Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  Daniel stared toward the hallway, and Kendra tensed, waiting for him to ask to see Matthew. What would she say? She’d cried silent tears so many nights that Matthew didn’t have a father, knowing the pain that would bring him as he grew older. And, yes, she’d cried worried tears for Paulo Ayudor.

  But now Matthew’s father was here, now Paulo stood in front of her alive and well and as another man... She could never have anticipated so many emotions churning in her.

  Staring blindly at the off-white wall that showed signs of close encounters with grubby toddler hands, Kendra stood stockstill and listened to Ellyn and Marti’s whispered conversation accompanied by the rustlings of them gathering their things. Only the sound of the back door closing released her from her stupor.

  She met Daniel’s gaze.

  “Would you...” She swallowed, licked her lips and started again. “We can sit in the kitchen.”

  Before he followed, he paused, as if he might be looking toward the hallway again. She gestured to a chair at the table and continued on to the counter.

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She’d set out sugar earlier, knowing Marti liked her coffee sweet and Ellyn took hers black. But how did he take it? She didn’t have a clue. The father of her son. A man she’d done the most intimate act with – not only making love but creating a life – and she didn’t even know how he took his coffee.

  She jerked her shoulders straight, forcing calm into her words. “I don’t have cream. But there’s milk or –”

  “Black, thanks.”

  She poured two cups and brought them to the table, taking her usual seat, with one chair safely between them.

  “I suppose it’s easier that way. Not needing sugar or cream in your coffee, I mean, when you’re on the run.”

  His finger stroked slowly across the surface of the cup. His touch had been that light on her skin sometimes, yet she’d felt each contact of his roughened fingers – She dropped her head abruptly, wishing she could discipline her thoughts as well.

  “I have never been a criminal, Kendra. Some have called me an outlaw, but I don’t speak well of them, either.” From the corner of her eye, she saw his hands still.

  She looked up to find his dark eyes intently focused on her.

  “You’re Taumaturgio, aren’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  She’d suspected. Maybe at some level she’d known from the start. Yet his answer raised a thousand more questions.

  But before she could say anything, he added, “I was, anyway. Taumaturgio won’t be helping the Santa Estellanos any more.”

  Behind those words lay a bleakness that surprised her almost as much as the surge of sympathy it provoked in her.

  “What happened?”

  He rubbed his hand across his eyes twice, before dropping it to the table. A flash of memory showed her Paulo Ayudor making the identical gesture.

  She pressed the side of her knee against the table leg, hard enough to hurt. She needed that reality. She needed to hold onto it while she tried to absorb that sitting at her kitchen table was a man she’d known so briefly, but so intimately, then dreamt about so often. She knew his gestures and – an unstoppable heat seeped into her – she knew his body. Yet he remained a virtual stranger. No, a total stranger.

  That was what she had to remember.

  “The chain of command pulled the plug a couple months ago.”

  Her reporter’s instincts hummed – the distraction she craved.

  “Taumaturgio was an official mission?”

  “Not precisely.”

  “What precisely then?”

  He shook his head, apparently more at himself than her. “When I left Santa Estella, I took a leave of absence from my job in, uh, government. I started looking for you.”

  He stared out the window. She’d nurtured grass in the front, but here the yard consisted of bare spots, rocks, sage and the occasional head of cattle that had found openings in the fence. But beyond a windbreak of evergreens, the view to the north and west showed rolling hills rising to ranks of mountains, topped by sky so blue that some days it seemed to vibrate.

  He smiled slightly, his teeth white against the sun-deepened tint of his skin. She remembered thinking how good Paulo’s teeth were for an islander. What an idiot she’d been.

  “I’d have found you faster if you hadn’t come to such a distant corner. Finally got the address through your college alumni roster.”

  “They gave you my address?”

  “Not pre –”

  “Not precisely,” she finished with him.

  “You’d talked about a ranch, about coming to a ranch as a kid, but you were so intent on your career... I didn’t expect to find you in Far Hills, Wyoming.”

