Daddy by Surprise (8 page)

“Easy, there, love. It’s okay. Trust me. Everything starts to get better now. Rock against me. Move a little and you’ll feel it.”

She did trust him. Enough to shift her hips.

“Uh. Oh. Yes.”

He nodded in agreement but his eyes were closed and he appeared to be concentrating very hard. So she closed her eyes, too, and focused on what she was feeling. Color. Heat. Need.

The latter urged her on, searching for something she couldn’t name. She moved with an urgency that didn’t seem natural until suddenly it was as natural as breathing. And her breath was gone. Lost in an explosion of sensation that left her panting.

He’d told the truth. A door had opened to a new world of wonder and hope. The kind of place you prayed you’d go to when you died.

Maybe that was why he’d been so cavalier earlier about the dead man. Because Mad Jack knew there were alternatives to living. Some were just more permanent than others.

J
ACK AWOKE
incrementally, and not without some regret. Damn, he’d had a great dream. He couldn’t remember all of it, but certain images were crystal clear. The sex. He couldn’t name another time he’d come that hard. And the woman in his arms had enjoyed it, too. No faking of that orgasm, he thought with a satisfied sigh.

“Umm-um…”

He opened his eyes at the unexpected sound, which hadn’t come from his lips. His heart rate sped up as he looked around, trying not to make any movement.

Strange ceiling. Room-darkening curtains that cried cheap motel room. Extra-firm mattress that didn’t feel familiar. And a warm, naked body curled up beside him.

He turned his chin to the left, halfway expecting to see long blond curls. But no. The head resting on his outstretched arm belonged to a real woman. Not the schoolmarm in his dream. This bed-head coif stuck up in every direction. She looked so adorable he couldn’t help but smile.

Kat.

Even though he wasn’t sure how she’d gotten from the other bed to his. Or wait. Had he been the one to switch?

He looked to his right. “Oh, crap,” he muttered softly.

A second messy bed—the one he’d started the night in—was just beyond his fingertips. A cold shiver passed through his body. There was going to be hell to pay any minute.

As if picking up his disquiet, his bedmate stretched and wriggled in a way that made him horny as hell. For half a second. Then, she opened her eyes and blinked.

He felt the instant she realized where she was and that another person was right beside her.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, scrambling sideways, dragging the covers with her.

Her look of abject horror was so obvious Jack felt naked and exposed as the sheets slipped off his body. Rather than fight her for control of the covers, he vaulted into the second bed and yanked the comforter to his waist.

His reaction pissed him off. That was exactly what Jack Treadwell would do. Mad Jack, the person he’d been in his dream, probably would have stood up and proudly walked to Kat’s side to calm her down and maybe make love to her again.

He looked across the distance between them to where she sat, pulled into a tight ball of knees and eyes that had the proverbial deer-in-headlights look—right after making contact with a bumper. Too wide and not quite believing what happened really happened.

“Kat, I’m sorry.” He wasn’t. Not really. But it seemed like the right thing to say. “I don’t know what happened. Or how. Exactly. I mean…I don’t remember crawling into your bed. Maybe the meds…”

“I…We…Oh, shit. We did more than sleep together, didn’t we?”

He nodded, praying the sense of jubilation he still felt didn’t show on his face. “Yeah, we did. Although…” He shut his mouth. Telling her that he’d actually made love to another woman in his dream probably wasn’t a good idea. “I…Um…We…I’m sorry?”

She didn’t appear to be listening to his pathetic apology. She pulled the sheets away from her chest and looked down, as if checking to see that her body was in one piece.

Jack couldn’t help feeling a little offended. “It was straight sex. Nothing kinky. Just ask my ex. I’m as white-bread boring as it comes. No pun intended. I didn’t hurt you. Did I?”

She looked at him, her face screwed up in either pain or horror. He wasn’t sure which. “I can’t believe I did this.”

“We,” he corrected. “We did this. There were two of us—at the very least,” he added under his breath.

Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, that is so typical. Sex is just sex to guys, but I am not in the habit of jumping into bed with strange men. Or—” she whipped her index finger back and forth between his bed and hers “—letting strange men climb into bed with me. How did this happen?”

He could mention his dream, but he didn’t think she’d buy his excuse that he wasn’t himself. That he’d become an Old West gunslinger named Mad Jack. “Like I said. Maybe the drugs. I could have been sleepwalking.”
With a six-gun on my hip.

A laugh percolated upward, but he tried to cover it with a cough.

