Involuntary Daddy

by Rachel Lee

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

  She looked at Rafe and saw that his expression was concerned and...almost gentle. “You didn’t.” She managed a weak smile. “I’m fine,”

  But he didn’t look as if he believed her. His fingers continued to stroke her neck gently, and she found comfort in the touch. When the baby finished eating, she felt a loss for more reasons than one.

  Rafe took the child from her. “I need to go change him.”

  Deciding she couldn’t face Rafe again that evening, she went upstairs and closed herself in her bedroom. Never in her life had she felt more alone.

  Friday night dinner with the Tates was a pleasant affair. Three of Nate’s daughters were there, Krissie, the youngest, who was still in high school, Carol, who was a nurse and married, except that her husband was out of town, and Wendy, also a nurse, who worked in the county’s emergency medical services with her husband, Billy Joe Yuma. Rafe was made to feel welcome by everyone, but there was a certain stiltedness to the evening, anyway. Families, Rafe found himself thinking, didn’t grow overnight.

  He hardly got to hold the peanut, though. Everyone wanted a turn with the baby, including Marge Tate, who told him she would be happy to baby-sit anytime. It was a nice offer, but one he didn’t expect to be around to take advantage of.

  It would have been the perfect opening to ask Marge and Nate to take the child while he went back to work, but the words never passed his lips. Somehow they had become locked up in his heart, like the memory of something bad.

  Later, after the older girls had gone home and Krissie had gone to bed, Rafe, Marge and Nate retired to the den with the baby and cups of coffee.

  “Is Emma feeling any better?” Marge asked.

  “She was up and around a little bit today, but she’s still pretty weak.”

  “And Angela? I’m sorry she didn’t come with you.”

  “She was feeling a little peaked herself.”

  “I hope she’s not getting sick.”

  “Me, too.” The truth was, Rafe thought, Angela didn’t want to spend another minute in his company. She’d been assiduously avoiding him for the past two days. Not that he could blame her. He never should have touched her.

  Nate was holding the baby now, and Rafe noticed how safe and secure his child looked in the man’s arms. Maybe he could do a lot worse by his kid than leaving him here. But as soon as he had the thought, he battered it down. No. That wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t fair to the child.

  “Well,” said Nate, his voice a deep rumble, “I found out what Manny Molina wants.”

  Rafe felt his pulse speed up. “What?”

  “You’ll have a deputy serving papers on you sometime in the next few days. I haven’t made a big point of saying where you are, but I can’t keep it a secret forever, and neither can Gage.”

  “Papers for what?”

  “Custody.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!”

  Nate smiled faintly. “Exactly my thought.”

  “He can’t possibly expect a court to give the child to him. Not with his family. Besides, the courts here don’t have jurisdiction. I don’t live here.”

  “He’s apparently claiming you moved here with the intent of depriving him and his family of access to the child.”

  Nate patted the baby’s bottom thoughtfully for a minute, then said, “Maybe this is just an attempt to flush you out.”

  Rafe’s adrenaline was now pumping furiously through him, making it impossible for him to remain seated. He stood and started pacing the room. “He can’t do this.”

  “He’s doing it. The thing about courts is, they can make your life hell for a long time, until things get resolved. I’d recommend you get a good attorney and try to quash this thing right off. You can probably do that on the jurisdictional issue, if nothing else. But you’ll probably have to face it all over again when you get back to Miami.”

  “Hell.” He stopped pacing right in front of the bookcase and stood staring blindly at the titles. “I can’t believe that jerk.”

  “Either way, son,” Nate said slowly, “you might want to start examining your life-style, because one court or another is sure as hell going to.”

  Nate took him and the baby home, but this time there didn’t seem to be much reason to hide in the back seat. One way or another, Manny was going to find out where he was. And since the man had filed a custody suit in the local court, it was unlikely he would come hunting Rafe with a gun. It would be too obvious, and Manny would be too easy to find.

  But he could still make life miserable for Rafe.

  He was not in the best frame of mind when he entered the house. He desperately needed someone to talk to about all the crazy things he was feeling, but it was late, and everyone was in bed already, even Angela, who still needed to take her eleven o’clock injection, if he remembered correctly. Which meant she must be awake in her room.

  He put the baby to bed, then walked down the hall to Angela’s room and knocked on her door. When she didn’t answer, he figured she still didn’t want to talk to him. Reluctant to knock again, he started to turn away just as the door opened.

  She stood there, wrapped in her bathrobe, her hair tousled as if she’d been lying down. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Me,” he said. “I need to talk.”

  She hesitated.

  “We can go downstairs if you’d be more comfortable.”

  But as if his comment made her feel silly, she stepped back. “Come on in.” She waved him to the armchair in the corner, closed the door and sat cross-legged on the bed. “What happened?”

  “Manny’s filed for custody of the baby.”

  Her jaw dropped; then her blue eyes sparked with anger. “I can’t believe the nerve of him!”

  “Me neither.”

