A Hawk's Way Christmas

by Joan Johnston

  “I’ve already told you about my nefarious activities in school,” she said with a smile. “As far as my family goes…it’s been an adventure growing up on a cattle and cutting horse ranch, especially as one of the Whitelaw Brats.”

  “Whitelaw Brats?”

  She grinned and said, “Playful pranks and high-spirited, harmless mischief are a time-honored Whitelaw tradition. My brothers and sisters and I—even though all eight of us were adopted—felt compelled to uphold it.”

  “For instance?”

  “Jewel and I tied a big red bow to the tail of old Mr. Cooper’s bull—which wasn’t easy, believe me,” she said, smiling as she remembered how Jewel had held on tight to the bull’s tail through the fence while she tied the bow. “Another time we used a curling iron on Hardy Carmichael’s golden retriever, Butch. He was the cutest thing you ever saw when we were done.”

  Gavin laughed and said, “I’m envious. It sounds like you had a lot of fun together.”

  Gavin’s laughter warmed someplace deep inside Rolleen. The sensation was pleasant, without being threatening, so she didn’t fight it.

  “It was fun,” she agreed. “Especially with so many of us so close to the same age. I’m the eldest at 24, Jewel’s 22, Cherry’s 21, Avery’s 20, Jake’s 19, Frannie’s 16, Rabbit’s 15—Rabbit’s real name is Louis. We call him Rabbit because—”

  “He liked vegetables when he was a kid, especially carrots,” Gavin finished for her.

  She straightened her legs and relaxed into a sprawl on the sofa. “I’m telling you things you already know.”

  Gavin cleared his throat and said, “I didn’t know exactly how old everybody was, although I’d pretty much guessed. By the way, you forgot Colt.”

  “I saved the best for last,” she corrected. “Colt’s fourteen and the rebel in the family. He’s also the only one of us who was adopted as a newborn, so he’s the only one who hasn’t known any parents except Zach and Rebecca. All of us kids had a hand in raising him—which is probably why he’s such a maverick. Too many cooks spoiling the broth, or something like that.”

  “I got the impression your father intends for Colt to take over the ranch.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if Colt ends up running Hawk’s Pride. He’s always had an affinity for the land, he rides like he was born on a horse and Dad’s been teaching him the business since he was old enough to walk.”

  “What plans did your parents have for you?” Gavin asked.

  “I’m fulfilling them,” she said with a smile. The smile faded. “At least I was until…” Rolleen found another imperfection in the secondhand couch and tried to repair it.

  “You said last night you plan to leave school and try to support yourself. What kind of work will you do?”

  Rolleen bit her lower lip anxiously. “I’d rather not say.”

  “I need to know everything—all about the real Rolleen Jane Whitelaw—or this isn’t going to work,” Gavin said.

  She looked at him and found she couldn’t look away. His dark eyes compelled her to share all her secrets. That’s what he does for a living, a cautionary voice reminded her. It has nothing to do with you personally.

  “If we start hedging with each other this early in the game, we might as well call it quits,” he said.

  Rolleen lowered her eyes to avoid his scrutiny. Her hands knotted in her lap. Being a sympathetic listener might be his job, but he was good at it, Rolleen conceded. No one knew what she was about to tell Gavin Talbot. Not any of her family, not her friends, not anyone. It had been her deep, dark secret.

  She took a deep breath and said, “There’s a salon in Houston called The Elegant Lady that features designer clothing. They’ve been wanting me to work with them for some time.”

  Gavin picked up one of the fashion magazines from the coffee table and thumbed through it. “What would you do for them?”

  “Design clothing.”

  Gavin shut the magazine and stared at her. “Don’t you have to go to design school for that? Or have some kind of training and experience?”

  Rolleen pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “For the past three years I’ve been selling my designs—that is, fashions I’ve designed and sewn myself—to The Elegant Lady.”

  Gavin’s smooth forehead suddenly acquired several deep lines. “Are you telling me you’ve been at the top of your class in medical school for the past two years while you’ve been secretly working as a fashion designer?”

