Staking His Claim

by Karen Templeton

  "What the hell do you think?" he bellowed. "My priorities haven't changed, sweetheart! I still want you, and my baby, right here where the three of us can be part of each other's lives on a full-time basis. But damned if I'm gonna let you make me the heavy in this. Damned if I'm gonna be the reason you turned down the opportunity of a lifetime." His throat convulsed. "Damned if I'm gonna give you a reason to hate me."

  She regarded him steadily for several seconds, then pushed past him. And Ethel, who was just coming in. Two seconds later the house shook with the force of the front door banging shut.

  With an R-rated curse, Cal dropped onto the sofa, ramming his hands through his hair.

  "Okay, doody-for-brains," the housekeeper said, shucking off her old Pendleton coat and dumping it on a chair. "Which foot did you ram in your craw this time?"

  "Don't start, Ethel. I am not in the mood."

  Undaunted, she made a beeline for him anyway. "Like I give a damn what kind of mood you're in. You've got no idea what the woman was really asking, do you?"

  Cal assumed a scowl guaranteed to shave five years off Hannibal Lecter's life. "I got every idea what she was asking. She wanted me to let her off the hook so she could take that job with a clear conscience."

  "Wrong. She was looking for an excuse not to take it. Only for some harebrained reason I can't even begin to comprehend, you wouldn't give her one. One without about a thousand strings attached, anyway."

  Cal's head started to pound. He collapsed back against the sofa cushions, pressing the heels of his hands into his temples. "Okay, so maybe I didn't handle that too well," he said, glaring at Ethel when she snorted her obvious agreement. His hands dropped to his thighs. "Well, she caught me off guard, for cripe's sake. And anyway, I meant what I said. Baby or no baby, I don't want her making a decision about her life based on what I want."

  "Which came across to her as stay or go, it doesn't make the least bit of difference to me."

  "That's nuts! How could she possibly get that from what I said?"

  "Because the one thing that little girl needs is for somebody—let's say you, just for the hell of it—to put his big dumb butt on the line and say what you really feel. Not what you think she wants to hear."

  "I did say what I really felt—"

  "Only to immediately qualify it by makin' it impossible for her to make an unbiased decision! Now you've made things twice as hard for her!"

  Cal opened his mouth to protest, but let out another curse instead. Ethel was right. Instead of getting out of Dawn's way, he'd inadvertently stuck his big dumb butt, as she called it, right smack in the middle. If she took the job, would it be because she really wanted it, or because he'd made her afraid to stay?

  With a groan, he leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. "I'm an idiot."

  "You're not an idiot," he heard Ethel say on a rush of air. He looked up to see her sitting on the coffee table in front of him, her skinny mouth pulled so tight her lips were all but gone. She grabbed one of his hands, wrapping it in both of hers. "You're just scared."

  "Scared? Of what, for God's sake?"

  "The truth. You forget I've known you from the day you were born. And you were, without a doubt, the most easygoing little kid I ever saw. But after losing both your parents so close together, you changed. Oh, I doubt most folks saw it, but I sure did. On the surface, you might be the same happy-go-lucky goofball who lets troubles roll off his back you always were—" she squeezed his hand "—but I see a hurtin' young man determined to shove troubles away before they can take root. You didn't push Dawn away for her own good," she said gently. "You pushed her away because you're afraid of gettin' hurt."

  "That's bull, Ethel," he said, even as the truth of her words—not to mention her don't-give-me-that expression—slashed through him. He sighed. "Okay, maybe I had some trouble at first coming to terms with how I really felt, but I got past it. And all I'm trying to do now is give her all her options."

  "Then give her all the options, for crying out loud, instead of doing this fool dance around the subject! Honey, you keep paying lip service to how much you want that gal, but until you're willing to risk everything for her, you've got no business expecting her to. So here—"

  She turned his hand over and slammed the truck keys into his palm. He stared at them glumly, then said, "She doesn't love me, Ethel."

  "What in tarnation makes you think that?"

  Frowning, he looked up. "Because she hasn't said she does?"

  "Oh, Lord," Ethel said on a sigh, then added, "And have you told her you do?"

  "I don't want to scare her off—ow!" he said when she cuffed his head.

