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Big John Paladin on Fatherhood:

J.J.

Okay, so you were a surprise…and I’m not exactly father-of-the-year material. Heck, I’ve faced worse scenarios—look at my love life. On second thought, wait until you’re older. A lot older. The point is that the instant I saw you, I felt this situation was right somehow—that we were right—regardless of what we all had to go through to get here.

You have my word that I’ll do everything possible to give you the life—the home—you deserve. Maybe make you proud of your old man in the process. Hey, miracles happen.

Problem is, I don’t know diddly about babies. I’ve figured out what end the fuel goes in and where your oil pan is, but after that it’s a case of the blind leading the blind. Got a plan, though, and her name is Dana. At the moment she’s a bit miffed at me. Can’t blame her—like I told you, your old man isn’t any prize. But I’m nuts about her, son. Always have been. You’ll love her, too.

P.S. We’re going to be a family, J.J. I promise.

A Father’s Promise
Helen R. Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

HELEN R. MYERS

is a collector of two- and four-legged strays, and lives deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. She cites cello music and bonsai gardening as favorite relaxation pastimes, and still edits in her sleep—an accident, learned while writing her first book. A bestselling author of diverse themes and focus, she is a three-time RITA^® Award nominee, winning for Navarrone in 1993.

For Linda Varner, an ever-gentle, classy friend.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t ready for any of it. Even so, John Paladin carried his ten-day-old son out of Dusty Flats Community Hospital with the same brisk step that he’d entered, and tugged his Stetson and blue denim jacket farther over and around the baby to protect him from the driving wind and rain.

“Hang tough, pardner,” he muttered, squinting against the sharp needles that still managed to angle under the wide brim and prick at his face. “It’ll get worse before it gets better.” After hearing what he had inside, and considering the prospects for their future, it seemed about the only thing he could promise.

The wind lashed harder at them. Damn, but it was cold, he thought, and it wasn’t even November yet. By the look of things, he and every other west Texas cattle rancher had a heckuva winter ahead of them. If they didn’t float away first. “Dusty Flats” his soggy boots. The community had already surpassed its yearly rainfall average back in August; no telling what the rest of fall would bring.

But at the moment he had more important things to worry about, and he no longer had the stamina to take on more than one calamity at a time. It was just as well that there was nothing he could do about the weather; right now he faced the challenge of a lifetime—getting his boy back to the ranch, then changing and feeding him.

All right, so he figured he could handle the first task, regardless of the gusting wind that kept trying to knock him off his feet. But the rest…the rest turned his insides into quivering jelly.

It was all those instructions the nurses had spewed at him like that last adding machine he’d had that would churn out a half mile of paper whenever it got stuck in some crazy mode. Sure, he understood that they’d needed their bit of fun. Even as he’d been walking through the front door they’d determinedly escorted him like some military color guard, calling out advice and loading him down with enough booklets and junk to keep him reading until Thanksgiving. But he wasn’t in any shape to retain any of that book—learned nonsense. His mind was already so cluttered, he’d forgotten half of what he’d been told. Besides, even a grown man could starve to death if he had to read through the pamphlets jammed in his pockets before he was allowed to cook himself something to eat. A tiny scrap of stuff like his boy would be plumb out of luck.

Worst of all, though, were the directions about changing the kid’s diaper and giving him a bath.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Big John. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“Now, Big John, it’s not as though you’ll have to worry about him kicking or biting like one of those beef critters of yours.”

“There’s just something about them being your own that makes it easier, Big John.”

Bull. Not one of those women had listened, really listened to what he’d been trying to tell them. What did any of them know about how it was going to be for him? The way he figured it, caring for babies was as natural to women as stringing a barbed-wire fence was to him. But he knew nothing about fueling up anything this small, let alone dealing with cleaning out the rascal’s oil pan or anything.

From inside the wool cocoon and the down vest he’d wrapped the boy in, he heard a tiny protest. Jeez, he thought, could the kid be suffocating? Maybe everyone had been wrong about covering his face. Or maybe he was holding him too tight and smushing his toothpick-fine bones. Maybe the wind was getting at him and sucking the very breath out of the little guy. Blast it all, the head nurse had been right—he should never have taken the boy out in such conditions in the first place.

