Lost in the Wind

by Calle J. Brookes

  His sister said something to her, reaching out and patted Dalton’s back. Dalton grinned and waved at the woman who had the exact same smile. “Kell, Kell, Kell!”

  Even the baby saw the resemblance, apparently. He looked at Ariella. “It’s the resemblance to his sister. He adores her.”

  As his sister laughed and talked to Dalton, a sense of rightness went through him.

  He’d moved the kids to a small town so they could have these very kinds of days. Little league games, connections. People who knew the kids’ names when they saw them.

  He hadn’t expected some of those people to be his siblings, but he might be able to adjust to that. He’d just run into aunts and uncles his kids didn’t even know they had. Talk about serious connections.

  If he wanted to make them. It meant getting out of his comfort zone, but hell, he hadn’t had much of a comfort zone since having children, anyway.

  Neither of the two he’d met so far had seemed like bad people. They’d seemed…family oriented. His sister’s future children were racing around the grass toward the playground under the watchful eye of the actual governor of Texas and an older redheaded man Caine didn’t know. His twin’s firecracker of a wife was right there in the midst of the crowd. Caine suspected he’d like her quite a bit if he got a chance to know her.

  But it was Nikkie Jean that he wanted his children to know. She was talking with another redheaded woman, who stood clutching a forearm crutch and leaning against a man as tall as Caine but thinner. The man looked vaguely familiar, but he didn’t know why. It didn’t matter.

  It was the woman in the center of the crowd that Caine wanted.

  His body tightened with the thought that he wanted Nikkie Jean in more than just his house—he wanted her back in his bed, too.

  Long before the baby’s arrival. It wasn’t shared custody he was after. And it never had been.

  It was Nikkie Jean—all the ways he could get her.

  He waited until the grounds man crossed the parking lot on the riding lawn mower and then unlocked the passenger door of his truck. He lifted her, still holding his son, into the passenger seat. “Stay there. I’ll come get him through the other side and get him in his seat.”

  She just nodded. Her friends had taken her mitt and bat when he’d shown up so her arms were free to hold his son. She seemed to enjoy that and Dalton was eating it up as well.

  Caine made quick work of dealing with Dalton. Then he turned toward the woman he’d basically commandeered. She sat staring at him out of hot-pink sports goggles. He bit back a grin—and suppressed the urge to lean over and steal a quick kiss, just like his son had done before she’d put him in his car seat. “You fastened, sweetheart?”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion when the endearment slipped out. “Yes. And I am not your sweetheart. I’m your baby incubator-slash-former-one-night stand. That’s about it. Best if we just keep things in the proper perspective here. Not confuse anyone.”

  He snorted. “I think you’re a bit more than that. And you’re the closest thing to a sweetheart I’m ever going to have again.”

  Or want. A primal rush of emotion shot through him. This was the woman he wanted; Caine would do what he had to in order to make that happen.

  “You’re weird, Alvaro. At first you want nothing to do with me—” She shot a look at Dalton. “Other than that one-nighter thing, anyway. Which, while I’m sure was pretty good, I’m not so certain now it was so awing and inspiring to the point of us repeating it. I’m not really certain why you want to. You took off so fast last time I thought I must have had onion breath. Now, you show up here. In front of my friends. Your own brother and sister. Even the governor knows what you did now. You can’t keep me a secret any longer. You just shouted to everyone that you’re responsible for getting me pregnant. I’ve not told anyone who the father is. It was kind of like supposed to be the mystery of the year at FCGH. I was enjoying having my spies collect all the rumors.” She shot him a pointed look that Caine just ignored. He guided the truck out of the parking lot and onto the highway. “I heard there is already a betting pool. Money’s on Allen Jacobson, by the way. He bet a thousand dollars on himself! Cage Ralstone bet five hundred on himself, too. I didn’t realize I got around so much. All proceeds go to W4HAV. Payable by check, cash, or money order. Fourteen people put Rafe in as a wild-card vote. Can you imagine what they’ll think when the kid is born looking like…Uncle Rafe? If you just stay quiet, we can make life really difficult for Rafe and Jillian. I can play the other woman wronged. Jillian and I could play wrestle over Rafe in the lobby. Maybe with jello!”

