Lost and Found Groom, McLinn, Patricia [ebook reader for pc and android .txt] 📗

table leg, hard enough to hurt. She needed that reality. She needed to hold onto it while she tried to absorb that sitting at her kitchen table was a man she’d known so briefly, but so intimately, then dreamt about so often. She knew his gestures and–an unstoppable heat seeped into her–she knew his body. Yet he remained a virtual stranger. No, a total stranger.

That was what she had to remember.

“The chain of command pulled the plug a couple months ago.”

Her reporter’s instincts hummed–the distraction she craved.

“Taumaturgio was an official mission?”

“Not precisely.”

“What precisely then?”

He shook his head, apparently more at himself than her. “When I left Santa Estella, I took a leave of absence from my job in, uh, government. I started looking for you.”

He stared out the window. She’d nurtured grass in the front, but here the yard consisted of bare spots, rocks, sage and the occasional head of cattle that had found openings in the fence. But beyond a windbreak of evergreens, the view to the north and west showed rolling hills rising to ranks of mountains, topped by sky so blue that some days it seemed to vibrate.

He smiled slightly, his teeth white against the sun-deepened tint of his skin. She remembered thinking how good Paulo’s teeth were for an islander. What an idiot she’d been.

“I’d have found you faster if you hadn’t come to such a distant corner. Finally got the address through your college alumni roster.”

“They gave you my address?”

“Not pre–”

“Not precisely,” she finished with him.

“You’d talked about a ranch, about coming to a ranch as a kid, but you were so intent on your career . . . I didn’t expect to find you in Far Hills, Wyoming.”

“I was pregnant. I couldn’t find the father,” she said in stark, unemotional words. “I couldn’t see raising a child alone with my network job–not with the long hours and travel and unpredictable schedule. So I worked as long as I could, then I came here. It’s quiet, I have a share in the ranch and I knew Marti would help out.”

He seemed to absorb the accusation behind her words for a moment before saying, “If I’d known–”

“You did know.” Her sharp voice gave away more than she’d intended. “You knew it all, while I knew nothing. You knew who I was. You knew who you were–and who you weren’t. You even knew I was looking for Paulo Ayudor.”

“If I’d known,” he repeated steadily, “you were pregnant. You should have told me. If I’d known why you wanted to find Paulo when you called the consulate–”

“Told you? I should have told you? I talked to some anonymous bureaucrat named Tompkins whom I’d barely exchanged a half-dozen sentences with when I was on Santa Estella.”

A flicker of something crossed his dark eyes at her accusation, but he didn’t flinch. And he didn’t back down.

“I had a right to know you were pregnant.”

“You had a right? Which you? Daniel Delligatti? He didn’t have a right–I never heard of him until a few minutes ago. Taumaturgio? I’d never met him for all I knew. Tompkins certainly didn’t have any right. Only Paulo Ayudor had the right. Someone who didn’t exist except for in your imagination. And mine, I suppose.” This attempt at a laugh was no more successful than her previous try. “Good lord, it’s like getting pregnant by a character in a play.”

For the first time his calm cracked.

“I’m a man–not a damned character in a play.”

Her words had struck a blow. Too bad. His ego, or whatever she’d wounded wasn’t her concern. He wasn’t her concern.

“Really? Which man are you? The hero Taumaturgio? That rumpled bureaucrat Tompkins? The kindly, simple Paulo Ayudor?”

“Daniel Benton Delligatti.”

“And who the hell is he?”

“He’s all those men. I’m all those men. They’re–” The words jerked out of him, so unlike the smooth, flow of Santa Estellan Spanish she remembered. “–part of me.”

“I know nothing about you.”

He leaned forward, the crack in his calm repaired, but a new intensity showing. “You know the most important things about me, like I know the most important things about you, Kendra. You learned them during that hurricane. You learned–”

“Like your name? Or who you really were?”

“You know–”

“I don’t know–”

“Mommy?”

The small, sleepy voice stopped them on twin in-drawn breaths.

Their eyes met. She caught a whirl of emotions in his. Maybe with enough time she could have sorted them all out and identified them. But maybe no amount of time would have been enough.

Then he twisted in his chair to see his son for the first time.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Hello, sweetheart.” Kendra held out her arms, trying to make her concentration on her son block out her awareness of the man who’d gone absolutely still. It was hard when the boy carried such an imprint of the man.

She scooped up Matthew and sat him sideways on her lap. “Did you have a nice nap?”

As usual, her son ignored such unimportant matters and cut to the core of his interest. “Em’ly?”

“Emily went home with her Mommy. You’ll see her later. Remember? You and Emily will visit with Ben and Meg for a while?”

“Now?”

“No. Later. After supper.”

Matthew frowned, preferring “now” as the answer for everything except bedtime. He pointed a chubby fist at the newcomer. “Who?”

At her hesitation, Daniel’s eyes lifted from Matthew’s face to hers. Wary, faintly questioning, he waited.

Did he expect her to drop him into Matthew’s life the way he’d dropped into hers? Did he expect Daddy?

“This is . . . Daniel.”

“Hello, Matthew.” Despite her efforts not to watch him, she saw Daniel’s throat work on a hard swallow. “It’s good to meet you.”

“Hi, Uke.”

“No, sweetheart. His name is Daniel.”

Matthew nodded emphatically. “Uke, Uke, Uke.”

She thought Daniel winced, but couldn’t be sure.

She should have expected this. With Luke Chandler the only man Matthew saw daily, he’d taken to calling all men by that name. But any misconceptions Daniel had about Matthew’s use of the name were his problem.

She watched him from the corner of her eye while she rubbed her chin on the soft,