A Man of Distinction

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Tanya was stunned. How much money did he spend on all of this? A couple hundred at least. To him, it was probably just another day, but all of this stuff was more than she could afford in a year of careful scrimping and saving. How sad was it that she was even considering returning some of it just to get the cash? She could get enough to take Bear to a doctor, maybe even enough to pay for the prescription this time.

  Nick took a pair of winter boots and a cute stuffed bear out of the last bag. “Here you go, Bear. Your very own bear.”

  Bear grabbed at the animal. Tanya felt her head shaking. Nick had come prepared, and Bear was too young to know he was being bought off.

  “This is too much,” she started to say, but Nick cut her off.

  “The toddler bed is back-ordered, so it’ll be two weeks.” He ducked his head and shot her a sheepish smile. “I couldn’t figure out the car seat, though. Might need a little help with that.”

  “We can’t accept this.” She didn’t have much, but she had her pride. And she wouldn’t let Nick put a price on it.

  Nick’s eyes hardened—not much, but enough to let her know that he didn’t think too much of her opinion. “‘We’? Or just you?” He looked down to where Bear was now chewing on his new bear’s nose. “I think he’s happy to have some nice things.”

  “Because the only things I can give him are complete and total crap, right?” Tanya struggled to keep her voice calm, but she didn’t do a good enough job. Bear looked up at her with worried eyes.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Admit it—you don’t think I’m a good mother.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Nick had the same controlled, pissed tone to his voice. “Stop putting words into my mouth.”

  “Where else should I put them? I have a few suggestions.”

  She expected Nick to come back at her with both barrels blazing, but instead, he smiled—and then laughed. Bear watched them for another moment before he broke out in a toothy grin and went back to chewing on his toy.

  “What?” she demanded, feeling foolish and not knowing why.

  He closed the distance between them in two long steps, and before Tanya could stop him or react at all, he’d wrapped his arms around her and placed a fire-hot kiss on her forehead. “I know you won’t believe this, but I have missed you, Tanya. No one in Chicago talks to me like you do.”

  Tanya’s arms shook with the effort not to return the favor and pull Nick’s hard chest closer to hers. She wasn’t being swayed by any compliment, any tender gesture. None of this was working. Really.

  He leaned down, his voice quiet and only inches from her ear. The warmth of his breath rolled down her skin until a lot more than her arms shook. “I’m going to be here for at least a year. You don’t have to love me, babe, but let me see my son. A boy should know his father.”

  That was a damnably low blow, one that blew past her anger and went straight for her heartstrings. Who would she be hurting if she fought to keep Bear from Nick? Sure, she could exact some revenge for Nick’s repeated abandonment of her. But in the long run, it was Bear who would suffer. Would she really do that to her son?

  Could she really do that to Nick?

  As if he could feel that the attention of the adults had shifted away from him, Bear launched the teddy and began to flail. Tanya took a step toward him, but Nick put a hand on her shoulder. “I got him,” he said, a peaceful smile on his face.

  Tanya watched as the man of her dreams swooped her son up into a big hug and then grabbed a board book and settled down to read him a story about a very hungry caterpillar. Tears swam across her vision.

  She couldn’t keep Bear from Nick. She just couldn’t.

  But what would letting Nick back into her life do to her?

  Five

  Throughout the evening, Nick could feel Tanya watching him. She stared while he read Bear stories. She kept an eagle eye on him as he and Bear rolled a ball back and forth on the floor. And she hovered behind him as Nick fumbled his way through his first diaper change. She didn’t tell him he was doing it wrong, though. Hell, she didn’t say anything. She just watched.

  Nick didn’t remember all the words to the bedtime song Tanya had sung the other night, so he stuck with the classic “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Of course, while he sang it, Tanya stood in the doorway of the small bedroom, a look on her face that drifted between irritated and hopeful, with a dash of worried thrown in for good measure.

  In other words, she looked confused.

