The Baby Bargain

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She looked up at him with something like hatred. “You’d use me—me and my baby—as an object lesson? How handy that my husband died. It makes us seem more pathetic!”

He jerked upright. “I didn’t mean it like—”

“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t think at all.” She brushed the hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I didn’t think of it like that, dammit. You’re anything but pathetic.” His scowl softened. The corner of his mouth slowly tilted. “Though, with flour all over your face…”

I look like a clown? So much for indignation. She swiped the back of a hand across her nose, and he burst into laughter.

“Here—” He tucked three fingers under her chin to support it.

If her hands hadn’t been full of dough, she would have edged out of reach. Instead, she stood paralyzed, her lashes falling to shut him out—to shut out this fragile, disturbing moment—while he cleaned her off, his fingers brushing across the bridge of her nose, the tops of her cheeks, her shivering lashes.

“Better,” he observed huskily.

Was it? Was it really? A wave of black dismay—of echoing loss—washed over her. “Thanks,” she whispered, staring down at her dough. After a moment her hands moved again—knead, fold, turn…

“Will you help me persuade her, Dana?”

Give a little to get what you wanted, she thought, loss turning to disgust. He thought he could buy her cooperation that easily, with one gesture of tossed-off tenderness? “No, Rafe, I won’t. Zoe doesn’t need some stranger telling her what to do.” Nor, for that matter, a parent trying to shape her life according to his own lights. “What about getting her some professional counseling? I’m sure that Dr. Hancock—”

“I’m the only counselor Zoe needs, dammit! A baby will wreck her life!”

“Then if you’re all she needs,” Dana said coolly, “she doesn’t need me.”

“But, dammit—” He saw her chin tip up in warning and he shut his mouth with an effort, locked his jaw over his words. Stood rocking on his boot heels and scowling, while she patted the first ball of dough into a loaf, settled it into its greased pan and placed it on the warming shelf. She turned out another ball of risen dough, pressed out the yeasty gas, commenced kneading.

“All right,” he said grimly, “then look at it this way. You owe me this help.”

Her hands paused as she looked up. “Excuse me?”

“Your son knocked up my daughter. If you’d ridden herd on him, hadn’t let him run wild, had taught him a proper respect for girls—”

Dana threw up a floury hand. “Now, wait a minute. Your daughter is—what—two years older than Sean? And everyone knows girls are years more mature than boys. So just who seduced whom? And who should have known better?”

“At fourteen, he’s old enough to know right from wrong! Or at least, old enough to know how not to get caught. Didn’t you tell him about condoms?”

“Didn’t you tell your brilliant daughter?” she shot back.

“She knew,” he said with dangerous calm.

“Then—”

“Condoms do fail.” His gaze turned distant and bleak.

“Is that what—”

He shrugged and spun on his heel, surveyed her kitchen, swung back again. “She’s not giving me any of the gory details, and frankly—” His shrug was more of a shudder. “Frankly, I don’t want to know. Every time I think about it, I get this urge to hammer your kid into the ground like a cedar fence post.”

Dana dusted her hands and came carefully around the table. “If you ever lay so much as a finger on Sean again—” She prodded his chest with a fingertip “—I’ll have you in jail for assault, Rafe Montana. See if I don’t!”

“Assault?” He caught her wrist, trapping her hand in that gesture of threat, forefinger touching his breast. “Last night, he swung on me.”

“Yes, but who finished it?” She yanked backward, but he held her easily.

“That was a lesson he needed to learn. You don’t take on someone you can’t handle.”

“I’ll thank you not to give my son lessons!”

“Then who will?” He brought her hand down to his side, then drew it slightly behind him, a subtle tug that swayed her closer. She flattened her other hand on his chest to catch her balance—could feel his heart thudding against her palm. “You’ll teach him how to grow up a man? Not your strong point, I’d say.” His eyes roved down her face to her mouth. He smiled slowly and shook his head. “Not your strong point at all, thank God.”

She shoved his chest hard, and he let her go. “Nobody asked you for lessons, and I’m telling you again, don’t you dare—” She cut herself short as the screen door to the deck creaked.

Sean stood there, gaping at them both.

CHAPTER SIX

THE BOY’S LOOK OF SHOCK turned to a thunderous scowl and he stepped backward—spun away. Rafe Montana lunged after him before the door banged shut. “You! Come here!”

So much for her warning! Dana yelped a protest and followed. She flung out onto the deck to find them faced off like a couple of dogs, hackles risen and weight on the balls of their feet. She caught Montana’s collar and gave a warning tug. “I said don’t!”

“And I heard you,” he told her evenly, his eyes locked on Sean.

Which was hardly a promise to obey, she realized. Retaining her grip, Dana glared at Sean. “Sean, if you’d please go in the—” The bruise on his jaw registered—blue-green and glorious. “Oh, Sean!” She let go of Montana and flew to her stepson, caught his chin in her hand.

Sean jerked out of her grasp and edged away. “It’s nothing.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t!” She touched his shoulder, but he stepped aside. “Sean, please…”

“Shut up, Dana.” Sean didn’t spare her a glance.

“What did you say?” Rafe demanded in a voice of quiet thunder.

“I—I s-said…” The boy stopped as Rafe shook his head.

“Don’t,” he said with ominous calm. “Not ever. Not around me.”

“Rafe, I can handle this, thank you,” Dana insisted.

“Some job you’re doing.” His eyes switched to Sean. “You and I have to talk.”

Sean clenched his hands. “I’ve only got one thing to say to you, Mr. Montana. Where’s Zoe?”

