Читать книгу The Baby Bargain - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 10

STRAPPED INTO her car seat on the rear bench of Rafe Montana’s long-cab pickup truck, Petra whined and fretted till they reached the smoother highway. As the big truck settled into a mile-eating drone, her long lashes drooped on her fat rosy cheeks and she slept.

“Never fails,” Montana murmured, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

The voice of experience, Dana realized, studying his hard-edged profile. Perhaps he had other, younger children aside from Zoe. And for that matter—“Where’s Zoe’s mother?”

Five fence posts whipped into the headlights, then passed, their barbed wire swooping and falling, before he spoke. “She died in a car wreck when Zoe was six.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She watched his mouth curve wryly. Yes, she supposed it was a bit late to be offering sympathy. For that matter, he might well have replaced Zoe’s mother years ago. With his darkly smoldering good looks, that intense vitality, he’d find plenty of volunteers for the job.

The taillights of a car appeared as the pickup topped a rise. The country was flattening out into sagebrush-covered slopes, the dryer land to the west falling away toward the state border. The truck closed on the car in a rush—slipped out, passed it by and roared on.

“What about your husband?” Montana asked without taking his eyes off the road. “You didn’t leave him a message.”

She didn’t answer the question behind that statement. “No, I…didn’t.” To confess would be to admit he’d scared her. Scared her still in some way she could not fathom. But her instinct was to raise any and every barrier against him she could find.

At the same time, though, necessity demanded that she understand his outrage before they reached Sean, that she defuse it if she could. “Why did you want my stepson, Mr. Montana?”

“If I’m going to drive you halfway to Utah, Mrs. Kershaw, you can call me Rafe.” A tractor trailer thundered past, shaking the truck, and he flicked on his high beams.

She would have preferred the formality of last names, but he’d maneuvered her neatly. Now she’d look ungracious not to reciprocate. “Then it’s Dana.” She straightened her shoulders. “But what about Sean?”

“My daughter’s pregnant.” He glanced at her, as she shook her head. “Oh, yes. I caught her sneaking a pregnancy test kit into the house this evening.”

“Not Sean!” Dana said emphatically. “That’s not possible.”

“You’re saying my Zoe’s a liar?”

His voice grew softer and more level with rage, she was learning. “No, I…” Wouldn’t dare, but still…She thought of three ways to ask the same essential question—Is she sure Sean is the father? But no matter how she phrased it, she might as well set a match to a stick of dynamite. “There must be some mistake,” she said, instead. “Is she sure she’s pregnant?”

“She told me she’s missed two months, almost three. What do you think?”

The worst, quite likely. Dana bit her lip. But still…“Sean isn’t even dating.” How could he? She gave him an allowance, but it was woefully meager. Peter had cashed in his main life insurance policy to buy the ranch. His little term policy had paid off enough to create a trust fund that someday would cover Sean’s and Petra’s college tuitions. But the family’s day-to-day finances were cut to the bone. Sean had no money for dating, and no transportation aside from his beloved mountain bike. “Where have they been, um, meeting?”

“Didn’t get to the bottom of that. She clammed up on me, so I locked her in her room to think about it.”

“For all the good that did you.” Dana couldn’t resist the jab, and noticed it made the muscles in his jaw jump and his knuckles tighten on the wheel. To her mind, a girl who was old enough to make a baby was too old to be locked up like a rebellious ten-year-old.

“You’re doing a better job? Your kid’s running wild and unsupervised, stealing your car when he wants it. Speeding…knocking up girls.”

“Girl. If he did that at all. I still don’t believe it.”

“I’ll ask him when I meet him, how’s that?” Rafe suggested darkly. “Your sonny boy and I are going to have a long, earnest talk, believe me.”

Withdrawn, unconfident Sean pitted against this full-grown, outraged male in his prime? “No, I don’t think so. Not tonight. Not till I talk to him myself.” Peter would never have allowed his son to be bullied, and now she stood in Peter’s place. “Tomorrow…” Once she’d gotten Sean’s version. Once Rafe Montana had cooled down. Perhaps after she’d consulted a lawyer. God, where would I find the money?

