Staking His Claim

by Karen Templeton

  "No problem. You feelin' better?"

  "As opposed to being dead? Yeah, I suppose."

  They needed to talk, he knew that, but he didn't have a clue what to say. Or think, even. He kept trying to drive the words I'm gonna be a daddy through his skull, but they wouldn't go. To be truthful, Cal had worked his way through a fair number of condoms in his time—he wasn't much into torch-carrying—but this was the first time one had let him down. That it should do so at the precise moment somebody's egg was moseying on down the pike was just not fair.

  Panic raced through him like a brushfire.

  He glanced outside, toward the barn and the pasture beyond. Toward that part of his life that was still what it had been ten minutes ago. It was selfish, yeah, but right now he needed to be somewhere where he felt like he knew what the hell he was doing. He looked back at Dawn, met her questioning gaze.

  "I don't suppose you'd be up to takin' a short walk? Just to the pasture?"

  Her answer was to take another sip of water, nod and get to her feet, that multicolored skirt floating around her ankles as she wordlessly followed Cal outside into the molten early-evening sunshine. The dogs massed around them, tongues lolling, butts wagging; Dawn spoke to each one, softly, her words still tinged with an Oklahoman tang, even after all this time. He also noticed, when he looked over, that her hair flamed.

  And so did he.

  No point denying either his memory of their encounter two months ago or his body's reaction to her, he realized as they made their way to the pasture where several of his mares still grazed, yet to be brought in for the night. He knew she'd always felt uneasy in her own body, her legs too long, her breasts too large for her frame. So he'd been sure to show her that night—Cal had always been one to take advantage of an opportunity—the truth of the matter in as many ways as he could think of. Not that the size of her breasts mattered one whit to him, but he had to admit God had outdone Himself this time.

  And maybe it wasn't right, his thinking about her breasts at this moment, but it wasn't like he could forget them, for one thing. And for another, he'd always thought of sex as kind of a mental comfort food. It was hardly all he thought about, but when things got tough, he found letting his mind wander down that path brought him a certain measure of peace.

  "Cal? Wait a sec…"

  He turned. Dawn was leaning against the trunk of a cottonwood, her hands cupped over her nose and mouth. "The odor," she mumbled from behind her hands. At his probably perplexed expression—it was just a little fresh dung, for heaven's sake, and the wind was blowing away from them at that—she added, "Everything smells…stronger right now."

  So much for peaceful thoughts. Not even thinking about Dawn's breasts was going to do it this time.

  "Oh. Uh…you wanna go back…?"

  But she shook her head, pushing away from the tree and plastering on a fake smile. "Nope. All better. Let's go."

  Never mind that she looked like she was gonna hurl for sure.

  In the pasture, most of the mares, all pregnant, as well as the ten or so foals he was still hoping to sell before winter set in, stood in sociable clumps of twos and threes, like folks at a barbecue. Cinnamon, a sleek and sassy bay, pregnant with her ninth foal, ambled over to the fence, begging as usual. In this light, the mare's coat and Dawn's hair were nearly the same color.

  Cal patted the mare's glistening neck, chuckling when she nibbled at his hair. The mare whuffled, nodding toward Dawn, then back to him.

  "Cindy, meet Dawn. She's gonna have a baby, too."

  He saw Dawn's attention snap to him, but by then Cindy had cantilevered her massive head over the fence for some loving. Dawn was smart enough, or needy enough, not to turn down the horse's offer. She linked the fingers of one hand in the horse's bridle, stroking the mare's white stripe with the other, an expression on her face like she wanted to somehow sink into the mare's calmness and never come out. One of the barn cats, out for his evening hunt, rubbed up against her leg, marking her.

  "She's gorgeous," Dawn said of the mare. "They all are. What are they?"

  "Horses."

  That got a laugh. Well, what you could hear around the snort. "No, doofus. I mean what…kinds. Breeds, whatever."