  She hugged her knees more tightly, more protectively, to her chest. “I’ll make a good pediatrician.”

  “I never said you wouldn’t.”

  “Designing is a hobby. I do it for fun.”

  Gavin eyed her appraisingly. “It sounds to me like you’d rather be doing it for a living.”

  Rolleen stared at Gavin. He was amazingly perceptive. That wasn’t so odd, she realized, when you considered what he planned to do with his life. His work depended on reading faces, finding the hidden context in what people said and did. She still found it a bit disconcerting. In the three months she and Jim had been together, her professor had never once intuited that she wasn’t perfectly happy in medical school.

  “I wouldn’t have gone to medical school if I didn’t think I would like being a doctor,” she said.

  “But you love designing fashions,” Gavin guessed.

  Rolleen sighed, unable to keep the wistfulness from her voice. “Yes. I do.”

  “Can you really make a living at it?”

  “Not with as few designs as I’ve done over the past two years. But yes, with The Elegant Lady committed to buy as much as I can design, I could make a very comfortable living. And I’d be able to work at home, so I could be with the baby.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell your parents you’d rather be a fashion designer and just quit medical school?” Gavin asked.

  She smiled mischievously. “I’m about to do that, aren’t I?”

  “But you aren’t being honest with them,” Gavin said. “They’ll think you’re giving up something you really want to do because of the baby. If you’re so worried about their feelings, why not admit you prefer designing?”

  “Because then they’d know I’ve been lying to them for a very long time,” Rolleen admitted.

  “I can’t imagine Zach and Rebecca not supporting whatever profession you chose. Why lie in the first place?”

  “It’s hard to explain to someone who’s not adopted,” Rolleen said.

  “Try.”

  “You have to imagine what it feels like to be abandoned, totally alone in the world, knowing there’s no one who really cares if you live or die. Along comes this man and woman who say, ‘We’ll love you. We’ll take care of you. You’re precious to us.’“ She lifted her eyes and met Gavin’s intent, dark-eyed gaze. “You’d want to please those people because they’ve given you their love. And because if you didn’t, they might take it back.”

  “Zach and Rebecca would never— ”

  “I know they wouldn’t stop loving me,” Rolleen interrupted. “That is, intellectually I know it. But inside—” She tapped her heart with a forefinger. “Inside is a frightened six-year-old girl, already forsaken once by parents who said every day they loved her—and then abandoned her one morning at a convenience store.”

  Gavin remained silent, giving Rolleen too much time to think…to remember. Her heart was racing, clutching, as it did every time she relived that awful morning.

  She had frantically searched the store several times before she got up the courage to approach the clerk and ask, “Have you seen my mommy and daddy?”

  The clerk had taken one look at her, barefoot and dressed in a calico shift with a torn sleeve and the hem half-down and said, “We don’t allow kids in here alone.”

  “I came with my mommy and daddy. She’s wearing a dress with flowers on it and he’s tall and he’s got a mustache.”

  The clerk had looked out the window for a run-d
own truck that wasn’t there, said a word she knew she wasn’t ever supposed to say and then called the police. Rolleen didn’t remember much about the rest of what had happened that day. Mercifully she’d been in shock.

  As an adult, Rolleen understood that her birth parents had believed they were doing the right thing leaving her to the state welfare system, because she needed clothes and shoes to go to school and food to grow up healthy, and they were too poor to afford them. She still woke up every morning wondering what had happened to them. She still wondered what she could have done differently to keep them from abandoning her.

  It had taken a long time to learn to trust again. It had taken a great deal of courage to let herself fall in love. She told herself she had done nothing wrong as a child…or now…except to fall in love with a shallow man. But she had finally learned her lesson. She wasn’t going out on that limb again anytime soon.

  “Your turn to talk,” she said to Gavin. “Why do you need a fianc;aaee over Christmas?”

