A Hawk's Way Christmas

by Joan Johnston

  “We can share—”

  “Don’t argue with me, Rolleen,” he said curtly. “This may be pretend, but you’re a woman and I’m a man and I can’t help how I react to you—pregnant or not. Now get under the damn covers and turn out the light!”

  Rolleen did as she was told.

  She heard the zipper come down on Gavin’s jeans, and the whispery hush of denim being dropped in a pile. She felt him pick up the extra blanket at her feet and edge away as he confiscated the pillow next to her head.

  “You can still join me if you get cold,” she offered.

  “I won’t.”

  She knew why. He was physically attracted to her. She’d felt it from the beginning. She could understand her attraction to him. He was tall, dark and handsome. She had never understood his apparent attraction to her. She was pretty—but pregnant! That hadn’t deterred Gavin’s interest in the least. If anything, he had seemed fascinated by her pregnant body. If only…

  Rolleen made herself face the facts. Gavin Talbot was helping her through a difficult situation. It wasn’t fair to either of them to let herself dream of happily ever after.

  “Good night, Gavin.” She heard him shuffling around on the floor, spreading out the blanket and pounding the pillow and turning himself over several times, until at last he was quiet.

  She wanted to stay awake and talk, but it had been such a long day she could hardly keep her eyes open. She was home. Her parents believed their ruse. This Christmas would be as happy as all the others. And Gavin’s presence—and his pretense—had made it all possible. She owed him so much.

  “Gavin?” Halfway through the word she yawned.

  “You’re tired. Go to sleep.”

  “It was perfect, Gavin,” she said dreamily. “Everyone around the fire. Everyone smiling and laughing and happy. Just like Christmas should be. Thank you.”

  “It isn’t over yet,” he said.

  “Only two days until Christmas Eve,” she said. “We’ll make it.”

  “Maybe you will,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Rolleen laid her hand protectively over the baby, closed her eyes and moments later was sound asleep.

  * * *

  Gavin couldn’t remember when he’d spent a more miserable night. His body had been a furnace of desire when he’d lain down on the floor, but during the night, the cold had seeped up through the rug from the Mexican-tiled floor. The blanket had been too short to reach his feet and his shoulders at the same time, and it had taken a great deal of fortitude not to join Rolleen in bed.

  To make matters worse, the feather pillow had been too soft and the pillowcase had smelled of honeysuckle, a scent Rolleen sometimes wore. Gavin had spent the night aching for her. If he got involved—really involved—with Rolleen Whitelaw, it meant accepting another man’s child as his own. But if he hadn’t been able to accept Beth, whom he had adored the first four years of her life, how could he ever hope to love some stranger’s child?

  He had to make himself stop touching Rolleen. Stop wanting her. Stop thinking about her.

  That was easier said than done.

  Gavin had awakened at the crack of dawn and retreated to the bathroom across the hall to shower and shave before Rolleen and her family got up. He hadn’t wanted to see her all warm and tousled in bed. And he had wanted all the time he could get to gather his courage before he had to face Zach and Rebecca again.

  Last night, when Zach had come to the bedroom door, Gavin had imagined how he would have felt if some guy had come to his home “pretending” to love his daughter—who was pregnant—and then abandoned her a couple of months later. No matter when Zach and Rebecca found out the truth, they were going to be angry and hurt.

  But he also could understand Rolleen wanting to preserve the joy of Christmas for her family. No matter how hard he was finding it, Gavin owed it to her to try to keep his part of the bargain.

  He simply had to stop kissing her like he had last night. Because it was too hard to keep from feeling things he would rather not feel.

  Knuckles rapped hard on the bathroom door, and he heard Rabbit call out, “Hey! You done in there?”

  He opened the door a crack, shaved but wearing only a pair of half-buttoned jeans.

  The fifteen-year-old shot him an aggrieved look and said, “I hope you didn’t use all the hot water.”

