Bachelor Father (2 page)

“Amanda’s father.”

Katherine swallowed. It wasn’t a comfortable subject. Many times during the past few months she’d wished she could claim immaculate conception. After promising Zeke that birth control wasn’t a problem, she dreaded telling him she’d been wrong. She’d rationalized postponing the call because she’d seen no reason to involve him if she ultimately lost the baby.

“You have to tell him,” Naomi said.

“I know.”

“He might just relinquish all rights to her.”

“Maybe.” Funny how little she knew about the man who had given her life twice, first by saving her from drowning and second by fathering Amanda. He was possibly the most gentle man she’d ever known, yet beneath that gentleness burned a fierce passion. Her heart still raced whenever she allowed herself to remember their moment of joining, when she’d felt somehow
claimed.

The next morning, though, he’d been much more cautious and withdrawn. Plagued by her own insecurities, she’d suggested that maybe she ought to get back. Instead of trying to change her mind as some men might, he’d sealed himself off completely, which had convinced her there was no hope for a relationship.

“Do you feel anything for him?” Naomi asked.

Katherine looked up to find the older woman watching her closely. It was an important question. If she still had an emotional connection to Zeke, one that could potentially lead to a relationship, then she had no business letting Naomi train her as a replacement. She might not know a lot of things about Zeke, but she was absolutely sure of one thing—he would never live in New York. During their night together he’d made clear his love of the wilderness and his aversion to cities and crowds.

“I feel gratitude.” Katherine glanced at the clock on the bedside table and decided it was time to switch Amanda to her other breast. She still felt a little clumsy handling the baby, but once she settled her in again, the tug of her small mouth felt perfect and right. “After all,” she continued, “Zeke saved my life, and he inadvertently gave me Amanda.”

“I’m not talking about gratitude.”

Katherine tried to be objective about her emotions regarding Zeke, but it wasn’t easy. That night was like a blazing comet in her life, but her reaction to him had probably been born of many factors. She’d recently been dumped by Ken, she’d just been saved from drowning, and she’d never been stranded in the wilds with a man, especially a man as virile as Zeke. Maybe the fact that he was part Sioux had tickled her romantic fantasy. And maybe it was that look he gave her across the campfire, a look that promised so much pleasure...

“Katherine?”

She blinked and glanced at Naomi. Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Okay, he’s very attractive, and I have some hot memories that are tripping me up a little. But he’s apparently a real loner who wants nothing but wilderness surrounding him, while all I want is to work at
Cachet.
”

“But what about your vacation last year? You didn’t choose the Hyatt on Maui, don’t forget. You opted for your personal little Outward Bound in Yellowstone. Maybe that yearning to be a wilderness guide isn’t completely gone. Maybe you have a hankering for the great outdoors yourself.”

Katherine smiled, more sure of herself now. “What I have a hankering for is a crisp set of galleys, a hot cup of espresso and a bagel slathered with cream cheese.”

Naomi beamed in approval. “Good girl. Although you’ll have to go easy on the caffeine as long as you’re breastfeeding.”

“Decaf espresso, then.” She noticed that Amanda had drifted off to sleep, her tiny hands curled into fists. “New York is what I know and love, and I’ve found my dream job. What could be better?”

“I can’t imagine. So it’s time to tidy up the situation with this man and get on with business. If he wants to surrender his parental rights, we’re home free. If he wants partial custody, which I doubt, I’m sure you can work that out with him.”

She made it sound so easy, Katherine thought. Something told her it wouldn’t be quite that simple, but she tried to look confident as she nodded in agreement. “Right.”

“Great. I’ve set it up so you can do exactly that.”

Katherine stared at her. “Set what up?”

“He was part of a bachelor auction out in Wyoming, a benefit for a boys’ ranch. I donated a chunk of money to the ranch in exchange for you spending a weekend with him in Jackson Hole at the end of August. You can tell him about Amanda then. She’ll be two months old and should travel just fine.”

“Naomi!” Katherine jerked, causing Amanda to startle awake.

“Or were you planning to tell him over the phone?”

“I—” Katherine paused to catch her breath and gently rock Amanda back to sleep. She should have expected something like this from Naomi. The woman had invented the term
take charge.
“I hadn’t thought how I’d tell him, but...” She gazed at Naomi, still having trouble comprehending what her godmother had done. “You bought him for the weekend?”

Naomi waved a dismissive hand. “That’s overdramatizing the whole thing. It’s a business arrangement. I gave money to the ranch in exchange for helping my chief assistant tidy up her personal life.”

