She dove into the diaper bag, produced a folded pad, draped it over Julie’s shoulder, and waited only until the baby was positioned and being patted to pick up where she’d left off.
“When I said I wanted my sons to settle down with the right women, I wasn’t throwing stones at you. I was thinking of what you do for a living.”
Julie’s hand paused in mid-pat. “How does that factor into the equation?”
“I’m Oklahoma born and bred, girl. I’ve been around enough crop dusters to know it’s a dangerous occupation.”
“Probably as dangerous as wrestling pipe with two small boys hanging on your arm,” Julie retorted.
A satisfying belch put a temporary halt to their skirmish. Hostilities resumed as soon as Molly was tucked back in Julie’s arms, sucking happily.
“Big Jake and I did what we had to do to keep food on our table,” Delilah argued. “If you and Alex connect, you sure certainly don’t have to worry about where your next meal’s coming from.”
“I don’t worry about that now!”
“No need to get huffy. I’m just telling it like it is.”
Julie shook her head in mingled amazement and exasperation. “You’re a piece of work, lady. A real piece of work.”
Delilah brushed that aside as irrelevant and pressed ahead. “Alex told me how you took to the air in the Lane 602. Said you fly like you were born with wings. He also said his heart damned near stopped when you did wheelies in the sky.”
“I’m a good pilot,” Julie retorted, stung.
“Didn’t say you weren’t. But you and I both know it’s not just the flying that makes what you do so dangerous. It’s also breathing those chemicals day in and day out.”
Julie bit back a hot retort. She could counter that she took every safety precaution in the book when she mixed fertilizers and pesticides—long-sleeved shirts, pants, boots, goggles, rubber gloves. Even a mask for her mouth and nose when she worked with particularly toxic liquids. But she couldn’t deny that the risk was always there. One spill, one splash, one deep, unprotected breath could sear skin, eyes or lungs. Mouth clamped shut, she returned Delilah’s unwavering stare.
“Have you thought about the effect those chemicals could have on your baby if you get pregnant?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it.” Biting her lower lip, Julie let her glance drift to Molly’s industriously working cheeks. “I’m not pregnant.”
“Not now, maybe. But you want children someday, don’t you?”
The answer came slowly, honestly. “Yes.”
“Alex’s children?”
“Christ, Delilah, don’t you ever give up?!”
“No. You want Alex’s children or don’t you?”
“Okay! All right! Maybe I do. Someday.”
Actually, she wanted Alex, pretty much any way she could get him. She looked up to find his mother watching her with a hawk’s intensity.
“So it boils down to a simple question, Julie. Can you give up a career you obviously love to marry my son?”
Silence stretched out between them, broken only by Molly’s contented slurping and the high-pitched bleat of an elephant calf calling for its mother. Julie considered long and hard before answering as truthfully as she could.
“Alex and I aren’t anywhere near talking about marriage, but I promise you this. If we do reach that point, I’ll think hard about what you and I just talked about.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
To her astonishment, Delilah reached out and covered her hand.
“And I have to say, girl. My son would be damned lucky to have you.”
Julie was still dealing with the shock of that pronouncement when Alex delivered another later that evening.
They’d joined Blake and Grace for dinner at Delilah’s mansion. When they arrived at the Nichols Hills address, the ever-stately Louis informed them Miss Molly was already fed, bathed and asleep.
“Madam is waiting for you on the terrace,” he added
Madam greeted her son with her usual brisk affection and Julie with noticeably less hostility. Alex and Blake noticed the altered atmosphere with obvious surprise. Grace merely smiled and asked how Julie had enjoyed her morning at the zoo.
“It was…interesting.”
“I can imagine.”
Delilah ignored the provocative remark and enlivened a succulent meal of veal roulade served over egg noodles with a running recital of her twins’ youthful exploits. The outrageous tales left the two women giggling helplessly and her sons pleading with her to stop, already.