  That bothered Nick. What about this situation wasn’t black and white? He was Bear’s father, and as such, he had certain rights and obligations. He had a right to spend time with his son, and a correlating obligation to provide financial assistance for his care. Now that Nick was aware of the situation, he planned to step up to the plate and be a father.

  So the situation with his son couldn’t be what was worrying Tanya, which only left one other possibility. She was worried about him.

  And that bothered him, and the fact that it bothered him was a problem in and of itself. When the hell had he gotten to be such a nice guy? He had the legal upper hand here, and they both knew it. Tanya had admitted Bear had health problems and that she couldn’t afford proper medical treatment. Gaining custody would be a walk in the park. If he were still in Chicago, he’d use those facts to maximize his advantage. That was how the game was played. The moment someone showed weakness, whether it was opposing council or a coworker, you had to use that weakness to your advantage.

  Tanya’s passions ran deep and true, and up until now, he had never viewed that as a weakness. He’d never viewed her as weak at all. Headstrong, stubborn, passionate—yes. Especially the passionate part. Nick knew he tended to be overly analytical. That trait made him a damn good lawyer, but he’d been accused of being cold and, on more than one occasion, heartless. Tanya’s passion had always been the perfect counterpoint, whether they were arguing about tribal politics or having incredible sex.

  Of course, the flip side of the game he played in Chicago was that anything you said and did could be used against you, too. What would Marcus Sutcliffe think if he knew Nick had fathered a disabled bastard? More than likely, he’d scoff in an unsurprised way and say something like, “What do you expect from one of those Indians?”

  Even thinking about Bear like that made Nick feel sick to his stomach. How could he define his own son that way? He knew the answer—that’s how it would look in court. But that would be the same as dismissing Nick as the token Indian. No way was he going to let people slap a label on his son, because the moment they did that, Bear would spend the rest of his life trying to live that label down.

  Nick looked down at the boy, his thumb in his mouth, his eyes half-closed. That tightness hit his chest again. He would do whatever it took to make sure that Bear wasn’t dismissed. He needed a voice, and Nick was in the position to give him one.

  Did Tanya understand anything about the games Nick was used to playing? She couldn’t, because she’d never shown up in Chicago with the baby. A person with less-than-sterling morals would have made dangerous threats of exposure in hope of extracting some money. Extortion was the legal term, but it would be blackmail, pure and simple. Nick saw it happen all the time.

  But Tanya wasn’t like all those other people. It was apparent that she had no idea how much power she held in this situation. And even if she did, he didn’t think she’d use it. Somehow, despite her dirt-poor upbringing and barely-getting-by lifestyle, she had managed to remain pure and uncompromised. Hell, she’d even tried to refuse his gifts, despite how much she obviously needed them. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he’d dealt with a person who wouldn’t play the game. While it was refreshing to know that she couldn’t be bought, it left Nick with the unsettled feeling of knowing the rules had changed but not knowing what they’d changed to.

  Nick’s morals were just shy of sterling. Maybe he’d played the Chicago games long enough that he’d been permane
ntly tarnished. Winning primary custody of Bear would be easy—he could steamroll Tanya in a courtroom without breaking a sweat. He could get his son out of this hellhole of a rez and take him to Chicago. He could give Bear the finest medical care, the best schools, the nicest things—all the advantages that Nick had only dreamed about as a kid. He didn’t need Tanya’s permission. He could do whatever he wanted. Part of him wanted to do just that—show her exactly what he’d accomplished without her. She hadn’t let him give her a better life—that was her problem. But Nick didn’t have to let her withhold that life from Bear. In fact, he could make a strong argument that it was his moral imperative to gain primary custody of his son. He had worked his butt off for the last four years, amassing a small fortune and an unstoppable reputation. The least he could do was to share the benefits of all his hard work with his son. Then, maybe Tanya would finally realize that he hadn’t been selfishly focused on himself, but working for a life they could live together.

