For Love and Family

by Victoria Pade

  A face that was no longer as tense as it had been earlier.

  A face that Terese studied now that he was standing there in front of her and she had the perfect opportunity.

  He had a sharp, square jaw shadowed with a day’s growth of dark beard that looked more sexy than unkempt, and a mouth that was not too full, not too thin. His eyes were the color of the topaz stone in a ring Terese had inherited from her grandmother—brown eyes shot through with brilliant specks of gold. His brow was square and unlined, and he wore his sun-streaked dark blond hair just a little full and disarrayed—not messy, but as if he’d run his hands through it more than once today and let it all fall naturally into slight waves. Certainly it was nothing at all like the no-hair-out-of-place men she encountered in the social circles she was accustomed to.

  The nurse left them alone then and Hunter’s attention returned to Terese. “How are you doing?” he asked, barely penetrating her preoccupation.

  She consciously pulled herself out of that preoccupation and said, “I’m fine. I felt a little weak and light-headed for a while but they gave me juice and cookies and I’m okay now. They’re letting me go home.”

  He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the door the nurse had just gone through. “She’d told me before that you were getting out. That’s why I’m here.”

  That sounded like it might evolve into a fast goodbye and Terese didn’t want it to. Not before she knew how her nephew was. So she said, “More importantly, how is Johnny?”

  If Hunter had been about to make a quick exit, it didn’t show because he swung a leg over the wheeled stool the doctor had used and sat down across from her. “Johnny’s okay,” he announced with relief in his voice. “The nosebleed stopped. Finally. And the transfusion made him feel better. They’re keeping him for forty-eight hours—something about checking his hemoglobin to make sure it stabilizes. But as long as he isn’t bleeding, we’re doing well.”

  “And during the forty-eight hours will they know if he has hemophilia or not?” The drive to the hospital had only taken about twenty minutes, but Hunter had filled her in on a few things along the way.

  “Yeah, those results should be in before they let him go. They’re pretty sure that’s what we’re dealing with, though. They said we’ll have to be cautious but there’s no reason to panic. It isn’t a progressive disease or a debilitating one. Which is good.”

  “In other words, it’s not something you’d want him to have, but it could be worse,” Terese summarized.

  “Right. I’m sorry you couldn’t come in and see him. The nurses told me you wanted to, but between the nosebleed and the transfusion the poor kid was overwhelmed and not up for company.”

  “That’s okay. I understand.” But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been disappointed. She’d been hoping this would be an opportunity to meet her nephew. The nephew she probably wouldn’t have any other chance to meet, even though it was something she’d always wanted.

  “Once the bleeding stopped,” Hunter was saying, “and the transfusion was over, Johnny was exhausted. He fell right to sleep.”

  Terese nodded. “I’m just glad he’s okay.”

  “I’ll be staying here with him but since he’s out like a light now I thought I could run you home without him missing me.”

  “Your wife isn’t here?” Terese asked, knowing that a married couple had adopted Eve’s baby.

  Hunter handsome features tensed again. “We lost her two years ago,” he said quietly.

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t offer any more information on his wife’s death and although Terese was curious, she didn’t feel free to question him.

  He continued with what he’d been saying before that. “I don’t want you to have to take a cab home or bother anyone to pick you up.”

  “It’s okay. I called the house when they told me I’d be able to leave and had a car sent to get me.”

  Did that sound pretentious? Terese hoped not. But just in case it did, she added, “I don’t usually use the Town Cars or the drivers. I like driving myself. I have a small sedan. But since I rode here with you…”

  It occurred to her that Hunter Coltrane was probably not interested in that many details of her means of transportation, so she stopped what she was saying and finished with, “But thanks for thinking of me.”

  The rancher’s expression had relaxed once more and he laughed a wry laugh. “It’s me who needs to be thanking you. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you came here and did this. I’m in your debt. If there’s anything I can ever do to repay you…”

  Terese didn’t respond immediately to that. Ordinarily she would have merely waved away his appreciation and certainly she wouldn’t have sought any kind of compensation.

  But this wasn’t an ordinary situation. And it struck her suddenly that even though she hadn’t been allowed to meet her nephew today, his father’s gratitude might be her chance—her only chance—to meet Johnny in the future.

  “There is one thing I’d like,” she said tentatively, nervous about doing what she was about to do, but afraid she’d regret it if she didn’t.

  “Anything,” he said.

  Terese felt sort of small for putting him on the spot, so before she told him what she wanted, she prefaced it. “Let me say up front that if it makes you uncomfortable you’re free to refuse—absolutely free.”

  Terese could tell he was already slightly uncomfortable because he’d been sitting with his elbows on his wide-spread knees, leaning towards her, and now he sat up straight. But this was important to her so she soldiered on, although she couldn’t keep herself from talking very fast.

