Staking His Claim

by Karen Templeton

  They all trooped back into Ruby's gleaming kitchen, Elijah a trifle more subdued than he had been five minutes before. Especially when he caught sight of Jordy, Ruby's bald, bad, six-foot-three, 280-pound husband. After a brief discussion, it was decided Elijah could mop the floor after the lunch rush.

  "I don't know how."

  "Well, I suppose you can learn, can't you?" Ruby said, after which four people chorused, "You hungry?"

  * * *

  After Dawn and Elijah had packed enough away between them for a church potluck, Cal and Dawn took the boy and his bicycle, which he'd left in front of the hardware store, back out to the small farm he lived on with his widowed father. Who, as best they could figure out from Elijah's grudging explanation, had been on disability for some time. He also told them he was home schooled, since his father needed him around to "help." Help with what, was the question, since neither the small, drab house with its peeling paint and missing shutters, nor the bare dirt yard littered with junk and a couple of old pickups, indicated that any attention had been given to either for a very long time. Granted, Cal had seen worse, but the bleakness of the place turned his stomach. No kid should ever have to live like this.

  "Mind if we come in for a minute?" Dawn asked, but the kid said no before the words were all the way out of her mouth.

  "We won't say anything about the candy bar," Cal added.

  "It ain't that," Elijah said, pushing open the back door of Cal's extended cab truck. "It's just…uh, Daddy's usually asleep this time of day. An' he don't like bein' disturbed."

  With that, he bolted out of the truck and across the yard, stopping for a second to pet a large mongrel dog tied up to the lone tree in front of the house before bounding onto the porch and on through the screen door.

  Dawn kept her eyes on the house as they drove back down the dirt road leading to the highway. "I hate seeing kids left to their own devices like that."

  "Oh, I imagine he's all right," Cal said, briefly meeting her gaze when she finally brought it around. She blew out a sigh, then faced front, her brow knit, as the truck meandered over the gently rolling, lush green hills that Cal couldn't imagine giving up for skyscrapers and concrete and rush hour traffic.

  "Still," she said, holding her hair with one hand so it wouldn't blow to kingdom come. "Somebody should check up on him. From the county, I mean."

  "There's no real cause, far as I can tell. I didn't get the feeling he'd been abused. And he has to take tests or something if he's being home schooled. If he doesn't pass, they'd catch it."

  "But he's so thin! A stiff breeze would blow the poor kid away!"

  A smile inched across Cal's face. "You're obviously forgettin' how skinny I was as a kid then. Just because he's all bones doesn't mean he's not eating."

  "He stole, Cal."

  "A candy bar. Because he's twelve and it was there and he saw what looked like a golden opportunity." He glanced over.

  "Didn't you ever take something just to see if you could?"

  "No! Never!"

  "You were never even tempted?"

  "Well…maybe. But I didn't act on it." She sucked in a breath. "Did you?"

  "Yeah, once."

  "Oh, God."

  "Oh, unknot your panties. I was nine, for cryin' out loud. It was maybe a few months after my mother died. I snitched a pack of gum from the supermarket checkout, pretty much like what Elijah did."

  "What happened?"

  "Well, at first I felt like hot stuff because I pulled it off without Ethel catching me. But somehow the gum didn't taste near as good as I figured it would. And I couldn't sleep that night. So I finally confessed to Daddy."

  "Ouch. I can imagine how well that went over."

  "All he did was look at me. Like I'd let him down. Well, and march me back to the store to 'fess up to the manager, which was humiliating as hell. I was never even tempted to filch anything after that."

  "Never?" He heard the smile in her voice.

  "Almost never, anyway."

  She laughed, but it didn't last long. "Still," she said, "it worries me. About Elijah." He could feel her gaze on the side of his face. "I'd call Family Services myself, but I wouldn't be around to follow up…."

  He didn't know which irked him more, her leaving or her pushing him to do something he didn't think needed doing.

