Involuntary Daddy

by Rachel Lee

  That didn’t make it any easier to do it while he watched, though. She was suddenly painfully conscious of her nakedness, of the dimples on her thighs from so many injections. She fumbled as she pricked her finger for the blood test.

  “Four times a day?” he said. “Your fingers must be sore a lot.”

  “A little.” She didn’t really think about it anymore. Sometimes she noticed it, but mostly she was so accustomed to it that it was unnoticeable to her.

  She filled the syringe, swabbed her thigh with alcohol, pinched it and inserted the needle. When she finished, she swabbed her thigh again and tossed the used syringe in the wastebasket with its brothers.

  Then Rafe astonished her by bending to kiss her leg where she had just given herself the injection.

  “I’m sorry you have to do that,” he said, “but I’m damn glad you can. Now I’m going to check on the baby.”

  He rose, pulled on his briefs and jeans, grabbed his shoes and shirt from the floor, gave her a quick kiss on the lips and left her room.

  What had gotten into him? she wondered. If she didn’t know better, she might start to think he was sensitive.

  “Of course we want you to stay another week,” Emma said eagerly when Angela brought up the subject at dinner. “Didn’t I tell you we’d like it if you’d stay until Christmas?”

  “That’s right,” Gage agreed. “We’re enjoying your company, Angela. Stay as long as you want.”

  “Just another week,” Angela hastened to say. “I really do have to get back to job hunting. But I hate to leave.” For now. She hated to leave for now.

  Her eyes met Rafe’s across the table, and he gave her a smile that caused her heart to flutter. When she glanced at Emma, she saw knowledge in her friend’s eyes. But Emma didn’t say anything, just looked gently understanding.

  There was nothing to understand, Angela reminded herself. Rafe wanted a week, not a lifetime. And she had decided to take that week rather than miss it. No big deal.

  After dinner, Rafe suggested a walk. Emma excused herself, because she needed to bathe and get things ready to go to work in the morning. Gage excused himself to stay with Emma.

  Which left Rafe, Peanut and Angela to take a lazy walk down the darkened street. Peanut slept comfortably in his father’s arm, oblivious to the star-studded sky and the lights pouring through the windows along the street.

  Rafe reached out and took Angela’s hand, and she felt a tingle of pure delight as their warm palms met.

  “I’m convinced,” Rafe said, “that there are more stars here than there are in Miami.”

  It took a second, but Angela started laughing. “It’s the same sky!”

  “It couldn’t possibly be. We don’t have half this many stars.” He paused as they rounded a corner onto a dark street. “See? There’s the Milky Way. We don’t have that in Miami.”

  She was still laughing. “It might be the city lights, you know.”

  He flashed her a grin. “Nah. We just don’t have the same sky.”

  “You’re silly.”

  “Occasionally.” They walked on to the end of the block, then turned again, circling back toward the house. “It’s too bad they don’t need any D.E.A. agents here. I could get used to this.”

  “Maybe you ought to look into it. I mean, they might not need you here—the town is too small—but there are other places in Wyoming.”

  “I’d probably be working out of Denver. But maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “I take it you’re getting used to the cold?”

  “Ask me that again when it gets really cold.”

  As if she would be around then. Much as she tried to prevent it, her heart skipped a hopeful beat. Maybe she’d made a serious mistake by agreeing to spend another week here. It could get worse, she realized. It could get much, much worse.

  She felt as if she were standing on a bridge between hope and disappointment, between eager anticipation and dread. She felt as if she kept bouncing between one and the other, feeling joy and despair all at once.

  Rafe did that to her. It might have been wiser to leave in the morning, as she had planned, but it was too late now. She had signed on for the ride, wherever it led.

  When they got back to the house, Rafe went to feed the baby and put him to bed. Alone at last, Angela went to her room and gave herself her insulin injection for the night. Then she went to take a shower.

  Standing under the hot spray, she told herself that she might as well not try to sort out all of this now, because she had agreed to stay the week. Next week, after she left, would be soon enough to evaluate everything that was going on.

  For now she ought to just give herself over to the pleasures that were being offered to her.

  She felt a cold draft and turned around to find Rafe climbing into the shower with her. He gave her a lazy smile and took the bar of soap from her hand. He took a washcloth from the rack, soaped it, then began to wash her all over in gentle, stroking movements.

  The sensation was so erotic that her knees turned instantly weak. Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed his shoulders for support.

  “That good, huh?” he asked softly, and gave her another lazy smile. She felt herself smiling back, even as her eyelids insisted they were heavy, felt herself giving herself up to the marvelous feelings he was evoking in her, both physically and emotionally. She felt so cared for. So... sexy.

  The hot soapy washcloth, rough and smooth all at once, stroked her back, rubbed her bottom, then slid around to caress her breasts and belly. When he bent to wash her legs, she bit her lip and hung on for dear life. He went down the outsides of her legs first, long, soothing strokes, then came back up the insides to touch the most secret part of her and rub gently.

  She was burning, a slow, lazy burn that felt so good she never wanted it to end. But then she felt him press the soap and washcloth into her hands, and she knew it was her turn.

