“Watch him for me, will you?” Sierra asked Ethan. “I don’t want him going all big-brother on me.”
“Don’t be so hard on Gavin,” her father said. “It’s going to take us a while to get used to all this.”
To say the least.
The walk to the apartment took forever and yet was over in an instant. Sierra climbed the three porch steps with leaden feet and a racing heart.
Clay stood by the door with one hand on the knob, his expression guarded and grave.
Her son’s, on the other hand, lit up at the sight of her, and he babbled excitedly, just as he had three weeks ago when he’d seen her for the first time since the day he was born.
Giving Jamie up for adoption was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
Facing Clay, telling him about it, was coming in a very close second.
* * *
“HE WANTS DOWN.” Sierra sat on the couch, assuming, hoping that Clay would sit there, too, and Jamie would crawl across the cushions to her.
Only Clay had chosen the chair, a hand-me-down that used to reside in the living room long before she’d left for college.
Jamie squirmed and wriggled and whined, pushing ruthlessly at Clay’s chest in a bid for freedom. The resemblance between them, same hazel eyes and blond hair, same disarming smile, was striking enough for Sierra realize she wouldn’t have gotten away with lying about her child’s father’s identity for long.
“I won’t take off with him,” she repeated his earlier promise.
Clay released Jamie, reluctantly depositing him on the hardwood floor. He immediately scrambled over to Sierra, then abandoned her just as quickly to explore the cozy apartment. The two-person breakfast set fascinated him. He squeezed between a chair and the table legs, then plopped on the floor beneath the table, cooing with satisfaction.
Sierra hadn’t visited the old bunkhouse in years. As with the main house, the transformation amazed her.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Jamie?”
It was like Clay to ask the toughest question first.
She collected her thoughts before replying. “The simple answer is I found out you and Jessica were back together and getting married. Showing up at the wedding and announcing I was carrying your child didn’t feel like the right thing to do.”
“That’s not reason enough. You denied me my son.”
“Yes, I did.” And she would do it again, given half the chance.
“Why?”
She wasn’t going to admit she’d fallen in love during their two-week affair and that the announcement of his marriage so soon after it ended had crushed her. Clay would sense her vulnerability, and she wasn’t about to give him any advantage.
“I denied myself my son, too,” she said.
“I don’t see how.” He glowered at her as if she were a criminal when what she’d really been was a victim—of his callousness and the Stevensons’ heartlessness.
“I didn’t learn I was pregnant until after Dad told me you and Jessica had set a date.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you myself.” Clay’s glower momentarily abated. “I owed you that much.”
He had. And admitting it almost two years too late didn’t diminish her anguish.
“I was never very regular,” she continued without acknowledging his apology. “It wasn’t until the flu bug I thought I’d caught didn’t go away that I finally considered the possibility I was pregnant. You have to understand what a shock it was. We’d used protection.”
“I do understand. But that’s still no reason to keep Jamie a secret.”
“I didn’t tell my family, either, not that it matters.”
“It does, actually. I was going to give Ethan and Gavin hell for not telling me.”
“Today was the first I’d heard you and my brothers were friends again.”
“More than friends. Gavin and I are partners in a mustang stud and breeding business, and Ethan works for me at the rodeo arena, breaking and training broncs.”
“Wow!” Friends and business partners and coworkers. It was a lot for Sierra to absorb all at once.
“You’d have known we’d reconciled if you’d ever talked to your family.”
“I deserved that.” She may have, but it still stung.
“I didn’t say it to be mean.”
Hadn’t he?
The glower had returned, raising her hackles.
“Regardless, at the time I found out I was pregnant, you and my family hated each other and had for years. Which is the reason we snuck around those two weeks.”
“I wanted to tell them about us, if you remember.”
“Right. Like I was supposed to say, ‘Hey, Dad, I’m dating Clay, the son of the man who sold the land that was in our family for four generations.’ They’d have disowned me.”
“That’s not true.”
“They wouldn’t have been happy. Dad despised your father.”
“For the record, I never agreed with what he did to your family. We’ve hardly spoken in years.”
“That’s too bad.”
“No, it isn’t.” Clay ground out the words as if they tasted foul.
Whatever had transpired between him and his father must have been quite ugly.
“He’s family.” Sierra was just now rediscovering how important family was, even when the parent was a soulless man like Bud Duvall.
“So is Jamie,” Clay said. “My family.”
They both looked at their son.
He’d grown bored with his pretend cave beneath the table and had crawled out. Before he could interest himself in an electrical outlet or a lamp cord, Sierra rose from the couch, located a ring of keys on the counter and gave them to him. Thrilled, he sat on the floor between the kitchen and living room and proceeded to investigate his new toy with avid concentration.
“I’d have taken care of you and Jamie,” Clay said.
“You would have.” His sense of duty was nothing if not strong. Unlike his father’s. “Jessica, I was pretty sure, might have objected to you having a child with another woman.”
He didn’t answer, letting her know she was right.
