by Leigh Duncan
“You have horses?” Excitement flashed across the boy’s face. It faded quickly, though he was clearly awed by the prospect. Jimmy scuffed one sneaker against the ground and turned to Sarah. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t go there…can I?”
The little boy’s attitude sent a chill down Ty’s spine, and he winced. He couldn’t fathom what life in New York had been like for Millie and Jimmy, but his ex-wife must have said “No, we can’t afford it” more often than not if the child automatically thought something was out of reach. He bit back an urge to reassure the tyke. It wasn’t his place. That honor belonged to Sarah.
“I guess you’d like that?” she asked the boy.
“Would I! There’ll be horses. And cows. And…and…and…”
The joy fell out of Jimmy’s eyes. A worried look took its place as his gaze shifted between the two adults. His lower lip trembling, he settled on Sarah. “Yeah, but, you’ll come, too. Won’t you?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Sarah said with far more enthusiasm than she’d shown all day.
Jimmy’s eyes grew so wide Ty feared they might pop out of his head if someone gave the kid a good rap between his shoulder blades.
The boy’s excitement was infectious. It tempted Ty to hang around for a while, and he considered asking the pair if they wanted to go for ice cream. But one look at Sarah stopped him. The smile she beamed into the child’s excited face transformed her otherwise attractive features into downright heart-stopping. When Ty’s pulse skipped a beat or two, he fought the urge to step closer with a reminder that he wasn’t high on the prim and proper social worker’s list of favorite people.
Watching them climb into a government-issue sedan a few minutes later, Ty tugged off his hat and mopped his forehead with one arm. Despite temperatures in the seventies, the cotton sleeve came away damp. And no wonder. It wasn’t every day a man learned he might have a son. No matter how far-fetched the idea, he couldn’t deny the thrill of possibility that had hummed through him ever since he’d heard the news.
A son!
A son to take fishing and play catch with in the backyard. A son to inherit the ranch he’d worked so hard to preserve. A son to carry the hopes, dreams and traditions of the Parker family into another generation.
But one who was rapidly approaching his sixth year on this planet without Ty hearing so much as a “Surprise! You’re a dad” from his ex-wife.
Impossible.
With that sobering thought, he threw his hat into the pickup truck and slid onto the seat.
His marriage had hit the rocks not long after he and Millie had said their “I do’s.” Hindsight had eased the pain enough that he acknowledged his share of the blame. After high school, he hadn’t been able to put enough distance between him and the ranch where he’d been born and raised. In college, he’d been sure he’d always feel that way. And Millie had counted on it. They’d planned a life in the city where Ty had promised to buy his wife the house she’d always wanted. But neither of them had factored in his dad’s cancer. Ty had moved them home to help out, swearing it was just until his dad beat the disease.
Except, that never happened.
By the time they figured out it wasn’t going to, the smell of hay and horses had become as much a part of Ty as red ink and sweet iced tea. He’d discovered a new love for the summer roundup, that he had a knack for raising cattle. Maybe it was in his blood. Devotion to their particular stretch of palmetto and scrub had flowed through Parker veins for nearly a century.
It hadn’t flowed through Millie’s, though, and she’d split.
What about Jimmy? Whose genes did he carry?
There was no denying the kid favored him, but no one had to tell Ty that looks could be deceiving. The Circle P’s hardy breed of cattle traced back to the conquistadors. On the next ranch over, Ol’ Man Tompkins raised Brahmas. Only Brahmas. Cattle with wide gray sides, a hump over their shoulders and a smell Ty couldn’t abide. Two springs ago, Tompkins’s heifers had started dropping brown-hided calves that looked a lot like Ty’s cattle. His neighbor had about had a conniption, insisting one of Ty’s bulls had found his way past the fence line. Blood tests had proven Tompkins wrong. The color was a throwback, but the calves were all Brahman.
So, as much as Ty hated to submit a little kid like Jimmy to a needle, testing his DNA was the only way to know for sure. He peeled off the strip of colorful gauze, stuffed it in the ashtray and grabbed his cell phone. Punching numbers, he reached out to the college roommate who’d stood at his side when he’d married Millie and gotten him drunk the night his divorce became final.
“Dave.” Ty leaned against the seat back, picturing his friend behind an immense desk in a law office that overlooked Tampa Bay. “I’ve got a little problem.” He waited a beat. “Millie’s dead.”
A sharp intake of breath preceded “Jeez, I’m sorry to hear that. You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said past an odd tightness in his throat. “We hadn’t seen each other, or even spoken, in years. But that’s not the problem. She had a baby. A boy. The birth certificate names me as the father.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I was,” Ty said, not entirely sure he meant the words. “I’m in Fort Pierce where some friend of hers dropped the kid off at the DCF office like a sack of feed.”
“Wait a minute.” Through the receiver, Ty heard a chair squeak and knew Dave was staring at the ceiling, performing the same calculations that had been running through his own head. “Millie left—what? Six years ago? So the kid would be…”
“Jimmy—James Tyrone Parker—he’s five. The dates mesh up. That doesn’t make him mine. She would have said…something.”
