Staking His Claim

by Karen Templeton

Faith looked at her as if she'd lost it for sure. "The hell it's not," she said in an only-for-your-ears voice. "He's adorable, sexy as hell and good with kids. And the man is up there playin' Dracula, for pity's sake."

  "And what's that got to do with anything?"

  "Well, honey, if you can't figure that out, then I'm sure not gonna strain my brain to explain it to you…Maddie! Hey!"

  Dawn looked up to see Cal's sister-in-law, also pushing a stroller, coming straight at them. Her boy and girl, about the same ages as two of Faith's, immediately melded with the others. Barely taller than Faith's oldest girl, Maddie grinned as she shoved her feathery hair out of her light eyes.

  "I didn't know you two knew each other!" she said over the shrieking and giggling going on around them.

  "We were best buddies all the way through school," Faith shouted back. "Although we kinda lost touch after Dawn went away…"

  And while kids bounced and chattered around them, the two women fell into a conversation about potty training and pre-school—What is it, Noah? Well, go on up and ask Miz Chellete if you can use hers if you gotta go that bad—and what did Maddie think—Crystal! Give Jake's candy back to him right now!—of Taylor McIntyre, the new kindergarten teacher, since that's who Jake would get next year—Katie Grace, no, honey, the baby can't eat a lollipop—and did Faith want Maddie to bring over those baby clothes yet…?

  Dawn tried to force enough oxygen into her suddenly shriveled lungs to keep from passing out. How could she do this? How could she be this? And the thing of it was, Faith and Maddie seemed so relaxed about it all. Sure, she'd seen plenty of mothers in action with their kids over the years, but that had all seemed over there, somewhere. You know, that special place where mothers lived. A place Dawn had simply never envisioned herself living. Like…Irkutsk. Now here she stood, passport in hand, right at the border.

  Somehow, they'd all moved, like a yammering, sixteen-legged, eight-wheeled insect, down to the corner where Cal's brother Ryan lived. All the kids—including the two who lived there—rushed the two-story Queen Anne and clambered up the porch steps while their mothers continued talking: Dawn looked down the street to see Charmaine Chambers and her three heading their way just as all the kids clomped back down the doctor's steps and rejoined them.

  "Mama!" Heather said to her mother, hacking away. "Dr. Ryan says to tell you if my cough's—" hack, hack "—not better by next week to come an' see him again!"

  "Okay, baby…hey, Charmaine!"

  Judging from the look on the other woman's face, Dawn's guess was she would've crossed the street if she'd had her druthers. Her three kids, however—all boys, all dark-haired, all wired—fused with the others like melding oil droplets. By now the noise level was beyond belief, especially as every dog in town had decided to pitch in his two cents.

  And still the women talked.

  "You remember Dawn, right?" Faith yelled to Charmaine.

  The brunette, her arms tightly folded over a suede jacket Dawn thought she remembered seeing her wear in high school, gazed at her impassively. "Saw her over at the diner," she said, her voice flat. "Ruby says you're stayin'?"

  The coldness in Charmaine's voice arrowed straight to Dawn's already roiling stomach. "For a while, anyway."

  "Hey, Charmaine," Faith said, "We missed you at the last PTA meeting."

  "Sorry. Guess I forgot," the brunette said, then yelled out to her kids to get a move on, she didn't have all night.

  When she'd moved out of earshot, Faith let out a sigh and said, "Brody's leaving her did a real number on her head. Swear to God, I ever catch sight of that scumbag again…"

  "I'm right there with you," Maddie added.

  Dawn, who was watching Charmaine and her kids fade into the darkness, barely heard Faith's, "You don't even know how I was gonna finish that sentence."

  "Does it matter? Hey, y'all," Maddie said, "why don't you come on inside for some cocoa or something? Looks to me like things're winding down anyway, if those chock-full bags are anything to go by. And you," she said to Faith, "look like you seriously need to take a load off—"

  "You know," Dawn said over the Clash of the Titans number going on inside her head, "that really sounds great, but I'm gonna take a raincheck, okay?"

  Faith touched her arm. "Honey? You okay?"

