“So, why suggest marriage?” Dylan asked.
“On paper, it’s the best solution. Adam will have two parents who love him. He’ll want for nothing. No shared custody. No one weekend with you, the other weekend with me. And if we’re married, if you legally adopted him, then there’ll be no way that anyone can cut either of us out of his life.”
That last part sounded reasonable, but the whole picture had flaws the size of Texas. “And what about a loveless marriage? Do you really want that?”
Collena made a soft sound of amusement. “From my experience, love is vastly overrated.”
“You’re too young to be so skeptical,” he commented.
“I’m a lot older than my age might imply.” She shifted her position. “Look, I’m not some starry-eyed gold digger, Mr. Greer. I don’t want a husband, a lover or someone’s shoulder to cry on. I don’t even want someone to support me or pretend that I matter to him. I just want the best possible life for my son. A life where no one is pointing fingers at him because he’s different.”
Dylan didn’t let himself react to the emotion. To the truthful tone of that obviously painful confession. “If you wanted that, you should have stayed away from him,” he challenged.
“I considered it.”
And she was serious, too. Serious enough to bring tears to her eyes. It was the second time today that she’d teared up, but even with that track record, Dylan didn’t think she was a woman accustomed to showing her feelings. Those tears looked out of place.
“You considered staying away,” he paraphrased. “Yet, you came anyway. Lucky me.”
“I tried, but I can’t give him up.” She moistened her lips, looked away. “I lost him once, and I can’t survive if I have to go through that again.”
Unfortunately, Dylan knew what she meant, but he pushed aside the camaraderie he felt. It was best to keep his feelings toward Collena Drake as detached as possible.
He checked his watch and realized it’d been a good ten minutes since he’d asked Jonah to return. Dylan hit the intercom button on his desk so he could be heard in the kitchen.
“Jonah?”
“He left,” Dylan heard Ina, the cook, say. “He said he had another call.”
Well, that was just great. Jonah wasn’t finished with this call. For all the deputy knew, Collena Drake could have been a killer. At a minimum, she’d trespassed, and Jonah should have waited around long enough to see if he was going to have to arrest her for that. Not that Dylan planned to have her thrown in jail. But Jonah didn’t know that.
“I can see myself out,” Collena insisted. She was heading for the door before she turned back around to face him.
She probably hadn’t realized how close they were when she turned around. Mere inches apart.
Both of them stepped back.
“Please think about what I’ve said,” she added.
“Oh, I will.” In fact, he would think of little else.
“I’ll get my car and drive back to drop off the papers that prove Adam is my son. Or I can have someone bring them to you if you’d prefer.”
Dylan didn’t want anyone else involved in this just yet. He went to the closet and grabbed his coat and car keys. He wanted to see what kind of evidence she had so he could start looking for flaws in it. He didn’t know what he would do once he’d found them, but he wanted all the information about this situation and the woman who’d proposed marriage and then threatened to take Adam away from him.
“I’d also like my gun back,” Collena said.
“It’s in my pocket. You’ll get it back when you’re off my property.”
Figuring that he needed to go on the offensive, Dylan picked up his phone and pressed in some numbers. “Sorry to bother you on Thanksgiving,” he said to the man who answered. “But it’s an emergency. Call me the second you have any information on Collena Drake. And I have a DNA test kit that I need you to pick up ASAP and take to a lab.”
“Your lawyer?” Collena asked when he hung up the phone.
“A P.I. I want as much information about you as you think you have about me.”
And he would get it.
He needed all the ammunition possible to stop this woman who’d intruded into his life.
They went back outside, and Dylan could have sworn the temperature had dropped even more. The snowflakes had picked up, as well. They weren’t steadily falling, yet, but it would happen soon. Despite everything that was going on, he couldn’t help but think of how Adam would react to building a snowman.
“You’re smiling,” Collena mumbled.
He put on the stoniest face he could manage. It was easy to do. He was riled at this woman who’d come in unannounced and threatened to tear his life apart.
Dylan motioned toward his truck and unlocked the doors. “I can walk,” Collena assured him.
“I don’t doubt that, but this will be warmer.”
But not faster. She could actually walk across the pasture quicker than taking the roads around the ranch to get to her car, but Dylan wasn’t sure how steady she was on her feet. She’d eaten a few bites in his office, but she was still pale and seemed unsteady.
And it irritated him that he was even remotely concerned about that.
This woman could cost him everything.
He wanted to hate her.
What he didn’t want was to believe that she was telling the truth. Because if she was, if someone had truly stolen her baby and left her for dead, then she’d been through hell, something that Dylan totally understood.
“I suppose Adam can walk?” she asked.
He groaned. He didn’t want to talk about Adam, not to her, but it’d be petty to withhold such simple information. Still, he considered it before he finally mumbled, “Yes.”
“And he can talk?”
He bit back another groan. “He can say a few things.”
Collena nodded. “Thank you. I know that wasn’t easy.” She watched as he drove out of the wrought iron gates that fronted the ranch. “I came today, hoping I’d get a glimpse of him through one of the windows. I really hadn’t planned on intruding on your Thanksgiving day.”
What could he say to that? That she’d gone about it the wrong way? Well, they both knew there was no right way to do this. If she’d come to his door with this bombshell on any day, holiday or not, he wouldn’t have let her in.
He made the turn on the dirt and gravel road that snaked against the fenced portion of his property. The snow had already dusted the surface, making it hard for him to see where the road ended and deep ditches began.
Because the silence was thick and uncomfortable, Dylan decided to push her for more information. “Tell me about the father of your child,” he said.
Collena took black leather gloves from her pocket and put them back on. She also took a deep breath. “Sean Reese was a lawyer. We’d been engaged nearly a year when I got pregnant.”
A year. That wasn’t a casual relationship. “You planned a family?”
She shook her head. “No. I was on the pill, hadn’t missed taking any, so the pregnancy wasn’t planned. When I came home from work the day after I told him, he was gone. He’d moved out and left me a typed letter saying he didn’t want to be a father and that he was breaking up with me.” She paused. “That’s