“Peggy’s father is…truly out of our lives.”
The relief Jared felt was so great it almost seemed indecent. He shouldn’t be glad that Peggy’s father was out of the picture. The child deserved two loving parents. Yet he was happy, very happy that Kerry was free for the taking.
“I can’t imagine any man not wanting to be involved in his daughter’s life,” Jared said. “Especially one like little Peggy. She’s bright and beautiful and loving.”
Kerry found herself squeezing his fingers in response to his kind words. “Damon doesn’t even know what sex his child is, much less that she’s a lovely little girl. He doesn’t want to know.”
“Do you…ever try to contact him?”
Her mocking snort was full of bitterness. “No. Even if I did, he wouldn’t respond. You see, Damon Whitfield is from an old, respected family in South Carolina. He’d rather die than let his friends or relatives know that he fathered the child of a Comanche Indian.”
Jared put down the toe of his boot and the gentle sway of the swing stopped so abruptly she teetered forward.
“Kerry, are you telling me that you’re a single mother because some man didn’t think you were good enough to be his wife?”
Embarrassed heat poured into her cheeks and she quickly looked away from his probing gray eyes.
“I don’t know why you sound surprised,” she said with a sigh. “You’re a Comanche, or at least part Comanche. You, more than anyone ought to know we’re not always looked upon as regular folks.”
Jared let out a loud groan of protest. “That sort of racial thinking went out ages ago. Once in a great while, I might hear a crude comment made about red-skins or savages. But it’s usually uttered by some nasty drunk in a bar or an illiterate redneck that doesn’t know any better.”
Before Jared had picked her and Peggy up this evening, she’d worried about keeping her distance from this man. And not just in a physical sense, but in an emotional way, too. She’d wanted their dinner date to be enjoyable but safely detached. Yet now that she was sitting here beside Jared in the waning twilight and his warm hand was closed protectively around hers, it felt natural, even right to be sharing a part of her life with him.
“That’s usually true, Jared. And I guess you’re wondering what I was doing with a guy like that in the first place. But believe me, I didn’t know about Damon’s real feelings until it was too late.”
Jared glanced briefly over his shoulder. Now that he had Kerry talking, he hoped his great-grandfather would keep Peggy out at the brooder house long enough for him to find out the reason for her broken heart.
“Where did you meet him? In college?”
She nodded. “He was in his final year at the University of Virginia and I was working on my master’s.” She paused and the tightness of her features told Jared that relaying her past to him was like digging into a festering wound.
“I have to admit that I was naive,” she went on. “Before I met Damon, I’d never had a steady boyfriend. I guess the misery I’d watched my mother go through with Marvin made me leery of getting involved with anyone. But Damon was persistent. And he was white. For some idiotic reason, I thought that made him safe. I thought there wasn’t any way he could be like my father. But in actuality he was worse.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jared asked. From what he remembered of Marvin WindWalker, the man had been a worthless drunk. As far as Jared could see, the only redeeming quality he’d had was having a daughter like Kerry.
Pushed by the painful memories crowding into her mind, Kerry rose from the swing and walked to the opposite end of the porch. A moment later, as she leaned against one of the wooden posts that supported the roof, she felt Jared’s hand close over her shoulder.
Drawing in a bracing breath, she said, “This is hard to talk about, Jared. It’s hard to admit to anyone that I was such a fool.”
“Kerry,” he whispered gently. “Don’t call yourself a fool. That’s not true.”
As she looked up at him something hard and painful snapped inside her and the release was so great she lay her head against his chest. “Oh Jared,” she said softly, “I never stopped to think that Damon was just using me. That he only wanted my body. He had a glib tongue and I believed him when he said he wanted to marry me once he finished his college studies. I believed all the wonderful plans he made for the two of us.”
The feel of her cheek nestled against him was one of the sweetest sensations he could ever remember and the gesture of trust evoked a sudden fierce longing to protect this woman in a way Jared had never felt before.
Softly, carefully, he stroked the back of her hair. “So what happened? You got pregnant and he left you?”
“Not exactly,” she murmured. “After a time both of us began to realize we wanted different things in life and those differences caused all sort of arguments and problems. By the time I discovered I was pregnant, we’d already ended our relationship. But I wanted my child and I thought Damon would, too. I believed he would care enough to work out our differences and that he would want to get married for the sake of the baby.”
Jared had always considered himself fortunate that none of his former girlfriends had approached him with the news that he was going to be a daddy. But then he’d always been very careful not to get a woman or himself in such a predicament. Which hadn’t been all that hard considering his relationships were purposely kept to a short-term basis. Yet now that he’d heard Kerry’s story, he knew that he could never walk away from a child. Even if he didn’t truly love the mother.
“So this guy didn’t want to get married?” Jared asked.
She made a strangled sound that was intended to be a mocking laugh. “Not hardly. He made it plain that he’d had other plans all along and that I would have never fit into his social circles back in South Carolina.”
The intense rage Jared felt toward the man who’d betrayed Kerry took him by surprise. “He must have been a real bastard.”
