“Hey, pard. I know you’re upset.”
Silence.
“Ev? Look, just give me a chance to talk here, okay? This is hard for both of us.”
“My dad’s dead,” Evan said into his arms.
Rafe’s throat closed around a knot. “Yeah, I know. Your dad, he was a special guy. And I know you loved him.”
Evan’s back grew rigid.
“And see, I’d never want to take that away from you. I’d never want to interfere with that. That’s special, you and your dad. He loved you very much.” Evan sniffed. “Look, Ev, I don’t know how much you heard in there—”
“You were fighting.”
“No, we weren’t fighting. And definitely not about you. We were just trying to decide the best way to tell you.”
“You lied,” the boy said accusingly, tears streaming down his small cheeks.
“How’d I lie, Evan?”
“You s-said you were just a friend of my Mommy’s—”
“That’s true. A long time ago, we were good friends. Actually, more than friends. We, uh...we loved each other.”
Evan tipped his damp face sideways and glared at Rafe.
“But,” he continued, “for some reason, things didn’t work out and we broke up. When your mom found out she was gonna have you, well, she decided that Tom would be the best daddy for you. And so he was.”
“He was my dad.”
Rafe knew what he meant. In every sense of the word that Evan understood, Tom had fathered him—he’d tucked him in, read him bedtime stories and taken him fishing. Tom was the one who’d been there, not Rafe.
“You’re right. He was. But now I am, Ev. I’m your dad now and you’re my son.”
“You s-said we were just partners.”
Rafe reached out and touched Evan’s small back with his large hand. The boy seemed small and suddenly fragile. “Well, we’re that, too. It’s just that now we’re even more.”
Angry, Evan rested his forehead on his arms again. “If you were my real dad, you would’ve come to see me, but you never did.”
And there it was. Boldly put. Rafe rolled his eyes beseechingly at the roof overhead, then ran a hand over his stubbled jaw.
“I know this is gonna be hard for you to understand, Evan, but if I’d known about you, I would have come to you in a heartbeat. But I didn’t know until yesterday that you were really my son.”
Evan took that in, and his eyes narrowed. Rafe could see the wheels turning. Damn, the kid was quick.
“That’s not your mom’s fault, so don’t blame her. She did what she thought was best for you, and you gotta admit, Tom was a pretty good choice. But if I’d known, Evan, nothing could have kept me from you,” he said fiercely. “I want you to believe that. And nothing ever will again. You’re stuck with me, kid.”
From the bottom of the loft came the sound of Macky’s whine, and from above them the flutter of swallows wings as the birds built nests of mud in the rafters.
“You—you want to be my dad?” Evan asked.
“Do I want—?” Rafe felt his voice go, choked off by the longing in Evan’s question. “You bet I do, Ev. I want it more than you can know.”
Something broke inside the boy, and he lurched toward Rafe, wrapping his arms around Rafe’s broad shoulders. Rafe grabbed and held him tight, the joy of holding his son unbearably sweet. The bite of that emotion stung his eyes.
After a moment, Evan pulled back, apparently realizing the eight-year-old uncoolness of his embrace. He shifted his jacket straight and fisted away the moisture on his cheeks. “Are you and Mom gonna get married?”
Rafe’s mouth opened and closed as he searched for an answer. Married, to Carly? The idea tugged at him, but he rejected it just as quickly. For the same reasons they’d broken up years ago, he couldn’t drag her into his life now.
“Uh...well, you know, that’s a tricky thing.”
Evan blinked, knowing a no when he heard it. “But you said—”
“I know, I know. I said I’m gonna be your dad, and I am. But your mom and me, we’ve got different lives. She’s got a job in the city, and I’m here.”
“You could move.”
“No, Ev. But you can visit me here.”
“But don’t you love my mom anymore?”
Rafe looked at his hands. Hell, the kid could ask questions. Love her? Hell, he wanted her, Rafe told himself, thinking of last night. He missed her when she wasn’t around, and he felt singularly alive when she was. But love her? He couldn’t...wouldn’t...allow himself to love her. He couldn’t afford to.
