A Daddy for Dillon (9 page)

“I guess it’s easy to see that I can’t buy the latest fashions,” she said.

His quiet laugh caught her off guard.

“If you waltzed through this kitchen wearing the latest fashion, I wouldn’t know it. Besides,” he added with an appreciative glance at her, “you don’t need special clothes to look nice.”

He might call himself just a cowboy, but he definitely knew what a woman wants to hear, she thought.

“Well, I have what’s important to me.” Looking over at him, she allowed herself to gaze at his dark, rugged features. A shadow of a beard covered his chin and jaws, and faint, crescent-shaped lines were etched beneath his eyes. He’d been going since before sunup, but she figured the stress of the lost horses had worn him down more than the physical energy it had taken to find them. “Sassy believes someone here at the ranch let your horses loose. Is that what you think?”

His lips pressed into a tight line. “Believe me, Sassy isn’t the only one saying those things. But I’m not going to jump to conclusions or presume anything—yet.”

There was a note of annoyance in his voice, and she figured the questions being gossiped about on the ranch bothered him greatly. As manager, the ranch was a reflection of his work. And his work was clearly his life.

“Maybe the sheriff’s department should investigate.”

“Quint’s brother-in-law
is
the Undersheriff. But we can’t call Brady Donovan unless, God forbid, something more concrete happens. Up until now it’s all just fishy assumptions. And the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department has more important things to do than go chasing after suspicions.”

“Yes. I suppose you are right.”

He glanced at her and the hardness in his eyes yielded to a soft look of concern. “You aren’t frightened to be living here, are you? I know it’s twenty miles from town and the nearest neighbor is Tyler Pickens and he’s at least five miles away, but we do have our own security in and around the ranch yard.”

“Yes, Sassy said there were guards at the barns. She’s never mentioned a neighbor, though. Does he have a connection to the Chaparral?”

Laramie shook his head. “Not at all. About ten years ago he bought the land next to this ranch and hauled in a huge herd of Polled Herefords. Since then he’s pretty much kept to himself. I don’t think he likes people. But the feeling is mutual, I think. Most people don’t like him. The men who work for him say he’s tough but fair-minded and that’s about all they have to say. Quint and I leave him alone and he leaves us alone.”

“Some people are just more comfortable being alone.”

Seeing he was nearly finished with the food on his plate, she left the table and went to start a fresh pot of coffee.

As she filled the machine with cold water, he said, “Well, I hope you don’t mind being alone because I’m going to be away from the house for the next week.”

Taken by complete surprise, she whirled around and fixed him with a blank stare. “Gone? Where?”

“Spring roundup starts Monday. That’s always a very busy time here on the ranch. We gather all the new calves for branding and vaccinations and things like that.”

“And that takes more than one day?” She could see that her question amused him, and she frowned at him. “Laramie, I don’t know about cattle ranches. Especially one this big.”

The thought of him being gone for several days had practically jerked her feet out from under her. Even though he had an erratic schedule and she didn’t always see him, she still knew he was in the house at night, that if she needed him he’d be there. Funny how quickly she’d come to count on his presence. And not for safety reasons, either.

“Sorry, Leyla. I guess I’ve done this sort of thing for so long that it’s all second nature to me. I forget that not everyone knows about raising cattle. But yeah, it will take five, six, sometimes even seven days. Depending on how things go. With the spring being mild, we’ll probably have to go higher into the mountains and drive down some of the cow/calf pairs. That takes more time than gathering the valley calves.”

With the coffee brewing, she walked back over to the table. As she grew closer to him, she could feel his gaze darting over her. That was all it took to fill her whole body with uncomfortable heat.

“So you won’t be coming here to the house at all next week? Where will you eat and sleep?”

“I’ll try to make it back to the ranch a few times during the week. It just depends on how things are going with roundup. The rest of the time, I’ll be sleeping on the ground on bedrolls and eating off the chuck wagon with the rest of the men. The Chaparral does roundup just like the early ranches did more than a hundred years ago. We’ve kept that tradition all this time.”