  “Here’s the thing. For the three days after Johnny was born—and before you and your wife took custody—Eve didn’t want anything to do with him. But I hated the thought that he was only being looked after by nurses so I spent a lot of time with him. I fed him and changed him and…” She was getting teary-eyed just remembering it. Remembering how much it had broken her heart when she’d had to accept that her sister really wasn’t going to keep him.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I fell in love with him and then he was gone and… Well, I’ve always wished I’d been able to keep in touch with him. To know him and how he’s doing. To watch him grow up, even from a distance…”

  Hunter Coltrane’s posture seemed more stiff than it had before and Terese rushed to ease whatever tension she might be raising in him. “There’s no question in my mind that you’re his parent, that you’re his family. Please don’t think I’d ever—ever—forget that. But I really would like to meet him. Totally on your terms,” she was quick to add. “And he wouldn’t have to know there’s a connection if you don’t want him to. You could just say I’m a friend, or the person who gave him blood, and leave it at that.”

  Now it was Hunter who didn’t respond readily. Instead he seemed to be thinking it over. Or maybe he was just trying to come up with an excuse.

  Worrying that she was out of line, she didn’t wait for an answer and instead spoke again. “Honestly, don’t feel obligated. I give blood regularly so if the blood bank’s supplies hadn’t been depleted Johnny might have gotten my blood, anyway, and I would never have known the difference. So if you want to keep everything the way it’s been for the last four years, it’s okay. It isn’t as if I’ll take the blood back or anything.”

  The joke was lame but she was trying to lighten the tone, to keep him from feeling pressured.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t even be what’s best for Johnny,” Terese continued, the words spilling out on their own at a breakneck pace before Hunter could respond even if he was ready to. “And I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t good for him.”

  “It’s okay,” the rancher said then, holding up one hand, palm outward, to stop more of the verbal avalanche. “If you’d give me a minute I’d tell you that I don’t see anything wrong with Johnny meeting you.”

  Despite the fact that she’d been hoping he would agree, sh
e was shocked that he had.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Really.”

  “And you aren’t saying that just because you feel as if you owe me anything? Because you don’t. I wouldn’t want to do anything that disturbs you. I know that sometimes an adoptive parent’s security can be—”

  “I’m not insecure about being Johnny’s dad,” Hunter assured her with a hint of a smile that let her know how true that was. “Adopted or not, he’s my son and nothing is ever going to change that. I don’t think I want him going over to your house or anything like that, but just to have you meet him? I don’t see any problem with that.”

  Terese didn’t want to tell him that her twin sister wouldn’t want Johnny at the house any more than he did, so she merely agreed with his qualification. “No, I don’t think it would be good for Johnny to be at the house either. I’d come to you. I could even do it here, while he’s in the hospital, if you don’t want me to know where you live or—”

  “I’m not sure if seeing him in the hospital is a good idea. There are so many strangers and he’s already pretty intimidated just by being here. But where we live isn’t a secret.”

  “I’m willing to do it any way you want to do it,” Terese said.

  The rancher paused another moment, and she worried he might be having second thoughts. In fact, he paused for so long and seemed to be watching her so intently, that she began to think he was going to say no after all.

  But then, as if he’d made some sort of decision, he said, “You know, I have a guest cabin at the ranch. Nothing fancy, but if you wanted to come out and spend a few days with us, you could meet Johnny and get to know him a little on his own territory. What would you say to that?”

  She wasn’t sure what to say to that, because she was so stunned that not only was he willing to let her meet her nephew, he was actually offering her a way to get to know the little boy. It was more than Terese had ever hoped for.

  “That would be wonderful,” she finally said.

  “Can you take some time off work— Do you work?”

  “I do. I teach psychology at Portland State University. But I’m on sabbatical right now so my time is my own.”

  “Great.”

  Another nurse knocked and opened the door just then, coming in with papers for Terese to sign.

  Hunter stood to give the stool over to her. “I’ll get out of the way so you can go home. But I’ll call you as soon as I get Johnny out of here and we can set up a time for you to come to the ranch.”

  “I can’t wait,” Terese answered.

  Hunter gave her a little wave then and left her to the nurse who showed her where to sign the release forms and then told her she was free to go.

  “You’ll probably want to put on that sweater,” the nurse said as she left. “It’s feeling very Octoberish out there tonight.”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that.”

  Terese slipped the sweater over her head and then went to the small mirror on the wall to pull her shirt collar up and make sure she was presentable.

  But as she smoothed her hair into place something else flashed through her mind—the image of Hunter Coltrane. The image of Hunter Coltrane with her.

  “Now that’s a pipe dream,” she muttered to herself.

  And no one knew it better than Terese.

  Because Hunter Coltrane was handsome enough to stop traffic and she, as proven by the reflection in the mirror, was hardly the kind of woman who would so much as turn his head.

  Her stepmother had always said it. So had Eve. Eve had alluded to it today. And it was an irrefutable fact—Terese Warwick was a Plain Jane.

  The kind of Plain Jane who didn’t attract even moderately attractive men on her own merits, let alone men like Hunter.

  “And don’t you forget it!” she commanded her reflection as if it were another person.

  Then she left the hospital room, telling herself just to be glad she was going to get to meet her nephew.

  She worked hard to erase the lingering mental image of her nephew’s father, a mental image that had things inside her sitting up and taking notice.

  Just the way the man himself had….

