Becoming Jesse's Father (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 5) Read online

  Adam adjusted the pack on his shoulder, and said, "I brought some books for him, and Maddy insisted I give him a couple of her stuffed animals."

  "Then they all know about Jesse?" Emily asked, her voice wavering with alarm, the pupils in her eyes wide, but for a very different reason.

  "Yes, but they won't say anything," Adam assured her. "They know the situation's only temporary until we get you settled."

  "Then they know about Erik?" Emily asked, worried.

  "My folks do," Adam said, "but my brothers and Maddy think you're here because you wanted me to know about Jesse, but being the eldest in the family I'm supposed to set a good example so I was pretty up front with my brothers about what happens if they don't keep it in their pants. They got the message. But with Maddy, that was awkward. Before this she looked up to me as the perfect big brother. I can't imagine what she thinks of me now."

  "Or me," Emily said. "Even in middle school there are names for girls who sleep around."

  "You know that's not the way it was. We were engaged, and you're not the kind of girl who sleeps around."

  "Please don't make excuses for me, Adam. I hate myself for what I did to you, and I hated having to share a bed with Erik. It was like I was dead inside the whole time I was with him. I had to fake things because I was afraid not to when he expected that of me. It was all so sick and twisted. It was like he had this hold over my body, yet he didn't, because he couldn't make it do what you could."

  "Well, it's over," Adam said, not wanting to hear about that side of her marriage.

  "I know, I'm not expecting anything now," Emily replied in a wistful voice, and Adam realized she'd interpreted what he'd said as meaning having sex with him was over, which was for the best—one complication he didn't need amid all the rest. Yet, the temptation to take her into the bedroom and prove she wasn't dead inside was so strong he had to resist the urge to do just that. The reality was, the more he was with her the more he felt his resolve slipping.

  "I need to check on Jesse," Emily said, then turned toward the front door.

  Adam followed her inside, and after closing the door, he glanced around the room and saw Jesse standing just inside the hallway with his shoulder and the side of his face pressed against the wall, and his knuckle in his mouth, yet making no move to flee.

  "Hey, big guy," Adam said. "I brought you some books and toys. You want to come see what they are?" He slipped the pack off his shoulder and lowered it to the floor in front of the couch and unzipped it. Pulling out a book, he paged through it, and said, "It's all about frogs." He set it on the couch then reached for another book. "And this one's about a little train. You know what a train is?"

  Jesse stared at him with a puzzled frown on his brow, but said nothing, and gave no indication he understood. He just kept staring at Adam with big curious eyes. Still, he didn't leave his position in the hallway.

  "A train has a big locomotive up front that pulls a lot of cars that carry things, even people, and it has a red caboose at the end," Adam said. "When you're ready, I'll read you the book and you can learn all about trains." He placed the book on the couch.

  Jesse stared at the book then took a step into the room, as if he was about to walk over to look at it and maybe pick it up, then caught himself and backed into the hallway again.

  "And here we have a big fuzzy duck." Adam set a stuffed yellow duck on the couch. "And here's a shaggy dog with curly brown hair like yours." He placed the dog beside the duck and went into the kitchen to where Emily was standing with her back to the kitchen counter, and waited with her to see what Jesse would do. As he stood beside Emily, he moved his arm around her, not touching her, just around behind where he could brace his hand on the counter.

  "Jesse, honey," Emily said, "why don't you go see what Daddy brought. It's all for you, and you can take everything to bed with you tonight." Easing toward Adam, she said in a hushed voice, "He's curious, so if we stay here he might go take a look."

  Adam relaxed his arm some, so it was touching Emily's back, and when she leaned into it, he made no attempt to break the contact. Tipping his head toward her, he said, "Would it be better if I went outside and let him be?"

  She looked up at him, and her face was so close to his he'd only have to bend slightly to kiss her, and the look in her eyes was eager, like she wanted him too.

