Daddy by Surprise (2 page)

Not that getting punched out actually had been on his list of things to do when he came to the Black Hills, but there’d been a moment when he stood up to that female bully that he’d felt heroic—invincible. Until her trained gorilla decked him. Luckily, the cute little barmaid whose honor he’d been defending was there to cushion his fall. In a really nice way.

He didn’t usually find himself attracted to petite women. His mother was short, but he doubted if anyone had ever called her petite. Rosaline Treadwell was a five-foot-two-inch dynamo who had only recently traded in her stiletto heels for golf shoes when she retired from the bank where she was a vice president in charge of corporate loans. She’d been instrumental in helping Jack buy the building that housed Treadwell and Associates. “It’s never too late for a perfect smile” was his marketing slogan, since his group of three dentists—two other orthodontists and one endodontist—catered to all ages. Jack specialized in adults. Kids were not his cup of Kool-Aid, as his sister liked to say.

“Hey, man,” Brian, the guy who had offered to buy him a drink—which Jack had ended up paying for—said. “You got off lucky. I know that Buster dude. I seen him knock a guy unconscious once over in Sturgis. You could be missing some teeth.”

Jack squeezed his jaw experimentally and bit down. Nothing loose. Thank God. He’d never hear the end of it from his mother if he returned to Denver needing emergency dental work. “Yeah, lucky me,” he muttered.

“Here you go,” the waitress said, returning with a glass of ice in one hand and a thick wad of paper towels in the other. She set both items in front of him. “The bar rags all smelled funky and I couldn’t find a zipper kind of baggie. That’s what I use when my kids get hurt. I put a couple of cubes in the bag, then cover it with a towel and let them whack the ice with a hammer. Distracts them from the pain and gets rid of some of their frustration.”

He could picture the image perfectly. He would have smiled, but his face was beginning to ache. “You have kids? Plural?”

Maybe he was drunker than he thought because he could see his harmless question had caused some offense. Her pretty blue eyes narrowed. “Yes, I do. Two boys.”

“I…um…meant that as a compliment. You look too young to have one kid, let alone two.”

Some of the fight went out of her posture. “Oh. Thanks. Let me buy you another shot,” she said, turning on the heel of her thick-soled running shoes. She paused to pick up the tray she’d dropped, then hurried across the room.

Her trim build reminded him of a long-distance runner—compact and lean. He swam laps every morning, but he’d been thinking about diversifying his workout routine to see more than two walls at opposite ends of his pool.

When she returned, he asked, “Do you run?”

She looked at Brian as if the question required an interpreter.

“10 Ks? Marathons?” Jack tried.

“Me?” Her eyes sparkled with humor, but there was something sad in her expression, too. As if the word triggered a case of might-have-beens. “I run after my kids. That’s about it.”

“Weren’t you in track in high school, Kat?” Brian asked. “I swear, that’s what somebody told me. Because you were always the fastest on our softball team.”

She shrugged. “Another lifetime, Brian. Or maybe a dream. I can’t remember which.” She leaned closer to Brian and added something Jack couldn’t quite catch.

Jack hated being the odd man out. People whispering behind his back. He’d experienced enough of that when rumors about his father had pretty much ruined his chance to fit in and have a normal life.

He dumped the glass of ice upside down on the towels. A couple of cubes rolled off the edge of the scarred tabletop.

She squatted to retrieve them, which gave Jack a fine view of her bosom—fleshy tan mounds squashed together by a black lace bra that peeked ever so provocatively above the edge of her low-cut top.

He forced himself to look away. Why? He asked himself as he slapped one corner of the paper towel over the other. She’d dressed provocatively to draw attention. Only an uptight prude—as Jaydene had labeled him—would be too self-conscious to stare.

Before he could change his mind and take another look, she bounced to her feet, dropping the dirty cubes into Brian’s empty beer glass. She picked it up, then said, “I didn’t mean to be rude, but anybody who knows me knows I don’t have time to work out. I love sports, but I haven’t even played softball since the year Brian and I were on the same team.”

“That’s ’cause she got knocked up a second time,” Brian said gauchely, causing twin spots of red to appear on her cheeks.

Jack palmed the already soggy handful of ice and paper towel like a wad of dog poop from one of Jaydene’s whippets and pressed it against his cheek. His whole face was starting to hurt.

“Do you have any aspirin or acetaminophen on you?” she asked, her brow knit in concern.

He shook his head.

She glanced over her shoulder toward the bar. “I’ll bring you something. I’m a mom. I don’t leave home without a full pharmacy in my purse. But you have to be discreet, okay? My boss thinks he could get sued if you had a bad reaction.”

