“Help?” His faint smile was crooked. “You need a plane landed on a dirt road? Want pointers on pulling together a disguise that would fool your best friend? Expertise in evading Santa Estellan government forces?”
She shook her head, trying not to smile. “I had preparing Matthew’s lunch in mind, not taking over a small country.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever taken over a country, small or large. But if you insist on help with lunch... Need a jar opened?”
“Nothing that easy. You could give Matthew his milk while I finish.”
“Or wait until he’s old enough to pour his own,” Daniel muttered.
Leaving the piece of leftover chicken breast half cut up, she turned and pointed the knife at him. “You said you want to be a father, Daniel. Didn’t you mean that?”
He gazed at Matthew with such intensity Kendra half expected her son to react as he would to a touch. But Matthew was absorbed in running his wooden car around the tray top.
“I meant it.”
He turned back to her and their gazes connected, but only for an instant before Daniel’s slid away.
Last night he’d said he didn’t know how to deal with Matthew, passing it off as the general ignorance many of his gender had of kids. But then he’d added a sentence that indicated it might be more specific than general.
I don’t know how.
But was there more? Why was this man, so sure of himself in most arenas, intimidated by this two-and-a-half-foot high dynamo?
“Then you might as well start with the milk.”
He stood and took the duck cup she handed him with a quick lift of his eyebrows but no comment. She was aware of him passing behind her to get milk from the refrigerator, but forced herself to not watch the process. Even when he returned to his chair and presented the cup of milk to Matthew she didn’t turn.
“There you go. Milk. I’ll hold –”
But not even the best of intentions could stop her from spinning around after a scuffling sound accompanied by the screech of a thwarted two-year-old.
“No! Mine! No!”
Apparently jolted by Matthew’s scream, Daniel jerked back as if he’d given the child an electric jolt. At the same time, Matthew slung the newly captured cup around, as far away as his short reach could carry it from threatened recapture, spewing milk across himself, high chair, a corner of the table and the floor.
“Matthew!”
The cup came to rest on the milk-sodden tray with a splash, and her son emitted a rebellious, “Me do!”
“Matthew, you know better than that,” she scolded as she gathered paper towels, sponge and damp cloth – the stalwarts of a toddler’s mother’s arsenal.
“Here –” She handed paper towels to Daniel. “Start mopping. It’s good practice.”
“Sorry, Kendra. It happened so quick –”
“It always does. That’s part of the drill. No – start at the top and work down, otherwise it drips on where you’ve just mopped.”
She unhooked the high chair’s safety belt to wipe up around Matthew and the few drops beyond his mega-sized bib. They worked in silence for a moment, with Matthew an interested spectator.
“He’s fast, isn’t he,” Daniel said with a rueful kind of pride.
“As a rattler.”
He chuckled, and the atmosphere eased as they contained the milk spill.
“That should do it,” she said after a while, heading to the sink. “I’ll rinse out this sponge and do another pass.”
“ ‘Unch!” demanded Matthew.
“You have to wait a minute, Matthew. You made a mess and we have to finish cleaning –”
“Matthew!”
At Daniel’s shout, she spun around in time to see her son, standing on the seat of his high chair – Oh, God, she’d failed to belt him back in! – leap into the air as if reaching for a trapeze that wasn’t there.
Chapter Six
Before a cry could reach Kendra’s throat, Daniel snared Matthew with one arm and gathered him in close to his side.
For a second, all three of them remained frozen and silent.
She stared into Daniel’s eyes and saw reflected there the same fears of what might have happened as she felt churning inside her. But something deeper and darker, too.
A gasp escaped Kendra’s constricted throat – how much a reaction to her son’s near miss and how much to what she saw in Daniel’s eyes she didn’t know.
She had no time to sort it out as Matthew began hollering in thwarted outrage, “Me do! Me do! Down! Down!”
Holding the toddler against his side in a cross between a sack of potatoes and a football, Daniel shifted for a more secure grip as the squirming boy arched his back and flailed his legs.
“Here, you better...”
It trailed off as he turned to give Kendra the opportunity to take Matthew off his hands. At the last second, and as much as she wanted to reassure herself her son was truly safe, she pulled her hands back.
“No. You should make sure he knows who’s in charge.”
“Isn’t he?”
A chuckle escaping her efforts to stifle it, Kendra gave him a reassuring smile. “You’re doing fine. Have you heard of the terrible twos? Matthew is a great believer in them.”
Her laughter and their failure to pay attention to him had calmed Matthew. In fact, he apparently liked the novelty of his position and the new angle it gave him on the adults.
“Matthew,” Kendra asked in an even voice, “what did I tell you?”
“ 'tay put,” he answered promptly. “Me di’n’t”
“No, you didn’t. You could get hurt, and Mommy doesn’t want you to get hurt. So, this time, what are you going to do?”
“ ‘tay put.”
“Good boy. Daniel, would you put Matthew back in his chair?”
Only a flicker of discomfort showed in his eyes before he said with a fair assumption of casualness, “Sure.”
