Shotgun Daddy

by Harper Allen

  “Now, why would I say that?” she replied innocently. “Just because you kept me under what amounted to house arrest on a horse-ranch-slash-teen-boot-camp for two weeks and practically tore a strip off me everytime I set foot outside the door?”

  “Point taken.” The hard angles of his face broke into another wry grin, and then his expression sobered. “I guess you’ve had enough of ranch life to last you for quite a while, haven’t you. Real ranch life, I mean,” he added dryly, “since I don’t count the Lazy J with its indoor swimming pool and air-conditioning and home-theater screening room as a real ranch.”

  “Jess never did, either.” It was hard to talk about him, Caro thought wistfully, but it would be harder still to let the good memories fade. She managed a small laugh. “He always said that if he’d wanted real ranch life he’d have signed on as a hand at the Double B. But you know, I don’t think the trappings of his success were ever that important to him. I really believe that if he’d lost his fortune, as long as he had enough left to continue working with his beloved computers he would have been perfectly happy. And as for me…no, I haven’t had enough of ranch life,” she said slowly.

  She glanced at him in surprise. “I didn’t know I was going to say that,” she admitted. “In fact, when we first arrived at the Double B, I remember wondering how Greta and Susannah and Tess could stand living so far away from the amenities. But after a couple of days there I realized that all the amenities I needed were right in front of me.”

  “Such as?” Gabe met her glance.

  “Such as good friends, fresh air, beauty everywhere I looked. No, I’m not looking forward to leaving the Double B, Gabe.”

  “Good. Because until Dixon’s caught and we know for certain who he was working with, I wouldn’t recommend it anyway.”

  It was a more pragmatic answer than she’d been hoping for from him, she thought. Then again, if and when Gabe ever did talk of a future with her, it wouldn’t be while he was exiting a freeway and merging with city traffic. She decided to change the subject.

  “I guess Greta must have been more shaken up than I’d realized, to have to stay in the hospital for a few extra days while the doctors run more tests on her. Is Del planning to remain in Gallup while they do?”

  “Greta won’t let him. She told him he was driving her crazy, fussing around and hovering at her bedside, so she insisted he come home today.” Gabe signaled a turn and slowed. “Del didn’t say, but I wondered whether the doctors found something unrelated to her ordeal when they checked her over.” His mouth firmed to a line. “I hated having to hit him with Tye’s news at such a bad time, but I know he wouldn’t have thanked me for keeping it from him.”

  “How did he react?”

  “With grief, mixed with relief over the fact that Jess will finally be able to be brought home and laid to rest.” He frowned. “And with some guilt. Apparently his last conversation with Jess ended in an argument, and naturally he wishes now that it hadn’t.”

  “An argument over what?” Caro asked in astonishment. “For heaven’s sake, Jess was the easiest-going man I’ve ever known. And despite Del’s crustiness, I always had the impression he and Jess didn’t rub each other the wrong way like he and—”

  She stopped abruptly. A corner of Gabe’s mouth curved up.

  “Hell, go ahead and say it, honey. Like Del and me, right? I agree, there was never that kind of friction between them, but from what Del told me, he was forced into taking a hard line with Jess this time.” He looked uncomfortable. “Jess came to the Double B a few weeks before his trip to Mexico with some crazy story about Del being his father.”

  She’d been astonished a moment ago, Caro thought. Now she was flabbergasted. “But what would have made him believe such a thing?” she protested in shock. “I know from Greta that Del and Jess’s mother knew each other way back when, but that’s hardly enough to accuse a man of fathering you and then shirking his responsibilities to you.”

  “It might be enough if you were Jess and grew up wishing it were true.” Gabe exhaled loudly. “He hero-worshiped Del from the start. He saw being sent to the Double B as a dream come true when he was a teen, and at one time or another he floated his theory about Del being his father to all of us—me, Connor and Tye. In our sensitive juvenile-delinquent way we told him he was nuts, of course, but one thing we never knew was that the day before our year was up he actually went to Del and confronted him with his suspicions. I only found that out from Del yesterday.”

  “I don’t understand. When Jess was a teen he asked Del if he was his father, and although Del set him straight then, he never totally discarded that belief?” Caro bit her lip. “Oh, Gabe, how sad that seems.”

  “Del saw it as sad, too. But he said he still couldn’t let Jess continue thinking something that just wasn’t true, especially when Jess admitted that his mother hadn’t put the idea into his head.”

  “And their meeting probably ended in them both saying things they didn’t mean,” Caro said softly. “I can understand why Del feels guilty over that, but he’s right. What choice did he have but to set Jess straight?” A thought occurred to her, and her expression brightened. “Jess must have come to that conclusion himself after he’d thought it over, Gabe. Remember his phone call to Tye—the one where he said he wanted a meeting with all the Double B’s when he got back from Mexico?”

  “The one where he said he’d found a link between everything that had happened recently at the ranch, and Del’s past in Vietnam?” A slow grin broke across Gabe’s features. “I think you’ve got something, princess. He’d hardly have wanted to run his latest theory by Del for his approval if he hadn’t finally given up on the old one. I’ll remind Del of that. It might relieve him of some of that guilt he’s feeling.”

