The Drifter

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  The trip up made his stomach pitch. He glared suspiciously at the three women and four men in the elevator with him and wondered if any of them would be prepared with a cellular phone in case of an emergency. His jaw clenched, he watched the flashing numbers above the door. When the twentieth floor appeared, he wanted to shoulder his way past the others who were getting off, but he held back, forcing himself to face the fear. Once free of the elevator, he flexed his shoulders with a sigh and a little smile of triumph. He’d ridden the damn thing.

  He stuck his head in the first office that bore the Artemis name on the door and flashed the famous Lavette grin complete with dimple. “I’m looking for Amanda Drake.”

  The receptionist, a woman in her forties, reacted as most women did when he smiled at them. Pink rose to her cheeks, and the pupils of her eyes widened. Chase had had that effect on women ever since he’d reached puberty, and it was a nice perk in a life that hadn’t presented all that many.

  “Do you know where I might find her?” he prompted, knowing that sometimes women took a moment to pull themselves together before they answered. According to the nameplate on her desk, this one was named Bonnie Chalmers.

  She blinked. “Miss Drake’s on extended leave,” she said as if reciting her times tables.

  Chase thought that over. There was one obvious reason for her to be on extended leave, but his trucking buddies had told him that women in this day and age didn’t slip off quietly and have babies. They demanded child support, his buddies had said, and plenty of it.

  “She’s not sick or anything, is she, Bonnie?” Chase asked.

  At the use of her name, Bonnie flushed pinker. “No, she’s fine. She’ll just be out of the office for a while.”

  It was all very mysterious, Chase thought, but he didn’t know how things worked in the city. He had no doubt Amanda had a high-powered career, both from what she’d told him on that snowy night, and from the evidence of her material success. He’d noted the late-model Mercedes first. Then he’d caught a whiff of unfamiliar cologne, which he’d later identified by checking out a display in Lord and Taylor.

  Then there was the matter of her clothes. He’d had the pleasure of discovering the softness of her cashmere coat as he’d taken it off. He hadn’t been paying attention to labels when he’d removed her wool suit and silk blouse, but later, when the clothes were lying around the cab, he’d noticed names like Calvin Klein and Chanel. And her underwear...he could still get aroused thinking about those fragile scraps of lace that had to have been imported from Paris. Maybe she was in Europe right this minute, picking up more of that fancy underwear.

  He walked over to the desk. “I guess I’ll just leave her a message, then.”

  “That would be fine. Do you have a card?”

  Chase laughed. “No, Bonnie. I don’t even have a piece of paper. Is there something I could write on?”

  “Certainly.” She whipped the top page from a notepad beside her telephone and held it out to him, along with a pen. “I’m sure she’ll be sorry she missed you.”

  Chase wished he could be as sure about that as Bonnie. Amanda had been very cool three weeks ago when he’d called. But three weeks ago he’d simply been a trucker, and an injured one, at that. Today, his back was slowly mending, and soon he might be part owner in a ranch. In a few years, according to McGuinnes, he could be rich. That prospect had given him the courage to come here to issue an invitation to Amanda to come out to Arizona as his guest.

  He hoped she would, even though she’d told him straight-out that she didn’t think they had anything in common besides sex. And she was probably right. It was a damn strong suit, though. He’d made love to a lot of women, and he’d had a pleasant time with most of them. Yet that night with Amanda had shaken him to a depth he’d never reached with anyone. Her eyes, her soft body and her flame-colored hair had haunted him during eight months of long nights on the road. Knowing that Amanda would probably reject him if he asked her out, he’d tried to forget her with a lusty waitress in Atlanta and a sophisticated bartender in Hartford. And still he burned.

  * * *

  AS THE 747 cruised on in to Tucson International Airport, Amanda jiggled Bartholomew in her arms in an attempt to stop his wailing. This was such a bad idea, she thought, looking down at the desert, which at this altitude looked like the browned top of a crumb cake just out of the oven. The pilot had already announced the temperature in Tucson—one hundred and five degrees. She hated to think of how the heat would affect her, let alone a two-month-old baby.