  But he didn’t want to steamroll her. He didn’t want to be the one who took everything she held most dear and ground it into the dirt. Maybe it was being back under the wide South Dakota sky, or maybe it was the little boy who was almost asleep in his arms, but Nick didn’t want to win at all costs this time. Oh, he still wanted to win, but he didn’t want to salt the earth behind him. Tanya had always meant something to him. He didn’t want to destroy that. He didn’t want to destroy her.

  He tried to set Bear down just like Tanya had done the other night, but got his arms crossed up and wound up flopping the kid onto the bed. He froze, terrified he had just woken the baby up again, but after an extra-deep sigh, the little guy rolled over. Nick looked to Tanya, hoping to see approval or a smile on her face, but was surprised to see that she’d already turned away. In fact, if he didn’t know any better, he’d say she was sprinting down the small hallway.

  Moving as quietly as he could, Nick followed. By the time he got the bedroom door shut, she was out the front door. Oh, no. No way she was going to run away from him now.

  At the very least, they had to work out a visitation schedule, and he had to know more about Bear’s health—especially if he was going to start paying the medical bills. Tanya was still healthy, and Nick had never had any issues. It couldn’t be normal for Bear to have so many massive health issues. There had to be an external cause. Maybe it was just because Nick had litigated so many major pollution cases, but his first thought was that that external cause was environmental. What were the odds that Bear’s silence was connected to the contamination of the groundwater that the tribe maintained had occurred as a result of Midwest Energy’s fracking?

  But if that was the case, why wasn’t Tanya just as sick? That was the part that didn’t make sense to Nick, so he had no justifications for jumping to conclusions. He wasn’t going to rule anything out yet. All this meant was that he needed to do a little more research. The boy was going to have to get tested. If there was a chance he could be cured or fixed or whatever, Nick had to make sure that happened. And if the results happened to bolster his case, well, he’d have another piece of evidence in his pocket.

  But environmental concerns were not the real reason he took off after Tanya. Despite it all—her rejection of him, the hidden baby with health problems, the adversarial tone to their interactions—he wanted her. While he was fully aware that she’d kissed him out of self-defense the other night, there was no way she’d faked the heat that had flowed between them. He could still taste her desire on his lips. All that was complicated and tense had disappeared in that hot moment until he’d forgotten about lawsuits and reservations and everything that wasn’t Tanya. He needed Tanya. It wasn’t any more complicated than that.

  Except it was. It always had been. Maybe it always would be, because by the time he caught up to her, she was standing next to his Jaguar, arms crossed and an unassailable look on her face.

  Right. As much as he wanted to feel her body in his arms again, if he forced the issue, he would do more harm than good. He couldn’t let her know that he needed her more than she needed him. Never ever show weakness. “Like I said, I was having a little trouble with the car seat.”

  “Have you considered that the problem wasn’t the seat, but your car?” She spoke stiffly, but he could still hear a tiny tease in her voice.

  He was glad to hear that tease, however small. “Are you suggesting that a two-seater convertible is not the ideal family car?”

  “We aren’t a family,” she snapped, then took a step forward and wrenched the passenger door open.

  Nick sighed. She wasn’t going to make this easy on him, but he supposed he had that coming. “I read the instructions,” he offered. “I couldn’t find the LATCH things it said to use.”

  She hauled the car seat from where he’d wedged it in the passenger seat and set it on the ground. “Because car seats don’t go in the front.” She gave his Jaguar another once-over. Most women—in fact, all women—swooned over his car. Proof positive that Tanya wasn’t like anyone else, he figured. “But I see you are sadly lacking in a backseat, so…”

  Then she flipped the car seat around and shoved it back into the car. After several unproductive pushes, she turned around, and, hands on hips, gave him a stern look. Her hair had come loose from her braid and floated around her face, and her cheeks were pink from the effort. Heaven help him, she was beautiful. He hadn’t guessed she could be more attractive than he remembered her, but those curves, that fire in her eyes—he had a few more less-than-sterling thoughts.