  He pulled into a parking space and switched off the engine before turning to her. “We’re not out of the woods yet with this investigation, although Connor’s meeting with his FBI contact today to discuss their progress in the search for Andrew Scott is a good sign. Connor hopes it means that yesterday’s events have convinced the Bureau to throw all their resources at bringing him in and questioning him about his connection to Dixon. Even if they don’t locate Scott immediately, Dixon himself can’t run for long—especially since the authorities have frozen his bank accounts and flagged his passport at every border crossing. So soon he’ll be in custody, and at that point you and Emily will be free to go back to the Lazy J while Jess’s estate is being settled, or find your own place here in Albuquerque if you’d prefer.”

  “Not here.” She had no idea where this conversation was going, Caro thought, puzzled. “In Albuquerque I’m William Moore’s daughter, Gabe. I’ve come to appreciate being my own woman, and whether or not my father ever tries to mend the breach between us and have a relationship with his granddaughter, I don’t see myself ever slipping back into my old life again.”

  “Somehow I don’t see that, either, princess.” His tone was wry. He reached across the space between them and lightly tucked a short strand of her hair behind her ear, letting his hand rest there as he continued. “And I don’t see myself slipping back into the desert. The day after I resigned from Recoveries International I got phone calls from three other hostage negotiation firms, all offering me a job. I’m going back into the field when this is over, Caro.”

  The amber gaze watching her deepened to near-black. “In my line of work I’m usually out of the country, but I get back here for flying visits several times a year. I’d like to be able to come and see you and Emily when I do.”

  The street they were parked on was filled with traffic. On the sidewalk passersbys went about their business. After her time at the Double B, Caro thought disjointedly, she found the constant background noise of a city almost overwhelming.

  Which made it all the more amazing that she’d just heard the tiny crack of her own heart breaking.

  She’d been a fool. The man had told her from the start that he was a loner, but stil
l she’d allowed herself to daydream about Emily having a full-time daddy, about herself having the kind of future with Gabe that Susannah and Tess had won with their Double B ex–bad boys.

  You allowed yourself to daydream, yes. But be honest—did you ever believe those daydreams would come true?

  “Not really,” she said softly, meeting the gaze of the man she loved. “That’s why I never told you about—”

  “Sorry, princess?” A faint frown drew his eyebrows together. “Was that a no or a yes?”

  Caro blinked, and with the slightest of movements drew away from him enough so that his hand fell from her hair. The smile she produced felt too bright, but it was the best she could do.

  “That’s an ‘I need time to think about it,’ Gabe,” she said lightly. “And as you say, we still have a little time before we’re in a position to make decisions about what will happen when this is all behind us, right?”

  “Right.” His smile was apologetic. “Bad timing on my part, especially with this meeting with Larry ahead of us.”

  This was a topic she could deal with, Caro thought numbly. She needed to seize it before Gabe started talking about them again.

  “You know he’s going to deny Steve ever hinted to him that it might not be such a tragedy if Jess didn’t come out of that negotiation alive,” she said briskly as they exited the sedan. “Even though we don’t really believe that his actions during that handover were anything more than a bid for glory that backfired terribly on Larry, just admitting to discussing the death of the hostage he was supposed to keep safe would veer dangerously close to conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “I expect him to deny it,” Gabe said briefly. He held open the glass and stainless steel door of the starkly modern office building that housed the head office of Recoveries International, as Caro preceded him into the lobby. A bank of elevators stood against one granite wall. “But how he denies it is going to tell me whether my suspicions are correct or not. If they are, the FBI can question him further.”

  He fell silent for a moment as an elevator arrived and a woman with a briefcase got out, but as they entered the car and the doors closed behind him he went on, his tone brittle.

  “This one was personal, Caro, and I intend to gather every damning scrap of evidence I can against Dixon. I won’t risk him beating these charges because I didn’t go the extra mile to put him away.”

  He wasn’t the same man who’d once sworn to her that he had no ties to the Double B and the friends he had known there, Caro reflected. Gabe had come a long way in the past eight days, and the distance he’d traveled had nothing to do with the number of miles between his desert isolation and a place he’d once thought of as home.

  He’d come this far, but no further, she thought achingly. Probably she would never know all the reasons for those few final barriers he kept between himself and the rest of the world—between himself and her, she revised. But she couldn’t help wondering if the answer to his ultimate alienation might be found on the Dinetah, if he ever allowed himself to go looking for it there.

  “What the—”

  As the elevator doors opened, Gabe’s uncompleted exclamation broke into her thoughts. Immediately she saw what had prompted it.

  The wide hallway was a hive of activity, with burly men in movers’ uniforms lugging furniture and computers and electronics equipment into an open freight elevator. Even as she looked around her in confusion, Caro heard Larry’s angry shout coming from the direction of the office that was being emptied.

  “Not that, damn you! That painting’s my personal property!”

  “We’ve got our orders, Mr. Kanin.” One of the muscle-bound men came out of the office with a flat bubble-wrapped package. “Take it up with the management of this building. All I’ve been told is that you’re three months in arrears on your rent, and they’re trying to recoup a fraction of what you owe them.”