His heart beat a frantic tattoo as he accelerated his pace—but he didn’t quite break into a run. Better not risk it, he thought. The rain had turned everything slick, and the soles of his leather boots didn’t have good traction on asphalt. If he fell, he could make mush out of the chick-pea in his arms.

How the devil could those women have told him that the child was going to grow up every bit as big as him? What did they see that he couldn’t?

He finally reached his mud-splattered pickup truck. “Now, comes the next easy part,” he grumbled to himself as he opened the driver’s door.

Once again he had to secure the infant in a vehicle that wasn’t prepared for a virtual newborn. He respected and approved of the recent law that made seat belts mandatory. However, when he’d first carried his boy out to the truck, he’d realized accommodating that regulation was going to be a challenge, considering the danged buckle was nearly as big as his baby’s head. Too late he’d remembered the proper infant carrier that should have been purchased ages ago. But between problems with Celene, and his unusually heavy work load at the Long J, the last thing on his mind had been shopping excursions, let alone buying a bunch of baby things.

If only Celene had shown a little initiative, an ounce of concern sometime during her pregnancy and gone out to get a few things on her own. Heck, that’s why he’d bought her a car in the first place! But, no. After putting him through seven different kinds of hell insisting only a certain sports model and color would do, regardless of how impractical both were in their area, she’d left the iridescent pink thing virtually untouched.

Until this morning.

Just thinking of the times he’d suggested she make an excursion into town or to the mall in Abilene, made his blood steam all over again. He’d even gone so far as to offer her his credit card, for pity’s sake! But she’d merely glared at him over the top of her latest soap opera magazine, then settled deeper under her bed covers.

“So sue me,” he muttered to the bundle of blue he set on the front seat. “I tried.”

That earned him another, louder wail.

He snorted. Wail, nothing. He’d heard the rodents snared in the barn squeak louder. But the fragile sound still managed to fill him with a dread no mouse ever did.

“Okay…okay, squirt. I’m working on it.”

He scrunched his bulk into the cab, and drew the door closed behind him. At least that got them out of the weather. Maneuvering in the cramped space proved awkward, though someone of his proportions would find just about any vehicle smaller than a C-130 or an aircraft carrier a tight fit. Swearing as he struck his already throbbing elbow against the steering wheel, he jerked the brochures from his pockets.

“I feel like a wilting peacock,” he muttered, throwing them onto the floorboard. Then he leaned over to pick up the makeshift car seat he’d inadvertently knocked down there when they’d first arrived.

He’d come up with the invention while eyeing the contents in the back of the cab. Experience had taught him to carry everything back there, things no self-respecting rancher would find himself without: rope, chains, wrenches, hammers, nails, jumper cables…and a case of oil. It had been that box that had grabbed his attention. Not the most attractive or sterile thing known to man, but damned if it didn’t represent the best brand of motor lubricant money could buy. Most importantly, all he’d had to do was cut one end—a foot flap, he’d dubbed it with some amusement—and the fit had been perfect.

He’d dumped the twelve plastic bottles onto his tools, and then on impulse he’d also snatched up the blanket that he kept back there. Using the wool cover as an external buffer, and the vest as a mattress, he’d stuffed John, Jr. inside, until he’d been as snug as a tick on a dog.

“It worked well enough for the drive down here, so it’ll do for the trip back,” he told his son, repeating the process. “No way I can shop with you under wing and the weather plotting against me.”

It took him almost five minutes—ten less than the first time. Even so, by the time he’d finished he was sweating more than a hog in an auction pen. But worry and caution aside, he eventually had the boy strapped in, grateful that no one was around to point out how the whole contraption looked about as sturdy as a bag of marshmallows.

“Don’t worry about it,” he assured the calmer bundle inside. “I’ve already got strict orders from all of your self-appointed godmothers to drive as though I was carrying a load of nitro.”

