Cherokee Dad. Sheri WhiteFeather

as willing as she’d been, he hadn’t touched her. He’d promised Reed that he wouldn’t.

      Michael could still recall the day Heather had confronted him, the sunny afternoon she’d challenged that promise.

      They’d been at the edge of the lake, skimming stones across the water. She’d been wearing shorts and a halter top, her hair shimmering in glorious waves.

      “Why haven’t you ever kissed me?” she’d asked.

      He’d dropped the stone in his hand, plunking it in the water.

      “You’re still a kid,” he told her.

      “No, I’m not.” She came toward him, as fresh as the Hill Country air, as graceful as a palomino. “I’m all grown up.”

      Blood rushed from his head to his feet. She was everything he wanted. And more. “You’re jailbait.”

      She frowned, and he could see that he’d wounded her. He knew she had feelings for him, an attraction that had deepened over the years.

      But she was dangerous. He spent too many nights thinking about her. Fantasizing. Driving himself crazy with what he longed to do to her. “You’re Reed’s sister. I promised him I’d stay away.”

      “You and Reed hardly get along anymore.”

      “It doesn’t matter. It was still a promise. I can’t go back on my word.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, doing his damnedest not to touch her, to hold her, to feel her heartbeat stumble against his. “Come see me when you’re eighteen.” When her brother couldn’t interfere. “Ask me to kiss you then.”

      Instead she’d asked him to marry her, right then and there, in a secret Cherokee ceremony. Then they could be together, she’d said, no matter how old she was.

      For an instant, one torturous instant, Michael had been tempted. Just to be with her, just to take what she was offering.

      In the end, he’d told her it was a crazy idea. But so was trying to get her out of his system.

      He’d spent the next two years, the next twenty-four months dating other girls, other blondes who never quite filled the ache—the desperate, sexual consumption.

      Then finally, on Heather’s eighteenth birthday, she’d come to him. Without the slightest hesitation, he’d made love to her, taking her virginity, making her his.

      Yet no matter how many times they joined, how many hot, torrid nights they climaxed in each other’s arms, he feared the obsession, the emotional power she wielded over him.

      Michael didn’t want to fall in love. He’d seen how it had affected his mother, the destruction it caused. The only man she’d ever loved, Michael’s freewheeling father, had kicked her square in the heart.

      The way Heather had eventually done to him.

      He should have never asked her to live with him. He—

      “Michael?”

      He cleared his mind. Or tried to. The past still seemed like the present—the frustration, the emotional turmoil, the fear. “What?”

      “I need your help.”

      He squinted. “With what?”

      “With the baby.”

      He glanced at Justin. The kid tested the perimeters of his confinement, holding on to the sides and rattling the cage. “How so?”

      “I need you to commit to being his father.”

      Michael’s pulse shot up his arm. “You said the West Coast family already thinks I am.”

      “I know, but everyone else has to think that, too. If we don’t keep up the pretense they might find out the truth.”

      “You have no right to ask this of me. To expect me to raise your brother’s son.”

      “I’m not expecting you to do it forever. Just for a few months.”

      He almost glanced at Justin again, then decided not to. What if the boy flashed one of those big, goofy grins? Smiled at him the way he’d smiled at Heather?

      She set her coffee aside, and he suspected it had gone cold. As cold as the blood flowing through his veins. He didn’t want to play papa to Reed Blackwood’s baby, not even for a short time.

      “I’ve worked out the details,” she told him. “I’ll stay in Texas for a few months, and we can feign a reunion. But our attempt to renew our relationship will fail, and I’ll leave town to start a new life. For appearance’s sake, we’ll keep in touch about the baby. You’ll be the concerned father without having to get too involved.”

      He gave her an incredulous look. Did she think that feigning a relationship wasn’t getting involved? Or publicly claiming a child who wasn’t his?

      “What makes you think I don’t have a new woman in my life, that I’m not dating someone?” he asked, reminding her of how long she’d been gone.

      Her voice quavered. “Do you? Are you?”

      “No.” But he was glad to see the suggestion had rattled her, that he’d planted a seed to make her wonder. The way he’d wondered for eighteen grueling months if she’d run off with another man, if that had been the reason she’d disappeared.

      “You should have risked a phone call, Heather. You should have called me. Just once.”

      “I wanted to. So many times, I wanted to.”

      “But you didn’t.”

      She glanced at the mist-fogged window, at the overcast light shadowing the room. “I thought about you every day.”

      He’d thought about her, too. She was always there, the beautiful ghost from his past, the girl who’d disappeared.

      She twisted her hands on her lap, and he noticed her nails were bitten to the quick. He considered apologizing for the barb about another woman, but decided he would sound like a wuss, like he was still obsessed with her.

      He held his ground. “Why didn’t you think about me before you took off to California? Before you got tangled up in this mess?”

      “You wouldn’t allow me to see my own brother. What was I supposed to do?”

      Michael turned cynical. “Everything is always about Reed.”

      “This is about Justin. An innocent child.” Her eyes turned watery. “Please understand. This is important. More important than you can imagine. Beverly’s dad will probably keep an eye on us, just to see if we hear from Reed. He’ll probably try to lure information from people we know. So I need to make sure everyone we socialize with believes Justin is our baby. If a rumor leaks that he could be Reed’s son—”

      He cursed before she could finish her sentence. What in the hell was he supposed to do? Ignore her plea? Let the mob take the boy away from her?

      “Two months,” he said. “And I’m explaining the entire farce to my uncle.”

      “No!” She nearly flew off the sofa. “You can’t tell anyone. Not another living soul. This has to be our secret. The lie we take to our graves.”

      “It isn’t right.” He hadn’t lied to his uncle since he was a kid, a smart-mouthed youth who hadn’t given a damn about anyone but himself.

      “Please.” She went to the baby and picked him up. “Please.”

      Michael frowned, and Justin took that moment to smile, to blow bubbles at him.

      Damn. Damn. Damn.

      “All right,” he said as the boy’s slobbery grin tunneled an unwelcome path straight to his cautious, it’ll-be-over-in-two-months heart.

      The day passed quickly, but as evening