FieldofPlay

by Frances Stockton

  “Oh no, Dallas, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Gracie,” he assured. “I’d already decided to cool things off with her. She and Russell Sexton gave me the push I needed to tell her we were done.”

  “God, I can’t imagine what that scene was like,” Grace said. “Wait a sec, Russell Sexton? He’s another wide receiver for the Griffins!”

  “Afraid so,” Dallas confirmed. He bit into another rib.

  “Can I ask what you did when you found them?”

  Dallas finished another rib. “I kicked his ass out of my bed, literally. He fell face first onto the floor and broke his nose,” he answered. “I called a cab for Robyn and told her to come back for her things when I wasn’t there. She cried and said she did it to make me jealous. Perhaps she realized I was pulling away long before that. I’m not sure, but I’m always straight up with a woman. When I’m with her, I’m with her and no one else.”

  Grace took a sip of tea, thinking about what to say. “It’s strange, you know? I knew a Robin once, back in high school. Mind if I ask how she spells her name?”

  “R-o-b-y-n, why?”

  “I guess you could say we didn’t get along well and something about what you said reminded me of her. Do you still see your ex much?”

  “She’s primarily at the corporate offices in Alexandria. I see her only if there’s a team meeting with management. Russell and I are teammates. We’re not exactly friends.”

  “I can understand why,” Grace said.

  “Yeah, well, Robyn has become a total bitch. She told the league that I’d attacked Russell and had me suspended for the first game of the season.”

  “Oh my god, that’s so wrong.”

  “She was angry and hurt. That, I don’t blame her for,” Dallas admitted. “I was withdrawing from her by spending more time at my Fairfax home than in Alexandria with her. But Russell, that asshole, deserved to have his nose broken. He went after her because of the rivalry we have. He made sure I knew it.”

  “The two of you were rivals before that?”

  Dallas nodded his head. “It started in college. We went to schools in the same division and had about the same stats. We had the same position. The difference for me at the time was that I’d also competed in track and field and had set myself apart from other football players.”

  “I read that in a news article,” Grace supplied. “Sprinter and decathlon events, as I recall. Why both?”

  “I went to the University of Texas on an athletic scholarship and loved to run. With decathlon, I could run like the wind and feel like an Olympian. I was very proud to be a Longhorn.”

  “I bet you blew them away.”

  “At first, then my football coach yanked the chain on decathlon. With ten events, including high jump and hurtles, he didn’t want me to blow out my knees. I switched to sprinter. Best decision I’d ever made.”

  “Where does Russell fall into this?”

  “We were both up for the same award in our senior year. I won and was invited to the White House.”

  Grace felt herself smile. “Did you get to meet the President?”

  “Sure did,” he said, inclining his head modestly. “As Fate would have it, both of us were signed with the Griffins.”

  “Uh oh, I sense a ‘but’ coming,” she remarked.

  “But he’s struggled with some minor injuries that kept him on the sidelines. He claims he wants to be traded to a team that can use him, especially after learning that I’d signed a three-year deal. We’ll see if that changes at the end of the season.”

  “Sounds like it might be best for all concerned,” Grace said. “I’m very sorry things didn’t work out for you with your girlfriend, Dallas.”

  “Don’t be. I learned at the ranch that I wasn’t in love with her.” He shrugged a little sadly, his mind wandering somewhere else. “I’d gone on a few dates after that, but still felt a little gun-shy.”

  “I see,” Grace murmured.

  “Do you?” he asked, looking back up. “Truth is I like you a whole hell of a lot already.”

  “Are you warning me not to get my hopes up?” she asked, having to know even though this was a first date and neither of them knew where they’d end up. “You don’t have to. I understand that this is only a date.”

  “We both know it’s more,” he corrected. “That’s not what I meant. Until I saw you in the stands, I’d been afraid to think beyond a couple of dates. I was so caught up in wondering what kind of husband I’d be. More so, what kind of father? Would I abandon or forget my kid like mine did to me?”

  Grace had gone mute. The pain in his voice was so real and honest, it broke her heart. “Oh no, please don’t think that way,” she whispered. “From everything you’ve said tonight, I believe you are a good man, Dallas McKay. I wouldn’t be here if I thought otherwise.”

  “Are you saying you’ll give me a chance?” he asked.

  “A chance at what?”

  “For another date. Talking to you has been as natural to me as running fast. Let’s see where we can take this.”

  “Yes, I would like that.” She grabbed for her tea to help calm her racing heartbeat. “That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on your case. I really want to help you.”

  “I’m glad.” He reached into his pocket and came out with a handful of coins. He put them into the small jukebox machine at their table, typed in some numbers and turned up the volume a little more. There was something else in his hand, his wallet.

  “This is the reason I want your help, Gracie.” He handed her a small photo. “When I went to Texas to think, I decided it was time to find my birth parents. Maybe the unknown was keeping me from committing to a relationship.”

  Treating it very carefully because it was important to him, Grace looked at it. The picture was old and faded. A young Native American girl with long, dark brown hair was holding a small bundle against her chest, an infant. The two were crowded into a tiny space, with a curtain partly open on the side. The girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, yet she was so very pretty and so very sad.