“What’s important,” Rafe said carefully, “is that we both love you and want what’s best for you. It’s gonna take some working out, but we can do it. Whattaya say?”
One small shoulder lifted in a shrug of assent. It wasn’t the enthusiasm he was hoping for, but Rafe decided it would do. It was going to take work on all their parts to make this work. “I think your mom would like to talk to you, too, only she can’t make it up this ladder with that leg of hers.” He got to his feet brushing hay off his jeans. “She’s real worried about you.” Rafe extended his hand to the boy. “C’mon, son.”
“Sticky,” Laurie summed up succinctly, after Carly sketched out the ironic twists and turns that had led her and Rafe to this moment.
“Like glue,” Carly agreed, feeling as if she’d been swimming in the stuff.
With a sympathetic nod, Laurie added, “One good thing about glue...when it dries, it doesn’t stick to your feet.”
“I’ll try to remember that, if I can ever extricate myself from it.”
Laurie sighed, smoothing her palm across the wooden table. “I’m not sure what I would have done in your situation, and frankly, it’s unfair to even speculate. There’s nothing more fragile and inexplicable than a relationship. And no one looking at it from the outside can ever really comprehend it.
“Jack and L” she mused, “we were easy. We loved each other from the moment we laid eyes on each other. If you asked anyone we knew if there were problems, they would have laughed. But, the truth is, there were. Nothing I could explain or would even want to. We were lucky enough never to have to face the kinds of problems you and Rafe have. But,” she said on a shaky breath, “I’d take them in a second to have him back.”
Carly’s throat tightened, and she covered Laurie’s hand with her own. The thought of losing Rafe, even if they never resolved their differences, was almost too much to bear. And Laurie’s unbiased support meant more to her than she could have said.
Laurie tossed her silky dark hair with a flick of her head, refusing to be maudlin. “Anyway, you’ve told him now, and you can only move forward from here. It’ll take him some time. But personally, I think if he didn’t care, he never would have ended up in that bar the other night, nor would he have landed himself in jail over it. And you know what?” she said, getting up to pour more hot water into their teapot. “He’s gonna make a hell of a daddy. My kids adore him.”
“I know,” Carly said, dabbing at her nose with her overused tissue. “So does Evan. Or at least he did, until—”
“Don’t worry. He’ll come around. He’s still little, he can adapt. It’s you and Rafe I’m worried about.”
Carly sipped the remnants of her tea dejectedly. Me too, she thought, but she said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
“And roosters quack.”
Carly gave a teary laugh. “Only if they marry ducks.”
“Well, Rafe isn’t married to anyone, honey, and the only prospect I see is you.”
Laurie poured them both a second cup of tea, and they sat sipping in silence. Finally, she asked, “What is it you want, Carly?”
“I don’t know,” she answered on a sigh. “It seems foolish to hope for something that can never be. It’s not enough that we share a child. That can’t be what holds us together. Rafe’s always had trouble accepting love, and mine, he just plain doesn’t want.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” She looked at Laurie, then toyed with her cup. “You know, it’s funny—if you’d asked me that question a few weeks ago, you would have gotten another answer. I knew where I was going, what I’d be doing. My life was laid out in a nice linear path. That’s what I thought, anyway. However—a good knock on the head made everything a little bit clearer.”
“Funny,” Laurie commented, “how near-death experiences tend to do that.”
“Exactly. You know what I realized?”
Laurie smiled and shook her head.
“That all the years I thought I was chasing something, I was really running away. From Rafe and what we could have been. But Evan—he’s that part of us, that love, that never truly died. But Rafe’s pushing away again, just like he did before. He’s convinced that if he allows himself to love me, he’d be standing in my way, or something idiotic like that. That’s so far from the truth...but I can’t seem to make him see it. I love him, Laurie, so much it hurts. And there’s nothing I can do to change that.”
“Then don’t.”
Carly swallowed back the lump forming in her throat. “But if he won’t—”
“You’re a lawyer. Convince him.”
