Karen Templeton - Staking His Claim

“What happened?”

“Well, at first I felt like hot stuff because I pulled it off without Ethel catching me. But somehow the gum didn’t taste near as good as I figured it would. And I couldn’t sleep that night. So I finally confessed to Daddy.”

“Ouch. I can imagine how well that went over.”

“All he did was look at me. Like I’d let him down. Well, and march me back to the store to ’fess up to the manager, which was humiliating as hell. I was never even tempted to filch anything after that.”

“Never?” He heard the smile in her voice.

“Almost never, anyway.”

She laughed, but it didn’t last long. “Still,” she said, “it worries me. About Elijah.” He could feel her gaze on the side of his face. “I’d call Family Services myself, but I wouldn’t be around to follow up….”

He didn’t know which irked him more, her leaving or her pushing him to do something he didn’t think needed doing.

“Dawn, I hear what you’re saying, I really do. But I’m not gonna embarrass that kid, or his father, by calling the authorities on ’em when I don’t see any reason to. Looks to me like they’ve got enough to deal with without people sticking their noses in where they don’t belong.”

She pushed herself back against the truck door, as if needing to distance herself from him. “Problems aren’t always obvious, you know—”

“And living in the city for so long has made you see spooks lurking in every shadow. This isn’t New York—”

“Neglect is neglect, Cal. No matter where it happens.”

“You know what? If you’re so hot about this, why don’t you stick around and take care of it yourself?”

“Because I can’t, which you know. And how dare you try to blackmail me!”

Cal let out a nice, ripe cussword, to which Dawn spit back, “My sentiments exactly.”

Nobody said anything for another mile or two. Then she said, “I suppose I can at least make the initial call before I go back.”

Cal sighed. “You really feel that strongly about this?”

She turned to him, and he could hear her voice shake. “If you’d heard what I have, seen the effects of people looking the other way, you would, too. Working with these women and children hasn’t made me delusional, it’s made me think twice about taking things at face value. And I couldn’t live with myself if something happened that could’ve been prevented by a single phone call.”

He glanced over to see her mouth all set like it used to get when she was a kid. Aw, hell. “Tell you what. If I promise to personally check up on the boy, and his father, would that be enough to keep you from making that call?”

“Are you serious?”

“Are you out to see just how far you can try my patience before I lose what’s left of my mind? I wouldn’t’ve said it if I didn’t mean it…hey!”

She’d flown across the seat to hug him, nearly sending the truck off the road. “Thank you,” she murmured into his neck, her breath far too soft and far too warm for anybody’s good right now.

“Honey? Not that I’m not enjoying this, but I think that’s Didi Meyerhauser’s Bronco closing in on us, so you might want to—”

She was instantly on the other side of the seat like nothing had happened.

Not that anything had happened.

Exactly.

The preacher’s wife passed, waving. Cal and Dawn waved back, Cal suddenly remembering that Dawn used to be friends with Didi’s daughter.

“You seen Faith yet?” he said.

“Faith? No. Not sure there’d be any point. It’s been years since we’ve talked or written or anything.”

“Then I guess you didn’t know she and Darryl are having another baby?”

“Mama might’ve said something about it. Their third?”

“Fifth.” He grinned. “Now there’s one shotgun wedding that took.”

No response.

They drove past the turnoff that led back to the farm. For a second, he’d thought about asking if she wanted to come back, to see the cradle. But only for a second.

“So…Ryan and Maddie are doing okay, I take it?” Dawn asked.

Now, Cal knew it had not been her intention to hike up the temperature inside the truck several degrees. Except the last time Dawn would’ve seen them all was on July Fourth. The day he and Dawn made the baby. Which naturally provoked some real vivid memories of just how they’d made the baby, although to the casual listener—as in Dawn—his thoughts, like his words, were totally focused on Maddie’s youngest taking her first steps a few weeks ago, how his new sister-in-law had worked wonders to bring his reclusive workaholic brother out of his shell.

“And Hank and Jenna?” she said. “Mama told me they were getting married?”

He glanced over at her, his brain jumping its tracks as his gaze landed on her mouth. Which, when it wasn’t yapping a mile a minute and making him crazy, was soft and warm and—

He looked back, mentally flogging himself. This sex-as-mental-comfort-food business was fine to a certain extent, but at some point, a man’s gotta grow up and eat his vegetables.

“Right after Thanksgiving, yep.”

“I liked Jenna a lot,” she said, crossing her arms. “Her books are good, too. And I don’t usually read mysteries.”

“Her next one’s coming out in hardcover,” he said, thinking about that mouth. About how he’d kissed a fair number of women in his time, but Dawn…well, she was what you’d call a natural talent. “You know,” he said, because thinking about her mouth was making him feel reckless, “even though Jenna’s lived all her life in D.C., she doesn’t seem to have any reservations about moving out here.”

No response. Again.

One more little hill before they reached Haven proper. “I bet if you had a chance to know Jenna better, you’d really like her.”

Dawn laughed. Not what he was expecting. And she was hard enough to figure when she did something he was expecting.

“What?” he asked.

She said, “Nothing,” which would’ve ticked him off if she hadn’t immediately followed up with, “You’re going to make an amazing father,” which simply threw him.

To Nebraska.

“What makes you say that?”

“Deductive reasoning is kind of my stock in trade,” she said with a smile. “Watching how you handled Elijah, the way you related to him…” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her breasts lifting with the force of her sigh. First time in his life he’d ever thought of his peripheral vision as a liability. “At least I won’t have to worry about leaving our child alone with you. Me, on the other hand…”

The insecurity flickered in her voice for barely a second, just long enough to bring back another memory, this one of a eight-year-old girl, her chin defiantly tilted up underneath a quivering mouth, who’d refused to come right out and say how much it hurt when that man Ivy was supposed to marry suddenly moved away. Charley…Beeman, that was his name.

“What do I need a daddy for, anyway? And besides, Mama says a man just gets in the way of what a woman wants to do….”

Cal frowned, bringing himself back to the present. “Well, sweetheart, if things go the way I hope, you won’t have to worry about leaving him or her alone with me at all.”

Several beats passed. Then: “Stop the truck.”

“You gonna be sick?”

“Possibly. But not because of the baby.”

He pulled onto the shoulder; she jumped out and took off down the road. Cal stuck his head out the window. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Walking the rest of the way!”

Grumbling to himself, Cal got out and went after her.

“You know—” the words came in little puffs as he trotted along behind her “—the one thing I used to admire about you was that you never pulled this female crap.”