Staking His Claim. Karen Templeton

the permanent roster? Fifteen mares and a stallion I put out to stud. Plus the youngsters. All retired prizewinners or offspring of prizewinners. Good listeners with easygoing dispositions. And they all produce some real pretty foals.”

      “And you’re doing okay?” The concern in her voice made him turn to meet her equally concerned eyes. “It can’t be easy,” she said gently, “making something like this work.”

      “I won’t lie and say it is. Especially with foal prices taking a hit the way they’ve done the past couple of years. But the stud fees I get for Twister keep me afloat. In fact, I’ve almost finished buying out my brothers. By this time next year, this’ll be all mine.”

      He watched her scan the new up-to-date barn replacing the old barns and outbuildings she would’ve remembered from when they were kids. “You’ve really found your niche in life, haven’t you?”

      “I guess I have,” he said, trying to peg whatever he thought he’d heard in her voice, even though figuring out what went on inside women’s heads was definitely not his strong suit.

      “There’s something, I don’t know, honest and basic about working with horses. You treat ’em right, they’ll return the favor and do their best for you. I get up in the morning, and even when there’s a boatload of work to do, or even when I’m worried about one of my gals for one reason or another, I look forward to the day. How many people can say that? And really mean it?… Dawn? You okay?”

      Her forehead lowered to the mare’s muzzle, she muttered, “I’m sorry,” although almost more to the horse than to him.

      “For what?”

      She gave him a doleful expression.

      “Not for being pregnant?” he said.

      “Maybe,” she said on a rush of air. “I just keep feeling I should be apologizing for something. For falling into bed with you, if nothing else.”

      “Hey. Unless I missed something, that was a mutual decision. One I sure as hell didn’t regret.” She canted a look at him. “No, not even now.”

      “Never mind how stupid it was.”

      “Is that what you’re thinking? That it was stupid?”

      “Uh, yeah?”

      “Well, that’s just nuts.”

      “And now you’re pissed.”

      “Hell, yes, if I’m readin’ you correctly. Just because neither one of us expected more’n that one night doesn’t mean it was stupid. Or meaningless.” He leaned his forearms on the top of the fence, trying to tamp down his irritation. Trying even harder to understand it. Cindy, realizing she was no longer the focus of the conversation, clopped off, her black tail swishing.

      “Okay, so we got more out of it than we’d bargained. And yeah, I suppose I’m gonna be in shock for a while about that. But that doesn’t mean anybody has anything to be sorry for. Actually, if you’re lookin’ to blame somebody, it wasn’t you who forgot to check the date on those condoms, was it?”

      A pained smile crossed her face. “Should I be flattered it had been that long?”

      Cal hesitated, then said, “To tell you the truth…I grabbed one out of the wrong box. The one I should’ve thrown out when I bought the new one the month before.”

      “You know, I could have lived without knowing that.”

      “Thought women wanted men to be honest with them.”

      “Not that honest.”

      He glanced over. She was leaning against the fence much like he was, but everything about her was tight—her set mouth, her hands, knotted together in front of her, her shoulders, rising and falling in tandem with her shallow, hurried breaths.

      Cal gazed back over the pasture, over what had been his life for more than ten years. Building up his breeding business had given him something to focus on after his parents died, something he could count on to bring him satisfaction and pleasure even when his personal life sucked. He would be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, that he didn’t need this distraction, this monkey wrench in the orderly, safe, relatively painless life he’d made for himself. At the same time excitement tingled in his veins with the realization that the one thing that had eluded him so far—the promise of family—was suddenly within his grasp.

      He stole a quick look at the side of Dawn’s face, her expression resolute. Well, the promise of part of a family, anyway. Where he saw hope, however, his guess was that she saw catastrophe. Where he saw opportunity, she clearly saw entrapment.

      And her fears were doing a damn good job of kicking his wide awake.

      “How come you waited so long to say something?” he asked softly.

      “Denial,” came out on an exhaled breath. “I’d had a bad cold, thought maybe that screwed up my cycle.” She gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Okay, I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.”

      The sun nestled a little closer to the horizon as they stood there, not looking at each other, not saying anything. One of the dogs sat down to scratch, jangling his tags; a couple of mares decided to get up a game of tag, their pounding hooves raising a cloud of dust. Cal kept thinking he was supposed to say something, to come up with some sort of solution. Instead, he could practically hear the wind whistling through the cavity where his brain was supposed to be.

      “I guess you’re sure—”

      “Oh, yeah. I’m sure. And yes, I’m having the baby. And keeping it.”

      Her eyes darted to his, then away, as his stomach screeched to a halt a breath away from splat! “So you never considered—”

      “I didn’t say that.” At what must have been his horrified expression, she pushed out a breath. “To be honest, my first thought was this can’t be happening. And my second thought was how can I make it unhappen? So I went for a walk. A long walk. A walk that took me past a family planning clinic. On purpose. And I stood there, staring at the door, visualizing walking up the steps, making an appointment…” Her eyes went wide, the words shooting from her mouth like a flock of freaked birds. “I’d never even thought about having a baby, Cal! Let alone like this! Who knows what kind of mother I’ll make? For all I know, this could be a major disaster in the making—”

      She let out a little yelp when Cal grabbed her by the shoulders. “And you can stop that kind of talk right now! You’re gonna make a dynamite mother. Maybe not a normal one, but a damned good one.”

      She rolled her eyes, then said, “And you know this how?”

      “Because I know you. Or at least, I did. And the Dawn I remember never did anything half-assed.” Purely from reflex, his thumbs started massaging her shoulders. Purely from reflex—he assumed—she shivered slightly. “I’d be real surprised to find out you’d changed.”

      “Yeah, well, raising a kid isn’t the same as acing a course. Or even winning a case. Which I don’t always do, by the way.”

      “But—” He actually caught the thought before it sailed out of his big mouth, but only long enough to examine it and let it go, anyway. “But you were all set to get married.”

      “Oh.” She sighed. “That. As it happens, Andrew wasn’t all that hot on parenthood. And to be honest, I was ambivalent. About having kids, I mean.”

      “You got any idea why?”

      That got a shrug. “Maybe because so much of my work revolves around children. I don’t know.” At his frown, she said, “I do a fair amount of pro bono work for the firm, most of it involving family issues. Many of the kids I see have been knocked around pretty badly. By life, by The Man, by—all too often—their own parents. And the looks on their faces…” The expression on hers twisted him inside out. “Oh, God, Cal, they’d break