The Paternity Proposition

Part Cherokee, part Afro-American and not particularly inclined to socialize at the best of times, Chuck looked the newcomer up and down.

“Might be,” he drawled, shifting his plug to the other cheek again. “Who wants to know?”

“My name’s Dalton. Alex Dalton.”

Aha! Alex. The name clicked in Julie’s head as Chuck gave the man another laconic once-over.

“You in the casino business?”

Obviously surprised by the question, Dalton shook his head. “No. Oil field equipment. Julie Bartlett,” he repeated. “Is she here?”

Chuck left it to her to answer, which she did. First, however, she swiped her hands on the rag again and dragged in a long, steadying breath.

“Yes, I am.”

She could accept the fact that he hadn’t recognized her at first in baggy coveralls and baseball cap. She wasn’t real happy with the second look he zinged her way, however. Was that surprise in those laser-blue eyes? Or disbelief that he’d hooked up with this grimy grease monkey? Whatever it was, it stung. Consequently Julie’s next comment was more than a tad cool. “What can I do for you, Dalton?”

“I’d like to speak with you.” He shot a glance at Chuck. “Privately.”

She was tempted to tell him to say whatever he had to say right here. That brief look still rankled.

“All right. Let’s go inside. The office is air-conditioned.”

Even Dusty would admit “office” was a grandiose term for the plywood cubicle sectioned off inside the metal hangar. But it boasted an air-conditioner that sat on a precarious platform in the partition’s only window and did valiant battle against the July heat.

The chilled air hit with a welcome slap as Julie motioned Dalton inside and shut the door behind him. He stood for a moment, looking around. She could imagine what the place must look like to an outsider. It had certainly made her gulp when she’d walked in two months ago. Weather reports, spraying schedules, fuel bills and chemical invoices littered every available horizontal surface, almost burying the computer Dusty had acquired sometime back in the Middle Ages. A crook-necked lamp tilted haphazardly on the Army surplus desk. A chair was wedged behind the desk, another in a corner next to a much-dinged and dented metal file cabinet.

Dusty’s one-eyed, twenty-pound sloth of a cat lay sprawled across the seat of the corner chair. Belinda opened her good eye to a golden slit and twitched her whiskers, sniffing for the spicy tacos Dusty fed her two or three times a day. When she ascertained the arrivals had come empty-handed, she immediately lost interest and rolled onto her back to display a fat, freckled belly.

Julie started to nudge the animal off the chair when a glance at Dalton’s crisp white shirt and black slacks stayed her hand. If he sat, he’d get up again wearing a layer of cat hair. He appeared to reach the same conclusion. After a glance at Belinda’s freckled, two-acre belly, he opted to stand.

Julie still couldn’t reconcile this cool, sophisticated executive type with the cocky pilot she’d hooked up with for a few, intense hours. ‘Course, he hadn’t been this cool or remote then. He’d been all over her, and she him. Cursing the flush that came so readily with her dark red hair, Julie shoved the lingering image of his hard thighs and muscled shoulders out of her head and leaned against the front of Dusty’s desk.

“We’re as private as we’re going to get,” she said with a nod to the cat. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Instead of answering, he parried her question with one of his own. “Do you remember me?”

Like she could forget? Still, a girl had to save some face.

“Took me a moment after you got out of the car,” she said with a shrug, “but I finally placed you. Nuevo Laredo, a year or so ago.”

His gaze dropped from her face to her baggy coveralls. He did a better job of masking his thoughts this time but Julie could guess what he was thinking.

“Looks like you’re having trouble placing me,, though,” she said drily. Tugging off her ball cap, she tossed it on the cluttered desk. Her sunglasses followed. “Does that help?”

Recognition registered the instant his gaze went from her tumble of auburn hair to her odd-colored eyes. One was green, the other a cross between hazel and brown.

He’d teased her about them, Julie remembered with a sudden kick, before dropping lazy kisses on both eyelids. After which he’d burned a slow, delicious line to her mouth, her chin and the hollow of her throat before contorting to torture the tips of her breasts with his teeth and tongue.

