by Cara Colter
“I’m sorry she was sick,” he heard himself saying. “I really am, Tally.”
She blinked rapidly, and then said, way too brightly, “Anyway, I’ve found out all I wanted to know. You’ll be happy to know I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning. No more questions.”
“I am happy to know that,” he said, but he didn’t feel completely happy or completely convinced, either.
“Goodbye, J.D.,” she said. She stuck out her hand.
He made the mistake of taking it. He felt a little shiver of desire for her, the smallest regret it was over before it ever started.
He yanked his hand away and went back down Mrs. Saddlechild’s walk more troubled than when he had gone up it. Something was wrong here.
But he’d gotten what he wanted, an assurance she was leaving. He went home and went back to work. He ate supper and showered, no singing. Unease niggled at the back of his mind, as if he had missed a piece of the puzzle, as if he should know something that he didn’t. He felt as if she had never given him the real answer to why she was here, but that if he just thought hard enough, he would figure it out.
When no answer came, he ordered himself over and over to forget it. But as soon as he let down his guard, the unanswered question filled his mind again.
He went to sleep nursing it.
J.D. woke deep in the night, moonlight painting a wide stripe across his bedroom floor, the cry of a coyote still echoing in the air, lonesome and haunting. He lay still, aware of the deep rise and fall of his own chest, feeling momentarily content.
But then the question he had gone to sleep pondering swept back into his mind, and the contentment was gone, like dust before a broom.
Why was Tally Smith really here? Beyond driving him crazy? And beyond getting the citizenry of Dancer worked up into a nice gossiping frenzy, the likes of which had not been seen since Mary Elizabeth Goodwin, prom queen, had gotten pregnant without the benefit of marriage almost a half-dozen summers ago.
All this nonsense about Tally wanting to see who her sister had loved, about being intrigued by a photograph, just did not add up. Elana might have been compulsive, but her little sister looked cautious, organized, responsible.
The person least likely to act on an impulse.
For some reason Tally Smith was lying, or at the very best, not telling him the full truth. He could see it in her eyes—and in her ears and nose and throat, come to that. In the darkness of his room, he allowed himself the luxury he had not allowed himself during the day. J.D. contemplated the color of her eyes.
They were astounding, shifting from indigo to violet, sending out beacons when she felt guilty and troubled. He thought of that one moment when she had smiled, and a brief light had chased the somberness from her eyes.
The coyote howled again, and the sound shivered in the night, and that shiver went up and down J.D.’s spine, and stopped at the base of his neck. It tickled there, a premonition that his life was about to change in ways he could have never imagined.
Why was she asking people if he liked children?
Had there been the tiniest bit of truth threaded through her statement that Elana had left him an inheritance?
And then he knew. With that clarity that comes in the night sometimes, in those moments partway between sleep and waking, he knew.
He sat up, his heart racing crazily.
He tried to tell himself it couldn’t be, that it was not even possible, but he failed utterly to convince himself. A sense of urgency overcame him, and he tossed back the tangle of sheets and blankets and put his feet on the floor. He hoped the cold would slam him back into reality, but the sense of urgency did not abate.
Cursing, he pulled his jeans from a heap on the floor and yanked them on. He shoved his arms in the sleeves of his shirt as he ran for the truck, not stopping for shoes, barely aware of the rocks digging into his bare feet.
What if she hadn’t waited until morning? What if she was gone already? He didn’t know one single thing about her, except that she was Elana’s sister and that she was from north of the border. How many Smiths would there be?
It wouldn’t matter. If he’d missed her, if she had folded up her tent and slunk away in the night, he would track down every last Smith in Canada, until he had confirmed the truth that had unfolded in his heart and his head a few minutes ago.
He didn’t bother to button the shirt, just started the truck and barreled toward town. Not much law enforcement out this way at the best of times. None at—he glanced at his watch—three-thirty in the morning. He pressed down the accelerator, and watched with satisfaction when the needle jumped over ninety.
J. D. Turner knew how to rebuild a truck engine. If he was as good at other things, it might not have taken him so long to figure out why she was here.
The roar of the engine split the quiet of the prairie night. He squealed his tires at the one stop sign on Main Street. If he wasn’t more careful, if all of Dancer wasn’t speculating about him and Tally Smith by now, they certainly would be soon.
He felt almost weak with relief when he raced into the parking lot of the Palmtree and saw the little gray Nissan parked in front of a darkened cabin. It was the only car at the Palmtree. Good. He didn’t have to wake up everybody in the whole place banging on doors until he found her.
He got out of his truck and hammered on the door closest to her car, waited, hammered again.
After a long moment, he saw movement at the cabin window. The curtain flicked open ever so slightly and then flicked back into place, swiftly. Silence. Not a hint of movement outside, or inside either. He could picture her standing with her back against the wall, palms flat against it, holding her breath.
“Tally Smith, I know you’re awake.” It was a challenge to find the right voice volume—one she would hear, but not the rest of the town.
Silence.
“Open this door right now or I’m breaking it down.” This a little louder.
