Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  * * *

  Why had he done that?

  Lying in bed, wishing sleep would stop the thinking, that’s the question Kendra focused on. It was much better than thinking about what had happened between them. Or what would have happened if she’d let things continue.

  Why had he picked her pocket?

  To prove – to himself or her? – he didn’t need to rely on her, the way he had the night he’d returned from back East?

  Was that why he’d lied in answer to her question?

  I don’t know.

  If he’d tried, he probably could have fooled her. He certainly had before, as Tompkins and Paulo. So why had this lie been so unconvincing? Because she knew him better now?

  I don’t know.

  She’d known it as a lie immediately. So that meant he did know. But maybe he didn’t want to know. Maybe he didn’t lie well this time because he was lying to himself most of all.

  Why?

  I don’t know.

  * * *

  Damn her questions.

  She poked and probed until he felt like he’d been turned inside out. And, dammit, he had no answers. Not the neat kind she wanted.

  Daniel leaned against the chain link fence that separated the parking area from the pair of runways boasted by Far Hills Airport. If he’d had his own plane, he’d have gone up and seen eye to eye with the huge, clear Wyoming sky. Instead, he had to settle for the familiar, lingering scents of fuel and flight.

  Maybe Kendra had connected with Paulo during the hurricane because she couldn’t hold Paulo at a distance with her battery of questions. Not speaking the same language had definite advantages.

  Why had he come after her? Why three years after he’d left her at the consulate gate had finding her been his first thought when the door had been closed and locked behind his ever returning to Taumaturgio?

  Damned if he knew.

  And Kendra hadn’t expected him to have an answer. She’d used the question to drive a wedge between them. To stop the feeling between them.

  His body tightened in memory of that specific feeling.

  She’d try to back away now. He’d bet every penny on that.

  Go ahead and try, Kendra Jenner, he thought grimly.

  He’d be damned if he’d let that happen. Not her backing away, not her trying to keep Matthew away from him, not even himself easing away.

  Yeah, himself.

  It had been a long time since he’d felt the nervousness he’d experienced tonight when he’d realized Matthew was completely and solely in his care. On second thought, he’d never felt the terror that hit him so unexpectedly when he’d glanced in the rear view mirror halfway into town and seen Matthew’s expression of utter confidence that nothing could hurt him. Which meant he – Daniel Delligatti – was responsible that nothing did hurt Matthew.

  The situation had gotten worse when they had passed by the Community Church and Matthew started fussing. It occurred to Daniel then that Matthew’s equanimity had stemmed from a belief they were heading for the familiar babysitting co-op. It had a two-year-old kind of logic, since the co-op was where Matthew most often saw him. It also explained a couple of the words Daniel had understood in Matthew’s prattling – Emily, Jason and Fran.

  Not even a burger and fries (and the amazing mess they could make in the hands of a master) had ameliorated Matthew’s cranky suspiciousness at not encountering those expected faces, though the cooing attentions of the teenage waitress had helped some. By the time they’d reached the library for the movie, Daniel had been sorely tempted to hand Matthew over to Ellyn and bolt.

  But the time with Ellyn and Meg Sinclair – and Matthew’s fascination with Toto – seemed to restore some of his son’s faith in the world, if not in Daniel. Matthew had some justification for his wariness. Not only couldn’t Daniel get his car started, but transferring the damned child seat from his car to Ellyn’s had been a fiasco.

  Matthew’s improved mood lasted until the moment Ellyn dropped them off at Kendra’s house and he realized his mother wasn’t there.

  The military ought to check into distraught two-year-olds as a secret weapon. If the heart-rending pathos of flooding tears and pitiful cries for “Mommy, Mommy” didn’t bring a man to his knees, the sheer volume would. Add on the bruises and frustrations of trying to get a squirming body with the power of a pro wrestler packed first into a clean diaper and then into a diabolical contraption called a sleeper, and it could break the toughest man.

  Kendra might have thought Daniel had been lying in wait for her, but in fact he’d collapsed on the sofa and fallen asleep.

