The Paternity Proposition. Merline Lovelace

this tall. Or this intimidating. He stood so close she could make out the gold tips of his lashes, the faint white scar on one side of his chin, the utter determination in those deadly blue eyes.

      Julie was no shrimp. At five-eight, she’d had to shoehorn into more than one cramped cockpit. She’d also learned to extricate herself from tricky situations while flying in and out of some less than desirable locales. Dalton topped her by a good four or five inches, however, and right now he looked as tough as any of the macho hotheads she’d encountered over the years.

      “Look,” he said, making an obvious effort to rein in his temper, “this isn’t just about you or me. We need to know the baby’s parentage for health reasons, if nothing else.”

      Well, hell! She hadn’t considered that. Of course they would want to know if there was a history of serious diseases somewhere in the child’s family tree. Julie almost caved then. Would have, if Dalton hadn’t added a tight-jawed kicker.

      “We’ll pay you.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “A thousand in cash for a DNA sample right here, right now.”

      She had to fight for breath. Not only did he think she would abandon her own baby, now he appeared to believe she had to be bribed to prove she was telling the truth. If Julie had a wrench in her hand right now, this jerk would be parting his hair on the other side for a long, long time to come.

      “Get … out!”

      His jaw worked. Those blue eyes iced into her. “This isn’t over between us,” he warned.

      “What are you gonna do?” she sneered. “Get your PI to follow me around and snatch my coffee cup to steal a saliva sample?”

      “That’s one option. There are others.”

      He let his glance make a circuit of the messy office. Slowly. Deliberately. Then he brought that knife-edged gaze back to her.

      “The offer’s on the table for the next twenty-four hours. Think about it.”

      She ached to give him a few things to think about. A swift knee to the gonads came immediately to mind. She settled for slamming the door behind him so hard it bounced back and almost whapped her in the face.

      Two

      “A thousand dollars!”

      Dusty Jones’s creased, roadmap of a face lit up with delight. He’d returned less than a half hour after Alex Dalton’s departure. A small, bow-legged old coot with wiry gray hair that sprang out in every direction beneath a beat-up straw Stetson, he strutted like a banty rooster whenever he wasn’t in the cockpit. He wasn’t strutting now. He was slapping his knee and whooping with glee.

      “Whoooeee! A thousand for a hair or a lick of spit! That’ll almost pay for the chemicals I ordered last week.”

      “You ordered a new load?”

      Momentarily diverted from the subject of Alex Dalton’s outrageous offer, Julie brought the front legs of her chair down with a thud. The violent movement provoked a hiss from Belinda. After scarfing up the tacos Dusty had faithfully delivered, the cat had draped herself across Julie’s lap like a fat, furry blanket. She now proceeded to announce her displeasure at having her post-taco siesta disturbed by digging her claws into Julie’s thigh. The needle-sharp talons pierced right through her coveralls and came close to drawing blood.

      “Ow!” Julie returned the cat’s one-eyed glare and detached her claws before appealing to the second man crammed into the tiny office. “Chuck, will you puh-leez remind our partner we still haven’t paid for the last load of chemicals?”

      The mechanic shifted his plug and dutifully complied. “We ain’t paid for the last load, Dusty.”

      Julie ground her back teeth. If she didn’t love these two geezers so much, she’d let them sink and get back to having a life! Hanging on to her temper with both white-knuckled fists, she glared at her partner.

      “You promised!”

      “I know, I know.” Dusty rubbed a thorny palm across the back of his neck. “But we’re coming up on winter wheat planting season. Can’t make any money if we don’t service our customers. So give this guy Dalton some spit, missy, and get us out of the hole.”

      “Didn’t you hear me?” Julie asked, exasperated. “The man thinks I dumped a baby on his doorstep.”

      “Thought you said it was his mother’s doorstep.”

      She flapped an impatient hand. “His, hers, what difference does it make?”

      “Ha! You wouldn’t ask that if you’d ever crossed paths with Delilah Dalton.”

      “And you have?”

      “Yes’m, I have. Must have been thirty, forty years ago. Del and her husband were just starting out in the oil field re-supply business then. He was what we used to call in them days a real rounder. Now Delilah …” He shook his head in mingled admiration and chagrin. “That woman was one fine female. Probably still is. But so uptight you could bounce a dime off her ass and get nine cents change.”

      “Which is all the more reason for me to refuse her son’s demand for a DNA sample,” Julie huffed. “I don’t want anything to do with him or his mother.”

      “But, missy! A thousand dollars?”

      “No.”

      “Just for a little spit?”

      “No.”

      He heaved a long-suffering sigh, as though she was the one who’d plugged last season’s profits into the slots.

      “Awright, already. I hear what you’re sayin’. But …”

      “No, Dusty.”

      He sighed again and retrieved his cat from Julie’s lap. Belinda hung over his arm like a horse blanket as he delivered a last bit of advice. “If the Daltons are as hot to find the baby’s mama as you say they are, I ‘spect this isn’t the last you’ll hear from them. Or their lawyers.”

      “Lawyers?”

      Julie swallowed a groan. That’s all she needed. With a forty-five-year-old Pawnee leaking oil like a sieve and a partner who couldn’t stay away from the casinos, she now had to worry about a horde of lawyers swooping in to gnaw at the flesh of Agro-Air.

      “Look, I’ll contact Dalton tomorrow, after I’ve cooled down a little, and confirm that I’m not the mother of his child. But I’m not taking money from the man, Dusty.”

      “I’m just sayin’,” he intoned as he knuckled Belinda’s head. “Better be prepared, missy. Dalton didn’t look to be the kinda man to wait around for answers.”

      Alex’s jaw remained locked for most of the two-hour drive back to Oklahoma City. Julie Marie Bartlett didn’t have a clue who she was tangling with.

      Who she had tangled with. Christ! He’d almost forgotten the dark copper hair that had first snagged his interest when he’d walked into that operations shack in Nuevo Laredo. And those odd-colored eyes. Not to mention the full lips, taut breasts and slender hips that went with them.

      But the truth was, he hadn’t remembered any of those enticing attributes until two weeks ago. That’s when his mother had called and demanded his instant appearance at her Oklahoma City mansion. His, and his twin’s. She’d met them at the door with a bundled infant in her arms. Alex could still feel the remnants of their collective shock when she’d announced someone had left a baby on her doorstep. Then she’d thrust out the note alleging the six-month old infant was Delilah Dalton’s grandchild.

      After they’d recovered enough to speak, both Alex and Blake had questioned the authenticity of the note. With good reason. In the past five years their mother had transitioned from wistful to vocal to