Dixie Browning - A Knight In Rusty Armor

Feeling a familiar tug of emotion, he put through another call, reached Sharon, took a deep, steadying breath and asked to speak to his son.

“Matt’s in school.”

He’d forgotten the time difference. There was a long silence, and then, “How come whenever I call, he’s never available. If it’s not school it’s soccer practice. If it’s not that, he’s sleeping over with a friend. Give me a break, Sharon. He’s my son, dammit.”

“I see you haven’t changed. If you don’t get your way, you resort to swearing. Maybe it’s better if I don’t let you meet him at all. I don’t think you’d be a very good influence.”

“Oh, and I suppose Saint Andrew is a great influence,” he jeered. Trav had never even met the man. For all he knew, Andrew Rollins was an ideal role model, but dammit, Matthew was his son, not Rollins’s. Trav had never even spoken to the boy, much less seen him. He still found it hard to believe that for the past twelve years he’d had a son, and until eleven months ago he hadn’t even known about him.

Damned if he wasn’t tempted to threaten her again with a lawyer, but if he knew Sharon—and he did, having been married to her for a few miserable years a long time ago—that would only get her back up. As she’d been quick to point out the first time he’d mentioned joint custody, the law would side with her. At the time he’d been a bachelor living in rented rooms, and she was able to provide a home and a stable family. “Three guesses which side social services will come down on,” she’d taunted.

Trav had bitten his tongue and reminded himself that she’d been the one to get in touch with him after all this time, to tell him he had a son. She’d hardly have done that if she meant to keep them apart.

Trav had never claimed to be a family man. What he was, was a duty-bound, by-the-books career serviceman. He’d been called a loner. If so, it was only because he didn’t know how to be anything else. He was no better at relationships than his own father had been, as Sharon had pointed out more than a few times. But sixteen years ago, head over heels in lust, if not in love, he’d been willing to learn.

Evidently he hadn’t learned fast enough or well enough. Now, at the advanced age of thirty-nine, he might not know much about families and forming close ties, but he was determined to give it his best shot. Matthew was his own flesh and blood.

Trav’s first impulse on learning that he had a twelve-year-old son was to fly out to the West Coast where Sharon now lived with her second husband, their two daughters and Matthew. But she’d told him to wait. To give her time to prepare the boy for the fact that Andrew Rollins was not his real father.

So he’d waited, and then waited some more. While he was waiting, he’d bought a few acres and started building a house. Next he’d looked around for someone to help him create some semblance of a stable family, to tip the scales in his favor in case it was needed. Meanwhile, he’d sent money and arranged for child support to be taken from his paycheck, and he’d started writing to the boy. He’d sent pictures. He’d sent a baseball glove, soccer gear, a football and a spinning rod, complete with a fully equipped tackle box.

He’d written a bunch of stuff he probably shouldn’t have, all about how his own father had been career Coast Guard, and how one of Trav’s mother’s ancestors had owned thousands of acres in northeast North Carolina, but by the time her descendents had found out about it, it had dwindled to a few hundred acres of swamp that was now part of a wildlife refuge. He’d promised that one day they’d explore it together, canoeing, backpacking—whatever it took.

Oh boy, he’d gone way out on a limb. Trying to establish some kind of a relationship, he’d barged in without waiting to be invited. Being able to size up a situation quickly and act on it was an advantage in his line of work. It could mean the difference between success and failure. But in personal matters it could lead to a situation he didn’t know how to handle.

Matthew had never written back, but Sharon had assured him that it was only because he was ashamed of his poor handwriting and was working hard on improving it. She’d said something about one of those learning disabilities that had been discovered recently. A lot of bright kids had it. Some of them even took pills for it.

Things had changed since he was a kid. Trav was just beginning to realize how much he didn’t know about being a parent.

After giving up on another fruitless attempt to reach his son, he dialed the number of Ru’s friend, Moselle Sawyer, and got the same irritating message. He yawned, then sneezed and then turned as his houseguest shuffled into the living room.

“Someone named Kelli called while you were out. She said she’d call back. I left a note in the kitchen.”

“You sound better.”

“I’ve decided to live ”

“Glad to hear it.” She looked better. In fact, she looked a hell of a lot better, even with her hair in a shaggy braid down her back and a limp black sweater that did nothing at all for her looks.

“Who’s Kelli?” She handed him a note she’d written on the back of an envelope.

Trav glanced at the note, then looked over at the woman who’d spent the past forty-eight hours in his bed The thought that ran through his mind was not only inappropriate, it was impractical. She was a lot better looking than he’d first thought, if a man happened to like his women long, lean and chilly.

Personally, he liked them warm, with a little more meat on the bone. Plus a lot more animation. But then, he’d traveled down that road before and had no intention of repeating the mistake. “She’s my fiancée. My ex-fiancée, that is. We’re, uh—still on friendly terms.”

Kelli was nothing if not friendly. It was one of the things he’d liked best about her—she was always up. Bright, chipper, talkative. If, after a while it had begun to get on his nerves, he figured that was his problem, not hers. “Did she say why she was calling?”

“No. She sounded sort of surprised when I answered. She asked if I was Sharon. Who’s Sharon?”

Somewhere between boot camp and being commissioned, Trav had picked up a few manners. Hell, he’d even graduated from knife-and-fork class, like every other mustang trying to become an officer and a gentleman.

So he politely refrained from telling her that it was none of her business. “Sharon is my ex-wife, Ms. Roberts, currently happily remarried and living on the West Coast. Now, is there anything else you’d like to know?”

So much for gentlemanly manners. If he’d tossed a lit firecracker in her lap, she couldn’t have looked more startled.

Startled?

Make that frightened.

Two

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, Ms. Roberts.”

“How did you know my name?”

He frowned. “Your name?”

“You called me Ms. Roberts. I didn’t tell you that.”

If there’d been any color at all in her face before, it was gone now, except for the shadows under her eyes. “It’s on your registration. Ruanna Roberts? That is you, isn’t it?”

The lady was a walking minefield. “Look, I’m sorry. If you’re a spook on assignment, or in the witness protection program, I don’t want to know about it. It’s none of my business. I just thought it might be a good idea to clean out the trunk of your car before it—Anyway, I grabbed the papers from the glove compartment while I was at it, and I happened to see the name.”

Her shoulders lifted and fell, making him aware for the first time that she wasn’t quite as skinny as he’d first thought. At least, not all over.

“I’m the one who should apologize. I’m not—not either of those things you mentioned. It’s just that—well, I have this thing about privacy,” she finished weakly.