“I refused to be responsible for ending your marriage before it even began.”
“That was my decision to make. Not yours.”
“Blame the hormones. I was confused and—” she decided to be honest with him “—hurt. I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly.”
She’d also been depressed. Deeply depressed. Enough that her obstetrician had become concerned and prescribed private counseling along with a support group. Sierra’s health insurance didn’t cover counseling, and she wasn’t earning enough money to pay for it out of pocket. She did attend a support group. Three meetings. Talking with other single mothers in similar situations had only made her feel worse, not better.
Chronically sick, hormonal and at an all-time emotional low, she’d been an easy target for someone with a personal agenda. Like the Stevensons.
“I didn’t intend to hurt you, Sierra. Those two weeks we had together were wonderful.”
“Not wonderful enough, I guess.” The wound he’d left her with ached anew.
“You were going back to San Francisco. My job was here. If I led you to believe we had a future—”
“You didn’t.”
Sierra had been the one to hope for the impossible. Clay and Jessica had dated for years. Six, no, seven. They were constantly breaking up, only to reconcile days or weeks later. Sierra had been a fool to think he wouldn’t run back to Jessica the second she snapped her fingers.
“What made you decide to come home?” He’d gotten around at last to asking the second-toughest question.
She took her time, watching Jamie push the keys across the floor instead of answering Clay. It required all her willpower not to dash into the kitchen and grab Jamie. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be having this conversation with Clay. What had made her think returning to Arizona was the solution?
&
nbsp; “Sierra?”
“My brothers’ wedding, of course. And I realized I needed help. Raising a child alone isn’t easy.”
“Are you home for good?”
“I…” Here was another chance to fib, but she couldn’t. “I think so. I haven’t discussed it with Dad yet.”
“You weren’t planning on telling me, were you? Not ever.”
“I thought it best to get settled in first. Give my family time to adjust.”
“Bullshit!”
“I told you, I thought you were in Texas.”
“You could have found out easily enough if you’d bothered asking.”
She shot to her feet. “You have no right to lecture me!”
“And you have no right to hide my son.” He stood, too. “What was it? Revenge? Because I hurt you?”
“God, no!”
He snorted. “Right.”
Jamie began to wail. One glance informed Sierra he was responding to her and Clay’s escalating argument.
She went to him. Clay didn’t object when she lifted Jamie into her arms. Patting his back, she murmured soothing phrases until he quieted. Before too long, he wanted down again.
When she released him, he toddled over to the cabinet under the sink where there was probably bleach, dish soap and a multitude of potentially dangerous cleaning products. Sierra opened an overhead cupboard and found some plastic cups and mugs. Sitting on the rug in front of the sink, Jamie proceeded to bang cups against mugs in a noisy symphony.
“You’re good with him,” Clay observed when she sat back down.
“I’m learning. Every day is a new experience. A new lesson.” Many of them hard.
“At least you’ve had the opportunity these last, what? Fourteen months. I’ve missed out on everything.”
She swallowed. Now that the moment had come to reveal the whole, horrible truth, she was having second thoughts. Clay was already angry with her. He might try to obtain custody of Jamie by proving her to be an unfit mother. He might win for, in her mind anyway, she was indeed the worst mother on the planet.
Lying to Clay and everyone else was the only way she could protect herself. Protect Jamie.
Her mind in a whirl, she opened her mouth, ready to blurt some concocted story. Clay’s eyes stopped her cold. They were no longer ablaze with anger but filled with sadness and grief.
He truly regretted those missing fourteen months with Jamie.
Sierra’s own heart shattered. Could she have been any crueler? She’d done to Clay exactly what the Stevensons had done to her—stolen a child from his parent.
“I’ve missed out on everything, too.” Tears pricked her eyes, and she brushed them away. “Except for the last three weeks.”
“What are you talking about?”
There was no easy way to say it, no way to soften the crushing blow she was about to deliver. “I gave Jamie up for adoption when he was born. Last month, on January twenty-third—” she’d remember that day always “—he was returned to me.”
His expression darkened. “I don’t understand.”
“I gave him up for adoption. His…caretakers—” she refused to use the word parents, even with adoptive in front of it “—changed their mind and returned him to me.”
“You gave him up?” Clay recoiled in disbelief.
To Sierra, it felt like a slap.
“Why? How could you?”
Good question, and one she’d asked herself a thousand times.
“I was ill all during my pregnancy. Really ill. Day and night.”
“That’s no reason.”
“I was also an emotional wreck. I took the news of your marriage hard.” Boy, that was an understatement. “Maybe because I was pregnant, things overwhelmed me. I was alone. I didn’t think I could confide in my family. My job didn’t pay that well, had minimal benefits, and I was required to travel ten days a month. I wanted Jamie, truly I did. I just didn’t know how I was going to manage everything.”
“So, you decided not keeping your baby was easier.”
The disgust in his voice cut her to the bone and echoed her own feelings about herself. This was why she hadn’t come home before or confided in her family.