  He smiled. "Quarter horses, mostly. But I've got a couple of mutts, too—the chestnut back by the fence is part Tennessee walker. And we think Josie, there—the dapple gray—might have some Arabian in her."

  "How large is the herd?"

  "On the permanent roster? Fifteen mares and a stallion I put out to stud. Plus the youngsters. All retired prizewinners or offspring of prizewinners. Good listeners with easygoing dispositions. And they all produce some real pretty foals."

  "And you're doing okay?" The concern in her voice made him turn to meet her equally concerned eyes. "It can't be easy," she said gently, "making something like this work."

  "I won't lie and say it is. Especially with foal prices taking a hit the way they've done the past couple of years. But the stud fees I get for Twister keep me afloat. In fact, I've almost finished buying out my brothers. By this time next year, this'll be all mine."

  He watched her scan the new up-to-date barn replacing the old barns and outbuildings she would've remembered from when they were kids. "You've really found your niche in life, haven't you?"

  "I guess I have," he said, trying to peg whatever he thought he'd heard in her voice, even though figuring out what went on inside women's heads was definitely not his strong suit.

  "There's something, I don't know, honest and basic about working with horses. You treat 'em right, they'll return the favor and do their best for you. I get up in the morning, and even when there's a boatload of work to do, or even when I'm worried about one of my gals for one reason or another, I look forward to the day. How many people can say that? And really mean it?…Dawn? You okay?"

  Her forehead lowered to the mare's muzzle, she muttered, "I'm sorry," although almost more to the horse than to him.

  "For what?"

  She gave him a doleful expression.

  "Not for being pregnant?" he said.

  "Maybe," she said on a rush of air. "I just keep feeling I should be apologizing for something. For falling into bed with you, if nothing else."

  "Hey. Unless I missed something, that was a mutual decision. One I sure as hell didn't regret." She canted a look at him. "No, not even now."

  "Never mind how stupid it was."

  "Is that what you're thinking? That it was stupid?"

  "Uh, yeah?"

  "Well, that's just nuts."

  "And now you're pissed."

  "Hell, yes, if I'm readin' you correctly. Just because neither one of us expected more'n that one night doesn't mean it was stupid. Or meaningless." He leaned his forearms on the top of the fence, trying to tamp down his irritation. Trying even harder to understand it. Cindy, realizing she was no longer the focus of the conversation, clopped off, her black tail swishing.

  "Okay, so we got more out of it than we'd bargained. And yeah, I suppose I'm gonna be in shock for a while about that. But that doesn't mean anybody has anything to be sorry for. Actually, if you're lookin' to blame somebody, it wasn't you who forgot to check the date on those condoms, was it?"

  A pained smile crossed her face. "Should I be flattered it had been that long?"

  Cal hesitated, then said, "To tell you the truth…I grabbed one out of the wrong box. The one I should've thrown out when I bought the new one the month before."

  "You know, I could have lived without knowing that."

  "Thought women wanted men to be honest with them."

  "Not that honest."

  He glanced over. She was leaning against the fence much like he was, but everything about her was tight—her set mouth, her hands, knotted together in front of her, her shoulders, rising and falling in tandem with her shallow, hurried breaths.

  Cal gazed back over the pasture, over what had been his life for more than ten years. Building up his breeding business
had given him something to focus on after his parents died, something he could count on to bring him satisfaction and pleasure even when his personal life sucked. He would be lying if he didn't admit, at least to himself, that he didn't need this distraction, this monkey wrench in the orderly, safe, relatively painless life he'd made for himself. At the same time excitement tingled in his veins with the realization that the one thing that had eluded him so far—the promise of family—was suddenly within his grasp.

  He stole a quick look at the side of Dawn's face, her expression resolute. Well, the promise of part of a family, anyway. Where he saw hope, however, his guess was that she saw catastrophe. Where he saw opportunity, she clearly saw entrapment.

  And her fears were doing a damn good job of kicking his wide awake.

  "How come you waited so long to say something?" he asked softly.

