by Anna Jeffrey
Dahlia couldn’t relate. She liked feeding Joe, adored the ongoing connection to the tiny human that had begun life inside her body.
When he drifted off to sleep, Luke lifted him from her arms and tucked him into the playpen.
No way did she intend to be confined alone in the small space with a man who made her question every thought she had. “Come on,” she told him. “You may as well see the store. So you can see what we damn store clerks do.”
“I told you I didn’t mean that, Dal. You didn’t used to be mean.”
“I’ve changed,” she snapped.
He trailed behind her as she led him on a tour of the grocery store, including her pride and joy, the butcher shop. As they went, she couldn’t keep from wondering when he had been in a grocery store for thirty minutes, let alone all day. He made dutiful comments like, “That’s real good,” and “That’s real nice,” and “You do a real good job.”
He couldn’t have cared less, she suspected. A mom and pop grocery store was indeed small potatoes compared to a ninety-thousand-acre working ranch, large by even Texas standards. She wanted to smack her forehead in frustration. Or better yet, smack him.
“Not that you’re really interested, but I do, in fact, do a real good job. And I like it,”
The presence of a ruggedly good-looking cowboy who obviously was not struggling to make his truck payments was a huge distraction to the female employees. They blushed and giggled if he went near them. And why not? Hadn’t she once behaved the same?
Even the male employees prattled about the observable fact that Luke was her son’s father. Several times, she overheard their whispers.
At lunchtime, Luke walked down the street to Essie’s Cafe to pick up sandwiches. As soon as he left, one of the cashiers approached her and asked if he were a model. “Yeah,” Dahlia growled, “he’s the Marlboro Man.”
Near the day’s end, instructing the teenager in her butcher training program, she sliced her finger on a sharp blade. “I’ve had it for this day,” she told Luke as she taped on a Band-Aid. When he asked if he could help her, she said, “Yes. You go back to your home and I’ll go to mine.”
She gathered Joe and his stuff and didn’t try to prevent Luke helping her load them into her Lumina. She had traded the snappy BMW in on it soon after learning she was pregnant. It wasn’t as much fun as the Z3, but it was far more practical.
Leaving Luke standing in the parking lot as she drove away, she watched him in her rearview mirror, their last parking lot meeting still as vivid in her memory as if it had happened yesterday and as ugly as the grasshopper that had splattered on her windshield. She could see him watching her, too, his hat tipped back, his knee cocked in his damn John Wayne stance. She felt something turn over inside her. He was just so, so . . . so friggin’ macho . . .
That evening, after Joe’s bedtime feeding, she held him close for a long time, recapping the day.
Fine. You come with him. Luke’s words echoed in her mind. How could she believe he wanted her? He pursued his goals with a vengeance. She had seen it with her own eyes. If he had really wanted her last summer, a stampede of wild mustangs couldn’t have stood in his way. Knowing him that well was what had made his breaking up with her so painful, a thorn that pricked her anew every time she thought of him.
No, it was Joe, and only Joe, that Luke wanted. Maybe last summer he said he didn’t want more children, but now that he had another one, possessiveness took over in a man like him. It wasn’t an uncommon phenomenon. And what would she do if he tried to take Joe or sued for equal custody or did something else unforeseen? Where would she find the money to fight him?
It was foolish to treat him coldly and risk angering him, she concluded—like poking a sleeping dragon with a stick. Or to be uncooperative when he wanted to do something good for Joe, and indirectly, for her. Even a patient man had his limits. Hadn’t what he had done to his ex-wife proved it?
She would be kinder, she decided, and friendlier.
And again, she wondered where he might be sleeping.
“You have a manager, so you don’t have to be at that store every day. I hope you and Joe and I can spend the day together.”
For the second day, Luke was on her front porch at a ridiculous hour of the morning.
“Taking care of a baby takes a lot of energy. I should think you got your fill yesterday.”
“We could drive somewhere, spend a quiet day where we can talk.”