  And it was every bit as wonderful. It gave her an unimpeded opportunity to admire the rippling muscles of his back and shoulders, his tight, flat butt, his long, strong legs. His chest, broad and firm, his belly flat and hard. His manhood, hard for her. Just for her. She stroked him sensuously, enjoying the low sound he made, as if he were purring.

  Then she found the scars in his side and paused there, looking up at him.

  “Knife wounds,” he said with a shrug.

  The thought froze her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed the scars before, but she noticed them now, and they filled her with pain.

  “Angel, it was a long time ago. Don’t worry about it.”

  But her mood was destroyed, and so was the hazy, devilmay-care determination with which she had embarked on this week out of time. In an instant it all became too entirely real.

  He was a cop. People tried to kill him. She was leaving in a week. What was wrong with her? She must be out of her mind!

  She turned from him abruptly, rinsing as quickly as she could.

  “Angel?”

  “It’s okay,” she heard herself say. “It’s okay. I just need...I need to be alone for a little while, okay?”

  She hardly dared look at him, but finally she stole a glance and found his face as frozen as an Arctic tundra, as hard as ice.

  “Okay,” he said flatly.

  She climbed out of the tub, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. Then, picking up her nightgown and slippers, she ran for her bedroom, locking the door behind her.

  She couldn’t go on with this, she realized. She couldn’t ignore reality, even for one week. When it came to Rafe Ortiz, life promised absolutely nothing but pain. Nothing.

  Well, screw her, then, Rafe thought as he rinsed himself off. Little tease. He was really getting sick to death of the way she would suddenly run from him, closing him out. And for no good reason that he could figure out.

  His scars? Well, what about them? They’d been there so long he’d nearly forgotten them, and he had told her about the time the guy st
abbed him. He was sure he had. So what was it with this running away?

  He turned off the water and stepped out onto the bathmat. Using a towel, he wiped off the mirror on the back of the door and took a long look at those scars. Hell, there wasn’t much to see, certainly not when compared with the way they’d looked for months afterward. Now they were little more than wide silvery lines in his darker skin. A little puckered, but when all was said and done, the doc had done a fine job of sewing him back together. They sure weren’t any worse than the scars from knee surgery.

  So what the hell was going on with her? Was she that repulsed by a few scars? Somehow he didn’t think so. Then what?

  He was about ready to throw in the towel on this one. He’d begun to feel something with her that he hadn’t felt since Raquel, a passion commingled with a warmth unlike anything he’d ever known before.

  It killed him to admit that. He didn’t want to admit that he’d tumbled into bed with Raquel for any reason other than lust. But in retrospect, in moments of brutal honesty, he admitted that there had been something more. Something that had drawn him to her. Something that had touched him in ways he’d never been touched before.

  But she had turned her back on him the same way Angela kept doing. With Raquel, he’d never gone back. And it was remembering that fact every time he looked at his son that made him reluctant to walk away from Angela.

  He’d made a mistake with Raquel, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. But how many times was he supposed to keep going back before he admitted it was a lost cause?

  Frustrated, he toweled himself dry, yanked on his slacks and headed for his own room He would probably wake up in the morning and discover that Angela had gone home, after all.

  And that was probably for the best. How many times and in how many ways did a woman have to tell him to get lost before he believed she meant it? The fact that he might have made a mistake with Raquel by listening the first time didn’t mean he had to spend the rest of his life taking this kind of crap from some woman.

  Nope, he was going overboard here. Angela kept telling him, and it was high time he started listening.

  She didn’t want him. Period. End of story.

  But accepting that didn’t make going to sleep any easier.

  By Monday morning, Angela was wondering why she had ever agreed to stay the week. Rafe was scarcely talking to her—although, to be fair, she couldn’t blame him.

  What stung, she admitted, what really stung, was that for the first time in her life she was being rejected by a man not because of her diabetes, but because of the way she had acted.

  Throughout her morning run she wondered if she should apologize to him. But how could she explain her own actions? It was as if every time he got a little too close to something that mattered, she bolted like an unbroken horse.

  God, she almost hated herself when she thought about it. If she were him, she would avoid her, too.

  Entering the house, she found Rafe and Peanut in the kitchen, making a late breakfast.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Morning.” He looked grumpy and rumpled.

  “Did the baby keep you up last night?” she asked.

  “Nope. Not the baby.”

  She almost asked what had disturbed his sleep, then decided against it. She might not like the answer. “Look, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about how I’ve been behaving.”

  He didn’t look particularly receptive. He scraped scrambled eggs onto a plate, beside four pieces of toast, then sat facing Peanut, who was sitting in his recliner seat.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said finally.

  “Yes, it does. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged with supreme indifference. “Whatever. Forget it.”

  She wanted to scream with frustration, but instead she went to get her snack. Then, pointedly, she sat at the table to eat. “I don’t mean to act like that,” she said. “I never have before.”

  He said nothing. She gave up and concentrated on her crackers and milk.

  The phone rang. Without getting up, Rafe twisted and grabbed the receiver. “Dalton residence. Oh, hi, Connie. How’s it going?”

