His for the Taking

by Ann Major

  “Why are you doing this? Surely you can’t want Noah!” she whispered.

  “Wrong!” He sprang to his feet, truly infuriated now. “I didn’t know about him! Now that I do, you’re going to have to deal with it, the same as I am! I could do a lot for Noah, you know. And for you.”

  “I want you out of my life!”

  Heat engulfed him.

  Her words pushed him over some dangerous edge, because he wanted her in his life as much as he wanted Noah. Even now, knowing that she’d probably slept with him for the sole purpose of remaining in his house long enough to get her letters so he would never find out about Noah, he wanted her.

  “Well, that’s too damn bad! Noah has two parents!”

  After she’d left him for Vernon, he’d felt dead. Even when he’d been married to Lizzie, he’d felt dead. For years, he’d buried himself in his work in an attempt to forget her. Lizzie had felt neglected, and rightfully so. When Lizzie had died, he’d chosen booze so he wouldn’t have to face the guilt and the emptiness that ravaged him—or the insane need he’d felt to search for Maddie.

  When he’d seen her at the pool this morning, the sun had seemed to brighten and the water to sparkle with a special blinding radiance. Because of her, the whole world had seemed new and fresh. He couldn’t tell her any of that, though, because then she’d know her power and use it against him.

  “I don’t like this any better than you do!” he yelled as she ran out of the room and up the stairs with his sheet trailing behind her.

  Angry as he was, the knowledge that her voluptuous body was soft and naked under his sheet had him brick-hard again.

  When he tore after her, he intended to appease her at least a little before pulling her into his arms, but she turned on him at the top of the stairs. And the words she flung at him through her sobs slammed him like mortal blows.

  “I’m engaged to be married! To a wonderful man, I’ll have you know! He grew up poor like me, so he understands me. He’s a teacher, so he’s wonderful with kids. He would never reject and abandon me, the way you did, and he already considers Noah his son. He’s everything that Noah needs in a father.”

  “Then why the hell did you just sleep with me?” he thundered.

  “Hormones. It was a horrible mistake. Please, just drive me home, and stay out of our lives!”

  “You ask the impossible,” he whispered in a ravaged tone. “Where’s his damn ring anyway?”

  “We’re…we’re informally engaged.”

  She raced into his bedroom and slammed the door.

  * * *

  Moonlight flooded his bedroom as Maddie sank down on his big bed with its tumbled sheets where they’d made love such a short time ago, where she’d been so happy…so foolishly happy, she thought now.

  When she’d awakened from her nightmare filled with doubts and insecurities, he hadn’t been there, and she’d felt rejected and afraid of her own powerful emotions.

  She’d felt afraid that he didn’t care about her, that he never had and that he never could. She thought maybe to him she was just a carnal pleasure—and of no more consequence than a coveted toy a spoiled child might enjoy from time to time.

  Had Cole come after her when Vernon had hurt her? Had Cole rescued her like a knight in shining armor? Not that she believed in fairy tales, but still… Had he even questioned her mother’s sordid story? Or had he simply believed the worst, like everybody else? Had he ever tried to find her? Or had he already been chasing after Lizzie—a proper girl, Yella’s sweetheart? If she’d mattered to him at all, if she’d had a background he’d approved of, wouldn’t he have found a way to reach her?

  All her old doubts and insecurities had torn at her as she’d lain in the dark. Then she’d gotten up the nerve to search for him to determine his true feelings.

  The lower part of the house had been dark when she’d made it down the stairs, so she’d made her way to her purse on the little table by the window and pulled out her tiny flashlight, which she always carried.

  Thinking maybe he’d fallen asleep on a sofa, she hadn’t wanted to turn on the lights as she searched for him.

  When she hadn’t found him on any of his big sofas or easy chairs, she’d seen his office door ajar. The lower drawer had been open, and she’d let out a little scream after she’d sunk to her knees and realized he’d probably read her letters.

