Natural Born Daddy (11 page)

Blue eyes, filled with dismay, gazed up at her. “I have to ‘pologize, huh?”

“I'd say so.”

“Is he going to be really, really mad?”

“Oh, I think Jordan is a fair man. He'll listen to what you have to say. Go on, now. Run and tell him what happened.”

With obvious reluctance, Dani unhooked her seat belt and slipped out of the car. Kelly hid a grin as she watched her daughter crossing the yard, her gaze fixed on Jordan. No criminal heading for the hanging tree had ever walked at a more halting pace. She paused at the bottom of the steps. From the car, Kelly could hear her hesitant greeting.

Jordan's rocker stilled as he listened to the stammered apology. Kelly slowly left the car and went to join them. As she approached, she didn't dare
risk a glance into his eyes for fear they'd both start chuckling.

“I see,” he said quietly when Dani concluded her explanation for breaking her promise. “Will it ever happen again?”

Dani shook her head emphatically. “Never. I really, really promise. Cross my heart. Next time I'll even write it down, if you'll show me how to spell your name.”

Jordan held out his hand. “Then that's good enough for me. Apology accepted. And I'll teach you to spell my name later on this afternoon.”

Relief spreading across her face, Dani bolted up the stairs and flung herself into Jordan's arms. After a startled look at Kelly, he picked the child up and hugged her. A wistful expression passed across his face as Dani's arms wound tightly around his neck.

In that instant, watching the two of them with a lump in her throat, something inside Kelly shifted. Suddenly she began to envision possibilities that she'd been staunchly denying for weeks now. If Jordan could accept Dani as his own, if he could love her child as she did, then perhaps his feelings for her didn't really matter. If she could guarantee Dani's happiness by giving her a father, then perhaps she could live with no more than Jordan's affection for herself.

“So, where have you two been?” Jordan inquired after Dani disentangled herself and received permission to go to the barn to check on the kittens as soon as she'd changed her clothes.

Kelly propped herself against the porch rail. “Church.”

“You didn't mention anything about that yesterday when I told you I'd be back this morning to help with the fences.”

Kelly shrugged. “We've always gone to church on Sunday, before doing any work. Besides, I thought you'd probably change your mind.”

“Because?”

“Because of last night.”

He nodded slowly. “I'll admit what you said in the car took me by surprise. It never occurred to me that you would think I intended our marriage to be anything less than the real thing. That's not the way I do business.”

Kelly frowned. “Business?”

He had the good grace to wince. “Sorry. Force of habit. I spend an awful lot of time negotiating deals. The terminology is ingrained.”

She tried to cling to the pragmatic way she'd felt only moments ago, but his attitude grated. She couldn't help it. She didn't like being viewed as part of a business deal, something acquired with no more emotion than he might display when gobbling up a new company for his corporation. Maybe marrying Jordan for Dani's sake wouldn't be so smart, after all. She'd have to think about it long and hard, far longer than it appeared he was inclined to give her.

“I'm going in to change,” she said, heading for the door.

“Kelly?”

“Drop it for now, Jordan.” Still holding the screen door open, she glanced back at him. There was an oddly forlorn expression on his face she didn't know how to interpret. “Stay for Sunday dinner, if you like. We'll work afterward.”

He brightened at once. “Fried chicken?”

She grinned at his enthusiasm. The way to this man's heart had always been through his stomach, no doubt about it. “Always,” she assured him.

“You know something?”

“What?”

“It's really good to know that some things never change. Fried chicken on Sundays is one.” He paused, his gaze fixed on her. “You're another. Please don't ever go and change on me, Kelly.”

She thought about that remark the whole time she was changing clothes. A few minutes later she met Jordan in the kitchen. He was already setting the table for her, just as he had whenever her mother had invited him to stay for Sunday dinner years ago. He'd even taken out the good china, just as he'd been instructed to do back then.

“Another old habit?” she teased.

“Exactly.” His gaze settled on her. “It feels right being here, Kelly.”