  “This is you with your mother?” she murmured, needing to say something.

  “I believe so,” Dallas answered. “I was left at a police station in South Dakota when I was a week old. Four identical photos in a strip and a birth certificate were tucked into my blankets.”

  “It looks like it was taken at a carnival or something.”

  “When I was very little, I was told it could have been a photo booth at a tourist shop. The cops searched for her, but she’d disappeared. My foster families tried to get more information, but her trail went cold.” Dallas kept his voice really quiet. Grace leaned in close.

  She checked the back of the photo. There was something written on it, only the words were faded and she didn’t understand them. “What does it say?”

  “It’s Lakota. Basically it says, ‘give Matoskah a good home’. Matoskah means White Bear.”

  “Are there any clues to your biological parents on your birth certificate?” Grace turned it back over and studied the girl. Even though it was faded, she saw that Dallas had the same eyes and mouth.

  “The names of my father and mother were left blank. All that was listed about them was that my birth mother was American Indian and my father was white.” Thirty-two years ago, the document wouldn’t have listed his father as Caucasian. “My date of birth and the doctor that delivered me was still there. That proved useless.”

  “Why?” Grace asked.

  “By the time authorities went to talk to him, he was gone too.”

  “Do you think he met with foul play?”

  “Can’t say,” Dallas said. “He’d burned all of his records. Nothing else in his office was damaged. No one listed him as a missing person. Police thought he’d been paid to leave or he was a fraud.”

  “If there’s money involved, there’s a trail,” Grace remarked, making a mental note to add that to her investigation.

  “I h
ope so. I’m tired of not knowing what happened to her.”

  “I’ll do my very best to answer that for you.” She looked at the photo again before handing it back to him. He placed it back into his wallet and put it in his pocket.

  “When were you adopted by the McKays?”

  Dallas shook his head slightly. “It wasn’t until I was ten years old that I met them. Authorities had placed me in the foster care system in South Dakota.”

  “Were you mistreated?”

  “Not physically, ever. I’d gotten into so many fights that I was sent to family after family. I was angry at the world,” he confessed. “Kids the same age teased me for being an unwanted bastard half-breed. I’d blamed my biracial heritage as the reason no one wanted me.”

  “I know a good bit about teasing. Kids can be really mean, but there had to be some good ones too.”

  “There were, especially the Blackstones. Did I see it at the time? No. I’d decided the best thing to do was to run as far away from South Dakota as I could. I didn’t want to be Lakota. I wanted to be a cowboy because I’d always loved being around horses and John Wayne movies.”

  “You went to Texas,” she said, understanding how he’d grown up there. “How does a ten-year-old boy do that?”

  “By stowing away in a horse trailer headed there,” he answered. “No one found me until they’d checked on the horses.”

  “Wow, they didn’t think to send you back?”

  “Quinn McKay found me. He took a liking to me and asked my name. I told him Dallas. I could speak English, but couldn’t read it until I left South Dakota. There are many different tribes within the Sioux Nation, with varying languages. My case workers thought I should learn all the traditions of my people before English. Now I agree that they were trying to do right by me. Then, I’d been too angry and resentful and wanted to be white like my father.”

  “Then your dad must have helped change that view,” she commented.

  “If it weren’t for him and my mom, Mary, I might have caved into that hate,” he admitted. “Oh, Gracie, she’s amazing. She took me in and won my heart on day one. My parents tried for years to find my birth mother or father, but the trail went cold long before I’d left South Dakota. They officially adopted me five years later. I legally changed my name and have kept the circumstances of my birth private ever since.”

  Again, Grace needed some sweet tea to dislodge the lump in her throat. She wasn’t going to cry, damn it. “I’d like to meet your mom and dad sometime, soon.”

  “You will, baby. Be prepared for some real Texas cooking. It’ll blow your socks off.”

  “I bet!”

  Suddenly, Dallas’ mouth tightened. “What’s wrong, Dallas?”

  “I want to know why,” he admitted. “Why didn’t she want me? Why didn’t my father?”

  Instinctively reaching across the table, Grace took his hand. He gripped it like it was his lifeline. “I don’t know about your father. But, Dallas, the girl in that photo, she loved you. I can see it. She looks so young, no more than a kid herself, and scared. She placed you in the safest place she could think of, with the police. She loved you.”

  For a second, she worried that she’d said the wrong thing. Dallas stared at her, his mouth open. His hand tightened, his fingers swamping hers. “That’s what my mom said when I went home to think. She told me point blank that I couldn’t commit to a future with any woman until I stopped being afraid of finding my birth parents. At any given time, I could have pulled in any legal team I’d wanted. It feels right to do it now, my way.”

  “Are you still afraid?” Grace kept very still, waiting. Her heart hammered fiercely.

  “Yeah, a little,” he admitted. “Something shifted in me after that. If nothing else comes of this search, it’s my hope that my mother is safe and happy.”

  “What about your father?”

