The Men of Mayes County

He watched her scan the new up-to-date barn replacing the old barns and outbuildings she would’ve remembered from when they were kids. “You’ve really found your niche in life, haven’t you?”

“I guess I have,” he said, trying to peg whatever he thought he’d heard in her voice, even though figuring out what went on inside women’s heads was definitely not his strong suit.

“There’s something, I don’t know, honest and basic about working with horses. You treat ’em right, they’ll return the favor and do their best for you. I get up in the morning, and even when there’s a boatload of work to do, or even when I’m worried about one of my gals for one reason or another, I look forward to the day. How many people can say that? And really mean it?… Dawn? You okay?”

Her forehead lowered to the mare’s muzzle, she muttered, “I’m sorry,” although almost more to the horse than to him.

“For what?”

She gave him a doleful expression.

“Not for being pregnant?” he said.

“Maybe,” she said on a rush of air. “I just keep feeling I should be apologizing for something. For falling into bed with you, if nothing else.”

“Hey. Unless I missed something, that was a mutual decision. One I sure as hell didn’t regret.” She canted a look at him. “No, not even now.”

“Never mind how stupid it was.”

“Is that what you’re thinking? That it was stupid?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Well, that’s just nuts.”

“And now you’re pissed.”

“Hell, yes, if I’m readin’ you correctly. Just because neither one of us expected more’n that one night doesn’t mean it was stupid. Or meaningless.” He leaned his forearms on the top of the fence, trying to tamp down his irritation. Trying even harder to understand it. Cindy, realizing she was no longer the focus of the conversation, clopped off, her black tail swishing.

“Okay, so we got more out of it than we’d bargained. And yeah, I suppose I’m gonna be in shock for a while about that. But that doesn’t mean anybody has anything to be sorry for. Actually, if you’re lookin’ to blame somebody, it wasn’t you who forgot to check the date on those condoms, was it?”

A pained smile crossed her face. “Should I be flattered it had been that long?”

Cal hesitated, then said, “To tell you the truth…I grabbed one out of the wrong box. The one I should’ve thrown out when I bought the new one the month before.”

“You know, I could have lived without knowing that.”

“Thought women wanted men to be honest with them.”

“Not that honest.”

He glanced over. She was leaning against the fence much like he was, but everything about her was tight—her set mouth, her hands, knotted together in front of her, her shoulders, rising and falling in tandem with her shallow, hurried breaths.

Cal gazed back over the pasture, over what had been his life for more than ten years. Building up his breeding business had given him something to focus on after his parents died, something he could count on to bring him satisfaction and pleasure even when his personal life sucked. He would be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, that he didn’t need this distraction, this monkey wrench in the orderly, safe, relatively painless life he’d made for himself. At the same time excitement tingled in his veins with the realization that the one thing that had eluded him so far—the promise of family—was suddenly within his grasp.

He stole a quick look at the side of Dawn’s face, her expression resolute. Well, the promise of part of a family, anyway. Where he saw hope, however, his guess was that she saw catastrophe. Where he saw opportunity, she clearly saw entrapment.

And her fears were doing a damn good job of kicking his wide awake.

“How come you waited so long to say something?” he asked softly.

“Denial,” came out on an exhaled breath. “I’d had a bad cold, thought maybe that screwed up my cycle.” She gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Okay, I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.”

The sun nestled a little closer to the horizon as they stood there, not looking at each other, not saying anything. One of the dogs sat down to scratch, jangling his tags; a couple of mares decided to get up a game of tag, their pounding hooves raising a cloud of dust. Cal kept thinking he was supposed to say something, to come up with some sort of solution. Instead, he could practically hear the wind whistling through the cavity where his brain was supposed to be.

“I guess you’re sure—”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure. And yes, I’m having the baby. And keeping it.”

Her eyes darted to his, then away, as his stomach screeched to a halt a breath away from splat! “So you never considered—”

“I didn’t say that.” At what must have been his horrified expression, she pushed out a breath. “To be honest, my first thought was this can’t be happening. And my second thought was how can I make it unhappen? So I went for a walk. A long walk. A walk that took me past a family planning clinic. On purpose. And I stood there, staring at the door, visualizing walking up the steps, making an appointment…” Her eyes went wide, the words shooting from her mouth like a flock of freaked birds. “I’d never even thought about having a baby, Cal! Let alone like this! Who knows what kind of mother I’ll make? For all I know, this could be a major disaster in the making—”

She let out a little yelp when Cal grabbed her by the shoulders. “And you can stop that kind of talk right now! You’re gonna make a dynamite mother. Maybe not a normal one, but a damned good one.”

