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She rocked him slightly, stroking his head while she glanced at Jeb, and he could feel the clash of wills between them. They both wanted the same child. Jeb thought he was entitled to his son, yet for all his young life, the one person Kevin had known as his parent was Amanda Crockett. Jeb realized he was going to have to face that and deal with it in a way that wouldn’t cause a lot of pain to his child.
Why had he thought that he could show up and demand his son and she would hand him over? He had expected a fight, but he hadn’t stopped to think about her being locked into his son’s affections. He had thought of Amanda Crockett as he thought of his ex-wife, Cherie, and Cherie would have given up a child by now. She had given this one up at birth.
“Do you have a grill?” Jeb asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll go get some steaks and grill them, and then you won’t have to go to so much trouble.” He stood, feeling a deep reluctance to leave. He wondered if he would ever get enough of looking at Kevin. What a marvel the child was! His big brown eyes watched Jake solemnly. Oh, how he longed to touch his son, to hold him. “Anything else you’d like?”
“Thank you, no,” she answered politely. She stood and picked up Kevin and shifted him to one hip.
As Jeb followed Amanda to the door, his gaze left his son and drifted down over her; he noticed the slight sway of her hips and her long, shapely legs. She opened the door and stepped back for him to leave. When he was outside, he looked back again at Kevin.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. She nodded and closed the door. Jeb felt as if she had slammed it shut on his hopes and dreams.
He shopped quickly, and as he drove back to her house, logic told him she would be there, getting dinner. But his emotions churned and he half expected to come back and find her house empty. Too easily, he could imagine her taking Kevin and running away.
Why hadn’t he stopped to think what he would do if she was a wonderful mother to Kevin? Kevin. Jeb liked the name. According to the detective, the child had his adoptive mother’s last name, Crockett.
When Jeb returned to her house, her black car was in the drive and relief poured over Jeb. He parked behind it and picked up the sack of groceries. On impulse, he went to the back door and knocked.
She opened it and motioned to him. “Come in.”
He entered a kitchen that had mouthwatering smells of hot bread and a blackberry cobbler. He was even more aware of Amanda as she gazed up at him with those compelling crystal-green eyes. Her tangle of red hair and the tiny beads of perspiration dotting her brow gave her a sultry earthiness that was appealing. She blinked, and with a start he realized that he was staring at her. She waved her hand.
“Set the groceries there,” she said, motioning toward a space on the countertop. “Kevin isn’t into steaks and salad. He gets macaroni.”
Jeb placed the grocery sack on the counter and took out the steaks to unwrap them. All the time he worked, he was conscious of Amanda moving around him, of her perfume, of her steady, watchful gaze. She looked at him as though she had invited a monster into her kitchen. Her house was comfortable and appealing, but the kitchen was small, and when he brushed against her accidentally, he was acutely conscious of touching her.
“Sorry,” he muttered, glancing at her. She looked up and once more they were caught, gazes locked and sparks that he didn’t want to feel igniting. Her lips were rosy and full, a sensuous mouth that conjured up speculation about what it would be like to kiss her. He realized where his thoughts were going and turned away, bumping a chair.
What was the matter with him? He was reacting to her like a sixteen-year-old to a sexy woman, yet Amanda Crockett had done nothing to warrant any blatant male attention. He needed to remember that this woman was tearing up his life and that he was getting ready to tear up hers. If only she would do the right thing, acknowledge that Kevin was his son and simply hand him over. She had no right to take his child from him.
Hope began to flicker that she would be reasonable, realize she had taken a child from his father. Then he glanced across the kitchen into her eyes, which held fire in their depths, and he was certain that wasn’t going to happen.
Dinner was a silent, strained event with little conversation by anyone. Jeb began to wonder about his son, who seemed shy and too quiet. Kevin was the only one with an appetite and he ate his macaroni, his bread and butter, and drank his milk.
“You’ve been in the army?” Amanda asked.
“The Eighty-second Airborne. I was a paratrooper.”
She inhaled sharply. For some reason he had a suspicion she didn’t approve, yet she probably didn’t approve of anything about him.
“Do you and Cherie keep in contact?” he asked.
