Staking His Claim

by Karen Templeton

  Cal wrapped an arm around her shoulders, whispering a constant string of "It's gonna be all rights" in her hair. But when she lifted her eyes to his, she saw not love or concern or even fear but an anger so fierce, so bitterly cold, it scared her half to death.

  Even as she knew it wasn't directed at her.

  Chapter 13

  Since Dawn's first contractions didn't have a lot of punch to them, Ivy assured Cal he wouldn't be missed for an hour or so. Plenty of time to zip back to the farm and check up on the herd.

  Maybe tend to one or two other pressing matters.

  The front door to the old Victorian was still unlocked, even though it was getting on to seven o'clock. Cal removed his hat, the carpeting muffling his footsteps as he crossed the waiting room toward the unenthusiastic glow coming through the office door. The man sat at his desk, forehead braced in palm, the room in shadows except for the solitary shaft of light illuminating the papers spread in front of him.

  Why hadn't Cal seen the resemblance before? Then again, maybe he had, choosing to shove the impossible to the back of his mind rather than believe somebody so generally, and genuinely, respected, a man Cal's father had admired to the nth degree, could harbor a secret of such magnitude.

  Sherman looked up at Cal's light knock on his doorframe. "Cal!" he said with a smile, removing his glasses. "What on earth are you doing here so late—?"

  "Just thought you might like to know," he said mildly, "that your daughter's gone into labor."

  For a moment, confusion crumpled Sherman's features. "My daughter? But Brenda's not even preg—" Realization bloomed in his eyes as he sagged back against his chair. It had started to rain. Outside, a car whooshed by, windshield wipers squeaking. "How did you know?" Sherman said at last.

  "I was always real good at puzzles," Cal said, forcing his voice to stay even. "Even when I didn't have all the pieces."

  "Does…Dawn know?"

  "She's a little preoccupied right now, but I don't think it'll take her too long to put two and two together now. I haven't said anything. And Ivy's kept her promise. Heaven knows why, but she has." With that, his calm shattered. "For God's sake, Sherman! Dawn was working for you! And you knew she was looking for her father! What harm could it have done now to tell her the truth? Your wife can't be hurt anymore, Brenda Sue hasn't lived here for years—"

  "And who'd trust a lawyer who didn't have the guts to acknowledge his own child?"

  Cal refused to be derailed, either by Sherman's muleheadedness or this blasted sympathy determined to worm past Cal's anger. "Well, now's your chance to own up to your mistakes. And I don't know anybody around here who wouldn't respect that."

  "And how can I do that without screwing things up even more than they already are?"

  "I'm not sure you have much choice. In spite of Ivy's denial, Jacob's convinced he's her father. And he's likely to keep believing it until you tell the truth."

  Sherman stayed silent for a long time, then said, "Until Dawn and I talked a little while back, I had no idea what she'd been through as a kid. Because of me, I mean. Which I know is stupid," he said on a rush of air. "I've lived in this town all my life, I should've known what it would've been like for her." He looked at Cal. "To tell her now…She'll hate me, Cal. And with good reason."

  "And maybe this isn't about you, y'know?" Cal got out through a tight jaw. "Maybe it's about a little girl who always said it didn't bother her, not knowing who her daddy was, because she was too proud or too stubborn to let anybody know that deep down, she felt abandoned. Like she wasn't good enough for her own father to claim her as his own."

  Sherman's face fell. "I swear, I was only trying to protect—"

  "Your own butt." His chest tight, Cal took two steps closer.

  "God knows, I'm no psychologist. I couldn't begin to figure out the connection between you refusin' to let her know who you really are and why she's so driven to succeed, or why the idea of staying in Haven gave her the heebie-jeebies. Or most important, why she's so scared to trust a man. To trust me. I just know there is one. Just as I know—" he punched the space between them with his hat "—that until you show her she's more important to you than saving your own hide, there is no way in hell I'm gonna be able to keep her, or my kid, here."

  "Now hold on here!" Sherman got to his feet, his expression thunderous. "God knows, I didn't do right by her, but you have no right to blame all your problems with her on me!"