She nodded, unable to say anything. Having him here felt too darned right to her, too. It was a dangerous sensation, a trap she didn't dare fall into. Nostalgia was no reason to get married.

Getting a grip on her emotions, she put him to work peeling potatoes next. As she prepared the chicken, she watched him closely. Despite his expressed contentment at being there, there was something quiet and distant about him that was out of character.

“Jordan, what's going on with you?” she asked eventually.

He glanced up from the mound of potatoes forming in front of him. “It's Cody.”

Kelly's heart thumped unsteadily as she imagined the youngest of the brothers injured or worse. She'd been gone when Erik was killed in an accident on Luke's ranch, but she'd spent time with Jordan after that and seen how devastating it had been for him. It hadn't been easy for her, either. She'd felt as if she'd lost her own brother. If something had happened to sweet, irrepressible Cody…She didn't even want to think about it.

“Has something happened to Cody?”

Apparently he heard the alarm in her voice, because he reached out and touched her hand.

“Nothing like that,” he reassured her hurriedly. He went on to tell her about Cody's abrupt departure the night before. “Daddy's fit to be tied, not just at Cody, but at me for not stopping him.”

Kelly could just imagine the guilt trip Harlan was capable of laying on Jordan. “Cody's a grown man. He has to handle his problems whatever way works for him. I could shake Melissa, though, for doing something like that. It doesn't make any sense. She's adored Cody forever.”

“That's what I thought, but Cody swears he saw what he saw. He couldn't wait to take off. Now Daddy's threatening to cut him out of the will. Whatever he feels right now, it would kill Cody to lose White Pines.”

“Would Harlan really disinherit him?”

“I suppose that depends on how long Cody stays away. You know how stubborn Daddy is.”

Kelly surveyed him pointedly. “I certainly do. It's a trait he passed along to all of you.”

“I'm not stubborn,” Jordan denied.

“Oh, please.”

“Determined, maybe. Dedicated.”

“Bullheaded,” she corrected.

He grinned, that lopsided, boyish grin that was so at odds with the sophisticated image he'd projected in recent years. “If you know that, then you should know you haven't got a chance in fighting me on this proposal.”

“You're forgetting one thing.”

“Which is?”

“I am every bit as bullheaded as you are, Jordan Adams.”

“Admittedly a frightening thought,” he teased. “But you don't scare me, Kelly Flint. You're weakening already. I can tell.”

Kelly swallowed hard against the tide of pure panic that his observation sent through her. “How can you tell a thing like that?”

“Oh, no, you don't. I'm not telling you my secret way of figuring out what's really going on in that head of yours. It's the only advantage I've got.”

It wasn't, Kelly thought with a sigh. The real advantage he had was that she was still head over heels in love with him.

K
elly spent the rest of the day watching as the bond between her daughter and Jordan miraculously strengthened. It was as if some barrier inside Jordan had fallen and allowed him to open his heart to the child. Always stiff, formal and a little aloof in the past, today he had finally relaxed, reminding her why she had wanted him as Dani's godfather in the first place. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.

To her initial surprise Paul had been delighted with the choice. An ambitious man, she finally realized that he relished the tie to the powerful Jordan Adams. Kelly could hardly criticize his motives, when her own were less than pure. She had asked Jordan to be Dani's godfather, not only because he was the sort of stable, bright, fun-loving influence she wanted for her child, but because it would forever link them all together.

Jordan had balked at first, swearing that what he knew about children would fit on the head of a pin.
Kelly had had to use every persuasive skill at her command to talk him into it.

Now, observing the two of them, she was glad she had. Just seeing their heads close together as Jordan tried to teach Dani how to make homemade peach ice cream after they'd worked on the fence for awhile made Kelly's resolve slip another notch. Soon she wouldn't have any reserves of willpower left for resisting him. Dani wanted a father desperately and Jordan was slowly but surely slipping into that role. It was far more natural to him than he had once insisted or she had once imagined.

