Daniel's Daddy

By nightfall the rain had stopped. Jess took Daniel to a nearby café where home-cooked meals were served smorgasbord-style. Jess was glad to see Daniel hungry and eating his fried chicken and accompanying vegetables. He’d been afraid the trip up here and the ordeal of the funeral might have upset Daniel, but thankfully his son seemed to be taking it all in stride.

They had ice cream for dessert, then Jess, deciding neither he nor Daniel was ready to go back to the old house just yet, drove the two of them out on the interstate for a few miles. The desert highway was more or less empty, other than a freight train headed west. Stopped at the railroad crossing, Daniel watched the long line of cars until it disappeared into the far darkness. After that, Jess turned their truck back toward Lordsburg. He still had a lot of things in his father’s house he needed to go through and the sooner he could get it done and over with, the better he’d like it.

“Can we go to Hannah’s house now?” Daniel asked, breaking into his father’s dismal thoughts.

Surprised by the request, Jess looked at his son. “You must have really liked Hannah,” he said.

Daniel nodded. “She was nice.”

“You think so, huh. Well, I think she thought you were nice, too.”

Daniel bounced his legs up and down on the vinyl seat. “I wish Hannah could be my mommy.”

Jess very nearly slammed on the brakes. “You what!”

“I wish she could be my mommy,” Daniel repeated with exaggerated patience. “You know I don’t have one.”

Jess let out a weary breath. Oh, do I ever know it, he thought guiltily. “I know you want a mommy, son. But I—” He stopped midsentence and glanced curiously at Daniel. “Why do you wish Hannah could be your mommy?”

The little boy shrugged one shoulder, then the other. “Just because. Because she’s nice. And she smells good. And she’s pretty.”

So Daniel thought Hannah was pretty and he wanted her to be his mother. Jess couldn’t have been more shocked. Not because Daniel had asked outright for a mother. He’d been hounding Jess for some time now on the subject. But he’d never gone so far as to pick out a specific woman for the role. And Hannah was very different from any of the women Daniel had been around, including Louise, the woman who’d been his baby-sitter since the child’s infancy. What was it about Hannah that had prompted Daniel to say such things?

“Well…I guess that is true,” Jess began slowly, knowing if he didn’t say something soon, Daniel would start to question him. “Hannah is nice and pretty.” Jess had never thought of her as pretty, but through the eyes of a child, people often looked different. And now that he thought about it, he had to admit that there was something about her that stirred him, too. Something soft and feminine and even sexy. “But I really doubt she wants to be a mommy.”

“Why?”

Jess stifled a sigh. He should have been expecting that. “Why? Well, she’s not married. And only married ladies want to be mommies.”

“Then you could marry her, Daddy. Louise says if you got married, I’d get a mommy.”

Jess silently cursed the older woman for opening her mouth about such things to Daniel. And how on earth could a boy who wasn’t quite four yet remember such a thing?

“Well, that’s true,” Jess was forced to agree. “But I don’t want to get married.”

Daniel folded his little arms across his chest and pushed out his lower lip. Jess braced himself for the whining and pleading to come. But after one, then three, then five miles passed and Daniel remained stubbornly quiet, Jess ventured a hopeful look at his son.

“We’re still buddies, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said, but without much enthusiasm.

“You haven’t forgotten that we’re going to that baseball game when we get home. Tracie and Dwight will be there.”

Jess’s friend, Dwight, was also a fellow border patrolman and Tracie was his wife. Since they didn’t have any children yet, the couple doted on Daniel. And Daniel was crazy about them. But tonight, the mention of their names only brought a glum nod from Daniel.

After that, Jess decided the best thing to do was let the matter drop. In a few days, when Daniel was back at home with Louise, he’d forget all about this thing with Hannah. Jess couldn’t start worrying and fretting just because Daniel thought he wanted one certain woman to be his mother.

He wasn’t going to worry, Jess muttered to himself as he turned the truck down a residential street. Who was he kidding? He worried about Daniel all the time. He was constantly asking himself if he was doing the right things for his son, spending enough time with him, teaching him what he should know and more than anything, giving him the love he knew the child needed.

A kid needed love from two parents. Jess knew that better than anyone. So he made an extra effort to give his son his time and his affection. But that was hard to do when his job demanded he work long hours. And in two weeks, Louise was moving to Tucson to live with her sister.

Two weeks? No, it was less than two weeks now, he realized. That’s how long he had to find some kind, gentle, trustworthy woman to take care of his son. Lord, how was he going to do it? It had been so easy with Louise. She lived right next door to him. She was always home and available to keep Daniel at any hour Jess called upon her. He didn’t have to be told that it was going to be nearly impossible to find someone to replace her.