  Between mother and child, it had not been Daniel’s finest hour, or evening.

  He pushed off from the fence. That wasn’t going to stop him. Not from spending time alone with his son. Not from pursuing his son’s mother.

  * * *

  The next afternoon an assignment for the Banner took Kendra to Sheridan. She stopped in a drug store for aspirin to fight a raging headache. She’d had it when she woke up. Finding her car keys on the counter and her car parked neatly by the back door hadn’t helped.

  He had to have been in her house to return the keys and he had to have been up before dawn to get her car back. On a Sunday morning, where’d he find a ride? Or had he walked back to wherever he lived now? What if he couldn’t get his car fixed? Or –

  No. None of that was her concern.

  Aspirin in hand, she turned and came face to face with a display of condoms.

  She would never need them. Certainly not with Daniel – that would be crazy. And, at the rate she was going, not with any man.

  On the other hand, history showed that when she had needed them, she hadn’t had them. From a practical standpoint...

  Without regard for the finer points, she grabbed a packet.

  * * *

  If Daniel had had any thought of keeping where he and Matthew had spent Tuesday afternoon a secret from Kendra, their son’s new word ended that idea immediately.

  “Plane! Mommy, plane!”

  Matthew started in as soon as Daniel freed him from the car seat and he came barreling toward where she stood outside the back door with the binoculars she’d been using to scan the mountainside.

  “Yes, sweetheart. Planes are in the sky.”

  “No. No. Plane! Mat’ew – plane!”

  “Plane? You saw a plane? Oh!” Kendra spun around to Daniel, walking leisurely toward her. “You took him up in a plane! You had no right –”

  “Don’t be so fast to judge, convict and execute. We –”

  “Pop’ler, Mommy. Vrrrrm-vrrrrm-vrrrrm!” Matthew tugged at Kendra’s jeans. When she didn’t respond immediately enough for him, he looked to Daniel. “Pop’ler? Dan’l, pop’ler?”

  “That’s right, Matthew. That’s the noise a propeller makes.”

  “Pop’ler,” Matthew nodded. “Pop’ler, Mommy!”

  “Daniel, how could you –”

  “I know questions are your strong point, but how about if you hold off, Kendra? I think you’ve got someone right now who’d like to tell you what he discovered this afternoon.”

  Kendra glared at him long enough to convey she didn’t appreciate the crack about her asking questions, or for being found lacking in paying attention to Matthew. Then she crouched to face her son.

  “You heard a propeller, Matthew?”

  He nodded emphatically, his dark eyes, as warm and compelling as his father’s, shining with excitement. “Pop’ler, Mommy!” Matthew prattled on with words tumbling over each other so rapidly that even she, who’d heard each of his words first – until today, she thought with a jolt – had difficulty making them out. Although propeller, plane, sky and vrrrmm reoccurred. Along with another word.

  “Roof?” she repeated tentatively.

  “Rufus Trent,” Daniel filled in. “He owns the airport, and some planes. He showed us around, and let Matthew sit in a cockpit.”

  And now she recognized another of her son
’s new words – pilot.

  “Mat’ew pilot!”

  He reached up toward Daniel, both arms raised, small fists opening and closing in the universal sign for “Gimme.”

  Daniel reached into his light jacket and pulled something out. A couple of quick movements of his long fingers, and he handed over to Matthew a balsa wood plane.

  “Me pilot!” Matthew exulted, running down the driveway making his version of engine noises.

  Kendra glared at Daniel, hands on hips.

  He shrugged, but didn’t sound the least apologetic. “He wanted a plane. He said he didn’t have one.”

  She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Explain,” she demanded as soon as Matthew was out of earshot.

  “Explain? You make it sound like I’ve committed a crime.” His frown matched his tone – irked. “I took him by the Far Hills airport. I wanted to introduce my son to something I love. That’s no crime.”

