An Unlikely Daddy

by Rachel Lee

  Slowly he came back to the table, as if he were dragging something heavy. He poured them both fresh coffee, then sat again. “Can we talk about John?”

  She drew a long breath. “I guess we need to. He’s here right now, right between us, still full of secrets I’ll never know. Things I’ll never understand. So go for it.”

  “I don’t want to rip you up.”

  She swallowed hard. “I don’t think anything can rip me up more than I already have been.”

  He nodded slowly. “Over the years John and I worked on a number of missions together. Not every one, but enough. The thing about me, about people like me, is that after a while you start to know exactly what you’re capable of. Good and bad. What you can endure.”

  She nodded slowly. She guessed she could understand that.

  “It doesn’t usually take long for the brass to come off.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You get to the point where you know you have nothing to prove to anyone, not to yourself, not to others. You’ve proven it already. So you kind of quiet down. That’s what I meant about the brass going away.”

  “Okay.” She sipped coffee, trying to wet a mouth that was turning dry. Somehow she knew she wasn’t going to like this.

  “John was different. I should have faced that difference more squarely. More honestly.”

  “How so?” She closed her eyes.

  “He never stopped feeling he had something to prove. To whom or what I don’t know. He rode himself hard. And—I’m sorry, Marisa—I wouldn’t have taken that last post he took. If I had known, I’d have done my level best to talk him out of it. But he had something to prove. I knew that, and I should never have gotten him the job.”

  His words dropped into her heart like heavy stones of ice. She knew he was right but didn’t know how to explain how she knew. John had always been involved in some kind of private competition. She’d always assumed it was with himself. “You’re right about him,” she admitted hoarsely. “I saw it sometimes.”

  “So that’s where I failed you both. I knew he had a dangerous attitude, but I didn’t act on that knowledge because I also knew he wasn’t stupid. But more than once I had to remind him we were flesh and blood, not superheroes.”

  “Really?” Surprise opened her eyes. Amazingly, she could almost hear the conversation in her head. “I can believe that,” she admitted. “Oh, I can believe that.”

  “Anyway, I’m not saying he did something stupid that got him killed. I know what you know. But I kind of feel like I should have guessed this might...happen.”

  The words emerged stiffly from her mouth. “You weren’t his caretaker.”

  “No, but I evidently wasn’t a very good friend, either.”

  Irritation sparked in her. “Do you really think he’d have listened to you? I know what he was like when he decided to do something. Wild horses couldn’t stop him. And if he felt he had something to prove, then that last job may have attracted him for that very reason.”

  His face softened a shade. “You’re being very kind to me.”

  “No,” she said, her tone sharpening. “I’m being brutally honest here. Maybe it’s time I was. I loved him. I loved him with my whole being. But do you think he ever thought of that when he went away? When he made his decisions? No. I know he didn’t. He always promised to come home, and I think he believed he always would. Maybe that’s a dangerous way to live. But he sure didn’t wonder about leaving me as a widow, or about the possibility of a child. I know because he never once mentioned it to me. I’m surprised he even thought about it enough to ask you to check on me.”

  “Marisa...”

  “No.” She silenced him. “He was a good man. He was always good to me. But there was a part of Johnny no one could ever tame. And I knew it, too.”

  Ryker closed his hands around his mug and looked down into it. “Maybe,” he said finally. “But don’t take it on yourself.”

  “I could no more take it on myself than I could control a wild mustang. He was who he was. We all are.”

  She put her hand to her forehead, then started to rise. “I need ice water. Enough coffee.”

  “Let me get it.”

  She let him do it because he seemed to need to do something, but as she watched him pull out the glass and deal with the ice dispenser on her fridge, she realized that she needed to do something, too. She was half ready to crawl out of her skin.

  He placed a tall glass of ice water in front of her, and she downed half of it immediately. Coffee, she had discovered, only made her thirstier.

  He sat again, pushing the chair back and crossing his legs, one ankle on his knee. Leaning back, he cradled his coffee. “I didn’t want to bash John. Don’t take it that way. I wasn’t saying he was reckless.”

  “Not exactly,” she qualified. But in the deepest recesses of her being, she knew Johnny had been reckless. Not stupidly so, but she had taken some motorcycle rides with him in the mountains that had left her scared to death. He loved the adrenaline rush and kept on doing it even after she refused to go with him again. No sedate weekend drives for him. Nothing sedate about Johnny.

  She looked at Ryker, who was studying the mug in his hands, and wondered how much like Johnny he was. He kept secrets, obviously, but he’d said he wouldn’t have taken that last assignment that Johnny took. She desperately wanted to know why. But she knew the wall would slam in place again. Still, she had to ask.

  “Ryker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why wouldn’t you have taken that assignment?”

  He glanced at her, those dark eyes drawing her in for just a moment before he returned his gaze to his mug. “Some situations,” he said slowly, “are inherently unstable. Even a local lives in constant danger. So the key is to evaluate the situation. How much can I do? How helpful will I be? Or will I just be putting my head in a noose for no good reason? John and I had slightly different standards, I guess. If some good can be served, I’ll go. If I judge that it can’t...well, I’ve turned down a few postings. Not many, but a few.”

