Yes, she wanted to cry. Yes! J.J. was wrapped around her heart so irrevocably, she didn’t know what she would do if John told her that he no longer needed her. And she didn’t want to deal with the torment she would feel if someone like the woman downstairs was staying in this house. But how could she confess all that without taking down barriers, barriers she was convinced she still needed?
He tried to make it too simple. Man, woman, chemistry…he kept dismissing the memories and her past. Theirs. And yet this year had been so hard. Empty. It seemed as though fate had been making a point to tell her that no one could live without some love in their life.
“Talk to me, honey. The next step has to be yours.”
But fierce Gaelic pride stood in her way. “I can’t believe you did this to me.”
“I didn’t do anything to you that you didn’t do first.”
He was right, but she’d never been in this predicament before—never actually felt jealous and possessive. She could hardly think straight.
What was wrong with her? She’d believed she would never be able to look at him again without seeing the mercurial man she’d watched break another man’s nose for a forgettable, thoughtless comment. The unpredictable man who’d literally pulled her out of her car, and had dragged her into her house because she’d intended to go to a seminar with someone of “the wrong sex.” The explosive man who’d kissed her with such anger, her lip had bled and swelled as though bee stung. The bitter man who’d come back from Abilene with a pregnant wife.
How could she suddenly find herself conniving to stay near his son? How could she find the prospect of never coming here again beyond bearing?
“I thought I had everything resolved!” she whispered, lifting a hand to her head.
“It wasn’t a bad hunch,” he said with a sad smile. “You just forgot life’s not that neat, that’s all.”
True. In the last few days, specifically since she’d had a chance to watch John with J.J., see the earnestness with which he was attempting to find and maintain the tender, patient side of himself, Dana had been forced to begin wondering how resolute she had a right to be. Was it stubbornness alone that made her hold so rigidly to her doubts and fears?
“This isn’t fair to you.” That much she understood. If she wasn’t able to give him some kind of vote of confidence, why should he do her any favors?
For a moment he looked disappointed. Then he squared his shoulders. “Are you telling me I can go back in there, make a phone call and hire one of those women?”
Dana couldn’t bring herself to do that. She couldn’t make herself do anything but meet his probing look with increasing frustration.
“Will you be able to walk out of here and not look back, if that’s what I ask you to do?” he continued relentlessly.
The mere words gave her a frozen, empty feeling. The thought of never holding J.J. again…of never seeing John burst into laughter as she recited all the sweet moments she’d experienced with his son throughout the day…It was more than she wanted to deal with. But at the same time, how long could she risk this continued close contact with him and not expect something to go wrong?
“One question,” she began, hoping he would allow her to continue being cautious.
“Go ahead.”
“What if I…what would you say if I decided to stay around awhile longer?”
He could have posed for a sphinx. “It all depends on what you mean by ‘awhile.’ I have to tell you, I don’t have time to do these interviews every few weeks.”
“I understand. It would depend on…on whether or not you’re going to read more into this than there actually is.”
He shook his head ruefully and took a step backward. “Lady, lady. You have the most untrusting soul.” But he gave her the courtesy of pretending to consider the query. “All right,” he said at last. “I’m going to continue with the plan.”
“What plan?”
“The one I told you about before. The one where I make you see that I can be a good man as well as a responsible father.”
Once again Dana felt some chunk of her resistance break away like a disintegrating iceberg. Nevertheless, she replied awkwardly, “I can’t make any promises.”
“Fair enough. But you could give me a sign of goodwill.”
Suspicious, she shot him a wary look. “Exactly what did you have in mind?”
“I thought it would be nice to seal the agreement with some gesture.”
She couldn’t afford to touch him at the moment. She was too afraid of what she might feel. “Shaking hands would seem foolish, don’t you think? I mean, considering that we’ve known each other for ages, and all.”
“True. But what about a kiss?”
The word moved like an earth tremor through her body. “Paladin,” she managed to whisper, “you’re the less attractive end of a horse! Of all the black-hearted, conniving—”
He touched his right index finger to her lips. “Save your breath, Irish, and listen. One kiss, right here,” he said, barely caressing the corner of her mouth. “That’s all. I swear.”
“Why?”
“Because you tried to play me for a fool, instead of coming to me with the same honesty that I’ve been trying to deal with you. And,” he continued, his voice growing tender, “because it might prove to you once and for all that you can be around me without having to worry about me pouncing on you like some uncontrollable animal.”
“And I don’t have to kiss you back?”
His eyes turned the color of the deepest of caves. “I would walk barefoot to Fort Worth tonight if I thought you would. But I’m trying to be realistic, and so I’ll kiss you and not expect anything back.”
“Here?” She indicated the corner of her mouth, not convinced she should trust him regardless of his somber attitude.
He narrowed his eyes. “Exactly. And I expect you to behave yourself and not take advantage of the situation.”