  “I’m not sure about him,” Dallas said. “I want to find him too. But it’s the photo that’s haunted me more than anything. Part of me wants to know why he didn’t man up and help her before she got desperate.”

  Grace rested her right hand over the top of his left. Feeling more connected to him, she sighed softly at how nice it was. “It could be that he was as young and scared as your mother. Please know that I’m in this with you until we find them both, if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I want,” he replied, his voice falling back to his Texas drawl.

  Taken by how truly handsome he was, part cowboy, part Sioux, she knew she was falling fast and hard. Something powerfully warm and incandescent settled deep in her soul, feeling much like she’d been waiting her whole life to find him.

  Elvis’ prophetic voice spilled from the table speaker, warning them not to be fools. And Grace was a goner. She knew it the second Dallas stood, her left hand still in his grasp. “Dance with me, Gracie.”

  She was up before she could stop herself.

  Dallas led her across the room. Finding a back corner of the crowded dance floor, he drew her into his arms. Grace flowed into step with him, easing closer and closer. For a moment, her world tilted off its axis, righting itself again when his big receiver’s hands went to the small of her back, caressing softly, slowly.

  For the first time ever, she rested her head on a man’s shoulder and danced. He smelled like heaven, sandalwood and leather. His heart was racing in time with hers. He sang softly, beautifully. Soft, dark hair brushed her cheek. She sighed, feeling safe. Not exactly sure how it happened, she suddenly lifted her head. He smiled, leaning in to nuzzle his nose at her jaw. His voice faded into kisses up and down her jaw and that tender little spot near her earlobe.

  Grace went up on tiptoe. Her pulse pounded. A knot of need that only a man could truly ease pulled taut way down deep in her belly. There was no use denying it. She wanted him.

  Dallas shifted in just the right way, making her aware of his height and athletic muscle. Even through his t-shirt she could tell he was ripped. One of his thighs slipped between her legs, wedging up close and personal with her slit.

  “Oh God, now I’m scared,” she murmured, glad she wore dark blue jeans to hide the immediate rush of moisture that soaked her panties.

  “Shh, it’ll be okay,” he said, equally quiet, sounding equally turned-on. His thigh slid in and out, nudging her where she needed him most. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  She should have pulled away. He wasn’t exerting his strength or overpowering her. But with his thigh working her clitoris and his substantial erection rubbing against her hip, the dance was pure seduction. Couples were dancing all around them, neither cared. It wouldn’t have mattered if everyone knew what they were doing. She wasn’t about to stop him.

  Dallas touched his lips to hers. He kissed her softly, sweetly, with an insistence that warned her he wanted way more than a kiss. “Open, baby,” he whispered.

  Elvis was still singing about fools rushing in. Grace ignored the words and obeyed Dallas by parting her lips for his tongue. Going from soft to intense, his kiss set her on fire. His thigh rubbed against her center, edging her closer to that elusive pleasure that she’d not been able to enjoy with a man for way too long.

  “Gracie,” he said between kisses.

  “Hmm?” She couldn’t find her voice so she hummed.

  He eased back a fraction. It was just enough to let him shift his hand from her back to her chin. His eyelids were lowered, the lashes long, shadowing his gaze.

  He leaned forward again, saying, “Come for me.”

  With his insistent rock-hard thigh working magic on her clit and labia, she couldn’t dare look away. Holding her face in both hands, he watched her while his thigh rocked against her clit. Her hips surged harder, faster, searching, seeking and fucking his leg. Orgasm struck like lightning, hot and fast, searing her insides like he’d branded her. Rocking her through it, he pressed even harder and she flew right back up, another orgasm a breath away. She breathed, soared, shaking as she came so hard,
her feminine juices flowed.

  Dallas kissed her. His tongue delved deep, exploring her mouth, rewarding her. Elvis stopped singing and he drew back. “Come home with me, Grace.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “You want me. I want you,” he countered. “We should.”

  It was hard to deny that she wanted him after having two orgasms in less than a minute. She was still trying to catch her breath. It had been one date. Yet they’d talked like they’d known each other forever.

  “I don’t have any clothes or anything. We shouldn’t.”

  “Now see, there’s this thing called a phone. All we need to do is call the Blacks and I’m betting they can have a change of clothes for you sent to my house by morning.”

  “No, no, don’t bring them into this.” Oh hell, she was going to do it. “Okay, okay, yes.”

  “Then what do you say we get out of here?” he suggested. “And spend the rest of the night alone?”

  “I can’t say no to anything you want,” she admitted.

  Dallas drew back and led her to their booth. In a flourish, he tossed money on the table, grabbed up their coats, gloves and his hat and they were rushing toward the door. Their coats were half on, half off.

  It wasn’t until they were actually in his truck when it hit her as to what she’d agreed to.

  Chapter Three

  Dallas wanted to get home before Grace changed her mind. If she did, he wouldn’t press the issue. But hell, he was so fucking hard for her he thought his cock might break his zipper.

  Well on their way to the highway, he kept both hands tight on the wheel. Safety was the key. If he drove like a bat out of hell, they’d be royally screwed.

  “Dallas,” she said quietly.