More silence. After all her research, she should really know better than to try calling his bluff.
“I’m counting to three.” He was just a little short of the decibel level that made walls shake and blew out windows.
Did he hear a little scuffling noise on the other side of the door?
“One.” He lowered his voice, marginally.
He heard the bolt move.
“Two.”
The handle twisted.
“Thr—”
The door opened a crack, and she put one eye to it, and regarded him with grave annoyance.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. “You’ll wake up everyone in town.”
Her hair was spilling down around her shoulders in an untamed wave that gave complete lie to the long-sleeved, high-collared nightgown, straight off Little House on the Prairie.
“Let me in,” he demanded.
“No. It’s the middle of the night. Are you drunk?”
Drunk? “No, I am not drunk,” he told her dangerously. “Isn’t that somewhere in your notes? That J. D. Turner doesn’t get drunk?”
She sniffed. “There’s a first time for everything.”
“You know, come to think of it, if I was going to get drunk, you would be a pretty good excuse.”
“I’m not going to stand here in the middle of the night and be insulted by you.” She tried to shut the door, but he slipped his foot in.
“We need to talk,” he told her.
“It will have to wait until morning.”
She was so bossy. This took on new and significant meaning now that he knew his life was going to be tangled with hers, one way or another, forever. “It’s morning actually.”
She opened the door all the way, and glared at his foot until he put it back on the other side where it belonged. Her hair was all sleep-messed. It looked exactly the way he had known it would had he been given a chance to remove the pins from it—thick and rich and wild, tumbling over her shoulders and softening the lines of her face. She looked more appr
oachable. Sexy, actually.
He knew he must be mad, because he had that urge to kiss her again. Mad, angry. Mad, crazy, too.
“So,” she said, tapping her foot, “talk.”
She had a watch on and she glanced at it pointedly, to let him know her middle-of-the-night time was doled out thriftily. The cascading hair had not changed her tone of voice, nor her snippy attitude.
He said, with deliberate slowness, enunciating each word, “You didn’t come here checking out your sister’s lost loves.” It was a statement, not a question, and she knew it.
Whatever sleepiness was left her in face was replaced by wariness. “And your theory is?” she asked tartly.
“She had a baby.” That wasn’t a question, either. “My baby.”
He saw the answer written in her face. The color drained from it so rapidly he thought she might faint. She stood frozen, her eyes huge and frightened.
In delayed reaction to his earlier decibel level, the light blinked on in the motel office. Some instinct for self-preservation made him take her shoulders. He guided her backward, inside the cabin. Then he closed the door and leaned on it.
“Boy or girl?” he asked, ice-cold.
“Boy,” she whispered.
“I want to see my son. Get dressed. Because we are leaving right now.”
Chapter Three
“We are not going anywhere,” Tally said, finding her voice, and trying desperately to insert a note of steel into it. If this man ever got the upper hand, there would be no going back.
Though it must have been a mark of the lateness of the night, and the shock of his springing his newfound knowledge on her, that she could not think of what was so attractive about her life that she would need to go back to it.
J.D. glared at her, his eyes dark and challenging in the dim light of her room. She could see the strength and resolve in those eyes, and it occurred to her that there would be no winning a battle of wills with this man.
When she lost the staring contest, she dropped her eyes. Unfortunately, his shirt was unbuttoned and hanging open, revealing the broad and magnificent landscape of his chest. It occurred to her that she had seen more of J.D.’s chest than Herbert’s, which was unseemly, given that she was planning an intimate lifelong relationship with Herbert. She shivered.
J.D. was a magnificent specimen of a man, and the anger that sizzled in the air around him did nothing to reduce his attraction. She could feel the power of him, vital and exciting, but that was exactly the type of thing that turned a woman’s head, clouded her thinking. Being drawn to the unknown mysteries of a man was precisely the type of impulse that had gotten Elana into trouble again and again and again.
“Get dressed,” he snapped, obviously mistaking her befuddlement for weakness. “And get packed.”
She folded her arms over her chest. She could feel how rapidly her heart was beating, as if her very survival was being threatened by him taking control of her. But she wasn’t going to let him know that she was thrilled and frightened in turn by this extraordinary twist in her plan.
“No,” she said, giving herself a mental pat on the back for her calm tone. “You will have to haul me out of here, kicking and screaming.” He seemed unmoved by that threat, and so she tacked on, “And won’t that make a fine front page for the Dancer Daily News.”
He leaned very close to her. She could feel his breath on her cheek, and it was warm and sensuous and dangerous. His eyes had a steely glint in them that did not bode well for her.
“I’ll take that as a challenge, if you like,” he said, his voice deceptively soft. “It wouldn’t bother me one little bit to toss you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. You don’t look like you’d weigh more than a sack of spuds. And I’m not worried about the Dancer Daily.”
“That is not what you said earlier,” she reminded him pertly.
“I was a different man then. My whole world has changed since then.”
