Staking His Claim. Karen Templeton

      “Don’t wait up,” he said, heading out the door.

      “I don’t intend to,” she said, adding a row of lime green to the godawful pink.

      He’d stopped by Ryan’s place first, but Maddie, his new wife—who, judging from the scent of warm fruit and fresh-baked pie crust rushing out the kitchen door from behind her, was busy making her next batch of pies to sell to Ruby’s Café—had said he was on duty at the clinic tonight until ten and was there anything she could help him with? But Cal said, no, he didn’t think so, and went on to Hank’s.

      His oldest brother, an ex-cop, ran the Double Arrow Motel and Guest Lodge on the outskirts of town, a fixer-upper he bought as a sort of therapy after his first fiancée’s death a few years back. Not only had Hank made the dump into someplace respectable, but he even had a developer seriously interested in turning the place into a bona fide resort. And a few months back, damned if a second chance at love hadn’t come along and crashed his pity-party.

      And then stayed until every last guest was good and gone.

      Now living in a modest two-story house at the edge of the motel property, Hank seemed understandably surprised at Cal’s showing up unannounced, especially since the three brothers had grown apart after their father’s death when Cal was fourteen. Ryan’s and Hank’s trials and tribulations on the road to true love during the past year, however, had driven the three brothers to talk to each other more than they had in the fifteen years before that.

      Now it was Cal’s turn.

      Hank led Cal through the living room—painted some orange color that only Ethel could love—to the kitchen where he offered him a beer, which Cal gratefully accepted. Hank’s teenaged daughter, Blair, sat at the kitchen table, her coppery hair gleaming under the lamp as she pored over what looked like an album.

      “Wedding invitations,” Hank said by way of explanation. He took a long swallow of his own beer and swept a hand through his short black hair. Falling in love with Jenna Stanton had worked miracles on a mug few people would ever have called good-looking, with its craggy features and twice-broken nose. Hank hadn’t even known about his daughter until a few months ago, when Jenna, a widow herself, had come looking for him after her sister’s—Blair’s mother’s—death and her subsequent discovery that Hank was Blair’s father. The romance had just been a real nice, and totally unexpected, bonus.

      “Lord help us,” Hank said, “but I think we’ve got a wedding planner on our hands.”

      “Da-ad,” the freckled teenager said, rolling her blue eyes and flashing her braces. “You think Jenna’ll like this one?” She turned the album around. Both men stared at the prissy invitation she was pointing to, trying to figure out what set it apart from the eight other equally prissy invitations on the same page.

      “I suppose you’ll have to ask her when she gets back,” Hank said, clearly already well-versed in how to take the easy way out.

      “Where is Jenna, by the way?” Cal asked.

      “Back in D.C., taking care of loose ends before moving here for good.”

      “Y’all decided on a date, yet?”

      “Sunday after Thanksgiving, after Jen turns in her next book.”

      Leaving Blair to her search, they wandered out onto the back porch. As one, both men sank into twin wooden rocking chairs Hank said Jenna’d ordered from some catalogue or other. Hank’s half-grown puppy, Mutt—the consensus was half black Lab, half German Shepherd—came bounding up the steps to them, planting his big black feet on Cal’s knee.

      “I hear Dawn’s back,” Hank said nonchalantly. Cal might’ve laughed if his gut hadn’t felt like somebody’d filled it with a bucket of broken glass.

      “You know, I’m beginning to think this entire town’s clairvoyant.”

      “Nope. Luralene just happened to be standing in the doorway to the Hair We Are about the time Ivy and Dawn drove past this afternoon. I imagine the news has gotten clear to Claremore by now. Far as Pryor, at the very least.” Hank glanced over, his expression unreadable in the dim light coming from the screen door, then took another swallow of beer.

      “What’s got everyone speculatin’, though, is why she’s back. Especially since she was just here in July.”

      Cal stuck one booted foot up on the porch railing, pushing back the chair on its rockers as far as he dared. “Let’s put it this way—looks like you and Ryan aren’t the only ones to have fatherhood sprung on ’em this year.”

      Hank had the beer can halfway to his mouth; now he lowered it, glancing back to make sure they wouldn’t be heard. “You got Dawn pregnant?”

      “Yep.”

      Hank sat back in his chair, taking this in. Rocked some more. Then he said, “Remember that night you cheated me out of twenty bucks when we were playing pool? And I asked you whether anything happened between you and Dawn when she was here on the Fourth, and you wouldn’t answer?”

      “Well, now you know why I wouldn’t answer. And I did not cheat you out of twenty dollars. Not my fault you can’t play worth spit.”

      Several seconds passed before Hank said, “So…what’s this mean? You two gettin’ married?”

      “Nope.”

      “She at least moving back here?”

      “Nope.”

      “And I take it you’re not sellin’ up and moving back east with her?”

      “Hell, no.”

      “Then what in tarnation—?”

      “The way I see it,” Cal said, “is what we’ve got here is a baby on the way, a pair of parents who probably shouldn’t be having this baby together, and a whole bunch of questions without answers.” He took a swallow of beer and said, “Make for one helluva crappy night, let me tell you. Well, except for the baby part. I mean, I wasn’t exactly plannin’ on it right now, but it could be worse.”

      Another several seconds passed before Hank said, “Yeah. It could be. She might’ve decided not to tell you at all. Then twelve or thirteen years down the road, you suddenly discover you have a kid.”

      At that moment the kid in question banged through the screen door to say good-night, bending over to give her father a hug and a kiss before going back inside. Both men sat and rocked for a moment, the rockers’ creaking competing with a lone cicada buzzing its butt off.

      “So what’re you gonna do?”

      Cal sighed. “Damned if I know. Our goin’ to bed together was a fluke. Our havin’ a baby an even bigger fluke—”

      “And you’ve been sweet on her your whole life.”

      “You know, I’ve never given anybody cause to think that, so why—”

      Hank just laughed. Cal rocked some more, thinking about that look on Dawn’s face when she was talking about those kids she worked with. “Her life’s back east. And there’s nothing Haven, or I, can give her that could even begin to replace what she’d be giving up.”

      “Must’ve been some reason she got cozy with you.”

      “Yeah. Boredom.”

      “You know that for sure?”

      Cal wiggled his bottle on his knee, frowning. “No. But maybe I’ve got better things to do than set myself up for a fall. There’s a reason I didn’t pursue her when we were in high school, you know. Even when we were kids, she practically buzzed with all the things she wanted to do, places she wanted to go. Causes she needed to champion. As we got older, it became crystal clear that Haven would never be enough for her. That I’d never be enough for her.”

      “So you think she’s better than you?”