As if he’d needed the reminding, he thought, somewhat disgruntled. He maneuvered his large frame back behind the steering wheel, only to have to twist again to dig his keys from his hind pocket. It was just the two of them now. His son was the most important thing in his life. If he’d had any doubts before, Celene’s latest stunt made that fact abundantly clear.

He did, however, wish that he could have gotten John, Jr. admitted here at the hospital for a day or two, until he’d tracked down the exasperating woman and gotten things between them settled once and for all. But all the nurses had certified him as crazy.

“This ain’t no hotel, Big John.”

“You can’t desert your son in his hour of need, Mr. Paladin.”

“Beast.”

Oh, yes. They’d laid it on thick and heavy.

Not even his longtime friend, Bud—Sheriff Bud Hackman today since he’d been summoned by Juanita, the head nurse in pediatrics, who on behalf of all her new mothers seemed to hate men in general—could resist pointing out that he should have known better than to even consider doing such a thing. “You abandon this boy and go after that woman, Big John, I ain’t gonna have no choice but to recommend he be made a ward of the court.”

Let the big oaf try to set foot on the Long J again. “The only welcome he’ll get is a butt full of buckshot,” John growled, taking a grim pleasure in visualizing the scene.

Maybe it had been unusual to suggest the hospital care for his son in his absence. But where was their understanding, their sensitivity, their compassion? He’d been driven to these straits. He was riding a long trail of bad luck—had been ever since he’d behaved irresponsibly during his trip to Abilene and had gotten himself saddled with a pregnant bride some eight months ago. All he was trying to do was buy himself some time to straighten out the mess.

“Who cares what they think,” he muttered aside to his wide-eyed passenger. “We don’t need them, do we? We’ll work things out for ourselves. For now, though, you might as well kick back and catch up on some shut-eye. It’s a thirty-mile trip back home. No need for both of us to end up stressed out and ornery.”

He started the truck, shifted into Drive and, because the lot was almost empty as usual, drove forward to cut a wide U-turn toward the nearest exit. Because the weather was having a decided effect on visibility, when he reached the stop sign and saw that his windows were fogging up, he quickly switched on the defroster. After the mist cleared away, he looked up and down the empty road once, twice, then added a third glance for good measure.

That’s when it struck him that this behavior was totally out of character for him, and it told him just how deeply he’d been rattled. Dusty Flats might be the county seat, he reminded himself as he gripped the wheel and turned onto the street, but in a town with a population under fifteen hundred, bad weather had a tendency to keep folks at home. There wasn’t exactly a need to act as though he were driving on a sixteen-year-old’s hardship permit. Thirty and responsible—regardless of what those uniformed viragoes had accused him—he’d never had a wreck in his life. He could do this, he told himself.

You can’t do this, and you know it.

He did, however, manage to make the turn. He even drove a few miles without breaking into a cold sweat. But by the time he got to the farm-to-market road that angled off toward his ranch, he found himself setting his right hand on the seat in front of the baby and driving twenty miles an hour under the legal limit. Completely logical, he told himself. He was still calm. This was merely in case someone came barreling out of nowhere and aimed straight into them.

Before he reached the next intersection, however, he had to pull over to the shoulder. Reduced to a shaking mass, he actually felt as though he might have to get out of the car and lose the coffee and biscuit that was all he’d ingested since rising before dawn. Him. Big John Paladin. The rancher who’d outraced tornadoes and had outlasted droughts since taking over the Long J Ranch at the unheard of age of twenty-six.

How he wished he could blame his condition on the shock over what Celene had done. But he would be lying if he tried. He was angry—angry, disgusted, but most of all scared sick. He had a feeling that it was just as well that Bud had threatened to keep him here. If he found the exasperating…female, he might strangle her with his bare hands.

Funny thing was, from the minute he’d set eyes on her, he’d known they were wrong for each other. Celene had been flashy, daring and restless. She’d been the kind of woman who would find it difficult to stick with one man, let alone work at a marriage. But on the night he’d sat in that Abilene honky-tonk, all that had mattered was that she hadn’t looked anything like Dana Dixon. When they’d danced, she hadn’t felt the way Dana had in his arms. Her perfume hadn’t crept under his defenses and spawned a fierce hunger in him like Dana’s. And she sure as hell couldn’t tie him in a big agonizing knot with one of her smiles.

