Natural Born Daddy (10 page)

Cody tried to stare him down, but eventually he nodded. “If I do, you'll handle things with Daddy?”

Jordan heaved a sigh of resignation at the renewed note of determination he heard in his brother's voice. He knew in his gut that Cody wouldn't be swayed. Under the same circumstances, he probably wouldn't have been, either.

“I'll do my best,” he promised. “On one condition.”

Cody regarded him suspiciously. “What's that?”

“You'll tell us where you are. You won't cut yourself off from the family.”

His brother nodded. “If you'll swear that none of you will ever tell Melissa where I am. I don't want to ever hear her pitiful excuses for what happened tonight. I don't ever want to see her again at all.”

Jordan thought his brother was protesting a little too much, but he agreed. “We'll keep your whereabouts from her, if that's what you want. I'll see that the rest of the family agrees.”

“Jessie, too?”

Jordan grinned. Their sister-in-law was a soft touch when it came to romance. “Jessie, too,” he promised.

He bunked out on Cody's lumpy old sofa. Eventually he went to sleep, still praying that by morning his younger brother would come to his senses. No matter what he'd promised and would do if he had to, he really, really didn't want to be the one to explain to his father that Cody had taken off.

Harlan Adams had a tendency to fly off the handle and go after the messenger when he got bad news. This particular message was very likely to get him blasted with a shotgun.

C
ody was gone when Jordan awoke at daybreak. Obviously his brother had managed to find the truck keys in his pocket or he'd had a spare set hidden away that he'd forgotten about the night before in his fury over his girlfriend's betrayal.

Jordan groaned as he thought about what his father's reaction was going to be to the news. He worried, too, about whether Harlan could still handle all of the ranch's strenuous activities. As vital and fit as his father was, he had been depending more and more on Cody to run the day-to-day operations at White Pines. It was something that would have to be discussed, but to be perfectly honest, Jordan dreaded getting into it. His father hated even the slightest hint that Cody's role at White Pines had gradually become equal to or even more important than his own.

First things first, though. He had promised Kelly he'd be back this morning to offer more help with the fences. She'd probably be delighted if he failed to show, but he wasn't about to give her an excuse to accuse him of letting her down. Obviously she
already had a lot she was blaming him for, garbage from their past he hadn't even been aware was simmering in her head. The workings of the female mind had always been a puzzle to him, except with Kelly. Now it appeared she was falling into that same incomprehensible pattern of behavior.

With some reluctance he reached for the phone and dialed the ranch. To his vague relief, Dani answered. At least with her, he wouldn't have to explain past actions.

“Hi, Jordan,” she said so eagerly it made his heart flip over. “Thanks for the pizza. It was scrumpsi-delicious.”

He grinned, despite his mood. “I'm glad you liked it.”

“Did you and Mommy have a fight after I fell asleep in the car?” she asked, a frightened note in her voice. It was the concern of a child who'd already seen her father walk out of her life, no doubt after more than one angry exchange with her mother.

Jordan's heart thudded dully. How much could she possibly have heard? Why the devil hadn't they been more discreet? They'd both assumed that Dani was sleeping soundly in the back seat. “Why would you think that, munchkin?”

“Because Mommy looks all sad this morning and she yelled at me for watching a video instead of coming to take my bath.”

So, Kelly looked sad, did she? He'd have to think about what that meant. As for her attitude toward Dani, he was pretty sure he wasn't the one responsible for that. “How many times had she called you to take your bath?”

“Once,” Dani said.

Jordan had his doubts. “Really? Just once?”

“Maybe it was twice.”

More likely double that, Jordan guessed. “Don't you think that could have had something to do with why she yelled?”

Dani sighed. “Maybe,” she conceded. “She still looks sad, though. Are you coming over?”

“In a bit. Is your mom there?”

“She's in the shower.”

