Don't Tell Me You Love Me (Destiny Bay Romances~The Ranchers Book 6) (5 page)

The problem was a lot of things were getting jumbled. Some of the things he’d just told Lysette were true and right. He didn’t like kids particularly, in fact, he’d always made it a point to stay away from them. Kids were noisy and asked too many questions. In Asia, there were places where kids swarmed around you like a flock of gnats, trying to grab whatever they could get, trying to get you to buy something or give them something or sometimes--- just for the pure hell of it. He had no doubt this kid would be just as annoying as others he’d seen around. He’d take a look, tell the kid hello, and that would be that. He didn’t really want to go much further. But Lysette was right--it was a way to see Cheyenne again. And he wanted to see her as much as he could before….before she was Frank’s.
 

So at eleven o’clock, he’d be at the big oak door he knew so well. He was going to see her once more. But he was going to have to resist the urge to kiss her this time. You weren’t supposed to kiss the bride before the wedding.
 

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy….,” Zachary sang it out like a song as he came barreling down the path toward the rose garden.

Cheyenne rose from where she’d been pulling little weeds out from between the pieces of bark in the mulch around her prize Floribundas and swept him up in her arms as he came crashing toward her knees. He squealed with delight and she laughed, holding him close, savoring the smell of peanut butter mixed with pure baby.
 

He wiggled in her arms, a bundle of life and love so precious it brought tears to her eyes. He scrambled down again and she let him go, watching as he ran off down the path, his slightly bowed legs carrying him off to a new adventure, pretty young Gina, her “mother’s helper”, following behind him. Zachary was her son. He was her life. She would do anything for him. Anything at all.
 

There had been a time when she would have said the same about Johnny.
 

Johnny. Her heart skipped a beat. He would be here soon. She was going to be very strong and very cool. She was going to do her duty and then tell him he had to leave. And just to make sure she didn’t weaken, she had Gina, the housekeeper’s daughter who often babysat for her, sticking around, and she’d told Frank to come for lunch. There would be no more kisses.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sunshine. Looking back, it seemed she’d spent most of her teenaged years kissing Johnny. The nights they’d spent sitting on the back steps, lips touching, tongues tangling, breath coming faster and faster….
 

She remembered the first time he’d kissed her. And she remembered the first time his hand had “accidentally” touched her breast. And the time her father had come out the back door and found them, bodies entwined, eyes glazed, lips swollen. He’d raised hell, ordered Johnny off the property, ordered Cheyenne never to see him again, and put the whole household into an uproar for hours while he yelled and issued threats. By morning he’d relented, once Cheyenne had cried a few tears and sniffed her way through breakfast, once he’d realized all his lecturing about how she should go out with other boys had been so much smoke in the wind. Finally, he’d said Johnny could come back. For the time being.
 

Her father’s permission had always been important to her. She never could make Johnny understand that. She had been exceptionally close to her father ever since her mother had died. There was a special bond between them, and she loved him with all her heart. She knew he didn’t want her to date Johnny. He wanted someone from the country club for her, someone whose daddy belonged to the same organizations he did, someone who came from money and the right address.
 

But she loved Johnny. She couldn’t explain it, especially not to her father. She and Johnny were meant to be. There was nothing she could do about it.
 

Her father had grudgingly given in to the inevitable. He’d actually given Johnny a job in his real estate firm and then sent him to college. Of course, they’d both known there was an ulterior motive involved. He’d sent Johnny to a local university and he’d sent Cheyenne to an Ivy League school back East. He wanted them as far away from each other as they could get. But it didn’t work. They would get together every time she could get her father to buy her a ticket home—and a few times which he never did know about, when Johnny had scraped up the money himself and met her at the airport in Los Angeles and they spent the weekend lost in each other’s eyes.
 

Those were the days she cherished. Those were the days she would never forget. All things had seemed so very possible then.
 

A car was coming up the driveway. She turned, shading her eyes. Johnny stepped out, looking tall and strong and incredibly handsome. The sun shone on his black hair and his shoulders filled out the denim shirt in a way that appealed to her on a level she didn’t often visit these days. She drew her breath in deep and forced herself not to notice.
 

