knows? One of these nights you might decide to go out and do something wild and crazy.”