  “You push from this side,” she said, slipping around the back of the car before he could do anything rash like kiss her.

  Before he understood what she was doing, Tanya had climbed in through the driver’s-side door and was hauling on the car seat. Then he heard it—the sickening sound of plastic scraping against his custom burl-walnut dash. “Stop!”

  She paused. “It’s the only way to get it in.” The way she said it made it clear that she thought he was choosing the car over the kid.

  He wanted to tell her that it was a very expensive car, but he knew that observation wouldn’t go over real well. Instead he leaned over the seat, making sure to brace it so she couldn’t keep scraping up his woodwork. “He shouldn’t be riding in the front seat anyway.” Clearly, he was going to have to rethink this plan. “Maybe you could bring him out to my place this weekend?”

  Tanya’s eyes bored into him. He realized that his face was less than a foot from hers. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I have plans.”

  Her tone kept rubbing him the wrong way. Yes, he had earned a little flack, but that didn’t give her the right to treat him like the enemy. She was just as much a culpable party in this as he was. She’d stayed here of her own choice, so she could quit treating him like he’d abandoned her. As far as he could tell, he was not the bad guy here, and the sooner she stopped treating him like he was, the easier things would be. “This may come as a surprise to you, but not everything I say is a direct attack on you.”

  She held his gaze without flinching. He leveled his most effective glare at her, and she met him head-on. Despite the attitude, he was impressed that she didn’t buckle. “So you’re leaving indirect attacks on the table.”

  He was about to cut her down to size—he did not need all this resistance in his life—but then the corner of her mouth curved up and the angry lines faded from around her eyes. And just like that, she was radiant.

  The air between them seemed to thin, making it hard to breathe. Relinquishing his grip on the car seat, he reached up and smoothed an escaped strand of hair away from her face before he cupped her cheek in his hand. “I have missed you, Tanya.”

  She leaned into his touch, her eyelids fluttering—but not quite closing. Instead, she opened them wide. The confrontation was gone; instead, he saw desire just below the surface. This time, it wasn’t hiding behind ulterior motives. It was right out where he could see it.

  “I don’t have to love you.�
� She tried to throw his words back at him, but she couldn’t stop the way her voice shook. He could feel that tremor through his hand. It was a small thing, but he still felt it throughout his entire body.

  Mentally, he pumped his fist in victory. For once, she didn’t have a barb ready to throw at him. “But you still care for me, don’t you?” You still want me is what he really wanted to ask, but that would be pushing too far, too fast. Besides, Tanya was smart enough to know what he’d really been asking.

  She dropped her gaze, her face flushing with a different sort of heat. Nick could hear the yes on her breath. He could see it in her eyes. But she didn’t say it. Instead, she pulled away and backed out of the car.

  He’d lost her. Maybe she was better at playing this game than he thought. But he wouldn’t let his disappointment show. Part of playing the game was not letting the other side know when they had you on the ropes. He stood. Tanya stood by the driver’s door. He could feel the weight of her expectations. He just wasn’t sure what she expected of him. She wanted him, that much was clear. But she didn’t trust him. Though she seemed open to letting him spend more time with Bear. Maybe he’d been wrong earlier—this situation wasn’t as black-and-white as he wanted it to be. Not for her anyway. “I’d still like to see Bear this weekend.” Of course, he’d like to see Tanya, too, and preferably without a car between them.

  “You’re welcome to come with us.”

  Was he mistaken, or was there a challenge in her eyes? “Sure, I could do that. Where are you going?”

  No, he wasn’t mistaken. She was throwing down the gauntlet. “There’s a powwow in Platte.” Her smile grew menacing. “I’m sure everyone would love to see you again.”

  Nick’s mouth ran dry. He’d been to powwows before. He’d done his fair share of dancing. But that had been a long time ago. A lifetime ago, some would say.