  “Hardly. I’m not hiding that that’s my child growing inside you. I’m damned proud of it. I won’t hide it. Any more than I could hide paternity of the one in the backseat. I’m going to be there for my children, Nikkie Jean. All four of them. Period. I needed to see you again. You’d better just get used to me being around. No more avoiding me or holding me off with cryptic or snotty little text messages.”

  —Dude, your spawn is incubating just fine. Now let me go back to sleep.

  At seven thirty the night before. Caine had just burst out laughing—startling Dalton who’d been in his arms—and then had to explain to Henry and the twins that his friend Nikkie Jean had sent him something funny.

  He’d never realized how easy frustration could be communicated through text before.

  He’d just asked if she’d had dinner yet or wanted him to bring her some spaghetti. And tuck her in bed. He’d hoped she’d extend the offer.

  “Well, you’ve seen me. Now what? I’m real. Not a nightmare you can just wake up from. Can’t get away from me now.”

  Snark. It was right there. But so was the fear. Nikkie Jean was afraid of what he was going to do. “Now? I buy you—and Dalton—lunch. And we spend some time getting to know each other. Outside of the one-nighter thing. The way we should have that night. And that next morning. I’m sorry I ran. You scared me.”

  “No kidding. I’m big and fierce.”

  “It was how you made me feel.”

  He should have spent the entire night with her. The next day, too. Make her understand that he did care about her. If that hadn’t worked, he should have been out there that first day after that he could.

  He shouldn’t have left her feeling like what had happened between them hadn’t mattered.

  Because he wanted to know what made her afraid. What made her happy. What made her sad. What made her…love.

  She was as different from April as a woman could get. He wasn’t too thick-headed to see that.

  He’d seen it that night, too.

  And that was what had sent him running into the night. The potential of what he could feel for her.

  He’d run, and those feelings were catching up with him anyway.

  It was those fates and their plans for him again.

  Caine decided then and there to let those fates catch him. This time.

  “Rafe and Ari will be there. You might actually have to talk to them again.” She gave him a wide-eyed, snarky look. The woman was trying to distract him from what needed to be said between them; Caine was wise to her ways now.

  When she was frightened or anxious, Nikkie Jean tried to push people away with snark. Just like she used chatty humor when she was comfortable.

  She went from one extreme to the next. Like she was too uncertain of where her emotions truly belonged.

  “I’m a big boy. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I may even send them Christmas cards this year.”

  “Gee, I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.”

  “You always use sarcasm when you’re nervous?” Of course, she did. He was starting to figure her out. Nikkie Jean Netorre used humor and her bubbly personality to deflect people away from the insecurity underneath. Now he had to figure out what had made this beautiful, kind, intelligent, absolutely amazing woman not realize exactly who she was. Because something had. Caine understood the aftermath of trauma when it was right in fr
ont of him. “I don’t have any family, Nikkie Jean.”

  “What?” She looked at his son pointedly. “Yes, you do.”

  “I have my children and a sixty-year-old uncle who isn’t in the best of health. That’s it. My so-called father is dead. My mother, I have no idea what happened to my mother. And I don’t plan on asking. She abandoned me in a hospital incubator when I was two days old because I wasn’t as good as Rafe. In reality, I think she couldn’t sell a defective baby, so she just walked away. That’s what my father told me my whole life. That my only worth to my mother was how much she could sell me for. I went for a fifth what my identical twin did. That…stayed with me. Making me feel second best for years. It took a while to get over that and my wife choosing other men—some of them twice her age—over me just pounded that in. I have never mattered to someone to come first except my uncle. And my father often separated us just to be an asshole. But my children—all of them—will know what they mean to me. My children have no one but me and my father’s brother. The people back there that we don’t yet know. And now you. I want my children to know you most of all. Because I want you to mean something to me, too. And I…want to mean something to you. Like I haven’t anyone else before.”