Just the memory of that erotic assault made the aforementioned tips get all tight and tingly. Then his mouth slid into a grin, and her traitorous nipples jumped to instant attention.

“Yeah,” he admitted, “it does.”

Whoa! There was the man she remembered. That slow, sexy smile crinkled the tanned skin at the corners of his eyes and transformed him from merely mouthwatering to Greek-god-gorgeous.

That’s all it had taken, Julie remembered ruefully. That killer grin. Followed by dinner, a couple of beers, several shared war stories and two—no, three!—explosive orgasms.

Unfortunately, the cumulative effect of all of the above had made the other males Julie had since met seem too dull or flat or uninteresting to progress beyond the dinner stage. Not that she’d had much time for men, dull or otherwise, in recent months. Things could be looking up, though.

“You’re a tough person to track down,” he commented.

He’d been searching for her? Well, well. Things were definitely looking up.

Unless …

Had he driven out to this corner of the Oklahoma Panhandle in search of another good time? Another quick tumble? The possibility left a chalky taste in her mouth. Guess that’s what she got for letting his handsome face and come-hither smile overcome her common sense.

Then again, he did drive all the way out here. That could indicate some level of interest beyond the obvious. If so, they would do things differently this time, Julie decided. Take it slower. Share more than a few beers and tall tales before they exchanged bodily fluids. Despite her firm resolve, the possibility sent a shiver of delicious anticipation down her spine.

“You were gone when I woke up,” he commented, breaking into her thoughts.

“I had a five a.m. show time at the airport.”

Also a major case of the guilts. She’d been dating someone else at that time. Not seriously, but regularly enough to add a nagging sense of disloyalty to her dismay at having done something so completely uncharacteristic. She and Todd had gone their separate ways soon afterward. Probably due to the fact that he—along with the two or three other men Julie had dated since—had suffered mightily in comparison to this one.

Okay. She could admit it. She’d thought about tracking Dalton down once or twice after their brief encounter. Might even have checked the logs at the Nuevo Laredo airport for his home base after she broke it off with Todd. But she’d taken a job hauling mine supplies in Chile immediately prior to buying into Agro-Air. That was a grueling, inter-Andes killer, and since returning to the States she’d had nothing but long days, exhausted nights, and too many Dusty Jonesstyle headaches to even consider a life outside fungicides and fertilizers. Thank God they were in that narrow window between spring harvest and prep for winter wheat planting. She finally had a few weeks to finish overhauling the Pawnee.

Reminded of the engine dripping oil outside, she decided to lay things on the line. “I’m flattered you drove all the way out to the Panhandle to find me, Dalton, but you need to know that I’m not the same person I was last time we crossed paths. A lot’s happened in my life since then, and I don’t have the time or the energy for a casual fling. Not that our last one wasn’t fun,” she tacked on when his brows straight-lined.

“I didn’t come here hoping to pick up where we left off.”

Ooooh-kay. Glad they cleared that one up.

“So why did you track me down?”

As soon as the words were out it belatedly occurred to her that he might want to talk business. Although they hadn’t gotten around to sharing detailed family histories during their previous encounter, she’d deduced from the plane he was piloting and the very expensive watch he’d sported that he was related to the Daltons who owned a major manufacturing operation headquartered in Oklahoma. He’d just confirmed that a few moments ago with Chuck. As far as Julie knew, Dalton International wasn’t into agricultural aviation but they could be considering it. The field looked to become extremely lucrative if recent crop trends continued.

Unless, of course, you’d bought into a company whose senior partner was addicted to the slots. Suppressing a grimace, Julie waited for Dalton to continue. He did, with no trace of a smile in either his voice or his eyes now.

“I came to find out if I got you pregnant that night in Nuevo Laredo.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” His expression was positively unfriendly now. “Did you get pregnant, give birth to a baby girl, and deposit her on my mother’s doorstep two weeks ago?”

Her jaw dropped. She gaped at him, stunned into sputtering incoherence. “You’re … You’re kidding, right?”

“Wrong.”