by Jenna Kernan
“Take it inside. Wrap it up in something dry and wait for me. Did you call Child Protective Services?”
At her question, he recalled that his training included instructions to call the state agency, and that he had the number saved in his contacts on his phone.
“Not yet.”
“I’ll do it.” The phone went dead.
Jake held the still bundle and the phone. He glanced around one last time.
“Hello?”
The morning chill seeped under his collar as he stood holding the infant before him like a live grenade. He thought he might be sick as past and present collided in his mind. Lori was coming. Sweet Lord, Lori was coming. He squeezed his eyes closed. The sound of movement made them flash open, and he turned toward the rustling.
“Is anyone there?”
Nothing moved but the little baby pressed against his chest.
* * *
LORI DROVE TOWARD Koun’nde in the rising light before dawn. Burl had arrived quickly to relieve her, and so she was only a few minutes away from having to face Jake Redhorse. Since her return, she had mostly avoided him. It was infuriating how he could still make her tremble with just a smile. One thing was certain. She was not falling for his charm twice.
As she approached his home, the anxiety and determination rolled inside her like a familiar tide. If she had not been good enough for him then, she was now. Only, now she didn’t want him, the jerk.
She’d learned what he really thought of her after the baby had come. Not from him, of course. Oh, no. Mr. Wonderful would never insult a woman. He’d left that to everyone else.
Damn him.
Her face heated at the shame of it, still, always.
She pulled into the drive, wondering if she had the courage to make the walk to his front step. As it turned out, she didn’t have to. Jake hurled himself out the front door without his familiar white Stetson or uniform jacket and charged her driver’s side like a bull elk.
“Hurry,” he said.
Lori grabbed her tote and medical bag and followed as Jake reversed course and dashed back into his home. Lori ran, too, her medical bag thumping against her thigh as she cleared the door. Once inside, she heard the angry squall of a newborn.
Jake stopped in the living room before a dirty red polar fleece, which sat beside a couch cushion on his carpet. On the wide cushion was a baby wrapped in a familiar fuzzy green knit blanket, its tiny face scrunched and its mouth open wide as it howled. Lori’s stride faltered. She knew that blanket because she had knit it herself from soft, mint-colored yarn. She glanced at Jake. Why had he kept it?
Jake pointed at the baby. “It’s turning purple.”
Chapter Two
Lori scooped up the infant and cradled the tiny newborn against her chest. The sharp stab of grief pierced her heart. She’d held dozens of newborns since that day, but none had been wrapped in her blanket and Jake had not been standing at her side. It was all too familiar. She tried to hide the tears, but with both hands on her charge she could not wipe them away.
Jake stepped up beside her and rested a once-familiar hand on her shoulder. His touch stirred memories of pleasure and shame, and her chin dropped as she nestled her cheek against the fuzzy head that rooted against her neck.
She turned and allowed herself to really look at Jake. Oh, she had seen him since her return, often in fact, but she’d refused to let herself look, refused to allow the emotional gate to swing open. But the baby and the blanket had tripped some switch and she wanted to see him again, if only to remember why she had once loved him. Permission granted to herself, she braced for the pain. His brow had grown more prominent, and his broad forehead was made wider because his hair was tugged back in a single pony at his neck, which was dressed with blue cloth. He always wore blue now.
No, not always, she remembered. Once, he’d worn his hair wrapped in red cloth. Jake’s ears showed at each side of his head and she noticed they seemed tucked back, as if he needed to hear something behind him. He wore a silver stud in each ear. Police regulations required that he wore nothing dangling, but she preferred the long silver feathers she’d given him. Did he ever wear them?
His jaw was more prominent now, having grown sharp and strong. The taut skin of his cheeks seemed darker than the rest of his face due to a day’s growth of stubble. She traced the blade of a nose with her gaze, ending at his mouth, and watched his nostrils flare and his lips part. Their eyes met and she went still, seeing the familiar warm amber brown of his eyes. He still made her insides quake and her heart pound. Memories swirled as he took a step forward. He rested his hands on her shoulders and angled his jaw.
Oh, no. He’s going to kiss me.
Instead of revulsion, her body furnished blazing desire. She told herself to step back but found herself stepping forward. The newborn in her arms gave a bleat like a baby lamb, bringing her back to her senses. Had she been about to stroke that familiar face?
She stiffened. Damned if she’d give him the chance to hurt her again. She was through with men who treated her like she wasn’t good enough. There were men out there who judged you by yourself instead of by your family. Jake Redhorse was simply not one of them.
“I’m sorry, Lori.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and made a disbelieving sound in her throat. Was he sorry that she’d come, sorry that he’d nearly kissed her or sorry that anyone else in the world was not here to help him?
His mother would have been an option—his mother, who had called her an apple, red on the outside and white on the inside, because her father had been white. Then she’d called her siblings pieces in a fruit basket. Lori was well aware that none of her siblings shared the same father, because no one ever let her forget it.
His mother had disliked her right from the start, but after May Redhorse learned about Lori’s condition and that Jake planned to marry her, her dislike solidified to distain. Mrs. Redhorse was a good Christian and a bad person.