  “Rabbit!” Colt said, cuffing his brother on the shoulder as he passed by. “Let the guy finish getting dressed!”

  Gavin peered out and realized the hall was alive with Whitelaws coming in and out of bedroom doors in various states of dress and undress. He should have known they’d all keep rancher’s hours.

  “I’m finished in here,” he said, dropping his towel into the hamper and stepping barefoot out into the hall along with a cloud of leftover steam. “I took a quick shower,” he promised Rabbit as he headed across the hall to Rolleen’s bedroom.

  “You’re last tomorrow if you didn’t,” Rabbit threatened as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  Gavin felt himself grinning. He’d certainly become one of the family.

  The hall was suddenly empty, and Gavin wondered where everyone had gone. He hesitated on the threshold of Rolleen’s bedroom, fascinated by what he saw.

  Rolleen was sitting up in the big brass bed with both pillows stacked behind her, a saltine cracker poised at her lips, her gray eyes crinkled at the corners and her mouth split wide by laughter. The sound was so beautiful—like twinkling stars in a winter sky or snowfall stacked on the boughs of a mountain pine or children dressed as angels—it took his breath away.

  He watched as Rebecca lovingly brushed Rolleen’s blond hair away from her face and said, “I don’t have any firsthand experience, but all your aunts have told me the first trimester is pretty exhausting. How are you feeling, really?”

  Gavin was startled by Rebecca’s reminder that none of her children had been born Whitelaws, that every one of them had been adopted. She had learned to love eight children who were not her own.

  “I’m fine, Mom. Really,” Rolleen said. “And the baby’s fine.”

  Gavin watched as Rolleen took her mother’s hand and laid it over her belly where the child was growing inside her. He saw the look of delight on Rebecca’s face and the glow that lit Rolleen’s and made her every bit as beautiful as her laughter.

  “Were you ever sorry, Mom?” Rolleen asked. “I mean, that none of us were your own?”

  Gavin listened raptly for Rebecca’s answer, knowing he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but unable to move from where he stood.

  “I have always wondered what it would be like to feel a child growing inside me,” Rebecca admitted. “It must be wonderful to give such a gift to the man you love.”

  Gavin saw Rolleen’s hesitation before she nodded.

  “But your father and I have had the unique pleasure of finding each and every one of you children—never knowing when or from where the next would arrive. It’s been a life filled with wonderful gifts I wouldn’t have missed for anything.”

  Both women had tears in their eyes, and Gavin wished he could disappear into the wall. He didn’t need this. Of course Rebecca could love someone else’s children. There was no history of deception, no feelings of betrayal connected to them. His situation with Beth was different. It had been impossible to keep loving Beth once he’d learned his wife had betrayed him in creating her.

  In the early days after he had learned the truth about his daughter his grandmother had been the first to say, “People can learn to love children who aren’t their own.”

  “That isn’t the point,” he’d argued. The part of himself he’d always believed was a part of his daughter no longer existed. Before he’d even had a chance to grieve that loss, he was being asked to love the part of his daughter that was a stranger, along with the part of her that reminded him of a wife who had betrayed him with another man.

  So far, he had
n’t been able to do it.

  “You can’t keep ignoring her,” his grandmother had admonished the last time he’d left the ranch to return to Houston. “Take her with you, Gavin. Be her father. Love her. Beth loves you so much! She doesn’t understand why you avoid her. She doesn’t understand—”

  “Please, Hester, no more,” he’d said. “I can’t face Beth right now and pretend everything is the way it was. I can’t.”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” Hester had said.

  He’d felt the ache in his throat and known he couldn’t stay any longer. He had turned to leave the room and collided with Beth.

  “Daddy, don’t leave me!” she’d cried excitedly, holding her arms open wide to him. “Take me with you!”