What Celene had managed to do that fateful night was to provide him with a drinking companion—and a few hours later, some long-denied companionship of another form. It had been the kind of experience that a brooding, recently rejected man should have been able to walk away from. With a hangover, to be sure, but also with just enough guilt to promise himself never to do it again. Maybe even with enough humbleness to go home and try to mend some fences.

He’d had the hangover, all right. He’d also ended up with the kind of shock that made men give up drinking permanently. Before he could apologize to Dana, only weeks after the Abilene incident, he found himself saddled with an angry, pregnant wife. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget her fury once Celene had tracked him down through a friend who’d worked at the motel. As though that one night of carelessness and stupidity had been all his fault.

And now he had a child, as well. A son, no less, born from the wrong woman. Then, as though that wasn’t problematic enough, sometime between dawn and midday, while he’d been checking on the herd in his northernmost pasture, that woman had decided she not only didn’t want to be a wife, she didn’t want to be a momma, either.

It had taken only minutes after his return to discover why John, Jr. was crying his tiny lungs out. Celene was nowhere to be found. Her clothes were gone, as was everything else she owned, and so was that damned car she’d demanded as part of their unconventional arrangement.

He hadn’t taken time to check on whatever else was missing; he’d simply scooped up John, Jr. and headed toward town to find someone to care for his boy while he did what he had to do. Only no one wanted to help him.

What was he going to do? He couldn’t go after Celene with a newborn child in tow, nor did he have an inkling how to care for the boy all by himself.

His son needed a woman. A mother. Softness.

John knew all he had within him at this point in his life was guilt, frustration and too much damned bitterness to be healthy for any human being. And a heap of heartache, but not an ounce of it for his wife.

“Damn you, Dana,” he whispered, feeling the sweat trickle down his back. This whole mess would never have occurred if she hadn’t provoked him so. “Damn you.”

He didn’t realize he had company until he heard the tap on his window. With a jerk, he swung around and looked into Bud Hackman’s rain-splattered face. Apparently his friend had decided to follow him in his patrol car. Swearing under his breath, John rolled down his window.

“Some people have the sense not to stand out in the rain,” he said in lieu of a greeting or query. “So what are you gonna do, write me up for boring a gopher or armadillo to death?”

Bud eyed him calmly through eyeglass lenses that could have used their own set of windshield wipers. “They were all smart enough to take the last yacht to Monterey. You okay, J.P.?”

John had come to group the people in his life into three categories. Everyone who was either in awe of or feared him called him Big John. Everyone who liked him—at least sometimes—called him J.P. And the few who wished he’d never crossed their paths called him Paladin. Right now he knew there were only two members in that second group.

“Sure. I’m great,” he muttered. “I get my kicks out of driving all the way to town to ask total strangers to take care of my kid while I hunt down my wife. It doesn’t faze me at all when my best friend not only refuses to help me, but threatens to arrest me for making a disturbance in a public facility.”

“All I said was that we couldn’t put out a missing person’s bulletin for twenty-four hours,” Bud replied as though indifferent to the edge in John’s voice. “And that I didn’t think it was a good idea for you to be chasing all over the country for Celene when you had greater responsibilities here.” The quiet-mannered cop hunched more deeply into the collar of his down jacket and eyed the makeshift car seat. His expression appeared to stay the same except that the raindrops on his glasses seemed to twinkle a bit more. “Whatcha gonna do about the tyke, guy?”

John’s glower intensified. “Thought I’d put him in the pen with the other new calves until he’s weaned, but I’m open to suggestions. You want to lend me Kay for about ten years?”

“I’d rather eat my mother-in-law’s rhubarb pie three times a day for the rest of my life.”

“Hmph. You think so? You should have sampled some of the junk I’ve eaten lately. Rhubarb pie doesn’t sound so bad at the moment.”

“Be careful for what you ask, old son. Lucille’s only a phone call away.”

John glanced over at his boy and sighed. “I know you think I’m slightly unhinged at the moment, Bud, and that you have to watch over me like some big guard dog to protect me from myself, but can you cut me some slack?”