  "Denial," came out on an exhaled breath. "I'd had a bad cold, thought maybe that screwed up my cycle." She gave a dry, humorless laugh. "Okay, I couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it."

  The sun nestled a little closer to the horizon as they stood there, not looking at each other, not saying anything. One of the dogs sat down to scratch, jangling his tags; a couple of mares decided to get up a game of tag, their pounding hooves raising a cloud of dust. Cal kept thinking he was supposed to say something, to come up with some sort of solution. Instead, he could practically hear the wind whistling through the cavity where his brain was supposed to be.

  "I guess you're sure—"

  "Oh, yeah. I'm sure. And yes, I'm having the baby. And keeping it."

  Her eyes darted to his, then away, as his stomach screeched to a halt a breath away from splat! "So you never considered—"

  "I didn't say that." At what must have been his horrified expression, she pushed out a breath. "To be honest, my first thought was this can't be happening. And my second thought was how can I make it unhappen? So I went for a walk. A long walk. A walk that took me past a family planning clinic. On purpose. And I stood there, staring at the door, visualizing walking up the steps, making an appointment…" Her eyes went wide, the words shooting from her mouth like a flock of freaked birds. "I'd never even thought about having a baby, Cal! Let alone like this! Who knows what kind of mother I'll make? For all I know, this could be a major disaster in the making—"

  She let out a little yelp when Cal grabbed her by the shoulders. "And you can stop that kind of talk right now! You're gonna make a dynamite mother. Maybe not a normal one, but a damned good one."

  She rolled her eyes, then said, "And you know this how?"

  "Because I know you. Or at least, I did. And the Dawn I remember never did anything half-assed." Purely from reflex, his thumbs started massaging her shoulders. Purely from reflex—he assumed—she shivered slightly. "I'd be real surprised to find out you'd changed."

  "Yeah, well, raising a kid isn't the same as acing a course. Or even winning a case. Which I don't always do, by the way."

  "But—" He actually caught the thought before it sailed out of his big mouth, but only long enough to examine it and let it go, anyway. "But you were all set to get married."

  "Oh." She sighed. "That. As it happens, Andrew wasn't all that hot on parenthood. And to be honest, I was ambivalent. About having kids, I mean."

  "You got any idea why?"

  That got a shrug. "Maybe because so much of my work revolves around children. I don't know." At his frown, she said, "I do a fair amount of pro bono work for the firm, most of it involving family issues. Many of the kids I see have been knocked around pretty badly. By life, by The Man, by—all too often—their own parents. And the looks on their faces…" The expression on hers twisted him inside out. "Oh, God, Cal, they'd break your heart. The way they want to trust so badly, and are so afraid to…"

  Tears shone in her eyes. "Everybody says, don't get involved, don't let it become personal. Except that's the reason I became a lawyer to begin with, to try to make a difference. Lame as that might sound," she added with a wry smile. "But having a kid of my own…" She let loose another sigh, this one long and ragged. "I've never been one of those women who gets all mushy when they see someone else's baby or feel a pang of envy at seeing a pregnant woman, okay? I've never felt that having a child would complete me, because I never felt anything was missing to begin with. But here I am, pregnant. Pregnant and confused, and sick half the day, and scared. That's about all I know. And that I had to tell you. Beyond that, it's a blank. A very screwed-up, messy blank."

  Their gazes danced around each other for a second or two, then she took off for her car, leaving Cal so tangled up in his emotions, he had no idea which one prompted him to yell out, "We could get married."

  She spun around, her mouth open. Then she burst out laughing.

  "It wasn't that dumb a suggestion," he muttered, closing the space between them.

  She crossed her arms when he reached her, that pitying look in her eyes again. "Who'd you vote for in the last election?"

  He told her, and she laughed again. The car door groaned when she opened it. "We'd never survive the next presidential campaign. Besides, even if I was sticking around, you know as well as I do shotgun marriages rarely work out."

