The Come-Back Cowboy. Jodi O'Donnell

always callin’ me his pal—and we’re not!”

      “He’s only trying to be friendly! I know for a fact that Connor is one-hundred-percent earnest about being your dad—”

      “But I don’t want him for my dad!” Jace broke in, getting upset all over again. “I don’t wanna go live somewhere else ’sides here!”

      His struggle against her hold on him nearly broke her heart. It just wasn’t like Jace to be so desperate—which made Addie realize how deeply the feelings in her son went regarding this particular issue, feelings she’d believed long ago resolved.

      Well, she sure had been wrong.

      What was she to do, though? It was time. Time for her to lay the past to rest once and for all and get on with her life—and take definite steps toward putting a father into Jace’s.

      “Jace, please,” Addie said huskily, her fingers tightening on his shoulders. “I know this is a lot of change to take in right now. But I really do think you’ll feel differently if you just give Connor a chance.” She hesitated, then went on in soft appeal. “Give us all a chance to be a real family.”

      This sent him into an absolute frenzy. “No, we won’t! He can’t be my dad!”

      “But why not, Jace?” she asked, completely stumped.

      “’Cause!” His eyes filled with rare tears, disturbing Addie even more. “I don’t want a dad, ever!”

      With that, Jace broke free, whirling around and taking off like a locomotive at full speed away from her, head down, jeans-clad legs pumping. Addie could only look achingly after him. She’d never felt more helpless in her life, for she didn’t believe for a moment that Jace didn’t want a father. That wasn’t the problem, but she was confounded as to what really was.

      And just as at a loss about how she might find out.

      Then the boy was suddenly swept from his feet with a deep “Whoa there, Slick,” and swung around in a movement as smooth as a dance step, dislodging Jace’s cowboy hat from his head. The move surprised him enough that he struggled not at all, but only stared up at the stranger who held him under the arms like an eight-week-old puppy.

      For this man, Addie now saw, wasn’t one of the Bar G’s ranch hands…although there was something uncommonly familiar about him. She couldn’t make out his expression under the shading brim of his black Stetson, but his stance was like stone as he, too, stared down at Jace in surprise.

      Leaning a hand against the railing, Addie straightened as she took in the whole of him—lithe and lean and tense as a jungle cat, vigilant. Dangerous.

      A steel rod of shock shot through her spine, making every muscle in her body go rigid. It couldn’t be!

      The sun broke through the clouds, cranking the humidity up another couple of notches and distracting her from the danger swirling around her. It was getting late. She needed to get Jace taken care of, needed to batten down this thicket of hair and scrape the mud off her heels. Needed to remind Opal, the wife of one of the ranch hands who tended the house, to pick up Daddy’s prescription at the pharmacy when she was in town for groceries. Needed to do the thousand and one things that signified life going on as usual.

      The problem was it couldn’t—not when the danger wasn’t around her but within her. For in that instant her traitorous heart rose up in her with the force of a hundred-year flood, drowning out every other sound in the world with its jubilant cry: At last! At last, he’s come back.

      Oh, I knew he’d keep his promise!

      He had a son.

      The realization rocked him, tipped his world and set each ever-so-carefully placed piece on it careening perilously toward the rim.

      Deke Larrabie scrutinized the dark-haired boy that he held; his hawk eyes that could spot a case of scours in a calf before it started looking peaked were hindered not one whit by the overcasting clouds. The air hung heavy around him, though, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.

      For it changed the whole picture—his whole life—if he’d left Addie Gentry pregnant.

      Could he be wrong? A skirmish over the question broke out in him. Even as Deke did a review of the events of the past couple of months that had brought him to this moment, he clung to the possibility as he would a rope over a yawning canyon.

      But why else would Addie’s father have labeled his call providential, even if Deke had been phoning in direct enquiry to Jud Gentry’s ad for a ranching consultant at the Bar G? Except that when Jud hadn’t mentioned Addie, Deke had assumed life had taken her away from the ranch and that she no longer lived there.

      Of course, he hadn’t had the guts to assign the label “happily married” to the situation, even in his own mind. But when he’d first spotted her a moment ago with the boy who was obviously her son, he’d felt nothing but relieved gratefulness that after he left she had gone on and found happiness.

      That hadn’t exactly been evident in the tone of their words, unclear to him except for the last—that heart-wrenching cry of I don’t want a dad, ever!

      Desperately, he peered at the boy as he slowly lowered him to the ground, the small hands continuing to clutch Deke’s shirtsleeves. The smattering of freckles across his nose, like splatters of tan paint, was all Addie, he thought. So was the wide lower lip that gave the youngster the appearance, at least at this moment, of being able to bend without breaking, being able to yield precious ground while not giving it all up.

      But the Will Rogers cowlick in front and those cat-colored eyes looking up at him with an even more impossible mixture of hope and doubt—those were pure Larrabie, come by in a straight shot from Deke’s father D.K., to Deke, to this boy.

      He had a son. They had a son. He and Addie.

      And the past seven years he’d been living a lie.

      Another depth charge of emotion buffeted Deke, as nitro-potent as he’d experienced in ages. What a fool he was, thinking he had a chance to make anything up to Jud or in any way change the fate that had been written for him the day he was born.

      Because it was not this boy, but Addie who changed everything. Everything.

      At the realization, his heart set up a pounding cadence, its pace growing stronger and faster, like a clock wound too tight after years of never being wound at all. Holding his breath, he focused on slowing down the sound until it beat out a nerve-steadying rhythm, metronome-like. One-two…thud-thump.

      Deke knew the mantra; it had become a part of him. You and you alone are in charge of your destiny. He was not at the mercy of his inclinations. At the mercy of his emotions.

      Slowly, he raised his head and found her gaze.

      “Hello, Addie,” Deke said, speaking for the first time in seven years the name of the woman he’d loved—and left.

      He knows, Addie thought wildly. He knows about Jace. But perhaps that was all he knew at this point.

      She had to get both herself and Jace safely away, though, from the force that was Deke Larrabie.

      “Jace. Come on back here, hon,” she said as calmly as she could, holding her hand out to her son. Thankfully, he came, although the whole way he craned his head around to stare at the stranger as if he were Duke Wayne in the flesh.

      Once he’d reached her, she couldn’t prevent herself from pressing him close to her side, obstructing his sight of the stranger. Or was she blocking Jace from Deke’s view?

      His eyes were only for her, though, as he started toward her. Amber-green, eerie in their detachment, yet as intense as ever.

      In fact, everything about him was more intense. More…Deke-like. He’d always filled out a Western shirt and pair of Wranglers in a way that was uniquely, devastatingly him. Had always worn a Stetson at that exact angle, pulled low over his eyes, in a way that had her believing