Once a Father (12 page)

All she'd needed was a little fresh air and she was ready for Act Two. She rejoined the group just as Sally was saying to Logan, “Be there or be square, and you know I can't be square. Not even on a dare.” Seated beside Hank at the end of a plank bench, she looked up at Mary.

“Who would dare?” Mary meant to smile, but she couldn't quite pull it off.

“Well, that's just it. And that's…” Sally turned back to Logan. “…why I'll be there. Moral support. Right, Hank?”

“I dare you to stay home and let Logan handle him,” Hank ventured. “A move that
would be
just it.”

“Why do I feel like somebody just said, ‘Shh. Here comes Mary'? If you're planning a raid on the Tutan lands, I like chicken, too.”

“I wish,” Logan said. “It's just a meeting.”

“The hearing my father wants?” Mary tucked her arm around Logan's—a little affection, a lot of support. “Listen, I'm on your side. Don't treat me like the big white elephant in the room.”

“It's a
meeting.
And if you were an elephant, we couldn't fit you in with the eight hundred pound gorilla.” His grin faded. He looked at her closely. “You okay?”

Mary pressed her lips together and nodded.

Sally missed the exchange. “Hey, that friend of yours is interested in the competition. The guy from Wyoming.”

“Dane? You found him?”

“You can find anyone on the Internet. He thinks pretty highly of you. Can you think of anyone else?”

“Not off hand, but I'll…” Mary frowned as she looked up at Logan. “The land should go to the horses. How can my father have any say in the matter? When is this meeting? It might mean something if I'm on your side.” Still hanging onto Logan's arm she gave a little smile. “I'm the eight hundred pound gorilla's white elephant daughter.”

“Hard to ignore a pair like that.” He returned her smile. “But Indian politics is no different from any other kind. Thorny as hell, and I've got the scars to prove it. When the Bureau of Indian Affairs sticks its nose into it because there's land involved, somebody from Washington might try to pull something on us. Helping out a friend.”

“And I know just…” A sharp cramp deep in her belly took Mary's breath away.

Logan put his arm around her. “What's wrong?”

“I just need to sit down for a minute.”

“Sit here.” Hank stood quickly. “How about some water?”

“I think…I think I should go. I should lie down.”
She laid her cheek against Logan's shoulder. “I'm sorry.”

“We'll get you to my house,” he said gently.

“Need any help?” Hank asked.

“No, thanks. It'll go away. All I need is …” She glanced at Sally and rolled her eyes, woman to woman. “Better timing.”

Logan wasted no time hustling her through the maze of vehicles in the tamped-grass parking lot. The knot in Mary's stomach twisted tighter as the pickup bumped over the rutted entrance road. At the gate they would turn onto the blacktop—right for Logan's place, left for Sinte.

“Do you think they'd see me at the Indian hospital?”

He gave her a cut-the-crap look. “What is it?”

“An emergency.” She gave her head a tight shake. “Or not. But say it is, they wouldn't turn me away, would they?”

He gunned the engine and arced the steering wheel hard left. “Two minutes.”

 

Logan waited in the hallway outside the emergency exam room. He wasn't one to speculate about another person's business, but he cared for this woman. It shook him deeply to see her in pain. He'd thought she was in better shape than he was, and he was pretty damn fit. He tried to remember everything they'd eaten—maybe she didn't have an iron gut like his, or
maybe she'd eaten something this morning that had been left over from last night. That must've been it, and that was as far as his speculation was going. It wasn't anything bad. He thought about the mustang, the way he'd stood quietly with his head belly-level and he quickly dismissed the notion of a disease-detecting horse. Empathetic, sure, but horses didn't sniff out trouble the way dogs did.

And if it was a woman thing, that was definitely her business. A woman's body was to be respected, and a man, well, certain times he just steered clear. He was no match for a woman's life-giving power.

Which was why he was glad the doctor on call was a woman. His grandmother would have approved. But she would have instructed him to stop by on the way home and pick up some of her medicine.

“The pain has subsided,” Dr. McKenzie told Logan when she finally emerged from the room. “I think it's going to be okay, but it's one of those wait-and-see situations. I offered to keep her overnight. It's up to her.”

“What's going on?”

She nodded toward the room marked
Emergency
. “Go on in. She wants to see you.”