She rolled her eyes, then said, “And you know this how?”

“Because I know you. Or at least, I did. And the Dawn I remember never did anything half-assed.” Purely from reflex, his thumbs started massaging her shoulders. Purely from reflex—he assumed—she shivered slightly. “I’d be real surprised to find out you’d changed.”

“Yeah, well, raising a kid isn’t the same as acing a course. Or even winning a case. Which I don’t always do, by the way.”

“But—” He actually caught the thought before it sailed out of his big mouth, but only long enough to examine it and let it go, anyway. “But you were all set to get married.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “That. As it happens, Andrew wasn’t all that hot on parenthood. And to be honest, I was ambivalent. About having kids, I mean.”

“You got any idea why?”

That got a shrug. “Maybe because so much of my work revolves around children. I don’t know.” At his frown, she said, “I do a fair amount of pro bono work for the firm, most of it involving family issues. Many of the kids I see have been knocked around pretty badly. By life, by The Man, by—all too often—their own parents. And the looks on their faces…” The expression on hers twisted him inside out. “Oh, God, Cal, they’d break your heart. The way they want to trust so badly, and are so afraid to…”

Tears shone in her eyes. “Everybody says, don’t get involved, don’t let it become personal. Except that’s the reason I became a lawyer to begin with, to try to make a difference. Lame as that might sound,” she added with a wry smile. “But having a kid of my own…” She let loose another sigh, this one long and ragged. “I’ve never been one of those women who gets all mushy when they see someone else’s baby or feel a pang of envy at seeing a pregnant woman, okay? I’ve never felt that having a child would complete me, because I never felt anything was missing to begin with. But here I am, pregnant. Pregnant and confused, and sick half the day, and scared. That’s about all I know. And that I had to tell you. Beyond that, it’s a blank. A very screwed-up, messy blank.”

Their gazes danced around each other for a second or two, then she took off for her car, leaving Cal so tangled up in his emotions, he had no idea which one prompted him to yell out, “We could get married.”

She spun around, her mouth open. Then she burst out laughing.

“It wasn’t that dumb a suggestion,” he muttered, closing the space between them.

She crossed her arms when he reached her, that pitying look in her eyes again. “Who’d you vote for in the last election?”

He told her, and she laughed again. The car door groaned when she opened it. “We’d never survive the next presidential campaign. Besides, even if I was sticking around, you know as well as I do shotgun marriages rarely work out.”

He couldn’t argue with her there. Of the three couples they’d gone to high school with who’d “had” to get married, only one was still together.

“Hold on.” He clamped hold of the top of the door. “What do you mean you’re not sticking around?”

Her brows shot up. “You honestly don’t expect me to move back here just because I’m pregnant?”

“I didn’t expect anything. But I sure as hell didn’t think you’d drop a bombshell like this and just take off again!”

“I’m not. I’ll be here until the end of the week.”

“Oh, well then. That’s different.”

“Dammit, Cal…” She smacked a loose hair out of her face.

“I know your life is here. But mine isn’t. And hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve invested far too much in my career, and Mama sacrificed too much to help me get there, to just drop it because I’m—we’re—going to have a baby.”

Her words only added to the debris-laden whirlwind swirling around inside his head. Yes, he’d always accepted, even if he hadn’t fully understood, that Haven could never provide Dawn with whatever it was that fed her soul, something he assumed she’d found in New York. And an hour ago he didn’t even know about this baby. Yet he already knew not being able to see this child grow up, day by day, minute by minute, would kill him.

“And if you think I’m gonna settle for being an e-mail daddy,” he said sharply, “you’re more off your nut than I thought. You can be a lawyer anywhere. Even here.”

“Right. As if there’s room for more than one attorney in a town with a population of nine hundred.”