Finally, belatedly, Lori stepped back. Jake’s eyes still had that piercing look of desire. She drew a breath as she prepared to throw cold water on him.
“You could have called your mom,” she said. Bringing up his mother was a sure way to douse the flame that had sprung from cold ashes between them.
His mouth twisted. “She can’t get around very well right now.”
Lori recalled the diabetes and the toe amputation—more than one. His mother had always been a big woman, and the disease had only made her less mobile. Some of her anger leaked away.
“Yes, of course.”
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Jake, pointing to the fussing infant.
“Hungry, maybe. Let’s have a look.”
Lori found Jake’s kitchen and laid the baby on his dinette. Then she peeled back the blanket and stroked the knit edge.
“You kept it,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Just reminds me of her.”
Lori didn’t need a reminder. She carried the memories in her heart like a spike. The baby girl she’d lost. Jake’s baby. At the time she thought the miscarriage was her fault, that she must have done something wrong. She knew better now.
The baby before them had ceased fussing and stared up at them with wide blue eyes. The infant was pink and white, with skin so translucent you could see the tiny veins that threaded across her chest and forehead. She was clearly a newborn, still streaked with her mother’s blood.
Lori shrugged out of her coat and Jake stepped forward to take it. Always the gentleman, she thought. Perfect as Captain Freakin’ America. Captain of the soccer team, basketball team and track team. Fast, smart and somehow once interested in her. The world made no sense.
“What’s that white stuff?” he asked, peering over her shoulder, his breath warm and sweet on her neck.
“That’s the caul. It’s the tissue sack that surrounds the baby in the womb. I hear that some Anglos believe that wearing the caul is lucky.”
“What Anglos?”
“The Irish, I think. Maybe Scottish. I can’t recall. My granddad was a Scot.” Why did she feel the need to remind him her father had not been Apache?
* * *
JAKE GLANCED AT HER, letting the desire build again. He knew her grandfather had been a Scot. He even remembered her father. He’d been a redhead who worked for the oil and gas company in Darabee for a while. He was the reason that Lori’s hair took on a red gleam in the sunlight. She’d taken a lot of teasing over that in grade school. She even had a light dusting of freckles over her nose. Or she had as a child, anyway. It made her different. Jake thought those differences made her more beautiful, but he’d been one of the worst in middle school. Anything to get her attention, even if it was only to see her flush and storm off.
Lori had changed over the five years of separation, and at age twenty-one, she had grown into a woman’s body. Her skin was a healthy golden brown and her mouth was still full but tipped down at the corners. Above the delicate nose, her dark brows arched regally over the deep brown eyes. The sadness he saw there was new. Today she wore her long, thick hair coiled in a knot at the base of her skull, practical like her uniform. And the hairstyle disguised the soft natural wave in her hair. Lori worked with children and babies, so her top was always alive with something bright and cheerful. Today it was teddy bears all tumbling down her chest with blocks. The bottoms matched, picking up the purples of the top and hugging her hips. The shoes were slip-on clogs with rubber soles. White, of course.
But beneath the trim medical nurses’ scrubs, he knew her body. Or he’d known the body of her youth. His fingers itched to explore the changes, the new fullness of her breasts and the tempting flare of her hips. They were children no longer, so before he went down this road again, he needed to think first. He hadn’t thought the last time.
Actions had consequences. He knew that well enough by now.
She had been a pretty girl but had become a classic beauty of a woman. When she danced at powwows, she drew the photographers like a blossom drew bees. The camera loved her, and he had a copy of a magazine where she’d been chosen as a cover model back in their senior year. Dressed in her regalia, she had a poise and intelligence that shone past the bright beads around her neck and white paint that ran down her lip to her chin. The cover that should have been a coup turned into another source for teasing as the lighting highlighted that her brown eyes were more cinnamon and revealed red highlights in her hair. Where was that magazine? His eyes popped open and he glanced about his living space, hoping she wouldn’t spot it before he could tuck it away.
Lori continued on, “My grandmother, my dad’s mother, told me once to look out for a baby with a caul. It means the baby is special.”
“All babies are special,” he said, thinking of one in particular.
* * *
LORI GLANCED AT the newborn, a little girl, checking her toes and fingers and finding her perfectly formed, if somewhat small.
“Do you have a kitchen scale?”
“A what?”
She smiled. “No way to check her weight, then. Grab my medical kit.”
Jake darted away as Lori examined the umbilical cord. Someone had tied it with a strip of green bark over a foot from the baby and then sliced the cord cleanly through. It was not the sort of cut a midwife would make, and it was not the sort of twine you would find in a home. More like the materials someone who had given birth outdoors would use.
Her mind leaped immediately to a teenage mother. Lori checked the baby and found nothing to indicate where the child had been born, but by the look of her, she was white.
“Here it is.” Jake set the kit down on the chair with a thump.
“Hold on to her so she doesn’t fall,” said Lori.
“Hold on how?”
Lori wrapped the baby again and then took his big, familiar hand and placed it on the baby’s chest.
