Even if she had to quit her job and move to Texas to make it happen.
“
I’m not sure he really knows what the word means, though,” Sam said. “You need to tell him who I am.”
“
I will,” she said, nodding.
“
Do it now,” Sam prompted.
She frowned at him. He sounded exactly like her boss, a woman of about fifty whose skin seemed to be stretched tight across her skeletal figure from years of stress. “I need to think of a way to explain it so he’ll understand.”
“
Ethan,” Sam called. Their son lifted his head. “I’m your father. I’m your dad. Did you know that?”
He blinked, twice, and then went back to coloring. “Yeah.”
“
Ethan, sweetie,” Jenna said, “can you say that word? Can you say ‘daddy’?”
“
Yeah,” Ethan answered.
“
Can you point to him? Where’s Daddy?”
Ethan looked around with wide eyes and finally pointed to the TV.
Sam crossed his arms, his eyes turning glassy. She patted his thigh. “I’ll explain it to him. I promise. We just have to keep telling him. He’ll catch on.”
The doorbell rang and Bri came trotting down the stairs and answered the door. Jenna groaned, in no mood for Brianna’s friends.
Then she heard traces of a tense conversation and sat up. “The showing. They must be late. I forgot all about that. We’re not supposed to be here.”
Jenna went to intercede, to let Karen know they would get out of the way, but a young woman with dark blond hair carrying a baby pushed past her, looking right and left.
“
There you are,” she said, speaking to Sam. “I heard you were here.”
Sam stood, frowning. “Are you looking for me?”
“
Sam Strickland, you prick,” the woman said. She held out her baby, a girl probably eight months old. “You think you can use me and then just dump me? You’re gonna pay for this. And pay big. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
She turned around, and stopped short when she saw Jenna there. “Guess he used you, too,” the woman said. “My advice? Make him pay. And FYI? We’re not the only ones. There are others.” She looked back to glare at Sam. “Probably
lots
of others.”
The woman left in a rush, and Bri went to close the door, her eyes wide.
Jenna turned to face Sam.
He slowly stepped forward, his eyes also wide. “I don’t know her,” he said, holding up his hands in defense. “I’ve never seen her before. I swear. That’s not my baby.”
Jenna stared at Sam, a sudden realization coming over her. A harsh and shocking realization. She didn’t know him. She barely knew that man standing there. What on earth had she been thinking?
She turned and ran up the stairs.
***
Sam could only shake his head as Brianna glared at him. He’d wanted to talk to her, about conspiring with the Strickland girls to teach Brandon Stewart a lesson, but none of that seemed to matter anymore.
“
That kid is not mine,” he told her. “I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”
But Brianna only crossed her arms. “Maybe you just don’t remember.”
“
I’m not who you think I am. I know I used to have a reputation, but most of it wasn’t true. You should know all about rumors by now.”
Her face reddened and she shook her head. “I defended you!”
She ran away, just like her sister, and Sam could only yell, “I didn’t do anything!”
He looked down and Ethan was now standing, staring on, absorbing this disturbing situation. Sam forced himself to calm down. “Everything’s all right, buddy. People just get grumpy sometimes.”
He took a step toward his son, but Ethan ran away, away from him, through the other door leading out into the hall beneath the stairs.
Sam found himself alone, utterly confused. He’d been no angel, especially during high school and college, and a couple of years after, but he’d grown up, eventually. He worked his mind trying to think of a way out of this. The woman’s baby was less than a year old - that was obvious. Add nine months and where did that put him? In Texas.
Except that he’d made several visits back home during that time. But none of that mattered. He knew he wasn’t that baby’s father. Somehow, he had to convince Jenna. That was what mattered.
If the woman dared to pursue this, he’d demand a DNA test. That would clear him. But it would take time. By then, Jenna might have decided to shut him out of her life. And Ethan’s.
And imagining that felt like a kick to the chest. He couldn’t let that happen. Not now.
He took several deep breaths, steeling his resolve, and headed upstairs. Jenna’s door was closed and probably locked. He knocked lightly.
At first, he didn’t think she would answer, but then the knob turned and the door slowly swung open. Her face was red but she wasn’t crying. He’d been afraid he’d find her crying and full of damning accusations.
“
I don’t know what that was,” he said before she could say anything. “I don’t know that girl.”
Jenna stepped back and invited him in with the wave of her hand. More than he’d expected.
She shut the door behind him and sat on the bed. He stayed near the door. “I promise you,” he said, “that baby is not mine.”
“
I know,” she said.
He was surprised, and glad to hear her say it, but she was holding on to a mood. A quiet and distant mood. One he’d seen before. And one he didn’t like.
“
The baby had brown eyes,” she said. “You and the mother have blue eyes. And I know that’s not really proof. But I recognize her. She’s been in the law office a few times. She’s going through a divorce. Her husband’s related to Brandon Stewart somehow. I can’t remember. A cousin, maybe. I heard she was getting shafted because he has all the lawyers. Brandon set this up, paid her to do that. I’m sure of it.”
Relieved to the point of weakness, Sam sat on the bed beside her. He put his hand on her back but she stiffened, and wouldn’t look at him.
“
He stopped me on the way to work this morning,” she said. “He said he was waging war against you. That’s all this was. His revenge. Trying to break us up.”
He’d hoped to keep the barn incident from her, seeing no point in bringing it up. Now he had to. But he decided to keep Brianna out of it. “I think my cousins roughed him up a bit.”
“
More than a bit,” she said. “He looked, and smelled, awful. But I don’t care about that. I know I should. I don’t like that kind of thing. But I can’t care right now.”