“We’ll see about that,” Rafe said with dangerous calm.

Indeed they would. Dana clenched her hands. Sean’s refusal to forgive her might wound her daily, but still, she was all he had. No way would she throw him to this wolf. She changed the subject. “How much farther?”

“Another twenty miles. Almost to Four Corners.”

“Where could they have been going?” California? Sean missed San Diego, somehow seemed to believe that if he could go back there, life would be as it was. As if Peter waited there on the front lawn of the suburban house that he and Sean had shared when Dana first met them. If only it were that easy.

“They were headed for Arizona, I imagine. Zoe’s great-aunt lives in Phoenix. She’s Catholic, like all Pilar’s folks. I suppose Zoe figured she’d take her side.”

“Side on what?”

“Zoe is all set to go away to college in three months,” Rafe said obliquely.

“College?” Dana had been picturing a ninth or tenth grader! Sean with a senior? Sean, who had all the social sophistication of a golden retriever pup? Now she knew there was some mistake!

“Harvard, just like her—” Rafe paused. “Harvard. She’s…bright.”

As in very bright, Dana interpreted the pride echoing behind that western understatement.

“She’s been working all her life for this. Aims to be a doctor, a surgeon—though the school counselor tells me she could shoot higher than that if she wants. Sky’s the limit. But Harvard’s the start…the door she has to walk through to get where she’s going. Where she deserves to go. Her life’s just blossoming, just starting to happen—” He slammed the wheel with a fist. “And now this? I don’t think so. Now that your kid has messed her up, there’s only one way out.”

“Abortion, you mean,” Dana murmured. She suppressed a sudden urge to look back at Petra. To grab the baby and pull her over the seat and into her arms. “Does Zoe agree?” Zoe, who’d broken out of her room somehow and tried to flee the state?

“She…Neither of us was making much sense back there,” Rafe growled. “We’re not used to banging heads. But once she’s calmed down and thought it through…”

I wonder. “There’s always adoption,” Dana observed, her voice carefully neutral.

“Zoe starts college in three months.” Montana’s words might have been carved from Rocky Mountain granite.

THEY DROVE THE REST of the way in silence. But angry as he was, Rafe found he couldn’t focus all his thoughts on the coming confrontation. Sitting only two feet to his right, she tugged at his awareness. Dana Kershaw. Small and dark, she should have looked boyish with her short, silky brown hair falling into her big slate-green eyes, yet she was anything but. She had a softness and a warmth about her that were feminine to the core. Reminded him of the little half-Siamese cat Zoe had owned for years, all silky fur to the touch, daintily elegant—and absolute hell on dogs five times her size, if they looked sideways at her kittens. His lips twitched as he remembered the way she’d faced him down at her baby’s door. Not a woman to be crossed.

Kershaw’s a lucky man, he found himself thinking. You could tell the good ’uns at a glance, just like he could size up a corral full of horses and choose the best mount. He grimaced, realizing where this thought was heading—it was just a leftover from his earlier frustration. God, was it only three hours ago that he’d been sitting across a table from Mitzy Barlow? It seemed another lifetime.

What he’d learned about Zoe—like a knife stroke cutting that happy life from this strange present, him speeding through the night with a gentle, fierce woman, her eyes reflecting like fathomless pools in the windshield whenever a car passed them by. And Zoe, turned from his loving, loyal daughter into a defiant stranger! One stumble across the kitchen floor and he’d picked up someone he’d never met before—a young woman who’d loved a man, made a baby by him, cast her father’s wisdom aside to fly to her mate. To flee as if he were some kind of ogre, not the father who’d turned his own world upside down to make a good life for his own baby…How could everything change this fast?

Nothing’s changed, he told himself savagely, and wished he could believe it. Not really. There’d be a week or two of hurt feelings and ugly necessities, a week or two of sorrow after that, then they’d get back on track. She’s worked too hard. I won’t let this ruin her life.