“It’s hot and it’s really difficult taking a baby—”
“I know all about that. I’ll help you. We can drive over to that bigger town, have a nice dinner, maybe go to a movie. C’mon. You owe me that much. I won’t take no for an answer.”
Dahlia knew the latter statement to be true. Arguing with him took more energy than she wanted to spend. She gave in.
While Luke waited with Joe in the living room, she changed into loose khaki shorts, a red T-shirt and Nikes, bunched her long hair and clipped it at her crown. When she appeared in the living room, Luke said, “You look real pretty in red. I still remember that red dress.”
“Humph. I just wish I had back the money that damn thing cost.”
He gave her a little smile. “You’re being mean again, Dal.”
They loaded into his rented Taurus. He said he wanted to buy a cap, so they stopped by the Handy Pantry. A bill cap embroidered with “Dallas Cowboys,” was all the store had to offer.
Near one cash register sat a rack of short-sleeved T-shirts also imprinted with the football team logo. She pulled a Size XXX off a hanger. A quick frown crossed Luke’s brow when she handed the hat and shirt to him. Knowing he had almost no interest in football, she gave him a bland look and shrugged. “You might as well be comfortable.”
“They’ll do.” He flashed her a heart-stopping smile, reached back for his wallet and offered the cashier two twenties.
Dahlia pushed away his hand. “It’s a gift. I don’t think I’ve ever given you anything.”
He looked at her intently. “You’re wrong about that, darlin’.”
She felt her cheeks grow warm and swung a quick glance at the cashier. Dahlia could almost see antennae shoot up from the young woman’s head. By nightfall, a dozen new tales about her and this tall stranger would be circulating around Loretta.
In the parking lot behind the store, Luke changed from his long-sleeved shirt to the T-shirt. She glued her gaze to the dash. If there was anything she didn’t need in her fragile emotional state, it was seeing his sculpted torso without a shirt.
As soon as they were underway, Joe nursed and dropped off to sleep and she did, too. When she awoke, Luke reached across the console and patted her thigh. “Good nap?”
She shifted her knees to the right, away from his possessive pats. How odd, she thought, as she watched the landscape fly by. Last summer in Callister, she wouldn’t have dreamed of evading his touch or of dropping off to sleep while he drove. Back then, his displays of affection and savoring every waking moment with him had been the epitome of bliss.
She suggested they eat before the movie and directed him to a steak house near the mall. A hostess led them to seats in a booth with room to park an infant carrier. They ordered and the waitress bustled away, leaving silence. Even Joe, who appeared to be fascinated by the overhead lights, added nothing to fill the void.
This is going to last all day, she thought, so might as well be comrades. She was determined to stick to last night’s resolution to be friendlier. “So what happened to Lee Ann?”
She squeezed a lime slice into her glass of ice water, feigning nonchalance about the Callister woman who had been her nemesis. “I assume you went back to seeing her after I left. I’m a little surprised you didn’t go ahead and marry her, given your mother’s feelings.”
“She got married. Moved to Oregon.”
Dahlia’s heart went ka-thunk. “How sad for your mother.”
The waitress came with their meal and Dahlia occupied herself cutti
ng her steak into smaller than necessary pieces.
“Dal, I never—I haven’t been with anybody since you left….That way, I mean”
An urgency in his tone made her stop and look up. Holding a roll suspended, he was looking at her with that concentrated gaze she knew indicated his sincerity. They had played a similar scene at the ski lodge, the beginning of her heartbreak. “Well”—she cleared the lump that had leapt into her throat—“I’m sure you’ll find someone. Old girlfriends are easy enough to replace.”
He put down the roll and leaned back with a sigh. “I don’t want to replace you. I couldn’t replace what we had. I think about it a lot. You remember how it was, don’t you? How we couldn’t wait to touch each other? Sometimes we couldn’t even take the time to get undressed.”
