Lindsay Longford - Daddy By Decision

“Yep, good grief,” Gopher repeated. “Keep your—”

“Enough, sugar.” Jessie blew a strand of hair out of her face.

Fanny wiggling in the air and nose pointed toward the door, Gopher lifted his head. “Hey, mister. You got your pants on. Why din’t you hold your horses?”

“Sorry.” Jessie laughed as she scooped her hair behind her ear. Late-afternoon sun shone into her eyes, made the man in front of her a lean shadow. Peering up and clasping her son’s bottom with one hand, Jessie inhaled. She didn’t need her glasses to recognize trouble when it came knocking at her door. “Hello, Jonas Riley.”

“And a very pleasant afternoon to you, Ms. Jessica Bell.”

“My mommy’s not a bell,” Gopher informed him. “She’s a McDonald, like old McDonald and me. Only we don’t got any chickens and cows, but we got dogs, Loofah and Mitzi and this is Skeezes—” he pointed “—and I like your hat and—”

“That’s enough, sugar,” Jessie repeated, letting her talkative terror slide to the ground. “Hand over my glasses, please.”

“Nope.” Gopher stared up at her, his bare toes curled under. “Ransom first.”

“George. Glasses. Now.” Jessie stared him down until he reluctantly handed her her eyeglasses.

“Unfair to Gopher!” he cried, the soft mouth that had been so generous with a smackeroo now turning upside down with temper and a finely tuned sense of injustice. Snatching the afghan off the floor and wrapping himself in it, Gopher stomped away in high dudgeon, Skeezix torn between following him and staying at the door. “Very unfair. I captured booty. I earned a ransom,” he shouted as he stormed through the swinging door to the kitchen, Skeezix trotting behind him, tail wagging like an automatic dust cloth. “And I am the king!”

“Tough,” Jessie called after him. “But that’s life outside the castle. Sometimes even the king has to yield to a higher power.”

“Unfair!” The door swung shut on his words.

“Live with it, sugar.” She inhaled deeply, gathering her nerve, and faced the man she’d never expected to see again, much less twice in less than forty-eight hours.

“Well, golly gee, Miz Kitty, you sure run a tight ship. No ransom? Just off to the dungeons for the mutinous troops? I reckon I’m shaking in my boots.”

Jessie looked down at his boots. “They could use a shine. And they don’t look as if they’re moving, much less shaking.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, Jessica.” Five years vanished like smoke as that smooth, silky voice skimmed over her, tweaking her nerve endings, moving through her until her knees went weak.

“Apparently so.” Poking the ends of her glasses through her hair and over her ears, Jessie surveyed him. “Because you sure look like a derelict without a nickel to his name, not the hottest lawyer in the South and a man with more money than’s good for him. Although—” she scrutinized him with a slow up-and-down glance “—I have to admit there’s something about the cowboy getup that suits you.” Meeting his gaze, she gestured with her chin toward the jeans and shirt he’d worn each time she’d seen him. “Grown attached to that outfit, have you, Jonas?”

He slapped his hat against his leg. “Turned into a snob, have you, Jessica?” Back and forth, the hat whisked a slow, regular rhythm against his thigh, his muscle bunching and flexing under soft denim as he shifted his weight. “Going to invite me in?”

No question about it, Jonas was trouble.

With one arm blocking the entrance, Jessie tipped her head up and shaded her eyes. She’d be double-damned if she’d invite him in. “I’ll have to admit it’s nice to see you again, Jonas, but I’m terribly sorry I didn’t recognize you last night—” She nodded in assumed bafflement. “If I had, we could have had a fabulous—”

“Fabulous?” A streak of amusement flashed in his eyes as he interrupted her. And in that moment she knew as if he’d spoken out loud that he hadn’t forgotten anything.

“—time catching up on our lives, but you’ve caught me at a really awkward moment. Gopher and I were just leaving—”

“Was not.” Gopher wound an arm around her leg and looked up at the man standing in the doorway. The plastic bucket tipped to the back of her son’s head. “You’re letting all the cold air out, mister. Mommy doesn’t like me to hold the door open.”

“Makes sense.” Jonas studied her son’s round face. “Gopher, is it?”

“George Robert McDonald,” Gopher said and stuck out his hand. “You kin shake my hand.”

Jonas did.

“Want some lemonade, mister? I made it. Sort of. I squozed a lemon. It’s good lemonade.” He leaned forward confidingly. “But kinda sour.”

Jessie sighed. Coffee and Gopher would do her in every time. “As George so politely noticed, you’re letting all the cold air out, Jonas. You might as well come in.”

“Reckon I can’t refuse such a graciously extended invitation now, can I?”

“You could,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Pardon?” A quizzical expression clouded his face. The picture of innocent confusion, he didn’t fool her. “What did you say?”

“Nothing important.” Jessie motioned him into the living room and stooped down to Gopher’s level. His body language shouted his fascination with the dusty cowboy. “Sugar, why don’t you take Skeezix out into the backyard?”

“Don’t want to.” He smiled beguilingly. “Want to visit.”

“Not now, Gopher. Keep Skeezix company while he has a nice run in the yard. He needs some exercise.” Reaching into her dress pocket, she pulled out a doggy treat and tucked it into her son’s grubby hand. “Give Skeez a snack. Take the grapes in the fridge for yourself.”

From the corner of her eye she saw Jonas’s boots move out of sight. The air stirred in back of her with his movement, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose in the sudden chill. She could hear him move toward the windows, around boxes. The brown paper on a roll of wallpaper crackled as he nudged it. He was a man who could enter a room and make it his own. Whether or not the effect was intentional, she couldn’t decide, but she’d seen him work his magic in a courtroom, and now, in her living room, all the energy and light centered on him. Standing up, she turned so that she could keep him and Gopher both in sight.

Watching Jonas peruse the stacks of boxes, run his thin, clever fingers over a pile of her books and settle in a dining chair he flipped around, Jessie sighed. The man claimed territory effortlessly. Give Jonas Riley a proverbial inch and he’d take the mile. Well, she’d let him past the front door, so she had no one to blame but herself. This was her space, not his. She got to set the ground rules.

And she definitely did not want to rehash old times.

“Making yourself comfortable, Jonas?” she asked politely.

His folded arms rested on the curved back of the chair. “Thank you, yes,” he replied, equally polite, nodding to her.

Holding the dog treat in one hand, Gopher hopped on one foot toward Jonas. “So, mister, you got horses and cows like old McDonald?”

“Yeah, a few.” Steady on Gopher, Jonas’s gaze was serious. “You like horses? Cows?”

“Yeah.” Gopher hopped another step.

Even the damned dog couldn’t leave Jonas alone, Jessie noted grouchily. Skeezix sniffed Jonas’s knee and then rested his head against his thigh, regarding him soulfully.

Jessie wanted to pull her hair. “Gopher, say goodbye to Mr. Riley. He’ll be leaving shortly.”

Two pairs of blue eyes met her own.

“Will I?” Jonas smiled, and her toes tingled, curled. His gaze dropped to those ten traitors.’