“I can’t imagine Zeke putting himself up for auction, let alone agreeing to spend the weekend with me simply because you paid the going price.”

“I won’t pretend that he was eager to comply. He tried to talk me out of it, said that the two of you had nothing to discuss. But when he realized that my sizable donation to the ranch depended on his cooperation, he gave in.”

Katherine’s chest grew heavy with despair. She’d been right about Zeke. He might have surrendered himself to a night of lovemaking, but he didn’t want complications in his solitary life. Unfortunately, she was about to bring him a very large one.

“I still can’t believe he was willing to take part in a bachelor auction in the first place,” she said. “I’ve never met a more private man.”

“He’s an alumnus of the place. All the bachelors were. Quite an interesting story, really. They must have blanketed the media with invitations. Ours came quite a while ago.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” So Zeke had been raised on a boys’ ranch. She hadn’t known that. It made his lone-wolf image even more vivid.

Naomi regarded her with the same calm assurance that had kept her staff in awe of her for two decades. “You’ve been on an emotional roller coaster for months. Any mention of Zeke seemed to be stressful for you, and I was so afraid you’d miscarry that I decided not to bring this up. But it’s worked out for the best. Going to Wyoming with Amanda is the right thing to do. You can clear the decks and then come home and settle into your new position.”

“But Zeke doesn’t want to see me. You said so yourself.”

“He needs to see Amanda. You owe him that much, Katherine.”

She gazed down at her sleeping child. Zeke’s child. Naomi was right, but the thought of meeting Zeke again under these circumstances scared her to death.

“Your courage is one of the qualities that made me decide to turn over the magazine to you in the first place,” Naomi said. “I’m not giving you anything you can’t handle. You can do this.”

Katherine lifted her head and looked into Naomi’s eyes. “Yes, I can.”

CHAPTER TWO

A
UGUST
TURNED
OUT
TO
BE
a wet month in the Tetons, and more rain looked likely as Zeke climbed into his battered king-cab pickup and headed for Jackson Lake Lodge on Friday afternoon. He spent the drive time singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” because it reminded him of cookouts at Lost Springs and why he was putting himself through this.
Cachet’s
donation would go a long way toward remodelling bunkhouses that no longer met the fire code, and Rex had already lined up a contractor for the renovation.

Naomi Rutledge had made it clear, however, that her check wouldn’t be issued until after this weekend.

Zeke had never pretended to understand the thinking process of people who lived back East, but the whole deal was weird, even for New Yorkers. Painful though it had been, Zeke had combed through every moment of the night he’d spent with Katherine, searching for a clue as to what this could be about.

From the beginning, he’d tried to control his growing sexual awareness of her, which had been tough as their conversation grew more personal. He found out she’d broken up with her boyfriend, and to get her head on straight she’d decided to spend some time alone in the wilderness. She’d admitted that notion had been naive and overly dramatic.

Plucky, honest women appealed to him, and this one seemed to be available. Eventually his desire felt natural and right, something to be seriously considered even though they’d just met. But while he was debating the issue, she’d made the first move. It had only been a light touch on his arm, yet he’d felt his world shift. Then he’d turned to look into her hazel eyes. That moment when he knew that she wanted him as ferociously as he wanted her would be with him forever. A moment like that could make a man feel like a god.

This moment, however, when he was about to confront her after nearly a year of silence, when he’d been summoned to this meeting by her boss and kept in the dark about the reason, made him feel like a toadstool.

He sang another chorus of the drinking song as he pulled his beat-up truck in among the out-of-state cars and tour buses parked at Jackson Lake Lodge. But he didn’t have the nerve to keep singing as he walked into the lounge where they were supposed to meet, so the jitters he’d postponed with the song struck with a vengeance. He’d always loved this high-ceilinged room with tall windows facing Jackson Lake and the jagged Tetons beyond. He hoped this meeting wouldn’t ruin the place for him.

Heart pounding, he scanned the room. He didn’t see her. Damn it, after all this, maybe she’d stood him up. Of course, that would be a good thing. He didn’t want to see her, anyway. Except that he’d gotten himself all worked up about the prospect, and at least if he saw her, he’d find out the answer to the mystery.

“Zeke?”

He wouldn’t have bet that he’d recognize Katherine’s voice, but he didn’t have to turn around to know she’d spoken his name. A flood of desire took him completely by surprise as his body replayed the sensation of being deep inside her. He turned to face her slowly, giving him time to regain his cool. He knew she wouldn’t be wearing rumpled khakis this time, and he prepared himself for her city look.

But as he gazed at her, his brain stalled. When he finally admitted what he was seeing, his knees almost gave way.