When Julie said her good-nights after a surprisingly enjoyable evening, she saw Delilah slip something into Alex’s pocket. That something, she discovered after he’d accompanied her back to the guest suite, was a small, square box. He waited until she’d tossed her purse on the living room coffee table to dig it out of his pocket.
“What is this?” she asked warily.
“Open it and see.”
When she popped the lid, she gulped and stared for long moments in disbelief before she could wrench her gaze from the Inca sun god.
“Please tell me you didn’t buy this for me!”
“Well…”
“Alex!”
Her mind scrambling, she tried to remember the last bid she’d seen on the piece. Almost twenty-five thousand, if she remembered correctly.
“I can’t accept this!”
“Sure you can.”
“This is an artifact. It belongs in a museum.”
“So donate it to one of your choice.”
With a smile that turned her knees to sludge, he lifted the gold amulet from its nest.
“I like the legend behind… What’s this guy’s name again?”
“Viracocha,” she said weakly.
“I like the legend behind Viracocha.” He angled her shoulders and fastened the amulet’s black silk cord at her nape. “Didn’t you say the Inca believed he created the sun and the moon and the stars?”
Hypnotized by the reflection thrown back by the night-darkened floor-to-ceiling windows, all she could manage was a distracted nod.
“At the risk of sounding like a complete ass,” Alex murmured as he bent to nuzzle her neck, “I’m getting an inkling of what Viracocha must have felt when the stars emerged from darkness.”
He turned her in his arms, and Julie’s heart revved up to a couple of thousand beats a minute.
“Is it too soon to tell you I love you?”
Her throat closed. Her nails dug into her palms. Without much success, she fought to steady her wildly careening pulse.
“Not…”
The hoarse croak got stuck halfway out. She licked her lips and tried again.
“Not from where I stand.”
“Good. Now let’s see how it looks from a different angle.”
They transitioned from vertical to horizontal with minimum fuss and maximum speed. Julie didn’t even try to hold back her response to his taste and touch. She was just as voracious as Alex was, every bit as greedy. When he shoved a knee between hers, she wrapped eager fingers around his hot, pulsing erection.
The scent of him, the feel of him was so strong and so tantalizing she almost came at his first thrust. Teeth clenched, she fought against the rapidly increasing swirls of sensation as long as she could. When they built to a furious crescendo, she locked her legs around his thighs and rocked into him.
“Now, Alex. Now, now, now!”
He slammed into her, muscles cording, hips thrusting. With a raw, throat-closing groan, Julie rode the torrent of sensation. Her legs tightened around his thighs. Her nails dug into his back. She gasped out his name—a long, drawn out moan that twisted into a cry.
Vaguely, she heard his grunted response. Her mind spinning, she felt every muscle and tendon in his body lock. A heartbeat later, she shuddered on a wild tide of ecstasy. Moments, or maybe hours, later he poured into her.
A slow, delicious descent followed. A numbed corner of her
mind registered the chest crushing hers. The moisture trapped between their bodies. The tang of sweat and musky scent of their lovemaking filled her nostrils.
Breathing in both, she lay in mindless lethargy until the creak of bedsprings and a sudden loss of body heat prodded her into semi-consciousness. She pried up an eyelid to find Alex—beautiful, studly, sweat-sheened Alex—propped on one elbow.
“Do you have any idea how you look wearing nothing but a gold amulet and a smile?” he said roughly.
“Tell me.”
“Wild and pagan and very, very kissable.”
To prove his point, he buried both hands in her hair and planted a very, very satisfactory kiss on her willing mouth. When he lifted his head, the lazy smile faded from his eyes.
“I meant what I said, sweetheart. I love you.”
His words produced pretty much the same slam Julie had experienced when she’d thrown the 602 into a hammerhead yesterday morning. Her heart thudding, she slicked her tongue over suddenly dry lips.
“I love you, too. But…”
The hands buried in her hair tightened. “But?”
“Your mother and I had a long talk this morning, Alex.”