  Then her lips parted and her tongue came out to moisten them, and she said, while holding his gaze, "You still make me feel things, Adam. I don't expect anything to come of it, but I just want you to know." She reached up and touched his face.

  Ever since I lost my Adam there's been a hole here that he once filled...

  Adam knew the feeling. There had been a hole in his heart ever since Emily left. Sometimes it festered with bitterness because she'd walked out of his life, but other times it just lay there in his chest like an open wound, but gradually it started to heal over. A day would go by when he didn't think about her, then another, and maybe a few days, and a week, and until he remembered it was December 15th, which happen to coincide with the day he saw her again, it had been well over a month, and he couldn't go through that again.

  Taking Emily's hand from his face, he held it away from him, and said, "I'm not ready for things to start up with us, and if you tell me things like that they will, at least for me they will."

  Emily looked up at him with eyes that reminded him of a wounded animal. You see the pain in their eyes but they suffer silently. But right now she was escaping an intolerable situation with Erik, and she was hurt and vulnerable and not thinking clearly, and he wasn't about to compound things by adding sex to the mix, which would happen if he responded to her touch.

  The silent exchange was broken when Jesse started walking across the floor, his knuckle still in his mouth, his eyes shifting between Adam and the books and stuffed animals on the couch.

  Adam released Emily's hand, and for a few moments they stood watching Jesse, who put his hand on the book about frogs then looked over at them so see if it was okay, which Emily affirmed, by saying, "It's okay, honey. The books and animals are yours. Would you like me to read to you about frogs?" Jesse picked up the book and held it out. Emily went over and sat on the couch and lifted Jesse onto her lap and opened the book.

  As Jesse turned the pages, and Emily pointed to the pictures and talked about what was in the book, Adam watched from across the room, his feelings mixed. The last time he and Emily were at the cabin was the summer Becca and her baby moved in with Jayne and Sam while Chase was in Afghanistan. Rick was home from vet school and Marc home from college, and Sophie showed up unexpectedly. That was also the summer Rick's mother committed suicide, and the guest ranch was in full operation, and he and Emily just wanted to be away from it all and have time alone. They'd spent the afternoon there making love, hiking, planning their future together, and making love again before returning to the ranch. He couldn't have imagined then that a week later, Emily would leave him for Erik. Just as he couldn't have imagined that three-and-a-half years later she'd be back with the son they'd conceived that same afternoon.

  A little stab of anger tightened his gut.

  Stepping over to the window, he looked out and saw the dogs stretched on the porch. They'd given no indication that the lion had come back, and when he checked the deer carcass earlier, he noted that it had been uncovered and dragged a little distance away, and large chunks of meat were gone. Later, when buzzards started picking off the remains, he knew the lion had moved on.

  Returning to his stance in the kitchen, he said to Emily, "The dogs are quiet, which means the lion isn't around. Let's take Jesse outside. He can walk with you and I'll keep my distance."

  Emily glanced up, and replied, "I think he'd like that." Looking at Jesse, she said, "Honey, Daddy's going to take us for a walk and you can play in the snow. Would you like that?"

  Jesse looked at Adam, a long, big-eyed stare like he was sizing things up and not at all sure about them, and Adam didn't know
whether to smile or not, because it would be a smile of apprehension, not happiness, and even a toddler could pick up on that, so he waited to see what Jesse would do. Then Jesse looked at his mother, and said, "Daddy take."

  Adam felt a rush of pure joy, a reaction he could only equate to what a parent must feel on hearing his child's first word, or seeing him take his first step. And now, he was a father, and his son had just called him Daddy. He looked at Emily and couldn't help smiling, and when she smiled back, he saw the glint of tears in her eyes and knew they were tears of happiness. And in an instant he felt his resolve to stay away from her fading, and his desire to hold her and love her and again consummate that love growing.

