want names?” he retaliated, his hands on his hips.
She shook her head, not only because she didn’t want to know, but because she didn’t want to feel the doubts she was experiencing about Guy. They weren’t close friends, but she liked the chamber of commerce president, despite the embarrassment of John’s interference that had made her stay home that fateful weekend. She still spoke to Guy several times a month and he’d sent her some of her most valuable clients. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted with some reluctance. “But the point is that whatever Guy may or may not have had on his mind is secondary to your behavior. You went ballistic, and you had no right to. Not only did it show that you didn’t trust me, but you were wrong in trying to dictate what I could or couldn’t do.”
“You knew how I felt about you.”
“What about how I felt? Of all the people in Dusty Flats who should have known that I would never let myself be controlled by anyone again, it was you. Instead you broke every promise you’d ever made to me. Promises you’ll recall I warned you you wouldn’t be able to keep. Do you have any idea how terrified I was when you—”
“Yes.” His gaze burned into hers. “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t have regrets, when I don’t hate myself for how I acted that day. But eventually I was also able to find a seed of hope in the fact that I stopped in time. Remember?”
“I wore the imprint of your fingers on my arms for over a week,” she accused. “My lip got cut when you…” She looked away.
“Kissed you. Why can’t you say it?”
“Because it wasn’t a kiss, it was an attack.”
He drew a deep breath. “I could feel you slipping through my fingers. Then I tasted you and you went straight to my head. You ran scared. I ran eager. It happens.”
“Of course it does.” Dana could hear the trembling in her voice, but couldn’t help it. “And what you did upset you so much that the perfect solution was to go to Abilene and sleep with the first woman who would accommodate you.”
“Bad judgment based on frustration and hurt—”
“Spare me the clinical answers.”
“—and I’ve been paying for it in spades ever since. I will for the rest of my life,” John said more quietly. “There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already said to myself, no name low enough that I haven’t already thought of.”
She attempted to pass his son back to him. “Then there’s no reason for you to be here any longer.”
He moved back a step to offset hers. “Yes, there is. I want to…Wait a minute, Dana.”
“Take him.”
“No. Hear me out.”
“What for?”
“Because I want you to teach me how to be a father.”
She knew her mouth fell open. She could tell by the flicker of relief in his eyes. But before she could recover, he began again.
“Bud’s right. I can’t leave my son to go chasing after Celene. I’ll call my lawyer and let him file the proper papers to deal with her. What’s important is that I be here for my boy, and that he learns early on that I’ll be whatever he needs me to be. But, hell, Dana…I don’t know where to begin.”
“You could start by not swearing in front of him.”
One corner of his mouth curved upward in a faint smile. “You’ll have to do better than that. You swore at me the moment you opened the door.”
“That proves I’m not the right person for this job,” she replied primly. She sidestepped him and crossed over to the couch where she placed the baby back into his box. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Besides, I haven’t any more experience with children than you do.”
“So we’ll learn the technical stuff from the brochures the nurses at the hospital gave me. But you do know firsthand what a father shouldn’t be. He isn’t rough, impatient or loud the way I am…the way your father was. You could show me the better way, the gentler way to handle him when he does something wrong, and teach me how to encourage him so he won’t grow up to be a bully or a boaster. I don’t want him to back away from me the way you used to do with your old man when he was in one of his tempers, and the way you’ve already done with me today. I want him to call me Dad because he’s proud of me, not because he’s obligated to out of respect, or worse yet, fear.”
Dana felt his influence like a blowtorch melting a block of ice, felt the impossible pull of his charisma and resisted it with all her might. There was a time when she would have longed to believe he meant what he said, but she’d known him too long not to suspect he was asking too much from himself, let alone her. She began to shake her head.
“Before you turn me down again,” he said just as she attempted to add a verbal reply, “let me rephrase that request slightly. Help me until I can hire someone full-time.”
It was better, but still difficult. “I really shouldn’t…No, it’s impossible. I can’t.”
“But I have a ranch to run.”
“And I have a business.”
“I know that, but—Dana, if you don’t help me, my only other option is to use Durango.”
Now that was something else entirely. “You wouldn’t. The man smokes like a volcano about to explode, and he has the ethics of a weasel.”
“Maybe, but the bottom line is that he’s the only hand who’s around the house with any consistency.”
As his son protested the confines of his box, Dana drew her lower lip between her teeth and worried over this news. This wasn’t fair. She was just beginning to think she’d put her disappointment and, yes, even heartbreak over John Paladin behind her. He had no business charging back into her life and tying her head and heart into knots again. Maybe he had always managed to make her vulnerable to him, but she wanted a quiet life, a secure, serene life. Her mother had never had it—not until her father had been laid to rest the year before she’d graduated from college. Dana refused to go through that herself, even if it meant she would spend the rest of her life alone.
On the other hand, she brooded, no infant should be held responsible for the sins of the parents. She glanced down at John’s son. This beautiful little boy who’d been conceived in the worst possible situation already had two strikes against him—a mother who’d abandoned him, and a confused, inexperienced father. She might be risking more heartbreak, but she couldn’t turn her back on such circumstances, not when she thought of the helpless innocence of such a tender, vulnerable life.
Not unaware that she could be making the mistake of a lifetime, she cast John a wary look. “I’d have some stipulations,” she began cautiously.
“Anything,” he replied without hesitation.
“Don’t be so eager—or confident. I doubt you’ll like what I’m about to say.”
“You’re looking at the new John Paladin,” he said, a determined glint in his eye. “Shoot.”
What she’d like to do was…No, she decided. This wasn’t the time or place.
She drew herself erect. “First of all I want to know what kind of physical arrangement you have in mind.”
“Physical. Well, I hadn’t really given it much thought.”
Just as she expected, she thought, barely able to restrain from indulging in a sigh of frustration. “I think it’s best we start from there. Now I don’t for a moment consider myself up-to-date on child-care techniques, but it seems like