Staking His Claim. Karen Templeton

with a white crewcut, dark eyes and an easy smile who always had Tootsie Rolls in his overall pockets and called the girl “young lady,” but not the way people did when you did something wrong.

      Sometimes she envied the boy his daddy, although she never let on.

      Dawn’s inner ear perked up at fragments of a conversation she hardly knew she remembered, drifting over from the porch.

      “Maybe Ryan and Hank don’t want to stick around, but I’m never gonna leave here,” the boy said, crunching into an apple from one of the trees off to the side of the house. Totally at ease with himself, in himself, he leaned back on his elbow, an expression on his dust-smudged face the girl would later peg as serene.

      Even at that age she thought it was peculiar, not wanting to see what else was out there in the world, and she told him so. Her mama had taken her into Tulsa once when she was five, and all she could think about was getting to go back someday. Except Mama was always busy helping ladies have babies and couldn’t afford the time away very often, she said, in case one of the babies decided to come while she was gone.

      The boy shrugged and took another bite of his apple. “Whaddya wanna do now?” he said. “Play with my trucks or somethin’?”

      “Trucks are dumb.”

      “Not as dumb as stupid old dolls.”

      “Well, I don’t play with dolls, do I?”

      The boy gave her a funny look. “But you’re a girl.”

      “So? That doesn’t mean I hafta play with dolls. Besides, that’s sexist.”

      “Ooooh, I’m gonna tell! You said ‘sex.’”

      “I did not. I said sexist. That’s when somebody thinks you oughta like or do something because you’re a girl or a boy. Mama told me. An’ she said nobody should hafta act a certain way just ’cause people expect ’em to.”

      The boy threw his half-eaten apple off into the yard. One of the farm dogs trotted over to investigate, but since it wasn’t meat, he let it be. “You’re weird, you know that?” the boy said. “And anyway, so why don’t you play with dolls?”

      “I dunno. Maybe because I see so many babies and little kids when Mama takes me with her on her ’pointments? Babies cry a lot, you know. And make real stinky messes in their diapers. And their hands get tangled in my hair.” The girl sank her chin into the palm of her hand, waiting out the peculiar feeling she got sometimes, like an itchiness on the inside that you couldn’t scratch. It wasn’t fair, having to get up in the middle of the night to go with Mama when one of her ladies had her baby. But thinking about that made the itchiness worse, so she pushed the thoughts away and said instead, “We could read, maybe.”

      “Reading’s boring,” the boy said, but the girl had a pretty good idea he said that because he didn’t read as well as she did. “I got a new puzzle. Wanna do that?”

      “I don’t like working puzzles with you, you never do ’em right.”

      The boy thought for a minute, then said, “We could go dig in the backyard if you want.”

      “S’too hot.” They sat there for a long time, listening to their own thoughts—well, the girl was, anyway, she was never sure what the boy thought about, if anything—until she suddenly said, if for no other reason than the silence was beginning to hurt her head, “Brenda Sue Mosely called me a bad word today.”

      The boy looked like this could be interesting. “What kinda bad word?”

      “I can’t say it.”

      “Sure you can. I mean, I won’t tell.” When she slanted her eyes at him, he crossed his heart. “Promise.”

      So she leaned over and whispered the word in his ear, thinking she liked how he smelled, like earth and animals and apple, and how it made her feel safe for some reason. She’d heard the word several times before, but she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. She just knew it was meant to hurt her.

      “Brenda Sue Mosely is stupid,” was all the boy said, giving the girl the impression he didn’t know what the word meant, either. “If she was a boy, I’d beat her up for you.”

      “I don’t want you beatin’ anybody up for me, Cal Logan, you hear me? I can stick up for myself….”

      “Dawn? What the hell?”

      She jumped a foot, her memories scattering like the roaches in her apartment when she turned on the light in the middle of the night. Panic sliced through her, knotting her stomach. His long, denimed legs wading through an entourage of dogs of all shapes, sizes and parentages, a very much grown-up Cal Logan approached the car, his face creased with concern. A cool breeze ruffled that same unkempt hair, now darker than it had been as a child, and bam! Just like that, even though the thought of sex with anybody right now made her green around the gills, every nerve ending she had screamed, “Remember?”

      Not fair.

      All her life, Cal had been just Cal. Well, mostly. There’d been the odd tickle of fantasy from time to time, but then, what else was there to do in this town besides fantasize? Their single sexual encounter had been an aberration, a momentary detour off the Road of Reason. She knew that, he knew that, they’d discussed it like rational adults the morning after and she had put the whole episode behind her, chalking it up to One of Those Things. Thought she had, anyway. Her current, totally unexpected condition didn’t change the aberration aspect of this. His “just Cal-ness.”

      Except, now, as her gaze slithered over the body that was no longer a mystery underneath his workshirt and jeans, she silently dubbed herself six kinds of fool. What on earth had she been thinking? That she could simply forget how good the man was in bed? How good he made her? That within twenty minutes he’d changed her mind about sex from whatever to whoa?

      That she’d start salivating at the sight of him?

      Be that as it may. Salivating didn’t change anything, other than perhaps raising her standards for future encounters. If there were any future encounters, which at the moment looked highly doubtful. One minute they’d been old, albeit lapsed, friends, the next they were lovers. Unfortunately, it was about this gaping hole in between. A hole they’d never, ever, be able to fill in a million years.

      Except for this child they’d made that would now bridge that gap, in some ways, forever.

      Just as Cal had bridged the gap between his house and her car. Dawn’s swallow wedged in her throat, mere inches above her heart. Then she noticed he seemed far more interested in the car than her. She couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or offended.

      “This Scooter Johnson’s old GTO?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      Cal chuckled. With good reason. Her mother had taken the ghastly vehicle in trade for delivering the Johnsons’ second baby, but Scooter had definitely gotten the better end of that deal.

      “Honey, even with you in it, that is one butt-ugly car.” His light mood abruptly departed, however, when he once again focused on her face. The man wasn’t stupid. And by the time she’d forced herself to open the car door, untangle herself from her long broomstick skirt and haul herself to her feet, she could tell from his expression that he’d jumped to the only conclusion he could have.

      Hope struggled for purchase in worried green eyes. “Dawn? Why are you here?”

      Dogs milled about them, panting and wriggling; birds chirped; yellowing leaves danced against a peaceful blue sky in a place as far away from the life she’d made for herself as the moon. And Dawn, who still had no idea what to think about any of this herself, hauled in a huge breath and said, “Remember the condom that broke?”

      Then her knees gave way.

      A few choice epithets flashed through Cal’s brain as he carted Dawn into the family room, that long, crinkly skirt of hers clinging to him like plastic wrap, her soft