  His first instinct had been to pick her up, to hold her, to cherish her and protect her from the truth. He had dropped onto one knee and found himself looking into eyes that were not the shape or color of his—or Susan’s. Beth’s hands were already closing around his neck when he had caught her wrists and pulled himself free. “I can’t, baby. I can’t!”

  She had stared at him confused, but not frightened, because he had always been so gentle with her. “Why not, Daddy?”

  I’m not your Daddy.

  Dark and dangerous rage. Huge and horrible grief. Aching, unbearable pain. He had felt all of it at once and jerked himself free of its source: his daughter…who was not his daughter.

  Gavin had run. And been running for almost a year. At Hester’s insistence, he was going home for Christmas. Home to face the blameless child he had abandoned and try to be a father to her.

  “Gavin?”

  Gavin realized Rebecca and Rolleen had noticed his presence while he’d been lost in thought. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  Rebecca laughed as she rose from the bed. “I was just saying I ought to excuse myself so you two can finish dressing. We’ve got a hectic day ahead of us.”

  She was gone with a smile and a wave, closing him inside the bedroom with Rolleen.

  Gavin took one look at Rolleen and felt his body draw up tight. He swore under his breath. He wanted her, but he knew better than to reach for her. The situation was just too damned complicated. He stayed where he was, restraining the hungry beast inside.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” he said, his voice hard and hoarse with desire.

  “I know things aren’t as private around here as you’re used to,” she said, putting her feet over the edge of the bed. She rose as though she had a book balanced on her head, and he suspected her stomach was unsteady.

  What kind of crazy man craves sex with a woman who has morning sickness? He did. He wanted her something fierce, and she was totally oblivious!

  “But we Whitelaws are a close-knit family who—”

  “Why don’t you tell them the truth?”

  She froze, then turned to stare at him. “What?”

  “I can see they all love you. They won’t blame you for what happened. Why don’t you just tell them the truth and get it over with?”

  He watched the blood leech from her face and hurried over to sit her down on the bed and force her head between her knees. “Keep your head down,” he said when she tried to raise it too soon.

  “Please don’t tell them,” she begged. “Not now. Not yet.”

  He pulled her up and into his arms and hugged her. He felt bad for her and her parents. And helpless because there was nothing he could do to make things better.

  Except keep playing the game.

  Her hair felt silky in his hands as he tunneled his fingers up the back of her neck to rub at the knots of tension there.

  “That feels good.”

  The sound of her voice resonated inside him, making his blood race.

  “At least tell them you don’t mind quitting medical school,” he said, fighting the urge to crush her against him. “Will you do that for me?”

  “I suppose I could say you’re going to encourage me to work on some fashion designs at home,” she said.

  “It’ll be the truth,” he said.

  She smiled up at him, and Gavin felt something tumble and shift inside. It isn’t just that I want her body. I want her. I need her.

  “You’re a nice man, Gavin Talbot.”

  “And a hungry one,” he said, watching the double entendre slide right over her head. If only… He forced himself to let go of her and asked, “When’s breakfast?”

  “You can eat anytime you want. I’m not having anything.”

  “Oh, yes you are,” he countered. “I want you strong enough to keep up your end of the bargain.”

  “But I’ll be sick if I eat,” she protested.

  “You can nibble on something.”

  Nibble was all she did, but he made sure she mentioned her plan to do some fashion designs for The Elegant Lady.

  “What a wonderful idea,” Rebecca said.

  “You’ve always loved to sew,” Jewel pointed out.

  “And I’ve always wanted a sister who was a fashion designer,” the irrepressible Frannie said.

  “You would,” Jake said. “So you can dress up in her clothes.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Frannie asked indignantly.

  Everybody laughed.

  Before Gavin knew it the whole family had tumbled out of the kitchen door like kittens out of a basket and were on their way to the stable to take a quick ride around Hawk’s Pride.

  When the ride became a race, Gavin excused himself and Rolleen, insisting she had promised to take him on a side trip down into the canyon where the stone walls were etched with primitive drawings.

