The Paternity Proposition

The two brothers locked gazes again. What the heck was this all about?

“You want to tell us how you know this Dusty character?” Alex asked.

The question seemed to shake her out of a trance. “We locked horns decades ago. Damned if I can remember why. But I do remember that bowlegged bastard could fly his rickety ole biplane like nobody’s business.”

“He’s progressed from biplanes to single-wing PA-36’s.” A tight smile stretched Alex’s lips as he recalled the oil dripping from the Pawnee’s engine. “Still pretty rickety, though.”

A familiar combative light leaped into their mother’s eyes. “And that’s who your one-night stand is partnered with?”

“Her name is Julie,” he repeated tersely. “Julie Bartlett.”

Almost purring with pleasure, Delilah eased the baby from his arms. Satisfaction radiated from her in waves as she tucked Molly back into the sling.

“Unless the Dusty I knew forty years ago has shed his skin and grown a new one, he’s up to his elbows in one kind of trouble or another. Put that PI of yours on him. I’ll bet my new chinchilla coat you’ll find some leverage to hold over him and that tart you slept with.”

“Julie,” Alex ground out. “Her name is Julie.”

“Like I care?” With a wave to her sons, she headed for the door. “This is your daughter we’re talking about. Yours or Blake’s. So don’t screw around. Go for the jugular.”

Alex took the elevator to one of the penthouse apartments on the top floor of the Dalton International building and put the rest of that afternoon and evening to productive use.

He knew he’d inherited his mother’s killer instinct. More to the point, he itched to show a certain green-eyed, slender-hipped crop duster he was not someone she could eradicate from her life like she would a pesky aphid.

Okay! All right! It was more than an itch. During the long drive back to Oklahoma City, it had become almost a compulsion. He could chalk it up to his naturally competitive nature but he knew that was only part of the equation. As she had the first time they’d met, Julie Bartlett had spurred a gut-level response in him.

Once in his sprawling apartment with its panoramic view of the city, he splashed Crown Royal onto ice and settled at his desk. His first task was to turn his PI onto Dusty Jones as Delilah had suggested. It didn’t take long for Jamison to come back with a report on the crop duster’s personal ups and downs. Mostly downs in recent months, he related. Big downs.

While that was in the works, Alex spent several hours at the computer. He and Blake had already run the stats on Agro-Air’s operations and revenue once. Wouldn’t hurt to dig a little deeper. By the time he called it quits sometime after midnight and hit the sack, Alex suspected he’d gathered more information about the company than its principal owner wanted either of his partners to know.

Lacing his hands behind his head, he stared up at the moonlight streaming through the skylights. Now that he’d had time to sort through his roller-coaster day, he could admit the truth. It wasn’t his mother’s acerbic comments or his brother’s legalese or the all-consuming question of Molly’s parentage that had spurred all these additional queries. It was Julie Bartlett.

The prickly, uncooperative, grease-smeared redhead had gotten under his skin this afternoon, even more than the pilot who’d snagged his interest in down in Nuevo Laredo. His bone-deep competitive instincts wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew whether she was or was not the mother of the child that might or might not be his. In the process, he might just finesse the woman into bed again.

Yeah, right! Like he needed that complication in his life right now.

On the other hand …

Images from their night together drifted into his mind, came into focus, sharpened. Alex was damned if he could remember the name of the restaurant they’d eaten at or the motel across from the airport they’d adjourned to. But now that he’d seen Julie Bartlett again, he couldn’t get the vivid, 3-D image of her naked and flushed with desire out of his head. Grunting, he rolled over and punched his pillow.

Three

Alex’s first call Wednesday morning was to his mother. Since she’d turned over most of the Dalton International’s operations to her sons, Delilah had taken to sleeping more than the four or five hours a night she’d grabbed while she was raising her boys and building the corporation from the ground up almost single-handedly. Molly had rekindled old habits, however. Delilah was once again up with the sun and crashed as soon as she tucked the baby in for the night.

She sipped her first cup of coffee while she listened to Alex’s plan. When he hung up, she sat for a long time in the kitchen of her sprawling mansion. She would never admit to either of her sons that she felt more comfortable in this cheerful kitchen with its watermelon striped wallpaper and collection of dented copper tea kettles than in any of the other seventeen rooms, all decorated by outrageously expensive interior designers.