  His expression shifted, allowing in a glint of joy. “He loved it. Rufus has a couple nice little planes. Nothing fancy, but he keeps them spit and polish, inside and out. Matthew and I got inside, and he saw the instrument panel and even tried the throttle. But we never left the ground, Kendra.”

  “You told me before you two left that you wanted to show Matthew where you’re staying.”

  “I said I wanted to show you both were I’m living.” His emphasis disputed her less permanent word. “You said you had too much to do.”

  She did have work to do, but it had been the resemblance to a family outing that had kept her from saying yes when Daniel showed up at her door in his newly repaired car with sandwich makings and ready-made salad for lunch. When Daniel had said in that case he’d take Matthew, she hadn’t been able to think of an excuse to say no, since Saturday night seemed to have gone well from what she could see and from Ellyn’s breezily incomplete comments.

  “You live at the airport?”

  “Yeah. I told you I rented a place. I rented it from Rufus. The operation’s run out of an old house – offices, a lounge and the radio room. There’s living space upstairs. I’ve got a room, my own bathroom and run of the kitchen. Works out for both of us – he likes having someone around because of the equipment, so the rent’s real reasonable.”

  “And it happens to be at an airport.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, that’s a bonus. So, with all the work you had to do, what are you doing out here with the binoculars?”

  She ignored the gibe. “There are reports of forest fires in the Big Horns. I’m seeing if I could spot anything.”

  “Could you?”

  “Smoke from the far side.” She brushed that topic aside, coming back to the real issue. “I don’t want Matthew around airplanes. Or airports.”

  “Flying is what I do, Kendra.” He said it with deliberate emphasis. “I’m his father, and whether he knows that or not now, someday it’ll be important to him to know about me, about my flying.”

  “You don’t know what it would be like for him... if you don’t come back.”

  He took her hand, she tried to pull away. He held on, clasping it between both of his. “Or if you don’t come back.”

  “Me? I don’t take risks.”

  “You live. That’s the risk. You could –”

  “You’re going to say I could be hit by a truck, or struck by lightning. True. But I don’t court risks, Daniel. I don’t go meet them more than halfway. You fly into danger for a job.”

  “So did you.”

  “I did? How do you figure that?”

  “You walked into a hurricane for your job. I remember you talking about taking calculated risks to get the story of Taumaturgio. You seemed to think that was reasonable.” Before she could formulate an answer, he went on, “Kendra, you can’t tell me you don’t know how it feels. You wanted that Taumaturgio story so much – I could see it. Why do you think I followed you to La Baja?”

  She gave him a look meant to be quelling, and tugged at her hand. He ignored the tug and grinned, obviously interpreting her expression to his own advantage. “Well, yes, that too. I can’t say that your appeal didn’t figure into my following you.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” But her protest didn’t stop the heat of certain memories from traveling through her body. “You followed me because you were playing savior to the world and you thought I’d be a danger to your plans.”

  His grin evaporated. “You were in danger.”

  “All right, all right. I know. It was the stupidest thing I’d done in my life.” She gave him a cutting look. “To that point.”

  He ignored the implication. “I hope you didn’t do anything riskier. A storm like that – it’s like a wolf on the hunt. It’s going to tear into someone, you never know who or where. And yes, I worried about you. You were a stranger to hurricanes and a stranger to Santa Estella. I could also see the determination in you to find out all the secrets of Taumaturgio – that worried me, too.”

  “So, you could have let the hurricane deal with me. That would have ended all your worries.”

  “Right.” He used his self-mocking tone. “Wouldn’t look good for Taumaturgio, defender of the weak, champion of the downtrodden to let a gringa reporter drown because it was convenient.”

  “You talk as if Taumaturgio were a separate person.”

  He released her hand. “Still doing the story, Kendra?”

  Body language, tone and words all screamed that she’d stepped into hidden territory. For a moment, she felt as if she had her foot raised, poised to step over some invisible threshold, about to venture into a realm that stretched unseen ahead of her. The realm of Daniel Delligatti. Not solely the facts he’d chosen to tell her to this point or the glimpses his lowered defenses had allowed her to see, but into other emotions he’d skirted away from.