  "Dawn, I hear what you're saying, I really do. But I'm not gonna embarrass that kid, or his father, by calling the authorities on 'em when I don't see any reason to. Looks to me like they've got enough to deal with without people sticking their noses in where they don't belong."

  She pushed herself back against the truck door, as if needing to distance herself from him. "Problems aren't always obvious, you know—"

  "And living in the city for so long has made you see spooks lurking in every shadow. This isn't New York—"

  "Neglect is neglect, Cal. No matter where it happens."

  "You know what? If you're so hot about this, why don't you stick around and take care of it yourself?"

  "Because I can't, which you know. And how dare you try to blackmail me!"

  Cal let out a nice, ripe cussword, to which Dawn spit back, "My sentiments exactly."

  Nobody said anything for another mile or two. Then she said, "I suppose I can at least make the initial call before I go back."

  Cal sighed. "You really feel that strongly about this?"

  She turned to him, and he could hear her voice shake. "If you'd heard what I have, seen the effects of people looking the other way, you would, too. Working with these women and children hasn't made me delusional, it's made me think twice about taking things at face value. And I couldn't live with myself if something happened that could've been prevented by a single phone call."

  He glanced over to see her mouth all set like it used to get when she was a kid. Aw, hell. "Tell you what. If I promise to personally check up on the boy, and his father, would that be enough to keep you from making that call?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "Are you out to see just how far you can try my patience before I lose what's left of my mind? I wouldn't've said it if I didn't mean it…hey!"

  She'd flown across the seat to hug him, nearly sending the truck off the road. "Thank you," she murmured into his neck, her breath far too soft and far too warm for anybody's good right now.

  "Honey? Not that I'm not enjoying this, but I think that's Didi Meyerhauser's Bronco closing in on us, so you might want to—"

  She was instantly on the other side of the seat like nothing had happened.

  Not that anything had happened.

  Exactly.

  The preacher's wife passed, waving. Cal and Dawn waved back, Cal suddenly remembering that Dawn used to be friends with Didi's daughter.

  "You seen Faith yet?" he said.

  "Faith? No. Not sure there'd be any point. It's been years since we've talked or written or anything."

  "Then I guess you didn't know she and Darryl are having another baby?"

  "Mama might've said something about it. Their third?"

  "Fifth." He grinned. "Now there's one shotgun wedding that took."

  No response.

  They drove past the turnoff that led back to the farm. For a second, he'd thought about asking if she wanted to come back, to see the cradle. But only for a second.

  "So…Ryan and Maddie are doing okay, I take it?" Dawn asked.

  Now, Cal knew it had not been her intention to hike up the temperature inside the truck several degrees. Except the last time Dawn would've seen them all was on July Fourth. The day he and Dawn made the baby. Which naturally provoked some real vivid memories of just how they'd made the baby, although to the casual listener—as in Dawn—his thoughts, like his words, were totally focused on Maddie's youngest taking her first steps a few weeks ago, how his new sister-in-law had worked wonders to bring his reclusive workaholic brother out of his shell.

  "And Hank and Jenna?" she said. "Mama told me they were getting married?"

/>   He glanced over at her, his brain jumping its tracks as his gaze landed on her mouth. Which, when it wasn't yapping a mile a minute and making him crazy, was soft and warm and—

  He looked back, mentally flogging himself. This sex-as-mental-comfort-food business was fine to a certain extent, but at some point, a man's gotta grow up and eat his vegetables.

  "Right after Thanksgiving, yep."

  "I liked Jenna a lot," she said, crossing her arms. "Her books are good, too. And I don't usually read mysteries."

  "Her next one's coming out in hardcover," he said, thinking about that mouth. About how he'd kissed a fair number of women in his time, but Dawn…well, she was what you'd call a natural talent. "You know," he said, because thinking about her mouth was making him feel reckless, "even though Jenna's lived all her life in D.C., she doesn't seem to have any reservations about moving out here."

  No response. Again.

  One more little hill before they reached Haven proper. "I bet if you had a chance to know Jenna better, you'd really like her."