  “I was pregnant. I couldn’t find the father,” she said in stark, unemotional words. “I couldn’t see raising a child alone with my network job – not with the long hours and travel and unpredictable schedule. So I worked as long as I could, then I came here. It’s quiet, I have a share in the ranch and I knew Marti would help out.”

  He seemed to absorb the accusation behind her words for a moment before saying, “If I’d known –”

  “You did know.” Her sharp voice gave away more than she’d intended. “You knew it all, while I knew nothing. You knew who I was. You knew who you were – and who you weren’t. You even knew I was looking for Paulo Ayudor.”

  “If I’d known,” he repeated steadily, “you were pregnant. You should have told me. If I’d known why you wanted to find Paulo when you called the consulate –”

  “Told you? I should have told you? I talked to some anonymous bureaucrat named Tompkins whom I’d barely exchanged a half-dozen sentences with when I was on Santa Estella.”

  A flicker of something crossed his dark eyes at her accusation, but he didn’t flinch. And he didn’t back down.

  “I had a right to know you were pregnant.”

  “You had a right? Which you? Daniel Delligatti? He didn’t have a right – I never heard of him until a few minutes ago. Taumaturgio? I’d never met him for all I knew. Tompkins certainly didn’t have any right. Only Paulo Ayudor had the right. Someone who didn’t exist except for in your imagination. And mine, I suppose.” This attempt at a laugh was no more successful than her previous try. “Good lord, it’s like getting pregnant by a character in a play.”

  For the first time his calm cracked.

  “I’m a man – not a damned character in a play.”

  Her words had struck a blow. Too bad. His ego, or whatever she’d wounded wasn’t her concern. He wasn’t her concern.

  “Really? Which man are you? The hero Taumaturgio? That rumpled bureaucrat Tompkins? The kindly, simple Paulo Ayudor?”

  “Daniel Benton Delligatti.”

  “And who the hell is he?”

  “He’s all those men. I’m all those men. They’re –” The words jerked out of him, so unlike the smooth, flow of Santa Estellan Spanish she remembered. “– part of me.”

  “I know nothing about you.”

  He leaned forward, the crack in his calm repaired, but a new intensity showing. “You know the most important things about me, like I know the most important things about you, Kendra. You learned them during that hurricane. You learned –”

  “Like your name? Or who you really were?”

  “You know –”

  “I don’t know –”

  “Mommy?”

  The small, sleepy voice stopped them on twin in-drawn breaths.

  Their eyes met. She caught a whirl of emotions in his. Maybe with enough time she could have sorted them all out and identified them. But maybe no amount of time would have been enough.

  Then he twisted in his chair to see his son for the first time.

  Chapter Four

  “Hello, sweetheart.” Kendra held out her arms, trying to make her concentration on her son block out her awareness of the man who’d gone absolutely still.
It was hard when the boy carried such an imprint of the man.

  She scooped up Matthew and sat him sideways on her lap. “Did you have a nice nap?”

  As usual, her son ignored such unimportant matters and cut to the core of his interest. “Em’ly?”

  “Emily went home with her Mommy. You’ll see her later. Remember? You and Emily will visit with Ben and Meg for a while?”

  “Now?”

  “No. Later. After supper.”

  Matthew frowned, preferring “now” as the answer for everything except bedtime. He pointed a chubby fist at the newcomer. “Who?”

  At her hesitation, Daniel’s eyes lifted from Matthew’s face to hers. Wary, faintly questioning, he waited.

  Did he expect her to drop him into Matthew’s life the way he’d dropped into hers? Did he expect Daddy?

  “This is... Daniel.”

  “Hello, Matthew.” Despite her efforts not to watch him, she saw Daniel’s throat work on a hard swallow. “It’s good to meet you.”

  “Hi, Uke.”

  “No, sweetheart. His name is Daniel.”

  Matthew nodded emphatically. “Uke, Uke, Uke.”

  She thought Daniel winced, but couldn’t be sure.

