Daddy By Decision

She’d smiled in return, lifted one eyebrow, and shut her door, leaving his question unanswered.

She wasn’t that Jessica Bell anymore. That woman seemed alien to her now. If she were different now, so, too, must he be. Inside. Outside. They weren’t the same people at all. So why was her heart still pumping so hard she felt as if she’d run a race? What possible impact on her life could a chance encounter at the Palmetto Mart mean at this point in her life?

Diddly. That’s what.

She braked the car in the driveway. Home. Hers. One she’d bought and paid for by herself. Downstairs in the family room a solitary splash of blue-white from the television broke the thickness of the night. Skeezix lumbered out behind her, woofing and circling her, weaving in and out between her legs until she laid her hand on top of his head. “Quiet, dopey. You want to wake up the whole neighborhood?” Two different canine greetings answered Skeezix.

The front door opened. A tiny silhouette in the rectangle of the doorjamb tilted his head and scrubbed at his eyes. “Hey,” he said sleepily.

“Hey yourself, sugar.” She swung him up over Skeezix and into her arms. “It’s mighty late. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Me and Aunt Lolly waited for you. But we was hungry, so we ate all the pizza. Ev’ry last bite.” He spread his arms wide and clasped her around the neck, his chubby bare arms tight against her. “Loofah chewed the cheese off the cardboard.”

“Bad dog.”

“She was hungry, too.”

“I guess that’s okay, then.” Jessie nuzzled the warm, sweaty neck of her son. “C’mon, sugar, let’s say good night to Auntie Lolly and get you to bed.”

“‘Kay.” His soft hair tickled her nose as he leaned against her and fixed her with eyes as blue as her own. “But I am not at all tired.”

“No?”

“Nope. Not sleepy at all.”

Jessie stumbled against Skeezix, who’d crowded in behind her as she closed the door. Gopher tilted over her arm and blew a kiss at the dog. “Night, Skeezes. Sleep tight.” Her son glanced shrewdly up at her. “Skeezes isn’t sleepy. Me and Skeezes’ll sleep better together, right?”

Laughing, Jessie scrunched him to her. “Is that so, sugardoll?”

“Yep,” he said with satisfaction as his head drooped against her breast and his thumb found its way to his small mouth. “That’s so.”

Waiting inside the arch to the family room, her neighbor and honorary aunt Lolly rolled her eyes. “He did take a long nap. But he’s been going nonstop since he woke up. Can you give me some of whatever you’re feeding him? So I can keep up?” Her bony freckled face was cheerfully rueful. “We’ve dug worms, we’ve walked the dogs, we’ve made brownies. And taken three baths. Lord love a duck, Jessie, how do you keep up with him?”

“Practice.” Jessie anchored Gopher higher on one shoulder and slid open her desk drawer, reaching inside for her checkbook. “Hang on for a minute while I carry him up to bed, will you? And then I’ll write you a check if that’s okay?”

“You don’t have to pay me, Jess. I told you, I love staying with Gopher. Anyway, what else do I have to do most nights?”

“Take the check, Lolly. It’s better this way. Your time’s valuable, too, you know, no matter what you choose to do with it.” With her hip balancing the weight of her son and one arm curled around his rear, Jessie scribbled on a check. If she didn’t, Lolly would be gone before Jessie could come back downstairs. “And who knows? One of these nights you might decide to go out and do something wild and crazy.”

“Oh, sure,” Lolly scoffed, her face crumpling into soft folds of humor. “You seen any gents looking for sixty-twoyear-old dates?”

“Sure, but you can go out with a guy for company. Doesn’t have to be a date.” Jessie shifted Gopher and handed Lolly the check. “And you have friends. You could go to the movies. Or to the theater over in Sarasota? Lolly, listen. Life’s too short to pull up the drawbridge and hide out forever. You’ve got a lot of years ahead of you. Enjoy them. Go out. Party. Even if the wildest you get is going to the DeSoto Salad Bar.”

“Maybe.” Lolly opened the door.

With Lolly, “maybe” meant “no way.”

Lolly stuffed the check inside her vinyl purse. “Jess, I’ll take Loofah and Mitzi home with me. You can pick them up tomorrow if you’re going to use them at the rehab center.”

