Arlene James - Her Single Dad Hero

Holding the bat at her side, she slunk in long, silent steps across the foyer, through the living room and dining room to the door of the kitchen, glancing out the windows as she went. She saw no new vehicles parked alongside the dusty, red-clay road that ran between the ranch house and the outbuildings that sheltered machinery, fodder and livestock, primarily the horses used to work the two-square-mile Straight Arrow Ranch. The regular hands—Woody, Cam and Duffy—lived off-site and would have simply come to the front door if they’d needed to speak to her.

She lifted the heavy wood club into position and darted through the door into the kitchen. A dog—a mottled, black-masked blue heeler with brown markings, one of the better herding dogs—wagged its tail expectantly beside a kitchen chair pushed up to the counter, atop which kneeled an impish redheaded boy with his arm buried up to the elbow in the owl-shaped cookie jar.

“Hello!” sang out the boy, his bright blue eyes hitting a chord of familiarity within her. Completely unrepentant to have been caught stealing cookies, he turned onto his bottom, pitched a cookie to his dog and crammed another into his mouth. “Mmm-mmm.”

Stunned, Ann let the bat slide through her hands until she could park the butt on the floor and lean against the top. “Thank You, Lord!” she breathed. Then, in as reasonable a tone as she could muster, she demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

He blinked at her, his freckles standing out in sharp contrast to his pale skin.

“Eatin’ cookies,” he answered carefully as if any dummy could see that.

His eyes were the brightest blue she’d ever seen, far brighter than her own pale, lackluster shade. He had eyes like sapphires. Hers more closely resembled the sun-bleached sky of a hot, cloudless summer noon. Suddenly she remembered where she’d seen eyes like them before, and to whom they belonged. Dean Paul Pryor. The very reason she was stuck in this dusty backcountry.

She had first met Pryor at her brother’s wedding reception, when Rex had identified him as the custom cutter who would be harvesting their oat and remaining barley crops and installing the new feed storage and mixing station while Rex, his new bride, Callie, and her baby daughter were in Tulsa on a combined honeymoon and business trip. Pryor had presented himself again that morning when he’d reported for work.

Dean Paul Pryor was everything Ann disliked in a man: tall, gorgeous, confident, masculine. She suspected he stood taller than her brother, who was at least six foot two. Dean might even be as tall as her dad, at six foot four. Solidly built, he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. Add the short, thick, wheat-blond hair, gem-like blue eyes and the square-jawed perfection of his face, and he had everything he needed to make most women melt at his feet. But not her.

He’d mentioned that morning that he had his son with him. She hadn’t expected the boy to be so young, however. This child couldn’t be older than six or seven.

“Where is your father?” she asked icily, taking a choke hold on the bat again.

“Workin’,” came the laconic answer.

Obviously the father, as well as the son, needed to be taught some manners. Well, this wouldn’t be the first spoiled brat who she’d had to deal with or the first lazy, uninvolved parent she’d had to set straight. This was why she didn’t have children, why she never intended to have children. One of the reasons.

“Come.”

Shrugging, the shameless imp helped himself to several more cookies. What he couldn’t stuff into his mouth, he crammed into the pockets of his baggy jeans before hopping down onto the chair and then the floor. As she had no intention of eating the cookies or anything he’d touched, she allowed it. He began to push the chair back toward the table, its feet screeching across the wood planks.

“Leave it!” Ann ordered, her eyes crossing at the high-pitched noise.

The dog barked sharply as if in agreement, and the boy again shrugged. Ann again pointed to the door, and he happily set off, the dog falling in at his side.

“Mmm, Mizz Callie mawkz ze bezz cookeez,” he said around the mass in his mouth as Ann escorted him through the house.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” she scolded, stopping to put the bat back in the closet.

Nodding, he looked up at her with those big blue eyes, gulped and said, “You sure are pretty. And you got red hair like me.” He grinned suddenly, displaying an empty space in the front of his mouth where a tooth should be. “Come and meet my dad, why doncha?” With that, he turned, opened the front door and ran outside, the dog scampering after him.

Her mouth agape, Ann snatched a faded ball cap from its wall peg, a shield against the relentless summer sun and the possibility of freckles, crammed it onto her head and went after the miniature thief.

* * *

From the corner of his eye, Dean Paul Pryor caught sight of his son in the field just south of the big red barn. As previously instructed, Donovan stopped at a safe distance to watch as Dean used the small, rented crane to drag a cone-shaped steel bin on stilts from a flatbed trailer and carefully, painstakingly stand it upright. Dean let out a sigh of relief as four workers in white hard hats guided the stilt legs of the bin to the concrete base. Donovan, meanwhile, munched his cookies and watched, rapt, as the workers settled the five-ton bin, one of several, and began bolting it down.

Smiling, Dean shook his head. He should’ve known that nothing, not even chocolate chip cookies, could keep the boy away from the construction zone. What red-blooded boy could resist the lure of heavy machinery and risky maneuvers? At least Donovan had sense enough to keep his distance.

Just then one of the workers dropped a fist-size nut meant for an enormous bolt. The nut bumped across the uneven ground.

The boy darted forward, yelling, “I’ll get it!”

Dean’s heart leaped into his throat. Abruptly letting out the clutch, he killed the engine on the old crane and bailed out of the cab, waving his arms and shouting over the sound of screeching metal as the full weight of the bin suddenly came to rest.

“Donovan! No! Get back! Get back!”

The boy froze in his tracks then began creeping backward. The worker who had dropped the nut quickly retrieved it and began threading it onto the bolt sticking up from the concrete base. Pocketing his mirrored sunglasses, Pryor strode toward the boy. To Dean’s surprise, Ann Jollett Billings got to Donovan before he did, pulling the boy backward several steps. Dean temporarily ignored her.

“Son, I meant it when I told you that you couldn’t help with the feed bins,” he said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. That’s why I sent you to the house.”

“You sent him to the house?” Ann demanded.

Dean swept off his hard hat. He never could ignore her for long, and as always she was a sight for sore eyes, especially with that familiar old baseball cap on her head.

“Hello, Jolly,” he said around a grin.

She gasped. “Jolly!”

The nickname, a reference to her middle name, Jollett, had once been used by those closest to her, but Dean had momentarily forgotten that particular circle had never included him. The look she gave him said so in no uncertain terms, the message coming across loud and clear. He sucked in a quiet breath.

“You really don’t remember me at all, do you?” he asked on a wry chuckle, scratching his nose to hide a hurt that he had no real right to feel.

She tossed her long, wavy hair off her shoulder with a flick of her hand. “Should I?”

“We went to school together.”

“We did not.”

“Oh, we did,” Dean insisted lightly. “I was ball boy for the softball team all four years you played.”