She looked more polished than she had a year ago, but he barely noticed as his attention fastened on the canvas carrier snuggled intimately against her chest. She supported the weight of the carrier with one arm. With her free hand she cradled the head of a baby. A baby with very black hair.

While his mind shouted denials, his gut reacted with a primitive tug of certainty.
His.
He relived the dizzy ecstasy of being inside Katherine, of her warmth and a connection unlike any he’d known. When he’d finally poured himself into her, he’d experienced a sense of purpose he’d never felt with any woman. Maybe he’d known then, no matter what she’d said about birth-control pills. Maybe he’d known all along that this could be the only logical explanation for their meeting today.

“Her...her name is Amanda.” Katherine sounded out of breath. “Zeke, I didn’t mean for this to happen. Apparently the stress of nearly drowning short-circuited my system.”

A girl.
He noticed the baby’s terry outfit was pink. He began to shake. A baby girl. Somehow knowing that she was a girl terrified him even more. She was asleep, her dark lashes creating a fringe above each cheek. She pursed her tiny mouth, then relaxed it again. Petrified though he was of this little bundle, he couldn’t seem to look away.

“I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I realize this comes as something of a surprise.” She paused. “Zeke, I wish you would say something.”

With great effort he lifted his gaze and looked at Katherine. A frown creased her high forehead. How he’d enjoyed touching the smooth planes of her face as they’d lain side by side in his small tent, his battery lantern on low so he could see her while they made love. Her golden eyes had reminded him of a mountain streambed, the kind that he could stare into for hours. He might have even told her that. He knew he’d said things to her that he’d never said to anyone before, risked more than he’d meant to risk.

Her eyes brought him no joy today. All he could see was a woman who’d taken the best he had to give, then acted as if she could hardly wait to get away from him the next morning. Admittedly he wasn’t good at expressing his feelings, but that morning he’d been trying to think how he could tell her what the night had meant to him. Before he had it figured out, she’d announced she’d better leave. He’d been half expecting her rejection. In his experience, caring too much almost guaranteed being discarded like an empty fast-food sack.

And now obligation was all that had brought her here to let him know they had a baby. He wanted to call Amanda an accident, but he knew she wasn’t. At the time she was conceived, he thought he’d found his mate. That belief alone might have cancelled Katherine’s birth-control pills. He’d seen people will their own death, so maybe you could will life into existence, too. Maybe he’d unconsciously done that.

He cleared his throat. “I think we should find a more private spot to talk about this.”

“You’re right, we probably should. But just let me say this. I’m not here to ask for anything—not child support or even for you to give Amanda your name. I take full responsibility for this baby. I understand how you want to live your life, and a child doesn’t fit in very well. Now that you’ve seen her, if you’d like to relinquish all rights and never see either of us again, that’s fine.”

He stared at her, hurt tearing at his insides. She knew nothing about the way he wanted to live his life, but she’d use his loner status to justify closing him away from the baby because that suited her best. Anger and self-protection followed close on the heels of his pain as he threw up the walls that had sheltered his bruised heart all his life. He kept his voice low. “Is that what you came for? To have me sign off on this kid?”

“No!”

The baby’s eyes opened and she started to whimper.

Katherine rocked her gently. “I mean, yes, if that’s what you want, but if—”

“You could have hired a lawyer to put that in a letter and saved us both a lot of time.” He took satisfaction from the distress in her eyes.

“I thought you deserved to see her.”

“How considerate.” He lowered his voice even more, conscious of others in the lounge starting to listen in. “You haven’t seen fit to contact me in all these months, not even when you knew you were pregnant. Now you drop out of the sky, present this baby and suggest I give up my rights. That’s a great idea, but I don’t need three days in a plush lodge to work that out with you. Mail me the papers.” He brushed past her and walked out of the lounge, refusing to allow the baby’s wail to penetrate the thickness of the wall around him.

* * *

K
ATHERINE
STOOD
in the middle of the lounge in a state of shock, automatically comforting Amanda while she tried to assimilate what had taken place. Unless she’d misunderstood, Zeke had just agreed to the very thing that Naomi wanted, and for all intents and purposes, the visit had already accomplished its goal. She should feel jubilant, ready to celebrate before catching a flight back to New York.

Instead she wanted to cry. This was wrong, all wrong. Back in New York, she’d thought such a plan would be best for everyone, but after seeing Zeke again, she knew she didn’t want him to sign some papers and disappear from Amanda’s life.