Mary lay in a white room on a white table, her legs propped up and covered with a white sheet. Thank God she was able to turn her head when he walked in.

“Well, this is a fine mess.” She offered a token smile. “I'm pregnant.”

Logan stopped in his tracks. “That quick?”

She turned away and stared at an overhead light fixture. “Let's see if I've gotten the hang of this Indian humor. It looks like somebody beat you to the henhouse.”

Dumbfounded, he took a step closer. Her light brown hair fell away from her ashen face and pooled beneath her head like an earthen pillow, and all he could think about was the way she'd looked lying on the ground beneath him and how badly he'd wanted to pour everything he was into everything she was.
That quick, that slow, that quick again.
“You're not
that
swift and clever.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I'm sorry, Logan. I'm about six weeks along.”

“And I put you up there on that mustang?” He passed his hand over his forehead. “Jeez. Why didn't you say something?”

“I was hoping the signs would go away.” Gripping the sheet in both hands at her waist, she turned her face to him again, her eyes filled with a new sheen. “And you didn't put me up there. I put myself up there. So what does that say?”

He shook his head. “Do you feel okay?”

“What a beautiful man you are.” Blinking furiously, she trapped her lower lip to stop it from trembling.

She was killing him. He wanted to kiss her, but he'd already made an ass of himself.
That quick.
What was he, twelve? He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

She drew a slow, tremulous breath and found a way to smile. Not much, but for real. For him.

“I feel much better.” She nodded, as if to punctuate her claim. “The cramping and, you know, everything else has stopped. It wasn't much. Just enough to wake me up. I wanted it to go away, and it almost did.”

“What do you want now?”

She took a moment, as though the question of her wanting was totally unexplored. Then she levered herself up on her elbows and swung her legs over the side of the tall bed. He watched for a sign, a signal, a need he might meet. She offered none.

“I'd like to go someplace quiet and be still for a while.” Hands on the edge of the bed, she steadied herself as though she were preparing to slide into a cold pool. “A hotel, I think, if you wouldn't mind taking me. The doctor said I should keep my feet up for a while.”

“What about…”

“The father? There isn't one.”

“I was gonna say your mother.”

“She's with my father.” She gave a dry chuckle. “Another father who isn't one.”

“There's a father somewhere in this equation.” He
wasn't going to ask. Damn him, he was not going to…“The guy you contacted about the competition?”

She shook her head. “The guy who dropped off a bunch of sperm on his way home from Iraq. Really. One time, one condom malfunction. That's all it takes.” She snapped her fingers. “That quick.”

“You can stay at my place.” He sounded gruff, which was the way he wanted to be right now, the way he wanted to feel. “I can stay or go. It doesn't matter, either way.”

“It matters to me.” She touched the back of his hand. “You matter to me. I'm sorry. I really am.”

“For what?” That hand was staying wedged in his pocket. “It's early, right? A few weeks. You didn't know.”

“And, of course, no one else knows.”

He looked her in the eye. His brain framed a stupid, stupid question. He clenched his jaw.
None of your damn business, Wolf Track. Keep your hands and your questions to yourself.

Like that could happen the way he felt right now.

“You still want it to go away?”

“Oh, my God.” She repeated the words until he took her in his arms, pressed her head to his chest and took her tears onto his shirt. “I'm scared. Why am I scared? Women have babies every day.”

He couldn't speak. There was nothing he could
say. He was in love with her, and she was six weeks pregnant with somebody else's kid.

He was in love with her.
Since when? Damn his hungry heart. With all the women out there, why pick this one? She looked up at him, smiling apologetically through tears he wanted to take away, and the word
why
took flight on its wings and tail. He felt the way he felt. He could either make an ass of himself and act on it, or he could do the decent thing and no more. Be a fool, or be, what? A gentleman?

What in holy hell was a gentleman?

“Today isn't your day,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

“Stay at your place tonight.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes awash. “If you don't mind.”

“If I minded, I wouldn't offer. I'll wait for you at the nurse's station.”

 

“This is my room.” Logan stood tall in the middle of his short, nearly dark hallway and gestured left, and then right. “This is the spare room. Take either one.”

“Is this a test?”

If it was, she wanted desperately to pass, at least the multiple choice portion. She'd already failed on filling in the blank. Whatever he thought of her at this point, it couldn't be good.