  "You haven't heard one single word I've said, have you?"

  They stared each other down for several seconds. Then Cal did some more hair plowing and some more swearing, until he'd gotten both out of his system enough to say, "Okay, suppose you're right," which he knew was dangerous but he was already screwed, anyway, so it wasn't like he had anything to lose. "How'm I supposed to take back everything I just said and not look like an idiot for sure?"

  Ethel shrugged. "Sometimes, that's the chance you gotta take."

  "Gee, thanks," he said.

  She ruffled his hair, like he was ten, for God's sake. "Anytime."

  Chapter 12

  "Well," Ivy said, after a good ten minutes spent listening to her daughter rant and rave about the stupidity of men in general and Cal in particular, "he does have a point. If you stay because of him instead of because you really want to, you will end up resenting him. And your child'll end up payin' for it, one way or the other. Besides," Ivy said calmly, lifting up the lid on the Dutch oven to check on the pot roast, "it's not him you're mad at right now."

  "Ah, but I think it is."

  "Well, you're wrong." She turned to meet her daughter's annoyed expression. "Oh, you're hot 'cause he wouldn't make your decision for you—"

  "I didn't want him to make the decision for me! I only wanted his input!"

  "Well, sounds to me like you got it. And now you're mad at yourself because the ball's back in your court and you don't know what to do with it."

  On a strangled groan, Dawn yanked back a kitchen chair and lowered herself onto it. But wonder of wonders, she didn't have a comeback. Ivy sat down across from her, looking into the same confused, angry eyes that used to confront Ivy all those years ago, after some kid had taunted her or she'd overhead ignorant whisperings in the supermarket.

  "Poor baby," Ivy said softly, brushing Dawn's hair back over her shoulder. "Everything's come crashing down around you, hasn't it?"

  "To say the least." Her mouth flattened. "I don't get it. I mean, things have never been simple, or easy, but at least they used to be clear."

  Ivy smiled, even though her heart was splintering into about a thousand pieces inside her. "I've been dreading this from the time you were a little girl."

  "What? That I'd make a total mess of my life?"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Dawn! You really don't get it, do you? You haven't made a mess of anything! Stuff happens, honey. Stuff none of us—not even you—can control. And I knew it was only a matter of time before you had to learn that the hard way. Sometimes we gotta trust things'll work out even if we can't see how…."

  The doorbell rang. "If it's Cal," Dawn said as Ivy got up, "I do not want to talk to him."

  "Now there's a mature response," Ivy said, chuckling when she heard Dawn blow raspberries at her back.

  Yep. It was Cal, all right, standing there on her doorstep with hat in hand, his hair more of a mess than usual, his mouth pulled down at the corners and his eyes full of something she sure had never seen in a man's eyes for her.

  "Dawn here?"

  "She's in the kitchen, she said she doesn't want to see you, and if it's any consolation, she looks as bad as you do."

  Cal frowned at her. "That mean I can see her or not?"

  "Honey, I'm just a messenger, not a guard dog. Just make sure to clean up the blood when yo
u're done, since I am not mopping that floor twice in one day."

  * * *

  "So much for tellin' Mama I didn't want to see you."

  "You were outvoted," Cal said with a helluva lot more composure than he felt, dragging out a chair and settling in across from her. He took a deep breath, inhaling what should have been the mouthwatering scent of simmering pot roast or stew or something on the stove. That his stomach didn't leap to attention only went to show how bad off he was.

  "Why are you here?" Dawn said, crossing her arms over her belly.

  "To apologize."

  Her brows crashed. "For what?"

  Cal leaned back in his chair, messing with his hat for a bit, then looked over at her. Lord, he hadn't felt this shaky since that time a few years back when he'd gotten on a horse far greener than he'd realized. The question hadn't been if he'd get thrown, but when. And how hard he'd land. "After you left, I got to thinking—"

  No point in mentioning Ethel's kick in the pants, he didn't think.

  "—and it occurred to me that, for all this discussion about what you should do, what would be best for the baby, we're still avoiding the real issue. Which is how we feel about each other." He watched those big, brown eyes, sure at any moment his heart was going to pound clean out of his chest. "Right now. Not how we may have felt ten years ago. You with me so far?"