  “It’s not his child! You’re the father.”

  “Yep. I’m sure of that. I had a DNA test.”

  Her face changed subtly. “What would you have done if it was negative?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes, then planted his elbows on his splayed knees. “I don’t even remember what I was thinking back then. I was shocked. Disbelieving. I mean, she could at least have sent me a note telling me she was pregnant!”

  “That’s true.” She regarded him cautiously, sensing he was on an emotional edge. She had no idea what this man might be capable of when he blew up.

  He shook his head. “On the other hand...I figure she planned to raise the baby herself. She didn’t want me involved. Not until she was dying and there was nobody else she wanted to have the kid.”

  “That could be.”

  “Of course it could be,” he said impatiently. “There’s no other way to explain it. She hated me. I know she hated me.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Oh, cut it out, Angela. I don’t need that crap. She hated me.”

  “Maybe it’s easier for you to believe that.”

  He swore. “You can be a bitch, you know?”

  “So can you!”

  He astonished her with a wry smile. “That’s one name I’ve never been called before.”

  She flushed.

  “I guess I woke you up, huh? You’re not in a very good mood.”

  She sighed. “I’m in a rotten mood, but it’s my own fault. Ignore me.”

  “You just can’t get over this thing with Raquel, can you? You can’t believe that the woman hated me, not when she slept with me and had my baby. You can’t believe a woman is capable of that, can you?”

  “Taken all together, it stretches my imagination a little.” She looked down, then spread her hands. “Okay, I’ve had a sheltered life. Maybe it was possible for her to hate you. Maybe she did.”

  “She did. And you know what? That kills me more than if she had loved me.”

  Her eyes widened as they searched his face. “Why?”

  “Because if she had loved me, she would have made some attempt to get in to
uch with me after. And things wouldn’t have turned out like this.”

  “Would you have married her?”

  He looked off into space. “I don’t know. But I know I would have taken her away from there. I know she wouldn’t have been someplace where she could be shot.”

  Which, he realized miserably, was tantamount to admitting he had cared about Raquel, something he’d been steadfastly denying for a year now. Oh, it was not at all a pretty picture of himself.

  “You cared about her, didn’t you?” Angela said softly.

  “Yeah.” He swallowed some indefinable emotion, and cleared his throat. “Yeah. A little.” He didn’t want to admit it to her, but he’d never been much for lying, except to himself, apparently.

  “So why didn’t you get in touch with her afterward?”

  “You make a habit of asking impossible questions?”

  She shrugged a shoulder, as if she didn’t care. “You want to talk about this, I’m not going to pull punches. Your call.”

  He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Okay. Hell, I guess somebody ought to ask tough questions. God knows, I’ve been avoiding them for too long.”

  “So why didn’t you get in touch with her?”

  “Because she hated me. I saw the look on her face. There’s no way on earth we could have had anything together, not after the way I betrayed her.”

  “Are you sure she didn’t betray you?”

  He stared at her, trying to read her expression, feeling slightly disoriented by the direction of her questions. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she turned on you after you arrested her brother. But didn’t you tell her at the outset you were a D.E.A. agent?”

  “She didn’t believe me.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  He almost gaped at her. This woman’s thought processes seemed to be leaping all over the place. He almost got up and walked out in disgust, but curiosity overrode his other feelings. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, knowing you were a D.E.A. agent, she shouldn’t have been surprised that you arrested her brother. She must have known you were going to do the right thing.”

  “With the Molinas, the right thing is always standing by your family, no matter what they do. Even if she believed me, she must have thought I wouldn’t arrest her brother.”

  “Hmm.” Angela shook her head slowly. “Let’s try this from a different angle. Keeping in mind, of course, that family solidarity couldn’t be everything to Raquel, considering that she gave her son to you, not her brother.”

  That statement hit him with all the force of a blow. The inconsistency in Raquel’s behavior suddenly seemed as obvious to him as if it were painted orange. A few minutes passed before he could bring himself to speak. “Where does this get me?”

  Angela tucked her robe more tightly around her legs. “Well...what occurs to me first is that she believed you were D.E.A., and that she was using you to break away from her family. Maybe she wanted out of the whole drug-running mess and saw you as a lifeline.”

  He thought about it and didn’t like the way it made his gut twist “Then why was she so angry when I arrested her brother?”

  “Maybe it was an act. Or maybe she’d been hoping you’d arrest her.”

  “I doubt that, Angel. Do you have any idea what a federal trafficking sentence looks like? She’d have been signing away the rest of her life.”

  “So maybe she was just pretending to hate you so nobody else in the family would see how relieved she was. I’m guessing what you did put paid to the Molinas’ business.”

  “For now, at least.”

  “So she was out of it. And maybe that’s what she wanted. And maybe she used you to achieve that, then betrayed you by turning her back on you once you gave her what she wanted.”

  He was feeling stunned. This woman had taken everything he thought he knew about the situation and twisted it around into a whole new landscape. Had he been duped? Had Raquel really been that calculating? He couldn’t believe it.