“You’re making that damned difficult.”

“What are you talking about?” He’d thought Bud was going to write him up for the makeshift car seat. Surely he wasn’t accusing him of something worse, like having been drinking?

As though he’d read his mind, Bud tilted his head toward the road ahead. “Look where you pulled over.”

John glanced beyond Bud’s left shoulder—and groaned inwardly. He’d guessed wrong. It was worse than he’d imagined.

Cripes.

He’d stopped right before the turnoff to Dana’s place. Eat crackers and whistle, he thought, feeling several times the fool.

“Innocent enough mistake, old pard,” Bud continued, sounding suspiciously calm all of a sudden. “Once you get away from town and landmarks, one road starts to look like another.”

“Stuff it,” John barked, reaching for the last ounce of his self-control. “The boy was fussing, so I pulled over.”

“Is that so? For a minute there, I was worrying that you might have had something else in mind. Something as foolish as when you got involved with Celene. That’s what made me decide to follow you out of the hospital in the first place. You haven’t been in any shape to think clearly in a while, J.P.”

As he spoke he’d been glancing around the interior of the cab, making it impossible for John to miss his meaning. His truck looked the way his stomach, he, felt—a mess. Neglected. Chronically abused. Falling apart. Because he knew it was the truth, John’s mood grew even more caustic.

“You gonna stand out there and catch pneumonia for the sheer pleasure of irritating me some more? You already told me back at the hospital that there was nothing I could do about Celene, so either give me a ticket, or bug off,” he snapped, hating the whole embarrassing situation. Regardless of what some people thought, he wasn’t all quick temper and impulsiveness. Well, not always. At least he preferred to keep his personal problems to himself as much as possible. “You’re gonna get my boy sick with that wind blowing in here.”

“You should have thought of that before you took him out in the first place. But,” Bud added more kindly, “I’ll let you go, provided you fill me in on what your plans are once I turn around and head back to town.”

The man was clever. Sneaky. Low-down. He’d once told Bud that he had the personality of a fox. Now he decided his friend had taken the analogy too seriously.

“Up yours, compadre.”

“I could always haul you in on a DWI.”

It took all of John’s control not to lunge out through the half-lowered window. “You know damned well that I haven’t had a drink in—”

“Ah-ah-ah.”

“Since the day John, Jr. was born,” he snarled.

“A whole ten days, good job. Because with a great-looking boy like that, it wouldn’t make sense to stick your ornery neck out any farther than it already is. Understand?”

“Remind me to call you if ever I have a massive coronary,” John muttered sarcastically. “It would be comforting to know someone was around who would be sympathetic.”

Bud straightened somewhat and looked up and down the road. “I am sympathetic, J.P., but you’ve gotta pull it together now.”

Feeling another surge of panic and frustration, John replied with a snort. “For what?”

“For that new life beside you, you big lummox! The one who didn’t do a danged thing to deserve this, but who’s stuck having to live with what you’ve helped create for him.”

John felt Bud’s words reverberate through him. No matter how annoyed he became with his friend, the truth remained irrefutable.

“I know you’re right but…I don’t know what to do,” he whispered to the dashboard, afraid to be heard, afraid he wouldn’t be.

“What do you want to do?” came the gruff, though empathetic question.

He didn’t have to think about the answer at all, although five minutes ago he’d had something far more vengeful in the forefront of his mind. “File for a divorce and get full custody of my kid as soon as possible.”

“Anything else?”

“Raise him to be a better man than his father,” he said grimly, only to add with no small anxiety, “but…I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Take it one step at a time, friend.”

John wanted to nod; instead he gripped the steering wheel. “There’s something else, too. I want to get Dana back.”

Several long, weighted seconds passed. “You’ve never had Dana, John,” came Bud’s reluctant reply. “Not any more than my kid ever possessed that orphan fawn the year we rented that place near your east boundary. Some wounded things can’t learn to trust again after they’ve been damaged.”

