Drive-By Daddy. Cheryl Anne Porter

I could go through that again.”

      “I think you came through just fine, Mother. After all, you were front-page news.” Darcy didn’t have to be told how the Buckeye Bugle was there to get its headline. Who didn’t know that Barb Fredericks’s son, Vernon, was the editor? The same Barb who weekly played bridge with Darcy’s mother and their two other partners in crime, Jeanette Tomlinson and Freda Smith. The bane of Buckeye. All four of them.

      “Don’t be silly,” Margie Alcott said, crunching now on potato chips. “That cowboy is the star. And, of course, my new granddaughter.”

      “And me,” Darcy reminded her.

      “Of course, you. I was just mentioned because I’m the one who called Barb and got Vernon on the story. It’s not every day something like this happens.”

      “Well, certainly not to me.” Darcy decided to try one last time to change the subject before her mother started her speech on how 50-year-old Vernon would make a great husband and father…if he could ever move out of his mother’s house. “Have you seen the baby today?”

      “Have I seen her? Is my name Margie Alcott? Of course I’ve seen her. I’ve all but conducted tours by the window that looks into the nursery. Why, she’s the most beautiful child on the face of this earth. Everyone says so.”

      Everyone better. Darcy knew that much, knowing her mother—the social ringleader, as well as the resident bridge champ, of her group of lady friends.

      Just then, her mother set down her soda and pursed her lips. This was never good. “Well? Have you named her yet? You’ve known for months you’d have a girl. And yet my grandchild is a day old and doesn’t even have a name. ‘Baby Alcott, female’ it says on her little wrist ID. That’s just plain awful. Everyone’s calling her Louisa May. I just won’t have that, Darcy. Louisa May Alcott. Why, the very idea…naming her after some dead romance writer.”

      Sighing, Darcy the English Lit professor reached over to the bedside table and picked up the form the nurse had left her to fill out, hoping her mother wouldn’t obsess on the still-empty box marked “Father.” She just couldn’t bring herself to write Hank’s name in the space. The very married Hank Erickson wanted nothing to do with her or his new daughter. He had two of his own with his wife, Darcy now knew. “Relax. I named her. See for yourself.”

      Her mother took the clipboard Darcy offered her…and read aloud. “Montana Skye Alcott.” She looked up, a tremulous smile on her lips. “That’s beautiful, honey. Really pretty. Little Montana.” Then a knowing look claimed her grandmotherly features. “Something to do with the Montana cowboy who helped bring her into this world?”

      Darcy shrugged. “I suppose. It seemed like the right thing to do, don’t you think?”

      “Well, I’ll say I do.” Margie handed back the form and looked down, swiping at some crumbs on her uniform. “Too bad you don’t know what that cowboy’s name is,” she said with oh-so-much innocence in her voice. “Otherwise, you could put his name here in the blank place for a father.”

      Darcy slowly pulled herself up in her bed. “Look at me, Mother. He’s not the father. Not. Even if I knew his name, I wouldn’t do that. It’s not right. Or legal.”

      Her mother fingered a bedside flower arrangement—one of about twenty in the room—and played with the card. “Well, we wouldn’t want to do anything against the law, now would we?”

      “Mother.” Margie looked at Darcy, her brown eyes wide and guileless. Darcy wasn’t going to fall for that. The last time she had, she’d ended up going to the senior prom with her nerdy, pimply-faced cousin Mel when her own date had stood her up—the start of a definite trend in her life, it seemed. Darcy shook her head for added emphasis. “No. We. Wouldn’t. Say it with me.”

      Instead, Marge said, “You know, we could find out who he is.”

      “No, we can’t.”

      “Yes, we can. Ask me how.”

      “No. I don’t care how.”

      “You do, too.”

      Silence followed. Darcy stared at her mother. Her mother stared at her. Darcy caved. “All right. How?”

      Margie smiled triumphantly. “By some of the things he left behind.”

      Darcy flopped the clipboard onto her bed and folded her hands together in her lap. “Like what?”

      “Like that Indian blanket. And a matchbook with the name of a fancy Phoenix hotel on it. I forget which one just now. And a pocketknife with engraved initials. T.H.E. His initials, don’t you think? Anyway, those things were all tangled up in the blanket’s folds. And I have them.”

      Darcy remembered the knife and the matchbook. But his initials were THE? The what? Tom? Terry? Ty? Her interest quickened…before she remembered she wasn’t interested. But it was too late. Her mother had noticed. Great. “What about them?” she was forced to ask, even as she tried hard, and failed, to sound as if she couldn’t care less.

      “Johnny Smith. That’s what about them.”

      A sick feeling came over Darcy. She gripped her covering sheet in her hands. “Not Johnny. Mother, what are you thinking of doing? Don’t do it. I swear—”

      “Not in front of me you won’t.” With that, Margie Alcott stood up and collected her lunch leavings. “Now you rest easy, honey. They’ll be bringing Montana in to you in a minute, I believe. And I’ve got to get back to work. That sweet little old lady, Mrs. Hintzel, is back in the hospital. I think she’s just lonely. But I swear, that tiny stick of a woman—you know she’s 87?—well, she just plain worries if I don’t come around. So I’ll go check on her first and then—”

      “Don’t practice medicine, Mother. You know how the doctors get. You’re supposed to be volunteering in the admissions office. Not making patient rounds.”

      Her 70-year-old mother pursed her lips. “I know what my job is, Darcy. But it doesn’t hurt a thing if I visit those poor old people. I can’t imagine why that young Dr. Graves can’t figure out Mrs. Hintzel has something wrong with her uterus. Must be inexperience.”

      Darcy sighed out her breath. “Or the fact that Mrs. Hintzel had a hysterectomy thirty years ago. You told me that the last time she was admitted.”

      Margie Alcott frowned. “I see your hormones are making you testy again. I’m going to go check on Mrs. Hintzel. And then I’m going to call Johnny Smith.”

      Darcy’s mouth dried. Johnny Smith, bachelor son of bridge-playing Freda Smith, was also one of the small town’s few policeman. The man looked like a bloodhound. But if anyone could track down a Montana cowboy…with no more information than what her mother had to give him…it would be Johnny Smith.

      This was not good. For her. Or for T.H.E. Lone Ranger.

      MEANWHILE, BACK AT The Ranch, an upscale hotel in Phoenix, Tom Harrison Elliott was back in his room after the morning’s meeting with the land brokers who were interested in his grandfather’s plot of land here. Quickly changing clothes, Tom picked up his white Stetson, settled it low on his brow, headed for the door…and called himself a fool in love.

      He stopped…as if he’d smacked into an invisible brick wall…and just stood there, staring into space as the realization washed over him. He was in love. Instantly. This was the way it happened in his family. Every one of them. One day you’re just walking down the street, minding your own business, when you see that special someone and…bam, right between the eyes. In love. First-sight love. And here he’d thought the rest of his family was crazy. He’d teased his sister and cousins mercilessly about succumbing to—and believing in—the old family tradition. And now, here he was…succumbing. To two women. Well, a woman and her baby girl. Head-over-heels in love with both of them…since the moment he’d taken Darcy in his arms to lift her out of her car, and when he’d first held the baby girl in