When she’d walked into the lounge and caught sight of him there, his broad back to her, she’d felt an unexpected rush of delight. And awe. She’d forgotten just how big a man he was. His silky black hair seemed a little longer—it touched his collar in back now. But his stance was disturbingly familiar, and the faded jeans and blue flannel shirt could have been the same ones he’d worn that night. She suspected he had lots of similar clothes.

And he certainly fit the surrounding country with his massive frame and bronzed good looks. The rugged Tetons outside the window provided the perfect backdrop for a man in flannel and denim.

In spite of the anxiety she’d felt at presenting Amanda to him, she’d looked forward to the moment he would turn around, the moment she would once again be able to admire his warrior’s face with those intense dark eyes. Until now she hadn’t acknowledged to herself how much she’d missed him.

And now he was gone.

But maybe she could still catch him.

Grabbing up the diaper bag she’d set down, she clutched Amanda tight and hurried out of the lodge. She made it into the parking lot just as Zeke started to climb into an old gray truck. Calling his name, she started toward him as a light rain began falling.

He turned, but there was no charity in his glance. The forbidding look in his dark eyes almost made her give up and go back inside, but Amanda’s warm weight against her body was all the motivation she needed.

“Please don’t leave.”

His expression was totally closed. “It’s raining. Take her back inside.”

“Come inside with me. We’ll get some coffee. We’ll talk.” She was begging, but she didn’t care. “I don’t want you to leave like this. Surely you’ll want to see her once in a while, and we need to—”

“Why?”

“Because she’s your daughter!”

His laugh was harsh. “You say that as if it makes a difference. I happen to know being somebody’s biological kid doesn’t mean a thing.”

So he’d been abandoned by his parents, she thought. He hadn’t admitted that when they’d talked about neither of them having any family left. She took a deep breath. “You’re right, it doesn’t mean a thing to some people. I had you pegged differently.”

His eyes hardened even more. “Up until ten minutes ago I didn’t even know this baby existed. I wish you’d done us both a favor and kept it that way, but since you haven’t, I’m going to leave here and pretend I never laid eyes on her.”

“Zeke, please don’t.”

“It’s the best thing all around. Now take her back in. It’s raining harder.” He climbed into his truck, started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

Katherine bowed her head over Amanda to shelter her from the rain and to hide the tears that threatened to fall. Naomi would be thrilled, she told herself, sniffing. A clean break. No strings. Lots of little girls grew up without fathers.

Amanda gurgled and waved her hand, bumping her fist against Katherine’s damp cheek.

“Forgive me, sweetheart,” Katherine murmured, not sure who she wanted to forgive her—Amanda or Zeke.

* * *

Z
EKE
STARTED
OUT
OF
the parking lot, determined to get the hell away from the lodge as quickly as possible. But he made the mistake of looking in the rearview mirror.

Katherine stood there getting wet, her head bowed over the baby. They looked so hopelessly vulnerable, so in need of protection. Katherine was brave, but she had a reckless streak, too. That’s what had nearly gotten her killed on her solo trek through Yellowstone. He remembered the stab of fear he’d felt when Naomi had called and he’d been afraid something had happened to Katherine.

Well, something had, and he’d been partly to blame for it. Would she do something foolish now just because he’d refused to talk about this baby business? He’d thought he was giving her exactly what she wanted by refusing to have anything to do with the kid, but his response seemed to have devastated her. Would he get some terrible message from Naomi Rutledge concerning Katherine and the baby’s welfare?

With a muttered oath he slammed on his brakes. Slowly he backed the truck to where she was standing, pulled on the emergency brake and put the gearshift in neutral.

As he got down and rounded the truck, she was watching him cautiously, her eyes wide. She held Amanda with a protective grip. He’d been told that his size, combined with the features passed on by his Sioux ancestors, gave him a menacing air, so he deliberately relaxed his expression and unclenched his hands.

She had a large canvas diaper bag hanging from the crook of her arm. Vaguely he recognized Winnie the Pooh characters, although he’d been an adult before he knew anything about those stories. He gazed at her standing with her tiny baby, her storybook diaper bag and an almost childlike uncertainty in her big eyes.

Damn it, he felt like rescuing her all over again. The woman kept getting herself in trouble, and he kept wanting to keep her safe. It was a bad combination. But he couldn’t leave her standing here looking as if her world had suddenly stopped spinning.

“Let’s take a drive,” he said. “I don’t feel like discussing this over a damn cup of coffee. I need to be doing something.”

She peered at his old truck. “Do the seat belts work in your back seat?”

“Yeah.” Then he realized that these days you didn’t just decide to go for a ride with a baby. There were all sorts of rules and regulations. “Forget it. Just write me a letter when you get back to New York.”