“No, and it's not a game. I'm in no mood for either one.” He stepped closer, plunging his hands into
his pockets again. He'd turned only one light on in passing, and it cast soft light and deep shadow over his chiseled face. “What are you afraid of, Mary?” His tone was as soft as the light. “You said you were scared. I'm just asking.”

She was doomed to fail this one. She wasn't supposed to be afraid. She'd spent her adult life building herself up, body, mind and will. Her guard had been ironclad.

“I had everything under control. All regimented. My life on my terms.”

“In a war zone?”

“That's the best place to learn to put your own house in order and keep it that way. You don't let yourself get emotional. Don't get buzzed up on anything that might take your guard down.” She glanced left and right.
Which way?
“It was just stupid is all. It was careless and stupid and not even… He was going one way, I was going another, and our paths crossed.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Not…no.” Oh, God, she looked weak. A horse with a broken leg. A dog with a broken leg could be dangerous. Couldn't she be that? A snarling bitch? One look into his gentle eyes cast that particular wish to the wind. “I hurt myself. I guess that's what scares me. I did this.” She shook her head. “And I don't know what to do next.”

“Pick a room.”

Not what she'd expected, which was exactly what she kept telling herself she didn't want.

He nodded toward the door to the spare room. “That one doesn't get used much, and the bed sags in the middle.” The other door drew a gesture. “This has a good bed, but it's full of my stuff.”

“The bed?”

“The room. The bed's probably full of my smell, but I'll change the sheets for you.”

She stared at the door to his room. “May I have your bed with you in it?”

“Not tonight.”

“Then leave the sheets. I'll take what I can get.”

L
ogan tapped on the door before he opened it. It was a warning, not a request. The woman was in his house, his room, his bed and he had something she needed. He left the door open, letting in the light from the hall. She moved to one side of the bed—
his
side on the rare occasions he'd shared. He preferred to be the caller rather than the called upon. Easier for the caller to call the shots. The called upon could hardly clear out, even when the call was clearly over.

He sat in the space she'd made for him. “Can you sit up a little? I made you some tea.”

She braced herself up on her elbows and gave him the look that would have had a lesser man trying to remember which was his rifle and which was his gun.
Man, she had it down. But Logan was no raw recruit. His raw places had hardened over, and he knew how to fight and how to have fun.

He had to laugh. “You got a helluva nerve taking my bed. Maybe it was a test.”

“If I minded, I wouldn't offer,” she mimicked as she got herself situated, her back to the wall.

He handed her a mug and watched her take a sniff of the steam. “I didn't say I minded.”

“What is this?”

“Mostly black haw root. It doesn't grow this far north, but I've got connections.” He lifted one shoulder. “Well, I've got sisters. This is women's medicine.”

“Men don't mess with it?”

“Men don't need it, and they don't share their bed with women who do.” He chuckled. “But what the hell, I love a woman with nerve.”

“In my case it wasn't easy to come by.” She sipped noisily, raised her brow and sipped again. “Don't tell anyone I said I was scared,” she whispered without looking up.

“You weren't scared to ride a wild horse.”

“If I'd known I was pregnant, it would have been an irresponsible thing for me to do. I don't
do
irresponsible. That's not me.” She rested the mug on her belly and the back of her head against the wall. She was still wearing her T-shirt, but he imagined bare legs beneath the bed sheet. She could not know
how young and vulnerable she looked in the soft shadows.

Or maybe she did. The way she sighed seemed to say so.

“I know, I know,” she said. “You pay your money, you go to the little girls' room, you take your big girl test. But that's only if you think you could possibly be pregnant.” She rolled her head back and forth, seesawing with the wall as her fulcrum. “By some happy-to-get-lucky GI you hardly knew.”

“The army could track him down for you.”
But don't ask them to.

“I could go get one of my dogs and track him down myself. Or, hey! How much wolf could a Wolf Track track?”

He smiled. “I don't care how much wolf he is. My only question is, dead or alive?”

“What a beautiful man you are,” she whispered. “I don't want him tracked down. It was something that never should have happened. Believe it or not, something I don't do.” She closed her eyes. “I mean…”

It occurred to him to ask
Believe which part? You don't want him back, or you don't…do?
But he wanted to be what she'd called him twice now—a beautiful man. Unselfish, uncritical—a simple
c'est la vie
kind of a guy.