“Right. I’ll come get them. I wanted to give Skeezix the day off. Loofah and Mitzi work really well. They’re sweethearts. The patients are crazy about them.” Jessie blew Lolly a kiss and headed up the stairs, Gopher murmuring in her ear all the way.

“I luuv Lolly. And I luuuv Skeezes and I love my mommy and Loofah—”

“I know, sugar, and I luuuv you.” She kissed his soft cheek where a red scratch testified to his busy day. “Let’s tuck you in bed and you can tell me all about your day.” Pulling back the faded purple dinosaur sheets, Jessie slid him under the light cover and shucked off her sneakers, climbing in beside him. “Oof, sugar, you’re getting so big.”

“That’s my job,” he told her sleepily. “Going to Sunny Days Early Learning Preschool, and coloring and getting big. I luuuuv Sunny Days.” He wriggled his rump into the curve of her arm and waist.

Curling him close to her, his tough little body radiating heat, Jessie shut her eyes wearily. “So how many worms did you collect for our fishing trip tomorrow, sugar?”

“Maybe seventy-leven zillion.” He half rose and kissed the underneath side of her chin, a sweet, damp press of not-quitebaby mouth that never failed to squeeze her heart.

“That should do the trick,” she said, hugging him tightly to her, this child, a child she’d never expected, hadn’t wanted yet would die for. Smoothing his hair off his forehead, she returned his kiss. Her child.

But it was Jonas Buckminster’s intense eyes she saw in the darkness as she drifted into sleep beside her son.

Sometime before dawn the phone rang in the stuffy room of Maxie’s Motel, dragging Buck out of a fitful sleep where he’d been running and running and running, chasing something, someone, the figure disappearing into shadows and mist In the dream where an iron band squeezed his heart, he’d needed to stop that figure, ask it—what? Something. He yawned. Sheets twisted around his naked body, wound in between his legs. Groggy, mouth dry, he fumbled for the phone, lifting it to his ear.

His brother T.J. spoke, the words fast and harsh. “Daddy’s in the hospital, Buck.”

He sat up, pulling free of sweaty sheets. “What? You’re kidding. He was fine today at Mama’s birthday party.”

T.J. paused, and Buck heard the unspoken words in the tension in T.J.’s voice. “I don’t know. No one’s said anything yet. I don’t know what happened, but Mama wants you here. Can you come?”

“Yeah. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Static crackled between them. “Good thing you stayed over, Buck.”

“Yeah.” There was nothing more to be said.

Hanging up the phone, Buck rubbed his eyes. Hoyt? In the hospital? There must be a mistake. Tough, as strong as the oak tree on the Tyler ranch that now belonged to T.J., Hoyt was immortal. A man among men, the patriarch of patriarchs. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood couldn’t walk in his shadow.

Shrugging into jeans, Buck zipped and snapped with steady fingers while the air conditioner labored in the muggy air. Hoyt was going to be fine. Nothing else was possible. Jamming loose change into one pocket and his wallet into the threadbare rear pocket, Buck scanned the shadows of the room.

Funny, but he’d almost decided to drive back down to Okeechobee last night. Instead he’d stayed and checked the listings for McDonalds in the Tarpon City phone book. Too many to call, so he’d tossed the book on the floor and crawled into bed.

If he hadn’t stayed, he would have been out in the pasture, too far away to make it back to Tarpon City before late evening. Fate. Shaking his head, he grabbed the Jeep keys from the round table near the window.

On the scarred and peeling veneer of the bed stand, the toy car glittered in the predawn watery light, gold flecks sparkling in its bright red metal.

A quick flash of memory stilled him. The keys dangled from his slack fingers.

Her head bent away from him, that streaky hair curling and sliding every which way, she’d hesitated, her hand lingering on the toy. And, briefly glimpsed in the monitor, her squarechinned face with its wide mouth.

Like mist on the bayou, memory swirled gently through his brain. Picking up the toy, he frowned as he touched the smooth, sleek finish.

Chapter Two (#ulink_b707e4ad-7f6b-54f6-a702-fb31f12b7f5c)

Buck shut the door to his room and jogged to the Jeep through the dim parking lot where gray shadows lingered under cabbage palms and moss-draped oaks. Even before sunrise, heat radiated up from the black asphalt and thickened the humid air.