The Wedding Wager: Dakota Daddy

“I’m sure you care!” she exclaimed bitterly. “Jared, this is all past.”

“I want to know what happened. Answer my damn questions.”

“If you must know, my aunt came to stay with me the last two weeks. My dad never came. After Ethan was six months old, he told me to come back home.”

“Well, I got some damned revenge there. Ethan looks like me. What a blow that must have been.”

“It was to all of us. I prayed he wouldn’t look like you—and that you’d never know,” she said, the coldness and anger clear in her voice.

“Damn it, Megan!”

“Damn it is right! I prayed my baby wouldn’t resemble you in any way and that you’d never know as long as you lived. How can you act like you care now?”

“It’s a shock to discover I have a child. I have questions. And frankly, Megan, I want to know my son.”

She looked as if he’d hit her. And then he could see her pull herself together in that manner she had. She stood taller, a coolness coming to her features.

“Was it difficult for you when you came back home? With one look at Ethan, I’d think anyone would’ve known who his father was.”

“How much gossip there was, I don’t know,” she admitted. “In the course of months, other scandalous things happened around this area, so interest shifted. It didn’t matter after we moved to Santa Fe and it never has again, I’m sure you and I were a major source of gossip until I married Mike. You couldn’t tell who Ethan’s dad was by looking, until after the boy got a full head of hair. While he was a baby, people thought that he was Mike’s child. Dad was smart enough to find a guy who bore a physical resemblance to you—black hair, dark brown eyes, tall. It was inevitable that Ethan would have black hair. No one would give that a thought.”

“I’ll bet my folks never laid eyes on him. One look at him, hair or no hair, and my mom would’ve known.”

“As a matter of fact, they didn’t.”

“Damn it, even if I did walk without telling you good-bye, you should’ve let me know about our baby. I know now, though,” he said coldly. “We’re going to have to work something out,” he said.

She walked away to stand by the floor-to-ceiling glass door before she turned back to face him. “You keep your distance. You forfeited all rights to Ethan when you walked out on me. You’re not coming into our lives now, Jared. Forget that one. I don’t see that you have any rights in the matter.”

“I damn well do. You’re not going to pack and go and take him away from me.”

“I’m going home. You know what happened after you left me, and this is getting us nowhere.”

“How the hell can you walk out of here and try and say good-bye? Understand me, Megan, I intend to get to know my son,” he declared, his temper rising. He clenched his fists and inhaled deeply.

He stood with his hands on his hips and they glared at each other, the clash fierce between them. In spite of all his fury, he wanted her. She was as beautiful and enticing as she was infuriating. Long strands of her black hair had come loose from the clip and fell around her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wide, and she was enticing in spite of the struggle between them. He desired her and he wished she would cooperate with him—both impossibilities.

“All right, we’ll go back to the ranch and discuss it,” he said. “You come to my place or I’ll go to yours. The sun is shining, no rain is predicted and the river has lowered enough that the bridge is definitely above water.”

“I see no point in arguing further,” she said.

“Megan, I will get to know Ethan. That’s a fact, not a wish,” he stated, trying to control his temper, pushed to his limit. “We can discuss what we’re going to do in the future. Your ranch or mine will be more comfortable for both of us and this may take a while.”

She clamped her lips closed for a moment. “I know you’ve had a shock. The drive to the ranch will give you some time to adjust to your new status and to think about all that’s happened. Don’t tear up Ethan’s life. You think about it when you drive home. You’re being selfish again. I know you’re accustomed to thinking only of yourself, but you’ll hurt him if you come into his life. And you’ll raise a hundred questions.”

“You should have thought of those questions,” Jared said. “You should have known that this day would come.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t wanted to buy the ranch,” she said bitterly.

“You might have slipped by if you’d sold it to me. My attorneys would have handled the deal, and I doubt if you and I would have crossed paths except at the closing, and then you would have left for New Mexico and I would’ve gone on my way. Big error, Megan, if you’d really hoped to keep me from Ethan.”

Her face flushed and he knew he’d been correct in all he’d stated.

“Perhaps, but I couldn’t bear the thought of selling to you. You get what you want in life too easily.”

“Well, now you pay the price for that refusal.”

Frowning, she picked up her purse and hurried to the door. “If you insist, I’ll see you at my ranch. I’m not taking any chance of getting marooned at yours again.”

Grabbing his coat, he caught up to hold the door and walk out with her. “We’ll start another flurry of rumors by this little interlude in the hotel.”

“I can’t worry about that. I don’t plan to live here,” she said. “I don’t have many close friends here any longer. The few that I have are close enough to understand and to know that there will never be anything between you and me again.”

“You can’t foretell the future,” he said.

“I can predict that much with certainty. There’s too much bitterness on either side for it to vanish.”

He didn’t answer, his mind reeling with his discovery and what he’d learned from her. He escorted her to the street where she motioned with her hand. “My car is parked right there. I’ll see you at home.”

“All right. This will give you time to think, too.”

She nodded and walked quickly away. His gaze traveled over her, looking at the sway of her hips and her leggy stride while he thought about their future. He hurried to his car and in minutes he was out of town.

As he drove to the ranch, he pored over their conversation. His mind kept going back to that startling moment when Ethan looked up at him. Jared vowed that he wasn’t going to be out of Ethan’s life. Megan wasn’t thinking straight, and he knew he had rights. He’d heard too much about a birth father’s rights. He’d never let her cut him out of Ethan’s life now.

Damn her bastard father. Now Jared could understand her bitterness and anger. Why hadn’t she called and let him know? No undoing the past now—but he wasn’t leaving here without settling up when and how he could have Ethan with him and be talking to Ethan as his father.

Now he could understand her frightened and unhappy aunt and uncle’s reactions. Only Ethan was oblivious to the emotional tempest swirling around him.

Realizing how fast he was driving, Jared eased his foot and set cruise control while his mind was still on Ethan. All the years of Ethan’s life he had missed, babyhood, toddler—it hurt, and he vowed that this distance was going to end as soon as possible.

He tried to think of ways they could share Ethan’s life. They needed solutions, not accusations and anger. How could they work it out to share their child, when they had such disparate lives, and while she was so furious with him?

In front of Megan’s ranch house, he spotted her car outside her garage. As he crossed the porch, she opened the door. “Come in, Jared,” she said.

He entered a wide hallway that he hadn’t seen for the past seven years, recalling the last time he’d walked along the hall and out the front door. He’d been hurt, his life had changed and he wouldn’t see Megan again—until this year. All because of her father.

He followed her into a spacious living area that was just as he remembered, with a huge stone fireplace, animal head trophies on the walls, a large gilt-framed portrait of her father, Edlund, on one wall and a smaller picture of Megan beside it. Leather-covered furniture filled the room, along with a wide-screen television and ceiling fans that slowly turned overhead. The polished wood floor held Navajo rugs. Window shutters were open. Memories crowded him—some not good.

She turned to face him. “Let’s get this over with. I hope you’ve done some thinking and that you’ve calmed. Jared, your life is too busy to give much attention to a child.”

“Your life isn’t busy?” he asked with cynicism.

“Of course it is. But I don’t travel the world or have much social life or have any lifestyle like you do, and my kiln and studio are at home, and my gallery is attached to the house, so I can be with him when he’s home.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Oh, please!” she replied. “You have an interest in him because of the novelty of discovering you’re related to him.”