Daddy in the Making

by Crystal Green

  He stood back as Rita took the stairs up to the wraparound porch, with its wooden rockers and a cigar-store totem pole out front, then he followed. Inside, the furnishings were simple, but it was the view that dominated the room.

  Long windows, the shimmering lake.

  Candlelit romance.

  Rita seemed to realize that she might’ve picked the wrong location as they obeyed the sign by the hostess desk saying, “Take a seat.”

  “It sure doesn’t look like this during the afternoon,” she said quietly, heading for a lakeside table away from most of the other diners in the room, who’d gravitated toward the side where the view of the water was the best.

  He pulled out a simple knotted-pine chair with a gingham cushion and waited for her to sit. Then he went to his own place across the small table and grabbed menus from the silver holders, giving one to her first.

  “You come here often?” he asked.

  “Not since...” She shrugged. “It’s been a while.”

  Had she come here on dates? With friends back when she hadn’t shouldered the burden of running the hotel?

  The waiter, with his blue-and-white checked shirt and a gap-toothed smile, was quick in taking their orders.

  Rita fidgeted with her paper napkin before spreading it over her lap. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t time to grill her. She looked ready to jump out of her chair at his slightest misstep.

  “St. Valentine looks like a nice place to have grown up,” he said. A totally neutral, totally safe topic.

  She seemed surprised that he hadn’t rushed right into the meat of the matter. “It was very nice...when I was a kid. It was almost like the most beautiful chapters of a book like To Kill a Mockingbird—the parts without Boo Radley and Atticus Finch’s court case. Summers in swimming holes, adventures in old, abandoned houses. Things like that.”

  “It was nice?” Was he treading on thin ice even by asking? Was he getting too personal for what his business was with her?

  She didn’t seem to mind. “I say it was nice because the older I got, the more I realized just how small the town is. The favorite pastime tends to be getting into other people’s business. But I guess that comes with having everyone see you grow up and take part in your life.”

  He was about to ask what she could’ve done to whip up any gossip in the past, before this mysterious pregnancy, but then he thought of Kristy, and of how that father seemed to be out of the picture, too.

  Rita was playing with her napkin again, so he got the signal and shifted the topic.

  “You said that your family has always owned that hotel.”

  “Right.” There—she let go of the napkin, smiled up at the waiter as he brought them the drinks they had ordered. “My great-grandpa came over from Portugal with my grandmother in the early 1930s. That was just after Tony Amati officially made it St. Valentine.”

  Hell, this wasn’t awkward at all. “So you’re a St. Valentine institution.”

  “Most everyone in Old Town is. But the kaolin-mine closure several years ago shook things up. It’s taken years to get back on our feet, and we lost some of our population when the unemployed miners went off to a natural-gas operation near Houston.”

  “That’s why Old Town seems like a ghost town?”

  “Right. There’s also a social line running between Old Town mining families and the new richies.” She raised an eyebrow. “I guess the Niles clan falls somewhere in the middle.”

  He couldn’t believe he’d actually gotten her to talking. “When you run a small business like your family, I guess it doesn’t pay to take sides.”

  She glanced out the window as rain tapped against it. The soft candlelight burnished her skin, and he longed to run his fingertips over the smoothness. The slope of her cheekbones fascinated him. So did her lips.

  He kept watching them as she spoke, a pit of yearning in his belly.

  “I’d ask you all about where you grew up,” she said, “except you already told me.”

  And there she was, talking about what he needed her to talk about. She had come around after all.

  “Listen, I know that you probably didn’t tell me everything yesterday when we talked because you wanted me to scram, but was there anything else I shared with you that night? Even the smallest detail might trigger another memory.”

  She adjusted the silverware in front of her. “I can offer just a few more tidbits. Like when you said something about majoring in procrastination during college while you got an ag business degree. You also said that your grandpa built up your cattle ranch, and after your dad passed on years ago, you and your three brothers took it over, along with your mom. You all have your own parcel of land, a cabin, a place of your own. You sounded...very content.”

  The observation sounded distant, though, as if he’d never be able to get to that point again.

  “Conn,” she said. “We didn’t spend enough time together for me to know all your ins and outs. Even though...”

  “Even though what?”

  She pressed her lips together just as the waiter came with their fish-and-chips platters. After he left, she shook a little bit of salt and vinegar onto her meal.

  “Rita,” he asked, “did I do something besides take your necklace and tell you I’d be back?”

  “Like propose marriage after one night?” She laughed. “No. But I guess I thought there was a...connection.”

  The words had tumbled out of her, as if she’d been holding on to them too long and just wanted to get rid of them now. She kept her head down, obviously not wanting to see his expression.

  “I don’t know what to say.” He wanted to use a finger to tilt up her chin so he could look into her beautiful, clear gray eyes—as clear as he remembered from that night.

  “Don’t feel guilty, Conn. I made it through that day or two of disappointment just fine.”

  “I can see that.”

  She looked up. Were her eyes a little glassy?

