A Texas Kind of Cowboy by Delores Fossen
CHAPTER SIX
DAXSTIRREDWHENhe heard the sound. Stirred but stayed in that half dream state where his body was waking up but his brain would have to play catch up. No one would ever accuse him of being raring to go the moment he woke up. It was always a long, slow process.
Much like sex.
And speaking of sex, his body registered the fact that he was with a woman and that her breasts were against his chest. Strands of her hair were also tickling his face. It also registered that his left shoulder was throbbing like a toothache. Actually, lots of places were throbbing, and even though it meant giving up the “chest to breasts” contact, he rolled off his side and onto his back to get some relief.
The throbbing got worse when his bum shoulder smacked against a hardwood floor. Emphasis on hard. Hell’s bells. He was aching in too many places, and even the stirrings of a morning hard-on weren’t overriding the pain.
He heard the sound again. A sort of cooing, and he wondered if the woman he was with was waking up as well. He lifted one eyelid, silently cursing when he glanced around. Not his bedroom. Not his house. So, how the hell had he...
His question skidded to a halt when he saw the woman with the breasts was Lorelei. And there was a baby staring at him. She was standing up in her crib, her pudgy little hands gripping onto the railing, and she said, “Goo.” Then, she grinned, a big toothy grin as if she’d just seen her most favorite person on earth.
“Stellie,” Lorelei mumbled, no doubt reacting to the sound of her daughter’s voice.
Groaning, Lorelei sat up, and in the same motion, she shoved the now wild tumble of blond hair from her face. She conjured up what seemed to be an automatic smile that she aimed at the occupant of the crib.
But then the automatic stuff stopped.
Lorelei gasped when her gaze landed on Dax, and he could practically see her mind whirling, trying to recount how and why they were here together. Her gasp, though, turned to a groan—the kind of groan that usually accompanied a hangover or really bad news—when she looked at the debris on the floor. The cups of coffee, leftover food and tissues.
She opened her mouth, and he would have bet the tat on his ass that she intended to snap out the question of why the heck was he there. But she must have remembered. Not just his coming through the window with items to induce caffeine and sugar highs. But she also must have recalled the back rubbing and soothing. Yep, the very back rubbing and soothing that had caused her to drift off to sleep so she could then wake up on the floor next to him.
“Goo,” Stellie said again, flexing her legs as if ready to jump right out of the crib. Thankfully, her tiny feet stayed firmly grounded on the mattress. Her little green eyes, however, stayed fixed on Dax.
Apparently, Lorelei didn’t have bum shoulders or knees because she leaped up without making a single sound of pain or discomfort, and she hurried to the crib. “Good morning, sweet girl,” she murmured, giving the baby a cheek kiss. “I’m betting you’re wet and hungry.”
Stellie babbled out another “Goo,” but the inflection was somewhat different this time. It seemed to be a yes, and kissing her again, Lorelei lifted her from the crib to take her to a table-like deal where she proceeded to change the diaper, all the while cooing and talking to the little girl. There were some apologies mixed in with the talk, and from the apologies Dax gathered that Lorelei was usually up, showered and dressed before Stellie even woke.
He checked the time, not quite seven in the morning, and while he didn’t usually start his day before eight o’clock, he would since he was already up and stood no chance of getting any more sleep. He’d drive back to his ranch, do some paperwork, check on how the training was going for a new bull and then wait for Valerie’s husband and family to arrive.
And wouldn’t that be fun?
Lorelei might need another night of soothing and such if that turned out bad. Hell, he might need a night of soothing as well. After all, he just might to have to fess up that he’d had a one-off with the wife and daughter whose death they were now likely grieving.
“I’ll have to make a pit stop in one of your bathrooms before I head home,” he commented, picking up the tissues and empties and putting them in the trash can tucked in the corner.
“There’s one in the hall,” Lorelei said without even looking back at him.
Dax headed in that direction but made a detour to the kitchen first so he could dump out the remains of the old coffee and put the pastries on the counter. The bag was splotched with oily spots now, which definitely cut down on their appeal, but Lorelei might need the sugar hit to get herself revving. Then again, she seemed like the “always on the rev” type.
He made that pit stop in a dainty powder room that was the color of lemons and smelled like flowers. There were some toys in here, too, making Dax recall the challenges of being a single parent. Not firsthand knowledge but rather from his oldest brother, Jonas, who’d married a woman with a baby. A woman who’d died when the kid had been just a toddler, and since the kid’s father hadn’t been in the picture, Jonas had taken over raising the boy. Apparently, single parenthood meant solo pit stops weren’t always possible.