  But she had a problem, one she hadn’t figured out a way to solve except by coming here. Her family had been shocked and embarrassed by the news of her pregnancy, but her concocted story of going to a sperm bank to get pregnant on purpose had mollified them. That had a classier ring to it than the word accident, not to mention the longer version of the truth—a one-night stand with a trucker. Her story had remained viable until the day little Clare, daughter of her best friend, Janice, was diagnosed with diabetes.

  “Thank God we knew what to look for,” Janice had said when she broke the news. “It runs in the family, so we got on it right away.”

  In that moment, Amanda’s carefully constructed house of cards had tumbled down. This little dark-haired imp who in the past two months had become the center of her world could have a predisposition for any number of life-threatening diseases. She couldn’t position herself as his protector unless she knew what to fight. Only one person had the answers—the person waiting in the terminal to take her out to the True Love Guest Ranch.

  His move to Arizona had been a convenient one for her. Living so far away, he was less of a threat to her independence, and she could come out here, question him and return to New York without anyone back home being the wiser. She hadn’t told Chase about the baby when she’d written her letter telling him of her impending arrival. She didn’t think it was the sort of thing one revealed in a letter.

  But now, as the plane’s wheels bumped against the runway, she wished she had. The prospect of meeting Chase again for the first time since that snowy night was nerve-racking enough. To meet him while carrying his child in her arms might be more than either of them could handle.

  The plane taxied to the gate and Bartholomew stopped crying for the first time in two hours. Amanda remained in her seat fussing with his blanket and checking his diaper while passengers filed past her. At last she and the baby were alone with the flight attendants and she had no choice but to gather him in her arms, hoist the diaper bag over her shoulder and start that long walk down the jetway.

  She paused at the door of the plane and looked into Bartholomew’s blue eyes that already held a hint of green, like Chase’s. “Well, kid,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Time to meet your daddy.”

  2

  CHASE SHIFTED his weight from one booted foot to the other as he watched passengers funnel out of the jetway. Amanda would appear any minute now. He adjusted his hat and flexed his shoulders, feeling like a teenager on a first date, with the same sweaty-palmed excitement, the same nervous hopes for the night ahead. Well, perhaps greater hopes than a teenager on a first date might have, he thought with a smile. After all, he and Amanda had become lovers ten months ago.

  Her handwritten note had been short. If it’s convenient, I’d like to take you up on your offer. Except for listing her flight number and arrival time, that had been it. He couldn’t consider it a proposition, exactly, but why else would she come to the ranch? She could afford to vacation anywhere in the world. Copying her style, he’d sent a short note back—I’ll meet your plane. Maybe he and Amanda didn’t need words between them. Their bodies had done most of the talking the night they’d met.

  He was glad she hadn’t come out six weeks earlier, when he’d first arrived at the ranch. Thanks to laps in the pool and massages by the head wrangler, Leigh Singleton, his back was in much better shape. He would have hated it to spasm at some awkward moment, like in the middle of making love
. He’d asked Freddy Singleton, Leigh’s sister and the ranch foreman, to reserve the little honeymoon cottage for Amanda. Marriage was the last thing on his mind, but the cottage stood in a mesquite grove several hundred yards from the main house, which gave it lots of privacy. Not as much as the curtained bunk of an 18-wheeler on a snowy night, but more than the guest rooms in the main ranch house.

  The steady flow of people from the plane slowed to a trickle. With a sick feeling of disappointment Chase wondered if Amanda had changed her mind. Maybe she’d read the weather reports for Tucson and decided her fair skin wasn’t suited for the desert summer. He’d worried about that and had planned to make sure she wore hats and long sleeves when she was outside. In the six weeks he’d been on the ranch, his skin had bronzed to a rich brown, but Amanda’s skin was so much more delicate.... He licked dry lips and stood on tiptoe to peer deep into the empty tunnel leading to the plane. Maybe he should ask someone if she’d been on the flight.