That did it. Tears bunched in the corners of her eyes. Damn.She had become a waterfall since he showed up. She snatched up her napkin and attempted to salvage her eye make-up.
“I don’t mean to make you cry, but I don’t have much time to get the things said that I want to.”
“I’m not crying,” she snapped. “Please. We’re in a restaurant. Let’s just get this, this . . . this trip over with.”
“Okay. But I gotta ask one more question, Dal.”
“What is it?”
“How about you?”
“How about me what?”
“You making it with anybody?”
Her face heated from a rush of blood. She looked down at her lap. Tell him it’s none of his damn business. Tell him now. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said to her turkey salad.
When she looked up, his face held a sparkling-eyed, white-toothed grin.
Oh, God. If only she could hate him. She had called him every gutter name she knew. She had cursed him in the night, wished evil upon his house and his mother’s head, but as she looked into the eyes that matched her son’s, she couldn’t deny a weak-willed part of her was doomed to always love him.
Dahlia glanced into the back seat in the back seat and saw Joe stretch and sigh in the infant carrier. Luke watched him through the rearview mirror. “Our boy was good,” he said.
Dahlia didn’t reply. An irrational jealousy flew through her every time he made proprietary remarks about Joe. She hadn’t thought of her son in terms of ours; he was hers.
Twilight softened the air around them to deep blue as they motored toward Loretta. Joe had been good on his first trip to the movies. She’d had her doubts they would be allowed into the theatre with an infant, but admission to a week-day matinee had been no problem. She fed him soon as they were seated and he slept the whole two hours. She made a mental note to write the event in his baby book.
They rode for miles in silence. Luke appeared to be lost in his thoughts. She wouldn’t attempt to guess what they might be.
“When’s his birthday?”
The question snapped her to attention. “What?”
“His birthday—when is it?”
“May eighteenth”
“Hey, my birthday’s the 10th. He didn’t miss it by too far.” He laughed, a deep huh-huh.
She cut him a sidewise glance. “I know.”
“What’s his name? Nobody’s ever told me his name.”
“Joseph. After my dad.”
“What’s his middle name?”
An acid taste crept up to her throat. “Lucas,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
“Lucas?” His head turned toward her. “That’s my name.”
“I would have named him after my mother, but her maiden name was De la Fuente.” She crossed her arms and looked out the window.
“If you named him after me, I guess you weren’t too mad when he was born. How long were you in labor?”
Joe’s birth came back to her—the hours of excruciating pain. Piggy wise-cracking and popping in and out of the room like a jack-in-the-box until the pains got serious, at which point she disappeared altogether. And the overwhelming swelling of love in her chest at the first look at her little boy. “Long enough.”
“Guess things went okay?”
“Obviously, we survived.”
“Guess somebody was with you…”
“Piggy.” Dahlia kept her gaze glued to the landscape. Seconds turned to a minute.
“Sure wish I would’ve known.”
“Be glad you missed it. It hurt like hell. He weighed nearly nine pounds and I wasn’t exactly stoic.”
“If I’d known, maybe you would’ve been with me, where you should’ve been.”
And maybe Claire McRae would send her a congratulations card. “I doubt it.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to make a home for Joe?”
“Stop it, Luke. You sound like a melodrama. He has a home. How would you have dealt with your mother? Just how? Somehow I can’t see you muzzling her and chaining her to a tree.”
“It could have been handled—”
“We’re going over old news here. Let’s just say I did you a favor and drop it.”
“Mom’s not as mean as you think, Dal. I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive her.”
“Not likely. She ruined my . . .” Dahlia almost said my life, but her life wasn’t ruined. In reality, it was better. The past year had made her lean and mean. She felt like an adult in control—or at least she had felt that way until Luke came. And she wouldn’t trade Joe for anything. “It wasn’t just her. You didn’t stand up for me. I’ll never forget that.”
“That’s not true, Dahlia. Maybe I didn’t do it the way you would’ve liked, but—” He let out a long breath. “Guess I hope someday you can forgive me, too.”