  “So you would have judged this one to be pointless?”

  “Maybe not,” he said quietly. “It’s easy to judge in retrospect. John must have felt he could accomplish something while he was there. I shouldn’t second-guess him now.”

  She reached out desperately for just another kernel. “But how much can a translator do?”

  “Negotiate.” One word, edged with warnings not to pursue it.

  Unstable situation. Negotiation. She guessed he didn’t mean the kind of negotiations she saw on TV with conference tables surrounded by serious men and women in business suits. She could imagine another kind, though, a much more dangerous kind. She didn’t want to go there, but she suspected her late husband had done exactly that. And Ryker had just told her more than she had believed she could possibly learn. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Don’t thank me. I’m not even sure I’m right. Like I said, I heard the same thing they told you. And that could be the truth, Marisa. I’m not saying it isn’t. It could have been a random street attack, nothing to do with his job at all. Maybe someone thought he had money.”

  But she didn’t believe it, and she suspected he didn’t, either. He was as much in the dark as she was, and given that those walls of secrets that kept her out also kept him on the inside, it probably bothered him even more than it bothered her.

  She drew a long breath, finally accepting that she would never know exactly what had happened. It was even possible that no one knew any more than they’d told her. Much as she hated the idea, it was possible, and she was going to have to live with it.

  Studying Ryker, surprised by how much he had found a way to share with her, she noticed again how attractive he was. She’d felt the instant of recognition on their first meeting, but w
ith him sitting there looking so relaxed, she let herself absorb it, this time without guilt. Maybe it was a good sign that she even noticed.

  But he was so different from Johnny in appearance. Johnny had had a fresh-faced look to him, even when he came home after a long stint overseas. All-American guy looks. Ryker had a totally different impact. His black hair and eyes looked almost exotic, as if he had some Native American in him, and his skin was a few shades darker. His face had been chiseled into harsh lines, and today he apparently hadn’t shaved, because dark beard growth shadowed his chin and cheeks. He was larger than Johnny, a few inches taller and a bit broader. Johnny had been solidly built, but this guy gave new meaning to the words. He might have been carved from granite. Appealing in a very different way.

  But this was a path she didn’t want to wander. It felt somehow like cheating on Johnny, although cheating on him was at least six months in her past. Not possible anymore, but a pang of guilt struck her again, anyway. Noticing another man with Johnny’s baby in her belly. Betrayal.

  “So,” she asked, “do you prefer to be called R.T. or Ryker?”

  He lifted his head, her words drawing a smile from him. “Ryker. It reminds me I’m home.”

  “It’s an unusual name.”

  “Dutch. My mother’s family had a few Rykers in the past. She dusted it off for me.”

  Marisa gave a little laugh. “Dusted it off?”

  “Well, I think it skipped a few generations. My sister lucked out with Lila.” Leaning forward, he put his cup on the table. “I need to go do my inspection and measuring. It looked like the tool shop downstairs was pretty well equipped. Mind if I explore it?”

  “Help yourself.” About the only things she was familiar with down there were the water heater, the heater, the humidifier and the washer and dryer. Other than to grab a wrench or a screwdriver from time to time, she really had no idea what wonders might be in the workshop area.

  She needed to put her feet up for a while. She could feel her shoes growing tighter, so it was a relief when Ryker smiled, nodded and left the kitchen. Then, with another glass of water, she went into the living room where she could put her feet up on a hassock. Amazingly, it wasn’t long before she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Ryker found some good work lights in the basement and positioned them so he could see the stairway clearly. He had plenty to think about as he used various measuring tools and a pencil and pad for note-taking.

  He wondered if he’d spoken too harshly about John. The man had been a good friend for many years, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see him clearly. John had not only kept his brass, but he’d remained unusually gung ho. His edge had grown harder with time, but it had never seemed to temper the way it did for most of them. If John had been brash when he’d come out of his Rangers training, he’d been just as brash the last time Ryker had seen him, nearly two years ago.

  Turning down assignments wasn’t something anyone did often, but they were allowed to. Not even the CIA wanted to send someone into a situation they didn’t think they could survive. It wasn’t like being in the army. You didn’t have to salute sharply, then march up the hill into a hail of certain gunfire.

  But given the country John had been sent to, Ryker was fairly certain he would have turned it down himself, maybe only the third time in his long career. It wasn’t a job for cowards, but it was also a job that required a lot of smarts and street savvy. Clearly John had viewed his last assignment differently, but John had been a born risk-taker. They all were to a large extent, but John more than most.

  He should have kept his mouth shut about that, even though Marisa had seemed to know the truth of it. The other stuff he’d told her, that was okay. No violation of operational secrecy. But being a translator? He had no difficulty imagining what Marisa had believed the job would be. It certainly wasn’t standing as the lone man in a torn area of the world, probably trying to negotiate a prisoner release, or maybe a temporary cease-fire, or even to glean intelligence from dangerous sources. She had no idea of a world run by people who actually liked being at war, and to hell with everyone else. Nor would she even conceive that he might have been trying to infiltrate some subversive group.

  But John had known. He had still walked in.