  “For God’s sake, man—” Larry appeared in the doorway, his face distorted with rage. His gaze landed on Caro and Gabe and his mouth curled into a sneer.

  “Great. Just freakin’ great. The two people in the world I most want to see at this moment—my ice-queen ex-fiancée who never unfroze enough to give herself to me, and the burned-out case she chose to father her illegitimate brat. Thanks for blowing the whistle on me in Mexico with your buddy Estavez, Riggs. The word got out, and what corporate clients I had left deserted me like rats leaving a—”

  His sentence ended abruptly as Gabe’s fist crashed into his jaw.

  Chapter Twelve

  He had a daughter.

  And his child’s mother had never intended to tell him he was a father.

  Gabe slammed the flat of his hand against the nearest porch pillar, as hard as he could. Even as he stood there, his head bowed and his arm still braced against the pillar, a voice came out of the midnight stillness from a few feet away.

  “So she told you, did she?”

  The crisp tones were unmistakably Del’s—not surprising, since it was his night for guard duty, Gabe belatedly recalled. Del was the last person he wanted to talk to right now. Or no, he corrected himself savagely as he turned away, Caro was the last person, but Del came in a pretty close second.

  He couldn’t remember much about what had happened at Kanin’s office this morning. He remembered hitting him, and he remembered why he’d hit him. It hadn’t been because of the bombshell Kanin had dropped on him, since his mind had still been processing what he’d just heard when his fist had decided to get up close and personal with Larry’s jaw. It had been because of how he’d referred to Emily.

  Caro had once called her baby daughter—my baby daughter, Gabe thought, feeling the knife that had been twisting in his gut give another turn—“pure innocence.” She hadn’t lied about that, at least. Emily was pure innocence, and from the moment he’d laid eyes on her he’d had the foolish feeling that there was some kind of bond between them. The way she’d clamped onto his finger that first time, the way she held out her arms to him when he bent over her crib, the way she crowed with delight every time he swung her into his arms…

  Except that feeling of being bonded with Emily hadn’t been foolish. It had been nothing less than the truth. And now that he knew it he wondered why he hadn’t been sure of it before.

  Because the snow princess made damn sure you wouldn’t see it. And you were so busy looking at those lush lips of hers while she was lying to you that you would have believed her if she’d said black was white, dammit.

  Aside from not remembering much about what had happened in Kanin’s office, he also didn’t remember most of the drive back to the Double B. He had the feeling she’d tried to talk to him a few times. He was pretty sure he’d seen tears falling from those alpine-blue eyes. In the end she’d fallen silent and had only resumed talking when they were almost at the ranch.

  That part he remembered.

  “Maybe I should have told you.” The tears had disappeared from her voice. “Then when you paid us those flying visits once or twice a year that you were talking about earlier, Emily could have known it was her daddy who was dropping by to say hi.”

  It was the first thing she’d said that he’d felt a need to reply to. “If I’d known I had a child, I wouldn’t have—”

  “Wouldn’t have what? Wouldn’t have walked away from us when this investigation was over, wouldn’t have contemplated taking the type of job that gives you the perfect excuse not to commit yourself to me, wouldn’t have reverted to being a damn loner, Gabe?” Her voice had shook. “Oh, I believe you. You would have changed your life out of a sense of duty to the child you created. But I wanted you to do it because you couldn’t imagine living without Emily—and without me.”

  A wave of pain had seemed to rush from her on her last few words, and his immediate response had been anger. What right did the snow princess have to feel pain, when she was the one who’d lied? What right did she have to cry, just because her deception had been found out, and what ri
ght did she have to make him feel, even for a moment, that he was in the wrong?

  He’d opened his mouth to say all those things, but then the gates of the Double B had come into view. Only when he was pulling into a parking spot by the barn did he speak.

  “You don’t want me to be part of her life, and I don’t want my daughter’s world torn apart by one custody dispute after another between her parents. So up to a point I’ll bow out. But I won’t let you stop me from paying support, and when the time is right, I want her to know who her father is and have the choice of getting to know me. Those terms aren’t negotiable.

  “And one other thing. I took on the responsibility of keeping you safe. Just because our personal relationship went to hell this afternoon doesn’t mean our working one’s changed. With any luck, when we walk in, Del or Con will tell us that Steve was picked up by the police while we were gone, Andrew Scott’s been found and has confessed to being Dixon’s mouthpiece, Leo, and all danger to you and Emily is past. If that’s not the case, I think it would be easier for both of us if the whole damn Double B gang doesn’t figure out that we’re no longer an item.”

  “So you’re changing your rule. The one about nobody gets to pretend.” She’d been staring straight at him, so it had been impossible to look away. “Now we pretend, Gabe?”

  He’d taken refuge in curtness and had seen the pain that flashed behind her eyes as he did. “Yeah, princess, now we pretend. But you’re good at pretense and deception, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

  That last had been a low blow, Gabe thought now, heading for the porch steps. And it hadn’t been necessary to say anything about not letting the others know what had happened between them, because when they’d walked into the kitchen together the place had been in an uproar, with Connor’s voice raised above everyone else’s.