The Paternity Proposition. Merline Lovelace

sweaty nose. With a pilot’s quick grasp of the essentials, she catalogued sun-streaked tawny hair and linebacker shoulders encased in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up on muscular forearms. A silver belt buckle glinted in the July sun above a pair of pleated black slacks that only men with flat bellies and lean hips could carry off.

      This guy did more than carry them off. He could have modeled them in any catalogue or on any website in the Western World, with some pouty, anorexic model draped all over him. Julie was thoroughly enjoying the view until he peeled off his sunglasses and hooked them in the open neck of his shirt.

      “Omigod!”

      She recognized those lean hips and wide shoulders now. She should! They’d pinned her to the sheets a year or so ago.

      A different kind of heat slammed into her. Swift and furious and completely unexpected. She felt its scorch as images tumbled into her head. This man, lean and sleek with sweat, while she straddled his hips. His hands on her breasts, her hips. Hers exploring every inch of the gorgeous male stretched out beneath her.

      And she could barely remember his name! Andy? Aaron?

      Her inability to extract that bit of data from the searing memories acted like a bucket of cold water, dousing the heat and all but making Julie cringe. She didn’t tumble into bed with complete strangers! Ever! Except for that one time, and never would again. She was too careful, too precise, and too fastidious for one-night stands.

      Normally.

      If he hadn’t swooped into that small airport outside Nuevo Laredo in a spiffy, twin-engine Gulfstream …

      If they hadn’t bumped into each other in the operations shack …

      If he hadn’t offered to buy her a beer …

      Oh, for Pete’s sake! All the if’s in the world wouldn’t erase the idiocy of that wild night. Or her anxious hours after their insane marathon of sex. They’d used a condom. Several, in fact. But she’d been late the following month. Almost ten days.

      She’d realized afterward that was probably due to her erratic hours and disrupted sleep cycles, but those were a tense ten days. Just remembering her dread when she’d walked into a drugstore to purchase a pregnancy kit made Julie shove her sunglasses back up her nose with a grimy finger. She wanted no trace of that nerve-racking experience to show when she greeted this ghost from her not-so-distant past.

      Or didn’t greet him. He flicked her no more than a quick, dismissive glance as he strode up to the engine stand and directed his remarks to Agro-Air’s chief mechanic.

      “I’m looking for Julie Bartlett. Is she around?”

      Part Cherokee, part Afro-American and not particularly inclined to socialize at the best of times, Chuck looked the newcomer up and down.

      “Might be,” he drawled, shifting his plug to the other cheek again. “Who wants to know?”

      “My name’s Dalton. Alex Dalton.”

      Aha! Alex. The name clicked in Julie’s head as Chuck gave the man another laconic once-over.

      “You in the casino business?”

      Obviously surprised by the question, Dalton shook his head. “No. Oil field equipment. Julie Bartlett,” he repeated. “Is she here?”

      Chuck left it to her to answer, which she did. First, however, she swiped her hands on the rag again and dragged in a long, steadying breath.

      “Yes, I am.”

      She could accept the fact that he hadn’t recognized her at first in baggy coveralls and baseball cap. She wasn’t real happy with the second look he zinged her way, however. Was that surprise in those laser-blue eyes? Or disbelief that he’d hooked up with this grimy grease monkey? Whatever it was, it stung. Consequently Julie’s next comment was more than a tad cool. “What can I do for you, Dalton?”

      “I’d like to speak with you.” He shot a glance at Chuck. “Privately.”

      She was tempted to tell him to say whatever he had to say right here. That brief look still rankled.

      “All right. Let’s go inside. The office is air-conditioned.”

      Even Dusty would admit “office” was a grandiose term for the plywood cubicle sectioned off inside the metal hangar. But it boasted an air-conditioner that sat on a precarious platform in the partition’s only window and did valiant battle against the July heat.

      The chilled air hit with a welcome slap as Julie motioned Dalton inside and shut the door behind him. He stood for a moment, looking around. She could imagine what the place must look like to an outsider. It had certainly made her gulp when she’d walked in two months ago. Weather reports, spraying schedules, fuel bills and chemical invoices littered every available horizontal surface, almost burying the computer Dusty had acquired sometime back in the Middle Ages. A crook-necked lamp tilted haphazardly on the Army surplus desk. A chair was wedged behind the desk, another in a corner next to a much-dinged and dented metal file cabinet.

      Dusty’s one-eyed, twenty-pound sloth of a cat lay sprawled across the seat of the corner chair. Belinda opened her good eye to a golden slit and twitched her whiskers, sniffing for the spicy tacos Dusty fed her two or three times a day. When she ascertained the arrivals had come empty-handed, she immediately lost interest and rolled onto her back to display a fat, freckled belly.

      Julie started to nudge the animal off the chair when a glance at Dalton’s crisp white shirt and black slacks stayed her hand. If he sat, he’d get up again wearing a layer of cat hair. He appeared to reach the same conclusion. After a glance at Belinda’s freckled, two-acre belly, he opted to stand.

      Julie still couldn’t reconcile this cool, sophisticated executive type with the cocky pilot she’d hooked up with for a few, intense hours. ‘Course, he hadn’t been this cool or remote then. He’d been all over her, and she him. Cursing the flush that came so readily with her dark red hair, Julie shoved the lingering image of his hard thighs and muscled shoulders out of her head and leaned against the front of Dusty’s desk.

      “We’re as private as we’re going to get,” she said with a nod to the cat. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

      Instead of answering, he parried her question with one of his own. “Do you remember me?”

      Like she could forget? Still, a girl had to save some face.

      “Took me a moment after you got out of the car,” she said with a shrug, “but I finally placed you. Nuevo Laredo, a year or so ago.”

      His gaze dropped from her face to her baggy coveralls. He did a better job of masking his thoughts this time but Julie could guess what he was thinking.

      “Looks like you’re having trouble placing me,, though,” she said drily. Tugging off her ball cap, she tossed it on the cluttered desk. Her sunglasses followed. “Does that help?”

      Recognition registered the instant his gaze went from her tumble of auburn hair to her odd-colored eyes. One was green, the other a cross between hazel and brown.

      He’d teased her about them, Julie remembered with a sudden kick, before dropping lazy kisses on both eyelids. After which he’d burned a slow, delicious line to her mouth, her chin and the hollow of her throat before contorting to torture the tips of her breasts with his teeth and tongue.

      Just the memory of that erotic assault made the aforementioned tips get all tight and tingly. Then his mouth slid into a grin, and her traitorous nipples jumped to instant attention.

      “Yeah,” he admitted, “it does.”

      Whoa! There was the man she remembered. That slow, sexy smile crinkled the tanned skin at the corners of his eyes and transformed him from merely mouthwatering to Greek-god-gorgeous.

      That’s all it had taken, Julie remembered ruefully. That killer grin. Followed by dinner, a couple of beers, several shared war stories