His headlights picked out a creek bending in from the darkness to edge the highway, then a state police car parked on the shoulder above it; ahead of that, a pickup. Two pale faces stared back through the truck’s rear window, as Rafe swung in behind the patrol car and parked. “We settle with the Statie first, Dana. He’ll want to hear that we’re taking this seriously.”

“Believe me, I am.” She checked her child, who was still sleeping, then hurried after Rafe as he strode to meet the state trooper, now unfolding from his car.

She handled it well, Rafe had to admit, as Officer Morris assured them that he could arrest Sean for everything from car theft to speeding. Dana didn’t try to excuse or defend her son, but simply promised that he would be punished, that such a grievous misjudgment would never be repeated. Clearly of a mind to be satisfied, the trooper finally nodded, marched off to his car, got in and carved a swift U-turn, then headed off toward the truck crash near Durango.

“You were lucky,” Rafe observed, hearing the distant engine shift into overdrive. He turned. And now, for someone who’d run flat out of luck…

Both doors of the shabby pickup opened as he stalked toward it. “Daddy?” Zoe called fearfully from the far side.

But Rafe had another target in his sights. The greedy, undisciplined spoiler who’d led them all to this disaster. “I want a word with you, punk,” he said quietly, barely aware that Dana Kershaw plucked at his elbow. He shrugged her off.

Head high, the boy paused beside his open door and let him come. Rafe’s strides slowed and he drew in a harsh breath. This was his enemy? Half a head shorter than him, with the gangly limbs, the too-big feet and hands of a boy? He’d pictured an eighteen-year-old, at least! “You’re Sean Kershaw?” He glanced toward the cab in spite of himself, as if the kid’s older brother might burst forth.

“My stepson,” Dana declared, swinging around to stand shoulder to shoulder with the kid.

Rage and frustration had been building inside Rafe all night. He’d contained himself—barely—but had promised himself a full and glorious venting when he found its deserving target. But now? You could stomp a man, but this—this unshaved brat? He caught the kid’s collar between thumb and forefinger. “How the hell old are you?” he demanded, ignoring both Dana’s and Zoe’s yelps of protest.

“Old enough and get your hands off me!” The boy chopped up a forearm, breaking his grip.

“Old enough for what, you little runt? To wreck my daughter’s life?”

“He’s fourteen, and you leave him alone,” Dana cried, stepping between them. “I said we’d talk tomorrow,” she added in an urgent undertone.

“Fourteen!” Rafe shook his head. What the hell?

“Daddy!” Zoe pleaded.

Zoe had betrayed him for this—this puppy? “Get in the truck,” he snapped without glancing aside.

“Don’t,” countered the kid. “He can’t make you do anything you don’t want.”

“Oh, can’t I?” He prodded the boy’s shoulder. “Mind your own business, sonny.”

The boy batted his hand aside. “This is my business.”

“Sean, be quiet! Rafe, please.” Dana caught his upper arm with both her hands.

Even through the mists of rage, he could feel each separate small fingertip digging into his muscles. She’s married, he reminded himself, and felt his rage kick up a notch. He swung his arm back, pushing her away from the fray. “Yeah, you’ve made it your business, big shot. You’ve made a baby nobody wants or needs. A baby the grownups will have to deal with now. Good going!”

“Nobody’s asking you to deal with anything—” The boy’s voice cracked on the last word and jumped half a squeaking octave.

Rafe threw back his head and laughed. The situation was so absurd, it was that or weep.

Sean shoved him hard with both hands. “Zoe doesn’t want an abortion, and if she doesn’t want one, I don’t want one!”

Rafe rocked back on his heels, then rocked forward, looming over the kid. How do you like that? Sixty pounds lighter, yet the kid was going toe to toe with him. Guts. Still, “Easy for you to say, twerp. You won’t be around to pick up the pieces.”

