Michael's father (14 page)

Megan relaxed, allowing the pent-up breath to escape. At least he hadn't rejected her out of hand. If they'd just talk to each other, she was sure they could work things out.

A burst of laughter drifted up from the bunk-house, and somewhere far away a coyote yipped, the sound escalating into a mournful howl. It was one of

Mean's favorite times of day. She was still caught off guard by the utter stiUness of the Wyoming nights, by the thick darkness of the sky and the brilliance of the stars strewn across it.

She pushed her toe against the floor and set the gHder in motion. For the first time since she'd left her grandparents' farm, Megan felt as if she'd found a place she could stay. This place spoke to her in a way no other place ever had. There was a stark beauty to the land that seemed to feed something in her soul.

At the end of summer, when Grace Cavenaugh reclaimed her job, Megan thought she might stay. Not on the Lazy B, of course, unless Kel invited her to do so, and it was dangerous to let herself even consider that possibility.

"Is that Gun with Colleen?"

Megan had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn't heard Kel's approach until he spoke. She jumped slightly, sending a quick shiver through the glider. Turning her head, she saw him standing just inside the screen, which explained why she hadn't heard the door open. He pushed the door open and stepped out onto the porch, his eyes looking past her.

He was wearing a pair of clean but faded jeans and a black T-shirt that molded every muscle of his shoulders. He'd exchanged boots for a pair of soft-soled moccasins. With his dark hair, tanned skin and with the lamp casting angled shadows across his face, he looked as much Indian as cowboy. From there, it was a relatively short step to wondering what he'd look like wearing a breechclout.

"Is that Gun with Colleen?" Kel asked again, interrupting the lascivious turn her thoughts had taken.

Megan followed his gaze and saw the two figures who'd emerged from the shadow of the bam and were making their way slowly toward the house. Gun's arm was slung around the girl's shoulders, his long stride slowed to accommodate her awkward gait.

"That's Gun with Colleen," Megan confirmed, feeling her heart swell with pleasure and a healthy dollop of relief. If she'd been wrong about Gun's reaction ... But she hadn't been, and this had proved to be one of those rare occasions when a httle meddling was a good thing. Not that she'd really done anything ...

"What did you do?" Kel's question made her flush a little, but she didn't pretend not to know what he meant.

"Not much, really. Colleen and I talked and I suggested that she might want to talk to Gun."

Kel gave her a disbeUeving look. "After six months of her acting like a scared rabbit aroimd him, that's all it took?"

"I think the time was right."

Kel sat down on the glider, angling his long body so that his knee just brushed hers. Megan knew she had it pretty bad when even that casual touch sent a tingle of awareness up her spine.

"You've been good for Colleen," he said. "I think she needed a friend."

"So did I," Megan said quietly.

Gun and Colleen reached the porch just then, and Kel turned to speak to Gun, looking as if there was

nothing extraordinary about seeing his best f rioid and his little sister walking together.

Sitting there, with the glider moving idly beneath him and Mean's knee just brushing his, Kel was aware of a feeling of lazy contentment, a vague sense of peace. Through the back of his mind drifted the thought that Colleen wasn't the only one M^an had been good for. But he shied away from considering that idea too closely.

Chapter 9

1 he sun shone down out of a pale blue August sky. Megan straightened from where she'd been crouched between the rows of green beans and arched her back to stretch the cramped muscles. Closing her eyes, she turned her face so the sun could find its way under the brim of the bright red baseball cap she wore. She savored the feel of its heat pouring over her. It wouldn't be all that long before winter made this kind of warmth a distant memory.

Megan shivered, her mood of sun worship abruptly spoiled. Opening her eyes, she stared down the row of beans, twined up head-high trelUses on either side of her. The big kitchen garden was one of her favorite places on the ranch. She enjoyed all of it, but she'd watched with particular delight the growth of this neat green tunnel, tracking the progress of the bean plants up the web of strings stretched between sturdy poles.

They'd started out as ankle-high streaks of green, the tiny plants looking somewhat ridiculous in comparison to the tall trellis they were expected to cover. But cover it they had.