“I wonder how Adobe knew,” he said, and not just for something to say. He'd been privy to something pretty wonderful, and he'd wondered about it a lot.
“Some kind of vibration? Does he hear something or smell something? Is there some kind of gut feeling that only a guy with a huge gut can tap into?”

“You know how crazy that sounds?”

“To you? It doesn't sound crazy to you at all. You were willing to ride him.”

“But I didn't know,” she insisted. “I mean, I wasn't sure. I wasn't trying to…”

“Like I said, you've got a lotta nerve. You trusted the horse. What didn't seem possible to you was obvious to him, so you let him carry it for a while.” An amazing conclusion, and he was pretty proud of himself for reaching it. Women and horses were wondrous creatures. “Now that
does
sound crazy.” She raised her cup in toast. “But I'm trusting you. I don't know what's in this cup, and I'm drinking it like it came in a teabag.”

“How do you know what's in a teabag?”

“I know you wouldn't give me anything you wouldn't drink yourself.”

“Yeah, I would. That's
women's
medicine.” But he took the cup from her, sipped it noisily, grimaced comically. “Mmm. Yummy,” he said, falsetto. He liked hearing her laugh.
She should be made to laugh often, and by someone who knows how.
He smiled, pleased with his version of an ad he'd seen on TV for an old movie he'd probably never see. “You ask me,
men should do the heavy lifting for their pregnant women and keep their opinions to themselves.”

He gave her back the cup, stretched out beside her and tucked his hands behind his head. “What scares you, Mary?”

“Babies.”

“I've seen you with kids. You weren't scared.”

“Their mother was close by.”

“Their grandma. She's raised her share of kids, all but the first one. One of our grandmas raised him. He turned out pretty good.” So had Logan, raised mostly by his grandma. There had been times, growing up, when some teacher or social worker had made it sound like they'd pitied his circumstances. It hadn't been easy, but he'd always managed to throw off the urge to tell them where to stuff it. They just didn't know any better.

“Is it the single parent part that scares you, or the fatherless kid?” he asked.

“Don't they add up to the same fear?”

“Nope. My former wife didn't want to be a single parent. She wasn't too worried about fatherless kids.”

She touched his hair. “Not after she found you.”

“I found her.” She'd worked at the PX in the cosmetic department. She'd sold him some rank after-shave, said it reminded her of the ocean. He chuckled. “I was like Adobe. I was away from home, needed a family, and I found a woman with two kids and no
man. The woman was hot, and the boys were really cool, and I was ready, willing and able.”

“I can't imagine running away like she did.”

“Can't you?”

“You thought she'd come back,” Mary said quietly.

Ah, women. They had a way of burrowing under a guy's skin, rooting around for rhymes and reasons.

“Yeah, maybe. At first I did, sure. I figured we'd try again. But, hell, you can't hold your breath while you're taking care of two kids. Figured that out pretty damn quick.”

“Funny you didn't get married again.”

“Funny you're scared of babies.”

She groaned. “With you it's
been there, done that.
With me it's
never been there, what if I can't do that.
Babies are small, and they need…”

“They start out small, but they grow on you.” He grinned. “Well, first they grow
in
you, and then they grow on you.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“I know.” He chuckled. “Men get off easy.”

“You didn't. You bit off a big chunk of
never been there
and you did fine with it. The thing is…”

She went quiet for a moment, digging around for her own rhymes and reasons. It was the kind of pickax work he couldn't help her with. But he'd wait for whatever
the thing
was. He'd let her lay it on him.

“I don't need a family,” she said softly. “I'm afraid I wouldn't be good at it.”

Well, damn. Was this a red flag or a red herring?

“You're a good partner,” he allowed, hoping it helped. “Better than I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Nothing too complicated. I expected to be your teacher and the horse's trainer. I expected you to be able to ride the horse by the time we were through. I expected to win the competition.”

“Two down and one to go.”

“You're a full partner. I'm learning from you. Between you and Adobe, I'm seeing things I've never seen before. ‘If wishes were horses,' you said. I have wishes, too.”

“If we win, the money's yours.” She touched his hair again, and his scalp tingled.

“I like your hands, Mary.” He took hold of the one that was only flirting with the idea of actually touching his skin, and he rubbed it against his cheek. “The way you use them to greet the mustang, make him feel safe with you.”