“I’m not allergic to anything,” Jack said, trying not to move his jaw too much. His words probably sounded garbled, but she smiled as if she understood him completely.

Like that was possible. No woman he’d ever met really got him—including his fiancée and his mother. Everyone saw the outward signs of success—nice home, luxury car, booming practice—and assumed he was someone he wasn’t. Happy, secure, confident. All things he pretended to be.

It had taken a surprise and rather shocking confrontation with the woman he’d intended to marry to make him question his everyday reality. Like him, Jaydene pretended to be someone she wasn’t. Serious—she worked in a bank and volunteered at an adult school. Responsible—four years older than Jack, she seemed wise, witty and slightly irreverent. And in the three-plus years they’d been dating she’d never once expressed an interest in kinky, multiple-partner sex until the afternoon he showed up unexpectedly at her home and found her involved in a ménàge a trois—via the Internet.

Just picturing the lurid image of her legs spread on either side of her laptop with the little eyeball camera trained on her most private parts as her two partners—both men—did the same was almost enough to make him toss his last shot of anis-flavored booze.

After the initial shock had worn off, they’d talked. She’d called him repressed. Unadventurous. Boring. She’d implied that her participation in online sexual encounters was because she knew he would have shot down any suggestion that, as a couple, they try swinging.

And she was right.

He’d swung in a different direction. He took a long overdue vacation from work. Kissed his mom and sister goodbye, then jumped on his shiny new Harley and headed to the Black Hills. Close enough to Denver to get back quickly if he was needed, yet far enough away that it wasn’t home.

He’d picked the Black Hills of western South Dakota for two reasons. First, he was a closet fanatic of all things Old West. He didn’t decorate his house in antiques or anything, but he watched every television series and miniseries that came along. Every incarnation of
Lonesome Dove.
He had the entire
Deadwood
series on DVD. He also owned an extensive collection of western movies, from
Dances with Wolves
to the John Wayne classics. Recently he’d turned to romance novels to get his western fix, since his two favorite novelists, Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, were long dead.

Second, the Hills had a reputation that almost rivaled Las Vegas’s infamous “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” slogan. He was ready to cut loose and experience what Jaydene claimed he’d been missing. This was his time and he planned to live it to the fullest.

She just hadn’t warned that the experience would hurt.

K
AT WAITED PATIENTLY
for the R.U.B. to leave. She’d brought him a glass of water about an hour ago without his asking, but he’d failed to take the hint. Or stop drinking. Now he claimed to be killing the pain, but she had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the ache in his bruised jaw. Her gut told her this guy had woman problems.

“Kat!” Brian hollered, motioning her over. “Jack here says he wants to get a tattoo. I told him that was Master Jäger talking, but he says he don’t know anybody by that name.”

Laughing at his own joke, Brian would have toppled off his chair if Kat hadn’t been close enough to steady him. “Can I call your wife to come pick you up, Brian? You’re in no condition to drive.”

“Huh? No. Me’n my friend need another round.”

“Not unless your friend plans on letting you sleep it off in his hotel room.” Brian wasn’t a bad guy; he just didn’t know his limit.

“Aw, Kat, you’re no fun. What happened to you? You used to be fun. ’Member when we played on the same softball team? You ’n me ’n…um, what was your second husband’s name? I forgot.”

She rolled her eyes. “Me, too. About as often as he forgets to send his child support.” She didn’t care if that was more information than the stranger who was staring at her needed to know. She looked at him and said, “What about it, mister? Are you claiming responsibility for this inebriated galoot?”

His left eyebrow rose in a perfect arch that gave his face a sort of Daniel Craig look. She’d seen that particular James Bond movie three times. Now, there was a man with big-screen swoo. “How ’bout if I buy him dinner?”

“Good idea. Make sure he orders coffee, not wine.”

He nodded but made no effort to get up. She assumed he was waiting for a menu, so she explained, “We’re just a bar, but there are a bunch of restaurants around. The one next door has a pretty decent chicken-fried steak.”

He blanched, which made the faint bruise on his cheek more noticeable.

“Are you feeling sick?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s just…well, my dad took drugs for his high cholesterol since his mid-forties, had quadruple bypass surgery and suffered a fatal heart attack when he was fifty-eight. A chicken-fried steak sounds lethal.” He paused a moment, then shrugged. “That’s what I’m going to order.”

“You have a death wish?”

“Me? Heck, no. Ask anybody who knows me. I’m boringly predictable. Especially where food is concerned. I wash my prewashed spinach,” he said, tellingly.

She didn’t see what was so bad about that. She might, too, if she could afford the bagged stuff.