It was an awkward business. Such an awkward business and accompanied by enough indignant squawks from Matthew that as much as Kendra tried to focus on finishing his lunch, she bounced from the temptation to laugh to the urge to do the job herself.
But in the end, Matthew was solidly seated in his high chair, facing forward, with a leg on each side of the divider and the belt around his waist. A sheen of sweat showed on Daniel’s forehead.
Kendra fed a much subdued Matthew lunch, while Daniel watched and listened to her comments about their routine as if he were learning brain surgery.
“More milk, Matthew?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. Down.”
“Okay. Cleanup first.” She wiped his hands and the moving target of his scrunched-up face, then unhooked him from the belt and pulled back the tray. She slanted a look at the man on the other side of the high chair. “You want to put him down?”
“Okay.”
For a moment he and Matthew eyed each other warily, with such identical expressions on their similar faces that Kendra felt as if she were watching a time-lapse photo.
“Ready to get down, buddy?”
Matthew was torn – he wanted to get down but part of the two-year-old’s creed was to say “no” as much as possible. He compromised by nodding.
Daniel wrapped his big hands around the child’s chest, gingerly lifting him from the chair and setting him on the ground as if he were glass. Kendra thought she detected a faint sigh of relief from Daniel as Matthew headed off.
“Now what?”
Matthew’s audible yawn made her smile as she answered, “There’s your answer. It’s nap time.”
“Thank God,” Daniel muttered under his breath.
Without her inviting or his asking, Daniel trailed behind as she gathered up Matthew and took him into his room. Daniel watched closely as she took off Matthew’s corduroy overalls, and laid him down on the changing table.
But when the diaper started to come off, Daniel developed a sudden interest in the row of pictures of Matth
ew at various ages atop the dresser.
“It’s safe, I’m done,” she said, letting a bit of taunt into her tone.
She regretted that when he turned. His dark eyes looked haunted. What had he thought as he’d studied those pictures of his son? That he’d never know those days? Or had he thought of other children?
“You want to put him down?” she asked softly.
“No! Mommy do!” demanded Matthew. That surprised her, since his refrain for the past few months had been “No, Mommy! Me do!”
She was also surprised at the flash of relief in Daniel’s eyes.
And she wanted to kick herself for that surprise, and the mist of disappointment that followed it. What had she expected?
She’d probably given him entirely too much credit a moment ago. Most likely what she’d interpreted as haunted was simply wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into once he’d caught a whiff of a diaper.
She cuddled Matthew, as if her arms around him and his face against her neck could protect him from every possible hurt from all corners of the world. Including from his father.
“Okay, sweetheart. Time to go to sleep.”
She nuzzled him a final time before laying him down. He grabbed the corner of his favorite blanket in a fist, and brought it to his mouth. Not quite sucking on it, but having it handy in case.
Matthew’s long, dark lashes swept down over his beautiful eyes, dropping once, then lifted quickly before drifting down again, slowly, slowly. She would never tire of watching her son’s slide into slumber.
Yet she was fully aware of Daniel beside her, of his shoulder not quite touching hers, of his hands resting lightly atop of the crib’s side, of his warmth and reality. And she felt a connection to him that she’d fought from the moment he’d said he’d come to find his son.
Our son.
She hadn’t said the words aloud yet.
Her son, still, of course. Now, too, his son. But also our son.
She turned and walked out, aware he followed her, half wishing he wouldn’t.
When they reached the hall, she heard him exhale.
“He’s even fast falling asleep.”
He sounded as if he were smiling.
“Some days that’s the only thing that lets me keep my sanity. I guess it’s because he expends so much energy.”
“Is this a typical day?”
“Pretty much. He’s active for his age from everything I hear and read. Marti says I walked late and talked early, so he must be taking after you in this.”
Her probe hadn’t been particularly subtle, and neither was his heavy and deliberate silence.
Halfway across the living room, she squared off to him. “You said I should ask my questions. You said you’d answer –”
“You’re right. I did. But I can’t help you with this one, because I have no idea when I walked or when I talked.”
“You could ask your –”
He turned abruptly, heading toward the back door, with her following. “I’ve gotta go make a phone call before Washington closes up.”
“Wait just a minute, Daniel Delligatti. You said –”
“I said I wanted a tour. But you can’t do that with Matthew napping,” he said, as if he didn’t know perfectly well that was not the objection she’d started. “Can you get Marti or Ellyn to take care of him for a while tomorrow morning?”
“I’m working tomorrow morning, and that’s not the point, anywa –”
“Okay, tomorrow afternoon. Tell you what – I’ll bring lunch. Noon?”
“I won’t be home till after one, but I don’t –”
“See you then.”
And he was gone as completely and inexplicably as he’d disappeared that night outside the consulate. Back into the shadows.
Except this time he didn’t leave without a word. This time he’d promised to be back tomorrow. So, tomorrow she’d make sure she got answers.
* * *
Daniel drove beyond Far Hills land before pulling off the side of the road and putting his head back.
He wasn’t going to sleep. It wasn’t that kind of exhaustion. But no kind of exhaustion was an excuse for his bungling this afternoon.
