Longwalker's Child

“I’ll need to see some sort of identification,” Lauren insisted. The delay tactic would prove futile, but she had to try. Though fear whittled away at her resolve not to run as fast as she could away from him, Lauren held her ground. She needed some inkling of his immediate intent.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a patient but weary gesture that wasn’t quite a smile. She had the distinct impression that he had not smiled often during his thirty or so years. Somehow that thought disturbed her. Lauren tamped down the reaction. She would not feel anything even remotely related to sympathy for this man. This was the man who held the power to devastate the life she had built since coming to this town.

Lauren squared her shoulders and met his searching gaze. Taking his time so that he could analyze her more thoroughly, he reached into the back pocket of his faded jeans and removed his wallet. The March wind ruffled the duster around his legs, the flapping sound loud in the otherwise stark silence.

He flashed a Texas driver’s license. “Gray Longwalker,” he repeated, his tone wary now, as if he’d read her last thought. He shoved the worn leather wallet back into his pocket. “I’ve come for my daughter.”

The words, though expected, echoed all the way through Lauren’s soul. She blinked twice. Her skin felt clammy, and the hasty breakfast she’d wolfed down less than half an hour ago threatened to make a reappearance. She knew the symptoms and what would follow. She willed herself to calm, taking a slow, deep breath to fight the light-headedness already overtaking her. This was not the time to lose control. She focused on blocking the disabling sensations clawing at her.

“She’s not here,” Lauren informed him with surprising strength. She would not allow him to destroy their little family. Surely the man could be persuaded to see reason. But right now she had to get to Don’s office.

“You’re sure about that,” he pressed, easing a step closer, putting himself in her doorway.

Lauren suppressed the desperate words she wanted to blurt out and struggled to think rationally. Gray Longwalker didn’t know his child’s name or what she even looked like, yet he had come to claim her. He had to be reacting on impulse. How could he expect to just take her away? His gaze shifted to the hall behind her, then settled intently back on her.

“I said she’s not here.” She resisted the urge to retreat a step from his stare.

“I’d like to know where she is, then,” he said quietly, too quietly. “Please,” he added stiffly.

Lauren was certain that word hadn’t come easily. Something resembling the same desperation she felt glimmered from the gray depths that marked this man as the father of the child Lauren had called her own for almost a year now. He was every bit as anxious as she was, but beneath the surface a storm was brewing. She could feel it emanating from him in waves. Gray Longwalker was holding back, restraining something that felt very much like rage. Lauren knew with complete certainty that she should be afraid. She should be very afraid.

“I told you she’s not here.” Lauren lifted her chin in defiance of her own emotions. She had to be strong. She had to fight this man. He would not take her child away.

Something changed in his eyes then. The anger she’d felt simmering overrode his restraint. “Patience is not one of my strong suits, Ms. Whitmore,” he warned, his voice low, lethal. “I’ll ask you again, where is she?”

Her heart banged painfully against her chest, but Lauren ignored the ache. “I’ll get my keys and you can follow me into town to my attorney’s office.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t want to see your attorney. I want to see my daughter.”

“Mr. Longwalker, if you have no consideration for my feelings, at least consider the child’s.” Lauren blinked back the sting of tears. “How do you suppose she would feel if you burst into her classroom and announced that you were her father?”

Realization dawned in his eyes.

Oh, God! Lauren realized at that same instant that she had just told Gray Longwalker where his daughter could be found. She could well imagine him roaming the halls of Thatcher Elementary, looking for a child he’d never seen and asking for a daughter whose name he didn’t even know. Somehow he didn’t appear the type to be thwarted by mere technicalities.

“Thank you for your kind assistance, Ms. Whitmore,” he said tightly, then turned and strode away.

Not a single doubt existed in Lauren’s mind that he fully intended to go straight to the school. He had already made it across the porch and down the steps before Lauren found her voice.

“Wait, please,” she called after him. By the time he turned back to face her, Lauren stood on the bottom step, practically at eye level with him. She shivered when his gray gaze collided with hers. A strange spark of awareness arced briefly between them, and Lauren felt oddly violated, as if he had looked right through to her soul.

“What?” he demanded, seemingly oblivious to the zing of electricity that had passed between them.

Lauren dismissed the unfamiliar sensation as a part of the lingering shock of finding Gray Longwalker at her door, not to mention the monster headache threatening. “Think,” she pleaded. “We both want what’s best for Sarah—”

“Sarah…that’s her name?” His features relaxed just a fraction, an almost-imperceptible vulnerability crept into his wary eyes.

“Yes.”

He looked away. Lauren watched the smooth movement of muscle beneath dark skin as he swallowed hard. However cold and ruthless this man was rumored to be, hearing his child’s name for the first time touched something deep inside him. That knowledge only served to increase Lauren’s mounting anxiety. God, why had he come? He couldn’t possibly love Sarah the way she did.

“Does she know anything about me?” His penetrating gaze locked back on Lauren’s. All signs of vulnerability had vanished. Those gray depths were like hard, metallic points probing past her defenses.

“No,” she said simply, and braced herself for his response.

Gray closed his eyes and then dropped his head. Lauren heard the heavy breath he released. She had expected him to explode into a rage, but he didn’t. For one fleeting moment she wanted to reach out to him…to tell him she was sorry about the whole situation. That maybe they could work something out, then Lauren remembered the promise she had made Sarah’s mother.

“Mr. Longwalker, I love Sarah. I must warn you that I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep her happy and safe.”

