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

them alive . . . at least for a little longer.

He didn’t know about handling duck cups or little boys climbing out of high chairs or the Terrible Twos.

He didn’t know any of the things to make a little boy with a smile as wide as the biggest sky feel safe and loved.

How could he know?

Kendra had expected him to be good with their son because of Taumaturgio. But Taumaturgio had all the advantages–a mysterious identity, arriving like magic, bringing supplies needed so badly that providing them seemed like love to those children.

And the biggest advantage of all–he wasn’t Daniel Delligatti.

He lifted his head, opening his eyes. Listening.

Maybe this exhaustion was from five years of being someone else–several someone elses. From five years of seeing too many wrongs he couldn’t right.

No . . . he had that wrong. Maybe the exhaustion came from being forced to take off the mask that had become so much a part of him. From losing the chance to fix the wrongs within his grasp.

Muffled by the closed windows of the rental car came a sound, familiar and welcome. Now he realized what had caught his attention.

He climbed out quickly. Tipping his head back, he spotted a small plane overhead. He shielded his eyes against the sun.

A Super Cub. Descending. Like a bird heading home.

Home. A real home, like hers. A home where a little boy had all the food he could want, clean clothes, a comfortable bed, toys. And love.

He’d had none of those commodities until the Delligattis had found him. He’d be grateful to Robert Senior and Annette Delligatti for what they’d given him and what they’d saved him from for the rest of his life.

But none of that–his life with the Delligattis, what had come before, or the years as Taumaturgio–had prepared him for what he felt when he looked at Matthew.

Was he fooling himself thinking he could learn to be a real father? What did he know about being a father?

And did he think he had a hope of hiding his gaping ineptitude from Kendra?

At that moment, the plane slipped below a distant line of trees in a gentle, earth-bound angle.

Must be landing.

He started to drop back into the car, then halted abruptly, his right arm resting on the hood of the car.

The plane was landing. Just beyond that line of trees. So there had to be some sort of airport.

And, where there was an airport and planes, he was at home.

*

He was early. When Kendra drove up the next day, he was leaning against his car, pleased with his morning’s work, absorbing the warm sun and the dry breeze while he scanned the sky.

When her car door opened, he forgot about the sky.

She had a skirt on. Dark blue with little splashes of color. Full enough to cover her knee when she swung her left leg out of the car. But then she reached for something on the far side of the passenger seat, leaning into the car, and the skirt molded to the curve of her thigh and hip.

In another instant she had both legs out, with only a discreet amount of calf visible under the skirt’s hem–attractive, but eminently decent. Unlike the memories and desires churning through him, gathering like rain-ripe thunderclouds in his gut.

The sensation of those curved calves rubbing along his leg as slow and mesmerizing as a drum beat. Those thighs pressed against his, holding him to her, in her. Those hips under his hands as he brought her down to him, slowly, then faster and faster. Again and again and–

“Give me a minute to change, and then we can go.”

By the time he’d adjusted his thinking enough to consider answering her, she’d breezed past him and the screen door had thudded closed, rebounded and thudded a couple more times. Leaving him to consider that even good memories sometimes carried pain.

She re-emerged wearing jeans, boots, a battered cowboy hat and a roomy shirt the color of orange sherbet. She buttoned the cuffs as she walked past him without breaking stride.

“You want to drive, Daniel, or do you want me to?”

“I’ll drive, but–”

No sense finishing his sentence because she’d disappeared into his car.

“Head for the home ranch,” she instructed.

“Okay, but–”

“Can you ride?”

He turned to her. Her eyes held definite mischief, but clearly not the kind that came to his mind at hearing her question.

“Ride?” he probed.

Apparently some of his thoughts came through in his tone. She cast him sideways glance, as if checking that the innuendo she’d heard really existed. His face must have confirmed it, because color started up her throat and her jaw firmed even before she faced away from him.

“Horses,” she said shortly.

He knew he was treading a fine line. Push her too hard or too fast, and Kendra Jenner’s wall would get another layer of quick-set concrete. But damn, it felt good to know that behind the wall, the woman from Santa Estella still existed.

“Why?”

“You wanted a tour, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Best way to see the ranch is on horseback. So, can you ride a horse?”

“I never fell off on the merry-go-round,” he drawled.

“Okay, we’ll see if we can fix you up with a wooden horse that goes up and down on a pole.”

“I’d prefer something softer than wood,” he murmured.

She clearly didn’t catch the sexual connotation of that comment, because she chuckled easily.

“If you’re not used to riding, after a few minutes in the saddle, the softest horse’s back can feel like a rock.”

It wasn’t the only thing getting harder. But he didn’t let on.

After he’d followed her directions and parked by the main barn at the home ranch, he took a few minutes getting their lunch–a carton of fried chicken, potato salad and soft drinks–to give himself a cooling off break before following her into the barn.

Kendra was at the far end, saddling a reddish-brown horse. The big doors at both ends of a central aisle had been swung open to catch the dry breeze. Luke Chandler settled a hefty saddle on the back of a dappled gray