To Claim His Own. Mary Lynn Baxter

joined the army, he’d probably be dead by now. He would’ve joined a gang and been sucked into the same underworld he’d spent much of his adult life fighting.

      Thank God that hadn’t happened and thank God he had this place.

      It was home to him now, especially since he loved the outdoors, reveling in the freedom it gave him. Until his new security job took him out of the country, he aimed to spend as much time here with his horses and cattle as he could.

      He just wished he could bring his son….

      Cal slammed on the brakes and shoved the gearshift in Park, feeling sweat ooze out of every pore in his body. He was also dizzy. He rested his head on the steering wheel until it stopped spinning.

      His child.

      His son.

      By damn, he was a father.

      Of a fine-looking boy, too. When he’d first laid eyes on the kid, he’d been awestruck, thinking Logan couldn’t be his flesh and blood. No way could he and Connie, out of the misery of their marriage, have produced a tiny being so perfect. Hence, the kid had to have come from someone else’s loins.

      Then just as quickly Cal’s negative thoughts turned a bit positive when he remembered a baby picture of himself he’d found at the ranch. Logan did resemble the kid in the picture.

      Screw DNA testing; he didn’t need that. Logan was his kid.

      Still shaking, Cal swiped the sweat from his brow and above his lip. He remained too shaken to drive toward the small cabin that served as his home. His gaze searched for his foreman, Art Rutherford, who was usually out and about taking care of chores. When Cal didn’t see Art or his vehicle, relief flooded through him.

      Right now he didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. He had some serious thinking to do. Since he’d lied to Emma Jenkins, he might as well see where that took him. Maybe if he wormed his way into her good graces, she would let him see the kid. In doing that, he had to know he might run head-on into her father, who would immediately recognize him, and the gig would be up.

      If that happened, he’d devise plan B. That was his boy and no one was going to take Logan away from him.

      “Whoa, brother,” he said out loud, “Don’t go gettin’ too big for your britches.”

      While getting his son, having something of his own for the first time in his life, might be his top priority, he had to ask himself a brutal and honest question. How equipped was he to become a parent? He had a ton of emotional baggage weighing him down, which certainly didn’t make him parent material.

      The Jenkinses knew that and were sure to use it against him. Both father and sister hated him with a passion. To add insult to injury, Connie’s sister had built a smoldering fire in his loins.

      Not a good thing.

      Though a chill of foreboding shot through him, Cal couldn’t ignore this emotional upheaval. Like it or not, seeing Emma today had made him think thoughts he hadn’t had since he’d returned from Central America. But Emma was different. She fascinated him because she had no idea how attractive, how sexy, she was.

      He’d never met a female who seemed as unaware of herself as she was. There was nothing artificial about her, no desire to be noticed. She reeked of sexuality, with a fragile innocence that any man in his right mind would have found appealing.

      Any man but him, he told himself savagely. He wasn’t about to get involved with any woman, especially not his ex-sister-in-law, who had every intention of taking his child away from him.

      So what was he doing counting the days until he could return to the nursery?