Thanksgiving Daddy

She’d never felt like this before. A whole new world of sensation was opening in her, and she loved it. She hadn’t imagined being with a man could be so good.

Hot and heavy sensations filled her. Stifled cries escaped her. She was searching for something and didn’t really know what it was.

Then he plunged into her. At once she gasped. A sharp pain seared her, almost ruining the moment.

“My God,” he said.

No, don’t let it stop, not now. She needed this desperately. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed his hips and urged him on, bucking wildly in her need.

After the briefest hesitation, he bent his head again to her breast and began to move in and out of her in a steady, deepening rhythm. Carrying her higher and higher, as if she rode a rocket.

Culmination came almost too soon, as if her body had waited forever for this release. She peaked, rose up to meet him and whimpered as an almost agonizing pleasure filled her. Moments later, he drove deep into her, shuddering.

* * *

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked later.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

“I’d have been more careful.”

“I didn’t want careful. I wanted exactly that.”

He looked deep into her eyes, then nodded. “I’m leaving today. I should have told you that. Let me buy you breakfast.”

She pulled on a fresh uniform, cleaned up as best she could at the sink, aware of his gaze on her.

“Don’t be mad,” she said finally.

“I’m not mad. I just wish I could have done better by you.”

“You did just fine.” She managed a smile. “I don’t regret it, Seth, so don’t ruin it.”

At last he smiled. “Fair enough.”

They went to get breakfast at the canteen. Early though the hour was, the place was filling up. With little privacy, they could only talk desultorily. He mentioned his parents, his home back in Wyoming and how he hoped to go back there soon.

She talked a little about her life back in the States, although there wasn’t much to tell. No family left. That bothered her. She would have at least liked to have a family to go home to.

But mostly she talked about her career, and how it was the centerpiece of her life.

“I get it,” he said. “Believe me. I’m thinking about retiring, though.”

“Will they let you?”

His smile was crooked. “I’m starting to get past my use-by date. I don’t see my future behind a desk.”

“I hear you.”

Finally he pulled a pad out of one of the many pockets on his uniform, and scribbled something. “If you need me, you can reach me through my family.”

“Why would I need you?”

He just shrugged. “You never know.” He rose and offered his hand. She shook it. “I hope I see you again.”

She doubted he would. SEALs came and went all over the globe, almost like ghosts. Here then gone. She looked at the scrap of paper and tossed it on her plate as trash.

She didn’t even dream what a mistake that might be. Or that eventually she would remember that scrawl.

Chapter One

As she approached Conard City, Edith Clapton wondered if there was even a town out here. Endless miles of empty grazing land, cattle here and there and finally a couple of roadhouses were the only signs that people actually lived out here.

Her hands tightened on the wheel, and a glance at her GPS told her she was getting close. Not for the first time she wondered if she had lost her mind.

She was pregnant. Nearly five months. And she’d spent a whole lot of time gnawing around about whether she should tell Seth Hardin he was a father. She’d tried once to track him down through the military, and had been extraordinarily relieved when she couldn’t find him. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to face it, but she kept feeling she at least owed it to him to tell him he was going to have a kid.

She didn’t need child support, she didn’t want a stranger intimately involved in her life. Lots of good reasons for just keeping her mouth shut. Except for that feeling that a father needed to know he had a child. Whether he wanted to be part of this kid’s life or not.

She couldn’t seem to get around that, and God knew she had tried. Maybe the thing that had hit her hardest was the idea of having to tell this child that his father didn’t even know he existed. Boy, wouldn’t that make her feel like slime.

So okay, she’d drop the bomb on his parents—easier than telling him—and leave. Just leave. Get her duty done then forget about it. If Seth wanted to hunt her up someday and meet his kid, nothing would stop him. It wasn’t as if she was impossible to find.

Damn, everything was all messed up. Pulled off flying status, stuck behind a desk until after her maternity leave, superior officers hinting that she might want to consider some other career path with a kid to consider. She didn’t want to give up flying. She loved it. And maybe she had a hankering for the adrenaline, too.

Regardless, she was feeling an adrenaline rush as she reached town at last, and houses sprang up, most close together, most older. The time was getting close.

She wondered how she’d be received. Probably like an unwelcome messenger. Probably with anger and doubt. Well, she didn’t care. She would do what was right then shake the dust from her heels.

She would try to put back together a life and a career that had been shattered by unwelcome news. Her rise to the top had probably come to a halt. How could it not, unless she gave up the baby. She couldn’t do that, though. Those thoughts had danced around in her head, even pummeled her at times, but somehow she couldn’t bear the idea of giving up that little life growing in her, a life that had seemed real almost from the instant she learned of it, that had become very real from the first little bubble of movement she felt.

Abandon the kid so she could continue rising? No way. She might be tied to a desk from here on out, but she’d be the best damn desk jockey in the air force, if it came to that. Maybe she had enough behind her to keep her going up, but she doubted it. Kids weren’t supposed to be a factor in what assignments you could perform. You were supposed to have someone who could step in to parent while you had to be away.

She had no one. Raised by her grandmother after her mother had died of a drug overdose, she was now alone in the world. No one to turn to except herself. She was used to that. But farewell to her career, most likely. She’d make it twenty years, realize the promotions wouldn’t come again, and she’d have to pull out.

Well, she wasn’t going to abandon her kid the way her mother had abandoned her. That was the strongest determination in her right now.

And all of these thoughts had long since been worked out. All of them. She was just trying to avoid thinking about the uncomfortable conversation ahead. A conversation that she hoped would happen on a doorstep. Then she would turn and leave for good.

The town had slid into autumn. Leaves shone in brilliant gold. Those that had already fallen tumbled along sidewalks and streets in a light breeze. Here and there pumpkins, skeletons and waving white ghosts announced the approach of Halloween. Pretty place, she supposed, if you wanted to turn the clock back. Of course, she was a lousy judge. Sterile military environments had been her only home for a long time now.

The voice of the GPS, silenced so often in the empty prairies, resurrected and offered her no mercy. It told her to turn left, and she did, until she reached what she supposed was a newer subdivision. Post–World War II at least. Maybe post-Vietnam. Despite looking like it had tumbled out of a box that contained only one design, it was neat and even colorful. She guessed no one here thought about deed restrictions. Some of the houses were almost blinding in their brightness.

“You have arrived.”

“Shut up,” she said to the GPS. She slowed and stopped and looked at the house number. No escape. She was here.

The house was a white ranch-style, sprawling, set on a well-tended lawn that was beginning to fade with autumn. Rose bushes, barren of all but a few flowers, climbed a trellis beside the door. A sporty little car sat in the driveway.