“Is there any possibility?”
“Not much of one. I’ve been racking my brain for all the good it’s done me. Can’t remember a single, well—you know. It was a bad time. I don’t have to tell you how bad.”
Ty’s best friend had just been deployed to a war zone. Millie had seemed bent on turning their lives into one. And his dad had been dying. After he’d passed, it was Dave who’d safeguarded the Circle P, making sure ownership transferred to Ty rather than the army of creditors who’d demanded he sell the ranch. For that, he owed his friend far more than keeping Dave’s freezer stocked with steaks.
A low whistle. “Whether he’s yours or not, it sucks to be you.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Either way, Millie had pulled off one heck of a cruel joke.
“How can I help?”
Ty ran a hand through his hair. “We just took the paternity test. Won’t get the results for a couple of weeks. The question is, what do I do if I’m right and he’s not mine?”
Another squeak of Dave’s chair grated on Ty’s nerves so much he wished he could pass his friend a can of oil.
“Yeah, that’s the bad part. According to Florida law, if you and Millie were still married when the kid was born—”
“We were. The divorce didn’t become final for another couple of months.”
“Then, he’s yours. No matter what the blood tests say.”
Ty nodded and swallowed hard. He was either a stranger to the son he’d never known about or dangerously close to getting stuck with some other man’s child. Both options made him sick to his stomach. “And there’s nothing I can do?”
“As a probate lawyer, that’s not exactly my field of expertise. I think you can go to court, give up your rights, but I’ll have to look in
to it. Fax whatever paperwork you have to my office. I’ll have something for you in a couple of days. And, Ty?”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry to hear about Millie.”
“Me, too, man,” he said, thinking of the mess his ex-wife had left him to clean up. “Me, too.”
Ending the call, he threw the truck in gear and headed for the closest shopping mall. A glance at the dashboard clock told him it’d be dark by the time he unloaded the supplies and the few items he’d pick up for Jimmy. Later still, by the time he’d sit with Doris and Seth, let them in on the secret he and Sarah had decided to keep from the boy until the test results came back. Before he turned in, he’d hunt down the old trunk that held the boots he’d worn as a kid. Jimmy was a might on the small side, but Ty bet there’d be a pair or two that would fit the boy.
He smiled, remembering the way the child’s face had lit up at the idea of spending time on the ranch. His son or not, he’d do whatever it took to make sure the kid enjoyed the next ten days on the trail. And who knew, he might even convince Sarah he wasn’t the ogre her foster kids had made him out to be. Changing the uptight social worker’s opinion would be a challenge, no doubt about it. But life was a challenge and, as he made the final turn onto the road that would take him home to the Circle P, Ty determined to meet this one head-on.
* * *
“WHAT’S THAT KID DOING HERE? I thought we agreed earlier that you’d take him to The Glades.”
Busted.
Sarah gripped Jimmy’s case file so tightly the thin manila practically folded in two. She’d hoped that with their tracking system off-line, Connie would forget about the boy. She should have known better. Just like she should have guessed that her supervisor would report to work though their office was officially closed. Connie wouldn’t let a little thing like having no computers stop her. She’d just work longer, harder.
Until she keeled over at her desk or reached the age of mandatory retirement.
Studying her boss’s wiry gray hair and hardened features, Sarah wondered if she was looking at herself in twenty years. She’d transferred to Fort Pierce in order to learn from the best the DCF had to offer, but all she’d learned so far was that the foster care system was broken and she’d never be able to fix it. Not by working from within. Every time she tried—the way she had with Jimmy—she put her career on the line.
“I’ve located his dad,” Sarah offered from the doorway to her manager’s office.
At least, she’d spoken with the man listed on the child’s birth certificate and knew someone wasn’t telling the truth. Either Millie had falsely named Ty or she hadn’t told him about his son. And after staring into a pair of eyes the same earthy-brown as Jimmy’s, Sarah would put her money on the latter. “I thought you’d want the child placed with his father.”
“So, why is he here? Shouldn’t he be with his dad?”
“According to Ty—” The name felt too familiar on her tongue, and Sarah backtracked. “According to Mr. Parker, until yesterday he never even knew he had a son. He’s asked for a day to prepare.” She took a deep breath. “Plus, I’m not entirely sure about him.”
Behind the rimless glasses perched on her nose, Connie’s stern look deepened. “You have doubts about this man? Why is that?”
“It’s—” Sarah fought back a sigh “—complicated.”
How much of the truth could she tell the DCF supervisor? Certainly not that seeing Ty stirred her blood in ways she hadn’t experienced in far too long. Or that his good looks made her doubt her own judgment. She could barely admit those things to herself, much less say them out loud.