  Dammit, he didn’t want her to cry, and anger crawled up inside him. He hated himself for doing this to her. Hated that he didn’t know exactly how he’d felt that night, because his wisps of memory only got him so far.

  Hated that he might’ve just been stringing her along, as he’d reportedly done with other women.

  So why was there something buzzing around in his chest? What the hell was it that had made her face such an important part of trying to remember—a face powerful enough to have brought him back to St. Valentine?

  She ignored her food. “Just so you know, I’m not being remote on purpose. I want to help. It’s only...”

  He waited her out, his heart beating.

  She sighed. “It’s just how I am.”

  And there it was—a major warning. A signal that, even if the candlelight and murmuring rain got to them, nothing would ever happen with Rita again.

  Disappointment nipped at him, even though rekindling their brief encounter was the last thing either of them needed.

  She continued in the same level voice. “Kristy’s father left me about five years ago. We’d dated throughout high school and then afterward, until we got engaged. Neither of us were well-off. We lived hand-to-mouth, really, and that’s why we took so long to get married. We wanted to save our money—him with his mining job, me with working at the hotel. Then, as you know, the mine closed.”

  “But he got a job in the natural-gas field, right?”

  “Right. But something significant had already changed for him by then.”

  Conn got a bad feeling about where this was going.

  “We didn’t plan to get pregnant. I was happy about it. We’d only have to work a little harder to make ends meet. He flipped out, though.”

  “Did he...?”

  She nodded. “He wanted an abortion. I didn’t. And I couldn’t believe that the man I thought I loved was asking for one. I had no idea who he was anymore. But he kept up the emotional pressure.”

  “And he left when he didn’t get his way.”<
br />
  “He had a bit on the side. Another woman who wasn’t half the trouble Kristy and I would’ve been.” Her gaze was full of shadows. “But that ended up for the best.”

  Conn narrowed his eyes. Would the old Conn have taken off, too, in the same situation?

  Her face brightened. “I’m raising Kristy by myself. It isn’t easy sometimes, with running the hotel, too, but it’s worth it. And my brother and sister help out as much as they can.”

  Their conversation went full circle for him now. “And that’s why St. Valentine stopped being that beautiful summertime place for you—because of how life turned out.”

  When she looked into his eyes, he could see that she was more guarded than ever.

  “Everyone in town knows how my life turned out, too, down to the last detail, it seems,” she said. “And you know how some people in small towns can be—nosey, judgmental, always thinking they know best for an unmarried woman who should’ve known better than to make trouble for herself.”

  “What exactly happened with the father of this baby?” he asked. Anticipation was a cold wire thrumming through him.

  Rita hesitated so long that he started to believe she would never answer.

  But even before she did, his nerves were screaming.

  “This father,” she said, “is just as undependable as my ex-fiancé was, and the last thing I want is to hurt this baby by having him be a part of his or her life.”

  Chapter Four

  The second the words came out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back.

  But they were the bald truth.

  Rita glanced down at her uneaten plate of food. She’d rather be sharply forthright than to keep lying about the baby’s paternity. Sugarcoating the situation wouldn’t make things better for them. Good God, Conn didn’t even know who he was or where he’d been. He couldn’t possibly be together enough to make a decent father.

  There was more than even that to consider, too. Besides being a stranger to himself, he was one to her. How could they possibly raise a child under those circumstances?

  Maybe, based on what he already knew about himself, he would let her off the hook and go home, continuing his search for who he was. He would have a chance to get back in control of his life again without any other pressures, like a surprise child. And she would be free to raise this baby just as well as she was raising Kristy.

  Conn hadn’t moved a muscle the entire time, but now he blinked. “Just who is the father, Rita?”

  She tucked an errant curl behind her ear, composing herself before looking back up at him. “You are.”

  “I see.” He glanced out the window, swallowing, then turned back to her. “I thought you said—”

  “I changed my mind about telling you.”

  Obviously, his mind was barely keeping up with everything that was hitting it, and a few moments trudged past.

  Then he said, “I’m not very good at telling how far along a woman is.” He wrinkled his brow. “I’m used to life on a ranch, but not...”

  “With a wife or steady girlfriend?”

  Her comment must have cuffed him, because he reared back slightly. She’d hit a mark, but it hadn’t been because she wanted to be cruel.

  It was just that she was made to be a mother, even if there wasn’t a father around. Who cared what kind of family she had or how she’d gotten it, just as long as she had one?

  But Conn? She was pretty sure he was the opposite, and she would be doing him a favor by cutting him loose.

  “I don’t hold you to anything,” she said. “We had no commitments.”

  “You think I’m that unreliable?”

  Slowly, she nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  It was as if the air had gotten heavier, the raindrops on the window louder, taking over the growing space between them. She drank her water, he drank his, but neither of them ate a bite.

  Finally, though, Conn lowered his voice so that she almost didn’t hear it. “You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet?”