  "I…just need to…" Instead of finishing her sentence—which she couldn't have if her life had depended on it—she muttered something lame and probably incomprehensible and headed back for her mother's house.

  Where Cal—and that minefield of unresolved issues—waited.

  * * *

  Still sitting on the porch, Cal felt his heart nearly bolt out of his chest at Dawn's shell-shocked expression when she returned.

  "Hey," he said, getting to his feet. "What's goin' on?"

  She started a little, like she'd forgotten he was there, then shook her head and kept walking. Cal hurried to open the front door for her and followed her inside, the nearly empty candy bowl clutched in his hand. Staring blankly in front of her, she slowly peeled off her jacket, letting it drop to the sofa before continuing to the kitchen. By the time Cal got there she'd made serious inroads into one of Ethel's double-size cinnamon buns. He dumped the candy bowl on the counter, then wordlessly poured her a glass of milk and handed it to her.

  "Thanks," she said.

  "Talk," he said.

  "What good would that do?"

  "Damned if I know. But I don't see how it could hurt."

  She took another bite of the cinnamon bun, washing it down with half the milk. Then she said, "Okay, but if I start rambling incoherently, you can't complain."

  "I live with Ethel, remember? I was fifteen before I realized that incoherent rambling wasn't just the way women talked."

  That got a small smile, which did little to ease the torment in her expression. "I must be nuts."

  "About what?"

  She gestured at her stomach with what was left of the cinnamon bun. "All those kids…at one point, there were…" Her brow knotted as she stopped to count. "Ten kids under the age of eleven within a six-foot radius. How do they do it? Maddie and Faith and Charmaine?" Panic sent her voice into the stratosphere. "How do they stand the screaming and the noise and the constant demands for attention?"

  "Whoa, honey…" He pried the empty glass out of her fingers and handed her a napkin. "You're not having ten kids. Just one." She frowned at the napkin like she didn't know what to do with it. "You've got icing on your chin," he said, then added, "And you don't have to do it alone, you know."

  "What? Wipe off the icing?"

  "No." He waited until she finally looked at him. "Raise the kid."

  Her face crumpled as two wonker tears popped out and streaked down her cheeks.

  "Aw, hell, sweetheart," he said, opening his arms.

  "C'mere." At her wary, watery look, he added, "Oh, for God's sake—I'm not gonna sling you over my shoulder and haul you back to the farm, okay?"

  Another second or so passed before she accepted his invitation. But she wasn't exactly what you'd call relaxed.

  "That better?" he asked.

  "You must be kidding."

  He tightened his hold, just because it felt good, dammit. And somebody oughtta be gettin' something out of this, right? "This isn't just about the baby, is it?"

  After a moment she shook her head against his chest, then honked into the napkin. "It's about…everything," she said on a wobbly, very un-Dawn-like sigh. "The baby and you and how I'm going crazy here with nothing to do and…and…Oh, Cal, I'm so homesick!"

  His chin resting on top of her head, Cal shut his eyes against the sensation of being kicked in the gut. "I'm sorry, honey," he said softly, letting his fingers sift through her ponytail. "Although I can see where Darryl and Faith's brood could have that effect…"

  "That's not it. Not the homesickness part of it, anyway. I mean…" She pulled away to drop into one of the kitchen chairs, her forehead creasing into that trying-to-figure-things-out frown
he remembered from way back. "I was actually enjoying myself for a while, kids and all. Except then Faith started asking me about New York, and this weird feeling came over me…and I suddenly missed the city so much, it hurt."

  Cal dodged another kick, then said, "I'm sorry you hate it here—"

  "But that's just it, I don't hate it here! I just want my life back—"

  "Honey?" Ivy said from the doorway. "What's going on?"

  Well. It didn't take a brainiac to figure out where she was going with that thought, did it? And Cal knew if he stayed he'd only end up arguing with her, because that's the kind of mood he was in. Which would be a colossal waste of everyone's time because, for one thing, arguing with Dawn was like trying to order the weather to do what you wanted. And for another, Cal hated fighting more than he hated brussels sprouts, and that was saying a lot. So he said his good-nights and took off.

  What he didn't count on was Ivy's going after him.