“Do you think this is funny?”

“Um…no? No. I don’t.”

She put her head in her hands and groaned. “Oh, God, not again. Please. Not this time. Not this man. No, no, no. It can’t be.”

“Hey, Katherine, I mean, Kat. Is your real name…? Never mind. Um, look, I know you’re upset, but would you please not act like there’s a dead body on the floor?”

She looked up sharply, her hands falling to her lap. The sheet dipped slightly, making it hard for him to remember what he was supposed to be saying.

He cleared his throat and made himself look into her eyes. Her clear, blue, gorgeous eyes that were swimming with tears. He wished he could hold her and comfort her, but he knew she didn’t want that. “Kat, what happened was a mistake. Unplanned. Unpremeditated, I promise. But it’s not a huge deal, right? I mean, we’re both single, and I can fax you my clean health record when I get home. I had a full workup a couple of months ago and haven’t been with anyone since. Until last night.”

She used the corner of the sheet to wipe her eyes. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you get a full checkup?”

“I wasn’t sure I could trust my ex-fiancée.”

“Because you thought she might sleep with a stranger? Like I just did?” Her voice cracked, and he acted on his impulse to comfort her. Mad Jack would have.

Leaning between the beds, he spotted his navy blue shorts and quickly pulled them on. Advancing one knee at a time, he approached her. “Kat,” he said softly, lightly touching her arm. “I don’t remember exactly what happened. How we got together. How I came to be in your bed. In fact, the last thing I remember clearly is watching you read. Your lips make this kind of fishy look. It’s cute.” He tried to demonstrate.

Her upper lip quivered in a near snarl and he stopped.

“But the parts I do remember are really good. Hot and passionate. Like an X-rated movie, only with a plot.”

She pushed his hand away. “In your dreams maybe.”

Maybe.
Had he imagined everything? “We didn’t have sex?”

She shook her head. “Of course, we had sex. That part was real. I meant your X-rated movie scenario. I don’t do X-rated. Ask either of my ex-husbands. I’m too uptight.”

“Like a proverbial schoolmarm?”

She let out a little cry. “You’re making me crazy. I don’t know what happened or why, but it shouldn’t have and I know there’s going to be hell to pay for it.”

He sat back on his haunches. “Why?”

“Because that’s the way things happen in my life. Do you want to know my track record? O-for-two. Men were put on the planet to disappoint me. And vice versa, if you ask them. The swoo giveth and it taketh away.”

He blinked. “You lost me.”

“Better now than later,” she said cryptically. Pulling in a deep breath, she gathered her sheet and blanket like a regal cape and scooted off the bed, showing obvious care not to touch him. She paused to pick up her clothes, then hurried to the bathroom. Once inside, she tossed the blankets to the floor and closed the door.

He heard the lock click emphatically.

He blew out a sigh of his own and pivoted to rest his back against the headboard. What a hell of a way to ruin a perfectly wonderful dream, he thought grouchily. If he closed his eyes, he could still picture his dream self. Cool and confident. A cross between Adam Cartwright and Clint Eastwood’s character in those spaghetti westerns that made him famous. All charisma and untamed dark energy. A helluva lover.
Better than I ever was with—

“Stop gloating.”

He opened his eyes. He’d been so caught up in the memory he hadn’t even heard her open the door. His face went hot, but he denied the charge. “I’m not. I’m…remembering.”

“Well, don’t,” she snapped. “What happened didn’t happen. Not really. That wasn’t me.”

“You were hot.”

“Shut up.”

“
We
were hot.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. What happened was a mistake. I’ve made plenty in my life. All involving the wrong men. I don’t even know you well enough to say just how wrong you are, but…never mind. I need to go now. Can you drive? Or should I call my friend to pick me up?”

He looked down. The swollen mass on his chest looked almost normal. A slight puffiness still outlined the black tattoo that encircled his bicep, but the itching had subsided. He shifted around so she could see his back. “I feel okay. How’s my neck look? Maybe great sex is a better cure than antihistamines.”

Her low growl filled the room, as if from one of her namesake’s larger relatives. Puma. Cougar. Angry lioness. “Then get dressed, because we’re leaving.”

She marched toward the door, chin high, but he could tell she was blinking back tears. “I’ll wait outside. And I need to use your phone again,” she said, snatching the cell from the table where she’d set it the night before.