“This trip is about doing things I would never normally do,” he added.

“Like get a tattoo,” Brian repeated. “That’s why he came in here. To get drunk enough not to feel the needles, but I told him how bad it was when I got this baby done.” He yanked up his shirtsleeve to show them the large, colorful parrot on his upper arm. “Hurt like freakin’ hell. Worth it, though. I call her Linda, after my wife. That’s Spanish for beautiful.”

“Leen-da,” Kat said softly, using the accent she’d picked up while satisfying her foreign-language minor.

The stranger must have heard because he looked at her sharply…until Brian slapped his hand on the table. “Hey. I know. You can hire Kat to do your tat, man. She don’t use needles. She does that other stuff. What’s it called, Kat?”

“Henna,” she supplied, wishing the bar was busier so she’d have an excuse to get out of this conversation. She’d operated a booth for years at summer street fairs, giving artful, semipermanent tattoos. Henna was a stain that bonded to the skin and didn’t wash off, but faded slowly enough to create the illusion of a tattoo—without the regret that often came later.

Brian’s newfound friend looked interested. “That’s brownish red, isn’t it? But you can do black, right? A friend of mine got a really elaborate armband design that looked like the real thing from a distance. And in photos,” he added, as though that was important to him.

She assumed he was one of those people who put a lot of stock in what others thought. The kind who’d judged her all her life.

“I only do henna.”

He scrutinized her a moment. “You don’t have any black henna?”

“Actually, there’s no such thing. Black dye contains PPD. I can’t remember what that stands for, exactly, but it’s outlawed by the FDA.”

He exchanged a look with Brian. A guy look. She knew it well.
Law? Law? We don’t need no stinkin’ laws.
It was the same with marriage vows. “But it’s still used,” the man insisted. “Like I said, my friend was on a beach in Florida over spring break when he had it done. No side effects. No problems whatsoever.”

“Yeah. Same with my wife,” Brian said. “Linda had one done on her leg when we were in Mexico. Liked it so much she bought a kit. She was going to give Kat some competition at the street fair but never got around to it. Like usual. It’s collecting dust with all the other crap in my garage.”

“Could I buy it?” the R.U.B. asked.

“Hell, you can have it, man. No problem.”

Kat had an opinion about Brian’s wife’s lack of successful endeavors, but she kept it to herself. “How long ago did you buy it?” she asked. “An out-of-date product could be even more dangerous.”

Brian frowned in thought, but before he could come up with a date, her prospective customer said, “I’m healthy as a horse, and like I said earlier, not allergic to anything. Will you do a design in black if I supply my own ink?”

“Don’t you want to know how much I charge?”

“Not really,” he said, confirming her first impression. He must have money. And she’d be a fool not to let a hundred bucks or so float into her pocket—even if she wasn’t crazy about using a product she’d never tried.

He had several plusses in his favor. He wasn’t a sweaty, stinky behemoth, like several of her former clients. And a part of her was really curious about what was under that do-rag. A receding hairline, no doubt.

“You don’t have to worry about the price, Jack,” Brian said, slapping the man on the back. “Kat’ll treat you fair. She’s gonna be a schoolteacher pretty soon and then she won’t have to work here no more.”

Kat grasped the convoluted logic. She’d been working at a bar too long. She was beginning to talk drunk.

“None of my teachers were ever that pretty,” Jack complained.

“Mine, neither,” Brian agreed.

The two men toasted their mutual deprivation.

Kat sighed as she pulled her pen from her hip pocket. “Here’s my number,” she said, neatly printing the seven digits on the grainy white surface of a napkin. “Call me tomorrow. I want to research the black dye on the Internet. If it’s too risky—”

He cut her off. “It’s my risk, and I’ll sign a paper abslo…absov…absolving—tough word—you of any responsibility.”

She was curious about why this was so important to him, but she knew better than to ask in front of another guy. Not if she wanted a truthful answer.

“If you want to buy Brian’s so-called black henna, that’s up to you. I’ll let you know my answer in the morning. But I don’t have a cell, so you’ll have to call before ten if you want to set something up.”

“What happens at ten?”

“I take my son to his summer arts program. I normally get back around eleven, though, so I could probably fit you in then.”

“Can you do more than one tattoo?”

“I have a folder full of designs. The price depends on the complexity and how long it takes.”

“No problem. Do I come to you?”

She gripped her pen a little tighter. Normally she did her work in a booth surrounded by other vendors. She’d done tats at her house for friends and family members, but she’d never invited a stranger to her home before. Nor had she gone to a man’s motel room. The second image felt a bit too sleazy. “I guess that’ll work. We can do it on the deck. I’ll give you directions when you call.”