It pleased her that he considered her intelligent enough to appreciate his work and the history connected to it. Most of the men she encountered at her former job looked at her as a sex object with no ability to think past the length of her nose. Laramie treated her differently.

“Once, when I was working at the Blue Mesa I overheard a pair of ranchers arguing about whether to use horses or four-wheelers to gather their cattle. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but the man who preferred horses got very heated about it all. I thought they were going to come to blows. I actually wanted to dump hot coffee on both their heads,” she admitted. “But now that I’m living out here, I see the advantage of doing things on horseback. The terrain is very rough.”

He nodded. “Only a horse can take us to the rugged spots we need to go. And it’s a proven fact that cows handled by men on horseback are much less stressed.”

“Guess it makes sense that another animal moving among them feels more comfortable than a roaring, smelly machine,” she said thoughtfully.

He grinned at her. “My, my. I do think you’re catching on to all of this ranching stuff, Miss Chee.”

The sensual, teasing curve to his lips had her thoughts straying back to the kiss he’d given her. She’d been shocked at how much she’d wanted to go on kissing him. How much she’d wanted to wrap her arms around him and keep holding on. The memory of those moments had never left her. Even worse, she longed to repeat them.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Between you and Sassy I’m learning.” Before he could make a reply to that, she hurried over to the cabinet to fetch the coffee.

Moments later, she returned to the table with a steaming mug and a saucer full of fig wafers. “I’m sorry,” she told him, “but you’ll have to make do tonight with Dillon’s favorite dessert. Because you gave me the day off, I didn’t do any baking.”

“If fig cookies are good enough for Dillon, then they’re good for me,” he said. “I wish it wasn’t so late and he could eat some with me.”

Dillon needs a daddy
.

Now why was Sassy’s remark haunting her now? Leyla wondered. Laramie Jones wasn’t a daddy type of man. He had all the makings, but he didn’t want that for himself. No, if she ever did find a daddy for Dillon, it would have to be a man who really wanted to be a father. Someone who’d always hoped and planned to be a father. And from what Laramie had told her, he didn’t fall into that bracket.

Deciding she’d spent enough time with the man, she began to gather up the dishes and carry them over to the cabinet. She was scraping the leftovers into a plastic bowl when he came up behind her.

“Don’t do that. I’ll take care of it.”

His low voice was like water flowing over a bed of gravel. Just the sound of it caused her eyes to close and goose bumps to cover her forearms.

“This is my job,” she said thickly. “Not yours.”

“Not tonight.”

The lowly spoken words caused her to spin around, and as soon as she was facing him his arms slipped past her waist until his hands were planted on the counter’s edge. The move pinned her in a seductive trap between him and the cabinets.

With her heart pounding, she dared to glance up at him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

One corner of his mouth lifted to a vague smile. “I’m trying to apologize.”

Her mind leaped backward as she tried to recall what he’d said or done that had been so offensive.

“Apologize?”

“For asking you to heat my supper. I’m a big boy who can take care of himself.” Lifting both hands to her face, he rubbed both thumbs against her cheekbones. “But I wanted an excuse to have your company.”

She had to force herself to breathe. “Laramie—that doesn’t make sense,” she finally managed to say.

“You’re right. A grown man like me shouldn’t be playing games. I should’ve just asked you to join me. But I was afraid you’d turn me down. Instead I used your job to get you in here.”

She should push his hands away, she thought. She should duck her head under his arm and scurry out of the room. But something about the touch of his hands, the gentleness in his eyes made her want to be close to him.

“I’m nothing special,” she murmured.

“I happen to think you are.”

The thickness in her throat was very close to becoming a ball of tears. And as she blinked her eyes to ward away the moisture, she wondered how different her life might have been if she’d met Laramie three years ago. Probably no different at all, she told herself. She’d only been seventeen at the time. He wouldn’t have looked at her as a woman back then. And now, well, it felt as though she’d grown a decade older.

