you a bad driver?” he asked bluntly.
“Of course not.”
“And why would I have a problem with you driving? My masculinity is not in question here.” At that a faint blush rose to the tips of her cheeks, and he knew what she was thinking of because he was thinking of the same thing. He allowed a faint smile. “I’ll see you after lunch.”
* * *
THE MINUTE JEREMIAH left her office Miranda let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She rubbed at her chest where it ached from the tension and mulled Jeremiah’s offer. She’d hoped to convince him to let her hire a part-timer to help her sift through evidence, files and do more survey hikes around the area last affected, but she certainly hadn’t expected the man to offer up his own time. Virgil had always been so tightfisted around budget time that it’d been nearly impossible to shake loose enough cash to purchase more than a few extra paper clips for the office. Maybe getting Jeremiah out into the field would be to her advantage. Perhaps some hands-on fieldwork would prompt Jeremiah to look for more creative ways to massage the budget to her favor. Maybe...
Except, she didn’t want to work with Jeremiah; she didn’t want to be around Jeremiah; she didn’t want to do anything that would put her in close proximity with Jeremiah.
And that certainly included tromping around in the forest with the man.
But, as she’d quipped with a fair amount of snark, he was the boss, so what choice did she have? She’d always loved animals, even as a kid. Maybe it was because her mom was too busy ignoring her, but animals always provided entertainment, and love, so when she found creatures being abused, whether they were wild or tame, it drove her batty. And it also sliced at a raw nerve that she hadn’t been able to catch those damn poachers yet. It was as if they were thumbing their noses at her and laughing behind her back that she hadn’t been able to nail them to the wall. Preventing and catching poachers was not only her passion, but it was part of her job description, and it made no sense to her that more resources weren’t being thrown at this problem.
She’d been planning to stop by her parents’ house today but that would have to wait. She wasn’t about to drag Jeremiah with her over there and have him see all the dysfunction running wild through her family tree. She’d already broken enough rules when it came to her relationship with her boss. She certainly didn’t need to add trying to explain why her mother had a borderline hoarding compulsion and her father was growing marijuana in a greenhouse operation. Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose. No, she definitely didn’t want him to know that.
If only her brothers would take more of an interest in helping her deal with their parents. Trace, her second-oldest brother, was an antisocial hermit who avoided people at all costs, including his own family, and Wade, her oldest brother, was too busy in California pretending he didn’t have any family at all. So that left Miranda to pick up the pieces, hold it all together and deal with the overall craziness that was thrown her way on an everyday basis.
Even as she allowed herself a minor pity party, her gaze strayed to the small portrait photo of her son on her desk. Talen’s wide and unabashed smile as he held up his first fish warmed her heart. If it weren’t for Talen she’d have given up a long time ago. He was the reason her life had taken a turn for the better even if her pregnancy had been a shock.
She remembered the day vividly.
She’d been sick all day and Johnny hadn’t been the least bit sympathetic.
“Catch a bug or something?” Johnny lit a cigarette. The corners of his mouth tilted up at her misfortune as he blew a smoke ring her way. “Maybe you need to smoke some weed.”
She sent him a withering stare. “Last I checked you aren’t a doctor, so shut up.”
“Don’t have to be a bitch about it. Just trying to help.” Johnny took a long drag off his cigarette. “You buy any food when you went to the store?”
The thought of food made her stomach rebel. “No, and don’t talk about food,” she snapped, just as she ran for the toilet yet again to lose the remaining contents of her stomach.
At first she’d thought it was the flu. But then she realized she rarely got that sick. And one thought led to another until she was staring at the realization that her troubles were not caused by a virus. She took a test the next morning. It’d been positive.
“So you’re saying I’m going to be a daddy?” Johnny had asked when she told him the news. But the moment she told him she’d wished she could have taken the words back. She didn’t want Johnny to have any part in raising her child. Johnny wasn’t the kind of man who should’ve been around children, animals or even plant life.
It was at that moment that she realized she couldn’t keep living the way she was living. Not if she was bringing a child into the world. A child deserved more. Certainly more than Johnny could ever offer. She’d considered lying to him and saying she was going to get an abortion. But lying was a temporary fix for a permanent problem. The minute Johnny knew she was still pregnant he’d want to have contact with his kid. The dilemma kept Miranda awake at night. Until one day, her problem resolved itself. Johnny got busted for drugs—and it was his third strike. Miranda knew she shouldn’t revel in someone else’s misfortune, but the day they took Johnny into custody, she’d experienced a sense of relief. And when she’d received the call that he had died in prison, it was the most that she could do to work up a single tear. The fact was Johnny was a bad person who’d probably done the world a favor by taking a dirt nap.
The only residual regret that Miranda experienced was when she had to explain to her son why his father wasn’t around. She wished she could tell him a story about how his father had died some noble death. The kind of death a soldier, a cop or a fireman might have, saving others, perhaps. There just wasn’t a way to pretty up the fact that Talen’s father had been a selfish, rude and wholly self-centered man who’d done and said bad things nearly every day of his miserable life.
God, she’d been so stupid to hook up with Johnny. At the time she’d been on a self-destructive streak and Johnny had seemed just the right amount of dangerous to satisfy her need for chaos. She met him shortly after Simone had died. She’d been heartsick, guilt ridden and overwhelmed with regret. Johnny must’ve homed in on those markers because he moved in on her like a bird of prey after a mouse.
The first couple of months had been great. Their sex life had been the stuff of X-rated movies—exciting and dirty—and for a while she really thought she loved him. And even if she wasn’t sure about her true feelings for Johnny, she knew for certain that she loved his mother. Likely, it’d been her relationship with Mamu that had kept her around longer than she should have stayed, but there was no point in guessing at this point. By the time Miranda had started to pull herself out of the skid and realized that Johnny wasn’t a healthy choice for a partner, it’d been a challenge to break ties.
Her pregnancy had allowed for a certain sense of clarity that’d been missing before and enabled her to think clearly for the first time since Simone had died.
Johnny had been proof that anyone could father a child but not every man was cut out to be a dad. And although Talen looked so much like Johnny, Miranda was ensuring that they were nothing alike.
It was hard to look at Talen’s face and see anything but the sweetest, most amiable boy ever created. And she couldn’t imagine life without him.
Thank God, Johnny had never had a single day of influence on the boy. For that, she was immensely grateful.
Talen was the reason she never brought men home with her when he was home, why she never introduced Talen to any of her boyfriends—though the term boyfriend was a stretch, because she rarely allowed them to hang around long enough to require stashing a toothbrush at the house. She didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. She wasn’t looking for a daddy figure for her son, which was a change from the usual single-mama drama that happened in town. Nope. Not looking for daddy material. Just a friend with benefits.
Her thoughts