“Hey, we’re up to nine hundred and nine now. At least three people had babies last year, nobody died and a new family with four kids bought Ned MacAllister’s property and are building on it. And besides, I hear Sherman Mosely’s thinking of retiring. That heart attack he had last year put the fear of God in him. So maybe there would be—”

“And what kind of work would I do here? Help people make out their wills? Write up contracts? My life isn’t something out of Ally McBeal. I don’t spend my days handling frivolous cases and my nights boogying in some bar.”

“I didn’t figure you did.”

“Then you should understand that I need to be someplace where I can make a real difference in people’s lives. Those kids I told you about? They need me, Cal. And if I make partner, I can help them even more.”

“In other words, Podunkville’s petty little problems don’t matter.”

“I didn’t say that! And I didn’t mean that. It’s just that…oh, hell—how can I possibly make you understand this without sounding like a snob? I’d feel stifled and useless here, can’t you understand that?”

Cal slammed his palm against the car’s roof. “And how the hell do you expect to raise a child together if we don’t live in the same place?”

“I don’t know! But I can’t just give up my life!”

“Your work comes before your child, in other words.”

“No!” Anguish swam in her eyes. “Oh, God, Cal—I may be totally clueless, and I’m still in shock, too, and I may not know what kind of mother I’ll make, but there’s a reason I never got beyond looking at the front door of that clinic! It takes my breath, how much I already love this kid. And I’m prepared to give it anything it needs. But is it so wrong to not want to lose myself in the process?”

He felt his eyes blaze into hers. “Is it so wrong for me to want to be a real part of my child’s life?”

“Of course not, but—”

“A kid shouldn’t have to grow up without its father, Dawn! And I’d think you’d be the last person to want to see that happen to your kid!”

Her face went rigid. Then she threw up her hands, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to talk about this anymore right now.” He didn’t hinder her when she climbed into the car. “Maybe tomorrow?”

His chest all knotted up, Cal propped his now-stinging hand on the roof. “You plannin’ on changing your mind overnight?”

After a moment, she shook her head again.

“Well, honey—” he let go and stood up straight “—neither am I. So I’d say we’re at an impasse, wouldn’t you?”

He watched her peel out of the drive, wondering if it would have made things better or worse to admit he was every bit as scared as she was.

If not more.

Chapter 2

After he’d put up the horses for the night and returned to the house, all he did was prowl from room to room. An activity which finally drove Ethel, who was crocheting something or other in the living room because the TV reception was better in here, she said, over the edge.

“For pity’s sake, boy! Either sit your backside down and talk to me or take it someplace else! And I already figured out she’s pregnant, so there’s one decision out of your hands.”

He stared at the top of her pin-curled head—she was already “in for the night,” as she put it. “How’d you know that?”

“Because it’s true what they say. About pregnant women glowing. Even if her particular glow looks more like it’s due to radioactive waste. Besides, why else would she be here?”

Cal sighed. Ethel clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her crochet hook a blur. Whatever it was she was making, it was frilly and the most godawful shade of pink Cal had ever seen. Suddenly she plopped the whatever-it-was in her lap and peered at him over her reading glasses, with as much concern in those button eyes of hers as if she’d been his real mother. Which, considering she’d pretty much filled that gap in his life from the time he was nine, wasn’t surprising. “Why don’t you go see your brother?”

“Which one?”

“Does it matter?”

He almost cracked a smile at that. “And what good would that do?”

“Other than getting you out of my hair? I have no idea.” She picked up her work again, weaving the hook in and out of all those little holes so fast it made him dizzy to watch. “But that’s what big brothers are for—to talk things over with. Now that the two of them’s finally figured out a thing or two about women, maybe they can share their wisdom. Besides, you’ll be tellin’ ’em the truth soon enough. Might as well get a jump on it.”

Well, maybe she had a point at that. Not that he relished the thought of being around either just-married Ryan or about-to-be-married Hank, but since he was fresh out of bright ideas, what did he have to lose?

“Don’t wait up,” he said, heading out the door.

“I don’t intend to,” she said, adding a row of lime green to the godawful pink.

He’d stopped by Ryan’s place first, but Maddie, his new wife—who, judging from the scent of warm fruit and fresh-baked pie crust rushing out the kitchen door from behind her, was busy making her next batch of pies to sell to Ruby’s Café—had said he was on duty at the clinic tonight until ten and was there anything she could help him with? But Cal said, no, he didn’t think so, and went on to Hank’s.

