Their Child?. Karen Rose Smith

want Brody lied to.”

      Her father nodded. “We understand.”

      Enid said, “And what about you and Tucker? It did seem, until just lately, that you two were…becoming close.”

      “Mama, I just don’t know. Right now, between Tucker and me, it doesn’t look too good.”

      Thursday afternoon at four-thirty, Tucker sat behind the desk in his study at the Double T, a whiskey on ice in a crystal glass at his elbow and Lori on his mind. He reached for the phone—and it rang.

      Impatient to get rid of whoever it was and get on to the phone call to Lori, he pushed the talk button and put it to his ear without checking the display. “Tucker Bravo. What?”

      “It’s Lori.”

      He wrapped his hand around his drink—and then let go of it. “Beat me to the punch, huh?” It came out sounding lazy and a little bit mean. Just how he felt right then—at least the mean part.

      He heard her suck in a breath. Then she rattled off, as if she’d been rehearsing it, “Tucker, I’m fine now. I’m well enough to talk. And we do have to talk. We have to come to some sort of reasonable arrangement about Brody and the future and what we intend to—”

      He didn’t need to hear it. “Lori.”

      There was a silence down the line. And then, tightly, she asked, “What?”

      “Come out here, to the ranch.”

      “Now?”

      “Yeah. Now. Come to the front door of my wing, the South Wing.”

      “I—”

      “Yes or no?”

      Another silence, then, “Yes. Twenty minutes.” He heard the click. Score two for her: she’d called him. And she’d hung up before he could hang up on her.

      The blood pumped hard and fast through his veins. He felt ready for battle. Impatient and exhilarated.

      Probably a bad sign.

      A woman Lori didn’t recognize answered her knock. The woman led her through the high-ceilinged foyer and into the beautiful, spare-looking South Wing living room, an airy space done in golds and browns, accented with black. That other time, two weeks ago, the room had seemed so relaxing and welcoming.

      Not now.

      Tucker sat on a coffee-brown sofa. He didn’t get up. “Thank you, Mrs. Haldana,” he said to the stocky, grayhaired woman. He picked up the full glass from the side table at his elbow. It had a watered-down look about it, as if he’d poured it a while ago and then decided not to drink it. “Want something—whiskey? Water? Both?”

      “No, thank you.”

      “All right, then.” He set the drink down without bringing it to his lips and turned to Mrs. Haldana. “I won’t need you anymore tonight.” The woman nodded and left them. He turned his shuttered gaze on Lori again. “Sit down,” he said.

      She almost refused, but then realized he would probably take it as an offensive move. She really, truly did not want to fight with him. So she perched across the glass coffee table from him, on a sofa identical to the one where he sat.

      He said, “That eye still looks pretty bad. How are things under the bandage?”

      She shrugged. “It burns and itches, alternately, which means it’s healing, so I’m not complaining. I’m feeling better every day. And that’s not what I came here to talk to you about. I…” She drew a complete blank. There was so much to say, she hardly knew where to begin.

      He didn’t help her out. He just sat there. Watching. Waiting.

      She forged ahead again. “I know, I truly do, that there’s nothing I can say that will excuse my not telling you that you have a son. I was wrong, and I know it. I knew it all along. I…well, I did try, to get a hold of you. When Brody was a baby, I found out where you lived in Austin. I went down there. You were gone by then, though, and the guy who answered the door didn’t know where you went. I wrote letters. More than one. But you went off to Europe and I didn’t know where to send them. I tried the Austin address, hoping it might be forwarded. It came back. So I sent one here, to the Double T, thinking your grandfather would send it on to you. I guess he did. But that letter never reached you, either. It came back to me with French postal marks all over it, unopened, and I—”

      His low growl of fury shut her up. He demanded, “What about just gutting it up and getting your butt out here, to the ranch? What about telling my granddaddy that you’d had my baby? Did you try that?”

      “No. I—”

      “‘No’ about says it all. You didn’t come here and talk to my grandfather—though we both know damn well what Ol’ Tuck was like. If he’d known he had a grandson, Granddaddy would have tracked me down. He’d have gone to the ends of the earth to get me back home and married to the mother of my child.”

      Lori knew he was right. She had no excuses, yet somehow she couldn’t stop herself from trying to make him see how it had been for her. “Oh, Tucker, I was so young. And I felt so alone. I was scared of Ol’ Tuck. Everybody was. You know that. And really, I didn’t even know you. That night, the night of the prom, I—”

      “Yeah. That night.” He sat so still, a frightening stillness, one that radiated cold rage. “Now you mention it, there was that, too, wasn’t there? That night you took your sister’s place. That night you let me call you Lena, over and over and over again. That night you smiled and sighed and went with me to that motel room. That night you let me take your clothes off you and touch your naked body and lay you down and call you Lena some more, while I was buried inside you. What about that night?”

      She had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. “I was wrong. I know it. I should have—”

      “Do you think I give a good damn about what you should have done? I’m not there yet. I’m still back with what you did. I’m back with calling you Lena while I was loving you, I’m back to that second time, when I’d used my one condom, when I was so gone on you, I had some crazy idea it didn’t matter, if we made a baby. It didn’t matter because I was staying right here, in town, because we’d be getting married anyway. Oh, yeah. I’m still back with what you did. Still back with the day after that night, when I came to your door and you let Lena answer it and send me away.”

      “It was…I wasn’t thinking straight. I got home and I looked at Lena and I felt so low, so bad, like I’d done something so awful, behind her back.”

      “Because you had.”

      She pulled her shoulders back. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.”

      “And the next night—that guy everyone thinks you met. What about him?”

      She said, in a whisper, through her clutching throat, “There was no guy.”

      He grunted again. A sound of purest disgust. “No guy.”

      She coughed to make her throat open up. “That’s right. Only you. I…well, I always wanted you, when we were kids. I would see you in town and at school and I would hope and pray that you would notice me. But you didn’t. It was Lena you noticed, Lena who got to be your girl. I accepted that—or I thought I had. And then Lena broke up with you and she didn’t want to go to prom with you and—”

      He waved a hand. “Back to that other guy. The one who didn’t exist.”

      She made herself nod. “Okay. What about him?”

      “You didn’t hesitate, did you, to let people think what was easiest for you? The whole damn town jumped to conclusions about how you ended up pregnant—and you let them. You let everyone think some stranger was Brody’s father.”

      “Oh, Tucker, my dad was yelling all the time, making threats. He said he was