Did he think his clumsy efforts to avoid Kendra’s questions would hold her off indefinitely? Not damned likely. If anything, it would make her more determined. He’d known that even as he’d scrambled to get the hell away.
But by tomorrow, he’d have himself in hand. By tomorrow, he’d be prepared for Kendra’s questions.
Would he ever be prepared to be a father?
He knew about stealing aid back from crooked officials without rattling a window. He knew about landing on mud ruts. He knew about giving desperate kids enough to keep them alive... at least for a little longer.
He didn’t know about handling duck cups or little boys climbing out of high chairs or the Terrible Twos.
He didn’t know any of the things to make a little boy with a smile as wide as the biggest sky feel safe and loved.
How could he know?
Kendra had expected him to be good with their son because of Taumaturgio. But Taumaturgio had all the advantages – a mysterious identity, arriving like magic, bringing supplies needed so badly that providing them seemed like love to those children.
And the biggest advantage of all – he wasn’t Daniel Delligatti.
He lifted his head, opening his eyes. Listening.
Maybe this exhaustion was from five years of being someone else – several someone elses. From five years of seeing too many wrongs he couldn’t right.
No... he had that wrong. Maybe the exhaustion came from being forced to take off the mask that had become so much a part of him. From losing the chance to fix the wrongs within his grasp.
Muffled by the closed windows of the rental car came a sound, familiar and welcome. Now he realized what had caught his attention.
He climbed out quickly. Tipping his head back, he spotted a small plane overhead. He shielded his eyes against the sun.
A Super Cub. Descending. Like a bird heading home.
Home. A real home, like hers. A home where a little boy had all the food he could want, clean clothes, a comfortable bed, toys. And love.
He’d had none of those commodities until the Delligattis had found him. He’d be grateful to Robert Senior and Annette Delligatti for what they’d given him and what they’d saved him from for the rest of his life.
But none of that – his life with the Delligattis, what had come before, or the years as Taumaturgio – had prepared him for what he felt when he looked at Matthew.
Was he fooling himself thinking he could learn to be a real father? What did he know about being a father?
And did he think he had a hope of hiding his gaping ineptitude from Kendra?
At that moment, the plane slipped below a distant line of trees in a gentle, earth-bound angle.
Must be landing.
He started to drop back into the car, then halted abruptly, his right arm resting on the hood of the car.
The plane was landing. Just beyond that line of trees. So there had to be some sort of airport.
And, where there was an airport and planes, he was at home.
* * *
He was early. When Kendra drove up the next day, he was leaning against his car, pleased with his morning’s work, absorbing the warm sun and the dry breeze while he scanned the sky.
When her car door opened, he forgot about the sky.
She had a skirt on. Dark blue with little splashes of color. Full enough to cover her knee when she swung her left leg out of the car. But then she reached for something on the far side of the passenger seat, leaning into the car, and the skirt molded to the curve of her thigh and hip.
In another instant she had both legs out, with only a discreet amount of calf visible under the skirt’s hem – attractive, but eminently decent. Unlike the memories and desires churning through him, gathering like rain-ripe thunderclouds in his gut.
>
The sensation of those curved calves rubbing along his leg as slow and mesmerizing as a drum beat. Those thighs pressed against his, holding him to her, in her. Those hips under his hands as he brought her down to him, slowly, then faster and faster. Again and again and –
“Give me a minute to change, and then we can go.”
By the time he’d adjusted his thinking enough to consider answering her, she’d breezed past him and the screen door had thudded closed, rebounded and thudded a couple more times. Leaving him to consider that even good memories sometimes carried pain.
She re-emerged wearing jeans, boots, a battered cowboy hat and a roomy shirt the color of orange sherbet. She buttoned the cuffs as she walked past him without breaking stride.
“You want to drive, Daniel, or do you want me to?”
“I’ll drive, but –”
No sense finishing his sentence because she’d disappeared into his car.
“Head for the home ranch,” she instructed.
“Okay, but –”
“Can you ride?”
He turned to her. Her eyes held definite mischief, but clearly not the kind that came to his mind at hearing her question.
“Ride?” he probed.
Apparently some of his thoughts came through in his tone. She cast him sideways glance, as if checking that the innuendo she’d heard really existed. His face must have confirmed it, because color started up her throat and her jaw firmed even before she faced away from him.
“Horses,” she said shortly.
He knew he was treading a fine line. Push her too hard or too fast, and Kendra Jenner’s wall would get another layer of quick-set concrete. But damn, it felt good to know that behind the wall, the woman from Santa Estella still existed.
“Why?”
“You wanted a tour, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Best way to see the ranch is on horseback. So, can you ride a horse?”
“I never fell off on the merry-go-round,” he drawled.
“Okay, we’ll see if we can fix you up with a wooden horse that goes up and down on a pole.”
“I’d prefer something softer than wood,” he murmured.
She clearly didn’t catch the sexual connotation of that comment, because she chuckled easily.
“If you’re not used to riding, after a few minutes in the saddle, the softest horse’s back can feel like a rock.”
Heart Stealers Page 32