It felt like her whole world was shifting dangerously, too. She had to hold on to reason! She was always the one who made the plans, who knew what to do, who took charge. Surrendering was not an option.
Still, she tried a less aggressive stance. She softened her tone, touched his arm. “Could we be reasonable adults, here? There is no reason this can’t wait until morning.”
He was not the least taken in by the softer tone, and he glared at her fingers on his arm until she jerked her hand away. “Maybe you don’t know this, but your sister led me to believe she was falling in love with me. And then she disappeared in the middle of the night, without even saying goodbye. So, I’ve been on the receiving end of a Smith girl’s disappearing act before, and it’s not happening again.”
“You may have had a reason not to trust Elana, but I am not guilty by association. I have not given you a single reason not to trust me!”
All these years of respectability—Tally was a school teacher, for goodness sake—and still the fear lived in her, that people would look at her and see her sister, someone unworthy of their trust.
“I have a son that you didn’t tell me about. That feels like a pretty good reason not to trust you. When were you going to tell me?”
When she was silent, he guessed, “Or maybe you had decided not to. Maybe I didn’t pass the little daddy interviews you conducted around town. Maybe you decided, Miss Control, that you weren’t going to tell me about the boy at all.”
“I was so going to tell you,” she said, but the truth was when she had gone to bed this evening she had felt entirely uncertain about what to do about the very troubling Mr. J. D. Turner. It seemed telling him about Jed had become all mixed up with the color of his eyes, and the taste of his lips, and more than anything she wanted to do what was right and rational.
“I bet you don’t lie very often. That’s probably why the tip of your nose gets red when you fib. And then your ears start to glow. And then your neck turns all red, right here.”
He touched her, his broad hand spanning her neck where it joined her jawbone. She felt like a deer frozen in headlights. She felt a compulsion to cover her nose and ears, but she didn’t have enough hands and it would have been undignified, not to mention an admission of guilt.
“I was waiting for the right time,” she stammered.
“The right time would have been on my front step.”
“After you acted like a barbarian?” she sputtered. His hand was still on her neck. It felt oddly gentle, given the look in his eyes said he wanted to strangle her.
He seemed to realize he was still touching her, and he pulled his hand away and glared at it as though it had offended him.
“See?” he said wearily. “It’s just as I suspected. You were going to decide if I was suitable father material or not, weren’t you?” His hand must have wanted to strangle her again, because he shoved it in his pocket.
“I was just trying to do what was best for my nephew,” she defended herself, and she touched her neck where his hand had been to see if it was truly burning.
“Well guess what? You’ve been retired as God. I’m taking over. I’m in control now.”
He pulled the hand out of his jean pocket, folded his arms across his massive, naked chest and stared her down.
She waited for the black wave that would tell her death had come.
Instead, she noticed what he smelled like: faintly spicy and entirely manly. Heavenly. Maybe she had died after all.
It occurred to her, that since she was fighting for her very survival, rather than enjoying his admittedly fine scent, she should pick something up and throw it at him. Scream. Bring half the town running.
But a disgusting little thing had happened inside of her when he had said he was in control now. Instead of feeling like she was going to die, she actually felt faintly relieved!
It was the scariest thing she had ever felt, a weakness. She had never tolerated weakness in herself. How could she? She had always needed to be the strong one. She could never let him see this st
artling vulnerability she had unearthed in herself. She could hardly believe she had admitted it to herself. How could she be relieved that this big, angry stranger was ripping the reins of control from her?
She had to fight!
“It would be kidnapping if you forced me to go with you.” It was her schoolteacher voice at its mightiest.
He smiled, a cruel smile, that made him menacing and so god-awful handsome it should have been illegal. He reminded her, suddenly, of a pirate. Oh Lord, with a patch over his eye and a saber in his hand he would be the most frightening man on the planet. Not to mention the sexiest. What kind of opponent was a schoolteacher for a pirate?
She drew herself up short. He was not a pirate! He was a mechanic! Losing her grip on reality would be of no help to anyone.
“I can’t drive in the middle of the night,” she said with sharp haughtiness. “I have night blindness.”
He snorted derisively. “You think I was going to let you drive? I’m driving.”
“You won’t like driving that far with an unhappy woman,” she said, and then realized sometime, somehow, entirely against her will, she had relinquished her position that she was not going at all.
“You know what? I’d walk over fire to see my son. So you, and your unhappiness, are a relatively small challenge to me.”
She should have felt insulted. Instead she felt the strangest sensation in her chest at the fierce loyalty this man felt for the son he didn’t know.
She had come to Dancer to see if he would be a suitable daddy for Jed. Better than Herbert. It had been a stupid plan. Impulsive and plainly not thought through properly. She had never considered the possibility that he was going to gain the upper hand, wrest control of the whole situation from her.
On the other hand, wasn’t there a faint possibility that from the moment she had seen his picture she had known J. D. Turner was the man most likely to rescue her from the incredibly boring life she had planned for herself?
It was a renegade thought, and one she had to subdue immediately. She had seen, firsthand, thanks to Elana, what excitement did to people’s lives!