  * * *

  Gavin had known this moment was coming, and he’d practiced what he was going to say. When he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out. He shoved both hands agitatedly through his sun-streaked, tobacco-brown hair, then let them fall onto his thighs. He took a deep breath and said, “My wife died—” He cut himself off, swallowed hard and corrected, “—My wife killed herself in January, and this is the first Christmas…” That I will spend without her.

  Gavin could not understand the lump in his throat. He shouldn’t be missing Susan, shouldn’t be feeling pain at the thought of Christmas without her. She had betrayed him. But it wasn’t only Susan he was grieving, he conceded, it was what they had been together with Beth—a husband and a wife and child—a loving family.

  He shifted his glance to the stuffed kangaroo sitting on the sofa with the tiny baby in her pouch and thought how much Beth would love to have such a toy.

  Don’t you see? he felt like shouting. I can’t face a little girl I used to love…a little girl who wants me to love her still…when I can’t anymore.

  His throat had swollen completely closed, making it impossible to explain anything. His nose stung and his eyes watered and he felt dangerously close to crying.

  Telling Rolleen anything about Beth would have to wait. There was plenty of time over the next ten days to tell the whole sordid story. Gavin swallowed back the worst of the misery in his throat and said, “It would be easier if my grandmother and I weren’t alone at the ranch over the holidays.”

  “So I’m going to be a buffer between you and your grandmother?” Rolleen asked.

  “Hester and I get along fine,” he said brusquely. “It’s… She worries about…” He hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t want to be alone this Christmas.”

  * * *

  Rolleen could only imagine how Gavin felt, losing a wife, but she had lost Jim, and that was close enough to the same thing for her to understand and feel his pain.

  Don’t feel too much, a voice warned. Don’t get too close.

  Rolleen made herself listen to the voice. If she wasn’t careful, she could be hurt again. It was all right to like Gavin Talbot. It was even all right to feel sorry for him. It wasn’t all right to get emotionally involved in his life. She had to protect herself. They were two strangers who were going to part company at the end of the holidays. It was not necessary for her to know more than the bare fact that she would be helping him if she came home posing as his fianc;aaee.

  “Where’s your home?” she asked, tactfully changing the subject.

  “The ranch is about an hour south of here.”

  “That’s where we’ll be spending Christmas together?”

  Gavin’s stomach growled loudly.

  Rolleen glanced at her watch and realized it was nearly one o’clock. “Lunch!” She bounced up as though one of the ancient couch springs had sprung and said, “You must be starved. Come on into the kitchen. I planned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Sounds great. What can I do to help?”

  “You can fix us each a glass of iced tea while I warm up the soup and cook the sandwiches.”

  During lunch, Gavin kept her riveted—and laughing until her sides were sore—with stories about the kids he was working with at the hospital.

  “How can they find so much to laugh about when their lives are so uncertain?” she asked.

  “The same way you’ve been able to laugh today,” Gavin said. “Life goes on. You make the best of it. And it beats the heck out of the alternative.”

  Rolleen started to laugh and yawned instead.

  “Looks like you need your beauty rest,” Gavin said, standing and collecting the dishes. He was halfway to the kitchen before Rolleen caught up to him with the iced tea glasses. “Thanks,” she said. “I guess we’re going to have to cut this short. I am feeling a little tired.”

  “The baby?” he questioned as he settled the dishes in the sink.

  She nodded as she put the glasses down on the counter, then placed both hands on her abdomen. “This little darling takes a lot out of me.”

  “May I?” he asked, gesturing toward her hands.

  Rolleen moved her hands aside, and Gavin’s hands, large and warm, covered her rounded belly.

  “It seems like it ought to be soft, but it’s so firm,” he said, his hands gently cradling her stomach.

  Rolleen felt an ache in her throat. If only…

  “Don’t be sad,” he murmured. “I’m here now, baby.”

  Rolleen started at the use of the endearment. Was it for her? Or was he speaking to the child inside her? The look Gavin directed at her was so concerned, so loving, that she almost believed he really cared. “You called me baby,” she pointed out to him.