“Very little,” she added, carefully. “I haven’t seen her in three years,” she said glancing at Kevin, and Jeb wondered if Kevin thought Amanda was his blood mother.
“She’s a country-western singer. I’ve seen her CDs in stores.”
“I’ve seen them, too,” Amanda replied, “but I haven’t seen Cherie. She’s remarried.”
“Right, for the third time,” he added dryly. “To the actor, Ken Webster.”
“You know a lot about her.”
“I hired a detective. I got all this information from him.” As Jeb talked, only half paying attention to their conversation, he tried to think what he could do about his son. His attention slid back to Kevin. “How old are you, Kevin?” he asked quietly, knowing the answer.
Kevin held up three fingers.
“Three years old. That’s getting very big. Do you go to pre-school?”
Kevin shook his head.
“Not yet. He’s enrolled for next fall,” Amanda said, touching Kevin. She constantly reached out to pat his shoulder or brush his hair from his forehead, and Jeb wondered whether she was affectionate all the time or whether she was giving Kevin attention out of worry now. Jeb leaned back in his chair. He had little appetite, and she didn’t seem to have any, either. Yet he was happy to be with Kevin, even though the child seemed inordinately shy.
“Is macaroni your favorite food, Kevin?”
Kevin shook his head while Amanda answered, “His favorite is chocolate ice cream. Maybe chocolate cake is a second favorite and then chicken drumsticks.” Her answer was perfunctory, her thoughts still churning.
Glancing over the food on the table, Amanda could hardly eat. What kind of battle lay ahead of her? Was Kevin going to be one of those children she had seen on the television news and in the paper—a child who had two people battling over him while he was always pictured as crying and unhappy?
She was sick at the thought. Every time she looked into Jeb Stuart’s brown eyes, she could see his determination, and every time he looked at Kevin, she could see his longing. He wanted his son.
That knowledge tore at her because at the time of Kevin’s birth, when Cherie wanted Amanda to take the baby, Cherie had sworn Jeb hadn’t wanted his child. Had he had a change of heart or was he telling her the truth—that he really hadn’t known? Amanda suspected that he was telling the truth. He looked earnest enough.
She couldn’t imagine having one of those horrible battles that hurt Kevin badly. She felt as if Jeb Stuart wanted to cut her heart out and take it with him. She realized he was staring at her, and she guessed he must have asked her a question.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I see a child’s swing in your backyard. Will there be time before Kevin goes to bed to go outside with him and play?”
“Sure,” she answered easily. “We’re finished. As soon as I clean the kitchen, we’ll go outside. Want to?” she asked Kevin, and he nodded. He started to stand.
“Wait. What do you say?”
“May I be ’scused?”
“Yes, you may,” she answered, and Kevin slid off his chair and ran to get his toys.
When she stood, Jeb Stuart rose also and picked up dishes. “I can clean up,” she said.
“This is no trouble,” he answered politely, and she thought how civil they were being to each other, yet what a sham it was. She knew he was doing it for Kevin’s sake, just as she was.
In her small kitchen she could not avoid bumping against Jeb. Each time she was intensely conscious of the physical contact. Every nerve tingled. Jeb Stuart looked full of raw energy, and she wondered if he would make her as nervous if Kevin weren’t the connection between them.
Making a rumbling noise like an imaginary motor, Kevin sat on the floor, playing with one of his toy cars. He was so little, too vulnerable. While she watched him, her eyes blurred. She couldn’t give up her child! As pain came in waves, she fought a rising panic. Trying to gain control of her emotions, she didn’t want to cry in front of Jeb Stuart. I’m Kevin’s legal mother. But she had seen the pain in Jeb’s eyes and she knew he was entitled to his son. She was losing Kevin! She felt queasy, as though she were going to lose the little she had eaten for dinner. She turned on the cold water and ran some over her hand, then patted the back of her neck and her forehead.
“Are you all right?”
His voice was quiet and deep and he was right beside her. She looked up into his inscrutable dark eyes and wondered if they were both headed for dreadful heartache. She feared that no one was going to win in this situation, least of all Kevin.
