Father and Child Reunion

Molly stood in the study doorway, her long pink nightgown falling off one shoulder and puddling on the tops of her bare toes. Ted, her battered, blue teddy bear, dangled from one hand.

Eve didn’t move. She wasn’t sure she even breathed.

The address book had lost Rio’s attention. Turning to the door, an easy, wholly unexpected smile stole over his face.

“Well, hi there,” he said, that same smile entering his deep voice. “Is your show over?”

“The good part is.” Molly’s eyes, blue like her mother’s, moved up his frame. As small as she was, he must have looked like a mountain to her. “I’m Molly Stuart. Who are you?”

“Rio Redtree.” Yanking at the knees of his khakis, he crouched down in front of the curious child and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Molly.”

Molly grinned and, doing what she thought people did when they went through this routine, laid her small hand in his broad palm.

As long as her mom was around, no person was a stranger. So it wasn’t her daughter’s behavior that gave Eve pause—even when Molly screwed up her nose at his last name and said she didn’t know people could be named after colored trees. It was Rio’s manner that was so unexpected.

It had been her experience that men, unless they were already familiar with children, tended to treat any human in the three-feet-tall range with either ambivalence, suspicion or a combination of both. Certainly, she’d never suspected Rio would seem so comfortable around a child. Not given how certain he’d been about never wanting any of his own.

Confusion joined trepidation as Molly, noticing the ring he wore, took his hand in both of hers and turned it over. Rio didn’t seem to mind her interest. Nor did he seem in any particular hurry to get back to what he’d been so interested in just moments ago. As he explained the shapes etched in the heavy silver of the ring, Rio seemed as intent on the child as the child was on him.

“The symbol here is Cheyenne. And this one is Arapaho. The feather is important for lots of reasons, and the three blue circles,” he explained, scanning her delicate features after he’d pointed out what he was talking about, “are a symbol of the Arapaho people.”

“What’s Cheyenne and Rapa…what is it?”

“Arapaho. They’re the Indian tribes of my parents.” His glance moved over her pigtails, taking in her hair’s deep sable color. “Arapaho men used to tattoo the circles on their chests, and the women would tattoo a single circle right there.” He touched his index finger to the center of her forehead.

Molly giggled. “What’s a tattoo?”

“Come on, Molly,” Eve cut in, curving a protective hand over one small shoulder. “You know who’s here now, so go back to your movie.”

The little girl looked up at her mom, her head tipping backward. “But I want to know what a tattoo is.”

“It’s like a drawing on your skin,” Rio continued, never taking his glance from the little girl.

“Mommy won’t let me draw on myself.”

The way Molly’s cupid’s bow mouth drew up in one corner when she frowned made Rio smile again. He couldn’t help it. The kid was a charmer.

He sat back on his haunches, watching the child’s somber expression turn animated once more when he agreed that moms could sometimes ruin the really fun stuff. The women at the wedding had been right. Eve’s daughter was, indeed, a tiny little thing. Delicate, dainty. Dainty, that was, except for the chokehold she had on her cyanotic stuffed bear. She had her mother’s azure eyes and the same engaging smile. But there was a familiarity to the rest of her features that had him feeling as if something heavy was sitting on his chest.

That familiarity wasn’t there because of her mother. As Eve was so fair, he didn’t think it likely that Molly’s dusky skin and nearly black hair had come from her gene pool. He had no idea what Eve’s father had looked like, but the surname Stuart did not conjure up an image of a swarthy man. As for Olivia, the woman had been pale as milk. If it weren’t for all the time Eve’s brother, Hal, had spent on the slopes last winter and by his pool this summer perfecting his tan, he would have looked the same. What Rio recognized in the apple-cheeked child was the resemblance she bore to his youngest nieces. And to him. She had the same defined cleft above her upper lip and dimple in her chin.

He was thinking she might as well have a sky blue circle tattooed on her forehead when Eve finally snagged the little girl’s attention long enough to tell her she needed to say good-night to him and finish her movie.

“Don’t sit too close to the television,” Eve called as Molly, having done what she was told with little more than an exaggerated sigh, disappeared around the corner.

Casting a furtive glance in Rio’s direction, Eve hoped to heaven she wouldn’t sound as nervous as she felt.

“Once she starts with questions, it’s hard to get her stopped. You wouldn’t believe the questions she was asking the gardener yesterday. Now, where were we? Oh, yes,” she said, hurrying on, easing the death grip she had on the address book. “I’ll bring a copy of this to you tomorrow. Okay?”

She was speaking to stone. Rio’s attention was still fixed on the doorway, his stance rigid. Though she could see only his profile, it didn’t appear that what she’d said registered at all.

“Will that be all right?” she asked, trying again.

Seconds passed with the tick of the clock on the desk. Muffled music filtered down the hall from the television. When he finally turned to face her, his eyes settled hard on hers.

“She’s a cute kid.”

Ambivalence sliced through her. “Yes. She is.”

“I don’t suppose you adopted her.”

The statement wasn’t unreasonable. Not given the disparity in looks between mother and daughter. It was Rio’s phrasing that made Eve’s heart kick her ribs. To anyone else, the question might have sounded like simple curiosity. To Eve, it sounded like a process of elimination.

“No,” she quietly returned. “I didn’t.”

“Did you have another Indian boyfriend?”

“No.”

“How old is she?”

“Rio, we need…”

“It’s a simple question.” His tone was mild. Deceptively so. “How old is she?”

The edge of the address book bit into her palm. “Five.”

A muscle in his jaw constricted, tightening the cords in his strong neck and turning his tone utterly flat.

“I was careful, Eve. We always used protection. Always,” he repeated, as if she were going to dispute the fact.

Eve had no intention of doing any such thing. She had no intention, either, of pointing out that protection obviously didn’t always work. Rio was doing a fine job of drawing his own conclusions.

“She’s mine, isn’t she.”

She wished she could read him. She wished something about that frustratingly impenetrable facade would let her know what was going on inside his head. But he kept his thoughts too hidden. Just as he always had.

The Fates, she decided, were truly perverse. Of all the things that had changed in the past six weeks—the past six years, for that matter—Rio’s ability to suppress his reactions seemed the one thing that had remained the same.

“Yes,” she admitted, not sure if she should be relieved or worried by his apparent calm. “She is.”

“How much longer before she goes to bed?”

“She should be there now. Why?”

It was hard enough to gauge his reaction with him facing her; it was impossible for her to comprehend what she was up against when he turned to the night-blackened window.

“Go take care of her. I’ll wait.”