Grimacing, he rolled onto his back and brought her with him. “I knew the sudden thaw between you two was too good to be true.”
“She said…” Julie hesitated, knowing how much rode on the next few moments. “She said you mentioned being nervous about some of my maneuvers yesterday morning.”
“Nervous, hell. You scared the crap out of me.”
“Flying is what I do. What I am.”
“I know that.”
She framed his face with her palms. The day’s growth of bristles tickled her palms. The dead seriousness in his eyes matched hers.
“Can you live with me going up every day?”
“I guess I’ll have to,” he said slowly. “Until you decide there’s something more important you’d rather do.”
Her breath hissed in. “Like playing Mrs. Alex Dalton and representing DI on the board of a half dozen charitable foundations?”
“Like taking over DI’s air operations,” he countered with a small crease between his brows. “Overseeing its soon-to-be-launched aero-agricultural division.”
Overseeing, Julie echoed silently. Not doing. The women in his sophisticated world didn’t get down and dirty. No sweat stinging their eyes as they wrestled with a frozen crankshaft. No grease in their hair or under their nails. The prospect of sitting on the sidelines for the rest of her life put a tight knot in her belly.
Alex caught the shift of emotions in her eyes, felt her withdrawal like a hard right to the jaw. He rolled with the blow, but a stubborn part of him wanted to ask why the future he offered wasn’t enough. Why he wasn’t enough.
And Molly! God, what about Molly? The way things stood now, they might never positively ID her mother. But the odds pointed seventy-thirty to Alex as her father. He was ready, more than ready, to go with those odds. Almost as ready as he was to put his brand on the woman staring up at him with her seductive, changeable eyes. Masking his fierce determination, he smoothed back her tangle of auburn hair.
“We don’t have to decide all this right now. Just wear Viracocha for a few days. Let him, uh, shine his light,” he finished with a sheepish grin.
Julie groaned. “That is so bad.”
“Best I can do when you’re all naked and sweaty,” Alex returned, getting hard and hot again.
He eased out of bed the next morning while Julie sprawled in naked abandon, arms and legs flung out at ninety-degree angles. Her hair spilled across her pillow. The covers were tangled around her hips. Her soft, breathy snuffles told Alex she’d be out for a while yet.
He jotted a quick note saying he would return with breakfast and propped it on the bureau, leaning against the sun god’s velvet box. He made a quick stop at his penthouse condo to shower and shave before walking the few blocks to Cecile’s. Once there, he skimmed the chalked breakfast menu and reached for his cell phone to wake Julie and ask whether she preferred quiche or crepes.
“Great,” he muttered when he discovered he’d left the phone at his condo. “Guess I’ll have to choose for both of us.”
He departed the bistro with two, lighter-than-air quiches and carry-out coffee containers brimming with rich, dark French blend. Anticipation thrummed in his veins as he let himself into the guest suite.
Silence greeted him, and emptiness. The purse Julie had tossed on the living room coffee table last night was gone. A half-downed cup of coffee sat on the counter of the kitchenette.
“Julie?”
The silence followed him into the bedroom. The tangled covers were thrown back. The open closet doors showed a row of bare hangars. Shoulders tensing, Alex spotted his note still propped on the bureau. Below his few lines was what looked like a hastily scribbled addendum.
Dusty called, he needs me.
Tried to reach you, couldn’t.
I’ll get back to you whenever.
Whenever? He appreciated Julie’s loyalty to her partner, sensed the urgency implied in her note, but whenever? The vague half promise, half brush-off stung.
Jaw-locked, he popped up the lid of the square box. Viracocha lay nested on his black velvet bed, raining tears of gold.
Twelve
Julie sped west on I-40, replaying Dusty’s brief, garbled transmission over and over in her mind. He was in the Texas Panhandle. Some little town she’d never heard of. Floating in and out ’cause of the drugs they’d pumped into him.
They who?