“I’m all right,” she said stiffly, turning to blindly rinse a plate and place it in the dishwasher. A hand closed gently on her wrist. Feeling his touch to her toes, she looked up at him.
“Go outside with Kevin. I’ll finish this and join you.”
She didn’t argue. After drying her hands, she took Kevin’s hand and headed outside, thankful to escape her kitchen, which now seemed smaller than ever and filled with the electrifying presence of the most disturbing male she had ever encountered. She still tingled from that casual touch of his hand on her arm. At the kitchen door, she glanced back over her shoulder.
Jeb stood watching her, and the moment their gazes met, another lightning bolt of awareness streaked through her. His midnight eyes were riveting and sexy. She felt a raw edginess around him that she suspected she would have experienced even if Kevin had not been a factor in their relationship. As they gazed at each other, the moment stretched between them, tense, breathtaking, until she turned abruptly. Hurrying outside, she tried to catch her breath and ignore her racing heart.
When Jeb joined them, she was swinging Kevin, and the child was smiling. Jeb stood watching and she was grateful for his patience and caution around Kevin. She knew Kevin was shy, and he became even more withdrawn if someone forced attention on him.
Time seemed to stretch into aeons until they went inside. She bathed Kevin and tucked him into bed. When she kissed him good-night, she held him close. He hugged her and then lay on his pillow. “Mama, who is Mr. Stuart?”
“He’s a friend, Kevin,” she answered slowly, wondering how to tell Kevin the truth. He’s your father and he’s come to take you from me ran through her mind while she looked into a pair of dark eyes so much like those of Jeb Stuart.
“I like it better when you don’t have a friend here.”
“You like it when Megan or Peg come over.”
He thought this over and nodded. “I like Megan better than Mr. Stuart.”
Amanda merely nodded and hugged Kevin again and fought tears because she didn’t want to cry in front of him. As though he sensed something amiss, he clung to her. She kissed him again and tucked him in.
“One more story, please.”
She relented and told him another story until his eyes closed and his breathing became deep. Reluctantly, she squared her shoulders, then tiptoed out of Kevin’s room and closed the door behind her.
In the small family room, Jeb Stuart stood with his back to her, staring out a darkened window at the night. She knew he was lost in his thoughts because there was nothing to see outside.
“He’s asleep.”
Jeb turned around and studied her, flicking a swift glance over her that she felt as much as if he had brushed her body with his fingertips.
“Is he always so shy?”
She shrugged and crossed the room to sit down on the sofa, folding her legs beneath her. “He’s shy, but he’s even more shy with you because he’s seldom been around men. He sees me and his nanny, his Sunday school teachers, my friends and, on rare occasions, my aunt, and they’re all women.”
She received another assessing gaze. “You’re pretty,” Jeb said.
“Thank you,” she answered perfunctorily, because she suspected he was going somewhere with his remark, and her wariness increased. Even as her defenses rose, on another level, she was pleased by his assessment.
“You’re too attractive to be single unless there’s a good reason. I know this is a blunt question, but you and I are going to have to do some serious talking. Why haven’t you married and had your own children?”
She raised her chin. It had been a long time now since she had thought about marriage, and having Kevin had taken most of the sting out of the question, because Kevin had helped her lose a lot of her feelings of inadequacy.
“Why haven’t you remarried and had more children?” she shot back at him.
“I had one unhappy marriage, and I’m not ready to marry again. So back to my question—why haven’t you married and had kids of your own?”
Like a lot of other people, she had secrets she didn’t care to share. Jeb Stuart’s question was personal, and she knew she could refuse to answer him or give him one of the two or three casual replies she had given on dates, but she saw no reason now to be anything except totally honest.
“I can’t have children of my own,” she replied, looking him squarely in the eye, feeling an old familiar pain.
Two
“Sorry. And I’m sorry to pry into your private life.”
She nodded, appreciating his apology and fighting an urge to like him. “When I was engaged, my doctor discovered a tumor and I had to have surgery. I’m fine, except I won’t ever be able to have children. My fiancе decided that I wasn’t really a complete woman, and he broke our engagement.”
As Jeb closed his eyes and looked as if he had received a blow, she could guess what was running through his mind. “That was one of the reasons I agreed to adopt Cherie’s baby, but it has little to do with why I love Kevin so much now.”