“Hi,” she said, managing to sound casual, as he walked toward where she stood at the edge of the garden. “Come this way. He’s playing down by the pond.”

He followed her. She was wearing slim jeans and a tiny knit top that hugged her body the way he would have liked to. He watched the way she walked from behind and it made him crazy. But he had to keep his mind on the mission at hand.
 

She led him around the hibiscus bushes to the edge of a small play area. There sat a little boy in the middle of a sand box, happily shoveling sand from one pail to another with a little plastic scoop, his brow furled with intensity as he worked hard not to spill a single grain of sand. Gina sat back under a tree, watching him. A pond lay just behind him, and three or four ducks swam along the surface, quaking softly to each other as they went. The playground included a jungle gym, a swing set, and a small portable plastic pool which was being filled for swimming once the day got hot enough. It looked like his kid was getting everything a little boy could possibly want.
 

What a contrast, he thought fleetingly, to his own childhood.
 

“Well, there he is,” Cheyenne said quietly, stopping at the edge of the pond and forty feet or so from the child. She folded her arms and glanced quickly into Johnny’s face to see his reaction. “What do you think?”

Chapter Five

Johnny watched him for a minute, very careful to be sure no emotion registered on his face. He was a cute kid. He looked pretty much like any other cute kid. For a long moment, Johnny stared at him and waited, wondering if he would feel any sort of connection to him. Nothing happened. Zachary could have been anyone, and anyone’s child. “He looks just like your father,” he said at last, knowing he had to say something.
 

Her eyes widened. She looked at Zach, then at Johnny. Didn’t he see it? Couldn’t he tell? His son didn’t look like her father at all. He looked just like Johnny. Exactly like him. Didn’t he see, or didn’t he want to? She bit her lip. She wasn’t going to say anything. There was no point to it.
 

“Okay, Johnny, here’s the deal. You’re acting like you can just walk in and become a father to a boy you’ve never seen before. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not automatic. He doesn’t have a little sensor that starts flashing and says, ‘Hey, it’s my Dad. Gotta’ love him.’”

He shrugged. “Obviously,” he muttered, but she was on a roll.
 

“You’ve never cared enough to make a phone call on his birthday. You’ve never sent a card.”
 

“Look, I’ve been busy. Not to mention, out of the country.” He frowned. “I just wanted to see him. Is that too much to ask?”

“It might be. We’ll see how he reacts.”

“Why would he react badly? I’ve never done anything to him.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “You appear out of the mist, as it were, and expect a child who has never seen or heard from you to come running into your arms? You really thought the two of you would become immediately attached?”

“He’s my son.”

“So what? He doesn’t know that. It doesn’t mean a thing to him.”

Johnny stared at her, a bit taken aback by her vehemence. He hadn’t come to grab the kid and run. He only wanted to see him. And Cheyenne. After all, that was the real point. And maybe that was also the problem.
 

“He knows who’s been here for him all along. He knows love and hugs and being picked up when he skins his knee. He doesn’t have a clue about Kuala Lumpur.”

“Cheyenne… .”

“You’re lucky he’s too young to understand all this. That means he’s too young to hate you. If he were much older, he’d be building up a case of resentment against the father that ran off and left him. As it is, he’s too young to understand what a jerk you’ve been.”

“Wow.” Johnny took a deep breath. “I’m glad you got all that out of your system. You want me just to go?” He shook his head. “I mean, look Cheyenne, I didn’t come here to be a problem to everyone. I just wanted… .”

“Oh crap,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Okay, maybe I’m getting a little crazy here. I…I didn’t mean to blow your head off. I just want you to understand the ramifications of your actions. Actions have consequences.”

He nodded. “Okay. I get it.”

“Okay. So why don’t you go on over and say hello?” She gestured toward where her son was playing.
 