  Dawn laughed. Not what he was expecting. And she was hard enough to figure when she did something he was expecting.

  "What?" he asked.

  She said, "Nothing," which would've ticked him off if she hadn't immediately followed up with, "You're going to make an amazing father," which simply threw him.

  To Nebraska.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Deductive reasoning is kind of my stock in trade," she said with a smile. "Watching how you handled Elijah, the way you related to him…" Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her breasts lifting with the force of her sigh. First time in his life he'd ever thought of his peripheral vision as a liability. "At least I won't have to worry about leaving our child alone with you. Me, on the other hand…"

  The insecurity flickered in her voice for barely a second, just long enough to bring back another memory, this one of a eight-year-old girl, her chin defiantly tilted up underneath a quivering mouth, who'd refused to come right out and say how much it hurt when that man Ivy was supposed to marry suddenly moved away. Charley…Beeman, that was his name.

  "What do I need a daddy for, anyway? And besides, Mama says a man just gets in the way of what a woman wants to do…."

  Cal frowned, bringing himself back to the present. "Well, sweetheart, if things go the way I hope, you won't have to worry about leaving him or her alone with me at all."

  Several beats passed. Then: "Stop the truck."

  "You gonna be sick?"

  "Possibly. But not because of the baby."

  He pulled onto the shoulder; she jumped out and took off down the road. Cal stuck his head out the window. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Walking the rest of the way!"

  Grumbling to himself, Cal got out and went after her.

  "You know—" the words came in little puffs as he trotted along behind her "—the one thing I used to admire about you was that you never pulled this female crap."

  "Yeah, well," she puffed back, "I've never felt this much like a female before."

  Along about this time, Cal happened to notice her behind had filled out some with the pregnancy, too. Not a lot, and not so's anybody but him would notice, probably, but there it was, jiggling away in front of him as she strode, and while one part of him was pretty ticked at her behavior—he liked kids, but not ones his own age—she looked so damned silly and cute and sexy, hoofing it away like this, that, well, something crazy just bubbled up inside him and made him want to kiss her.

  So he did.

  After he caught her, that is.

  She was too shocked to protest. At least, that's what he was working with. Oh, there was a little mmphh on her part when their lips met, but he chalked that up to the surprise element.

  Oh, yeah, she was a natural talent, all right. And she tasted like barbecue sauce and fresh peach cobbler, which Cal decided right then and there pretty much summed up his definition of heaven. Except he could have done without the mmphhs, which were definitely increasing in their intensity.

  The fists beating on his shoulders weren't doing much for the mood, either.

  He let her go, grinning down at her.

  She was not grinning back.

  "And you did that why?" she said.

  No way was he telling her about the bigger-butt revelation.

  "Because I felt like it. And I had fun. Well, I would have had fun if you'd cooperated more—"

  She burst into tears and sank onto the ground.

  Cal squatted beside her. "I didn't think it was that bad."

  That got the head-shaking, air-batting routine, then a series of sobbed syllables not even remotely related to the English language. Figuring she probably wasn't going anywhere in the next few seconds, Cal went back to the truck and retrieved two or three tissues from the smashed box in the glove department, then returned to where she was still sitting and handed them to her. When she was drier and—he presumed—more coherent, he said, "You wanna run that one by me again?"

  A few rattly sighs, a few more eye wipes, and at last she said, "You are such an idiot."

  At that he figured he might as well join her in the dirt and weeds.

  "You mean that in general?" he said as his backside touched down. "Or you got something specific in mind?"

  "At the risk of this going straight to your head, if not elsewhere—" she looked pointedly at the elsewhere in question "—my being hot for you isn't the issue here."

  "It's…not."

  She smacked him in the arm, honked into one of the tissues, then gave one of those oh-God-deliver-me-from-the-clueless sighs. "You didn't exactly have to talk me into your bed a couple months ago. If you recall."

  He squelched the laugh just in time. "Yeah, I seem to remember a certain…eagerness on your part. But I figured that was…"

  "What? You figured that was what?"