That seemed to work for him. He carefully folded the napkin and put it in the pocket of his jeans. She turned to leave, but a hand on her wrist stopped her. “I don’t know your last name, Kat.”

“Petroski.”

He repeated it slowly, as if committing it to memory. She happened to look at his lips as he murmured the syllables and a tingle coursed through her body from the top of her scalp to the tips of her toes.

A direct hit of swoo.

“I’m Jack Treadwell,” he said, offering his hand.

She swallowed a gulp of courage.
He wants to shake your hand, not kiss you, you idiot.

She squared her shoulders and held her breath as she gave him her hand. She tried not to notice how smooth and warm his skin felt. Not sweaty as Drew’s had been the first time he touched her—pulling her to her feet after accidentally bowling her over on the softball field. Or rough from working on engines the way Pete’s were to this day from his hobby of building hot rods. One quick, firm shake, then she yanked back. “Gotta go. If you don’t call, I’ll assume this yearning to get tattooed was the Jäger talking.”

“Oh, I’ll be there. One more thing to cross off my list.”

She knew all about lists—goals. She was one semester away from realizing a dream she’d set for herself when she was ten. She wanted to be a teacher and change people’s lives. The way Mrs. Findham—her fifth-grade teacher—had changed hers. Lois Findham. The first person to see Kat’s potential and praise her efforts. To a child caught in an emotionally brutal custody tug-of-war, the positive attention had given Kat a smidgen of hope.

Not that Kat’s path had been quick or easy—thanks to the reckless choices she’d made—but she was so close to the end of the tunnel she could almost shout with joy.

And shout she would this coming December after she completed her student teaching. In the meantime, the extra cash this R.U.B. was offering would come in handy. And despite the fact that she felt a dangerous level of swoo emanating from him, she wasn’t worried. She’d learned her lesson—twice.

This was a business transaction, not a date. Besides, he really wasn’t her type. In fact, she didn’t even like motorcycles.

J
ACK WATCHED
Kat for a few moments longer as she made her rounds. A bright spot in an otherwise stereotypical bar decorated in an Old West style that was probably far, far from the real thing. He considered himself fairly well versed in Old West history and legend—enough to know that the facts behind the legend often got blurred in the retelling for the sake of the story. He didn’t expect to see much of the
real
Old West here—at least not during this hectic celebration, but he could buy a forest-service map and head into the Hills. Do some exploring.
Wind up lost.

He wasn’t sure whether the voice in his head was his mother’s or Jaydene’s. Frowning, he took a drink from the glass of water the waitress—Kat—had brought without him asking. It was cold and delicious. He hadn’t realized how parched he was. Maybe he was also drunker than he’d thought. Kat had seemed to think so when she’d urged him to get some supper.

“So, how ’bout a fricken…shicken…fried chicken steak?”

Brian chortled. “Okay.” He dug in his pocket for what Jack hoped was money, not car keys.

“Lesgo,” he said, tossing a ten on the table.

Jack added another twenty just to be safe. He’d lost track of their bill several rounds ago. He looked for Kat to thank her and confirm their meeting the next day, but she was nowhere to be seen.

The disappointment he felt surprised him. She was pretty. And nice. But that didn’t mean he’d ever give in to the attraction he felt for her. He’d made it a rule never to date women with children. He didn’t like kids. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why. His father’s career as a dentist—and his life—had been ruined by a lying, conniving child who had been coached by his greedy, low-life parents to say Jack’s father had touched him inappropriately. And since Jack’s dad had been performing the dental procedure on a weekend—free of charge—to an underprivileged child, there hadn’t been any staff or dental assistant to say otherwise.

Jack had been fifteen. Even in a city the size of Denver, the rumors had gotten around. His once respected, beloved, community-minded father found himself defending his honor, his veracity and his livelihood. The team of lawyers that represented his father’s insurance company had pushed for a settlement to avoid the cost of a jury trial. They’d argued that the scandal would blow over faster—and his family would be saved the humiliation of appearing in court and hearing the allegation voiced against him—if he agreed to settle.

Money changed hands. The charges were dropped. His father was never the same. Nobody was.

All because of a lying little brat.

Jack paused in the doorway of the bar for one last glance over his shoulder. With any luck, she wouldn’t look as cute and appealing tomorrow when he went to her house to get yet one more thing crossed off his list. Dull and unadventurous Jack was going to get a tattoo. Sort of.

He told himself if he liked the looks of it—and the way it made him feel—he might get the real thing done later on. Changing his image might be the first step in changing his life. Maybe Jack would no longer be a dull boy.

Maybe.