Montana seemed to grow a foot. “You went looking for my daughter? You went on my land?”

Sean gulped and shook his head, but he didn’t back down. “Uh-uh. Zoe was supposed to meet me where—” His hand flew toward his mouth—a touchingly childish gesture—and stopped midair. Fisted again. “She didn’t meet me,” he finished sullenly. “What’d you do to her?”

“Zoe is grounded. She doesn’t set foot off Suntop till I give the word, and when she does, believe me, it won’t be to meet you.”

“No!” Sean shook his head wildly as his voice cracked. “I’ve got to see her!”

“Get this straight,” Rafe said softly. “You won’t be seeing my daughter again—ever. You’ve done your damage, and now you’re finished. It’s over.”

“It isn’t!” Sean cried raggedly. “Dana?”

“Oh, Sean…” He never asked her for anything, and now that he had, she’d give all she held precious to help. But he might as well ask her to move a mountain.

“You come sneaking on my land, and I’ll have you arrested for trespassing,” Rafe continued. “And I promise you, sonny boy, this charge will stick. You got that?”

“Try and stop me, asshole!” Sean spun, jumped three steps to ground level and took off running.

Rafe took two strides after him, but Dana blocked his path. “Don’t.”

“So help me God, Dana, if he comes sniffing after her onto my land, I’ll hog-tie the brat and haul him home to you in my truck!”

“I’ve heard enough threats for one day.” Dana swiped the hair from her eyes, retreated to her swing and sat.

“How long have you been raising him alone? He’s out of control.”

“And I’ve had enough criticism about my child-rearing techniques, thank you. Want me to start in on yours?” Crossing her arms to wall him out, she closed her eyes, tipped her head back. Willed him to disappear in a puff of smoke.

No such luck. He growled something wordless, and the swing tilted as he sat down beside her. Their thighs brushed, and she shied away. After a moment, the swing rocked backward on its chains, glided forward. Dana heaved a sigh up from around her toes, lifted her heels up to the cushion, clasped her ankles. The swing arced gently through her self-imposed darkness, through the fragrance of roses. How odd to be rocked; she’d grown so used to doing for herself.

“Well, what now?” he asked finally.

“Now? I suppose I take the steaks out to warm up. I start the coals, bake the bread, make cookies for dessert tonight…” A distant, sleepy wail drifted through an upstairs window. “I comfort my daughter…”

“And what do I do about mine?”

“Try listening instead of ranting?” she suggested.

Warm fingers closed around her arm, just above her elbow. “Help me persuade her. Please?”

She bet he didn’t beg for help often. Still, she sighed and shook her head. “Can’t do it, Rafe. Zoe needs to find her way, not be shoved into somebody else’s plan for her life.”

“It’s the best plan,” he insisted. “The only plan right for her.”

“Then maybe she’ll come to see that in time. But it’s not for me to say.” Nor you.

The swing lurched as he stood. She squeezed her eyes tighter shut, then waited, willing him gone. At least her life had been peaceful before he stormed into it. If he left now…Was it too late to go back to that?

“Thanks,” he said bitterly.

“You’re welcome, Rafe.” Eyes closed, Dana waited till the crunch of his steps across the gravel had faded. Till she could hear nothing but the Ribbon River, chuckling down the mountainside. She sighed again, opened her eyes and went into her kitchen.

Who was she kidding? From now on, nothing would be the same.

“HERE COMES YOUR DADDY,” drawled Anse Kirby from his higher vantage point. He’d been lounging sideways, one arm braced back on the rump of his red roan, Tiger, watching Zoe wrestle with the top wire of the fence. Now he straightened in the saddle and gathered his reins.

“Oh?” Zoe levered her pliers around the curve of the cedar post, tightening the wire, then hammered the loosened staple home. She pulled a second staple from the carpenter’s apron she wore over her jeans and whacked that in, downstream of the first. “What should I do? Turn cartwheels?”

“Smile might go a long ways.” Anse apparently addressed the lowering sun.

“Yeah, go ahead. Take his side.” As her father’s top hand, he could hardly do else, Zoe supposed, but she was in no mood to be fair.

“Just a general observation. Woofle’s outgrinned you ’bout twelve to one, today.”

“Well, he had a banner day—found something dead to roll in. Me, I’ve done nothing but ride fence.” A chore she usually loved in the summertime. But not today. Not when she’d been given into Anse’s care like a five-year-old pest, with the implicit order, Keep her occupied. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve been a grump.”

“We all get a mood on, from time to time.” He made no visible move, but, responsive to a tensing of Anse’s thighs, Tiger swung to face the oncoming rider and set off at a lazy jog. Ignoring the horsemen, Zoe slogged off to the next post. Out on her flank, Woofle rose from the grass and trotted on a parallel course, careful to preserve the twenty-foot margin she’d ordained.

She’d completed that post, when the shadow of a horse and rider blocked the sun. “Anse will finish up here, Zoe. Let’s go.”

She shrugged and hung her hammer over the wire, untied her apron and draped it over the post. Anse had already dismounted and collected Miel, her little palomino, who’d been standing ground-hitched, placidly grazing. He passed her the reins with a wink. “Thanks for the help, Zoe.”

Like he needed it. She gave him a reluctant smile. “Sure. Anytime.” Probably every day this summer, if her father had his way. But he won’t. She cast Rafe a mutinous glance as her leg swung over the saddle and she found her stirrups.

Under the brim of his Stetson, his eyes were expressionless. He jerked his chin uphill. “Suntop?”