  She should have expected this. With Luke Chandler the only man Matthew saw daily, he’d taken to calling all men by that name. But any misconceptions Daniel had about Matthew’s use of the name were his problem.

  She watched him from the corner of her eye while she rubbed her chin on the soft, dark waves at the top of Matthew’s head.

  So like dark waves she’d once felt against her skin, under her hands came the traitorous memory.

  Leaning forward with his forearms across his thighs and his hands hanging loose between them, Daniel’s face was set, intense, while his eyes followed Matthew’s every flicker of movement. He’d probably want to hold his son, take him in his arms...

  Unconsciously Kendra hold tightened around her son.

  “No, Mommy. Down! Down!” He arched his back and squirmed toward the floor, and Kendra complied with the demand. Slightly off balance, Matthew reached out to steady himself on the nearest object – which happened to be his father’s thigh.

  For an instant she thought Daniel would reach for the toddler. Instead, his hands clenched between his knees, and he remained utterly still as Matthew, unaffected, marched off toward his toy chest by the hallway to the bedrooms. By habit, Kendra watched to make sure he didn’t indulge in one of his favorite activities – Empty The Toy Chest. This time, Matthew took out only three other toys before finding the pull train he wanted.

  When she looked back at Daniel, he had his head down, studying his still tightly clasped hands.

  As if he sensed her watching him, he spoke almost immediately. “I know this has been a shock, Kendra. My showing up out of the blue. And we’ve got a lot to talk about. But I should go now. Let it sink in. Let you... get used to it.”

  Get used to Paulo not being dead? Get used to Paulo being Daniel Delligatti? Get used to Daniel Delligatti also being Taumaturgio and a bureaucrat named Tompkins and who knew what else? Get used to Matthew having a father? Get used to this man moving from her dreams to her kitchen?

  She had a lot to get used to.

  But she wondered if he, too, didn’t have things to get used to. The reality of having a son, for starters.

  “Yes, I... I have to fix dinner and –” Phone calls to make. “– I have plans this evening.”

  “Yes. I understand.” He lifted his head, turning his gaze toward Matthew, and leaving it there as he stood. “I’m staying at the motel out by the highway, beyond the garden center –”

  “I know where it is – there’s only one in Far Hills.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you some time, but if I don’t hear from you –” This time the brown eyes she met were the dark, intense brown of the man who’d kept her safe from a hurricane, the man whose eyes had sworn he’d return. “I’ll come back on my own. Soon.”

  * * *

  Daniel pulled into the spot in front of his motel room and turned off the car. He should get out, take his suitcase in and unpack. Now that he knew he’d found them and he’d be staying here.

  He should have touched the boy. Matthew. His son.

  From the instant that cameraman who’d worked with Kendra had so casually mentioned she’d been pregnant when she left the network – with a baby due nine months after Aretha – Daniel had known he’d move heaven and earth to protect his child.

  At the moment he’d turned and saw the two-and-a-half feet of humanity with the bright intelligence of Kendra in his eyes, the straight-as-an-arrow line of her nose and a miniature version of her independence, he’d have welcomed the task of moving a hunk of hell in addition to heaven and earth.

  But simply touching the boy? That had defeated him.

  What did you do with a child that perfect?

  Not what he’d done, that was for sure.

  And Kendra? He’d made even bigger mistakes with Kendra.

  Maybe because seeing her left him feeling like a depressurized plane – all the oxygen sucked out of him, with no oxygen mask in sight.

  She’d looked so different from the way he remembered her best. When he closed his eyes and saw her chestnut hair tangled under his hands, saw her shadow-spattered body warmed by their love-making, saw her eyes on his mouth and her lips parting to his coming kiss.

  She’d looked sleek and sure today. A little pale. A faint shadowing under cool gray eyes lacking the blazing flecks of green he recalled. But beautiful still.

  And... he searched for the right word... fortified.

  Fortified by her anger. Fortified by her friends. Fortified by the years.