She’d wanted more for her sons than the shack she’d grown up in. More than the tar-paper shanty their father had called home before hiring out to Conoco-Philips Petroleum when he turned thirteen. Neither she nor Big Jake had finished high school. Yet their sons had not only racked up several advanced degrees, they’d acquired a sophistication that secretly thrilled Delilah almost as much as it frustrated her. Alex and Blake should be married by now, damn it. Should be giving her the grandbabies she craved. Babies like Molly.

“Ah, Jake,” she murmured as she nested her coffee cup in both hands and looked out onto a multi-terraced and elaborately landscaped garden. “You ought to see the little one. She has your eyes.”

A familiar ache pierced Delilah’s heart. She could only pray that the shape of her eyes was all Molly had inherited from her irresponsible, incorrigible, irresistible grandfather. Then one of the monitors she’d had installed in every room of the house recorded the sounds of the baby waking to a new day and she catapulted out of her chair.

Alex’s second call that morning was to Agro-Air. He wanted to make sure the company’s senior partner was present when he made the return drive to the Panhandle and presented his offer.

Dusty Jones was folded into the desk chair when Alex arrived at the hail-dented hangar that housed the company’s office. Julie Bartlett and the craggy-faced mechanic she’d been working with yesterday were also in the office. The two men eyed Alex with varying degrees of interest when he walked into the hole in the wall that constituted Agro-Air’s office. Julie’s expression was considerably less friendly than her partner’s.

She wasn’t wearing coveralls today. What she was wearing almost stopped Alex in his tracks. It took some effort but he managed to keep his gaze from skimming down the long, fluid legs showcased by her cut-offs. He also allowed himself only a brief glance at the scoop-necked tank top, but the image of the high, firm breasts showcased by the stretchy tank stirred the beast within him. Ordering himself to get a grip, he focused instead on the dark red hair looped through the back of her ball cap and the destructive eyes leveled directly at him.

“I was going to call you,” she stated almost before he was in the door.

“Were you?”

He did his best to disguise the sudden spike in his adrenaline. Was she going to admit the truth? That she’d given birth to his child? Or flatly deny it and provide the requested DNA sample as proof?

In that moment, Alex was damned if he could decide which option he preferred. This woman had eaten a big hole in his sleep last night. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the possibility that a child might link them together for the rest of their lives, but the idea was inching its way into his psyche.

“You have something you want to tell me?” he asked, his eyes locked with hers.

“Yes, I …”

“Hold on there, missy!”

Alex’s gaze shifted to the white-haired, weather-beaten man who popped to his feet and deposited his dirigible excuse of a cat atop the littered desk. So this was the Dusty Jones who’d locked horns with his mother sometime in the past. Alex sized him up, wondering what caused Delilah and this banty rooster to go toe to toe.

“Dalton here called us,” Jones reminded his partner. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“I know what he has to say.” The anger Alex had glimpsed yesterday flared in her unusual eyes again. She banked it with a visible effort. “He wants me to provide proof positive that I am or am not the kind of woman who would abandon her own child.”

Dammit! Julie had promised herself she wouldn’t get all hot under the collar again. Dalton had a legitimate need to know the identity of his child’s mother. Yet she could feel the steam building as his blue eyes sliced into her.

“Are you?”

“Now just hold on a dang minute!” Swift as a snake, Dusty drew their fire. “You said you had a revised proposal you wanted to discuss with us, Dalton. What is it?”

“We’re not interested in any revised proposal,” Julie snapped.

“We might be, missy. We might be. Let’s just hear what the man has to say.”

The look she shot the old reprobate should have cut him off at the knees. He ignored her.

“Why’d you want all of us here?” he asked Dalton. “Why me ‘n Chuck as well as Julie?”

“I realize I might have come across a little heavy-handed yesterday,” Dalton began.

“Ya think?” Julie drawled.

“But I’ve had time to reconsider,” he continued coolly. “Instead of a cash settlement, I’m thinking we might …”

“Cash is good,” Dusty interrupted. “Cash works for me.”