  "That's true," Cal said calmly. "So let's say…seventy-five percent and call it square, okay?" He crammed his hat back on his head. "Now, if you'll excuse me, your daughter's about to have my baby, and I don't intend to miss it."

  Then he walked out, figuring the old man could just chew that over for a while.

  * * *

  "Here's one," Cal said, squinting at page 500 of the baby name book as he sat up beside Dawn on the bed where little whosits had made his appearance barely two hours before. Par for the course, she'd pushed the baby out as she'd always done everything, with a determined efficiency that stole his breath. Didn't even break a sweat. And right at this moment, he thought he'd never seen anything more beautiful than his baby nursing at his mother's breast. Except perhaps the expression on Dawn's face as she did. "It means 'born on a Friday,' but we could ignore that part."

  "I see. In what language?"

  He squinted at the book. "Akan."

  "Oh, this oughtta be good." Outside, about a million birds greeted the new morning. "Okay…" She shut her eyes. "I'm ready."

  "Yoofi," he said.

  Her laugh startled the baby. "And here I thought you'd hit bottom with Orestes. Could you please be serious about this?"

  "Okay, okay, I'm serious," he said, putting on his "serious" face. "How about…Oswald?"

  "No."

  "Romeo?"

  "Hell, no."

  He flipped through a few more pages. "Goliath."

  Dawn chuckled. Even three weeks early, the baby had weighed nearly nine pounds. Any bigger, she'd said, and they would have needed the Jaws of Life to pry him out. "While reasonably appropriate…uh-uh."

  "Erskine?"

  "Are you deliberately trying to give our child a complex or what?"

  "Fine." He slammed shut the book hard enough to make the baby's hands fly out. "Then you name him."

  "I tried. You didn't like it."

  "Dawn, honey?" Cal leaned over to grasp the baby's chubby, dimpled hand, emotion making his chest tight. When he'd first held him moments after his birth and looked into those alert, curious dark eyes…He swallowed and said, "Can you honestly see calling this bruiser Wesley?"

  "Sure as heck beats Yoofi."

  "Okay, tell you what—how's about I shut my eyes and just…stab at the page and see what we get."

  "Oh, God," she said, laughing, as he made a great show of waving his hand, then zooming in to land on…

  "Max," he said, his eyebrows shooting up. He looked at Dawn, who amazingly enough wasn't recoiling in horror. "It means 'the greatest.'"

  "That…could work," Dawn said, then stroked a finger down the baby's fat cheek. "Hey, Max." She giggled when the baby's mouth twitched into what a generous person might call a smile. "Looks like we've got a winner," she said.

  "Max Logan," Cal said. "I like it."

  Silence jittered between them.

  "Gardner," Dawn said, softly, looking at the baby.

  Cal silently swore. But for once he kept his mouth shut. Now wasn't the time to get into it with her. Any more than it was the right time to tell her about his meeting with Sherman. Far as he was concerned, that ball was firmly in the older man's court now. If and when he decided to out himself was totally up to him. So Cal leaned over to kiss the mother of his son on the forehead, the scent of new birth stirring feelings of protectiveness and pride inside him. Then he palmed the baby's head, so close to his mother's breast, stroking his thumb over the pulse beating strongly beneath a thatch of fine, red hair before getting up to shrug into his denim jacket.
"You need to get some rest. And I got me twenty-two large mouths to feed. I'll be back later—"

  "I swear, Cal," she said, "if there was any way to make this work, I would. But making a baby isn't the same as making a marriage."

  He hooked his thumbs in his front pockets, half wanting to storm out, half wanting to throttle some sense into her. Instead, all the things he'd sworn could wait came roaring out.

  "Okay, maybe you don't feel like my brothers and their wives have enough of a track record to prove they can go the distance, but my folks sure as hell did. And if this is about our being too different to make it work, all I have to say is you couldn't find two people with less in common on the surface than my parents. Or more devoted to each other. It's not how much in common a couple has, it's how well they understand their differences."

  "I know that," she said. "And you're right."

  Cal frowned. Then sighed. "It's about the job, then."