Her eyes shadowed with the past, Kerry lifted her head to look at him. “His duplicity is what really jolted me, Jared. It was so hard to believe that the man I’d known was all just an act on his part. Then on top of that, I had to face the fact that I was so gullible, so dumb that I hadn’t seen through him.”
Shaking his head, he reached out and cupped his hand against her cheek. “You weren’t dumb. You had a gentle, trusting heart and the man took advantage of it. I’d like to get my hands on him for about ten minutes. He’d be eating out of a straw for a few months. Then maybe he’d think twice about treating some other woman the way he treated you.”
The fact that he wanted to avenge the hurt she’d been put through thrilled her. She’d never had a father, brother or any man take up for her in such a gallant way and it made her feel protected and very feminine.
Rising up on her toes, she pressed a brief kiss against his cheek. “Thank you for the thought, Jared. And for caring.”
He did care, he realized. Far more than she could guess and way more than he’d ever intended.
“I do care,” he murmured, then before she could pull away completely, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and lowered his mouth to hers.
Instinctively, her eyelids fluttered downward. Her heart seemed to quit beating, the air in her lungs grew stale and her mind refused to think about anything except the sudden sweep of sensations through her body.
Beneath his hands he felt her muscles tense like a skittish colt and he told himself to keep the kiss light and short. But the taste of her lips was too sweet, too tempting to resist. Before he realized what he was doing, he was drawing her closer and slanting his mouth over hers hungrily.
Kerry was quickly losing her sanity and she silently screamed at herself to tear her mouth from his, to leave the seductive circle of his arms. But the pleasure of being this close to him was stronger than her common sense.
Thankfully, only a few more moments passed before the approaching sound of George’s voice
tore the two of them apart.
Embarrassed by her reckless behavior, Kerry quickly turned her back to Jared and gripped the porch post to steady her shaky legs.
Behind her, Jared reached out to touch her shoulder.
“Kerry.”
The hoarse whisper of her name suggested to Kerry that he’d been just as affected by their kiss as she’d been. But then she was hardly in any shape to gauge her own reaction, much less his. Besides, he’d had all kinds of practice with women, she told herself. He probably knew just what to say, just how to sound to make himself seem sincere.
“Don’t say anything, Jared,” she quietly pleaded. “It’s too embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing!” he repeated in a loud, insulted tone. Then seeing that George and Peggy were now climbing the steps, he lowered his voice for Kerry’s ears only. “I didn’t feel anything embarrassing about kissing you!”
Seeing that he’d misinterpreted her remark, she whirled back to face him, then inwardly groaned as her eyes connected with his dark, striking features. The man was simply too good to look at and definitely too good to kiss.
“That’s not what I meant. I—I’m ashamed at my behavior. I should have—never kissed you like that. Now you’re probably thinking I’m not a lady.”
Even though George and Peggy had now returned to the porch, Jared laughed with pure pleasure and caressed her cheek in an extremely intimate way.
“Honey, you’d be surprised at what I’m thinking about you.”
Chapter Seven
The next afternoon Kerry carried a stack of completed promissory notes into Clarence’s office for his signature and found the older man quietly reading the newspaper.
“Is that all you have to do around this place?” she teased.
He looked up questioningly and smiled the moment he realized the intruder in his office was Kerry.
“Work, work, work,” he bantered back at her. “You won’t even give a man five minutes to read the newspaper.”
She smiled. “I only need your signature on a few things before I file them away.”
“No problem.” He placed the paper to one side of his desk and reached to take the load of documents from Kerry’s arms.
As she handed them over, her eye caught the large photo on the front page of the local paper. Even from an upside-down position, she identified one of the men as Jared.
“I’m finished with the paper if you’d like to read it,” Clarence said as he began to scrawl his name across the bottom of a typed page.
Unaware that she’d been craning her neck for a better look, Kerry frowned at him. “Why would I want to read the newspaper? I have work to do.”
“Then why are you breaking your neck to see that picture of the Coltons?” He handed the paper up to her. “Here. Take a look while I finish signing these notes.”
Knowing it would look foolish to argue, Kerry took the newspaper and eased down in the chair situated in front of Clarence’s desk. As she scanned the photo of Jared accepting a huge key from the mayor of Black Arrow, Clarence said, “Looks like the Coltons have really made a splash in this town.”
“I wouldn’t call two newspaper articles making a big splash,” Kerry countered, while wondering why Jared hadn’t mentioned this meeting with the mayor to her last night. Maybe he hadn’t considered it a big deal, but she did. Especially when the whole incident was connected to her daughter.
“From what I hear, the news of Jared saving little Peggy has hit the Daily Oklahoman and the Tulsa World. And this morning while I was over in the courthouse building, Hazel tells me that someone was in there yesterday digging up more information on the Coltons.”
A quizzical frown wrinkled Kerry’s forehead as she looked up from the paper. “In the courthouse? There wouldn’t be any sort of information there about Peggy’s rescue. Who was this person?”
Clarence shrugged. “Some man she’d never seen before. She didn’t think he was from this area. Must have been some reporter.”