  Chapter 8

  Dawn let out a long sigh. See, this was the thing with men. They might say they want you to talk but do they ever really listen? Noooo.

  And do mothers ever really back off and let you work things out on your own? Noooo, again.

  Thinking she should probably try to avoid bloodshed, Dawn hauled herself to her feet, reaching the open front door in time to hear her mother yell at Cal's back, "Where the heck you think you're going?"

  The porch light now off, Dawn huddled in the shadows, swiping tentacles of cobweb filament out of her face. Well, hell—if her mother and Cal were fool enough to talk about her, she was fool enough to listen.

  "This is your opportunity, boy," Ivy said.

  "To do what?" Cal snapped, yanking open his door. "Confuse her more than she already is?"

  Ivy slammed her hands onto her hips and lowered her voice. How rude. But the wind still carried snatches of her words: "…you came to me, asking for my help…want her to stay as much as you do…to be happy…blockhead."

  "This is your idea of help?" rang out loud and clear. Except then Ivy shushed him, so all she got then was "…somehow get inside that gal's mind…staying here…an option?"

  Now Ivy crossed her arms. "…better'n just letting her go…she's begging for help!"

  "Help?" Dawn muttered, indignant.

  "Help?" Cal said on a dryer-than-dust laugh. Then all she heard was something about "once she set her mind to something, there was no changing it."

  Dawn frowned.

  The wind shifted, so she heard the next bit clearly.

  "So that's it?" Ivy said. "You're just giving up?"

  "Didn't say that. But you know, it's a whole lot easier to dig a post hole when you've softened the earth up first. She's homesick, Ivy. And until she gets over that—if she gets over that—I don't have a chance."

  "But the baby—"

  "Don't you get it? It's like she said, way at the beginning—even if she decided to stay here for the baby's sake, as long as her heart's someplace else, she's never gonna be happy—"

  O-kay, time to break up this cozy little chat.

  "This is getting to be a bad habit with you two," she said as she approached them, provoking simultaneous guilty jumps, "talking about me behind my back."

  She couldn't quite read Cal's expression in the moonlight, but it definitely provoked a shiver or two in a couple of very interesting places. Especially with the widow's peak and the "blood" dribble at the corner of his mouth. "What's gettin' to be a bad habit," he said, "is the way you keep interrupting a private conversation."

  "Hey. I'm the one whose life has just gone to hell in a handbasket. I'll interrupt whatever I want." At his why-are-women-like-this? headshake, she said, "Look. I'm a mess, okay? And I'm not going to apologize for that. But it occurred to me while I was ranting and raving in there that one of the reasons I'm such a mess is because I'm bored. So I made a decision. Which I was about to share with the class when you did your affronted-manhood number."

  "Hey!"

  "I need to go back to work. So…I decided to see if Sherman Mosely could use some help while I'm here."

  That got a pair of poleaxed reactions. Well, good.

  "God knows, this won't solve all my problems—" she looked pointedly at Cal "—but at least it'll keep me occupied."

  Cal frowned. "I don't think I much like being thought of as a problem."

  "Deal with it," she said, then added, "Besides, maybe Sherman can help me find my father."

  Her mother flinched. "Honey, I really don't think you should go gettin' other people involved with this—"

  "Then give me my father's name and I won't have to."

  Her gaze locked with her mother's, Dawn waited as her heart rammed against her ribs once…twice…three times…

  "I can't," Ivy finally said.

  "Fine. Then you can't say anything more."

  After a moment Ivy closed the gap between them and gave her a wordless hug, then went back inside.

  "For God's sake, Dawn…" Cal's voice, harsher than she'd ever heard it, washed over her from behind. "Why the devil you're so determined to find a man who was too much of a coward, or too stupid, or too blind to acknowledge his own daughter is beyond me."

  She twisted around to face him. "Probably for the same reason you're determined to win me over."

  His brows shot up at that. Silence grated between them for several beats, until a smile slowly worked its way across his jaw. "And if you find your father?"

  "What do you mean?"

  The grin still in place, he reached out to slip his fingers, warm and rough and insistent, underneath her hair at the back of her neck, and while a million little voices shouted, No!, a tiny, very persuasive little one whispered, Oh, what the hell, as he gently tugged her to him.