  "That you were still hurtin' after that guy dumped you, is all," he said gently, refusing to look at her. "And maybe you were looking for someone to boost your self-confidence back up a notch or two."

  Silence. Then: "I was a little…bruised, it's true. But more because I was duped than dumped. Andrew and I broke up because our visions of marriage—or rather, his vision of what he expected of a wife—didn't mesh. What pissed me off was that he didn't bother to tell me this until after we were engaged. And I felt, I don't know…betrayed as much as anything, I guess."

  "About what?"

  She yanked a poor defenseless weed out of the ground, then shifted to sit cross-legged, making lines in the dust with the weed as they talked. "We were really compatible on so many levels. Similar tastes, similar viewpoints, similar personalities." Her shoulders hitched. "He was…comfortable. After some of the so-called men I'd gone out with, it was a pleasure being with someone I never had to second-guess. Or so I thought." Her mouth hitched up into a rueful smile. "When he proposed, my first thought was, No more stupid dates! No more worrying about making an impression!"

  Cal frowned. "Oh, yeah, that sounds like a real good reason to marry somebody."

  "Trust me, after what I'd been through, it was a damn good reason. Anyway, I figured our lives wouldn't change all that much after we got married, that we'd just be a typical professional New York couple. But it turned out…"

  The weed snapped in two; she tossed it away and squinted into the sun. "He didn't love me, I know he didn't, but he still wanted more from me than I could possibly give. Looking back, I think he didn't want kids because the competition would've made him crazy, because Andrew wanted to be my world. For me to love him in a way I knew I never could. In a way I know I'll never be able to love anybody."

  Cal waited out the stab of pain before he asked, "Why?"

  "I don't know." She sounded surprised, like she hadn't expected him to challenge her. "Just the way I'm wired, I guess."

  "I see." His insides churning, he focused on a clump of late-season wildflowers shivering in the breeze. "So…you'd rather b
e alone?"

  She seemed to think about this for a second. "I've been on my own for a long time and I've learned to enjoy my own company. But I'm not a recluse. I wouldn't have agreed to marry Andrew otherwise. I have nothing against male companionship. Or sex," she said with a tilted smile. "I can even love, in my own way. Just not the way the rest of the population loves. Or wants to be loved."

  Cal wondered if she heard the sadness in her voice. Oh, she undoubtedly thought she was being…well, whatever people who came to conclusions like that were. Upfront? Resigned? Something. Frankly, Cal thought she was several sandwiches short of a picnic.

  The thing was, though, it didn't matter what he thought, did it? Because it was what she believed that mattered. It was like what Ryan said about attitude affecting a person's health—people who expected to get sick generally did far more often than people who didn't think about it too hard. So Cal could sit here and tell Dawn she was full of it until the cows came home, but as long as she was convinced she couldn't love like a normal person, he'd be wasting his breath.

  "So," she was saying, "about that night. You were flirting, and I'll admit I was still feeling a little off balance, and from everything I'd heard, I figured I probably wouldn't regret going to bed with you."

  His eyes snapped to hers. "From everything you'd heard?"

  "Hey. Women talk, too. And unlike men, we don't embellish. Granted, my information was a little out-of-date, but…"

  She shrugged. Cal looked back out across the road. A couple of trucks passed. Everybody waved. Cal figured Ruby's would be buzzing to beat the band by tomorrow.

  "In any case, I wasn't pushing you away just now because I didn't want to be kissed, but because kissing you is like opening a can of Pringles. Sour cream and onion. Or nacho cheese, in a pinch. If I start, I can't stop until I've eaten the whole damn can."

  "So…what you're saying is, all those rumors you heard about me…?"

  "Weren't rumors. Which is one of those good-news/bad-news kinds of things. Wanting to have sex with you isn't the issue. But it would totally ball things up. And I think things are plenty balled up enough already, don't you? And dammit, I'd kill for a can of Pringles right now."