"I'd be Bryan MacKade?"
"That's the deal."
While he hesitated, Jared's universe simply ground to a halt. If the boy rejected him, he knew, it would cut straight to his heart.
But Bryan didn't know for sure how things were done between men. He knew what to do when his mother offered him something wonderful, something he'd hardly dared to dream of but had wished for hard, really hard, at night. So, in the end, that was what he did.
Jared found his arms full of boy.
The breath Jared had been holding whistled out in almost
painful relief. Have a cigar, he thought giddily, you've got yourself a son.
"This is so cool," Bryan said, his voice muffled against Jared's chest. "I thought maybe you didn't want somebody else's kid."
Gently, for he suddenly felt very gentle, Jared cupped the boy's chin and lifted it. "You won't be somebody else's. We'd make it legal, but that's just a paper. What really counts is what's between you and me."
"I'll be Bryan MacKade. You'll make her go for it, won't you? You'll talk her into it?"
"Talk is my business."
Furious at herself for snapping at Bryan, Savannah ruined two illustrations before admitting that work was hopeless. She'd been so pleased with herself when she drove away from the MacKade farm. Drunk with the power of causing fury to run hot and cold over Jared's face.
Now she was miserable. Miserably angry, miserably frustrated. Miserable. She wanted to kick something, but wasn't so far gone she'd take it out on the two kittens napping in the corner of the kitchen.
She wanted to break something, but after a frustrated search through the living room she discovered she didn't have anything valuable enough to be satisfying.
She wanted to scream. But there was no one to scream at.
Until Jared strode through the door.
"You don't have so much as a cuff link left here, MacKade. Everything's in your front yard."
"I noticed. That was quite a show, Savannah."
"I enjoyed it." She crossed her arms, angled her chin. "Sue me."
"I might yet. Why don't we sit down?"
"Why don't you go to hell?" she drawled. "And be sure the door kicks you on your way out."
"Sit down," he repeated, in a tone just firm enough, just reasonable enough, to light a very short fuse.
"Don't you tell me what to do in my own house!" she shouted at him. "Don't you tell me what to do, period. I'm sick to death of you making me feel like some slow-witted backwater bimbo. I don't have a fancy degree—hell, I don't have a high school diploma—but I'm not stupid. I muddled through with my life just fine before you came along. And I'll do just fine after you've gone."
"I know." He acknowledged that with a slight inclination of his head. "That's what's been worrying me. And I don't think you're stupid, Savannah. On the contrary. I don't think I've ever met a smarter woman."
"Don't play that tune with me. I know what you think of me, and I can live up to most of it."
"I think you can," he said quietly. "I think you can live up to everything I think of you. If you'd sit down, I'll tell you what that is."
"I'll say what I have to say," she tossed back. "You want to know about me, Jared. I'll tell you about me. A parting gift, for all the good times. You sit down," she demanded, and stabbed a finger at a chair.
"All right. But this isn't why I'm here. I don't need to know—"
"You asked for it," she said, interrupting him smartly. "By God, you'll get it. My mother died young, but she left my father and me first. She didn't go far, just across the corral, so to speak. Another smooth-talking cowboy. My father never got over it, never forgave, never gave an inch. Certainly not to me. He never loved me the way I wanted him to. He couldn't. Even if he'd tried, he couldn't. I wasn't a nice polite little girl. I grew up hard, and I liked it. Getting the picture?"
"Savannah, please sit down. You don't have to do this."