Jordan closed down her laptop, ready to go back to the house when the landline on the desk rang. Since Karlee wasn’t around, she answered it.
“I need to speak to Lucian Granger,” the caller immediately said.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not here.” Jordan was about to offer to take a message, but the caller kept on talking.
“I’m Larry Larson with Biomeds Labs,” he continued, “and I need to know where to send the DNA results he ordered.”
Everything inside her went still. “There’s been a mistake. Mr. Granger canceled that test.”
“He put them on hold, but then I just spoke to him a week ago, and he told me to go ahead and run it.”
The stillness inside her didn’t last. Lucian had agreed to stop the test. He had agreed to do that to their faces, anyway, but he’d obviously gone behind their backs and done it anyway.
“He wanted me to call him as soon as I had the results,” the guy went on, “but he’s not answering the number he gave me so I tried this one.”
Lucian wasn’t answering because he was almost certainly in a business meeting.
“I can tell Mr. Granger the results,” Jordan insisted. Not a lie. Oh, she would tell him all right. Dylan, too. And she was certain it wouldn’t be a happy conversation when they confronted him.
“It’s a report,” the man explained. “I usually like to go over these things on the phone, but I’ll just send it to the email address he gave me. Let him know I called, though, in case he doesn’t see the email.”
Jordan assured him she would do that, but before she could ask Mr. Larson more about the results, he ended the call. She sat there, wondering if she should call him back or try to get in touch with Lucian. Or go and tell Dylan or Karlee. But then she looked at the computer on the desk.
Karlee’s business computer.
If the landlines were linked between Lucian’s office and hers, then maybe the computers were, too. And she soon learned they were when she saw the email from Biomeds Labs load into the inbox.
She hesitated because it was a violation of privacy, but Lucian was guilty of a much bigger violation by having the test done in the first place. That’s the justification Jordan used to click on the email and then the attached report. Once she saw Corbin’s name, then Dylan’s, she couldn’t read fast enough.
And then Jordan’s stomach went to her knees.
Oh. God.
* * *
DYLAN DIDN’T KNOW who or what to deal with first. What was left of the red panties that Booger had apparently dug up, or Abe, who was sitting in a rocker holding a stack of sex bingo cards. Or maybe he should tackle the incoming call from Lucian.
He decided to deal with Booger since eating the rest of those panties could send him back to the vet. Dylan also needed to figure out who’d let the dog escape—again—because Booger was running around in circles in the front yard with the dirt-caked panties clamped in his mouth.
“Excuse me a second,” Dylan said to Abe.
Dylan bolted off the porch after Booger. Of course, Booger did his own share of bolting, and the chase lasted more than the second of time that Dylan had mentioned to Abe. Actually, it went on for several minutes before Booger stopped in his tracks, turned to the door where Regina was bringing out Corbin. Booger let go of the panties and jetted toward them.
As nasty as the panties now were, Dylan stuffed them into his pocket. If he left them anywhere on the ground, Booger would find them, and there’d be another humiliating chase. He’d already reached that particular quota for the next month or two.
Booger kept up the jetting pace, running back into the house, and Corbin went after him. Regina followed suit, leaving Dylan to move on to the second thing on his to-do list.
“How many this time?” Dylan asked, taking the stack of cards from Abe.
“Thirty-six. But I got some bad news. Somebody printed a new version of the game. This time, it’s squares with things that folks think Jordan and you are doing together. Just look at the card on top, and you’ll see what I mean.”
He did look, and the only reason he didn’t curse was because Corbin might come back close enough to hear him. But yes, it was a new card, and yes, it was about Jordan and him. Other than just their names, there was a common denominator.
Dylan and Jordan get caught making out in the barn.
Dylan and Jordan leave the Longhorn Bar to make out.
Dylan and Jordan are seen making out in a car.
That last box was checked, which meant this was likely Melanie’s card since he couldn’t see Walter Ray or Theo doing something like this. Of course, someone could have brought the new card idea to Melanie, and since she was no doubt angry and hurt, she might have gone along with it.
And that brought Dylan to an eye-opening revelation.
The cards weren’t just going to stop being printed. He’d made his proverbial bed by sleeping around, and now he had to lie in that same proverbial shit. It didn’t matter that he’d changed his ways. Or semichanged them anyway. He had made out with Jordan in the car and had kissed her in the barn, but he hadn’t woken up with any naked women in the month since he’d had Corbin. That was progress, but it was going to take a lot more than that to get folks in Wrangler’s Creek to forget.
“I’ll write you a check for these cards,” Dylan told Abe, “but don’t bother collecting any more of them.”
Abe frowned. “You’re sure?” He was obviously disappointed since he was making a small fortune off this. Heck, maybe he was even the one who’d started the new game so he could continue his cash flow.
“Positive. Maybe the less said about the cards will mean the notion of them will die off soon enough.” Hopefully by the time Corbin was old enough to understand what any of those bingo squares meant.