Dax groaned when he glanced in the mirror as he washed up. He looked exactly as he’d expected after a pisser of a day before and then sleeping on the floor. In other words, he looked like crap. But it was the pisser of a day that was weighing the heaviest on him, and he wished he could believe that Lorelei and he had already been through the worst of it. And maybe for him, that was true. Lorelei, though, might need a couple more late-night calls to soothe her.
Not his bull, not his rodeo, Dax reminded himself. Except it darn sure could be if that paternity test came back a match.
When he came out of the powder room, he heard Lorelei, and he followed the sound of her voice to the kitchen where she now had Stellie in a high chair. The kid had a little sippy cup in one hand and was plucking Cheerios off the tray while Lorelei stirred something in a bowl.
Lorelei was still wearing the same skirt and top she’d had on from the night before, but she’d changed Stellie’s clothes. No more footed pj’s with little pink bunnies on them. She was wearing purple overalls and fuzzy matching socks.
The kid repeated her “Goo” greeting to him and grabbed a handful of the cereal bits to offer him. Dax obliged, ate the now soggy ball of oats, and the kid giggled.
Lorelei gave him a weird look. Well, weirder than the usual ones she gave him. The ones that made him feel as if he were pond scum with the morals of a really horny alley cat.
“Stellie sprinkled those with formula from her sippy cup,” Lorelei informed him.
Dax just shrugged. “Could be worse. Could have been breast milk.”
Which in hindsight just wasn’t a good thing to say. For one thing, it reminded him that Lorelei did, indeed, have breasts. The very ones that’d spent a couple of hours against his chest. It also no doubt reminded her that since she’d adopted the kid, she hadn’t gotten to do that particular motherly deal.
She finished stirring the stuff in the bowl that looked like lumpy goop to Dax, and when she turned to go to the table by the high chair, that’s when Dax saw the greasy spot on the back of her pale blue shirt. The exact spot where he’d “bull lulled” her. Clearly, there’d been bear claw gunk on his fingers when he’d been doing all that rubbing.
“Sorry about that,” he said, motioning toward her back.
Of course, she tried to look, but since it was in the center of the shirt, there was no way she could see it. That’s probably why she twisted the top, tightening it against those very breasts of hers that he was pretending to be blind to and not notice.
She muttered something he didn’t catch when she finally got a look at the silver-dollar-sized spot. “It’s okay,” she concluded. “My clothes don’t have a long shelf life around Stellie.” She hadn’t said that as if it riled her but more like a shrugged statement of fact.
Lorelei sat down across from the baby to start feeding her. Apparently, Stellie didn’t object to goop because she stopped eating the soggy cereal to gobble it up.
“Thank you for last night,” Lorelei said, glancing up at him. “Or rather this morning. The rubbing really helped.”
Judging from the little wince she made, she’d realized that sounded too raunchy. And that was his cue to head out. His cue to quit having dirty thoughts of this woman and her ample breasts.
“You’re welcome,” Dax told her. “Mind if I leave out the door instead of the window?” he tacked on to that just to try to lighten her mood.
It worked. Lorelei smiled a little, and even though she kept it short, his work here was done. He headed for the front door and was only a few steps away when there was a knock. He glanced back at Lorelei and saw the alarm on her face. Obviously, she wasn’t expecting anyone this early.
“It’s probably one of my sisters or my mom,” she muttered, and volleying her attention back at Stellie, she went to the sidelight window and peered out. “It’s Hilda,” she said, opening the door to the nanny. “I’m sorry,” Lorelei immediately told her. “But I won’t be going into the shop today.”
“I know.” Hilda was doing some volleyed glances as well, but hers were over her shoulder. “Some people just drove up and parked right in front of your house,” the woman said, hurrying into the foyer and shutting the door. “I don’t know who they are, but I heard them checking to make sure they had the right address. They said your name, Lorelei.”
Well, hell. This had to be Valerie’s family. The visitors certainly wouldn’t be local or Hilda would have recognized them.
“Oh, God,” Lorelei muttered, and she went that sickly pale color again.
“What do you want me to do?” Hilda asked. “I can tell them you’re not here.”
Lorelei no doubt considered that, but she dismissed it with a headshake. “No, they’re probably anxious to find out what I can tell them about Valerie. Anxious to see the baby, too,” she added in a murmur that was drenched with fear and worry. “I’ll talk to them, but could you please take Stellie to the nursery?”
The nanny didn’t question that at all. She hurried to the kitchen, and while greeting the baby with a cheeriness that she in no way could be feeling, she scooped up Stellie and took her and the rest of the oatmeal out of the kitchen.