Spotting a bean she'd missed, she reached out and pulled it free with a quick twist of the wrist. Zeke, the bunkhouse cook, had taken great pains to show her the right way to pick a string bean, a skill he seemed to think took some practice to master. Megan had listened and watched, giving the lesson the attention he clearly felt it deserved. She had come to like the crusty old buzzard, though she couldn't have said just why.

Instead of dropping the bean into the enamel pot at her feet, Megan nipped the stem end off with the edge of her thumbnail and bit into the crisp, sun-warmed flesh. From where she stood, she could see the ranch house, perfectly framed by the green walls on either side of her. It was a beautiful picture. The house looked solid, as if it had been here a long time and had every intention of being here a great deal longer.

Megan sighed and reached out to twist another bean from the plant, dropping it absently into the bowl at her feet. The house had good reason to be confident of its place, she thought whimsically. Unfortunately, she didn't.

Grace Cavenaugh's daughter had been delivered of a healthy baby girl three weeks ago. The new grandmother was staying on to help her daughter get on her feet. She hadn't mentioned just how much longer she expected to be away from the Lazy B, but Megan doubted it would be more than two or three weeks at most. Then Grade would return to her job.

And ril be out of one.

Not that she gave a damn about the job. If that had been her only concern, it wouldn't have been a concern at all. She'd never had trouble finding another job. But she'd found things on the Lazy B that weren't so easily replaced—the big house she'd come to think of as home, the ability to look clear to forever and see nothing but land and sky, her friendships with Gun and with Colleen. Those were things not easily replaced.

Not to mention the heart she'd be leaving behind with Kel, she thought, her mouth twisting in a painful smile. Hearts weren't easy to replace, either, which was too bad, considering how badly broken hers was likely to end up.

She sighed. If she just had some idea how Kel felt about her. When they were in bed together, it was dangerously easy to tell herself that he couldn't make love to her with such passion and tenderness unless he loved her at least a little. But what Megan lacked in experience, she made up for in common sense. Kel was a skillful and considerate lover. There was no reason to think it was anything more than that.

And she'd looked for a reason, she thought. Her mouth curved in a sad smile. She wanted nothing more than to believe that there was something more to their relationship on Kel's part than a certain friendship and the fact that they were compatible in bed. But if there was, he was certainly keeping it close to his vest.

They'd all been sitting at the dinner table last week when Colleen—a much happier Colleen than the girl she'd first met, Megan thought with satisfaction—had

read Grade's letter aloud. And when she reached the part where Grace mentioned that she'd be staying with her daughter a little while longer, Megan's eyes had slid compulsively in Kel's direction. But if it had occurred to him that Gracie's return meant her own departure, the idea didn't seem to disturb him.

He hadn't, either then or in the days since, said anything about her staying on past the originally agreed-upon time. If she had any pride, she supposed she wouldn't have continued to spend her nights in his bed. But if memories were all she was going to have of him then she wanted to store up as many as possible.

Of course, with every day that passed, it was becoming more of a possibility that she was going to be taking something more substantial with her when she left. She touched her fingers lightly against her stomach, wondering if her mild symptoms were a result of wishful thinking. And wondering if she'd completely lost her mind that she should actually be hoping she was right.

But crazy or not, she was hoping. She couldn't have Kel, but if she could have his baby... Megan didn't have any romantic illusions about how difficult it would be to raise a child on her own. Her peripatetic life-style was fine for her,.but she couldn't drag a baby all over the country with her. She'd have to try to find a stable job, which wouldn't be particularly easy to do while she was pregnant. And that was only the first and probably the least of the problems she'd have to deal with.

Before she even got to that point, there was the question of how Kel would feel about becoming a fa-

ther. It wasn't a topic that had come up between them. They hadn't really talked about birth control, he'd simply provided it from the start, but the only completely foolproof method was abstention, and they certainly hadn't done that.