  "No." She slipped her index finger inside Max's fist. "I'm turning it down."

  "You're what? Why?"

  "Because it doesn't feel right. Leaving here doesn't feel right. Deal with it."

  By rights this conversation should be resolving their problems. That it wasn't was confusing the hell out of him. If she was staying in Haven, and their differences were no longer an issue…

  "Just answer me one thing," he said, his lungs so paralyzed he could barely get any air. "Do you love me?"

  When she at last lifted her eyes to his, they were filled with tears. "What do you think?"

  Cal took a step closer to the bed, bending down to cup her face in his hand. "I think I want to hear you say the words. Out loud. So we can both hear them."

  "Fine," she said, clearly mad that he'd boxed her into a corner. "I love you, Cal Logan. I love you so much I can't look at you, or hear your voice, without getting the shakes. I love you so much that not five minutes goes by that I don't think about you in some way. But—" a tear escaped, trickling in slow motion down her cheek "—I'm…so…damn…scared."

  "Of what?" he said, catching the tear with his thumb, his heartbeat pounding in his head. "Why can't we just reach out and take what's right here in front of us?"

  "Because almost everything I've touched recently has turned to dust! Because wanting something and making it work are two different things!" She blinked, sending a second tear slaloming down the trail left by the first. "And I don't think I could bear it if I failed at this. Losing a job is one thing. Losing you…" She shook her head.

  He slipped one finger underneath her chin, gently tilted her head so she had to look at him. "You still afraid of being a mother?"

  She started. And frowned. "Since I have no choice about that, how I feel's beside the point."

  "No, it's not," he said, refusing to let her off the hook. "If you really didn't want to do this, you could let me have full custody and walk away."

  "Cal! What a horrible thing—" She awkwardly shifted the baby, clutching him to her chest in the classic it's-okay-I've-got-you pose. "I could never do that! I could never leave my baby!"

  "Why?"

  "Because I love him too much, why else?"

  "Cal," Ivy said from the doorway behind him. He straightened, then turned to see censure, and worry, in her eyes. "She doesn't need this right now."

  "Then she shouldn't have brought it up!"

  He started for the door, only to pivot back, frustration and what felt damned close to heartbreak vicing his words. "You know, watching how bad my father grieved for my mother scared the crap out of me, too, made me think for a long time I didn't want to ever love that hard. To need somebody that much…" The words got all jammed up at the base of his throat for a second, until he pushed out, "Until I fell in love with you and understood what was goin' on inside his head."

  He took a single step closer, not sure which was worse, the agony he felt or the agony he saw. "I could no more leave you than you could leave Max, and for the same reason—because I love you too damn much. No matter how much it scares me. So why on earth would I do anything to let the only woman I've ever loved slip through my fingers?" When her mouth dropped open on a soft gasp, he added, "I know…nuts, isn't it? To hold out hope for something I always knew wasn't anything more than a stupid, pointless dream?"

  He held her gaze for another second or two, just to make sure she got the message, then said to Ivy on his way out the door, "By the way, your grandson's name is Max." He glanced back at Dawn. "Last name to be decided at a future date."

  * * *

  On a ragged sigh, Dawn sank back against the pillows, as if Cal's exit had taken all her energy with him. In fact, when Ivy took Max away, she didn't even protest. Which, considering she hadn't wanted to let go of him from the moment Cal laid their son in her arms, only showed how fried she was.

  Their son, she thought on another sigh as she watched her mother change his diaper and settle the now-snoozing baby in the cradle.

  The cradle his own daddy had slept in.

  Her heart cramped.

  "You're going to spoil me," she said, feeling downright boneless. "Shouldn't I be doing that?"

  "Honey, trust me. By the time you get him housebroken, you'll be so sick of changing diapers you won't be able to see straight. So enjoy it while you can."

  "You think I'm out of my mind, don't you?"

  Ivy looked at her, then came and sat beside her on the bed, brushing her hair off her forehead. "I think this isn't the time for you to be thinking about any of this, not until those hormones of yours have settled down a bit. You've been up all night birthing that baby. Time you got some sleep."