  She was silent for an extremely long time. “My father never thought I was his, and he made that fact very well known. Every time they disagreed on anything one or the other of them brought up my paternity. As a weapon. They married because she was pregnant with my older brother. They stayed together for him. I was…the leftover. Like rotten meatloaf. My kid will never feel the way I did.”

  He hid a wince. There went any half-baked idea of them getting together for the sake of the baby he might have been formulating. Now he wouldn’t even mention that as an option.

  Nikkie Jean needed to know that he wanted her for her. Not because of their baby. Now he had to figure out just how to make her see that.

  “I need to get to know them, for my children. And I need to do it before I expose Keller and Everett to them. Just to be sure.”

  “They’re some of the best people I have ever met, Caine. I promise you that. The things I’ve watched them go through over the past six months have been horrifying. But they love each other and won’t ever hurt your children. Or you.”

  “They’ll be our daughter’s family, too.”

  “Daughter? You have magic powers or something?”

  He hadn’t realized where his thoughts had gone. Since that morning conversation with Everett, he’d pictured the baby as a girl. That had only deepened when he’d watched his sister playing softball. He would love a little girl with Nikkie Jean’s smile. The darker hair and eyes he possessed would be more dominant, but the smile—he hoped the baby had her smile. “Just thinking ahead. I’ll love whichever we get, but I know Keller will want the baby to be a girl. She already feels outnumbered.”

  “I bet she does.” Nikkie Jean stared out the window for a moment.

  “I hope she has your smile. Or he. I’m happy with either.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “I don’t know. That I’ve met a woman I care about and we’ve made a baby together. I’ve also started mentioning you—as a friend. So you won’t just appear out of nowhere. They know where babies come from.”

  “It’ll shake up their whole world. What if they resent the baby? I can’t do that to them. Or to the baby. I just can’t. I’ve lived like that, and I can’t do it. Especially since it’s built on a lie. Babies shouldn’t hold up lies, Caine. It’s not right.”

  He heard the well of hurt in her words. “It’s not. But that happens in reality anyway. It took me a year to get Everett and Keller bonded with Dalton. They blamed the baby for their mother wanting to leave us. She left me two days after she learned she was pregnant. She told me the night she left. I didn’t see her again until the day she and her lover were brought in to my ER. She died that day, leaving me with a premature infant I didn’t know whether I was the biological father of.”

  It was the first time he’d ever said that aloud to anyone other than Henry.

  But if he wanted Nikkie Jean to trust him, he was going to have to open up to her first.

  “I just want to focus on getting through this pregnancy. Staying as healthy as I can. Because all I want is for this baby to have a chance. If you tell your children about the baby and something happens, what would you say then? I’m terrified that something will happen.”

  Her broken whisper went straight through him. No wonder her defenses were up. This entire journey had to be nothing but a massive roller coaster for her right now. “We’ll do everything we can, sweetheart. And no matter what happens, I won’t leave you to go through it alone. I’m sorry I’ve left you alone this week. I shouldn’t have. Even with your little snark texts. We’ll figure it out somehow. I promise. For all of us. I’m not leaving you to face this alone again.”

  The look she shot at him stabbed right through his gut. Because it told Caine one thing.

  Nikkie Jean didn’t trust a word he had just said. And it was his own damned fault.

  50

  HIS SISTER-IN-LAW commandeered Dalton the instant Nikkie Jean carried him into the diner. Dalton wanted nothing to do with his father at the moment, instead being fascinated by Nikkie Jean and the other women around him, who kept stopping by to talk to Nikkie Jean and eye Caine with curiosity.