  He could see her pulse hammering in the base of her throat, but since she nodded, he leaned forward again to take her hand, which was freezing; he covered it in both of his to warm it. To keep it, even if only for a moment.

  "Honey, believe me, what I feel for you is as real as it gets. It's not about sex, it's not about the baby, it's about me and you. It's about me wanting to marry you." The bucking got worse; he swallowed and hung on even tighter. "Even if you decide to take that job."

  There. That should give her all the options.

  Shouldn't it?

  He'd never seen Dawn's eyes that huge, and that was going some. "I…ohmigod, Cal…I…" She snapped shut her mouth. Opened it again. "I honestly don't know what to say. That you'd be willing to settle for that kind of arrangement…"

  "The question is, would you?"

  She struggled to her feet, waddling over to the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of juice. Cal stood as well, his stomach giving him five fits even as he closed the distance between them to pull her into his arms, juice and all.

  "You wanna think about it?" he said. But she lifted her eyes to his, followed by her hand to his cheek.

  "I can't marry you, Cal," she whispered. "It just wouldn't be fair. To either one of us."

  Past the cold, hard knot lodged in his chest, he pushed out, "You've made up your mind, haven't you? About the job?"

  Tears glittered in her eyes. "The job's got nothing to do with it."

  Well. Time to pick himself up, wipe the dust off his sorry butt and get the hell out of there before he got trampled but good.

  * * *

  An hour later Cal stomped into his kitchen, flashing only a cursory glance at the woman responsible for him making a total ass of himself.

  "You were gone longer'n I expected," Ethel said behind him as he yanked a beer out of the refrigerator.

  He shrugged.

  "Frank put up the horses. And supper's ready."

  "I'm not hungry."

  She clunked a plate on the table for him, anyway. He ignored it.

  "So what'd she say?"

  "What the hell do you think she said? She said no."

  "No? To what?"

  "I asked her to marry me, even if she takes the job—which it looks like she is—and she said no. You satisfied now?" He took a swig of the beer, adding, "What?" at the stymied look on her face.

  "Who the hell said anything about askin' her to marry you?"

  "You did! All that stuff about comin' right out and letting her know how serious I was—"

  "Oh, of all the damn fool things…" The housekeeper let out a huff, then shook her head. "Honestly, boy—for someone as smart as you are, you have got the lousiest sense of timing of anybody I have ever seen. You don't spring something like that on a woman, for cryin' out loud! 'Specially not one with abandonment issues."

  "Abandonment issues? Which dumb talk show you get that from?"

  "I do not watch those things! Leastwise, not on a regular basis. And anyway, I don't need anything but my own two eyes and ears to figure out what she's afraid of. Her engagement fell apart, the man she thought was gonna be her father walked away, her own father never wanted anything to do with her…Lord above, no wonder the gal has a problem with lettin' anybody get close, if it looks like all they're gonna do is leave, anyway."

  "Except I'm not the one leaving. She is."

  "Only so you can't!"

  Her words twanged between them, until she batted at the air in front of her and said, "Oh, well…don't suppose there's anything to be done for it now. You may as well sit down and eat your supper before it gets cold."

  Cal gawked at her. "I've just shot myself in the foot and all you've got to say is 'sit down and eat your supper'?"

  Ethel gave him one of her looks. "The gal's not leaving tomorrow, so I doubt twenty minutes one way or t'other's gonna make much difference. Besides, nothin' says she can't change her mind."

  "This is Dawn we're talking about, here," he said, sitting down.

  "Precisely," Ethel said, only God knew what she meant by that. "But for heaven's sake," she added, pouring him a glass of iced tea, "don't be asking me for any more advice! My poor old heart just can't take it!"

  He swore around a mouthful of country-fried steak.

  * * *

  Seated on the sofa in Faith's tiny living room the next Sunday afternoon, wearing a gift-bow-studded paper-plate hat and surrounded by boxes and tissue paper and more onesies and sleepers and rattles than ten babies could use, Dawn watched her friend nurse her two-and-a-half-month-old son with a mixture of fascination and dread.

  The blonde looked up and chuckled, then said over yet another dramatized labor story a few feet away, "You should see the look on your face. Like you just found out we're serving grubs for lunch."