“But you’ll be much less willing to give him up because of it.”
She bristled and swung her legs to the floor, coming to her feet to face him. “I’m not willing to give him up now because he’s my son! He’s my son as much as if I had given birth to him. I got him when he was a day old. Cherie didn’t even want to see him! She hated being pregnant. I love him because he’s my baby and has been since he was born!”
Jeb rubbed his forehead. “Lord help us both,” he mumbled, hearing her agony and watching tears stream unheeded down her face. He hurt, too, and he couldn’t give up his son. “What do you want me to do? Walk out that door and forget that I have a son?”
They stared at each other, and he knew her emotions were as raw as his. She was shaking and white as snow again. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose, and when she became pale they stood out clearly. As she clutched her stomach and ran from the room, he felt as if he had just beaten her.
While he was alone, he paced the room and wondered whether he should just go and try to get back with her later, but that was only putting off what was inevitable. They were each going to have to give or else they would end up hurting Kevin, and Jeb didn’t think she would want that any more than he did.
When she returned, she looked even more pale. She moved to the sofa and sat with her feet on the floor. She looked small and hurt and defiant and he felt like a bastard for what he was doing, but he wasn’t going to give up his son to save Amanda Crockett’s feelings. He pulled a chair to face her and sat down. “We’ll have to work something out.”
“I don’t know anything about you.”
“I grew up on a ranch in Saratoga County. I have three brothers—Cameron, a rancher, lives near here with his wife, Stella, on the family land. It’s ironic that you left Houston and moved close to my family and home. My brother Selby and his wife, Jan, live in El Paso. He’s with the DEA. The youngest brother, Burke, leads wilderness treks. He and his wife, Alexa, have a home in Houston, so they’re not far away.”
“You were a paratrooper, you have a brother with the DEA and another who leads wilderness treks— your family is a little on the wild side.”
He shrugged. “I’m settled now. I bought land southwest of here and I’m raising horses. I hoped to take Kevin there.”
“You weren’t a rancher when you were married to Cherie, were you? I thought she told me she had married someone who worked in Houston.”
“I did. As soon as I graduated from Tech, I was hired as a salesman for a Houston feed company. After the second year I was promoted to district superintendent, then in another couple of years, director of marketing. That’s when I was married to her. I couldn’t have afforded Cherie before then.” He looked away as if seeing his past, and she wondered if he was lost in memories and talking out loud. “When we met, Cherie was charming, seductive, adorable. As long as she got her way, she stayed charming, but when I quit work and wanted to become a rancher, that’s when her true personality emerged. I was wildly in love with her when we married because she seemed to be everything a man could want.”
“I can imagine,” Amanda said quietly, knowing her beautiful cousin could be delightful as long as things went her way, but when they didn’t, she could be dreadful.
“Why did you decide to become a rancher?”
Jeb shrugged. “The corporate world was not for me. I grew up on a ranch, too, and I wanted to get back to that life.”
He studied her, and silence stretched tensely between them. “If you thought I had abandoned Kevin and Cherie, why did you cut all ties to your past and hide your tracks when you moved from Houston to Dallas?”
As she flushed and bit her lip and looked guilty, he wondered if she had been leading him on with an act. How much was she like Cherie? he wondered again.
“I guess deep down there was a part of me that doubted Cherie,” Amanda said, so softly that he had to lean forward to hear her, yet leaning closer was a tactical error because he could smell her perfume, see her flawless skin, watch as her tongue slid slowly across her lower lip. His body heat rose and momentarily he lost awareness of anything except a desirable woman sitting inches away. He had to fight the urge to reach out and touch her.
She twisted a string from her cutoffs in her fingers. “I wanted to believe her when she said you didn’t care and you had gone, but my cousin has never been a stickler for the truth. She tells things to suit herself. I was scared of just what’s happening now. That someday the doorbell would ring and there would be Kevin’s father—you—wanting him back.” She looked Jeb in the eye. “Maybe I shouldn’t have made it difficult for you to find us, but from all indications, you weren’t a man I wanted to get to know.”