She closed her eyes against the sight of man and child, but she couldn't stop her thoughts from dashing headlong back to a time when she'd dreamed of seeing Jordan with their child in just such a scene. She'd envisioned a pint-size boy, his thick, sun-streaked hair falling in his face, wearing tiny cowboy boots and trailing after his daddy with the same rolling cowboy gait. She'd imagined a little girl with dark brown curls and big brown eyes cuddled in her father's arms as he rocked her to sleep, crooning a lullaby in his deep, soothing voice.

Dani's excited shouts cut into her reverie.

“Mommy, I did it!” Dani hollered, thundering onto the porch, a bowl in her hand. “Look! I made ice cream!”

It looked more like soup to Kelly, but she didn't complain as she took the offered bowl and tried a taste. “Wonderful,” she declared. “The best peach ice cream I've ever had. Maybe you two will turn out to be the next ice cream magnates.”

“Peach is good, but chocolate is better. Jordan says next time we'll make that. It's his favorite, too.”

“Oh, really? You and Jordan seem to be making a lot of plans today.”

Jordan strolled up to the porch and leaned back against the railing right smack in front of her, a position that put his incredible thighs and other interesting parts of his anatomy practically at eye level. Kelly jerked her gaze up to rest more safely on his face. He shot her a knowing little grin that set her teeth on edge.

“Any objections to our plans?” he inquired, clearly daring her to challenge his determination to weave himself into the fabric of their lives.

Kelly waited until Dani had scampered off to check the ice-cream maker before responding. “Only if you intend to disappoint her,” she warned in a low voice. “Paul has done enough of that to last her a lifetime.”

“I will never disappoint her or you,” he vowed, regarding her solemnly. “You can take that promise to the bank.”

As soon as the businesslike words were out of his mouth, he looked chagrined. “Sorry.”

“I know, force of habit.”

Somehow, though, this time she couldn't work herself into much of a snit over it. With the sun setting into a purple haze of twilight and the fragrance of flowers filling the hot, dry air, she felt too at ease, too comfortable with the camaraderie they'd shared all day long to risk spoiling it with another quarrel over semantics. Jordan would probably always use business terms for describing things. At least he'd formally asked her to marry him, not to enter into a merger.

Besides, it was getting late, too late to squabble and ruin an otherwise perfect day. It was time for Dani to be going to bed and soon it would be time for Jordan to be going back to Houston. She was surprised he'd hung around this long. By Sunday evenings he was usually chomping at the bit to get away from west Texas and back to the big city so he could dig into the piles of work he always brought home from the office.

“You leaving for Houston soon?” she asked.

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“No, just wondering.”

“I'm not going back.”

Startled, she stared at him. “You mean tonight?”

“I mean, not until you and I reach some sort of compromise.”

She knew what compromise meant in Jordan's terms. He wanted her to capitulate completely. She shot him a wry look. “It's a little early for you to think about retiring over here to wait me out.”

“Oh, I don't anticipate it taking nearly that long.”

After glancing to make sure that Dani was occupied and out of hearing range, Kelly warned him emphatically, “You will not bully me into making a decision.”

He shrugged, looking supremely confident. “I didn't plan to.”

She sighed. “You're just going to try to wear me down, then, aren't you?”

“I prefer to think of it as winning you over to my way of thinking.”

Before she could respond to that, Dani rejoined them, leaning against Kelly's thigh and yawning
widely. “Sleepy?” Kelly asked, looping an arm around the child's waist and hugging her close.

“Uh-huh,” she admitted.

“Then run up and fill the tub. I'll be up in a minute to give you your bath and tuck you in.”

“But I just took a bath before church.”

“And you got filthy again today.”

“Okay.” Dani gazed sleepily up at Jordan. “Will you stay and read me a story?” she asked, an unmistakable wistful note in her voice.

Kelly saw the hesitancy in Jordan's eyes and silently cursed him. Before she could jump in, though, he grinned. “You have anything with horses in it?”