Carly blinked. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Not simple,” Laurie said, covering Carly’s hand with hers. “But what have you got to lose? Think of it this way—if this were a case, how would you go about proving him wrong?”
For a long moment, Carly stared into the sunshine pouring through the kitchen window, thinking. “I’d...convince him that the underpinnings of this case were set in quicksand,” she said slowly. “That the logic was faulty and the evidence slanted.”
“Aha.” Laurie grinned like a creamery cat.
Carly’s eyes widened. An idea began to take shape in her mind. Of course. The answer had been there right in front of her all along. It seemed so simple, really, but it would require a two-pronged approach—the second of which was decidedly riskier than the first. It held the potential to destroy everything, and she wouldn’t use it unless she had to. But Laurie was right. What did she have to lose? She had only one answer to that.
Rafe.
“Thanks, Laurie,” she said, the beginnings of a smile curving her lips. “Do you know you’d make a great attorney?”
“No,” Laurie quipped, “but if you hum a few bars...”
That night, Carly leaned over her son’s bed and pressed a kiss on his forehead. Tugging the covers up under his arms, she smoothed them straight with unnecessary fuss and sat down beside him. He looked different tonight, as if the day’s happenings had chiseled new wisdom into his features. And the bed seemed somehow smaller than it had the night before. Or had Evan grown?
Macky had assumed his position on the rug beside Evan’s bed, having temporarily abandoned Rafe for his younger clone. Carly scratched Macky’s belly with her toe.
“Mom?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“If Rafe is really my dad, what am I s’posed to call him?”
She brushed the last wrinkle from the sheets and smiled down at him. “Well, that’s sorta between you two. What do you want to call him?”
A frown creased his small brow. “If I called him Dad, that would be like Daddy wasn’t really my dad.”
“I see.”
“And if I call him Rafe, then it’s like he isn’t my dad.”
“I see your dilemma.” Carly stared at her son in wonder at the unexpected depth of his reasoning. They’d talked earlier, when Rafe and Evan came back from the barn. They’d spent tears and anger, and she’d answered a hundred questions. But this one wasn’t about the past, it was about the future. And for the first time, she felt the stirrings of hope.
“Why don’t you wait awhile and see what feels right to you?” she suggested. “I’m sure that would be okay with Rafe.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Mom?”
“What, sweetie?”
“How come you don’t love Rafe anymore?”
She swallowed hard. “That’s a complicated question, Evan.”
“Is it ’cause you loved Daddy?” he asked intently.
“Yes. I did love Daddy. But there’s room in my heart for lots of different kinds of love. I love you and I loved Daddy. I’m absolutely nuts about Macky....”
Evan giggled, and Macky thumped his tail against the floor, knowing he was being discussed. She gave him another rub with her toe.
“But what about Rafe?” Evan persisted. “Do you still love him?”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do, honey.”
“Then how come you can’t be married together? Rafe says it’s ’cause you have different lives. But they’re not so different, are they?”
“Not so different.” She pressed another kiss on his downy forehead. “But when you grow up, things get more complicated. Sometimes mommies and daddies just can’t live together.”
“Why not? ’Cause they don’t love each other enough? Like you and me?”
She nipped his nose between her fingers and grinned. “You and me, we’re a team, right? We stick together no matter what.”
“No matter what,” Evan repeated, as if it were a litany between them.
“And I’ll love you till the sun turns blue,” she said.
“And the moon turns green,” he finished, and they both giggled as she tickled him into distraction.
In the darkened hallway, Rafe stood stock-still, listening to the exchange between Carly and their son. Leaning his head back against the wall, he searched the dark hallway for guidance.
Complicated? Hell, things were getting downright mind-boggling. How easy it would be to wrap his arms around them both and beg them to stay. To be his family. He longed for that.
And coming from a man who sat on the brink of disaster, it shamed him to want to drag the two people he cared most about in the world down with him.
Like his father before him.
The old man had hauled him down into the whirlpool of alcoholism after Rafe’s mother walked out. Rafe could still remember the humiliation of moving from place to place when the rent got too steep, and the awful embarrassment of letting his friends know that Chet Kellard was a blood relation.