  “Thank you, Gavin,” Rolleen said once they were on the narrow trail into the canyon.

  “For what?”

  “For helping me to have faith in my parents,” she replied. “I should have known they would be supportive no matter what I chose to do. You’ll make a good parent someday yourself.”

  Gavin stared at her, stricken. But I’m not a good parent, he wanted to shout. I’m not even in the same class with Zach and Rebecca. They’ve opened their hearts to eight children who aren’t their own flesh and blood. I can’t even do it with one. He glanced at her growing belly, visible in the jeans she wore to ride in, and realized it wasn’t only one child he needed to love anymore. It was two.

  He wanted to talk with Rolleen about Beth, to seek her advice, to seek solace, but once he had her alone at the bottom of the canyon, he couldn’t help tasting her. And tasting led to touching.

  He kissed the curls on her nape and the small birthmark he’d found beneath her ear, and he put his palms over her breasts and heard her moan as the nipples peaked.

  “Gavin, please stop.”

  Through a haze of arousal he heard her plea. And did as she asked.

  “Your brothers will expect you to look kissed,” he said.

  She was flushed, her cheeks rosy, her lips swollen from his kisses. But her gray eyes were troubled.

  “We have to stop this, Gavin.”

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “I like kissing you, Rolleen. And touching you.” He brushed the back of his hand against her breast, and she hissed in a breath.

  “I don’t want to get hurt, Gavin. I’m starting to feel things…things I shouldn’t feel for you. It doesn’t feel like a game anymore,” she said.

  “Maybe it isn’t,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” he said, meeting her startled gaze. “What if we kept on seeing each other after the holidays?”

  She stared up at him, her heart in her eyes for a brief moment before she turned away. “I…I don’t know.” She turned back to him and said, “I’ll think about it.”

  Her brothers ribbed her unmercifully for her bright eyes and swollen lips and heated cheeks when they rejoined the rest of the party and Gavin made himself smile along with them, while inside it felt like someone had dumped the spoon drawer
upside down, causing a great clatter and a great deal of confusion.

  I never told her about Beth, he realized. I have to tell her about Beth.

  After lunch they played flag football. The third time Rolleen got tackled by one of her brothers, Gavin picked her up and sat her in a chair on the stone patio behind the house and ordered in a very husbandly way, “Stay there and take care of our baby.”

  In the late afternoon Gavin volunteered to help chop more wood for the fire along with Rolleen’s brothers. He almost cut his foot off when Rolleen cried out because a lizard had crawled across her boot. Her brothers razzed him unmercifully for not being able to take his eyes off of her.

  He punished Rolleen for scaring him with a kiss in front of her brothers that left her cheeks pink. She got him back by threading her fingers into his hair and ravaging his mouth with her tongue until his jeans barely fit. He had to stand behind the woodpile until he was decent, while she smiled smugly and trotted off to the house with her sisters.

  It was fun. The rambunctious activities went on for the next two days, with Rolleen notably absent for the rougher games and with the family joined by Rolleen’s sister Cherry, her husband Billy, their twin ten-year-old daughters Rae Jean and Annie and the new baby Brett. Gavin didn’t know when he’d enjoyed the Christmas holiday so much.

  Rolleen laughed often and unselfconsciously. She teased and cajoled and got angry with her brothers and sisters and forgave them minutes later. She teased and cajoled and got angry with him, too. And forgave him with touches and kisses and looks that made his blood simmer beneath his skin.

  His feelings felt like love. But he was always aware of the deception they carried out with her parents, always aware of the secret he kept from her that might make her turn away from him.

  The more Gavin watched the loving play of the Whitelaws, the more time he spent with Rolleen, the more he dreaded the thought of leaving Hawk’s Pride and heading for his home to play out the rest of their charade.

  The moment came much sooner than he expected. And in a way that made it plain how much was at stake in the dangerous game they played.

  CHAPTER 6