Nor could she confide that Ty had demanded a paternity test. Constance Morgan didn’t just run the DCF by the book, she’d written it. Literally documented the code social workers followed in order to protect children throughout the state. If she learned the rancher had challenged Jimmy’s paternity, she’d lock the little boy in the system until the test results came back. And if there was one thing—maybe the only thing—Sarah agreed with Ty about, it was that neither of them wanted Jimmy placed in a group home.
“We’ve dealt with him before. He’s the rancher who runs that old-fashioned cattle drive from Okeechobee to Kissimmee each summer.”
Connie nodded. “I remember. His fraternity wanted to start a Big Brother program. You spent months working on the project, even though I told you it would fail. These do-good programs usually do.” She propped her elbows on the edge of her desk, her fingers tented, her chin resting on her thumbs. “I can see why you’d question his abilities to parent. But we’ll monitor the situation. Do what we can to see him through this initial transition. Intervene, only if we have to.”
“Well, that’s the problem.” Sarah shook her head. “His midwinter roundup starts tomorrow. It lasts about ten days. He plans to take the boy with him.”
“Ten days?” Connie’s eyebrows knitted and her lips turned down at the corners. “No hope of salvaging your trip to Hawaii?”
“I tried,” Sarah said with a grimace she didn’t have to fake. She’d checked with her travel agent. The islands’ tourist season was in high gear, the out-of-the-way locations where flowers for her tropical garden were at their best, solidly booked through spring. And there was the little matter of the woman she’d hired to look after her tropical plants. According to their contract, she’d have to pay for the service no matter what.
Sarah sighed. Her plumeria and orchids liked humidity and needed plenty of water. The way she babied them, sometimes, she thought she’d be better off with cats. “It’ll be months before I can reschedule.”
“And you want to accompany the boy.” A statement, not a question.
Sarah fought the urge to duck her head when Connie’s glasses slid down her nose. The older woman’s steely-eyed focus bore down on her.
“If you do this, you’ll have to do it on your own time.”
“I figured as much.” Technically, she already was on vacation. If she didn’t go on the cattle drive, she’d only spend the entire time worrying about Jimmy when, instead, she could be right there beside him.
“And you’re up for this?”
This was it, her one and only chance to back out.
“It’ll be a stretch,” she admitted, letting her gaze drift toward Jimmy. As if he sensed her, the boy looked up from the video game he’d found under the tree Christmas morning. He waved, and Sarah wiggled her fingers in return. She couldn’t ignore the way the child’s lopsided grin tugged at her heart. Nor would she risk his safety by sending him off into Florida’s back country with a man she didn’t completely trust.
Even if he was the boy’s father.
Even if one look at the tall, muscular rancher made all her nerve endings stand at attention.
She’d keep those feelings under control. For Jimmy’s sake—and her own—she’d maintain an objective, professional demeanor. After all, it wasn’t as if she and Ty would be riding off into the sunset together. They were going on a cattle drive. Where the dirt and the dust, the sweat and the smell of cow droppings weren’t exactly romantic. As long as she kept her guard up, she could ignore the not-so-tiny flare of attraction she felt for Ty Parker and concentrate on the more important issue—giving Jimmy the future he deserved.
A single glance at the boy told her it was worth the risk. But in order to help the child, she’d have to stay objective. Which, with Ty in the immediate vicinity, might pose a bigger task than she could handle.
Chapter Three
“’Bout ready to hit the trail, boss?”
Ty quirked an eyebrow at Matt Henson’s fake drawl. The accountant from Chicago would never make it as a Southerner. Not with an accent that was more cream of wheat than grits. But the man, who readily admitted he’d lived his entire life above the Mason-Dixon Line, had apparently fallen in love with the image of himself as a rough and ready cowboy on last year’s roundup. He loved it so much, in fact, that he and his brother had convinced three of their friends to join them for the winter cattle drive.
“Pretty soon.”
Ty grinned. He couldn’t fault Matt or the others for wanting to mount up and ride. To tell the truth, he was a might eager to hit the trail, himself. There was nothing quite as good as a long day in the saddle to help a man forget his troubles. Troubles, Ty had in spades. Between his struggle to keep the ranch in the black and Sarah Magarity’s surprising news, worry pressed heavily on his shoulders.
He lifted his hat and brushed one hand through his hair. In the large, open yard, ranch hands darted here and there, loading supplies and suitcases into sturdy trucks outfitted to look like covered wagons. Ty knew without checking that Doris was in the kitchen, filling huge coolers with pies and cakes and the various side dishes she’d spent the past month preparing. Determined to give his customers the experience of a lifetime, one they’d paid well for, he refused to let the drive be waylaid by a few latecomers. He shaded his eyes to scour the long dirt drive. Nothing. A quick glance into the cloudless sky where the sun hung a hand’s width west of straight overhead told him one o’clock was on fast approach with no sign of his last two guests. If Sarah and Jimmy didn’t show soon, he’d have no choice. He’d have to leave without them.
Had the feisty redhead ignored his objections and stuck Jimmy in The Glades?