  "After everything Cal just said? You must be kidding." Tears pooled in her eyes. "What's wrong with me, Mama? Why can't I trust my feelings?"

  Ivy bent over and kissed her on the cheek. "Get some rest," she said. "Plenty of time for answers later."

  * * *

  "I'm sorry, Jacob," Cal said into the phone, backing up slightly as Ethel put a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon on the table in front of him. "I know that wasn't what you wanted to hear."

  The minute Cal had climbed into the truck and started for home, whatever had been keeping him from keeling over had chosen up sides and left for parts unknown. That he'd made it back in one piece was a miracle in itself. Frank had taken one look at him and refused to let him help with the morning chores; Ethel had taken one look at him and forcibly sat him down at the table to feed him, never mind that Ivy already had, or that, at that point all Cal wanted to do was go to bed and sleep for about three days. But that wasn't gonna happen until he'd filled Ethel in on all the details, and filled Jacob in on those details that pertained directly to him.

  "And you say you talked to the man who is her father?"

  "Uh-huh," Cal said on a yawn, even as irritation clawed at him that by the time Cal had left Ivy's, there'd been no sign that Sherman was planning on coming clean. "Jacob?" he said when the silence had gone on longer than he liked. "You okay?"

  He heard a sigh, then, "Yeah, I will be. It's just…all those years, thinkin' she was mine…And then gettin' to be around her these last few weeks, you know." Another sigh. "I mean, I'm glad the truth is finally out and all, but…"

  "I know, Jacob," Cal said, the food blurring in front of him.

  "It's gonna take some time. But you know, nothing says what you and Dawn have between you has to change. She's not gonna like you any less because you're not her father."

  "Huh. I guess you're right at that. Still…I can't believe Ivy'd go and do a thing like that, take up with somebody else so soon after I left."

  Someday, maybe Cal'd see the irony, not to mention the humor, in Jacob's indignation, but right now all he wanted was his second breakfast and his bed and for that scene with Dawn to be nothing but a bad dream. So he mumbled something sufficient to disentangle himself from a conversation he didn't even want to be having and handed Ethel the phone to hang back up on the wall.

  "Ivy and Jacob Burke," she said, shak
ing her head. "I had no idea. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction."

  Oh, wait. If you think that's strange…

  "So it was an easy birth, I take it?"

  "Ivy said it was." Cal shoveled in a bite of eggs, forcing his eyes to stay open far enough to make sure they landed in his mouth. He flexed his hand where Dawn had nearly broken the bones during one of those last contractions. "Dawn might have a different opinion, though."

  "I shouldn't wonder. Nine pounds," Ethel said, shaking her head. "And her first, no less. Of course, you were a shade over that yourself." Then she laughed. "Not bad for the runt of the litter."

  After pouring him another cup of coffee, she joined him at the table with her own mug, questions—or at least one particular question—buzzing around her like a persistent fly. Finally she said, "Since you didn't announce anything other than the baby when you came in, I take it she's still sayin' no."

  Cal swallowed past that tightness still there in the back of his throat, then took a long swallow of coffee, knowing his thoughts and emotions were far too shredded to say anything even remotely coherent. Ethel laid a hand on his wrist.

  "Did you know your mama turned down your daddy four times before she finally said yes?"

  His brow pinched, Cal met her gaze. "No. I didn't." He bit off half a slice of bacon and chewed, still frowning. "How'd you know that?"

  "Oh, Lord…every time they'd get teed off with each other, your daddy'd say something like 'I should've quit while I was ahead,' and your mama'd say back, 'Well, nobody told you to ask me to marry you four times!' Then they'd get to laughing and that would be the end of it. Until the next time."

  Cal leaned back in his chair. "You got any idea what held up the works so long?"

  "I asked Mary about it one day, not too long after you were born. She told me she'd had her heart broken, that year she'd spent back East, and she wasn't any too interested in repeating the experience. Said she just wanted to be sure your daddy really wanted her. That she figured," she added with a sly grin, "if she didn't make him fight for her, he wouldn't really appreciate what he was getting. You want more coffee?"