“I feel that way just watching your hands. I've never had much confidence in any hands other than my own.”

He tipped his chin up for a glimpse of her. “You open all your own jars?”

“What jars?”

They smiled each other into a thoughtful silence. There were things he knew about this woman now, things she didn't seem to know about herself. He'd lived, and he'd learned. Maybe his gut wasn't as big as Adobe's. His senses were only human. But he knew Mary's heart, cloistered as it was within her strong body. She reminded him of his sons and his horses. None of them lied to him.

“Are you going back?” he asked.

“I have to go.” She drew her hand away and raised the cup to her lips with both hands. She drank deeply, and then hurtled herself into explaining, “I have an important job to do. I made a commitment, and I don't renege on my commitments. And it's all I have.” She laughed. “
All I have?
As Sally would say, that sounds so Hollywood. So
Jane Wayne.
”

“Stay with me.”

Silence dropped over them like a heavy wool blanket. Logan held his breath for fear of scaring her away. He could hear her heart racing. Or was it his? Both, he told himself. Two hearts racing toward a life together. Two people who didn't renege on their commitments.

One guy getting way the hell ahead of himself.

Lighten up.

“I'm no John Wayne, but I'll be your Tarzan. I'll help you raise Boy. Or Girl. I don't know much about girls, but between the two of us—”

“Are you serious?”

“If I wasn't serious, I wouldn't offer.”

“What happened to
been there, done that?
”

“Those were your words, not mine.” They didn't make much sense to him and didn't seem worth discussing. “This is what I have, this house and the half-section it sits on. Plenty of room for you to train your dogs, if that's something you want to keep doing. Keep an eye on your mother, who's
right down the road.
” He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and turned to her. “You've more than delivered on your commitment. You don't have to stay in the army, Mary.”

“I don't know that that's my main concern. We have pregnant soldiers, you know.”

He kept his mouth shut and nodded.

“You don't get deployed while you're pregnant,” she pointed out.

“But after the baby's born…”

“I could be sent anywhere.” She shrugged. “Or I could file for a Chapter 8 discharge. Perfectly honorable, but not what I'd planned.” She gave a dry laugh. “Planned parenthood is what I'd planned.”

“Is it on your calendar?”

“What's on my calendar every month is an
E
for expected and a
B
for began. I'm short one
B
. It's not that I don't want to be a mother…
ever
. It's just that…” She sighed and flopped the back of her hand on the bed. “Okay, not like this. It wouldn't be right. And I'm not looking for a man to make things right.”

“Because that wouldn't be right, either.”

“Of course not. I have to make things right. You've already been a father to somebody else's…” she glanced at him and ventured “…children.”

“And that's definitely not right.”

“I don't mean that. It wouldn't be right to leave a baby…” She was wielding that pickax again, but this time she was digging at him. “See, your sons weren't
babies
. And you adopted them. And you were married to their mother.”

“You're not supposed to reveal your code,” he said. She screwed up her face, questioning his throw out of left field. “Your
B
and
E
thing. See, that's one of the differences between us. You keep the code to yourself, you can put your calendar anywhere you want. A man would never guess what that means.”

“Or care.”

“Marry me. I can be your child's father.”

She stared at him as though he'd grown donkey ears.

He shrugged. “Or don't marry me. I can still be the father.”

She looked in her cup. “What is
in
this stuff?”

“Roots.”

She laughed a little too hysterically for his comfort.

“I want to be your husband, Mary. I'm not talking right or wrong here. I'm talking you and me. I'm
thinking
about you and me. I'm thinking we're good together.” He stood slowly. “So, you think about it.”

“You're feeling sorry for me, aren't you.”

“Absolutely not. But you keep looking at me that way, you'll have me feeling sorry for myself pretty damn quick.” He nodded toward the cup in her hand. “Is that helping any?”

“How is it supposed to help?”

“How the hell should I know? I told you, it's women's medicine. It's supposed to fix whatever's going on in those mysterious parts of yours. The parts I don't have.” He cast a glance at the ceiling. “The parts I've been to and done, maybe, I don't know.”

“Well, isn't that special?”

“You know what?” He pulled his gaze back down to earth, to the guarded look in her eyes. “I take it back. I take my offer back. I take my proposal back.”

She shoved the mug at him. “Take your roots back.”