The vivid image that appeared in Jordan's mind could have steamed up the whole state of Texas: Kelly naked, slick with water, her body provocatively covered with suds, his hands sliding slowly over her. He nearly moaned out loud, then caught himself. Thoughts like that about Kelly had never occurred to him in the past or, if they had, he had banished them at once. It was getting more and more difficult now to forget such images.

“Okay, munchkin, would you be sure to tell her I called?” He was proud of the steadiness of his voice when his pulse was still ricocheting wildly. “Tell her I have to spend some time with my father this morning, but I'll be there as soon as I can, okay? Can you remember that?”

“I can remember.”

“Tell her the minute she gets out of the shower.”

“Okay. ‘Bye, Jordan.”

“‘Bye, munchkin. See you later.”

Jordan left Cody's shortly after hanging up. The trip to the main house took only a few minutes, not nearly long enough for him to decide how to tell his father that Cody was gone. He didn't catch a break once he was there, either. He found Harlan already
seated in the dining room, the newspaper spread open in front of him.

His father regarded him with open speculation as Jordan poured himself a cup of coffee and plucked a corn muffin he didn't really want off the buffet.

“You didn't listen to a word I said to you, did you?” his father grumbled when Jordan was seated at the table.

“Which words of wisdom are you accusing me of ignoring?”

“You spent the night with that woman.”

He noticed that the note of glee in his father's voice contradicted the somewhat negative phrasing of the statement. It simply confirmed Jordan's suspicions that his father had been trying out a little reverse psychology on him by warning him away from Kelly.

“I assume you're referring to Kelly, and no, I did not spend the night with her,” Jordan told him irritably, cutting the muffin into precise little sections to avoid having to meet his father's gaze. “I was at Cody's.”

That grabbed his father's attention. Harlan's gaze narrowed suspiciously. “What the devil were you doing there?”

“Trying to persuade him not to hightail it away from here.”

“Dammit all!” Harlan set his coffee cup down so hard, the coffee splattered all over the tablecloth. He made no attempt to blot it up. “Cody's leaving? Without a word to me? Damn that boy's hide.”

“He's already left,” Jordan corrected.

“Why would he want to go and do something crazy like that? We have work to do. He couldn't have picked a worse time for a vacation.”

“I don't think he sees this as a vacation.”

The color drained out of his father's face. “He's taken off for good?”

“So he claims.”

He stared at Jordan, disbelief and anger warring on his face. “That's nuts,” he protested. “He loves this place. It'll be his one day. You and Luke will get your shares, of course, but the ranch will belong to Cody.”

“Which is exactly as it should be. He's the one who always wanted it.”

“So, why the hell did he go and leave?” He waved his finger under Jordan's nose. “I'll tell you this, if he doesn't have a darn good explanation, I'll cut him out of my will, that's what I'll do.”

His father's face was turning bright red as his anger mounted. Jordan suspected, though, that beneath that anger there was genuine concern. For all of his domineering attitude and his manipulations, Harlan loved his sons.

“Come on now, Daddy, settle down,” he soothed. “You don't know the whole story.”

“So tell me,” his father snapped.

Jordan wasn't sure how much detail Cody would want him going into, but he realized his father wouldn't be satisfied with some evasive answer. “He and Melissa had some kind of a falling out. A pretty bad one. He needed to get his head straight, so he took off.”

“To go where?”

“He didn't say. He did promise to let us know where he winds up on the condition that we never
share that with Melissa. Who knows, maybe once he has time to cool off, he'll change his mind and come straight back here.”

His father's shoulders sagged. “I always knew that boy was going to wake up too late and see what his fooling around and taking her for granted had cost him. Did she leave him for somebody else?”

Jordan refused to say. “I don't know that for sure.” He studied his father worriedly. “Will you be okay around here? Have you got enough help?”

As he'd expected, Harlan immediately scowled at the question. “Boy, I was running this place when the whole bunch of you were in diapers. I suppose I'm capable of putting in a few more years of hard work.”

“Luke would be willing to help out, I'm sure.”