  "I don't care what you say, Dawn Gardner," he said, his breath dancing with hers, his fingertips hypnotically stroking that—oh!—very sensitive little dip at the base of her skull. "We're more alike than you might think. See, both of us thrive on challenge. On doing things the hard way." His lips touched hers, just long enough to tease, to send a wave of little prickles skittering along her skin. "And neither of us can rest until we get what we want."

  "And why do you think you want me, Cal?"

  He pulled back, frowning into her eyes. "What?"

  "Other than the fact that I'm pregnant with your child and that there's enough chemistry between us to blow up every science lab in the state, I'm willing to bet you don't want me nearly as much as you think you do. And I sure as hell doubt you need me."

  She shivered from the sudden touch of cold air on the back of her neck as Cal's hand fell away. He frowned at her for several seconds, then shook his head, muttering, "Why can't women just take things at face value?" before he got into his truck and drove off.

  For a moment that by all rights should have been victorious, she felt remarkably disappointed.

  * * *

  The early-November sun elbowed its way through the partially open miniblinds in Sherman Mosely's waiting room to illuminate, with pinpoint precision, the worn spot in the carpet in front of Marybeth Reese's old walnut desk. Over the secretary's rhythmic keyboarding at the vintage PC, her Dictaphone earplugs smothered by a mountain of spectrum-sucking black hair, Dawn could hear Sherman's animated tenor through the closed door, presumably in a phone conversation. In grating juxtaposition to the hundred-year-old building in which they sat, the slime-green Danish-modern sofa and assorted boxy chairs were unoccupied at present, except for the one Dawn was sitting in.

  "I honestly don't know how much longer he'll be," the thirty-something woman tossed out with an apologetic smile as she typed. "You sure you wouldn't rather make an appointment, honey?"

  "No, I'm good," Dawn said, tugging at the hem of her half-unzipped black Calvin Klein skirt, not sure whether she was more concerned that somebody might question where she'd gotten her stylishly oversize fur-blend sweater or whether they'd notice the steadily growing mound beneath it. She glanced over at Maryb
eth, a vision in Jaclyn Smith. It didn't take much to overdress around here. Actually, Dawn couldn't have cared less about designer labels, but working at a Madison Avenue law firm had kinda precluded a discount store wardrobe.

  "Dawn! Sorry to keep you waiting!" She looked up to see a smiling Sherman standing in the doorway to his office, his striped tie lolling to one side of the sagging stomach straining against the buttons of his white dress shirt. "Come on in, come on in…Marybeth, hold my calls, wouldja?"

  When she'd settled herself into the worn upholstered chair in front of his desk, she looked across to see the older man's warm hazel eyes fixed on hers. As a child, their paths had rarely crossed—his daughter, Brenda Sue, hadn't exactly been one of Dawn's favorite people—and she'd seen him hardly at all since then. Age had leached the color from his thick hair and softened features she remembered as once being keenly defined, but the result wasn't unpleasant. And when he smiled, his whole face went along for the ride.

  Just like Cal's, she thought with a start. Quickly reeling her thoughts back in, she said, "Mama told me about your wife's passing. I'm so sorry."

  "Thank you," he said with a nod and a slightly sad smile.

  "Barbara had been sick for a real long time, though. It was hard, watching her suffer like that, you know? And we had a good thirty-five years together. Mostly good, anyway. So, Dawn…" He leaned back, cradling his head in his folded hands, his scrutiny no less shrewd for its avuncular nature.

  "What can I do for you?"

  Dawn assumed her standard "competent professional" pose—spine straight, chin out, hands loosely folded in her lap, feet crossed at the ankles. "Word around here is that you need some time off. Since, as it happens, I need a temporary job, I thought we might be able to work something out for our mutual benefit."

  Thick, still-dark brows hiked up over his glasses. "You sayin' you want to work for me?"

  "Work with you is probably a better way of putting it. But, yes. I'm already licensed to practice in Oklahoma," she added quickly. "If that's a concern."

  "Why?"

  "I took the Oklahoma bar as a precaution—"

  "No, I mean why would you want to work here? I thought you were working for some highfalutin firm in New York City."