  Then he saw a flash of red hair as a woman came out of the gloom toward him. His heart hammered in his chest. She looked exactly as he’d remembered, only perhaps more beautiful. Her face had the most wonderful glow to it, and her hair was the color of an Arizona sunset. He’d have to remember to tell her that.

  He couldn’t see the rest of her very well. She had a large piece of luggage slung over one shoulder and was carrying something, holding it close to her chest. He stared at the bundle. It looked a lot like...

  The breath rushed out of him and he grabbed the back of a chair for support. Slack-jawed, he stared as the bundle in her arms squirmed. Oh, God. Oh, God!

  She came forward slowly, her blue gaze fastened on him.

  He braced himself as if standing against a stiff wind. She’d had a baby! His baby! An explosion of wonder left him weak and dizzy.

  As she drew near, fragments of questions formed and disappeared in his mind like campfire smoke. At last he focused on the fire itself, the burning anger of betrayal.

  “Hello, Chase.” She sounded out of breath.

  Fury made him tremble as he glared down at her. “Liar,” he said in a voice gone dead with shock. The baby began to cry.

  * * *

  NOT A GOOD BEGINNING, Amanda thought as she hurried to keep up with Chase’s long strides on the way to baggage claim. His expression reminded her of the hurricanes that sometimes buffeted her parents’ summer cottage on Long Island. He looked different—taller, more muscular and definitely more tanned than she remembered. The cowboy outfit suited him, but she’d bet his prizewinning smile wouldn’t appear today, or the dimple in his cheek that had fascinated her so.

  “If you’ll let me try to explain,” she said, raising her voice above Bartholomew’s wailing.

  “Not here,” he snapped, glancing at the luggage circling the carousel. “What do your suitcases look like?”

  “Burgundy leather, Louis Vuitton,” she said. “And there’s an infant seat, too.”

  His laugh was harsh. “I suppose that’s made by Calvin Klein. All I really had to do was look for the most expensive stuff on the belt.”

  Amanda turned away to hide the sudden tears that spilled down her face. Here was the true reason behind her plan to keep Bartholomew a secret from Chase. She’d always sensed they wouldn’t be able to bridge the social gaps between them. He obviously didn’t respect the way she lived and probably the reverse would be true, although she tried not to be a snob. She held her wet cheek against Bartholomew’s, and gradually he stopped crying and began to nuzzle against her skin, seeking food.

  “Let’s go,” Chase said from behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder to where he stood hoisting her two large suitcases as if they were filled with air, the infant seat tucked under one arm. She walked toward the entrance, where the sunshine met her like a bank of floodlights.

  “Cover the baby,” Chase ordered.

  “I was planning to.” Shielding Bartholomew’s face with the blanket, she gasped as they stepped into the ovenlike heat. Landscaping outside the terminal consisted of a few lacy-leaved trees and a desert garden, dominated by a giant cactus that looked like a missile with arms. Amanda had seen pictures of a cactus like that, and she tried to remember its name.

  Chase looked over his shoulder before he started across the street. “Don’t you have a hat or something?” he asked, his tone brittle.

  “No.” She lowered her head against the glare. “And my sunglasses are in the diaper bag.”

  With a deep sigh he set down the suitcases and infant seat before leaning over and opening the bag hanging from her shoulder. The brim of his hat brushed her arm and the air around them filled with the scent of baby powder as he searched through the bag until he located her glasses. He found them, spread the earpieces and slid the glasses over the bridge of her nose. As he leaned close, her gaze dropped to the open neck of his shirt where a small medallion on a pewter chain nestled against a dark swirl of chest hair. She remembered that medallion, remembered thinking it looked vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t have said why.

  “There.” Chase backed away from what under different circumstances might have been a tender moment. A woman passing by looked at them and smiled.

  Amanda bit her lip to stifle a little sob of despair. She’d been sniffling a lot lately, and she needed to stop. Her friends with children said crying jags were typical with new mothers, but Amanda didn’t want to be typical. Tears were inconvenient and demonstrated far too much vulnerability for her taste. She was a single mother and wanted to keep that status. She had to be tough.