He was turning her inside out. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to run for it. The John Paladin of years past couldn’t make light jokes like this. Too intense, too determined, he would always go to the heart of a situation—or for the jugular. Maybe someone thought he deserved a chance to show her how durable and real this new personality was.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and lifted her face. The sooner this was over with, the sooner she could escape back upstairs to J.J. Then she felt the whisper of his lips across her cheek. It tickled like angel hair and stole the breath from her lungs. The instant he began to withdraw she felt she was being abandoned, and she opened her eyes to find him watching her indulgently, with a strange, unreadable look in his eyes.
“Okay?”
He had to be kidding. “And that’s…that’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“The job’s yours. For as long as you want it. I’ll go phone the newspaper and tell them to quit running the ad.” As he began to walk away, Dana caught his arm. Immediately he froze. “Something wrong?”
She thought his cool demeanor commendable, and would have bought it entirely if she hadn’t seen the muscle twitching along his jaw. “You know there is,” she replied, sensing the power beneath the sturdy denim she let her fingers bite into. It reminded her not to trust things that were too easy.
“All right, out with it.”
“Don’t reverse this and play me for a fool, Paladin,” she said quietly. “Please. Whatever else I may deserve, don’t do that.”
He studied her a long moment and then lightly ran his thumb along her lower lip. “You couldn’t be more wrong about this whole thing, Irish, if you tried. What’s more, you’ll never be anyone’s fool…and if I’m playing at all, it’s for keeps.”
Chapter Five
“W ant a cup of coffee?”
John frowned as Durango cleared away the last of the hands’ breakfast dishes before beginning preparations for the evening’s late dinner. The rest of his men were off t
o the far corners of the sprawling ranch to begin moving in the herd. They wouldn’t be back until well after dark. He needed to be on his way, too, but before he followed he wanted to throw out a few ideas to his cook. Test the air, as it were. The trouble was, wanting and doing, as always, remained two different things. Particularly with someone as sharp and cynical as Durango.
“If I did, I’d already have gotten it myself,” John snapped, growing more impatient by the second. “Why aren’t you answering my question?”
“Because I need time to chew over the situation.”
All the fool was doing was chewing another of his ugly cigars to death and rubbing a hole in the platter he was drying. “Bull. Give me a simple yes or no. Do you think Dana would come to our Thanksgiving dinner or not? Why’s that such a difficult thing to respond to?”
“You tell me, Big John,” Durango replied out of the side of his mouth. He pulled the sink plug and watched with unusual concentration as the soapy dishwater gurgled down the drain. “That’s why you’re out here bugging me, ain’t it? ‘Cause you’re not sure whether she would or wouldn’t? Far as I can tell, the flea in the ointment, so to speak, is that—”
“Fly. It’s the fly in the ointment.” John clenched his fist and began tapping a dirgelike drumbeat on the counter that offset the overly cheerful prattle of the anchorwoman on the TV behind him.
“What? Oh. Well, there you are.” Durango abandoned the dishwater to gesture dramatically with his cigar. He used his other hand to reach into his coveralls and scratch at an itch in the vicinity of his solar plexus. “I ain’t never been good at academic things the way you are, Big John. I don’t have too many plain yes or no answers and I don’t see many things in black and white. To me, one and one don’t necessarily make two, either.”
“It damned sure does when you’re fleecing the men in a poker game.”
Durango gave him a narrow-eyed grin. “Forgot that. Guess you got me there, boss. A man sure is a complicated animal, ain’t he?”
“Oh, for—I’d really like to stand here and listen to what half-baked garbage you could make out of that,” John replied instead, regretting having brought up the question in the first place, “but in case you haven’t noticed lately, I have a ranch to run, and there’s only twenty-four hours in the day. When you figure out an answer, let me know. And while you’re at it, think about moving the dinner to the house this year.”
That took the twinkle out of Durango’s eye. The cigar butt dangled precariously between his fingers. “Move it? Move the whole thing because of Miss Dana?”
“You think I want her in this locker-room environment?” Normally John didn’t care that beds didn’t get made or that the bunkhouse sometimes smelled of dirty socks as much as fried steak and onions, but that didn’t mean he was willing to expose Dana to it. “There’s the matter of my son, as well,” he said, grateful to have an equally legitimate reason to fall back on. “If we have it here, I’d have to carry J.J. out in the weather, and he might get wet or catch cold. Or if he needed changing or wanted to nap before dinner was over, I’d have to carry him back to the house. If we’re over there to begin with, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of that.”
“If Dana comes, you won’t have to deal with any of it, period. You know she’d do all that babying stuff. It’s a woman’s job.”
That’s what he thought, John mused with an inner smile. Since taking on the task of educating him, Dana had made sure that regardless of whether she was around or not he did his share of caring for the boy, and that included changing diapers and washing a load of clothes if necessary. It wasn’t so bad, although his favorite times were when they worked together. He did his best to prolong them as much as he could. Like the first time…
“They don’t use pins anymore, Paladin. These adhesive strips do the work of holding things together…like this.”
“That’s what the nurses at the hospital said, but I still don’t get it. Maybe you’d better show me again.”
“Hands-on experience is best. I seem to recall that’s what you’ve said about cattle ranching.”
“Shoot. Arguing with a half ton of beef is a picnic compared to this. Look here. Don’t tell me these tab things are enough to do the job holding it all together. And how do you know it’s not too tight?”