Just as there was a knock at the door.
There was a serious panicked look in Lorelei’s eyes when she turned to him, but apparently just remembering he was there seemed to have her steeling herself up. Of course, he figured that was probably because she didn’t want to lose it in front of anyone. She definitely seemed to be a more “suffer in silence” type.
“I need shoes,” she muttered. “And I should brush my hair.”
“I’d like to stay,” Dax said, following her to the door of the main bedroom. Lorelei hurried in, scurrying around to locate those shoes and fix her hair at the same time.
There were a couple of reasons for Dax’s request. He wanted to see these people and hear what they wanted. And they would almost certainly want something from Lorelei. At a minimum, information about Valerie’s time here in Last Ride. They could be grieving, hurt and pissed, and they might try to take a metaphorical pound of flesh off Lorelei. Not because she’d done anything wrong but simply because she’d be an easy target.
The second reason Dax wanted to be there was linked to that whole deal ’bout Lorelei being an easy target. She might look like a high-end ice princess, but he’d watched some of that ice melt when they’d been on the floor together. Depending on what these people threw at her, she could end up melting a whole lot more than she could handle. Whether she would admit it or not, she needed an ally right now, and he could do that for her.
Hopping on one foot while she put a pale gray high heel on the other, Lorelei nodded. Then she shook her head. The nod was probably because she truly didn’t want to face this alone. The headshake because there might be speculation as to who he was and why he was there.
“They’ll find out about me sooner or later,” Dax reminded her. “But if you’d rather I not volunteer anything, I won’t. I’d just like to be here.”
Lorelei went through another mental debate while there was a second knock on the door. An impatient one this time, and the knocker followed it up by ringing the doorbell.
“Crap,” she finally muttered. “Just play it by ear.”
Lorelei tossed her hairbrush on the bed and straightened her skirt and top before she went to the door and opened it. Dax was right behind her, and he got his first look of the visitors as they stood on the porch.
Greg and Miriam Ford were in the front, and Dax saw an instant resemblance to Valerie. They looked to be in their mid-fifties and were dressed in conservative clothes that didn’t scream the money he knew they had thanks to Matt’s background check on them.
“Hello,” the woman greeted. “I’m Miriam Ford and this is my husband, Greg.” Her voice and expression were tentative, and judging from the dark circles under her eyes, she hadn’t gotten any more sleep than Lorelei and he had. Ditto for Greg. Added to that, there were signs that both of them had been crying.
Aaron was a different matter, though. And Dax was sure this was Valerie’s husband since Matt had also gotten his DMV photo. Aaron looked both rested and really pissed off, making Dax glad he’d insisted on staying.
Wearing a pricy indigo-colored suit with a white shirt and red silk tie that did scream money, Aaron stepped through the couple, like parting the Red Sea, and he faced Dax head-on.
“I’m Valerie’s husband, Aaron Marcel,” he snapped out like a bullwhip. He shifted his attention from Dax to Lorelei. “Are you Lorelei Parkman? Because if so, we have to speak to you right now.”
Aaron didn’t wait to see if Lorelei would verify her identity, and since Dax immediately labeled the man a dick, he didn’t step back so they could enter. “I’m Dax Buchanan,” he said, aiming the introduction at the parents who were looking pretty much thunderstruck by all of this.
“Dax Buchanan?” Greg repeated. The man did a double take. “The bull rider?”
Dax nodded and conjured up his trademark smile. It was genuine, mostly, though these days when he doled it out, it only reminded him that his days of doing what made him Dax Buchanan were nearly over. “That’s me.”
“Greg’s a big rodeo fan,” Miriam supplied, not sounding especially impressed but rather just someone on autopilot who was trying to say the polite thing. “I didn’t know you lived here in Last Ride.”
Dax nodded and would have continued to exchange a few nerve-settling niceties if Aaron hadn’t huffed. “Just a few hours ago, these people learned their only child is dead,” Aaron snapped. “And I learned I’m a widower. I want to talk to Lorelei Parkman.”
That was interesting wording. A little thing, but Aaron hadn’t said he’d learned his wife had died but had made it more about himself with his I’m a widower. Yeah, this guy was a dick all right.
“Come in,” Lorelei said, stepping back and sounding a lot more inviting than Aaron deserved. She’d likely meant that milder tone for the parents because, yeah, they appeared to be grieving for the child they’d lost.