  But before that time would come, he had to get a handle on why Emily kept returning to a situation with Erik that was self-destructive. He'd known Emily since grade school and never gave her much thought until eleventh grade when they were in a school play together. He was in the play because his grandmother convinced his parents he needed to broaden his sights beyond horses, rodeos, roping, and bullriding. But Emily was there to escape an intolerable situation at home. Long rehearsals after school gave her a place to be. But by then, Erik was her steady boyfriend because he'd convinced her she'd never be able to cope with life without him, or some distorted version of that. So for two years, Emily moved back and forth between home and boyfriend—two dysfunctional situations—and good old Adam was her sounding board.

  Still, Adam couldn't help admiring her, not only because of her determination to study hard and get good grades and go to college on a scholarship, but because when she got herself off to school each morning she left behind an alcoholic father and a drug-addicted mother and a house that should have been bulldozed because of the filth. Except for Emily's room.

  He saw it only once, when he'd dropped her off at her home after a late rehearsal their senior year in high school, because she wanted him to see the curtains and bedspread she'd made in Home Ec. She warned him in advance about the house. Still he hadn't gotten the picture until he followed her through a living room that looked as if it had never seen a vacuum or a mop, and littered with empty booze bottles and ash trays overflowing with cigarette butts. But when Emily opened the door to her bedroom, he'd been stunned. Unlike the rest of the house, Emily's clothes were neatly folded in a box she'd covered with a scrap of material, a varied assortment of books were in a bookcase that looked like it came from a thrift shop but had been sanded and painted to match a desk that also looked to be from a thrift shop. She'd also shown him one of her poetry books, and in it was a folded piece of paper on which she'd written the legend of the Thornbird.

  He thought it odd that she'd want to put in writing the story of a bird that, once it leaves its nest, wanders around until it finds a thorn tree where it impales itself, and knowing it will die, yet unable to resist the instinct, sings for the first and last time in its life, the most beautiful sound ever heard. When Emily saw him reading it she told him to keep it, and the book. He still had both. After Emily married Erik he reread the legend and wondered if it had been a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, because at the time Emily had written down the poem, she'd been dating Erik for two years. Early on, Adam saw the way Erik manipulated and controlled her, and still he couldn't keep Emily from returning to impale herself on the thorn. And now, as in the past, she turned to him when she was desperate.

  Only this time, she brought along his son, and he didn't doubt for a minute that Erik would use Jesse against Emily, maybe even threaten Jesse in some way to get Emily back, and even though she'd managed to divorce Erik, she could still go back and impale herself yet again.

  She was right. It was twisted, and he didn't begin to understand it. But he did know one thing. If Emily ever went back to Erik, she would not be taking Jesse with her. So the first step in the process would be DNA tests. But that couldn't happen until he could get close enough to his son to get them back to the ranch and have the tests done.

  ***

  While Emily was bundling Jesse in his coat and hat for going outside, she couldn't set aside the look on Adam's face after she'd told him how she felt about him. The glint of affection she'd seen moments before had been replaced by distrust, and she couldn't expect otherwise. After what she'd done he couldn’t possibly trust her again and she was resigned to it. Her only goal now was to know that Jesse was safe with Adam, and that Erik could never get to him.

  While pulling Jesse's wool hat down over his ears, she said, "This will be fun, honey. Daddy's going to take us on a walk and you might see a squirrel."

  When Jesse looked at the couch with the two books laying on it, Emily knew he was remembering one of the picture books she'd left behind, a book about squirrels and other woodland animals. But he could be remembering toys too. They'd left so quickly there had been no time to take anything but the absolute essentials with them. "Daddy will get you lots of new toys," she assured him. Picking him up, she stepped onto the porch and shut the door.

  Adam started towards them from the direction of the barn. Stopping some distance away, he said, "I locked up the dogs so they wouldn't scare Jesse. I'll walk ahead and you two can follow as close as you want." He turned away from them and plodded in a trampled-down path that meandered across an open expanse to where the mountain started to rise some.

  Emily set Jesse down and took him by the hand and they started after Adam. They had barely left the vicinity of the cabin when a squirrel darted out from behind some brush and stopped long enough to stare at them.