Dylan heard the footsteps from inside the foyer, and he stuffed the cards inside his shirt so that his mom or Corbin wouldn’t see them. But it wasn’t either of them. It was Jordan, and one look at her face, and Dylan knew something was wrong.
“What happened?” he immediately asked her.
However, Jordan didn’t give him an immediate response. She shook her head and kept shaking it until he went to her and caught onto her shoulders.
“Lucian did the DNA test on Corbin,” she finally said.
Dylan wasn’t able to hold back the profanity this time, and he reached in his pocket for his phone so he could call his brother. Then, he was going to find him and punch him. But Jordan took hold of his hand to stop him from making the call.
“The lab called Lucian’s office phone,” she went on, “and when I told him he wasn’t there, they sent me the results.” She shook her head again and said some words that felt as if she’d stabbed him right in the heart.
“Dylan, Corbin isn’t your son.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“DO YOU REMEMBER when we had that sex picnic in the pasture, and we caused the cattle to stampede?” Jordan asked Dylan.
She’d known before she brought it up that it would cause Dylan to scowl. And it did. But pretty much everything she’d said in the last half hour since he’d learned about the DNA test had caused him to react that way.
As she drove away from the ranch and toward San Antonio, she was doing her own scowling. At Lucian—who still wasn’t answering his phone. But she was especially scowling at Adele, who couldn’t take a call, which meant they had to drive to the jail to see her. Jordan knew, though, that she had to try to rein in at least some of Dylan’s temper before they came face-to-face with Adele.
Which they would do in about forty-five minutes.
So far, Jordan was failing big-time at temper reining—either Dylan’s or hers. She wanted to throttle Adele for lying, but she also needed answers. Like why Adele had done this and who exactly was Corbin’s father. The test hadn’t told them that because Corbi
n’s DNA had only been compared to Dylan’s.
God, she prayed that Theo wasn’t the father.
That would not only complicate things for Dylan, it would mean a nasty custody battle looming on the horizon. A battle that Theo might try to solve by putting marriage on the table again.
“When we caused the stampede, we were still partially naked, and we had to run like that all the way to the fence,” she added.
And again, she failed. If anything, Dylan’s scowl only got worse. At least he’d agreed when she had insisted on driving because with the way his hands were clenched into fists, he would have crushed the steering wheel.
“Sorry,” Jordan said. She’d lost count of how many times she’d used that word, as well. It hadn’t worked any better than the sex mishaps. “I’m furious with Adele, too, but I don’t want us to get thrown out before she even has a chance to explain why she lied.”
Dylan didn’t jump to respond to that, and Jordan thought he was going to continue the silence all the way throughout the entire drive. He didn’t.
“Fuck this,” he growled. “Fuck Adele.”
Dylan wasn’t big on cursing, but this was a cursing situation if there ever was one. DNA didn’t matter when loving a child—most adoptive parents would say that. But it did matter in this case because Dylan wouldn’t be keeping custody of Corbin. He’d only had the boy a month, but that was plenty enough time for him to become Corbin’s father.
When she saw that his knuckles were turning white, Jordan touched his hand, causing him to flinch. She’d never seen him this wired. Or this angry. So, yeah, visiting Adele at this moment wasn’t a good idea.
Again, Jordan was thankful she was the one driving because she pulled off onto a ranch trail. It was a heavily treed area with no one else around so he could have privacy if he wanted to have an adult version of a temper tantrum.
“No need for you to tell me that you want us to keep going,” she said before he could balk at what she was doing. “I want that, too. But this is for our own good.”
“The only thing I want to do right now is confront that lying witch and demand to know why she fucked me over like this.”
Jordan had zero doubt about that, but Dylan had broken a record in using the f-word, and that only convinced her even more that it was a good idea to stop. She pulled beneath a cluster of trees and tried to think of something she could say that would help.
“We could have sex,” was what came out of her mouth.
In hindsight, that wasn’t a helpful thing to say because Dylan looked at her as if she’d sprouted an extra ear.
“All right. Maybe not sex,” Jordan amended.
It was just she’d been thinking about it since her conversation with Karlee, dreaming about it, too, and that’s why she’d blurted it out like that. The sex bingo cards had contributed to the raunchy thoughts, as well. Dylan had pulled those from his shirt shortly after they’d gotten in her car, and they were now facedown on the dash. She was betting there were some things in those little game blocks that would distract Dylan enough to calm him down.
Or not.
The look he gave her said there was nothing she could say that was going to ease his scowl or get his teeth or fists unclenched. That was probably true, but she had to try anyway.
“Adele might have had a reason for lying,” she tried again. “Not a good reason, mind you,” Jordan quickly added when she saw the angry fire light through Dylan’s eyes. “The real father might be a dirtbag. Or maybe she truly thought Corbin was yours. Even you admitted the timing was right, so maybe she just assumed you’d gotten her pregnant.”
“Adele shouldn’t have assumed something like that,” he growled.
“No, she shouldn’t have, but we’re talking about Adele here. Flighty is her middle name.” Along with being irresponsible, immature and unreliable. In fact, it was possible that Adele hadn’t even had sex with Dylan.