  At the realization that he knew about Noah, that the knowledge was why he hadn’t come back to bed, she’d felt confused and scared, crazy. She hadn’t been ready to face him, to talk to him about Noah. No, she’d felt too vulnerable after the sex—sex that had revealed how much she still cared for him. So when she’d found herself suddenly backed into a corner about Noah, she’d reacted to Cole’s righteous anger and accusations defensively. By becoming furious, she’d made a royal mess of everything.

  But she wasn’t about to let hot sex weaken her into agreeing to include him in her son’s life when that might not be the best thing for her and Noah. Cole hadn’t been there when she’d needed him the most—when she’d been scared and helpless.

  Well, maybe she and Noah didn’t need him now.

  * * *

  What the hell was she doing up there? Sulking? Plotting? Or just feeling as sick at heart and confused as he was?

  With a heavy heart, Cole mounted the stairs and waited outside that closed door until Maddie dressed. When she came out, she rushed past him and down the stairs without looking at him or speaking to him. On the way downstairs he found a tiny red flashlight on a carpeted stair. He kneeled and closed his fist around it. Uttering a low animal sound, he jammed it in his pocket.

  Neither of them spoke as his truck ripped through the suffocating darkness on their way to Miss Jennie’s rambling house, but the atmosphere inside the cab felt as charged as one of his gas wells about to blow. When at last he slammed on the brakes in front of Miss Jennie’s and the truck jerked to a standstill, he jumped out and raced around to open her door.

  She stayed where she was. Then, without a word, she began rummaging in her purse.

  “Looking for something?”

  “My flashlight. I must have dropped it somewhere.”

  He yanked it out of his pocket and flashed the narrow beam inside her purse.

  With a frown she flung herself out of the door and grabbed it from him. “I’m perfectly capable of seeing myself to the door,” she snapped.

  Turning her back on him, she aimed the tiny beam on the sidewalk and marched stiffly toward the porch.

  She didn’t give him so much as a backward glance as she let herself inside the dark house and bolted the door behind her. Miss Jennie wasn’t one to keep her shades down, so he watched Maddie’s flashlight bob as she made her way to the back, watched when her bedroom light went on. Then her door closed, and the front of the house was dark again.

  “Baby, if you think this is finished, you’re very wrong,” he growled softly. “If Noah’s mine, he’s mine. Not Greg’s! I’ll use DNA and the whole damn legal system to get him.”

  Nine

  Usually, challenges seemed less daunting to Cole the next morning. Not today. Too much was at stake.

  As soon as the sun flamed like a red-hot ball of fire against a mauve horizon, Cole dragged himself out of bed and made coffee. Although he had a headache from hell and burned with impatience, he had called Juan about the well. Fortunately, the driller had just arrived, so Cole could vent some of his frustration by blasting that glib, overpaid shirker who thoroughly deserved it. After the call, he went for a run before he drove over to Miss Jennie’s.

  Morning doves cooed in the treetops above Miss Jennie’s house. Shadows from her big oaks slanted across her overgrown lawn. The last traces of ground fog hovered at the fringes of the brush where his ranch bordered her property.

  For a long moment Cole stayed in the cab of his truck and observed the single light burning in the kitchen window. Maybe Maddie hadn’t been able to sleep very well. He knew he hadn’t.
No, after dropping Maddie off last night, he’d lain in his bed, tossing and turning, torturing himself with visions of her lying in her fiancé’s arms.

  Gathering his courage, he dragged himself out of the truck and walked up to the front door and knocked. He was about to raise his hand again when the door opened and Cinnamon wheeled around from the back porch, yapping.

  Propped on crutches, Miss Jennie, whose wrinkled face was softened by her bright blue eyes, beamed up at him sweetly as Cinnamon rushed inside.

  “Good mornin’, Cole. I expect you’re here to see my darlin’ Maddie.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Well, she’s in the shower. The poor thing’s as pale as a ghost this morning and seems plumb tuckered out. I don’t think she slept much last night. I heard her pacing early this morning, but you come on in…that is, if you don’t mind waitin’ for her.”

  He removed his Stetson. “I don’t mind,” he said politely, feeling ashamed of his own violent emotions as he stepped inside Miss Jennie’s quiet, orderly parlor, which was filled with faded carpets, well-used antiques and the scarred piano that every kid in town had hammered on, including him.