  Dalton was eating up the attention. Caine, not so much.

  He kept a watchful eye on his son as he was passed between Caine’s sister-in-law and new sister, but he was grateful for the extra sets of hands to entertain the baby—while he focused on the woman with him.

  He was going to follow her home. They were going to talk. It was as simple as that. He still had four hours before he had to drive into town to pick up the twins.

  He and Nikkie Jean would talk, then maybe he’d convince her to go with him to pick up his older two. They could take the children to the diner.

  Give the children a chance to get to know her, and her them.

  Afterward, he’d take her back to his house with him. Introduce her to his uncle.

  He’d never introduced a girlfriend to them before.

  Nikkie placed her order, quiet in a way he didn’t like. He shifted closer. “You’ve not been sick, have you?”

  She nodded. “Every day for over three weeks. Usually clears up by noon. Usually. Allen shifted my schedule to later in the day. Dr. Jacobson. He said it’s for Jelly Bean. That’s what he’s calling the baby.”

  “Do you have a good obstetrician?”

  She nodded. “Same one as Jillian. She’s affiliated with Finley Creek. And she does high risk. Layla Kaur.”

  He’d heard of the woman, but they’d never met. “I didn’t realize you’d be high risk.”

  “I just don’t want to take any unnecessary chances. Layla handles both high-risk and average pregnancies. And she’s someone I know well enough to trust.”

  Because she was terrified. He could see that. He leaned down where he could whisper in her ear. “We’ll be fine, sweetheart. I promise.”

  She looked up at him. “But there are never any guarantees. This is probably my only chance to carry a child, Caine. What if something happens?”

  He twisted his fingers in hers. “It won’t.”

  “I wish life worked like that.”

  Nikkie Jean would not let herself be a clichéd overemotional pregnant woman. She forced back the tears and smiled at Jillian when she said something about the little boy looking just like his father.

  Just like his Uncle Rafe, too. That was no doubt what Jillian meant.

  Jillian’s child would no doubt look a lot like Dalton or the twins. Caine pulled her to a booth near the back, after grabbing a high chair from the corner. He retrieved his son from Rafe, who had somehow ended up with him, while she waited.

  It was odd seeing him with the little boy. He was so comfortable being a father. He knew what he was doing. Far better than s
he did, apparently.

  The new baby would probably slip seamlessly into Caine’s life. He was just that confident at being a parent.

  “Come home with me today. See my place. Talk to me.”

  “We can work out details after the baby is born.” Nikkie Jean pulled in a deep breath. He didn’t want her. She knew exactly what he wanted. And he was confident enough to think he was going to get the baby. She just happened to be the packaged deal he was stuck with. No matter what pretty words he used. “I…don’t think anything else is a good idea. We both know this isn’t going to go anywhere.”

  She knew that. And it was better that she remembered that. No one had ever stuck with her long term. He definitely wouldn’t. He’d wanted one night in her bed and that was it.

  Caine was a good father right down to his toes, and he wanted their child. She was just a means to an end for him. She had to remember that.

  Literally, she was just the incubator.

  “How in the hell do we know that? It’s obvious there’s something there to work with—or we wouldn’t be expecting the baby in the first place.”

  “We had a one-nighter after a pretty crappy day for me. I don’t normally do that, in case you’re thinking otherwise. And now we’re dealing with the consequences. It’s not like I’m the love of your life or anything.”

  He wasn’t hers, either.

  Caine was definitely not like the sweet young man who’d shown her that sex didn’t have to be a nightmare. The three times she’d had sex with Cole had probably helped her in that one regard. She’d needed his soft touch and kindness. His love. He’d been more nervous than she had. The fun and play they’d engaged in had helped her feel more in control than she had in months back then.

  With Caine, it had been about having someone’s arms around her just for a little while. A human connection at a time when she’d needed that most.

  Until he’d rejected her when they were finished. So soon she’d known the truth.