“He has his own place and his own family to think about.” Harlan shook his head. “Dammit, Jordan, I don't want to tell your mama about this. This means some of those trips she has planned will have to be postponed. Besides that, she dotes on Cody. He was her baby.”

Jordan wasn't sure there was much truth in that. He'd never noticed that his mother doted on anyone in the household except his father. Still, he asked, “Do you want me to tell her?”

“No, I'll do it.” He leveled a hard gaze at Jordan. “There's just one thing I want to know, son. Why the hell didn't you do something to stop him? This thing with Melissa would have passed over quick enough, if he'd stayed here and dealt with it. Now who knows how long it'll fester inside him and keep him from coming home.”

Jordan's own sense of guilt was as painful as any accusation his father could throw at him. “I did what I
could,” he said tersely. He stood. “You're sure you'll be okay?”

Harlan sighed. “I always am.”

Despite the assurance, Jordan squeezed his father's shoulder on his way past. “I love you, old man.”

His father's weathered, callused hand patted his. “I know you do, son.”

“So does Cody.”

His father nodded. “I know that, too.” He glanced up. “You on your way back to Houston?”

“No. I'm going back over to Kelly's. She needs more help with that fence.”

“Exactly how long will you be sticking around here, then?”

“That remains to be seen,” Jordan said.

An awful lot depended on how long it took him to get Kelly to agree to his proposal. At some point in the past twenty-four hours he'd resolved not to leave until she said yes. Maybe it was Cody's reaction to losing Melissa, maybe it was his father's to Cody's departure, but suddenly he'd grasped that there was nothing more important on earth than family and he wanted to claim Kelly and Dani once and for all as his.

* * *

Kelly hadn't bothered the night before to tell Jordan that she and Dani always went to church on Sunday morning. She hadn't figured it mattered. He probably wouldn't show up anyway, not after the way she'd accused him of using her to fill in until the right woman came along. He'd appeared to be genuinely exasperated with her for reaching that conclusion. She
couldn't imagine what else she was supposed to think, but he obviously resented the accusation.

At any rate, she wasn't all that surprised when he wasn't on her doorstep at dawn. All the way to church and back, she told herself it didn't matter, that she wasn't disappointed, that it would be better if he went back to Houston and got on with his life and let her get on with hers. She had too much pride to want to be a practice wife or a convenient hostess, until the right woman came along.

Apparently, however, that particular message didn't quite get from her brain to her traitorous heart. That blasted part of her anatomy reacted with pure delight when she spotted him rocking on her front porch as she drove up the lane to her house after church. She fought the impulse to race from the car and fling herself into his arms. Dani's reaction, however, was another thing entirely. For the first time Kelly could recall, her daughter didn't look overjoyed to see Jordan waiting on their doorstep.

“Uh-oh,” Dani muttered, scooting down in the front seat.

Kelly glanced at her daughter and saw the worried frown puckering her brow. “What's wrong?”

“I forgot something.”

Kelly glanced from Dani to Jordan and back again. “Something about Jordan?”

“Uh-huh.”

A vague stirring of alarm spread through her. “What did you forget?”

“He called before.”

“Jordan called?” She had to battle with herself to keep her voice from climbing. There was no point in letting her daughter know how much that small,
seemingly inconsequential piece of information meant to her. “When?”

“When you were in the shower,” Dani admitted in a tiny voice. “He said he had to go see his father and he'd be here later.”

“Did you tell him we were going to church?”

Dani shook her head. “I'm sorry, Mommy. He made me promise to tell you, but I just forgot. Don't be mad at me.”

Kelly reached over and rubbed her daughter's cheek with her knuckles. How could she not forgive her? Dani didn't have a mean-spirited bone in her body. And she was obviously contrite. There was, however, a lesson to be learned here.

“I'm not mad,” she reassured her. “But Jordan is another matter. You made a promise to him and you didn't keep it. How do you propose to handle it?”