“It didn’t happen like that. I was vulnerable, physically and emotionally weak. Confused and scared. I don’t remember when my boss Ken first approached me about adopting Jamie. He was subtle, dropping tiny hints here and there, letting me get used to the idea slowly. The next thing I knew, I was in my last trimester and meeting with him and his wife and their attorney in order to finalize the adoption.”
“You had to understand what was going on.”
“I did understand.” Sierra shoved her fingers through her hair. She’d gone over this again and again in her head, tried to justify what she’d done. So far, she hadn’t. How could she expect Clay to understand? “They were very persuasive and nice. Or so I thought. Ken and Gail had been married twelve years and spent most of them trying to have a child. I was sure they’d be good parents, give Jamie a better life than I ever could. They helped me, supported me, paid my medical bills. I believed they wanted what was best for my baby. I didn’t realize they were manipulating me.”
“You wouldn’t have had to go through that if you’d told me you were pregnant.”
His sanctimonious attitude irritated her. “That’s easy for you to say now that you’re divorced.”
“You’re right,” he admitted grudgingly.
“Believe me, I regretted my decision the moment I handed Jamie over to the Stevensons in the hospital.”
“Why didn’t you tell them you’d changed your mind?”
“I signed an agreement. And I was still convinced they’d be better parents than me.”
“What happened?”
“Instead of getting my old life back or my new life together, I fell apart. Guilt, regret, remorse, you name it. Every aspect of my life suffered. I hit rock bottom and was about to lose my job, my apartment, friends, probably my family. I thought of hiring my own attorney, something I should have done in the first place, and seeing if I could get Jamie. Not long after that, Ken and Gail contacted me out of the blue. They didn’t want Jamie anymore.”
“What?”
“Gail had finally gotten pregnant. With twins. She was almost eight months along. Guess they were like those childless couples you hear about. They adopt, and suddenly the woman conceives.”
“That’s no reason to give back your child.” Clay sounded as appalled and disgusted as Sierra had been. “He’s not a shirt you decide you don’t like once you get it home from the store.”
“Gail said they never really bonded with him. And now that they were having their own biological children, they thought they’d give me first shot before their attorney arranged another adoption. She said they were also concerned about the baby’s father.”
“Me?”
“You didn’t sign off on the adoption, which is usually required. Ken and Gail’s attorney had advised them not to go ahead without your signature, but they were desperate and willing to take the chance you wouldn’t appear one day. That changed when she got pregnant.”
“And you decided to come home.”
“I quit my job, gave up my apartment, cashed in my 401K and headed here. Now that I have Jamie, nothing or no one is going to take him from me again.”
“I see,” Clay said in a tone that made Sierra think he didn’t see at all.
“I’ve been given a second chance, Clay. An opportunity to correct all the mistakes I made.” The hell with her pride. She’d plead with him if that was what it took.
“Do those mistakes include not telling me?”
“I’m here now, and I’ve explained everything.”
“Have you?”
Everything except the part where I fell in love with you. “Yes.”
Jamie promptly abandoned the mugs and cups and waddled over to Sierra. She gathered him to her and kissed the top of his downy blond head.
Clay watched them. “We’re going to have to come to an agreement about him.”
“All right.”
She’d let him visit Jamie at the ranch. A few times a week if he wanted. Then later, say next year, when she’d conquered her separation anxiety, Clay could take Jamie for the afternoon or maybe the whole day. Assuming she was still in Mustang Valley. She’d need a new job and these days a decent one was hard to find. Chances were she’d have to look outside the Scottsdale area, possibly outside the state.
“I’m glad you agree.” Clay stood, went over to Jamie and patted his head, his smile tender and, this was a surprise to Sierra, almost fatherly. “I’ll have my attorney contact you this week regarding the custody agreement.”
“Custody agreement? Don’t you mean visitation?” Sierra also stood, Jamie holding on to her leg.
Clay reached for Jamie, hefted him into his arms. “I want joint custody of our son.”
“No! Forget it.”
“We’re going to raise him together, whether you like it or not.”
She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.
Chapter Three
Clay rang his mother’s doorbell. She always told him to use his key and just come in, but he didn’t feel right about that. Perhaps because the spacious townhouse in the upscale Scottsdale neighborhood had never struck him as home.
His mother’s home, he reminded himself.
The door swung open. “Clay, sweetheart! Come in.” Blythe Duvall kissed his cheek. “I’m so glad you called. What a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon.”
He gave her a fond squeeze before releasing her. “How are you, Mom?”
“Great. I shot an eighty-seven this morning. My best game in months.”
All this time, and it still surprised him to see her in golfing attire. Or in the business suits and heels she wore to the title company where she worked as an escrow officer. She should be in jeans and boots and the floppy straw hat she’d refused to give up till it literally fell apart on her head.
Except she hadn’t lived on a ranch in more than eight years and probably wouldn’t ever again.
“Good for you.” Clay followed her into the kitchen where a newspaper lay spread open on the breakfast bar.
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