  He admired John’s guts. Someone had to do it. Once he’d been willing, but as he’d said, the years had taken some of the brass off him. These days it wasn’t enough that a job needed doing. No, these days he calculated the likelihood of success versus failure...failure meaning death.

  He wasn’t afraid to die, but damned if he’d throw his life away in a pointless venture anymore. It all depended on what was on the line.

  Maybe John’s assignment had seemed important enough to take the risks. Maybe he’d judged that the value outweighed his own life. Well, of course he had. The question that would always hang over him was if John had misjudged. The world needed men like John, the ones who didn’t count the cost.

  But hell, when you had a wife... Ryker just shook his head. He and Marisa’s husband were very different in one respect: Ryker had never let a woman get close enough to be singed by the fire. John had wanted it all.

  And this was the end result. Ryker swore quietly under his breath, then switched off the lights and headed up the stairs to do some calculations at the kitchen table. He found Marisa dozing in the living room and couldn’t quite suppress a smile. Remarkable woman. And in her late pregnancy, beautiful. An earth goddess, a vessel of life. Unlike him and John, who had been vessels of death all too often.

  He’d never before noticed how sexy a pregnant woman could be, but this one had shown him. Lost as she was in the midst of her grief, something about her reached out to the man in him. He wanted her. Not wise. Her life had been shattered, and he didn’t want to add to it.

  Scolding himself, he went to the kitchen, filled a mug with the dregs from the coffeepot and sat down to figure out just how much lumber he was going to need. Minutes later, he was lost in sketching a diagram of the work ahead of him.

  * * *

  Marisa awoke to find the house empty, and relief flooded her along with a tide of shame. Thank God he wasn’t here. She felt horrified by the vivid dream that had startled her into consciousness, a dream of making love with Ryker. How could she even...?

  She guessed her somnolent libido was reawakening, but did it have to be Ryker? A real man who was in her life right now?

  No gauze covered the memory of the dream. No symbolism had filled it, making it hard to be sure what she had dreamt. It had been as vivid, as detailed, as real as a pornographic film. She couldn’t remember ever having a dream like that.

  It had left her aching with desire. The longing throb between her thighs followed her into the real world, holding her frozen in her seat despite being able to see that Ryker’s car was gone. Despite knowing she was alone and no one could possibly see the heat in her cheeks.

  But the feeling...it shamed her, but she wanted to hang on to it. It had been so long since her body had cried out for a man’s touches, but it was crying now. Love me. Fill me. Take me.

  It pounded through her blood like a song that wouldn’t quit. What the heck was happening to her? She didn’t have feelings for Ryker. Sometimes she wished he’d never shown up. She even occasionally wished he’d just go away.

  What had she been thinking to agree to allow him to fix the stairs? Now he’d be around longer. Now he’d even attend her baby shower, a man in place of her husband.

  She didn’t want to replace Johnny. Hell, she never wanted to walk that road again.

  Ryker?

  But her subconscious had launched it into her awareness, and no amount of mental shoveling could make it go away. Okay, so she’d had a dream. A delicious dream. But just a dream and she didn’t have to tell anyone, nor did she have to act on it.

  Guil
t grabbed her again, the feeling that she might betray Johnny. But even as it did, she heard Johnny’s old familiar laugh in her head. Just go for it. How many times had he told her that? How many times had Johnny done exactly that? He believed in going for what you wanted. If he’d ever felt guilt about anything, she didn’t know it.

  Johnny-in-the-moment. Always in the here and now. Hell, he’d be egging her on, she thought grumpily. He often had.

  The remembered dream clung and, with it, physical sensations almost as if Ryker really had touched her, and her cells remembered each caress. Finally, she glanced down at her ankles and saw the swelling had subsided. Time to get up, get some water and think about dinner.

  When she meandered into the kitchen, she saw papers scattered on the table. Taking a look at them, she realized Ryker had been doing calculations and drawings for the staircase. As she scanned them, she decided he did seem to know what he was doing.

  Good, because she’d be in a mess if she couldn’t reach the basement. The forced air heat kicked on, stirring the air and, for just a moment, letting her feel a chill.

  Dinner, she reminded herself. But for how many?

  The question almost overwhelmed her. For the first time in ages, she needed to consider it, and she didn’t even know if Ryker would be there. She could have laughed, had she felt more like it. But the dream haunted her, making laughter seem almost criminal.

  Peering into her freezer, she wondered if she had enough of anything to make a meal for two. She didn’t even know what Ryker liked or how much he ate. Johnny had always had a huge appetite, but considering how in shape he always was, and that he invariably came home from every mission looking as if he’d lost ten pounds or more, of course he’d been a heavy hitter. One of the hardest things she’d always had to deal with was making the mental shift from cooking for two to cooking for one. Although now she wondered how she could ever have thought that hard. Life had shown her just how sheltered she had been until recently.

  Now her brain didn’t seem to want to shift in another direction. She peered into her freezer, looking for something she had time to thaw that she might adequately turn into a meal for two. The pickings were slim, however, so she headed to the pantry. She always kept broth on hand, and it could readily be turned into a soup with some noodles and vegetables. At least if she ate alone tonight, the soup would still be good tomorrow.