  Jesse, catching sight of it, cried, "Skurl!" In an instant, he slipped away from Emily and ran after the squirrel, which scurried across the top of the snow towards the woods. But in another instant, Jesse was gone.

  "Adam! It's Jesse. Hurry!" Emily screamed, while racing to the spot where Jesse had simply disappeared into the snow. "Oh, my God! Adam!" Feeling her heart pounding hard, she stood frozen, not knowing what to do as she looked down into what appeared to be the caved in remains of an abandoned brick-lined water well, and saw Jesse, about eight feet below, sprawled face down across some boards that once covered the top of the well, and which looked ready to give way to the dark void beneath.

  Adam was immediately at her side. When Jesse lifted his head and started to get up, Emily saw blood smeared on the side of his face. Tears filled her eyes, and it was all she could do to keep from going after him, knowing the boards wouldn't hold beneath her weight.

  Jesse raised his arms. "Mo... mo... mommmmy," he wailed.

  "Mommy's here," Emily said.

  "It's okay, Jesse," Adam called down. "Daddy's coming to get you."

  "How?" Emily asked. "There's nothing but old bricks down there and a board that's ready to give way. You couldn't stand on it without it breaking through."

  "I'll rig up a cross piece and walk my way down the bricks by straddling the well," Adam said. He retrieved a heavy limb, partially buried in snow, and laid it across the opening, then pulling off his belt he made a loop and slipped it onto the limb. While holding onto the belt loop, he started making his way down, bracing one foot against a brick on one side of the inside wall of the well, and the other foot opposite, gradually descending, while saying to Jesse, who was sobbing and shaking and holding his arms up, "Daddy's coming, Jesse. Daddy's coming."

  With one hand gripping tight to the belt loop, and his feet braced against the sides on the well, Adam reached down as far as he could with his free hand, and said, "Jesse, take Daddy's hand." When Jesse seemed too terrified to move, Adam said again, "Jesse, take hold of Daddy's hand." And then, Adam felt a tiny hand against his.

  Wrapping his palm around Jesse's wrist and forearm, Adam lifted Jesse up and said, "Put your arm around Daddy's neck and when I let go of your hand, put it around my neck too." Which Jesse did, wrapping his free arm around Adam's neck first, then holding on with both hands with a strength that surprised Adam.

  Gradually, Adam made his way back up, while easing his arm into the belt loop to get m
ore leverage, until he was able to brace his elbow on the wide brick rim of the well and lift himself, with Jesse still clinging to him, out of the cold, dark opening.

  Once standing, Adam went to hand Jesse to Emily, but Jesse held fast, so Adam curved his arms around Jesse, held Jesse's head against his shoulder and walked toward the cabin.

  "He has a nasty scrape on his face," he said to Emily, "but there's a first aid kit with antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids at the cabin." Adam realized he was rubbing Jesse's back as he was talking to Emily. It felt natural, just as having his son in his arms felt natural, like he belonged there.

  "I think Jesse will do fine with you now," Emily said.

  Adam looked at her with misgiving. What she'd just said, and the way she'd said it, sounded final, like she intended to give Jesse to him. Permanently. And then what? Go back to Erik?

  Then, maybe he was jumping to conclusions. Some old habits die hard. "It sounds like you plan to turn Jesse over to me," he said, testing.

  "A ranch is a good place for a boy to grow up," Emily replied.

  "I have no problem with that," Adam said, "but when would you see him?"

  "Whenever I could," Emily replied. She looked at him then, and her brows drew together as if she were deliberating about something, then she gave a little shrug and said nothing.

  "Okay, Em," Adam said. "What's going on? You were about to tell me something."

  "Just be a good father to Jesse," she replied. "That's all I want."

  "To do that I need to establish paternity, so we need go back to the ranch and find a lab close by and have the DNA tests done."

  "Not around here," Emily said. "Someone from high school could see us, and word would get back to Erik, and he'd be here in an instant."