  "In a nice lemon butter, I'm sure they'd be fine," Dawn said, and Faith laughed again.

  "Here." She detached her son, grabbed a cloth diaper off her shoulder and thrust both out toward Dawn. "You need practice."

  "Oh! No! I can't—"

  "Faith's right," Maddie said beside Dawn, her own tummy nicely rounded underneath a knit jersey tunic. "Nothin' like a little hands-on experience to prepare you for your own. Which should be here in, what?" She shoved in what must've been her twentieth pig-in-a-blanket, finishing her question around a full mouth. "Three weeks?"

  But Dawn was too busy trying to adjust the tiny, wriggling, amazingly solid person on her shoulder to answer, trying to fathom that holding a tiny, wriggling, amazingly solid little person would be part of her normal, everyday experience in a matter of weeks.

  "Rub his back," Faith was saying as she buttoned up her blouse. "Yeah, like that. You wanna push the burp out—"

  Little Nicky let out a belch loud enough to rattle windows, every woman in the room went, "Awwww," and Dawn was stunned at the strange sensation of accomplishment that swept through her.

  "Good job, guy!" she said, tilting the baby back to smile for him. Not recognizing her at first, the infant scrunched up his face; then his mouth twitched into a goofy little grin, followed by the funniest burbling sound Dawn had ever heard. Dawn imitated the sound, making the baby smile even more.

  "Hey," she said. "This might be fun, after all."

  "Don't get too excited. He could just as easily have erpped up all over you. And at least this one's not colicky. Lord, I thought Crystal'd take us all under for sure. How something that little could cry for five and six hours straight was beyond me."

  Dawn sighed. "You could have at least let me wallow in my illusions until after the baby was born."

  "And where's the fun in that?
" the blonde said with a laugh as Hank's daughter, who at the rate she was going would be able to buy a small country from her baby-sitting earnings, swooped down and took Nicky to change him.

  Dawn straightened her chapeau and scarfed down another one of Luralene's pimento-cheese-spread-slathered Triscuits. She'd been sure, when Faith and Maddie had insisted on throwing the shower, this would be one of those grin-and-bear-it things. Not because of the shower itself, but simply because, since that disastrous conversation with Cal the week before—and her agonizing over that job offer ever since—she hadn't exactly been in a partying mood. But being around all these people who cared about her, whom she'd grown to care so much about in the past months, had gone a long way toward bolstering her sagging, and seriously addlepated, spirits.

  Most of the women had disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Faith and Dawn alone. "In a way it's kinda sad," Faith said, "knowing he's my last."

  Dawn tried, with no success whatsoever, to find a more comfortable spot on the sofa. "You sure about that?"

  "I guess I never told you, huh?" Her curls bobbing, the blonde moved to sit beside Dawn, whispering, "Darryl gave me a vasectomy for my birthday. Well, he didn't give it to me, but you know what I mean. And I didn't even have to bring up the subject, he did."

  "Now there's a keeper for sure." Dawn tried to pull herself forward to reach Arliss Potts's chicken salad sandwiches, smiling her thanks when Faith handed her the whole tray. "So things are better between you two, huh?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I just thought, from what you'd said in the fall…" At the look on her friend's face, she decided to concentrate on the bite in her mouth instead. Hmm. Horseradish in chicken salad.

  "Forget it. I must have misinterpreted…"

  That got a sigh. "No, you didn't misinterpret. Let me tell you something, if we make it to our fiftieth anniversary without one of us killin' the other, it'll only be because we're both too damn stubborn to give up."

  An explosion of laughter went up from the kitchen.

  "That doesn't sound very romantic."

  Faith shrugged. "It is what it is, that's all. Sometimes I think Darryl and me stay together more because the alternative's even scarier. Lord, who wants to be stuck alone with five kids? But it could be worse. I mean—" she glanced around to make sure Charmaine wasn't in earshot "—at least I know Darryl's not gonna take off on me. Or beat me or the kids. And there's a lot to be said for that, y'know? And as long as the sex is still good—oh, for heaven's sake, don't look so appalled—I'm fine. So. Tell me what's going on with you and Cal."