  Connie? Angela felt an uncharacteristic surge of jealousy. Who was Connie? Must be someone he worked with, she told herself. Maybe it was even his boss. She tried not to listen, and listening wouldn’t have told her much, anyway. He asked a few short questions that revealed nothing, then hung up and went back to his meal.

  “Well,” she said eventually, “I guess there’s no reason to hang around the rest of the week,” she said. “I’ll pack and leave tomorrow.”

  The reaction she got wasn’t at all what she expected.

  “You might want to wait until Wednesday,” he said.

  Even as her heart was plummeting because he didn’t want her to stay longer, her irritation began to rise. Who was he to tell her when she could go? “Why?”

  He looked at her. “That was my lawyer, about the custody case. The judge wants to talk to both of us. I told her not to wait too long, because I figured you’d be going back to Iowa soon. She said she’s going to set it up for tomorrow if she can. So you might want to hang around until Wednesday.”

  “Why? I have nothing to say about any of this. Unless the judge thinks we’re engaged?” Her annoyance began to rise. “That’s probably it. That stupid Manny probably shot his mouth off about that, and now the judge wants to know what kind of person I am. Man! I can’t believe this.”

  He didn’t say anything, just resumed eating.

  “Well, I’ll leave this afternoon, then,” she said. “Then you can go in there and tell whatever lies you want about your fiancée.”

  “I don’t lie,” he said levelly.

  “Except when it suits you.”

  “Except when it’s necessary, and never under oath.”

  “Pretty narrow definition of telling the truth, don’t you think?”

  He looked at her. “At least I don’t lie to myself.”

  Her hackles rose. “And just what does that mean?”

  “I suppose it’ll mean whatever you want it to, the way everything else I’ve said does.” He rose from the table and carried his plate to the sink. “I’ll tell you one thing, Angel. You could be a really wonderful person if you could come out of that shell long enough to care just a little bit about somebody besides yourself.”

  Then he picked up the baby and was gone.

  Oh, God, she thought, she’d done it again. What in the world was the matter with her?

  She and Rafe went to the courthouse the next morning to see the judge. For all she’d squawked about it, Angela hadn’t had the heart to pack. If there was something she could do to help Rafe keep his child, she would do it. But riding in the car with him was like riding to an execution. Neither of them said a word, and the emotional temperature was below zero.

  They were met at the courthouse by Rafe’s attorney, Constance Crandall. “This shouldn’t be difficult,” Connie said. “The judge is already strongly leaning our way.”

  Judge Williams was a pleasant-looking woman in her forties, dressed in a navy-blue business suit. She invited them into her chambers and offered them comfortable upholstered chairs facing her desk. She waited while Rafe removed Peanut’s bunting, then asked the court reporter, who was sitting in the corner, to administer the oath to both Rafe and Angela.

  “I’ve been reviewing this custody case, Mr. Ortiz. I don’t see any reason to drag this process out unnecessarily, so I thought I’d ask you a few questions to clarify some of the issues. I hope this will be sufficient to come to a conclusion in this matter. Now, I understand from your lawyer that you have absolute proof you’re the child’s natural father?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. I had a DNA test done.”

  The judge nodded. “And we can get a copy of those results?”

  “I don’t see why not I had it done through my regular doctor. He should ha
ve a copy of it.”

  “Good. Can you give me his name and phone number? Maybe my clerk can get him to fax those results up today.”

  Rafe pulled out his wallet and offered a business card.

  “Thank you.” The judge passed it to the reporter, who typed all the information in. Then the card was given back to Rafe.

  “Now,” the judge continued, “the complaint from Mr. Molina alleges that you absconded with the child in order to prevent Mr. Molina and his family from having access to the child. How do you answer that?”

  Rafe looked down at the baby in his arms. Angela found herself holding her breath, wondering what he was going to say, and afraid of the impact it might have on his case.

  “That’s partly true, Your Honor,” Rafe said finally. “When Raquel—that’s the baby’s mother, Raquel Molina—was dying, she left word with her doctor that she wanted me to raise the child far away from her family. I agreed with her.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Because the Molina family is deeply involved in drug trafficking, including the importation of cocaine from South America.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “I’m an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

  “Ah.” The judge sat back in her seat. “How many family members are involved?”

  “Well, I arrested Mr. Molina’s brother last year for trafficking. We have evidence that Mr. Molina’s mother—the baby’s grandmother—is also involved, and for a time the baby’s mother was involved as a mule—a person who carried the drugs across international boundaries.”

  “And Mr. Manuel Molina?”

  Rafe hesitated, and Angela found herself holding her breath. “As of this time, we have no evidence that he’s directly involved.”

  Judge Williams nodded and looked down at the papers before her. “He says he’s a restauranteur.”

  “He appears to be.”

  The judge made a note. “What were your other reasons for bringing the child here?”

  “Well, there were a couple,” Rafe said slowly. “I probably wouldn’t have left Miami quite so precipitously, except that Manny Molina showed up at my apartment one night. He had me followed.”