  Chase directed them past the cactus garden to a battered van with steer horns where a hood ornament should be. He opened the passenger door where True Love Guest Ranch was stenciled above a heart with an arrow through it. If she’d been in the mood for laughing, Amanda would have gotten a kick out of that. What a joke.

  She put one foot on the running board and immediately realized she’d never be able to climb into the van while holding Bartholomew. Then, before she could figure out another way to get in, Chase placed his hands at her waist and lifted her, baby and all, into the seat. And she remembered his touch—a combination of gentleness and strength that had, many months ago, made her beg for his caress.

  The interior of the van was stifling, and she loosened the blanket around Bartholomew, who was beginning to squirm and wrinkle his face in preparation for a good long howl of protest. There were two heavy thuds as Chase heaved the luggage into the back of the van and closed the doors.

  “I’ll strap the infant seat right behind you,” he said, coming back to the passenger door and opening the side of the van. “We have child-restraint laws in Arizona. The baby needs to be buckled up.”

  She turned and watched him secure the infant seat. “I don’t need a law to tell me that. How long before we get to the ranch?”

  “More than an hour, depending on traffic.”

  “He’s very hungry,” she said. “I really should feed him before we start.”

  Chase’s hands stilled. “It’s a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  He lowered his head for a moment, without speaking.

  “His name’s Bartholomew,” she ventured.

  Slowly, he lifted his head and gazed at her. “Bartholomew what?”

  She swallowed. “Drake.”

  He nodded and turned away to finish securing the infant seat. By the time he climbed behind the wheel of the van, Bartholomew was crying. “I’ll get us out of here and find some shade,” he muttered, gunning the engine and switching on the air conditioner full blast.

  In a few minutes he’d wheeled into the parking lot of a hotel near the airport. Amanda was surprised to see grass and large trees instead of cactus surrounding the hotel. Chase pulled into a shaded parking space near a bubbling fountain and rolled down his window. She shifted a wailing Bartholomew to her left arm and tried to roll down her window, too, but it was stuck.

  “Here. I’ll do it,” Chase said, sounding
disgusted as he leaned across her lap and forced the handle until the window lowered. A breeze, cooled by the fountain, wafted in. He straightened, but not before Amanda caught a whiff of his after-shave, a scent she associated exclusively with Chase. The men she usually dated wore designer fragrances. The minty aroma of Chase’s inexpensive after-shave was now indelibly paired in her mind with mind-blowing pleasure and powerful climaxes. Just the faintest trace of that scent could arouse her. It was a fact she never intended him to know.

  “Thank you,” she said, reaching for the buttons of her blouse.

  He glanced away as she unfastened her nursing bra and gave her nipple to Bartholomew, whose cries transformed immediately into soft sucking sounds. Amanda began to relax a little as the baby nursed. The gentle breeze and the splash of the nearby fountain suggested coolness, even if drops of perspiration gathered between her milk-heavy breasts.

  She looked at Chase, who stared fixedly out the window, his elbow propped against the opening, his chin in his hand. “I’m sorry to spring this on you so abruptly,” she said. “But a phone call or letter didn’t seem like the way to tell you.”

  “You’ve known how to reach me ever since that night,” he said, not looking at her. “We could have met for coffee months ago, if you’d wanted to tell me face-to-face.”

  “The truth is, I didn’t plan to tell you at all.”

  His jaw tightened. “That sucks, Amanda.”

  “But I didn’t know you!”

  Her loud retort startled Bartholomew, who lost his grasp on her nipple and began to cry. She guided him back, murmuring assurances. When she looked up, Chase was watching her, a yearning in his green eyes that made her catch her breath.

  “Didn’t you?” he said.

  Yes, she’d known him. That night in the truck, she’d sensed a will of iron, one that would probably have clashed with hers when it came to this baby. “When I first found out, I planned to have an abortion,” she said.