She’d screeched the question twice, trying to pierce his drugged haze while a mental image materialized of two cement-jawed thugs sent to beat or otherwise extract retribution for unpaid gambling debts. The image disintegrated when Dusty mumbled something about swerving to avoid a mule deer. When that was followed by a slurred request for her to come spring him from this cussed hospital, Julie had kicked off the covers and grabbed her clothes.
As the miles whirred under her pickup’s tires, she cursed Chuck Whitestone’s stubborn refusal to let Agro-Air spring for a mobile phone. The mechanic was closer to the Panhandle, and could have gotten to Dusty faster. She’d briefly considered a quick detour to rev up the Pawnee, but she couldn’t haul Dusty home in a single-seater if she got him released from the hospital as he’d begged.
Keeping a hand on the wheel and an eye on the endless stretch of highway rolling out ahead, she flipped up her cell phone and thumbed in Alex’s number. Her thumb stilled in mid-jab. The blank screen said she had no service out here in the wide-open spaces.
Correction. She had no power. The solid red battery icon in the upper corner told her the damned thing was completely drained. And of course she didn’t have her charger with her. It was back at the hangar, probably still plugged into the wall outlet after her last hurried charge.
With another curse, Julie tossed the phone onto the pickup’s dash and concentrated on the hundred and fifty miles of highway ahead.
She hit the Texas state line a little before 10 a.m. With her phone’s MapQuest function as dead as the instrument itself, she had to pull into the Welcome Center for a map. The rectangular-shaped center sloped upward from an elevated berm, looking like a WWII bunker plunked down in the middle of nowhere. The place was crowded with weekend travelers going to or returning from summer vacations. Julie darted to the head of the line and snatched a Texas state map from the counter. After a quick pit stop she wrestled a cup of coffee from a bank of vending machines and hit the pay phone to dial Alex’s number. He answered this time, thank goodness!
“Where are you?”
“In Texas. Dusty’s been hurt. A car accident, I think. His message was kind of slurred.”
“Why didn’t you wait for me? I would’ve come with you.”
“I didn’t know how long you’d be.”
It was a feeble excuse. Julie recognized that as soon as it came out of her mouth. The truth was that she’d learned
to take care of herself—and her personal affairs—swiftly and independently. Charging to Dusty’s side was a case in point. She’d rushed out of Oklahoma City fully prepared to provide whatever care or assistance he needed. It hadn’t even occurred to her to do more than advise Alex of the situation.
He didn’t seem all that pleased with her unilateral action. She could sense his irritation at being shut out. Sense him putting it aside, too, to offer help.
“I’m here if you need me, Julie. You or Dusty.”
“I know. Thanks.”
Taking her coffee with her, she climbed back into her pickup, and unfolded the map.
“Where the hell are you, Rockslide?”
She finally found the tiny dot in the northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle, less than a spit and a lick from the New Mexico state line. Groaning, she saw the only access was a county road that snaked like an angry diamondback around deep gulches and high mesas.
“What in God’s name are you doing in Rockslide?” she asked her absent partner.
Resigned to a tortuous drive, she keyed the ignition and followed I-40 to Amarillo. A half hour after passing a twenty-foot Texan who offered a free six-pound steak to anyone who could gobble it down in less than an hour, she cut north Dalhart on 385. Ten miles out of Dalhart she turned onto the two-lane county road. Mere moments later, the high desert surrounded her.
Red-rock mesas carved by centuries of eroding winds thrust out of the sun-scorched earth. Tumbleweeds skittered across the road. Longhorn cattle grazed on God knew what or clustered around corrugated tin water tanks filled by rusted windmills turning lazily in the breeze. If she hadn’t been so worried about Dusty, Julie might have enjoyed the starkly beautiful scenery.
Instead, she was a living, breathing bundle of nerves when she rolled into the cluster of ten or twelve adobe structures otherwise known as Rockslide, Texas. Slowing to a halt on the one road in and out of town, she hooked her wrists over the steering wheel.
“This place has a hospital?” she murmured in disbelief.
The Paternity Proposition Page 13