  “I know. We have to practice being in love,” he reminded her.

  Practice. Pretend. But it felt so real. Rolleen couldn’t take her eyes off Gavin. His head was lowering toward hers, but she couldn’t believe he really meant to kiss her. They’d known each other only a few hours.

  He stopped when his mouth was close enough that she could feel his warm, moist breath on her cheek. “May I?”

  “Isn’t it a little soon to be kissing?” she asked breathlessly.

  “We only have ten days to convince some very astute people that we’re in love,” he said quietly. “That I’ve had my hands all over you. That I’ve been inside you.”

  Rolleen took a hitching breath. “Holy cow.”

  “Is that a yes?” he said, his lips curling with amusement.

  Rolleen nodded and closed her eyes as he pressed his lips against her own. They were softer than she’d expected and slightly damp.

  “You okay, baby?” he murmured.

  Her heart pumped a little faster. “Mmm-hmm.”

  She felt a tingle as his tongue came out to trace her closed lips. “Oh,” she whispered in pleasure.

  He took advantage of her open mouth to slip his tongue inside, then withdrew before she could protest. He slowly straightened, his gaze focused on hers, so she could see his dark brown eyes were almost black, his lips rigid with desire.

  Rolleen felt panicky without knowing why. She put her hand on Gavin’s chest to make a space and eased past him. “I think that’s enough for today.”

  He followed her into the living room. “When can you meet with me again?”

  “Next week,” she said immediately. Rolleen wanted the rest of the weekend to recover from his touch, from the loving addresses, from his surprisingly sensual kiss.

  “How about tonight?” he countered.

  “So soon?”

  “We don’t have much time,” he reminded her. “And we both have busy schedules during the week. Why don’t I take you out for dinner and dancing?”

  “Dancing?”

  “It’ll be fun. Pick you up at eight.” He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth. “Think of me while you’re napping,” he whispered in her ear. A moment
later he was out the door.

  Rolleen felt like she’d been caught up in a tornado that had come and gone and left her not knowing which end was up. When Gavin had tasted her in the kitchen, she’d wanted to keep on kissing him. And just now she’d been thinking how nice it would be if Gavin laid down with her on the bed and held her while she napped.

  Snap out of it, R.J.

  Rolleen wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. She’d fallen for Jim Harkness in a hurry and look how that had turned out. What she felt for Gavin couldn’t be love, but whatever it was, it was dangerous. When he took her dancing tonight—she loved dancing—she was going to have to be careful not to like it too much.

  CHAPTER 3

  In the ten days since Gavin Talbot had met Rolleen Whitelaw, he had run the gamut of romantic experiences with her. They had gone from a couple just meeting to a couple who had mated—or rather, who could pretend they had. It had been quite an adventure, and Gavin had enjoyed every minute of it. There was only one cloud on his horizon: Rolleen still didn’t know about Beth.

  He had meant to tell her, but the better he got to know Rolleen, the less willing he was to confess his feelings toward his daughter. Because he was pretty sure when he did, he was going to lose Rolleen’s regard. And he wasn’t ready for that to happen yet.

  Gavin knew he was only postponing the inevitable, but there was always the chance his feelings toward Beth would miraculously change when he saw her again. At least, that was his excuse for keeping Rolleen in the dark about his daughter.

  In a matter of hours they would be leaving to spend the holidays with Rolleen’s family at her father’s ranch in northwest Texas. Gavin couldn’t quite believe they were really going through with it.

  As he thought back over the previous ten days, Gavin realized that he and Rolleen had become such good friends, it wasn’t going to take much acting to pose as someone who loved her. Especially since—if the circumstances hadn’t been what they were—they might have become romantically involved.

  He would never forget the stunned look in Rolleen’s eyes after he’d kissed her that first time. In fact, touching her and tasting her that day at her apartment had been so arousing, he had felt like picking her up and carrying her straight to the bedroom. The hard part had been remembering he didn’t have that right, that everything they did was make-believe, because she needed a make-believe father for her unborn child.