  From that moment when her long, slender hand had rest on his arm, his body had responded like it had been three hours instead of nearly three years since he’d touched her. Outside the consulate. Saying goodbye, though she hadn’t known it was goodbye. Guiding her inside the gate, then merging back into the familiar shadows.

  It’s like getting pregnant by a character in a play.

  He’d focused so absolutely on finding her. He’d never wondered if he might be a fool to think those hours during Hurricane Aretha were the most real of his life. Had he held onto a mirage?

  No, dammit. He knew what was real and what wasn’t.

  And he knew what he meant to do about it.

  He’d come here to claim his son and his son’s mother.

  Period. End of story.

  But learning to read people had kept him alive – as Taumaturgio and long before. Today, he’d seen that the woman who’d emerged during Aretha had retreated behind her personal wall, her fortified wall. He’d seen that wall first-hand as the bureaucrat Tompkins watching reporter Kendra Jenner chase Taumaturgio.

  It had only dropped for Paulo. When the hurricane had clawed at them. When she’d thought he couldn’t understand what she shared with him. And when they’d shared with each other a need deeper than words.

  Now that wall was between them again.

  A wall of brick and mortar might be easier to dismantle than the one she’d constructed, but he’d faced worse in his life. Much worse.

  * * *

  “So, how did the talk go?” Ellyn asked as soon as they pulled from the Sinclairs’ driveway into the ranch road. They had left Matthew and Emily being entertained by ten-year-old Meg and eight-year-old Ben, with Luke Chandler close at hand as he tried to patch together Ellyn’s old clothes dryer one more time.

  Kendra shrugged. “How can I tell? I have nothing to compare it to.”

  “Sure you do – the time with him in Santa Estella.”

  “That was a different person.”

  “I see. Well, then, let’s start with what you talked about?”

  “Mostly about...” With a sideways glance she extracted a pledge she knew was unnecessary. “You can’t repeat any of this.”

  “Who would I have to tell except you and Marti?” Under Ellyn�
�s good-natured realism, Kendra thought loneliness peaked through.

  “NBC, CNN, People Magazine. I’m surprised he admitted it to me.”

  Ellyn’s eyes widened. “You were right – he is Taumaturgio.”

  Kendra looked both ways before turning onto the highway more from habit than necessity. Traffic rarely posed a problem.

  “Yes. But he says Taumaturgio has been retired now.”

  “That couldn’t have happened too long ago. There’ve been stories about him on the news, haven’t there?”

  “Yes. It happened recently.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “That oh really, like you’re reading a lot into something –” For instance his making finding her a priority as soon as his reign as Taumaturgio ended, or so he said. “– when, in fact, there is nothing to be read into anything.”

  “Me? I’m not reading anything into anything. So he quits being Taumaturgio, and the first thing he does is come to Far Hills, Wyoming, well-known garden spot of the world – that makes sense.”

  Kendra didn’t buy her show of innocence, but let it pass. “He’s on a sort of leave of absence.”

  “From what?” Ellyn’s voice skidded up in surprise. “Being a masked crusader? I didn’t know they gave leaves of absence. Does he get benefits, too?”

  For the first time since her doorbell rang five hours ago, Kendra laughed. “I don’t know about Taumaturgio, but apparently Daniel Benton Delligatti works for the government.”

  “Daniel Benton Delligatti, huh? That’s got a nice sound to it. For what it’s worth, he seems like a nice guy.”

  Kendra gave a skeptical snort.

  “Yeah, I know. I only saw him for a few minutes, but you’ve got to admit those few minutes were under trying circumstances, and that does tell you something about a man – about a person.”

  “Now you sound like him.” It was an accusation.

  “Maybe he’s right – at least partially.”

  They’d reached the first stop light at the edge of town, and with the red bringing them to a stop, Kendra turned to her.

  “Oh, come on, Ellyn. It takes time to truly know someone. Not a couple days in the middle of a hurricane. He’s a stranger. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. What happened on Santa Estella – it was no more than a one-night stand.”