She tried touching him again by putting her hand on his arm. He didn’t flinch this time, but his muscles were still rock hard.
“I don’t want you to be nice to me.” His voice was still a growl. “I especially don’t want you to try to smooth this over or feel sorry for me. Just let me seethe and wallow in this shit storm that Adele created.”
Okay. She’d go with the wallowing/seething. And hopefully some passing of time. Even a half hour might be enough to cool a little of the hot anger.
She plucked the top card from the stack, intending to use it to make a joke, but then Jordan frowned. “Someone changed the game. It’s about us now.” And good gravy, it was about us in a stupid kind of way. “Are people really going to be watching to see if you and I have sex on the back of a horse?”
He took the card, and without looking at it, Dylan wadded it up and hurled it into the back seat the way a pitcher would throw a fastball at a batter. Since that seemed to help a little, she handed him another one to wad and toss. Then another. By the fifth one, she could see that this idea sucked. Dylan was just getting madder and madder.
So, she turned off the engine and climbed onto his lap.
Still no cooling of the anger. In fact, it seemed to make things worse.
“I don’t want pity sex,” he snapped.
“Good. Because I was thinking more like a pity hand job. You used to tell me I was good at those.”
The joke fell flatter than the look he gave her. And that’s why she went for broke and kissed him. It was a huge gamble. Because of his mood, he could move her right off his lap, say something hurtful and demand that she start driving toward the jail.
But he didn’t.
Dylan hooked his hand around the back of her neck and kissed her right back. Except it was angry kissing. Hard and rough. It was as if he was trying to work out some of his frustrations on her, and while Jordan wasn’t a fan of either frustration or pity sex, it wasn’t a bad basis for kisses. Of course, this was Dylan, so he pretty much excelled at any type of lip-lock.
He’d given her thousands of kisses, but each one felt both familiar and different at the same time. Even this rough and punishing one. Each time, the pressure of his mouth got to her. It melted her, and it was just as effective as if it’d been part of a moonlight-and-roses kind of date night.
His grip tightened on her, and he kept kissing. Kept taking. Until they were going to pass out if they didn’t get some oxygen.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say when they broke for air.
He stopped, stared at her, and she finally saw the change in his eyes. There weren’t flamethrowers of fury in his baby blues. Not huge ones anyway. But she saw the sadness that came with the realization.
That he wasn’t a father.
Corbin wasn’t his.
He groaned, the sound of pain coming from deep in his chest. Jordan could feel every ounce of that pain. That’s when she knew the distraction kisses weren’t working.
“Just so you know,” he said, cupping her chin and turning her to force eye contact. “I’m sorry about this.”
Not understanding what he meant, Jordan shook her head, but he stopped the movement by sliding his hand into her hair and holding firm. He repeated the “I’m sorry about this,” and he kissed her again.
Since Jordan had initiated the first kiss, she’d been ready for it. Not ready for this, though. It wasn’t angry, but it was fast. It was as if Dylan wanted to do this in a hurry or else he’d change his mind and stop. Jordan soon realized she didn’t want him to stop even though in the back of her mind she figured Dylan was going to regret this. She might, too, but for now she was just in the swept-away mode.
Without breaking the kiss, Dylan somehow managed to push the seat all the way back to give them some room to maneuver. And he used that room to shove up her dress. When she felt his hand on her bare skin, it was like a blast from the past.
Both recent and from ye
ars ago.
He’d touched her in the car when they’d made out the day of Lawson’s wedding, but there’d been times when the vehicle had become their makeshift bed. Of course, plenty of places had become that. In fact, this very place had when they’d still been in high school. And it was apparently about to become a repeat location.
Jordan didn’t try to slow him down to give herself time to think. That’s because she didn’t want to think. She just wanted to be swept up in the moment and hoped the same would be true for Dylan. Not just because it might ease his body, but it might ease his mind, too.
He certainly seemed to be trying to do just that.
Dylan kept kissing her, kept sliding up her dress while he dragged her tighter against him. He certainly hadn’t lost any of his skills in the sex department and had even improved them. Without easing up one bit on the frenzied foreplay, he managed to reach in his back pocket and get out a condom from his wallet. It was a good thing he’d thought of safe sex because Jordan sure hadn’t.
It took some more maneuvering for her to get out of her panties, and Jordan ended up ripping the side of them. Dylan gave her a quick look to indicate approval and “I could have done better” at the same time. He probably could have done better because she hadn’t remembered any past episode of panty destruction, but the urgency inside her was building, and she wanted him now.
Dylan unzipped his jeans, put the condom on and gave her now. He pushed into her and did what he did best. What he’d no doubt learned from years of practice. Practice that had started with her, since they’d been each other’s firsts.
That “firsts” thought didn’t last long in her head, though. Actually, nothing lasted because he caught onto her hips and started the thrusts inside her that would end all of this too soon. For her anyway. She was usually primed and ready by the time Dylan finished his chrome-melting foreplay, and today was no exception. It didn’t take long for Jordan to feel the climax start to ripple through her.
Lone Star Blues Page 20