  He couldn't argue with her there. Of the three couples they'd gone to high school with who'd "had" to get married, only one was still together.

  "Hold on." He clamped hold of the top of the door. "What do you mean you're not sticking around?"

  Her brows shot up. "You honestly don't expect me to move back here just because I'm pregnant?"

  "I didn't expect anything. But I sure as hell didn't think you'd drop a bombshell like this and just take off again!"

  "I'm not. I'll be here until the end of the week."

  "Oh, well then. That's different."

  "Dammit, Cal…" She smacked a loose hair out of her face.

  "I know your life is here. But mine isn't. And hasn't been for a long time. I've invested far too much in my career, and Mama sacrificed too much to help me get there, to just drop it because I'm—we're—going to have a baby."

  Her words only added to the debris-laden whirlwind swirling around inside his head. Yes, he'd always accepted, even if he hadn't fully understood, that Haven could never provide Dawn with whatever it was that fed her soul, something he assumed she'd found in New York. And an hour ago he didn't even know about this baby. Yet he already knew not being able to see this child grow up, day by day, minute by minute, would kill him.

  "And if you think I'm gonna settle for being an e-mail daddy," he said sharply, "you're more off your nut than I thought. You can be a lawyer anywhere. Even here."

  "Right. As if there's room for more than one attorney in a town with a population of nine hundred."

  "Hey, we're up to nine hundred and nine now. At least three people had babies last year, nobody died and a new family with four kids bought Ned MacAllister's property and are building on it. And besides, I hear Sherman Mosely's thinking of retiring. That heart attack he had last year put the fear of God in him. So maybe there would be—"

  "And what kind of work would I do here? Help people make out their wills? Write up contracts? My life isn't something out of Ally McBeal. I don't spend my days handling frivolous cases and my nights boogying in some bar."

  "I didn't figure you did."

  "Then you should understand that I need to be someplace where I can make a real difference in people's lives. Those kids I told you about? They need me, Cal. And if I make partner, I can help them even more."

  "In other words, Podunkville's petty little problems don't matter."

  "I didn't say that! And I didn't mean that. It's just that…oh, hell—how can I possibly make you understand this without sounding like a snob? I'd feel stifled and useless here, can't you understand that?"

  Cal slammed his palm against the car's roof. "And how the hell do you expect to raise a child together if we don't live in the same place?"

  "I don't know! But I can't just giv
e up my life!"

  "Your work comes before your child, in other words."

  "No!" Anguish swam in her eyes. "Oh, God, Cal—I may be totally clueless, and I'm still in shock, too, and I may not know what kind of mother I'll make, but there's a reason I never got beyond looking at the front door of that clinic! It takes my breath, how much I already love this kid. And I'm prepared to give it anything it needs. But is it so wrong to not want to lose myself in the process?"

  He felt his eyes blaze into hers. "Is it so wrong for me to want to be a real part of my child's life?"

  "Of course not, but—"

  "A kid shouldn't have to grow up without its father, Dawn! And I'd think you'd be the last person to want to see that happen to your kid!"

  Her face went rigid. Then she threw up her hands, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. I'm too tired to talk about this anymore right now." He didn't hinder her when she climbed into the car. "Maybe tomorrow?"

  His chest all knotted up, Cal propped his now-stinging hand on the roof. "You plannin' on changing your mind overnight?"

  After a moment, she shook her head again.

  "Well, honey—" he let go and stood up straight "—neither am I. So I'd say we're at an impasse, wouldn't you?"

  He watched her peel out of the drive, wondering if it would have made things better or worse to admit he was every bit as scared as she was.

  If not more.

  Chapter 2

  After he'd put up the horses for the night and returned to the house, all he did was prowl from room to room. An activity which finally drove Ethel, who was crocheting something or other in the living room because the TV reception was better in here, she said, over the edge.

  "For pity's sake, boy! Either sit your backside down and talk to me or take it someplace else! And I already figured out she's pregnant, so there's one decision out of your hands."