His oldest brother, an ex-cop, ran the Double Arrow Motel and Guest Lodge on the outskirts of town, a fixer-upper he bought as a sort of therapy after his first fiancée’s death a few years back. Not only had Hank made the dump into someplace respectable, but he even had a developer seriously interested in turning the place into a bona fide resort. And a few months back, damned if a second chance at love hadn’t come along and crashed his pity-party.

And then stayed until every last guest was good and gone.

Now living in a modest two-story house at the edge of the motel property, Hank seemed understandably surprised at Cal’s showing up unannounced, especially since the three brothers had grown apart after their father’s death when Cal was fourteen. Ryan’s and Hank’s trials and tribulations on the road to true love during the past year, however, had driven the three brothers to talk to each other more than they had in the fifteen years before that.

Now it was Cal’s turn.

Hank led Cal through the living room—painted some orange color that only Ethel could love—to the kitchen where he offered him a beer, which Cal gratefully accepted. Hank’s teenaged daughter, Blair, sat at the kitchen table, her coppery hair gleaming under the lamp as she pored over what looked like an album.

“Wedding invitations,” Hank said by way of explanation. He took a long swallow of his own beer and swept a hand through his short black hair. Falling in love with Jenna Stanton had worked miracles on a mug few people would ever have called good-looking, with its craggy features and twice-broken nose. Hank hadn’t even known about his daughter until a few months ago, when Jenna, a widow herself, had come looking for him after her sister’s—Blair’s mother’s—death and her subsequent discovery that Hank was Blair’s father. The romance had just been a real nice, and totally unexpected, bonus.

“Lord help us,” Hank said, “but I think we’ve got a wedding planner on our hands.”

“Da-ad,” the freckled teenager said, rolling her blue eyes and flashing her braces. “You think Jenna’ll like this one?” She turned the album around. Both men stared at the prissy invitation she was pointing to, trying to figure out what set it apart from the eight other equally prissy invitations on the same page.

“I suppose you’ll have to ask her when she gets back,” Hank said, clearly already well-versed in how to take the easy way out.

“Where is Jenna, by the way?” Cal asked.

“Back in D.C., taking care of loose ends before moving here for good.”

“Y’all decided on a date, yet?”

“Sunday after Thanksgiving, after Jen turns in her next book.”

Leaving Blair to her search, they wandered out onto the back porch. As one, both men sank into twin wooden rocking chairs Hank said Jenna’d ordered from some catalogue or other. Hank’s half-grown puppy, Mutt—the consensus was half black Lab, half German Shepherd—came bounding up the steps to them, planting his big black feet on Cal’s knee.

“I hear Dawn’s back,” Hank said nonchalantly. Cal might’ve laughed if his gut hadn’t felt like somebody’d filled it with a bucket of broken glass.

“You know, I’m beginning to think this entire town’s clairvoyant.”

“Nope. Luralene just happened to be standing in the doorway to the Hair We Are about the time Ivy and Dawn drove past this afternoon. I imagine the news has gotten clear to Claremore by now. Far as Pryor, at the very least.” Hank glanced over, his expression unreadable in the dim light coming from the screen door, then took another swallow of beer.

“What’s got everyone speculatin’, though, is why she’s back. Especially since she was just here in July.”

Cal stuck one booted foot up on the porch railing, pushing back the chair on its rockers as far as he dared. “Let’s put it this way—looks like you and Ryan aren’t the only ones to have fatherhood sprung on ’em this year.”

Hank had the beer can halfway to his mouth; now he lowered it, glancing back to make sure they wouldn’t be heard. “You got Dawn pregnant?”

“Yep.”

Hank sat back in his chair, taking this in. Rocked some more. Then he said, “Remember that night you cheated me out of twenty bucks when we were playing pool? And I asked you whether anything happened between you and Dawn when she was here on the Fourth, and you wouldn’t answer?”

“Well, now you know why I wouldn’t answer. And I did not cheat you out of twenty dollars. Not my fault you can’t play worth spit.”

Several seconds passed before Hank said, “So…what’s this mean? You two gettin’ married?”