  But he couldn’t dismiss it, either.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I could be all wet. It’s just that what you’ve been saying didn’t add up for me. And I keep remembering what you said about Raquel not wanting her baby to be raised by her family. That sounds like a woman who wanted out.”

  He nodded slowly, absorbing the ideas she had presented a little at a time. He had been so sure...and now he wasn’t sure of anything at all.

  But he hadn’t been sure of anything at all since he’d found himself holding a newborn son he’d never expected. Everything that had been secure and solid in his life had, in that instant, become shifting sand.

  Rising from the chair, he walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain, staring out at the darkness.

  “Should you do that?” Angela asked. “Manny might see you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Since he filed the custody suit, he’s the last person I need to be afraid of. He’s too obvious now.” Which for some reason didn’t make him feel any better. There were all kinds of threats, and Manny’s latest action was a threat that seemed bigger than looking down the barrel of a gun. He couldn’t say why—or maybe he didn’t want to.

  “Parents have rights that exceed those of other relatives,” she said in a reassuring tone.

  “Except when the parent is unfit.”

  “You’re not unfit!”

  “No?” He dropped the curtain and turned to look at her, a grim smile on his face. “How is it going to look in court when it comes out I never even knew the kid’s mother was pregnant?”

  “You couldn’t know if she didn’t tell you.”

  “But why didn’t she tell me? All kinds of suppositions can be made about that. And then there’s this whole trip up here. At least one person could be called to testify as to my reason for looking up Nate.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  “You know why I came up here, Angela? It wasn’t just to find my missing brother. No. The reason I came was because I figured I could dump the kid on Nate and get back to my real life.”

  She looked shocked. Her blue eyes grew huge, and her mouth tightened. He’d seen that look before, on a doctor’s face. There must be something to it, he thought. Two women had now looked at him with that same disapproval. One, he might dismiss, but two made a trend.

  “And now you can testify to the same thing,” he said. He didn’t know what he expected her to say, or if he expected her to reply at all. He didn’t wait around to hear. A moment later he was out of her room, closing the door behind him.

  Well, he thought, he’d put her in her place. She wouldn’t give him any more of those yearning looks that were grating along his nerve endings.

  But that didn’t make him feel any better, either. Back in his room, he sat in the chair beside the portable bed, and watched his son sleep.

  Manny might get the kid. And if he did, Rafe had no idea what he was going to do.

  Chapter 8

  Morning dawned gray and cheerless, with occasional snowflakes falling from an angry sky. The wind had a raw bite to it, and after her run, Angela was relieved to come indoors. Emma had felt well enough to go to the library that morning, and Gage had gone with her, apparently not as convinced as Emma that she was back up to par.

  The house seemed to echo with silence. Rafe was up in his room with the baby. She hadn’t seen him this morning at breakfast and had the feeling he was avoiding her after last night.

  Not that she could blame him. She’d said some things that couldn’t have made him feel very good, and he’d admitted something that she strongly suspected made him ashamed.

  She had the worst urge to make him feel better, but she had no idea how to go about it. She’d been shocked last night when he’d said he’d planned to give up his son, and even though she was sure he no longer intended to do that, she was still horrified that he’d even thought of i
t.

  Which wasn’t really fair, she told herself as she sat in the kitchen munching on crackers and sipping hot tea. Just because she wanted a child so badly that she ached with the longing didn’t mean everyone else had to feel the same way In all fairness. Rafe had had a stunner dumped on him. It wasn’t really unreasonable that he’d sought some way to avoid giving up everything he’d worked for, especially when he was still trying to get used to the idea. And he would have been a saint if he hadn’t felt some resentment when it happened.

  Sighing, she looked out at the bleak gray day and thought of the man and child upstairs. They were, she thought, more alone than anybody she’d ever known. They had no friends, and even the blood relationship with Nate would have to be hammered out over time before it could offer the kind of security most people took for granted in familial relationships—or even in friendships.

  It wasn’t her problem, she reminded herself, but she’d always been one to worry about other people, even people she didn’t know very well, like her clients at the bank. God, she’d spent so many nights sitting awake trying to figure out a way one family or another could avoid losing their farm. Her boss had kept telling her it wasn’t her problem, except to clear the bank’s books, but she couldn’t look at it that way.

  She sighed again and put away the crackers. It did no good to think about it. It was behind her, and now she needed to focus on making a new, better life for herself.

  But instead of thinking about her options, she found her thoughts turning back to the man and child upstairs. Bad as her situation might be, Rafe’s was worse.

  The phone rang, and she answered it. “Dalton residence.”

  “Hi, Angela,” Emma’s warm voice said over the phone. “How’s it going?”

  “Just fine, Emma. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fit as a fiddle. Gage is hovering, and I’m enjoying it.” She laughed. “Listen, I was just thinking, we haven’t really done anything interesting since you arrived. How about a trip into Casper on Monday? I’ve got the day off, and we could do some shopping.”