“Must have been,” Kerry murmured thoughtfully. “What sort of information was this person wanting?”
Clarence put down his pen and propped his elbows on his desk. “Hazel said he wanted genealogical information on Gloria and all of her descendants.”
“That’s odd,” Kerry mused aloud. “If he wanted that sort of information all he had to do was go to the sheriff’s department and visit with Bram. He’s the oldest of both the Colton families. He probably knows more about the family tree than most of the younger members. Or better yet, he could have talked to Gloria herself.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it weird, Kerry. Jared has been in the spotlight for the past few days and people all over the state are reading about him. Someone probably wants to do a story on him and his family. That’s all.”
Clarence could be right, Kerry thought. But something about the whole thing didn’t ring true with her.
“If that’s the case, he should have interviewed Jared personally. That’s the normal way to gather information.”
“Maybe he did,” Clarence suggested.
Kerry immediately shook her head. “No. He couldn’t have. I—”
She stopped so abruptly that Clarence immediately raised his eyebrows and prodded her to continue. “You what?” he asked.
Rosy color tinged Kerry’s cheeks as she quickly stood and placed the newspaper back on his desk. Spending time with Jared was not necessarily something she needed to keep secret. But Clarence was the closest thing she had to a father and she wasn’t ready to hear a lecture from him about dating a playboy. She’d already gotten enough of that from her mother.
“Well, I just—happened to be with Jared last night,” she explained. “And he didn’t mention anything about this stranger at the courthouse.”
Clarence leaned back in his chair and studied her with wry speculation. “I wasn’t aware that you were that well acquainted with Jared Colton.”
Kerry’s shrug was more of an effort to appear casual than anything else. “Gloria Colton and her father, George, were living here long before I was born. And many of her grandchildren are around my own age. We went to school together. The Coltons are a well-known family in Black Arrow. Especially with Bram being the sheriff and Gray a judge.”
“That’s true,” Clarence agreed. “But from what I understand, Jared hasn’t been a homebody. He’s been gone from here for the past ten or twelve years. And he is quite a bit older than you.”
Kerry leveled an annoyed look at him. “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Clarence? Just because I was with the man last night doesn’t mean there’s anything serious going on between us.”
Chuckling, he held up both hands in a gesture of innocence. “Whoa. I’m not jumping to anything. I was just a little surprised, that’s all. You’ve worked here for three years and I’ve never known you to date anyone.”
Clarence made it sound as though she’d suddenly taken a major turn in her life. And it wasn’t that way, she thought. She couldn’t let it be that way. Jared’s kiss might have turned her inside out, but he wasn’t a man she could let herself get serious about.
“Jared and I aren’t—exactly dating. He’s—been helping me with Peggy. She was so traumatized after her ordeal that she would hardly talk, much less eat. But she trusts Jared. And since he’s been spending time with her, she’s getting right back to her old self.”
A sly smile creased the older man’s face. “So this is not a case of like daughter, like mother.”
“Not at all,” Kerry said, then turned and headed out of the room before he could say anymore about her connection with Jared.
“Uh, Kerry,” Clarence called to her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
She paused at the door to glance questioningly back at him.
“I’ve signed all the notes,” he said, inclining his head toward the stack of papers she’d carried to him only minutes earlier. “Don’t you want to file them?”
Red-faced now, Kerry hurried ba
ck to his desk and snatched up the stack of documents. “Everyone gets distracted now and then,” she explained.
Clarence grinned at her. “Yeah, we do. And I’m very glad to finally see that you haven’t forgotten you’re a woman.”
If Kerry had forgotten, Jared had suddenly reminded her last night with that tantalizing kiss. Now she was going around as though she was moonstruck. She had to snap out of it before she did something foolish, something that might not only break her heart, but her daughter’s heart, too.
“I’m a mother first, Clarence. Always.”
That evening when Kerry arrived home from work, she found the house quiet and a note from her mother saying she and Peggy had gone to visit a friend over at Indiahoma and wouldn’t be back until later that evening.
After changing into a pair of jean shorts and a white sleeveless blouse, she made herself a sandwich and a glass of iced tea and carried the whole lot out to the porch to eat her solitary supper. As she ate, Kerry continued to ponder over the talk that a stranger had been at the courthouse digging into the Colton family records. The whole idea still struck her as odd and she wondered if Jared or any of the Coltons knew about the stranger.
It’s none of your business, Kerry. You don’t need to use this as an excuse to see Jared again. Being in the man’s company isn’t healthy for your heart or your head.
Okay, she conceded to the little voice of common sense. If seeing Jared was a bad idea, she could call Jared’s younger sister, Willow. But she hadn’t spoken to Willow in ages. Calling her up out of the blue and relaying such an odd story would have the woman thinking Kerry was crazy.
Of course, there was another option to consider. Bram was the sheriff. He was the man who needed to be alerted to suspicious goings on. But right now Kerry only had hearsay and she didn’t want to bother a busy sheriff with something that might turn out to be nothing more than gossip.
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