Everything Bud said was true, and he should know; he was one of the few in town who understood exactly how rough a childhood Dana had experienced. Frustrated and often left feeling helpless due to his youth, John had used Bud as a sounding board. But that was then. Donnal was long gone and as far as John was concerned, nothing was over until it was over. This conviction strengthened his resolve, was the steel that kept his spine straight.

He felt Bud’s stare for another few seconds and then his friend swore under his breath. “Well then, stop turning my road into a parking lot while I’m standing out here like a drowning fool. You turn that way,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

Farm-to-Market Road 5555. Like all the nonexistent telephone numbers on TV shows, this one ricocheted through John’s mind like a UFO streaking for home, triggering memories that were not all good. Not hardly.

“She may not want to see me,” he said, thinking of that last ugly scene between them. It had been the evening before he’d left for the stock sale in Abilene and driven by jealousy and fear, he’d jumped to some terrible conclusions about her and Guy Munroe.

“Probably not,” Bud agreed. “I said she was cautious, not stupid.”

John shot his friend a withering look. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“I’m paid to uphold the law for all of my constituents. The fact that deep down I may have hoped you and Dana could have overcome both of your backgrounds and created something special together is beside the point.”

Hearing him speak in the past tense wasn’t reassuring, either. “You don’t believe it’s still possible?”

Bud wrinkled his nose. His dripping glasses inched back up the bridge a bit. “You were always too much for her to handle, my friend. Now there’s two of you Paladins. What do you think? Either way,” he added, angling his head so that the collected rainwater sluiced off the rim of his Stetson, “you keep your temper in check, hear?”

“I never hurt her the way her father did, and I never would.” He knew Bud would understand his dangerously soft tone.

“No man can say what he’d do in a moment of passion, John. Fact is, you never erased the look of wariness in her eyes. Could be you even made it worse. I have seen you lose control enough not to care how badly you upset her. So I’m telling you outright, don’t make me have to choose between you.”

Maybe Bud was within his boundaries to read him the riot act, but that didn’t mean John had to like it. “Go dry off,” he said, shifting into gear again. “You won’t have to worry about any—calls this afternoon. At least not any from her place.”

The lawman straightened and held up his hands in surrender. “Having your word on that makes me feel a lot better. Thanks, J.P…. and good luck.”

As his friend returned to his car, John rolled up his window and turned left onto Dana’s street. Ironically his shaking had stopped, but now the rock he perpetually seemed to carry in his chest suddenly began slamming against his breastbone like a medieval battering ram.

Had he been intending to do this all along? What did that make him—besides a jerk for blowing his chances with her in the first place? He gripped the steering wheel more firmly. How was she going to react? Would he see at least a flash of joy in those beautiful brown eyes of hers?

A soft mewing sound rose from the box.

“We can’t ask for a miracle right off,” he said, his gaze locking on the house. “It may take some time and even more work. She was pretty upset the last time I saw her, but I promise you this, little guy, if there’s a snowball’s chance in, er, never mind. Just trust me. One look at you and she’ll be hooked. I promise you’ll have a momma—the best—before all this is over.”

But he didn’t feel quite so confident as he eyed Dana’s home. He’d hated the small white frame house even more than their former dwelling from the moment he’d heard that she’d planned to buy it for herself and her mother. He’d understood the frustration she’d been experiencing with spending money on rent, but had believed he’d had a better idea. Only she’d rejected it. Rejected him.

The place looked somewhat better now. In the two plus years she’d been living there, she’d planted shrubs and repainted the cottage. The trim was now an attractive country blue instead of the ugly medicinal pink it had been. Nevertheless, John still disliked the house, having always hated anything that gave Dana more independence or responsibility. Both had done their share in keeping them apart.

As he pulled into her driveway, he eyed the sign swaying in the wind. Bookkeeping & Tax Service. Dana had established the business five years ago, right after college. She’d needed a job where she could work from home and still care for her arthritic mother. Since not everyone needed the services of a full-fledged certified public accountant, she’d developed a modest clientele quickly, leaving her with plenty of time to devote to her increasingly incapacitated parent.

After her mother’s death and his subsequent marriage, John had heard that Dana had taken on even more accounts. That could create a problem, he thought, shutting off the truck’s engine.