“I’ll be leaving the ranch in a little while. So we can only be friends.”

His blue gaze locked on to hers. “I have friends who happen to be women. But I don’t want to touch their hair or hold them in my arms or kiss their lips. The way I want to do with you.”

It was one thing to be courted by a brash guy who hadn’t yet learned to be a man. But it was quite another to have a mature, responsible man like Laramie imply he was attracted to her.

“There must be a shortage of women here on the ranch,” she tried to joke.

“It takes a special breed to live on this ranch and like it. And I haven’t exactly been looking for a woman.” His hands left her face to flatten against the small of her back. “But I’ve been looking at you.”

His touch activated every cell in her body, yet his words affected her the most. It would be so easy to let herself hold on to this rugged man, to let his strength comfort her, his sexuality pleasure her. But she didn’t want to make a fool of herself a second time. She had Dillon to think of first.

“Laramie, I’m still not over Heath,” she said bluntly.

His brows pulled together. “Heath? Was that Dillon’s father?”

Just hearing that name connected to the word
father
was laughable. Heath had been a joke, she thought, a very sad joke.

Looking away from him, she said bitterly, “Only in a genetic sense. He’s the furthest thing from a parent that anyone could be.”

“Are you still in love with him?”

His question momentarily stunned her, but then she suddenly realized that Laramie didn’t know what had happened between her and Heath. He had no way of knowing that the guy had killed her love with his deception. “No! Our relationship ended when he walked out.”

“Love doesn’t always end just because that person hurts you. And I have no idea of how you once felt about the man. You must have loved him. Otherwise, I don’t think you would’ve had his baby.”

Groaning with embarrassment, she moved out of his arms and walked out to the atrium. There the footlights running along the pathway to the house cast a faint glow of light across the plants and cushioned wicker couch, but Leyla was too restless to sit. Instead she stood staring out at the lawn, remembering the evening Laramie had joined Dillon on the swing set. The image of the two of them together had touched her in a way that she’d not fully understood until now.

She was still standing by the glass wall when she heard Laramie’s footsteps enter the atrium, but she didn’t look around, even as his hand came down on her shoulder and her insides wilted at his touch.

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed for being human, Leyla,” he said quietly.

She tried to swallow away the thickness in her throat. “I was too young to know the man was using me, Laramie. At the time...I thought I loved him. I believed everything that he told me about the two of us getting married and having a home and family.”

“I figure you wanted to believe him. That you needed to believe him.”

The fact that he understood that much gave her the courage to turn and face him. “I guess I was looking for love and security. You see, things at home were never that great. My dad always talked about work, but he never did much of it. Mom cleaned houses in town to pay the bills. From what my sisters tell me it’s still that way with my parents.”

“And you wanted something better for yourself.”

She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, Laramie. A higher standard of living wasn’t what I was looking for when I met Heath. I’d never had much. And a person can’t really know about that sort of stuff until they’re exposed to it. What I wanted was to feel safe and protected by someone who cared about me.”

“You didn’t get that from your parents? Your siblings?”

“Dad only loves himself. And Mom only has so much to spread among us four kids. My sisters and I care about each other. But they were always jealous of me—because people called me pretty and not them. It’s hard to say about my brother. He’s very quiet and pretty much keeps to himself.”

His fingers kneaded her shoulder. “So Heath made you feel loved and wanted.”

She nodded ruefully. “Until I told him about the baby. Then he turned into a complete stranger. At first he accused me of trying to trap him, and then he accused me of sleeping around. Finally he admitted he was the father but that he’d never had serious intentions toward me. He’d said he didn’t want any part of raising a kid or paying child support. That crushed me. But I realized I didn’t want a guy like him around me or my baby.”

“What did you think about having the baby?”

“At first I was frightened because I knew my father would be angry. It turned out that he was so furious he more or less drove me out of the house and away from the family. But that made my pregnancy even more special to me. The coming baby meant that I would have someone who needed and loved me.”