Daniel wants a mother. Yeah, he probably did, Jess answered the voice inside him. Not probably, he did want a mother, Jess corrected himself. But Daniel needed to learn he couldn’t go around picking a woman to be his mother just because she was nice and smelled good. Besides that, Jess wasn’t about to let some woman tie him up in emotional knots again. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let one into Daniel’s life, then have her tear his heart apart by leaving. No way. It was better for him not to have a mother at all than to have one who would skip out on them when the going got rough.

A few moments later, Jess pulled into the driveway of his father’s house. He and Daniel climbed out of the truck and started walking over to the porch. Lord, the place looked bleak. This was the place Jess had once called home, but now it seemed not much more than a run-down piece of real estate. A big part of the stucco was eroding, leaving shallow pits and holes in the outside walls of the house. The gables hadn’t seen paint in years, and the yard, what little there was of it, was nothing more than sand with a few clumps of sage and grama grass growing here and there. Looking the way it did, he knew it was going to be hard to sell the property.

Jess glanced over his shoulder at Hannah’s house. A couple of lights were on behind the lace curtains at the windows and Jess wondered what she did in her spare time. What would he find her doing if he went over there right now?

The question left him grunting with amusement. Whatever it was, he’d bet it wasn’t entertaining a man.

He unlocked the door, but before he pushed it open, he glanced over at Hannah’s once again. Daniel was right in one respect, he thought. Someone like her was just what he needed to take Louise’s place. He’d bet his life that Hannah would be dependable. She probably never raised her voice, and judging by the sweet bread she’d brought over today, she could obviously cook, so Daniel wouldn’t constantly be fed snack foods. Too bad she lived in Lordsburg instead of Douglas, he thought.

Hannah couldn’t sleep and she didn’t know why. She’d read for hours, drank herbal tea and watched a boring late-night talk show on TV, but she was still wide-awake.

She blamed her restlessness on Frank Malone’s funeral. She hated funerals. But then, who didn’t? However, she’d especially hated this one because it had reminded her of her mother’s funeral; only a handful of mourners there, no family except one lonely offspring.

Poor Jess. She hurt for him because she knew how alone he must be feeling. And poor little Daniel. He would grow up without his grandfather.

As if the lights across the street were beckoning her, Hannah walked over to the picture window and looked out. Jess was still up. Though she couldn’t detect him through the curtainless windows, she could see parts of the cluttered living room. What was he doing at this hour? It was after two in the morning.

Was he so upset over his father’s passing, he couldn’t rest? Hannah hated to think so. Although his son was with him, he was more or less alone and she wondered why. Surely he had someone to whom he was close. Someone who could have come along with him for emotional support.

For the umpteenth time, Hannah wondered if Jess was married. After all, he had a son. True, a man didn’t have to be married to have a son, she quickly reminded herself. But there had to be a woman somewhere, she rationalized. So where was she? Back at home, taking care of other obligations?

That idea made Hannah snort with disapproval. If that was the case, Jess Malone didn’t have himself much of a wife or lover. Now if Hannah were married to Jess, she would have never let him and Daniel come here on their own to deal with their loved one’s death.

Lord have mercy, she was losing it, Hannah thought with a self-deprecating shake of her head. Imagining herself as Jess Malone’s wife and Daniel’s mother! She’d never be married. Much less to a man like him!

The knock at the door had Hannah bolting straight up out of a dead sleep. Her heart beating wildly in her chest, she glanced around, disoriented, until she finally realized she’d fallen asleep sometime early this morning on the living-room couch.

The knock came again. Louder this time.

Hannah wrapped the white plissé robe more tightly around her and hurried to answer the door. When she opened it and saw that the caller was Jess Malone, she very nearly gasped out loud.

“Jess. Is—uh—is something wrong?” Her eyes darted quickly downward at Daniel, who was clinging to his father’s hand and smiling broadly up at her.

Jess stared at Hannah. He hadn’t expected to wake her at this hour. It was eight-thirty. He’d figured she was an early riser, even on Saturdays. But it was obvious from her appearance that he’d woken her. She looked different. Very different with her long red hair down and curling wildly around her face and shoulders. Although she was holding the robe tightly together at her throat for modesty’s sake, Jess couldn’t help but notice the way the white material was stretched against her breasts, outlining their feminine shape. Pure male attraction surged through him, blotting out that part of his brain that was telling him to quit staring.

“Uh—no. We were just—” he thrust the empty thermos bottle at her “—returning your thermos.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten,” she said, then quickly added, “But there was no need for you to bother.”

The early-morning breeze caught at her hair and blew it in her face. One of her hands let go of the robe to push it back, allowing the fabric to fall away and expose the smooth skin of her throat.

Needing no further invitation, Jess’s eyes slid downward, hoping the wind would do what his fingers were itching to do. Part the robe even more and expose the creamy swell of her breasts.

She blushed furiously as she noticed Jess looking at her. Suddenly, he felt ridiculous because she’d caught him staring. Dear God, he was in trouble when he started fantasizing about a thirty-three-year-old spinster!