Megan plucked another green bean and bit into it absently. They'd talked of a lot of different things, but Kel's feelings on parenthood hadn't been among them. But she couldn't imagine that he would walk away from his own child. He had too much sense of re-sponsibiUty for that.

But if a sense of responsibility was all he could give her child, it might be better if he was completely out of the picture. Megan knew from experience just how painful it was to know that you were a responsibility to someone and nothing more.

When her mother had dumped her on their doorstep, her grandparents had taken her in because they felt it was their responsibility to do sa Megan had sat silently in the chair she'd been given and Hstened to the discussion. If they didn't take her, she'd end up in foster care, an additional burden on an already overloaded system. There'd been no help for it—they'd have to raise her themselves.

There'd been a note of stem resignation in her grandfather's tone that had chilled Megan's childish heart. At six, she'd overheard her parents quarreling about which one of them had to take custody of her. Her mother had lost that battle and Megan had never seen her father again. Two years later, her mother had met a man who wanted to show her the world but not

with an eight-year-old in tow. And it became obvious that her grandparents didn't really want her either.

It had taken Megan years to realize that there wasn't anything wrong with her, that it had simply been her misfortune to be bom to parents too selfish to love anyone except themselves, and then to be handed over to an elderly couple whose last wish had been to start the arduous task of rearing a child all over again.

No child of hers was ever going to be made to feel like a burden, she thought, frowning at a butterfly that was drifting lazily between the rows of beans. If that was the best Kel could offer, then they'd manage without him.

The vehemence of the thought drew her up short. She didn't even know if there was a baby, for heaven's sake, let alone how Kel would react if there was. She bent and picked up the pan of beans and started to the house, her mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. Until she knew for sure that there was something to worry about, it was a little premature to try to guess how Kel would react, let alone get upset with him over it.

From the window of his office, Kel watched Megan walk down from the garden. She was wearing a pair of bright green shorts that exposed a tantalizing amount of leg, a red T-shirt that climg in all the ri^t places and a ridiculous red baseball cap. She'd drawn her fair hair back in a ponytail, a practical style that somehow managed to look sexy and sassy on her. Battered white sneakers and bright yellow socks completed the outfit.

Kel felt his mouth curve upward. She reminded him of a brightly wrapped Christmas present, the kind that you wanted to unwrap first on Christmas morning. Megan disappeared behind the comer of the house, and a few seconds later he heard the thud of the : kitchen screen door closing behind her.

His smile fading, he turned to his desk, but he didn't sit down again. There was a stack of paperwork sitting there, bills to be paid, records to be updated, let- | ters to be answered. Kel ignored them all.

The house was quiet around him. Colleen had gone into town with Gun to get a part he'd ordered for that junk heap of a Vette. Since the two of them had i patched up their differences. Colleen had become j Gun's shadow, the way she had been before the accident. It was good to see his little sister happy again. That was something for which he owed Megan thanks. '

M^an. With Colleen gone, there was nothing to j stop him from going out to the kitchen, persuading her ] to drop whatever she was doing and taking her up- j stairs to spend an hour or two in bed. His body stirred ^i in response to the thought, but Kel resisted the pull. \

Among the papers on his desk was a letter from J Grade saying that she'd be returning to the Lazy B in i two weeks, since her daughter was almost ready to i manage without help. The letter had forced him to face an issue he'd been doing his best to dodge, namely, the fact that summer was creeping to an end and so was the time he and Megan had originally agreed upon for her to stay. When Gracie returned, Megan would go, it was that simple.

Unless he did something to stop her, she'd pack her things into her little blue car and drive out of his life. Unless he did something to stop her. The question was, did he want to stop her? And if so, why?

He spun away from the desk and stared out the window again. He knew the answer to the first question—he didn't want Megan to go, not now, not yet. As for why... What did it matter why, he thought irritably. He wanted her to stay because he liked having her in his bed. For that matter, he liked her companionship out of bed, too. She was intelligent and quickwitted. She made him laugh, and she'd helped put a smile on Colleen's face, something he hadn't been able to do in six months of trying.