“Kay Hackman told me to slip two fingers into the waist. If you can do that fairly easily, it’s comfortable for the baby. But, um, maybe you should only use one finger. If it’s too loose I suppose he’ll end up having dry feet and you’ll have a wet shirt.”
When precisely that happened a few days later, John’s frustration was quickly offset by the pleasure of seeing Dana laugh freely for the first time since…well, he couldn’t remember when.
Durango groaned, jerking him out of his daydream. “You’ve got that look in your eye again.”
Embarrassed, John shot him a lethal glare. Such back talk didn’t normally upset him, especially since Durango had been part of the Long J for almost as long as he had. Forced to give up the rodeo circuit and cowboying in general after being badly injured by a bull, the old sidewinder had settled down at the ranch grateful just to be near cattle. But thoughts of Dana always made John edgy. “Mind your own business,” he snarled.
“Before or after I answer your question?” With an almost girlish giggle, Durango removed the cigar once again and added, “Okay, what I think is…she’ll turn you down.”
“Why?” They’d been getting along great since she’d agreed to stay on. Not perfect by any means, but she was smiling more often. What’s more, yesterday when he caught her as she’d stumbled carrying J.J., she’d gazed into his eyes for several seconds with honest curiosity before easing herself out of his arms. Just the memory of that brief span of time made his pulse kick into overdrive.
“For one thing, she’ll be afraid of things looking too cozy.”
“How could it look cozy with all of your ugly mugs around?”
Durango looked wounded. “We may not be cover-model material, Big John, but we’re all the family you got outside of J.J. and she knows everyone on the Long J’s been having Thanksgiving together since the year your pa took me on. On top of that, every one of us knows T.J.’s gotta have a leg and double portions of cranberry sauce to start, that Hap likes white meat only, how Fred’ll sneak to the refrigerator at least twice to make himself a biscuit and stuffing sandwich not thirty minutes after I clear everything away, that Zeke will give his usual ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub’ blessing whether or not you say a few words of grace.
“It’s family, Big John, pure and simple. It’ll make her nervous.”
“What’d make her nervous would be you uncouth apes staring at her like she was dessert,” he muttered, afraid Durango might be right and that Dana would shy away.
“Pretty lady like her around,” the cook replied cheerfully, “you gotta accept a man’s gonna look.”
John swore and started for the door. “I’m going to invite her, and I’m putting the bunch of you on notice. Behave or you answer to me afterward. Pass the word.”
“Sure, boss. Sure. Er, but before you go,” Durango called after him, “would you do me a favor and get the spoon drawer open?”
“Again?” No less than four times a year the man managed to get a utensil stuck, locking the drawer in place. “You know,” John replied, resigned to retracing his steps, “if you’d be a little more careful about how you put the silverware away in the first place, you wouldn’t have this problem.”
“This time it’s a ladle. Really stuck it good.”
His apologetic countenance didn’t fool John. “If I get a hernia, I’ll make you swallow the damned spoon.”
He took firm hold of the drawer and jerked, not at all surprised when nothing happened. Next he rattled and jostled the drawer to try to get a feel of where the implement lay and how badly it was stuck. If he could get the drawer open an inch or two, it generally helped. This time the drawer remained shut tight.
>
“Great. Absolutely terrific.” He considered kicking the lower cabinet. It might not free the ladle, but it would do wonders for the exasperation he felt with his cook. “Stand back,” he warned him.
“Now careful, boss. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
He shot Durango a withering look over his shoulder. Did he need this? Taking hold of the drawer handle again, he braced his feet far apart and gave a mighty yank.
Not even he was ready for the results.
The drawer yielded as though suddenly greased with goose fat. It flew out of the slot, off its center roller, and out of the cabinet completely. Utensils went flying in every direction, and Durango dived behind the refrigerator. John saw it all happen in slow motion as he fell backward into the opposite cabinet doors.
Several utensils struck canisters and glasses. Two tumblers crashed to the floor and shattered. It lasted only seconds, but sounded like a tornado wreaking havoc in the whole bunkhouse. It didn’t, however, obliterate the sound of the front door bursting open.
“Stop it! Stop it this instant!”
Dazed, John looked up to see a fiery-eyed Dana glaring back at him. Durango peered at her from behind the refrigerator.
Hands on her hips, she stood tapping her foot rhythmically. “You two should be ashamed of yourselves. John Paladin, you most of all. What kind of an example are you setting for your people?”
“I’m not—”
“You’re certainly not!” With a toss of her head, she flicked her bangs out of her eyes. “Fighting like a couple of immature schoolboys. Poor Durango’s only half your size and nearly twice your age!”
“Hey! Not yet I ain’t.”
Durango’s complaint was mostly lost on John because it finally struck him that she thought they’d been fighting. He exchanged glances with the cook and almost missed the man’s sly wink. Despite his protests, Durango was enjoying himself. Not at my expense, he thought, hoisting himself to his feet.
“We weren’t fighting.” He didn’t care if his lowered head combined with his fierce eyebrows did make him look like a bull about to charge, the way Durango sometimes claimed.
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