“Nope.”

“She at least moving back here?”

“Nope.”

“And I take it you’re not sellin’ up and moving back east with her?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then what in tarnation—?”

“The way I see it,” Cal said, “is what we’ve got here is a baby on the way, a pair of parents who probably shouldn’t be having this baby together, and a whole bunch of questions without answers.” He took a swallow of beer and said, “Make for one helluva crappy night, let me tell you. Well, except for the baby part. I mean, I wasn’t exactly plannin’ on it right now, but it could be worse.”

Another several seconds passed before Hank said, “Yeah. It could be. She might’ve decided not to tell you at all. Then twelve or thirteen years down the road, you suddenly discover you have a kid.”

At that moment the kid in question banged through the screen door to say good-night, bending over to give her father a hug and a kiss before going back inside. Both men sat and rocked for a moment, the rockers’ creaking competing with a lone cicada buzzing its butt off.

“So what’re you gonna do?”

Cal sighed. “Damned if I know. Our goin’ to bed together was a fluke. Our havin’ a baby an even bigger fluke—”

“And you’ve been sweet on her your whole life.”

“You know, I’ve never given anybody cause to think that, so why—”

Hank just laughed. Cal rocked some more, thinking about that look on Dawn’s face when she was talking about those kids she worked with. “Her life’s back east. And there’s nothing Haven, or I, can give her that could even begin to replace what she’d be giving up.”

“Must’ve been some reason she got cozy with you.”

“Yeah. Boredom.”

“You know that for sure?”

Cal wiggled his bottle on his knee, frowning. “No. But maybe I’ve got better things to do than set myself up for a fall. There’s a reason I didn’t pursue her when we were in high school, you know. Even when we were kids, she practically buzzed with all the things she wanted to do, places she wanted to go. Causes she needed to champion. As we got older, it became crystal clear that Haven would never be enough for her. That I’d never be enough for her.”

“So you think she’s better than you?”

“No,” he said, irritation dragging out the word. “Just different. Life here suits me. It never did Dawn. And it never would. Especially now.”

“I see.” The floorboards squawked when Hank leaned forward. “So answer me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“All those gals you’ve dated over the years…how come you never settled down with any of ’em?”

“How the hell should I know? None of ’em…felt right, is all. Not for the long haul, anyway.”

“Uh-huh. As in, none of ’em were…enough for you?”

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” Cal said wearily.

“Dawn’s a helluva lot more—” he banged the beer on the arm of the chair, fighting for the right word “—complex than I am.”

Hank laughed. “All women are more complex than men, bozo brain.”

“And who the hell are you to give me advice, anyway?”

Heavy dark brows shot up. “Hey. Nobody told you to come over here. All I’m saying is, don’t sell yourself short. So the two of you are different. Big deal. So’re Jenna and me. And look at our parents, for the love of Mike. A farmer and a classical pianist? Look—at least you’ve got a fighting chance to see your kid grow up. That’s more than I had. And if you don’t try…what’s the alternative?”

From inside, the phone rang. Hank bounded out of the chair, dog scrambling and screen door banging shut as he grabbed the portable off the hall table. “Well, hey there, yourself, honey,” Cal heard his brother say, and his heart did this stupid thumping thing in his chest. He stood, as well, waving so long through the door before heading back to his truck. Once back out on the road, though, Hank’s words hit Cal like a well-aimed spit wad.

Why had Dawn ended up in his bed that night?

And, more important, why had he let her?

The answer whalloped him so hard, he nearly drove off the road: because he figured nothing would come of it, that’s why.

Because he thought he’d be safe. That since there was no danger of her falling in love with him, the opposite was also true.

If he hadn’t’ve been driving, he would’ve banged his head on the steering wheel. God knows his brain could use a little loosening up, anyway. Because now, thanks to the most pitiful excuse for doing something since Adam’s blaming Eve about the whole apple business, he’d fathered a child. If he wanted any chance at all of being part of this child’s life, he’d have to convince the child’s mother to stay in Haven. And if the child’s mother—a woman he’d never allowed himself to work up strong feelings about for any number of reasons—did stay in Haven, what were the odds that Cal’s heart would mind its own business and stay out of trouble?