“Easy. Don’t press.”
Then she retrieved a diaper from a side pocket. When she returned, it was to find him using a piece of gauze to wipe the blood from the infant’s face.
“We’ll do that at the clinic,” she said.
“It’s a blood sample,” he said. “Mother’s blood, right?”
She stilled. What she had seen as a childcare issue he saw as a crime scene.
“It’s probably some scared kid,” she said.
“It’s a felony. There are places to bring a baby. Safe places. She left it outside in my truck.”
She looked down at the tiny infant. Someone had given birth and then dumped her on a windy, cold September morning. She had treated babies abandoned by mothers before. They did not all survive. This little one was very lucky.
“Fortunate,” she said.
He met her gaze.
“To be alive,” she qualified.
Jake nodded. “I think she was still out there, watching me.”
“The mother?”
He nodded.
“That’s likely. She would have been close. Any idea who?”
“I need to take a look around the house.”
She nodded. “Go on, then.”
Jake tucked the gauze into one of the evidence baggies he had on his person and then slipped it into one of the many pockets of his tribal police uniform.
“Done with your evidence collection?” she asked.
He nodded. “For now.”
“Then I’ll get the little one fed and ready to transport while you have your look around.”
“Did you call Protective Services?” he asked.
“Betty called while I got my kit.” Betty Mills was her boss and the administrator of the Tribal Health Clinic. “She said they have to contact whoever is on call in our area. It could be a while.”
“Do you have a car seat for a newborn?” he asked, the unease settling in his chest.
Lori readied the diaper. “Yes. In my trunk. I’ll bring her to the clinic for a checkup. Unclaimed babies always come to the clinic now. Do you think the mother could still be out there?”
“I’ll know soon.” He zipped his police jacket and replaced the white, wide-brimmed Stetson to his head. Then he cast her a long look that made her stomach quiver. She pressed her lips together, bracing against her physical reaction. Fool me once, she thought. “Thanks for coming, Lori.”
“You want me to wait?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She nodded and watched him go. Jake Redhorse was her poison, but she was not going to be the tribe’s source of gossip again. She couldn’t go back and fix what was broken between them. Only he could do that, and it would mean admitting he had protected his reputation at the expense of hers. Left her out in the storm that never reached him. His luck, his reputation, his honor and his willingness to do what was right had all played in his favor. While her family legacy had cast her in the worst light. The natural scapegoat for daring to taint the reputation of the tribe’s golden boy.
So, you’re saying it’s mine? That was what he’d actually said to her. He wasn’t the first to suspect she’d pulled a fast one. How could they be so willing to think so little of her? After the gossip flew, she became the target of disdain. Her appearance in the classroom drew long silences, followed by snickering behind raised hands. Meanwhile, everyone felt sorry for Jake. Forgave him instantly. Who could blame him? He’d been tricked. Swindled. Seduced.
During junior year, Jake was still playing soccer and planned to play basketball but was already planning to get a part-time job moving cattle when the baby came.
When she mentioned her intention to work at the Darabee hospital as a health care aide, he’d scoffed.
“Finish high school, Lori,
” he’d said. “So you don’t end up like your mom.”
So he’d planned to drop out and have her stay in school. More fuel to make him the hero and her the parasite.
She had glared at him. “You could still go to college.”
“No. I’ll be here for my child.”
Yes. Of course he would. But he had never had to.
Instead, he had accepted condolences first for the unplanned pregnancy and later for his loss. His loss. Never their loss. She clamped her teeth together as the fury spiked. Instead, he had finished high school and gone to college and she had gone. too. Become a nurse. Shown them all. Only, no one had really noticed or cared.
Yet one look at the wiggling, smiling baby and her temper ebbed. As she looked down into her eyes, she felt a tug in her belly and breasts.
She knew this feeling, had felt it once before, even though her baby had already left.
Uh-oh, she thought. Pair bonding, her mind supplied, as if reviewing for one of her tests in school. That magic thing that made a baby uniquely yours.
“Don’t do this, Lori,” she warned herself. But it was already too late.
* * *
JAKE WALKED AROUND the truck. The wind had picked up so much that it whistled through the trees. Cold sunlight poured in golden bands through the breaks in the tall pines to the east. Behind the truck, he found a bloody palm print on his tailgate and pine needles beside the hitch. It looked as if someone had stepped on the bumper and then hoisted up to place the baby in the bed of the truck. She was small, then.
Had she arranged the red cloth so that he would notice it immediately against the silver of the F-150’s body?
He could see no blood on the ground and no tracks on the earth on either side of the driveway. He cast his gaze about, looking for a place where she could have watched his arrival and still have been shielded from discovery. Then he walked to the most logical spot. There in the eastern row of piñon pine, at the base of one of the large trunks, was a spot where the needles had been disturbed. He squatted and saw that someone had been here, waiting, evidenced by the sweep of a foot back and forth, creating two little mounds of needles and a swath of clean dark earth in between. He could not stand in the spot without hitting his head on the branches, but if he crouched down, he had a perfect view of the road and his driveway and the back of his pickup.