“I will! If Zoe needs me, I’ll be there. I’ll get a job and take care of her. I’ll—I’ll—”

“At fourteen?” Rafe jeered incredulously, shaking his head—and saw the blow coming from the corner of his eye, a roundhouse swing. His head tipped reflexively to the right, and the blow whistled past his ear. “Hey!”

Sean growled wordlessly and took another shot. Rafe caught it on his palm and swept it aside. “Back off!”

They circled, Rafe with open hands up and out, dimly aware of the women shrieking from outside the whirlwind of Sean’s flailing fists. Duck in and put a shoulder into his stomach, Rafe told himself. He could toss the kid up over his shoulder, trundle him down to the stream that gurgled beyond the truck. Dump him in to cool off.

Another blow sailed in, and he took it on his raised forearm as he stepped to one side. Somebody should have taught this kid to hit. Anyone really wanting to hurt him could have done so with ease.

“Rafe, please, he’s just a child!” Dana cried, and that decided him. Sean was a child—acting as a man. And standing by his woman, as foolishly touching as that might seem to an adult. And though apparently Dana didn’t understand, the masculine code required that you honor your opponent’s courage, no matter how incompetently displayed. So don’t demean him. Treat him as I would a man. Sean had earned that courtesy with his spunk. The kid came in grunting and slugging. Rafe sighed inwardly, chose his shot and, pulling his punch to the limit of credibility, hit the kid as lightly as he could.

Sean wobbled two steps backward and sat—and Rafe found himself nose to nose with Dana Kershaw. “You…big…bully!” She smacked her hands against his chest. “Stop it!”

Just what he’d been trying to do.

She smacked him again. “What kind of a man picks on a child?”

“Be quiet, Dana.” He’d been showing his respect, man to man. Now she was ruining his gesture—would humiliate the kid, if she didn’t hush up. “He’ll be fine.” Learning to take his knocks—that was how a boy became a man. And the kid wasn’t sniveling, Rafe noted with approval, glancing over her head. He was staggering to his feet with Zoe’s help…brushing her aside. Crap, was he coming for more?

Fearful the kid might wade in all over again, Rafe allowed Dana to back him down the road. “Take it easy,” he warned her, as she shoved him again. He caught her slender wrists and pinned her hands against his heart, scowling down at her. “Ea-sy!” Her pulse leaped beneath his fingertips, and he felt his own surge to meet it. He threw her hands hastily aside and retreated.

“Me, easy?” she cried, and turned up her palms in an appeal to the heavens.

Behind her, Zoe had caught the kid in a bear hug and was holding him back. Tears streaming, she glared over his shoulder. “I’m so ashamed of you, Daddy!”

Ashamed of me?! Now that punch landed—knocked him speechless. All those years of being his daughter’s hero, to be shattered like this? Rafe felt the first stab of pain, then rage overwhelmed it like a breaking black wave. Rage felt much better. “Get in the truck! Now!”

If he’d lost her affection, still she had a sixteen-year habit of obedience. She murmured something in Sean’s ear, then let him go.

“Zoe!” he called hoarsely after her. But head down, she marched off to Rafe’s truck, scrambled in and slammed the door mightily.

A moment later, a baby’s startled wail split the night.

“Petra!” Dana homed in on the sound, then brushed past Rafe without a glance.

The sobs gained volume and heartache, mixed with the crooning cries of two sympathetic women.

Damn it all to hell and back again! All he’d wanted tonight was to get laid. Rafe turned heavily to glare at Sean Kershaw. “Nice sound, huh? They do that for the first twelve months without a break to draw breath, except when they’re puking or pooping. Think about it.”

Halfway to his truck, he met Dana returning, arms full of the child and her bulky car seat. He opened his mouth to offer help, then shut it, knowing her answer already. Their eyes locked, held as they neared. She tipped up her chin and swept proudly past him, her baby’s hiccuping sobs trailing back on the cold night air.

Rafe sighed, then stood beside his truck till she’d started hers, completed her turn and headed for home. He followed at a wary distance.