He tried to stroke her hair, but she stood and moved away from him. He stood with her, now more confused than ever. She wasn’t upset about the ruse Brandon Stewart had set up. She wasn’t even upset members of his family had turned to mischief in her defense. He couldn’t imagine what was left.
“
I just realized,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “For a moment, before I recognized her, there was this one moment of doubt. And I realized. I don’t really know you. We had a month together - three years ago. And now, it hasn’t even been a week and we’re planning to get married? That’s crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t marry you. I must be out of my mind.”
Sam sat down again realizing this was worse than any revenge Brandon Stewart could cook up. A few days ago, he might have been relieved, afraid of committing. But today, her words filled him with a new kind of fear. The fear of losing her. He’d leave the ranch. He’d do whatever he had to do. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. “Time doesn’t matter,” he said. “We work. We’re right. I love you, and you said you love me. That’s all that matters.”
“
No,” she said, shaking her head, backing up until she hit the high-backed armchair in the corner. The one filled with Ethan’s toys. She swept the toys off to the floor and sat down. “I’ve been confused. Afraid. All the problems with the house and Bri’s college, and the future. I wasn’t thinking straight and then you came along and you were a relief. A bright, shining relief. You made everything else seem unimportant. I can’t marry you because you make me laugh. Or because of the financial help. It’s all wrong.”
He held up a hand hoping to stop this before it spiraled out of control. But she held up a hand of her own.
“
You’re Ethan’s father,” she said. “That’s a fact. And I won’t keep you from him. I want you in his life. He needs you in his life. But this thing we’ve been doing, acting like two kids playing a game? I can’t do that. We’ll wake up one day soon and realize we’re strangers. And we’ll be worse off than we were before.”
He looked around for some way to get closer to her but she was sitting far across the room in the only chair and the chair seemed to cocoon her. So he got up, dragged the chair over near the bed, and sat down again. He tried to hold her hands, but she crossed her arms.
“
Okay,” he said. “You’re right. We’re just getting to know each other again. And we don’t have to get married tomorrow. We can take it slow. As slow as you want. Just don’t say it’s over.”
She frowned but seemed to take in his words. “You’re leaving soon. You have a life in another state. I have a life here. What were we planning to do?”
So, she’d been worried about that, too. He remembered something else his granddad had told him, probably fifteen years ago during one of Sam’s summer visits, one night when his granddad had been sitting by the cold fireplace drinking scotch. Sam had forgotten until now. He’d told Sam not to live his life alone. The day his wife died, his granddad had said, was the day his life lost meaning. From that day on, routine was all that had kept him going. Sam didn’t want to live on routine alone. He’d never minded before, but now with the prospect of something better, returning to his old life of routine seemed like the same as death.
“
I’ll leave the ranch,” he told her. “I’ll move here. I don’t care. As long as we can be together.”
The frown eased, erasing the lines between her eyes. “I thought you’d expect me to move to Texas with you.”
He placed his hands on her knees, glad when she didn’t recoil from his touch. “Whatever you want. Here, there, wherever. You, me and Ethan together. That’s what I care about. Say you still want me.”
She laughed as tears filled her eyes again. “I do. I—”
She pushed the chair back so she could stand and went to her bedside table. She looked inside the drawer and brought something back. An 8x10 picture. She handed it to him and sat down again.
He looked at himself back in high school, in his football uniform, sweaty, smiling, carrying his helmet. A candid black and white photo someone had taken of the team leaving the field. Probably the school photographer.
“
I used to sleep with that picture,” she said, laughing softly. “I did it my entire freshman year. I fell asleep looking at your face. I would have died for just one word from you. That’s the secret Bri threatened to tell you about.”
Ah, the picture she’d mentioned. He set it aside. “I punched one of my best friends in the face for telling a dirty joke about you,” he confessed, while they were confessing. “I didn’t even know you then. But I knew you were mine.”
She laughed for real and leaned forward, holding his hands when he reached for her. “You did not,” she said.
He kept a tight grip on her, so happy to see her smiling again. “I did. And he never spoke to me again.” He shrugged. “I feel bad about it now, but….”
“
So, it’s not all of a sudden,” she said, nodding as if hoping to convince herself, not him. “This has been going on for years.”
“
Years and years, baby.”
She lunged forward and let him roll her back on the bed, and hold her in his arms. He draped his leg over hers, wanting to surround her and never let her go.
He stroked her soft cheek with his thumb. “So, we’re still getting married?” he asked.
“
We’re still engaged. We’ll talk about the marriage part later.”
Good enough. He kissed her and let his hand roam her body, needing her more than he ever had. She sank into the hot kiss, grabbing at him, spreading her legs so he could settle down over her, and press against her. He was about to strip off her shirt when she gasped suddenly and pushed against him.
“
I don’t know where Ethan is. Is he with Bri?”
Sam sat back, still dizzy, but suddenly just as concerned. A boy Ethan’s age was very mobile, and could be anywhere by now. “I don’t know. Your sister ran off.”
Jenna pushed again so he rolled off her and followed her out of the room as they went in search of their son.
They found Ethan in the kitchen, sitting on the floor in front of the open refrigerator, trying to get the lid off a plastic container. He succeeded before they reached him, sending leftover fruit salad flying, all over him and the floor.
Ethan jumped in surprise, his mouth flew open and his arms shot out to the sides, but he seemed too shocked to cry.
“
Oh,
baby
,” Jenna said, setting the container aside and lifting him. She carried him over to the counter by the sink to clean his face and hands. “You’re fine. I’ll fix you a real supper in just a minute.”