Accidental Father. Lauren Nichols

or it’ll be midnight till I get back to town. See you.”

      “Yeah,” Jess called back. “See you.”

      Heart thumping, Jake returned to Blackjack’s stall, Jess Dalton’s face frozen in his mind. Their similarities were staggering. But maybe that’s because he was looking for similarities. They were both about the same height, same black hair, same build—same black Stetson. But Jess’s eyes were brown, probably like his mother’s, and he carried himself loosely, the mark of a man at peace with himself. Jake envied him that. He had too many unresolved issues in his life for that kind of peace.

      He’d just started grooming his horse when Jess walked in and dumped a scoop of grain into Blackjack’s bin. The animal nosed into it.

      “Hear you’re looking for a new deputy,” he said.

      Jake grinned, trying to act nonchalant. “A part-timer, anyway. You looking for work?”

      “Me?” Smiling, Jess put his shoulder against the stall. “No, there’s more than enough around here to keep me busy. At the moment, just keeping Ross settled is a full-time job. His boots haven’t touched the ground since Maggie told him about the baby.”

      Jake fought to calm his nerves. “How about you? Looking forward to the new addition to your family?”

      “We all are. The Dalton clan’s pretty small as most families go.”

      Not as small as you think. “I see a lot of your aunt Ruby.”

      With a low laugh, Jess stroked Blackjack’s neck as the horse continued to feed. “Aunt Ruby’s a handful. Stay on her good side, and she’ll give you the key to her heart. Tick her off, and she’ll find you a first-class room in hell.”

      “I’ll keep it in mind.”

      “If you want to eat, you’d better. Around here we’ve got Ruby’s for food and Dusty’s for drinks. There’s not much else but grass, trees and mountains.”

      “Grass, trees and mountains work for me,” Jake returned. “Speaking of which, you’ve got a nice spread.”

      “Thanks. But that was our dad’s doing—and his father before him.”

      “Your dad’s gone?” Jake asked, hiding a guilty twinge because he already knew the answer.

      “For a while now. He and Ross’s mom died when Ross was in high school. Small plane accident.”

      “Oh. I’m sorry.”

      “Me, too. I still miss them both. But, as I said, it was a long time ago.” Jess glanced at his pocket watch, then tapped the side of the stall with the grain scoop. “Well, I’d better shove off. Casey’ll be putting supper on the table.”

      Jake hid his regret behind a smile. “Nice talking to you.”

      “Same here.”

      But a moment later, Jess called from the doorway, “Care to join us? I think it’s fried chicken tonight.”

      Jake didn’t move for a long second. Then slowly, he ambled into the hay-strewn aisle between the rows of stalls to meet Jess’s eyes. “Thanks, but I have a pile of paperwork waiting on my desk. I just came out for a little breather.”

      “Maybe another time, then.”

      “Yeah, maybe,” Jake said. “Thanks again.”

      Stifling the gut-gnawing urge to follow Jess up to the ranch house, Jake wandered back to Blackjack’s stall and grabbed the currycomb. For years, he’d wondered how it would feel to walk the same rooms his father had walked, wondered if—given the opportunity—he would feel a familial connection, a sense of belonging that had always been missing from his life. Now he’d passed up the chance. But much as he’d wanted to say yes, there was no way he could sit across the supper table from Jess Dalton without telling him they were brothers.

      Sarah put the teakettle on to heat, still rattled over her unexpected meeting with Jake. She’d worried about his looking too closely at Kylie’s coloring and wondering about it. But the current situation was worse. He knew her birth date. And the most logical place to get that information was at the courthouse.

      If that’s what he’d done, she prayed he’d done so under the guise of investigating someone else. Because if the courthouse clerks—especially Elvira Parsons—realized that Jake was looking into Kylie’s parentage, Sarah’s name would be on everyone’s lips again.

      Suddenly chilled, she tugged her white cardigan more closely around her. She could almost hear Elvira’s voice….

      I’ve always wondered who that child’s father was. She doesn’t look a thing like any of the family—including that thieving, no-account husband of Sarah’s.

      The kettle whistled. Sarah turned off the gas, then took a tea bag from the white-and-yellow ceramic canister on the countertop and dropped it into her mug. But something pulled her attention back to the canister set.

      She frowned curiously. The sugar canister was turned around backward; instead of big, full sunflowers, it showed a cluster of small, barely open buds. And there was a trace of sugar spilled on the countertop.

      Funny…she hadn’t used sugar from the canister in the last few days. And she took pride in having a neat, clean kitchen. She wouldn’t have left…

      Kylie.

      With a wry grin, Sarah wiped up the sugar with a damp sponge, then turned the canister around so that all four matched again. Obviously, her precocious little daughter was developing a sweet tooth, and was smart enough to move the kitchen chair back where it belonged after sneaking a treat. Still, what Kylie had done was dangerous. Tomorrow morning, Sarah would gently reinforce the rules about climbing.

      Half an hour later, Sarah climbed the stairs, stepped over the child-safety gate across the top, then showered and settled into bed to read for a while. But when she’d read the same two paragraphs three times without comprehending any of it, she returned the book to her nightstand and clicked off her lamp.

      Why couldn’t she get Jake Russell out of her mind?

      She was through with men who sent her hormones spinning out of control. Sarah shook her head in the darkness, remembering Vince. Her teenage heart had fallen for him so hard, loved him so desperately and believed in him so fiercely, that she would have staked her life on their marriage lasting forever.

      But behind his teasing smiles and charming compliments had beat the heart of a callous user who didn’t care about anyone but himself. In the three years they were together he’d lied, bedded other women indiscriminately and stolen from his own grandmother. He’d hurt a man with his fists and held up a liquor store. But he’d given Sarah a valuable gift—one that nearly canceled out all the heartache and shame. He’d shown her how brutally flawed her judgment was.