Dax’s gaze connected with Lorelei’s for just a second, and he could see the fight she was having to hold herself together. That’s why he put his hand on her back and gave her a very short bull rub. It didn’t work. No surprise there. She was wired now, and every nerve in her body had to be firing on all cylinders.
“I’m sorry about coming so early,” Miriam muttered. “After Sheriff Corbin called us, we got the first available flight to San Antonio and then rented a car and drove here.” The woman glanced around, no doubt looking for Stellie.
“It’s okay,” Lorelei assured Miriam. Again, she was going with the nice tone, but her voice was as strained as the woman’s.
Lorelei led them into the living room, and Dax saw them checking out the place. Maybe looking for Stellie. Maybe assessing what kind of environment the kid had been in all this time. Apparently, whatever Aaron saw caused the muscles in his face to tighten even more.
“Are you the boyfriend?” Aaron came out and asked Dax.
Every word of that question caused Dax to bristle, even though Aaron hadn’t specified if he meant Lorelei’s boyfriend. Or Valerie’s. Lorelei answered before Dax had to come up with an answer for that.
“Dax knew Valerie,” Lorelei said.
That caused Greg, Miriam and Aaron to all give Dax long studying looks, and Dax didn’t think it was his imagination they were all filling in the blanks as to what that meant. If Aaron’s jaw got any tighter, his teeth might crack. But even though this guy was clearly a dick, Dax couldn’t blame him. After all, Valerie had been married to the dick when Dax and she had had sex.
“Where’s my daughter?” Aaron demanded. “I want to see her, and Miriam and Greg want to see their grandchild.”
Lorelei certainly didn’t jump to answer that time, and after several snail-crawling moments of silence, Dax stepped in. “Your granddaughter is fine,” Dax assured Miriam and Greg before he even looked at Aaron. Dax didn’t make it a habit of scowling and such, but he made an exception this time. “And it’s very possible that the child isn’t yours.”
Oh, that pushed Aaron to the teeth-cracking stage, and the anger practically shot out in lightning bolts from his eyes.
“Valerie was my wife,” Aaron said, enunciating each word as if Dax were an idiot. “So, the baby is mine. Bring her to me now because I’m taking her home.”
Aaron made a move as if he might start searching for the kid, but Dax stepped in front of him. Greg took hold of his son-in-law’s arm.
“I legally adopted Stellie,” Lorelei informed him, and she’d obviously gotten back some of her steel because she, too, blocked the dick’s path.
“You hid her from me so you could claim to adopt her,” Aaron fired back. “Bring her to me now, or I start tearing this place apart to find her.”
That apparently was not a good thing to say, and it was like dousing a gallon or two of gasoline on an already-hot fire. “You will not tear this place apart,” Lorelei said, enunciating her words as well. “And you will not take her.”
Aaron did a little swaggering movement with his head. A nonverbal you and what army are going to stop me? Dax was ready to explain to Aaron that he was about to get his ass kicked six ways to Sunday, but Greg’s grip tightened on the man’s arm.
“Aaron, you need to let me handle this.” Greg’s voice was one of reason and authority. The opposite of his son-in-law’s.
“I want my daughter,” Aaron snarled, and then he must have realized to get his way, he should probably tone things down a couple of notches. “She’s all I have left of Valerie.”
Aaron didn’t quite manage to look or sound like an actual grieving widower or a father who loved a child he’d never seen. Nope. The assery vibe was still going on strong there.
“Valerie left you,” Dax threw out there. “She came to Last Ride for a reason.” He didn’t spell out that he didn’t know exactly why she’d done that. “She didn’t go back to you. For a reason,” he couldn’t help but add, and he figured Aaron understood his meaning just fine. That Valerie had dumped this dick and then turned to him.
Apparently, that was like tossing a whole bunch of gasoline as well, and Dax got ready to do that ass-kicking, but Miriam stepped in front of her son-in-law.
“You’re making things worse,” the woman snapped, and she managed to sound like a scolding kindergarten teacher and experienced mom at the same time. “Take a walk around the block or something. Cool off. Then, we talk this out.”
Because Dax was arm to arm with Lorelei, he felt her tense even more than she already was. Maybe because she, too, was thinking she might have to get involved in some ass-kicking if Aaron didn’t do as his mother-in-law had advised.
Aaron stood there, firing furious narrowed-eye glances at all of them, and he must have decided to hit the pause button on trying to tear the place apart or blast out any more venom. Wise move. But the wise move didn’t cool down his temper much.
“This isn’t over,” Aaron snarled, heading for the door. But he apparently had one last bit of venom in his arsenal, and he issued it as his threat from over his shoulder. “One way or another, I will get my daughter this morning.”