Softening inside, she hesitated and pulled at an earring. Had she already forgiven him without admitting it? Put to the question, she couldn’t think of another man she would rather see as the father of her child—including the one with whom she had lived as a wife. She had even begun to rehearse what positive things she might someday tell Joe about his father. “I don’t hate her, okay? . . . And as much as I’d like to, I can’t hate you. You gave me Joe. There have been times when he was all I had to look forward to.”
“Guess that’s better than a snake bite. I wouldn’t like to think about you hating me, Dal.”
“Why are we having conversation? It has nowhere to go.”
“What’s the rest of his name? . . . Is he a Montgomery or is he a . . . McRae?”
She couldn’t answer.
“Is my name on his birth certificate, Dahlia?”
Tears threatened again and she stalled until she could speak in a strong voice. “Of course it is. You think I’d put ‘father unknown”? . . . But his name is Montgomery.”
He placed his hand on her thigh. She moved it and concentrated on the landscape whisking by the window. Damn. Life was getting complicated again.
Chapter 26
After the heavy lunch Dahlia and Luke had eaten, they settled on a milkshake for dinner and reached Loretta at nine. Dahlia put a blanket on the living room floor and laid Joe on it. “I want to keep him awake until eleven so he’ll sleep,” Dahlia said and she and Luke cuddled and played with him. He even rolled from his back to his stomach once and Luke said, “Look at that. Did you see that?”
The display of fatherly pride sent a little ping through her heart and she couldn’t block out images of the future, of Joe with Luke as her baby grew into being a little boy. “He started doing it last week,” she said.
Luke picked him up and held him over his head. “Hey, cowboy, you’re about ready for a good horse.”
Dahlia fed him and Luke watched, letting Joe hang onto his finger, linking the three of them. The profundity of that made her brain hurt, so she tried to make a mental plan for tomorrow.
“How long before you’ll have to feed him again?”
“He’s sleeping longer now. Sometimes he’ll last until three. For a while, he was eating every two hours.”
When she put the sleeping baby in his crib, Luke stood so close behind her she could fee
l his heat and a shiver traveled through her. She stepped away.
“Let’s go outside,” Luke said. “We haven’t had a chance to talk and I can’t get used to this blowing air.”
The porch’s wooden floorboards felt spongy underfoot as they stepped out the front door. The veranda-style porch spanning the front of the seventy-year-old house had seen better days. Dad hadn’t been able to make home repairs after his stroke and money had been so tight, Dahlia dared not spend it hiring work done to the house except for emergencies.
Luke seated himself on the rickety wooden swing hanging by chains on one end of the porch. He dug out his pocket knife and began to trim his fingernails, something she had seen him do countless times. Cricket sounds reverberated in the hot, still night. She reached back inside the front door and switched off the porch light. “Sitting under the light, the bugs will carry you off.”
“A few bugs don’t do any harm.”
“Texas bugs are different from Idaho bugs. Texas bugs can hurt you.”
She eased down to sit on the top step, leaving him to her back, seeking safety from the emotion the day had aroused. In the corner of the yard, moonlight cast the old, gigantic oak tree in a silvery nimbus. “Full moon,” she said.
“Yep.”
Feeling the weight of his eyes on her back, she toyed with her fingers. “It would be cooler if we got some rain.” An old saying she had heard all her life popped up: People who have nothing else to discuss talk about the weather.
“Never gets this hot in the mountains,” Luke said, at last.
“I remember.”
More silence. Then, “Busy day, huh?”
“Yeah. Busy.” She wrapped her arms around her shins and smiled, remembering how little trouble Joe had been.
“Your dad was sick a long time, huh?”
“He had the first stroke while I was in Callister, then the fatal one a couple of months before Joe was born. But I’m sure he was sick long before I knew it.”
“We never talked about your family.”
“We never talked about anything. We were too busy—well, you know what we were doing.”