LITMIR.BIZ

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snorted. Wail, nothing. He’d heard the rodents snared in the barn squeak louder. But the fragile sound still managed to fill him with a dread no mouse ever did.

      “Okay…okay, squirt. I’m working on it.”

      He scrunched his bulk into the cab, and drew the door closed behind him. At least that got them out of the weather. Maneuvering in the cramped space proved awkward, though someone of his proportions would find just about any vehicle smaller than a C-130 or an aircraft carrier a tight fit. Swearing as he struck his already throbbing elbow against the steering wheel, he jerked the brochures from his pockets.

      “I feel like a wilting peacock,” he muttered, throwing them onto the floorboard. Then he leaned over to pick up the makeshift car seat he’d inadvertently knocked down there when they’d first arrived.

      He’d come up with the invention while eyeing the contents in the back of the cab. Experience had taught him to carry everything back there, things no self-respecting rancher would find himself without: rope, chains, wrenches, hammers, nails, jumper cables…and a case of oil. It had been that box that had grabbed his attention. Not the most attractive or sterile thing known to man, but damned if it didn’t represent the best brand of motor lubricant money could buy. Most importantly, all he’d had to do was cut one end—a foot flap, he’d dubbed it with some amusement—and the fit had been perfect.

      He’d dumped the twelve plastic bottles onto his tools, and then on impulse he’d also snatched up the blanket that he kept back there. Using the wool cover as an external buffer, and the vest as a mattress, he’d stuffed John, Jr. inside, until he’d been as snug as a tick on a dog.

      “It worked well enough for the drive down here, so it’ll do for the trip back,” he told his son, repeating the process. “No way I can shop with you under wing and the weather plotting against me.”

      It took him almost five minutes—ten less than the first time. Even so, by the time he’d finished he was sweating more than a hog in an auction pen. But worry and caution aside, he eventually had the boy strapped in, grateful that no one was around to point out how the whole contraption looked about as sturdy as a bag of marshmallows.

      “Don’t worry about it,” he assured the calmer bundle inside. “I’ve already got strict orders from all of your self-appointed godmothers to drive as though I was carrying a load of nitro.”

      As if he’d needed the reminding, he thought, somewhat disgruntled. He maneuvered his large frame back behind the steering wheel, only to have to twist again to dig his keys from his hind pocket. It was just the two of them now. His son was the most important thing in his life. If he’d had any doubts before, Celene’s latest stunt made that fact abundantly clear.

      He did, however, wish that he could have gotten John, Jr. admitted here at the hospital for a day or two, until he’d tracked down the exasperating woman and gotten things between them settled once and for all. But all the nurses had certified him as crazy.

      “This ain’t no hotel, Big John.”

      “You can’t desert your son in his hour of need, Mr. Paladin.”

      “Beast.”

      Oh, yes. They’d laid it on thick and heavy.

      Not even his longtime friend, Bud—Sheriff Bud Hackman today since he’d been summoned by Juanita, the head nurse in pediatrics, who on behalf of all her new mothers seemed to hate men in general—could resist pointing out that he should have known better than to even consider doing such a thing. “You abandon this boy and go after that woman, Big John, I ain’t gonna have no choice but to recommend he be made a ward of the court.”

      Let the big oaf try to set foot on the Long J again. “The only welcome he’ll get is a butt full of buckshot,” John growled, taking a grim pleasure in visualizing the scene.

      Maybe it had been unusual to suggest the hospital care for his son in his absence. But where was their understanding, their sensitivity, their compassion? He’d been driven to these straits. He was riding a long trail of bad luck—had been ever since he’d behaved irresponsibly during his trip to Abilene and had gotten himself saddled with a pregnant bride some eight months ago. All he was trying to do was buy himself some time to straighten out the mess.

      “Who cares what they think,” he muttered aside to his wide-eyed passenger. “We don’t need them, do we? We’ll work things out for ourselves. For now, though, you might as well kick back and catch up on some shut-eye. It’s a thirty-mile trip back home. No need for both of us to end up stressed out and ornery.”

      He started the truck, shifted into Drive and, because the lot was almost empty as usual, drove forward to cut a wide U-turn toward the nearest exit. Because the weather was having a decided effect on visibility, when he reached the stop sign and saw that his windows were fogging up, he quickly switched on the defroster. After the mist cleared away, he looked up and down the empty road once, twice, then added a third glance for good measure.

      That’s when it struck him that this behavior was totally out of character for him, and it told him just how deeply he’d been rattled. Dusty Flats might be the county seat, he reminded himself as he gripped the wheel and turned onto the street, but in a town with a population under fifteen hundred, bad weather had a tendency to keep folks at home. There wasn’t exactly a need to act as though he were driving on a sixteen-year-old’s hardship permit. Thirty and responsible—regardless of what those uniformed viragoes had accused him—he’d never had a wreck in his life. He could do this, he told himself.

      You can’t do this, and you know it.

      He did, however, manage to make the turn. He even drove a few miles without breaking into a cold sweat. But by the time he got to the farm-to-market road that angled off toward his ranch, he found himself setting his right hand on the seat in front of the baby and driving twenty miles an hour under the legal limit. Completely logical, he told himself. He was still calm. This was merely in case someone came barreling out of nowhere and aimed straight into them.

      Before he reached the next intersection, however, he had to pull over to the shoulder. Reduced to a shaking mass, he actually felt as though he might have to get out of the car and lose the coffee and biscuit that was all he’d ingested since rising before dawn. Him. Big John Paladin. The rancher who’d outraced tornadoes and had outlasted droughts since taking over the Long J Ranch at the unheard of age of twenty-six.

      How he wished he could blame his condition on the shock over what Celene had done. But he would be lying if he tried. He was angry—angry, disgusted, but most of all scared sick. He had a feeling that it was just as well that Bud had threatened to keep him here. If he found the exasperating…female, he might strangle her with his bare hands.

      Funny thing was, from the minute he’d set eyes on her, he’d known they were wrong for each other. Celene had been flashy, daring and restless. She’d been the kind of woman who would find it difficult to stick with one man, let alone work at a marriage. But on the night he’d sat in that Abilene honky-tonk, all that had mattered was that she hadn’t looked anything like Dana Dixon. When they’d danced, she hadn’t felt the way Dana had in his arms. Her perfume hadn’t crept under his defenses and spawned a fierce hunger in him like Dana’s. And she sure as hell couldn’t tie him in a big agonizing knot with one of her smiles.

      What Celene had managed to do that fateful night was to provide him with a drinking companion—and a few hours later, some long-denied companionship of another form. It had been the kind of experience that a brooding, recently rejected man should have been able to walk away from. With a hangover, to be sure, but also with just enough guilt to promise himself never to do it again. Maybe even with enough humbleness to go home and try to mend some fences.

      He’d had the hangover, all right. He’d also ended up with the kind of shock that made men give up drinking permanently. Before he could apologize to Dana, only weeks after the Abilene incident, he found himself saddled with an angry, pregnant wife. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget her fury once Celene had tracked him down through a friend who’d worked at the

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