  Two

  “Uh, Johnny? What do we have going on there?”

  It was Sunday evening and Hunter was expecting Terese to arrive at his ranch any minute. He’d had his son home from the hospital since Thursday and after some soul-searching, on Friday night he’d kept his word and called her to arrange a time for her to come out and stay so she could meet Johnny and get to know him.

  She’d said she had charity functions to attend this weekend, so would it be all right if she got there around nine o’clock. Hunter had agreed. But she was late and since it was already past Johnny’s bedtime, Hunter had gotten the boy ready for bed, complete with bath and pajamas. But the little boy had just disappeared upstairs for a while and now that he’d returned to the living room, Hunter was surprised to see the results of that trip.

  “You look nice and I wanted to, too,” Johnny informed him.

  Leave it to his son to notice that he’d taken a second shower and shaved again today, and that he was wearing slacks and a polo shirt rather than the jeans and sweatshirt he would normally have been in on a lazy Sunday evening.

  “Come over here and let me see what you’ve done,” Hunter said, trying not to laugh.

  Johnny had just turned four last month and was very intent on proving that he was more independent than he had been before. But as Hunter sat on the coffee table and pulled his son to stand between his legs, the boy seemed small and fragile to him.

  “So what did you do to yourself?” Hunter asked, surveying how his son had spruced himself up.

  Johnny had flaming red hair that Hunter kept short on the sides and in back. But he let the barber leave a little on top and now Johnny had done something to make only the front part stick straight up.

  Hunter lightly patted the stiff-looking tips with his palm. “How’d you do this?” he asked, careful to sound impartial so as not to offend what his son was clearly proud to have accomplished.

  “My friend Mikey showed me. You wet your hair and then you kinda comb it up with the bar of soap till it stays. Then you let it get dry.”

  That was a relief. Hunter was afraid he’d used super-glue.

  “It makes you cool,” Johnny informed him.

  “Cool,” Hunter repeated. “Uh-huh.”

  Accepting the hairstyle for the moment, he lowered his gaze to his son’s chubby-cheeked face with the sprinkling of freckles across his tiny nose.

  “And did you wash your face again since your bath?” he asked, surprised since it was always a struggle to get his son to wash his face once, let alone twice.

  “I din’t wash it. I shaved just a little bit,” Johnny informed him, rubbing a hand along his peach-skin jawline.

  “You must have pressed kind of hard,” Hunter observed. “Your cheeks are all red. You made sure you used the special razor I gave you, didn’t you? It’s more important than ever that you never touch mine, you know?”

  “I know. ’Cuz yours has a really sharp thing in it and ’cuz of the hemolilia I got now.”

  Hunter had tried to get him to pronounce hemophilia correctly but it was a losing battle.

  “Right. And did you put some of the soap in your eyebrows to make them stand up, too?” Hunter asked, seeing that the pale brows over his son’s blueberries-and-cream colored eyes were going in all directions.

  “No, I think they musta just getted that way when I dried off my face ’cuz the water in my hair dripped.”

  “So can I fix them?”

  Johnny nodded and Hunter licked his thumbs and smoothed his son’s eyebrows into place.

  Then he glanced down at Johnny’s rodeo pajamas. And the way his son had accessorized them.

  “That’s one of my best ties, isn’t it?”

  “Yup. I wanted to look nice.”

  “And you do,” Hunter assured him. He cou
ldn’t stop the smile that escaped. The tie was knotted into a wad at his throat and hung nearly to his knees. “I’m just thinking that this might not be a necktie kind of night. See? I don’t have one on.”

  “Maybe you should put one on.”

  “I don’t think so. And you know, a tie is sort of fancy for pajamas. Even for the good rodeo pajamas.”

  “I look nice,” Johnny insisted.

  “You do. You do. I’m just thinking that our company might not have dressed up quite that much and we wouldn’t want her to feel bad, would we?”

  Johnny creased his forehead and looked down at the striped tie. “We could tell her it was okay that she didn’t get dressed up good as us.”

  “You really want to leave the tie on, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  Hunter nodded. He didn’t have the heart to force the issue. “Okay, then. Well, I guess since you’re all ready, you can help me get the rest of your toys put away so this place doesn’t look like a cyclone hit it.”

  Apparently feeling dressed up made the little boy agreeable because he didn’t balk at that suggestion the way he usually did. Instead he turned and went right to work.

  “Who’s this lady again?” Johnny asked as he picked up his toys.

  Hunter hadn’t known how to explain Terese Warwick. Johnny knew he was adopted; Hunter and his wife had decided when he was still an infant that they would be open and honest with him on the subject. Despite that, the whole concept seemed slightly out of his grasp yet. Whenever they talked about it Johnny seemed only concerned with the fact that Hunter was his dad no matter what.

  Hunter hadn’t wanted to confuse him by trying to explain that Terese Warwick was the sister of Johnny’s birth mother, so he’d opted for a more simple description. Which he repeated now.

  “She’s a friend who knew you when you were only a baby, and she’s the person who has the same kind of blood that you have, so she gave you some of hers when you were in the hospital.”