Despite the shadow caused by his Stetson and the perpetual tan from endless days in the sun and wind, his strong-featured, wide-planed face was more gaunt than she’d ever seen it. Those dark brown eyes that had troubled more than a few of her dreams now possessed an almost sunken quality, and even his full beard and mustache couldn’t hide the deep lines that bracketed his hard mouth. This wasn’t the face of a thirty-year-old man. What’s more, she was shocked to see the changes in the six-foot-three-inch body that had once made high school and college football coaches rub their hands with glee. In the months since she’d last seen him, he’d turned into a shadow of his former self.
“You look good, Dana.”
“You look like hell,” she muttered, not caring if it did make her sound ungracious. Blast the man, regardless of his reasons for coming here.
“Yeah, well, it’s turning out to be a rough day. A rough year.”
She lifted an eyebrow, determined to retain her dignity, no matter what. “Don’t tell me the honeymoon’s over already?”
“You know there wasn’t any honeymoon.”
“Of course. What could I have been thinking?” she declared, touching her palm to her forehead. “You two had yours before the wedding.”
“There wasn’t any wedding. There was a ceremony to take care of legalities. And to set the record straight once and for all, there wasn’t any love in our marriage, either,” he added, his features resembling a volcano ready to explode. “I told you—”
“Yes, you told me,” Dana said quickly, more concerned with avoiding another barrage of excuses than worrying about his temper. “And I told you when you came over the day you got back from Abilene that I wanted nothing more to do with you. That means you have no business being here now.”
She thought it was a pretty fair declaration of independence under the circumstances…until he shifted his hold on the in his arms and she was forced to take a closer look at what he was carrying his baby in. Suddenly she forgot everything she’d said. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t carry around a child in that thing!”
He shifted, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Believe me, that’s been pointed out to me already, but it was all I had at the moment. Would you like to meet my son?”
“No.” She backed away a step and clasped her hands behind her. Getting up close and personal with his flesh and blood was the last thing she needed to do. Bad enough her curiosity threatened to drive her crazy.
“Okay, but I need to give him a bit of air.” He looked around as though trying to decide where to put down the box. “Do you mind if I, er…?”
Dana wanted to resist helping him. Unfortunately, this being her house, she didn’t exercise that option. “The couch is fine,” she finally told him.
She couldn’t help feeling resentful. Set up. As far as she was concerned, they’d finished with each other the day before he’d left for Abilene. But when he cast a dubious look at his soggy, muddy boots and then at her rose-colored carpet, she grew even more agitated. “For heaven’s sake, it’s a little late to worry about dirt. Just do it.”
As he crossed over to the green-and-rose print couch by the wall, Dana wrapped her arms around her waist. She wasn’t surprised at having to fight a feeling of emptiness. Since the day she’d heard he’d married, and why, she’d been dreading this moment. Now that it was here, she didn’t know if she could handle it.
His child…She’d known John Paladin from the time she’d been an inexperienced, shy sixteen and he a larger-than-life twenty. Despite efforts to ignore her contradictory feelings for him during a goodly portion of that time, she’d succumbed to more than a few fantasies. Fantasies such as imagining what it would be like to be possessed by him…to conceive a baby with him and carry his child…to share a life with him.
She’d blamed those daydreams—disaster dreams she called them now—along with her tendency toward melancholia on her Irish genes, the same excuse her mother had ascribed to her father’s drinking and temper. These days she knew better; she’d merely been a fool. But she was trying to change! Surprise visits made that darned difficult, though.
As he folded back the blue blanket, she felt her heart in her throat. When he awkwardly lifted the small bundle from the box, she had to force herself to keep breathing. Biting hard on her lower lip, she thought she was doing rather well, all things considered. Then came the pathetic wail.
She shot across the room. “Give him to me. You must be holding him too tight. You never did know your own strength.”
“Except with you,” John murmured, despite seeming willing enough to relinquish hold of the child.
A shiver of awareness raced through Dana, partly because of their closeness as he passed over his boy, and partly because she knew he was right. To a degree. He had tried to be careful with her—as careful as a man of his size and temperament could be—except for the first time they’d met, and the day before he’d left for Abilene. But she didn’t want to think about that now.
“There, there,” she crooned to the tiny bundle that fitted perfectly in the crook of her arm. Struggling not to meet John’s intense gaze for fear that he would see how vulnerable he could still make her feel, she turned away, gently rocking his son. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Looks like heaven to me.”
Dana could feel heat creep into her cheeks. No one had ever made her blush as easily or as often as he did. It took all her concentration to ignore him and focus on the child that another woman had borne him.
That was her second mistake of the day.
She fell in love. With her first gaze into the pink, innocent face, she knew she’d lost her heart as easily as she’d once lost it to the man she could feel watching her every move. Pain gripped her throat and throbbed in her chest.
So beautiful. So perfectly beautiful.
He was a miniature of his father, with the same steady, luminous brown eyes, the same shock of chestnut hair, the same bold features and stubborn chin. It wasn’t fair.
“What do you think?”
Dana resented the question as much as she did his presence. She knew what it invited, entreated, and she didn’t want to yield. At the same time, she couldn’t help touching the pad of her index finger to the baby’s chin. “You’re very lucky.”
“I’m not so sure, but thanks. He looks right in your arms, though.”
Disturbed and annoyed, she wanted to show him the door that very instant. Instead she turned away, shaking her head. “I can’t believe your…audacity bringing your child here when he should be home with his mother.”
“It’s not audacity, Dana, it’s desperation.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re right. He should be home with his mother. The problem is she isn’t there.”
Sensing more than fatigue and unhappiness in him, Dana tensed even more. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Celene left me.”
She fought an automatic tug of pity…and won. “Sounds like a smart lady, after all.”
He winced. “Don’t. I don’t deserve that. Regardless of what you think of me, I want you to know that I tried my best. I took responsibility for what I did. Really tried to make it easy for her.” He took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “I should have known