  She swallowed away the ache in her throat. “No. They tell me I can find out during my next appointment.” During all life’s craziness, she’d almost forgotten that she was going to the doctor the day after tomorrow. “I’ve told Dr. Ambrose that I want to be surprised at the birth. It’s like...”

  “Opening a gift on your own birthday.”

  When she glanced up, she found him grinning, a look in his eyes that nearly slammed her to the ground.

  A...softness?

  What was it exactly?

  A tiny, wishful thrill spun through her until she throttled it. This was no time for those fantasies she’d entertained about him the first night they’d met. He wasn’t her dream man, and she sure as heck wasn’t some princess who’d been swept away to some happily-ever-after with him.

  At any rate, he was taking the news pretty well. Maybe this pregnancy had triggered another memory in him and he was thinking that it would be a good idea to leave the baby to her?

  She ignored the leaden feeling weighing on her chest. “I guess a birthday present would be a good comparison. But, even though I want to wait, I can’t help wishing I could decide on baby names and start buying those teeny-tiny outfits for him or her. Sometimes the temptation to know just gets to me.”

  “Baby names.” There was that tender light in Conn’s gaze again, and it made her wonder if he had ever thought about having children.

  If he even remembered thinking about it.

  And that was when she lost it—the control she’d been holding on to with such fierceness. It broke, just like that, when she made an attempt to change the subject, segueing into something safe like his life on his cattle ranch or something.

  Too bad her attempt to start that new topic sounded just as cracked as her heart.

  Cutting herself off, she looked down at her plate again. Dammit, he couldn’t see her like this. Not this stranger.

  “Rita...”

  Her hand had been resting on the table, and she felt Conn’s long fingers ease over hers.

  At the spinning flip in her belly, she startled in her seat, a catch in her breathing. The warmth of his skin seeped into hers, and she fought the urge to pull back, to let him know without any doubt that touching her really wasn’t a good idea.

  But she found herself just sitting there, nearly shivering as she hungered for more. As she remembered that night and how his hands had explored places far more sensual.

  Don’t you dare look up at him right now, she told herself. Don’t do it....

  Yet she was doing it, her gaze meeting the deep blue of his own—a tender, heartfelt shade that matched the one she’d seen the night they’d been together.

  Suddenly, it was as if no time or hard feelings had passed between them at all. He really was a dream who’d walked into the Queen of Hearts Saloon, coming to a cocky stand at her table, grinning and stealing her should-know-better heart.

  He must have felt it, too, because he reached across their small, far-too-intimate candlelit table, grasping her hand between the two of his as he leaned forward in his seat.

  “I hate to see you sad,” he whispered.

  Every sound in the restaurant diminished under the low silver light from the moon-glow windows, under the gentleness of his words and gaze.

  She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t sad—that she had a beautiful child who made every day brighter, plus another one on the way. But there was an inexplicable emptiness inside her, letting her know that something else was missing, and it was this emptiness that he probably sensed right now as he stroked a thumb over the sensitive spot near her wrist.

  Closing her eyes, Rita tried to find some trace of oxygen in the room so it could fill her lungs and get her breathing again. But there didn’t seem to be any.

  How could he do this to her when she’d tried so hard to keep it from happening?

  Unexpectedly, a tear escaped from her eye before she even knew it was there. It rolled down her cheek, marking he
r.

  “Dammit, Rita.”

  That tear must have been his undoing, because the next thing she knew, he brought her hand to his lips, resting her wrist there, her pulse tapping against the softness and heat of his mouth.

  “I wish everything could work out for the both of us,” he murmured against her skin.

  And when he reached across the table to rest his fingers on her face, to touch the trail of her tear, she bit her lip.

  It was trembling, just as if she was a girl who’d never had a first time with any man, much less a dangerous one like this.

  Now the look in his eyes had turned to something else, heating up like the most searing part of a flame. The part you never played with.

  But here she was, wanting to do it.

  As she closed her eyes again, leaning into his hand, allowing her lips to barely make contact with his palm, she realized that wanting was the most important thing in the world. Forget control. Forget safety. This was what mattered, because if you didn’t feel, you didn’t live.

  God, how she wanted to live.

  In the next slow, endless moment, she felt him lean even closer—close enough so that she could feel his breath over her mouth.

  Then...

  On a stifled moan, his mouth brushed over hers, sweetly, with just a hint of the blue heat she’d seen in his eyes. Lust—or whatever it’d been that had gotten her into his bed in the first place—roared inside her.

  She was so ready—had been ready since he’d left her waiting for him to return.

  But then, as if he’d been burned himself, he pulled away.

  She couldn’t help opening her eyes, seeing him again, finding that his gaze had changed once more, this time to something unfocused, as if...

  As if he were remembering.

  As if whatever it was that had flashed across his brain had confused the hell out of him.

  “What is it?” she asked, feeling the furious blush on her skin and wishing it wasn’t there.

  Conn paused. He was the one who was looking away from her now, as if he didn’t want her to read him.