He’d grown up with a keen understanding of a man’s responsibility. It had been his dream for most of his life to find that stability and lock it down. Yet it continued to elude him.
In another week, he’d say goodbye to Carly and Evan, then do his damnedest to save this leaky vessel. One way or another, he vowed, he’d make his son proud of him.
Even if it killed him.
The next evening, Rafe decided they should all get out of the house. J.J.’s Pizza Emporium was doing a booming business as a grateful Carly and a thrilled Evan went through the door Rafe held open for them. They were met by the tinny sound of “A Bicycle Built for Two” coming from a player piano.
J.J.’s was decorated like a turn-of-the-century ice cream parlor complete with “gas” lamps, filigreed ironwork and costumed waiters. As a concession to the twentieth century, however, several old-fashioned pinball machines stood in one corner, surrounded by a line of children.
Evan couldn’t stop staring.
“Pretty impressive,” Carly murmured as they made their way to their table. The incredible fragrance coming from the huge ovens made her mouth water.
“Wait till you taste it,” he told her.
“Can I have a quarter, Mom?” Evan begged.
Rafe pulled several out of his pocket and handed them to Evan. “It’s my treat tonight.”
“Thanks,” Evan said shyly, and ran off to join the handful of kids surrounding a machine.
“Hey,” Rafe called after Evan. “What do you want on your pizza?”
“Just cheese,” Carly told him.
“Oh,” Rafe said, pulling Carly’s chair out for her.
“It’s all he ever wants on it,” she added, seeing Rafe’s discomfort. She shoved her crutches down beside her. “It’s some
kind of a secret pact all children make together to force parents to order a second pizza with everything.” She grinned.
“I still have a lot to learn.”
“That’s half the fun,” she replied.
“Well, Rafe Kellard!” A pretty dark-haired twenty-something waitress in a Gay Nineties pinafore practically skidded to a stop at their table. “Where have you been, darlin’? I’ve missed you!”
“Michelle?” Rafe said, flushing, as her gaze slid to Carly and back again.
“Oh, ’scuse me,” Michelle said in an embarrassed twang. “I was just so happy to see you, I didn’t notice you had company.”
“Michelle, I’d like you to meet Carly Jamison. Carly? Michelle Quatro.”
Carly smiled, wondering if the strategic pinning of the younger woman’s pinafore was done simply to emphasize the size of her perky breasts. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Michelle answered.
“Michelle was the rodeo queen last summer in Durango’s pro rodeo,” Rafe clarified.
“Really?” Carly said, impressed. She bet those perky breasts had something to do with that. “Congratulations.”
Michelle waved her hand. “The judges were either pizza eaters or skiers. I teach downhill up at Purgatory in the winter season,” she explained.
Carly nodded. “Ah.”
“So, Rafe,” Michelle went on, “how’s that ranch of yours? Keepin’ you busy, huh?”
“Sure is, Michelle. Awful busy.”
Evan bounded up to the table. “I need two more quarters, Mom. Can I? Pleeease? I almost got a free game!”
Carly watched Michelle take Evan into the picture as Rafe pulled out two more quarters. “Here you go, son,” he said. Evan managed a “Thanks” before he was gone again.
“Cute kid. Yours?” Michelle asked Carly.
She hesitated, unsure of how Rafe wanted to handle this.
“Ours,” he said proudly, meeting Carly’s eyes. She smiled back at him.
“Oh,” Michelle said. It sounded like a little hiccup. “I suppose you folks would like to order now.”
Rafe winked at her. “That’d be great.”
The pizza was the best Carly had ever had, thick and gooey and cheesy. Evan’s nonstop dialogue ranged from his pinball coup to Rafe’s promise to take him along with Gus for the branding tomorrow. Rafe and Evan had been working steadily on Evan’s riding, and the chance for a firsthand look at cattle branding had Evan practically jumping out of his boots. Carly wished she could go along and watch, but knew it was a male-bonding thing between them, and better left to the men.
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