  “No. I’m not doing any story.” Her words came out almost breathless, as if she’d truly stepped back from a precipice. “We’re off the subject, anyhow. The subject is your job. And flying.”

  “My job. I don’t know...” Her heart jolted uncomfortably against her ribs. Something in his voice... almost as if returning to his job were in doubt. But he lived and breathed his job, the flying and the danger.

  She treated his words with the levity they deserved.

  “What? You’re trying to tell me this was such a great government job that you could afford to retire at thirty-two –” His left eyebrow quirked. “Yes, I got your age from my sources. Don’t change the subject again. You’re going to be a full-time retiree?”

  “No.”

  She exhaled. Just as she’d thought. He’d go back to the job he’d had before Taumaturgio. He’d be off somewhere far away, where she wouldn’t be even tempted to cross into that other realm.

  * * *

  Kendra avoided any more direct contact with Daniel until Friday afternoon and the co-op’s party to celebrate all the birthdays that fell in the month of October.

  On that day, as many parents as possible were pressed into service to help with the cake, ice cream and games. As Fran said, kids, sugar and excitement were a highly combustible combination.

  Kendra kept most of the room and the ever-flowing mass of kids between her and Daniel during the festivities.

  She’d returned to the main room from attempting to clean up a four-year-old girl who’d tried to shower in juice, and spotted Matthew sitting on the floor beside his pal, Jason. Apparently they were playing a two-year-old’s version of keeping up with the Joneses.

  “My t’uck,” announced Jason, waving a green toy in his fist.

  “My t’uck.” Matthew snatched up a red one from beside him.

  “My new shoes.” Jason patted his Velcro-closed footwear.

  “My new shoes,” Matthew repeated, not entirely truthfully.

  “My sweat-ah.” Jason poked his tummy, covered by a blue sweatshirt.

  “My sweat-ah.” Matthew’s, also blue, truly was a sweater.

  Jason widened his scope, searching for the next it
em.

  “My Mommy,” he declared triumphantly, waving his arm in the vague direction of his mother, a petite blonde busy placing ice cream-sloppy paper plates carefully into a garbage bag.

  Matthew levered himself to his knees, scanning the room. Spotting her, he shouted with such glee that she couldn’t stop an answering smile. “My Mommy!”

  Jason pointed to the man holding the garbage bag for his mother. “My Daddy!”

  The next moment strung out like a series of still photographs, each etched into Kendra’s heart.

  Matthew’s hesitation, followed by a kind of confusion. Jason clambering to his feet and trundling across the room, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” knowing somehow that he’d won, yet innocent of any malevolence. Matthew flopping back to sit on the floor, his face creasing into a pucker of uncertainty.

  Kendra took a step toward him. But that brought Daniel into her line of sight and stopped her cold. His expression was so utterly shut down that she knew he had witnessed the episode. How could his face show no emotion and yet she feel such overwhelming blame?

  She started toward Matthew again, but Daniel’s curt gesture ordered her to stay still.

  Movement from Matthew caught her attention. He’d put his thumb in his mouth. His left hand idly stroked the top of the truck by his side. Then he started to move it back and forth, gradually shifting his focus. In another minute, his thumb was out of his mouth and she heard his “Vroom-vroom.”

  She walked out of the room, not stopping until she’d reached the open side door, drawing in slow, calming breaths.

  She wasn’t surprised when Daniel spoke from behind her.

  “Don’t you be the one to let him know it’s a big deal, Kendra. He’ll understand soon enough that it’s a big deal that he doesn’t have a Daddy. If he doesn’t, the other kids will let him know.”

  She squeezed her eyes tight against the pain buried so deep in his calm voice. He knew exactly how it felt to learn that, to understand what it meant not to have a daddy. Or a mommy.

  “We’ve gone over this.” It came out fairly steady.

  “Yes, we have. You don’t want Matthew to know he has a father on the chance that father might not come back someday.”

  She twisted around to find him leaning against the opposite doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest.