A Little Dare. BRENDA JACKSON

have kept him in the dark about his son for ten years.

      After the elder Brockmans had retired and moved away, there had been no way to stay in touch except for Ms. Kate, the owner of Kate’s Diner who’d been close friends with Shelly’s mother. But no matter how many times he had asked Kate about the Brockmans, specifically Shelly, she had kept a stiff lip and a closed mouth.

      A number of the older residents in town who had kept an eye on his and Shelly’s budding romance during those six years had been pretty damn disappointed with the way he had ended things between them. Even his family, who’d thought the world of Shelly, had decided he’d had a few screws loose for breaking up with her.

      He sighed deeply. As sheriff, he of all people should have known she had returned to College Park; he made it his business to keep up with all the happenings around town. She must have come back during the time he had been busy apprehending those two fugitives who’d been hiding out in the area.

      With the form in one hand he picked up the phone with the other. His cousin, Jared Westmoreland, was the attorney in the family and Dare felt the need for legal advice.

      

      “The sheriff needs to take care of few things and would like to see you again in his office when he’s finished.”

      Shelly nodded but none to happily. “Is there anyway I can see my son?”

      The older woman shook her head. “I’m sorry but you can’t see or talk to him until the sheriff completes the paperwork.”

      When the woman walked off Shelly shook her head. What had taken place in Dare’s office had certainly not been the way she’d envisioned telling him about AJ. She walked over to a chair and sat down, wondering how long would it be before she could get AJ and leave. Dare was calling the shots and there wasn’t anything she could do about it but wait. She knew him well enough to know that anger was driving him to strike back at her for what she’d done, what she’d kept from him. A part of her wondered if he would ever forgive her for doing what she’d done, although at the time she’d thought it was for the best.

      “Ms. Brockman?”

      Shelly shifted her gaze to look into the face of a uniformed man who appeared to be in his late twenties. “Yes?”

      “I’m Deputy Rick McKade, and the sheriff wants to see you now.”

      Shelly stood. She wasn’t ready for another encounter with Dare, but evidently he was ready for another one with her.

      “All right.”

      

      This time when she entered Dare’s office he was sitting behind his desk with his head lowered while writing something. She hoped it was the paperwork she needed to get AJ and go home, but a part of her knew the moment Dare lifted his head and looked up at her, that he would not make things easy on her. He was still angry and very much upset.

      “Shelly?”

      She blinked when she realized Dare had been talking. She also realized Deputy McKade had left and closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

      He gazed at her for a long moment. “I said you could have a seat.”

      She shook her head. “I don’t want to sit down, Dare. All I want is to get AJ and take him home.”

      “Not until we talk.”

      She took a deep breath and felt a tightness in her throat. She also felt tired and emotionally drained. “Can we make arrangements to talk some other time, Dare?”

      Shelly regretted making the request as soon as the words had left her mouth. They had pushed him, not over the edge but just about. He stood and covered the distance separating them. The degree of anger on his face actually had her taking a step back. She didn’t ever recall seeing him so furious.

      “Talk some other time? You have some nerve even to suggest something like that. I just found out that I have a son, a ten-year-old son, and you think you can just waltz back into town with my child and expect me to turn my head and look away and not claim what’s mine?”

      Shelly released the breath she’d been holding, hearing the sound of hurt and pain in Dare’s voice. “No, I never thought any of those things, Dare,” she said softly. “In fact, I thought just the opposite, which is why I moved back. I knew once I told you about AJ that you would claim him as yours. And I also knew you would help me save him.”

      Eyes narrowed and jaw tight, Dare stared at her. She watched as immediate concern—a father’s concern—appear in his gaze. “Save him from what?”

      “Himself.”

      She paused, then answered the question she saw flaring in his eyes. “You’ve met him, and I’m sure you saw how angry he is. I can only imagine what sort of an impression he made on you today, but deep down he’s really a good kid, Dare. I began putting in extra hours at the hospital, which resulted in him spending more time with sitters and finding ways to get into trouble, especially at school when he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. That’s the reason I moved back here, to give him a fresh start—with your help.”

      Anger, blatant and intense, flashed in Dare’s eyes. “Are you saying that the only reason you decided to tell me about him and seek my help was because he’d started giving you trouble? What about those years when he was a good kid? Did you not think I had a right to know about his existence then?”

      Shelly held his gaze. “I thought I was doing the right thing by not telling you about him, Dare.”

      A muscle worked in his jaw. “Well, you were wrong. You didn’t do the right thing. Nothing would have been more important to me than being a father to my son, Shelly.”

      A twinge of regret, a fleeting moment of sadness for the ten years of fatherhood she had taken away from him touched Shelly. She had to make him understand why she had made the decision she had that night. “That night you stood before me and said that becoming a FBI agent was all you had ever wanted, Dare, all you had ever dreamed about, and that the reason we couldn’t be together any longer was because of the nature of the work. You felt it was best that as an agent, you shouldn’t have a wife or family.” She blinked back tears when she added. “You even said you were glad I hadn’t gotten pregnant any of those times we had made love.”

      She wiped at her eyes. “How do you think I felt hearing you say that, two months pregnant and knowing that our baby and I stood in the way of you having what you desired most?”

      When AJ’s laughter floated in from the outside, Shelly slowly walked over to the window and looked into the yard below. The boy was watching a uniformed officer give a police dog a bath. This was the first time she had heard AJ laugh in months, and the sheer look of enjoyment on his face at that moment was priceless. She turned back around to face Dare, knowing she had to let him know how she felt.

      “When I found out I was pregnant there was no question in my mind that I wouldn’t tell you, Dare. In fact, I had been anxiously waiting all that night for the perfect time to do so. And then as soon as we were alone, you dropped the bomb on me.”

      She inhaled deeply before continuing. “For six long years I assumed that I had a definite place in your heart. I had actually thought that I was the most important thing to you, but in less than five minutes you proved I was wrong. Five minutes was all it took for you to wash six years down the drain when you told me you wanted your freedom.”

      She stared down at the hardwood floor for a moment before meeting his gaze again. “Although you didn’t love me anymore, I still wanted our child. I knew that telling you about my pregnancy would cause you to forfeit your dream and do what you felt was the honorable thing—spend the rest of your life in a marriage you didn’t want.”

      She quickly averted her face so he wouldn’t see her tears. She didn’t want him to know how much he had hurt her ten years ago. She didn’t want him to see that the scars hadn’t healed; she doubted they ever would.

      “Shelly?”