  “I have a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen. Or if you’d prefer a soda, there’s several in the fridge. I think I’d like a soda myself. Maybe you could open one for me, and we could chat at the kitchen table while we wait for our girl. Or sit on the screened porch.”

  “Wherever it’s cooler.”

  “That would be the kitchen. I’ve got the air on.”

  Cole poured himself a mug of coffee and set a chilled can of soda before Miss Jennie, who was quick to thank him.

  “I can’t manage these crutches and get a soda out of the fridge at the same time,” she said. “Not enough hands. Maddie’s been so good to come here and help me with little things like that. She’s fed Cinnamon and chased him, watered the plants and done the laundry. Mainly, though, we’ve caught up on our visitin’. I’m mighty proud of how she turned out.”

  He nodded courteously. He had immense respect for Miss Jennie, who had been his senior English teacher as well as Maddie’s, only Miss Jennie hadn’t championed him. Quite the opposite. Once, when his grades had fallen, she’d kept him from playing football for six weeks even though his parents and the coaches had pressured her to relent.

  “I never knew you were friends with Maddie back when she lived here, you being a Coleman and all. She never once mentioned you until that awful night when she came here and said she had to leave Yella for good. She told me plenty about you that night, though. Cried her heart out, she did, poor thing, because you were so high-and-mighty, so far out of her reach. I told her to call you and lay it all out—to give you a chance. But that only made her weep harder because she said she already had and that you’d made it clear you thought she was trash and didn’t want her.”

  Cole clenched his hands into fists and then unclenched them.

  “There was nothing I could say to cheer her after that. She just said, ‘He doesn’t want me. He never will. I’m scared. You’ve got to help me get out of this town, or I’ll end up just like my mother.’ So I did.”

  Whatever else Maddie might have been that night, he now knew she’d been scared, and he hadn’t been there for her. He was going to find out what the hell had happened to her that had made her run. It might take a while, peeling through the layers of the truth, but he was determined. First, though, he had to deal with Noah.

  “She turned out real nice, didn’t she?” Miss Jennie’s blue eyes drilled into him.

  “She did turn out nice,” he muttered, feeling defensive.

  “Miss Jennie!” Maddie stood in the doorway. Her stern voice and her ashen face were enough to make Miss Jennie swallow whatever she’d been about to confide.

  “Hello, Cole,” Maddie said stonily.

  He stood up awkwardly, having forgotten all he’d intended to say to her after Miss Jennie’s startling revelation.

  It didn’t make sense that Maddie had come to see Miss Jennie, of all people, on the night she’d been so mad with love she’d supposedly run off with Vernon. And Miss Jennie had confirmed what Maddie had told him about having tried to call him. What did it mean that she’d been crying her heart out because of him, and yet she’d still left with Vernon?

  “We have to talk,” he muttered gloomily.

  “I don’t have long,” Maddie said in a crisp tone. “Miss Jennie needs me.”

  “I’ll be fine right here with my soda and my morning paper. You two take Cinnamon out into the back garden and talk. There’s some shade, so it’s not too hot at this hour with the breeze. But mind that you make Cinnamon leave Bessie’s chickens alone, so George, her husband, doesn’t take a notion to shoot him again. You take all the time you need. I’ll be just fine in here.”

  Tension throbbed through Cole as he pushed the screen door open and called to Cinnamon. The dog wheeled between their legs, barking. Then, of course, the dog rushed straight for Bessie’s chicken coop.

  “I hope George doesn’t take aim at Cinnamon and shoot you or me by mistake,” Cole said to lighten the mood. “He’s a lousy shot.”

  A tight-lipped Maddie whirled on him as soon as they were where Miss Jennie could neither see nor hear them. “We have nothing to say to each other!”

  “Why don’t we start with the fact that I’ve had a son I haven’t known about for six damn years.” Deliberately, he kept his tone soft.

  When she shut her eyes, he was sure it was to block him out, not because the sun slanting through the oaks was so brilliant.

