Donna Clayton - His Ten-Year-Old Secret

After checking the street traffic one more time, she inched across the intersection and then steered toward the asphalt parking lot of the garage.

She stopped the car, its engine idling softly. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered to herself. “What are you doing?” Did she really believe Dylan would want to see her after all this time? After all the mean words they had hurled at each other?

But that seemed like a lifetime ago. They were both adults now, weren’t they?

She cringed at the question, remembering how very grown-up she’d thought she’d been at seventeen. Seventeen and pregnant.

Again, she brushed her memories of the past aside, turning the key to cut the engine. There were questions that needed answers. She really didn’t care one way or the other if Dylan would want to see her. He was going to see her.

Tess got out of her car, but it was the sound of her car door closing that had him looking her way. He called out for the driver of the big, white Cadillac to stop, and the car halted with a slight jerk.

His dark head tilted the tiniest bit and those deep green eyes of his narrowed, a frown creasing his brow.

She stopped about ten feet from him. A buffer zone of sorts.

“Hello, Dylan,” she said, reaching up and pulling off her sunglasses.

His gaze widened with recognition when she spoke, almost as though he’d known who she was, but refused to believe it until she actually addressed him. A dozen wild gypsies stomped out a boisterous jig on her nerves as she awaited his response.

Ho-ly hell! Tess. Tess Galloway. How she’d changed!

The teenage girl who had knocked him out of his high-top basketball sneakers all those years ago had been rail-thin, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks irresistible to him then.

Apparently the coltish Tess had grown up. Her girlish figure had filled out with the kind of womanly curves that fueled a man’s dreams when he was asleep and vulnerable. And not a single freckle could be found on her pale-as-moonlight complexion. Her manicured nails told him she’d broken the childish proclivity of nibbling on them when she was worried. Remembering how she’d lamented, again and again, what she’d thought was an unbreakable habit, he nearly smiled. Nearly. But he successfully reined it in.

But one thing about her hadn’t changed. Her eyes. Brown as rich, dark chocolate, and just as luscious.

That gaze alone was enough to have his libido churning down low in his gut. But put together the whole package, the angelic face, the bewitching curves, and no man was safe against a gnawing hunger that had nothing to do with food. The grown-up Tess Galloway would tweak the sexual appetite of any man.

Reaching into his back pocket with as much nonchalance as he could muster, he pulled out an oily old rag. He wiped at the grease on his forearm and said, “Well, well, well.”

Immediately he bit down on a silent groan. For years he’d practiced what he’d say if Tess were ever to show up in his life again. He’d filled a multitude of aching, need-filled nights imagining this moment, coming up with witty, double entendres meant to show her how great he was doing without her and make her regret leaving Pine Meadow, leaving him. But what had just come out of his mouth couldn’t have sounded more lame.

Absently he stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “Look what just blew in with the wind.”

Oh, Lord. He was going from bad to worse.

It was this damned surge of testosterone, he knew. The rush of hormones was hogging his body’s blood flow, making it impossible for his brain, or his tongue, to function properly.

Enough! the logical part of his mind cut in like a razor-edged knife. Why the hell are you lusting after this woman? Isn’t she the one who left you all alone? Isn’t she the one who sent Erin to you with an attitude so casual, so blase, it seemed to say she thought their child was like some stray mutt that needed tending?

His jaw clenched tight. Good. Anger. Strong enough to sink his teeth into. Strong enough to suffocate the desire burning a hole deep in his belly.

Like a flurry of sharp blows to his chin, memories bombarded him. Erin, crying with diaper rash, and he, a new father who knew zip about a cure. Erin, sick and weepy with a high fever. Erin, demanding attention when he was nothing but dog tired after a long day at work.

Excellent, he thought. He wanted to recall all the bad experiences he’d had as a single father. He urged those fearful, nerve-racking, irritating memories forward, in fact They would be the perfect stones and mortar to build himself a sturdy wall of defense against the woman standing in front of him.

“So—” he heard the clipped edge in his tone and liked it, latched onto it, actually, as if it was some kind of weapon with the ability to protect him “—you’ve finally come to see how your little puppy dog has fared after all these years.”

A light autumn breeze blew a few wayward strands of her glorious red hair into her face and she shoved them back with her free hand, her long nails combing through the tresses with one smooth stroke. Only when her face was free from obstruction did he see the bewilderment knitting her brow, clouding those gorgeous mahogany eyes.

“My little...”

Her words faded as she stopped to moisten her lips, and the sight of her delicate pink tongue sent his heart hammering his ribs like the pistons of a prime, asskicking 100-horse-power engine. Why had time turned her into such a beautiful and elegant swan?

Not that she’d been an ugly duckling as a teen. No stretch of the imagination could have him saying that. Hell, she’d been cute as a damn kitten. He was reminded just how cute she’d been every time he looked at Erin—Tess’s spitting image. But the years that had passed had made the woman in front of him far more than merely attractive. She was a radiant, dazzling diamond.

Suddenly he blinked. Was that pain he read in her gaze? What the hell did she have to feel hurt about?

“I never thought of you like that, Dylan,” she said softly. “I never did.”

Rage flashed red before his eyes like leaping flames.

“Me?” he snarled. “I’m not talking about me.”

The frown in her brow bit deeper, but he was so infuriated he couldn’t be bothered giving it a second thought.

“I’m talking about the little stray you so heartlessly sent back to me,” he ranted on quietly. “The waif you thought was so useless you didn’t even give her a name before you got rid of her.”

“I’m—”

Dylan watched her head shake, her hand raise to splay at the base of her throat.

“I, ah, I don’t under—”

Erin chose that very moment to shut off the engine, open the heavy door of the Caddy and get out of the car. Glancing back over his shoulder, he was grateful to see that the car’s windows had been closed. Maybe the noise of the idling engine had kept his daughter from hearing what he’d said. Lord, he hoped so. The last thing he wanted was for Erin’s self-esteem to be injured by thinking she hadn’t been wanted. Although that was the fact of the matter—at least from Tess’s side of things.

“Daa-aad.” Erin drew out the word as only an eager, impatient kid could. “You said I could park Mrs. Warrington’s Caddy. Please don’t change your mind. I already got it halfway out the door and I didn’t hit nothin’ yet.”

“You didn’t hit anything yet.” This probably wasn’t the best time to correct Erin’s grammar, but the action was automatic. Besides, he couldn’t have his daughter speaking like a heathen, now, could he?

Erin must have realized they weren’t alone because she grew quiet and came to stand beside him.

“Hi,” she said to Tess, offering a friendly smile.