Accidental Father

Sarah’s compassionate gaze gentled on his. And suddenly, there was something so special and giving about her—something so good—that he needed to take a tiny bit of it for himself. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he cupped her face, lowered his head and kissed her. Softly. Briefly. Then, not so briefly.

Slowly, Jake eased away, feeling his blood pump harder, feeling the stirrings he’d been trying to ignore for the past hour finally surface.

Sarah touched his face.

He searched her eyes.

Then hungry lips found each other, and dancing became sweet, needy friction.

Maggie rapped sharply on the door, shattering his thoughts as she breezed inside. “Here’s the paper. Hope there’s something promising in there.”

Jake almost stood, then realized with a start that he’d gotten far too involved in his memory. “Thanks.” Taking the paper, he opened it to the want ads to cover his embarrassment. “Seems like that’s all I ever say to you.”

“No reason to. I haven’t done anything.”

“Right. You’re only helping me find a place to live, and boarding Blackjack at your ranch.”

“Not mine, my family’s. And it doesn’t take a lot of time to feed and water one more horse.”

“I’m still grateful.”

“And you’re still welcome.” Maggie paused for a moment, then spoke hesitantly. “Any chance you’ll be here for a while?”

Jake glanced up from the disappointing listings. “I plan to be. Do you have errands to run?”

“No, but I need to talk to Ross. We have tentative plans to meet at Aunt Ruby’s at eleven-thirty, but I can stay until Joe gets back if there’s something in the paper that piques your interest.”

“Go,” he said. “Have lunch with your husband. From the looks of it, I’m out of luck unless I want to buy a used washer and dryer, or baby-sit from eight to four. If a crime wave hits, I’ll phone you at the café.”

“Great,” she said with a bright smile. “See you later.”

But as the door closed in the outer office, Jake’s thoughts returned to Sarah.

Shoving the paper aside, he went to his office window, remembering again how extraordinary their lovemaking had been. An illogical stab of jealousy followed as he imagined her with Vince Harper.

Turning from the window, he started back to his desk. How could she have let Harper touch her, feeling the way she did about the pony-tailed creep? Worse, how could she have let herself get preg—

Jake froze in his tracks as that family picture he’d conjured earlier formed again in his mind and he realized why, aside from obvious reasons, it had looked all wrong.

Vince Harper had had blond hair.

Jake stopped breathing as his mind played a cautious game of connect the dots. First he ticked off the months since he’d made love with Sarah. Then he took a guess at her daughter’s age.

Hair color didn’t necessarily prove parentage, he told himself as his heart pounded. Eye color didn’t, either, unless you had enough family history to factor in. But Sarah Harper was a brown-eyed blonde, and her ex-husband’s hair had been light.

Kylie Harper had blue eyes, and her hair was black.

Every adrenaline-juiced nerve, muscle and cell in Jake’s body sprang to life, and he damned Maggie’s early lunch. He had to see Sarah again.

She’s becoming a little person, Sarah thought, shooing Kylie into the single bed in the first-floor toy room. But she still had that precious baby voice. That sweet, trusting baby squeak that often replaced L and R sounds with Ws, but managed to make herself understood very well, anyway. For a child who wasn’t yet two and a half, Kylie had an amazing vocabulary.

“Mommy, I’n not tired yet.”

Sarah kissed the tip of her nose and covered her with a thin blanket. Then she squeezed into the narrow bed with her daughter, dodging half a dozen stuffed animals, a green dinosaur and a naked Barbie doll with wild hair.

“I know you’re not,” Sarah murmured. “But Mommy and Pooh are, so we’re all going to take a nap before we start supper. Now, you close your eyes and I’ll close mine, and before you know it, it’ll be time to wake up.”

“Let’s look at Kylie pictures!”

Sarah smiled. “Nope, we’ll look at the photo album later. It’s time to dream.” In only a few minutes, dark-lashed lids closed over blue eyes like her daddy’s, and Kylie was asleep.

Sarah felt her heart break.

Time to dream? If she ever slept again, her sleep would be filled with nightmares. One indiscretion. One terrible, wonderful mistake three years ago had given her the child she’d always wanted. But it had also given her the greatest fear she’d ever known. He would be living here now, seeing them at the market and church, bumping into them on the street.

He had a right to know. A man like Jake—who’d been raised by a rootless single mother then shuffled from foster home to foster home when she died—deserved to know he had a daughter. But if she told him, what then?

Even joint custody would be a horror, and it could happen, given the courts’ near-manic sympathy for fathers’ rights lately. Just last week, a friend of Sarah’s had lost a custody battle that should never have been decided in the father’s favor. If that happened, and Kylie was taken from her…

Sarah tried to contain her panic. Maybe they should leave—just pack up and move. It wouldn’t be easy to establish her catering business in another town, and her dad would miss them, as they would miss him. But he had friends, didn’t he? He and Judge Quinn were always doing something together.

Tears welled, and Sarah touched her forehead to her sleeping child’s. No, she couldn’t do that to her father. With her mother’s death still a raw ache after nearly two years, he depended on Sarah for love and support. But Kylie was another matter. Kylie’s laughter and kisses had become his lifeline. She couldn’t take that from him, just as she couldn’t deprive Kylie of the grandfather she adored.

Blinking back tears, Sarah slid her arm out from under Kylie’s neck, backed out of the bed below the protective side rail, then moved silently into the hall and closed the door to within a crack.

She would not cry, she told herself. She would not be a weak, blubbering wreck ever again. The last time she’d allowed that to happen, a lonely deputy sheriff on holiday to meet the brothers he’d never known had found her by Cotton Creek, and Kylie had been conceived.

She would pull herself together and tell herself she was overreacting. She would make the meatballs and sauce for the Tully girl’s nuptials and put some aside for tonight’s supper. She would not let Jake Russell’s threatening presence get to her. And she would not cry.

All right, she decided as her tears rolled, anyway, she would cry. But she would do it quietly.

Chapter 2

Keyed up and irked that he had to wait for oncoming traffic, Jake stopped the department’s white Jeep opposite Sarah’s house and waited for a battered red truck to go by. He was startled when the grizzled old man behind the wheel sent him a cold, hard look as he drove past.

“You have a nice day, too,” Jake muttered, wondering what he’d done to tick the man off already. Was the driver a fan of Comfort’s ousted ex-sheriff? Or had the official vehicle and Jake’s uniform made him wonder what Sarah had done to earn a visit from a lawman?

Easy answer, he thought, hitting the gas pedal and making a squealing left turn. She just might have given birth to his daughter.

Much of her pink Victorian home was hidden from the road by a thick stand of pines. Jake’s heart leapt as he left them behind and moved up the steep, paved driveway. Sarah was just descending the porch steps.

The instant she saw the car, her spine stiffened, and Jake knew their meeting wasn’t going to go well. But that knowledge didn’t prevent him from admiring her long tanned legs and cutoff denim shorts as she strode to the middle of the yard. A length of wide black plastic fluttered from her right hand, and a roll of silver duct tape circled her wrist, bracelet-style.

He swore as he realized what she was about to do, then cut the engine, got out and quickly crossed the lawn. By the time he reached her, she’d already draped the plastic over her sign and was fighting the wind to secure it to the post.

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded.

“Why am I doing what?”