His head shot up, and his eyes blazed with a rage probably as old as he was. Startled, Lauren drew away from his fury as far as her precarious perch on the step above him would allow.

“Then we both want the same thing,” he said harshly.

Lauren shook her head, unsure as to how he would react to the words about to tumble from her mouth, but they had to be said. He had to understand. “I made a promise to Sarah’s mother on her deathbed that I would never let you take her child away and I intend to keep it.”

Pain and betrayal flashed in his eyes. Gray adjusted his black Stetson and gave her one last heated glare from beneath the brim. “You’d better get to your attorney’s office then, because you’ll need one if you think you’re going to keep my daughter from me.” He turned away and continued toward his truck. His movements were graceful and sleek like a cat’s, but at the same time more dangerous and determined than any animal’s, domesticated or otherwise, she had ever seen.

Lauren wasn’t a coward, but neither was she one to pick a fight—that fact didn’t stop her from bounding down that last step and grabbing Longwalker’s arm. She pulled him around to face her, which would have been impossible had she not taken him by complete surprise. He glared down at her, impatient and irritated by her lack of cooperation.

With a single lift of his shoulder, he shrugged off her hand. “You have something else to say before we go to your attorney’s office?”

“How can I be sure that you’ll follow me? What’s to keep you from going to the school and trying to find Sarah instead?” Lauren set her hands on her hips and glared back at him, though she trembled inside. Every vicious story she had ever heard about the man flashed through her mind during the brief pause before he answered. Stories that would make the bravest woman fear for her safety in his presence. Especially alone.

“I’ll be right behind you, Ms. Whitmore,” he assured her. “You have my word.”

Lauren almost laughed at the absurdity of his statement. “I’m afraid your word doesn’t mean much around these parts, Mr. Longwalker.”

He made a mirthless sound in his throat. “Tell me something I don’t know.” His somber gaze punctuated his words. “You have my word,” he repeated then turned away once more.

Lauren watched as Gray Longwalker took the last few steps to his truck and seated himself behind the wheel. He made no move to start the engine; he just sat there and stared at her. Waiting, Lauren supposed, for her to get in her own car and lead the way.

Maybe she was a fool, but she believed him. Contrary to the rumors she’d heard, Longwalker didn’t strike her as the sort of man who gave his word lightly. Deliberately Lauren turned her back on the man and went inside the house to get her keys. Despite the display of trust, she listened for the roar of his truck’s engine as she searched for her forever-misplaced keys. The sound never came.

Lauren finally located her keys, grabbed her purse and headed for the door. In an hour she had a teleconference with a client and his building contractor, but she would just have to miss it. Maybe she could call Rosemary from Don’s office and have her reschedule the conference. She didn’t have time to leave her a note. What would her assistant think when she returned from her run to the post office and found Lauren gone? And what about lunch? Lauren swore silently as she locked the door behind her. Buck had asked her to lunch today. The man was obsessing about a reconciliation. But he would just have to wait, as well.

Lauren’s one and only concern right now was Gray Longwalker’s return.

GRAY WATCHED the hushed exchange between the Whitmore woman and her lawyer. He vaguely remembered Don Davis. The best he could recall, the man was at least ten years his senior. When Gray had left the small Texas town of Thatcher six years ago, Davis had been practicing law with his father. Gray supposed the older man had retired or passed away since the storefront window now read The Law Office of Don Davis. Gray remembered the elder Davis as a fair man. He only hoped the son would prove as just.

Had it only been six years ago that he had left this godforsaken place? It seemed like a lifetime. Yet nothing had changed. The people in this town would still think of him as nothing more than a half-breed bastard. An outcast. He wasn’t blind. He had seen the stares as he walked down the sidewalk to Davis’s office. The difference between six years ago and now was that Gray no longer cared. He frowned as the hushed conversation on the other side of the room jerked him back to the present. Whatever Davis was trying to get across to the woman, she didn’t seem to be taking it very well.

Lauren Whitmore was a transplant—a northerner, Gray had assumed from her accent even before Davis had mentioned Chicago. From the discussion they’d just had, Gray had learned that she had moved to Thatcher about three years prior and befriended another of the town’s outcasts, Sharon Johnson.

Gray closed his eyes and summoned Sharon’s image. A slight woman with fiery-red hair and eyes like a clear summer sky. As much as he hated to admit it, he hadn’t thought of her in years, though she had been a friend to him for most of his life. Sharon had been the only person who had tried to understand him or the emotions that drove him. Emotions or ghosts? Gray wondered. It had taken him many years to come to terms with what he was and the hand fate had cruelly dealt him.

He and Sharon hadn’t been in love with each other, but their feelings had been strong just the same. Those last few weeks before Gray had hit the road and left his sorry past behind, Sharon had been his only source of emotional support. He hadn’t meant to make love to her—it had just happened. It grieved him immensely that she hadn’t called on him in her time of need. She had died alone, save for the Whitmore woman and the child whom she had kept hidden from Gray.

Gray opened his eyes and forced the painful memories away. He had left Sharon with child, and she obviously hadn’t considered him worthy of the knowledge. He supposed he couldn’t really blame her. He had been a bitter, mixed-up hothead back in those days. Still, the fact that she hadn’t told him didn’t sit right in his gut. He knew Sharon. Or at least he thought he had. Things had gotten a little crazy those last couple of weeks before he left. Leaving Thatcher had been the only thing that had kept him sane and out of trouble with the law—at least the law according to the Buckmasters.