  “I want to see him,” Cole said. “To know him. For him to know me. As soon as it can be arranged and you feel that Noah is prepared, I want to meet him. Is that so wrong?”

  “This has all happened so fast, I can’t think. All I know is that you weren’t there when we needed you. We’ve built a life—apart from you. It wasn’t easy, I’ll admit. I know you said you could do a lot for Noah, but the man I’m going to marry, Greg, can take care of us. He’ll work hard to make us happy.”

  “Noah’s still my son,” Cole said. “I want to meet this other man, who’s going to have a big part in Noah’s life.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Cole saw Bessie’s shade lift.

  “Please, if you ever felt anything for me…just go on with your own life. I was doing just fine without you.”

  “Well, maybe I wasn’t doing just fine—not even before I knew about Noah. Maybe I want some answers. For six damn years I believed you jilted me and ran off with Vernon. In your letters that I stupidly didn’t open, you said that you believed Noah was Vernon’s. You sounded glad that he wasn’t, like you were glad to think I might be Noah’s father. Why? Miss Jennie just told me that you came to her right before you left Yella.”

  “Miss Jennie shouldn’t be talking to you.”

  “Well, she called it an awful night. She said you told her about us, that you were crying and that you were in some kind of trouble. If that’s true, I hope you’ll trust me enough someday to tell me what happened.”

  “It’s too late.” Her flat voice was so faint he could barely hear her.

  “Why did you tell her all about me if you were going to run off with Vernon? What the hell really happened that night?”

  Her eyes grew huge and filled with pain. “I’m going to marry Greg, so none of this matters.”

  “We have a son. I want to know what happened.”

  “I can’t go back there.”

  “I’m not asking you to go back. I’m asking you to communicate…honestly.”

  Refusing to look at him, she bit her bottom lip.

  “Why did you sleep with me yesterday?”

  “Because I’m weak and cheap…like my mother.”

  Was she? Grimly, he studied her wan face. He wished she could trust him enough to level with him.

  Feeling so frustrated he wanted to shake her, he balled his fists and slid them into his pockets. “Maybe I would have
been fool enough to buy that story before yesterday, but not now. I think you ran away from Yella because something terrible happened to you. I think you were scared and helpless, and I wasn’t there for you. I think the woman who put herself through college while she raised my son alone, the woman who has a decent job now and a schoolteacher fiancé who’s reputedly a damned paragon—that woman is the last thing from weak and cheap. I want the truth!”

  She caught her breath. “Okay…like I keep telling you, the truth is that last night—the sex, I mean—was a mistake that I deeply regret.”

  “Not for me, it wasn’t! It’s the first good, completely honest thing that’s happened to me in six years!”

  It was bad timing that he’d read her letters right after that and had been forced to confront her about Noah. It would have been so much better for both of them if they’d had time to grow their relationship before they’d gotten into anything so heavy. But here he was—in too deep—with a woman he wasn’t sure of. It was either sink or swim. He, for one, was determined to swim.

  “I can’t believe that,” she began. “You’re a Coleman, and I’m Jesse Ray’s no-good daughter.”

  “Will you stop using the way everybody abused you as a weapon to club me? You’ve always been way more than that, and you know it.”

  Hardly knowing what he intended, he spanned the distance that separated them. So what if Bessie’s shade notched up another inch or two. Wrapping Maddie, who smelled of shampoo and soap and her own sweet self, in his arms, he pulled her close.

  “Even though you don’t want me right now, you feel perfect in my arms.”

  When she tried to push free, he tightened his grip. Freeing her hands, he slid his arms around her waist.

  “Cole, don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

  “Kiss me,” he begged. “You’re going to have to prove to me you regret the sex.” He paused. “I now believe you tried to call me the night you ran away. I believe my mother said something terrible that hurt you very deeply when you were already upset and terrified. I don’t know why she doesn’t want to admit it. I can only imagine she sensed the depth of my feelings for you and was too scared to confront me because she was afraid I’d choose you. No doubt she thinks she was acting in my best interests. Baby, I want you to trust me enough to tell me what happened that night.”