“Who? Me?” He stood nervously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He’d come to see the child, and now he’d seen him. He wasn’t sure why it was incumbent on him to interact with the little boy, especially when the whole thing made Cheyenne so crazy. After all, he was too young to remember anything about this when he got older, wasn’t he? So what was the use of it all? And anyway, he didn’t have a clue as to how to approach the kid.

 
If only he were a dog—then he’d know what to do with him. Dogs were easy.
 

“You know what? I should have brought him a toy or something,” he said, turning back. “Maybe I’d better go down town and….”

She was shaking her head, looking stern. “No. He has too many toys as it is. He doesn’t need any more.”

He shrugged. “Okay,” he said, looking back at the boy.
 

As they watched, Zachary got up from his sand play and walked on chubby legs across the grass to where his pool was filling. A long, fat black hose was feeding water into the pool, and he pulled it out, letting it send its streams into the bushes instead. He laughed at the sight of the water spraying the leaves, but he didn’t look back to see who was watching him.
 

Cheyenne made a move, ready to tell him to leave the water alone, but she thought better of it. She didn’t want to do anything to put him into a bad mood at this point. There would be time for that after the two had met.
 

“Go on,” she urged, giving Johnny a little shove in the appropriate direction. “He’s a very friendly little boy. All you have to do is get him started.”

He took a step toward the child, who hadn’t looked up once, then stopped again and looked back at her.
 

“Uh…what do I do?” he asked, hooking his thumbs into his belt.
 

She frowned at him. He wasn’t usually shy. “Just go up and say ‘hi’.”

He grimaced and squinted at her. “Just say ’hi’? Does he know English?”

She sighed, her tan shoulders sagging. “Of course. What language did you think he spoke?”

He gave her a quick scowl. “You know what I mean. Is he talking?”

She held back a smile. “He knows ‘hi’.”

He took another step toward the boy, then turned back again.
 

“I don’t suppose I should say ‘hi, I’m your daddy’.”

She looked at him suspiciously, but he actually seemed earnest about this. “That might be a little confusing for him at this point,” she said. And then she couldn’t resist adding, “Especially when you disappear again.”

He took it exactly as it was meant—as a thinly veiled insult. “Who says I’m disappearing?” he challenged her.
 

Her eyes spoke of old resentments. “You know you will.” Then she remembered something. “And anyway, you promised.”

“I did not promise.”

She was about to argue with him when she realized what he was really doing. “Johnny, you are avoiding going over to Zachary, aren’t you?” She looked up at him in wonder. “What are you afraid of?”

His frown was fierce, just so she’d know he wasn’t afraid of anything at all. “I’ll go over to say ‘hi’ to the kid when I’m good and ready,” he said gruffly.
 

She put one hand on her hip and waved a finger at him. “You’ll go now!” she told him.
 

He liked the way she looked when she got pushy. If this had been two years ago, he would have reached out and grabbed her and kissed her until she cried uncle. But that was then. This was now. Reluctantly, he took a deep breath and turned, trudging across the grass until he came to where Zachary was playing with the hose. Finally, the boy looked up and stared at him with big blue eyes heavily fringed with black lashes.
 

“Hi, Zachary,” he said. “How ya’ doin’?”

The round, babyish face took him in. The little body was still as he stared. The little mouth was slightly open. Johnny smiled, but the child didn’t smile back. Then he turned back to his play, as though he’d seen enough and didn’t need to see any more.

“Having fun with the water there?” Johnny asked heartily. He waited a moment, but the boy didn’t look up. He looked back at Cheyenne. If the kid was ready to say this interview was over, so was he.
 

But she had other ideas. Gesturing, she let him know he had to try a little harder, and she started toward them as though to back that up. Johnny turned toward Zach again. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and erased the last bit of distance between them.
 

“What cha’ doin’, there kid?” he asked, reaching down with an awkward hand and ruffling the golden hair. It was soft as silk, thin and slippery as kitten fur. The boy didn’t respond, so he kept on ruffling. Still nothing. He ruffled a little harder. The boy pulled his head away and shot Johnny a gloomy glare.