“But I’m starving,” he said, getting up. The bulk of his clothes were right where he’d left them, neatly draped over the chair in the corner. He pulled on his pants. Strange how his clothing had felt different when he’d been Mad Jack. “Can we at least eat breakfast, first, then I take you home?”

She fumbled with the safety lock.

“I’ll meet you at the bike,” she said, opening the door. She glanced at her watch. “Tag’s dad is going to have my head if he tries to drop off Tag early and I’m not there.”

She was out the door before he could ask her why the guy thought he had the right to drop off their kid outside the set times. Jack finished dressing and used the bathroom. He would have liked a shower, but that was going to have to wait. Besides, he wasn’t in any hurry for his tattoos to wear off. They were a reminder of the best night of his life. If not for them, he probably never would have been in the same room with Kat, let alone the same bed.

K
AT FOUND
a shady spot within eyeshot of the motorcycle that reminded her all too vividly of the coal-black horse that Mad Jack had ridden in her dream. She groaned softly and fought back tears. Not only was she a loose woman of questionable morals, she was losing her mind. She needed help. And there was only one person she dared call. Libby.

After a deep breath to steady her hand, she flipped open the phone and punched in the number, remembering too late that there was a time difference between the Hills and the West Coast.

“Hello?”

“Lib? Did I wake you?”

“Kat? No, I’m up. Jenna and I have started taking early-morning walks along the beach. She spent the night with Shane, though, so I’m alone. Coop insists I carry my phone when I go out. I figured this was him checking up on me. He worries like an old woman.”

Kat smiled for the first time in what seemed like several centuries. “He loves you, Lib. It’s good to worry when you love someone.”

“I know. I tease him about it, but actually he’s so sweet I can hardly believe this life of mine is real.”

Kat was envious. It was natural to kindle a little flame of hope when you witnessed love of this kind in someone else’s life. For a while there, Kat had even dared hope that that kind of love would happen to her. But, no. Instead, she’d spent the night with a client and wound up making love to a figment of her dream—only for real, too.

“Is something wrong, Kat?”

Kat wasn’t sure where to begin…or if she should mention the dream part. Would everyone think she was crazy? Maybe she was. “I gave a guy a couple of tattoos and he wound up having an allergic reaction.”

“To henna? Is he suing you?”

“No. Not exactly. He provided the ink…That’s not why I’m calling. Before his body started swelling like a puffer fish, he’d asked me to show him around the Hills. A paid guide. I said sure. I never turn down a chance to make money, right? But when we got to Custer, he started to go into anaphylactic shock and had to see a doctor. Because of the shot the doctor gave him, he couldn’t drive. We had to get a motel room.” She paused. “The town is packed. There was only one room left.”

Libby giggled. “This story is starting to sound familiar. Was it in a stable?”

Kat let out a small wail. “Not exactly. And there weren’t any angels or drummer boys, but…I suppose there could be a baby,” she said very, very softly.

Libby was quiet so long Kat wasn’t sure she’d heard her strange confession. Then, her voice filled with gravity, she said, “You must have had a good reason to sleep with him. I’m going to assume he’s a really great guy and you’ve fallen in love with him.”

“Nice try, Lib, but I don’t even know him. He seems okay. Safe. Nice. But I didn’t mean to sleep with him. And I didn’t. Not exactly. Not
him
him.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try me. I’m sitting down now.”

Kat looked around to be certain nobody was close enough to overhear her confession. “The guy I slept with was in my dream. He was a gunslinger back in 1876 or something. I was a schoolteacher. I remember seeing a dead body on the street and I told him he was callous and unfeeling, then the next thing I knew we were ripping each other’s clothes off.”

“In your dream.”

“I thought so. And I can understand why I dreamed this. I was reading a history book about Seth Bullock and I sorta remember dosing off. But I have no idea where this Mad Jack guy came from. I mean, he’s nothing like the Jack I tattooed. Nothing.”

“Hmm,” Libby said in a tone Kat knew well. Her friend wasn’t the type to jump to conclusions. “So, in your dream, you made love with Mad Jack.”

“Big-time. It was incredible.”

Libby coughed. “But when you woke up, the real-life Jack was in bed with you?”

“Exactly.”

“Awkward.”

“Tell me about it.” Kat knew her body. She had no doubt whatsoever that the sex she’d enjoyed in her dream actually took place.

Neither said anything for a minute or so, then Libby groaned. “They didn’t have AIDs in the eighteen hundreds, Kat. You have to go get checked right away. And you’re the most fertile person I know. At least, tell me you’re on the pill.”