Staking His Claim

  * * *

  Staking His Claim

  Karen Templeton

  * * *

  Published by Silhouette Books

  America's Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  Cal's eyes sauntered back to her body, only this time she felt…worshiped.

  So much so, that Dawn didn't even object when he took a step closer, then closer still, to lay one large, gentle hand on her still-flat belly.

  She swallowed. Twice. Once from a plain old-fashioned rush of awareness, the second time from something achy and weird that she couldn't even define.

  "Tell you what," he said. "Let me stay for your checkup, then we'll spend a couple of hours together, just for us. How about it?"

  For a moment she was sorely tempted, then her senses returned. "There is no 'us,' Cal. There's never been an 'us.'"

  And quit standing there making this so damn hard. Quit making me long for things that can't be.

  Dear Reader,

  What better way to start off a new year than with six terrific new Silhouette Intimate Moments novels? We've got miniseries galore, starting with Karen Templeton's Staking His Claim, part of THE MEN OF MAYES COUNTY. These three brothers are destined to find love, and in this story, hero Cal Logan is also destined to be a father—but first he has to convince heroine Dawn Gardner that in his arms is where she wants to stay.

  For a taste of royal romance, check out Valerie Parv's Operation: Monarch, part of THE CARRAMER TRUST, crossing over from Silhouette Romance. Policemen more your style? Then check out Maggie Price's Hidden Agenda, the latest in her LINE OF DUTY miniseries, set in the Oklahoma City Police Department. Prefer military stories? Don't even try to resist Irresistible Forces, Candace Irvin's newest SISTERS IN ARMS novel. We've got a couple of great stand-alone books for you, too. Lauren Nichols returns with a single mom and her protective hero, in Run to Me. Finally, Australian sensation Melissa James asks Can You Forget? Trust me, this undercover marriage of convenience will stick in your memory long after you've turned the final page.

  Enjoy them all—and come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romance reading around, only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Editor

  Books by Karen Templeton

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Anything

  for His Children #978

  Anything

  for Her Marriage #1006

  Everything

  but a Husband #1050

  Runaway Bridesmaid #1066

  †Plain-Jane Princess #1096

  †Honky-

  Tonk Cinderella #1120

  What

  a Man's Gotta Do #1195

  **Saving Dr. Ryan #1207

  **Fathers

  and Other Strangers #1244

  **Staking His Claim #1267

  Silhouette Yours Truly

  *Wedding Daze

  *Wedding Belle

  *Wedding? Impossible!

  KAREN TEMPLETON,

  a Waldenbooks bestselling author and RITA® Award nominee, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

  She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001 New York, NY 10279, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

  Acknowledgments

  Without the following people's willingness to answer what must have, at times, seemed like the dumbest questions on earth, this book would not have been possible:

  To Nicole Burnham and Douglas Onsi for help with Dawn's career path

  To Wendy Wade Morton, DVM, of Golden Gait Farms, who's always there to answer my horse-related questions

  and to

  Mike Jackson from the OK Dept. of Human Services for his assistance with child welfare issues

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  None of this had been her choice.

  Not the car, a leprous, pumpkin-orange GTO with one front fender painted, inexplicably, baby blue. Not the trip itself—as if she had time to schlep back to Oklahoma with all those pending cases sitting on her desk nearly two thousand miles away. And God knows—she waited out a wave of nausea—not the reason for the trip.

  Well, that wasn't exactly true. The outcome might not have been her choice, but the events leading up to it definitely had been.

  So much for living for the moment.

  "No shame, no blame," Dawn Gardner muttered as she drove up in front of the single-story, sprawling farmhouse, still cinnamon brown with white-and-dark-green trim as it had always been. Edging a lawn faded from the early September heat, the same deep-pink roses bloomed, as they always had, only now against a backdrop of tangled deadwood. Cottonwoods stirred listlessly in the breeze, as if worn-out from the effort of shading the house for a whole summer, their lazy susurration no competition for the late-afternoon drone of a bumper crop of cicadas. The mingled scents weighting the humid air—of horse and fresh cut hay, the sweet, heady tang of overripe fruit—assaulted both her reluctant memory and her hypersensitive nose, making her stomach pitch. Making her feel…untethered, like a soul in limbo.

  A retriever mix, whose name she'd forgotten, his coat flashing gold in the late-day sun, sauntered over to the car with a halfhearted woof. She smiled, patting the door so he'd come close enough for her to pet. As she did, her gaze meandered to the front porch step, only one riser up from the yard. Memory nudged into view a pair of children, a boy and a girl, sitting there as they had hundreds of times. They might have been six or seven, the boy—much younger than his two older brothers, who were already in high school—boasting features that foretold of the handsome man he would eventually become, with heavy-lashed eyes, green as new grass, and thick blond hair that refused to be tamed. A little spoiled, perhaps, being the baby, but not a whiner. And not a tease.

  About the same height as the boy then, with long strawberry-blond hair her mother refused to cut, the girl liked that about the boy, that he never put her down. While their mothers chatted in the kitchen, the boy would often take the girl with him while he did his chores around the farm, mostly feeding the animals—pigs, goats, chickens, rabbits. The horses. Since they were too young to be around the huge animals by themselves, sometimes his daddy would be with them, a tall man with a white crewcut, dark eyes and an easy smile who always had Tootsie Rolls in his overall pockets and called the girl "young lady," but not the way people did when you did something wrong.

  Sometimes she envied the boy his daddy, although she never let on.

  Dawn's inner ear perked up at fragments of a conversation she hardly knew she remembered, drifting over from the porch.

  "Maybe Ryan and Hank don't want to stick around, but I'm never gonna leave here," the boy said, crunching into an apple from one of the trees off to the side of the house. Totally at ease with himself, in himself, he leaned back on his elbow, an expression on his dust-smudged face the girl would later peg as serene.

  Even at that age she thought it was peculiar, not wanting to see what else was
out there in the world, and she told him so. Her mama had taken her into Tulsa once when she was five, and all she could think about was getting to go back someday. Except Mama was always busy helping ladies have babies and couldn't afford the time away very often, she said, in case one of the babies decided to come while she was gone.

  The boy shrugged and took another bite of his apple. "Whaddya wanna do now?" he said. "Play with my trucks or somethin'?"

  "Trucks are dumb."

  "Not as dumb as stupid old dolls."

  "Well, I don't play with dolls, do I?"

  The boy gave her a funny look. "But you're a girl."

  "So? That doesn't mean I hafta play with dolls. Besides, that's sexist."

  "Ooooh, I'm gonna tell! You said 'sex.'"

  "I did not. I said sexist. That's when somebody thinks you oughta like or do something because you're a girl or a boy. Mama told me. An' she said nobody should hafta act a certain way just 'cause people expect 'em to."

  The boy threw his half-eaten apple off into the yard. One of the farm dogs trotted over to investigate, but since it wasn't meat, he let it be. "You're weird, you know that?" the boy said. "And anyway, so why don't you play with dolls?"

  "I dunno. Maybe because I see so many babies and little kids when Mama takes me with her on her 'pointments? Babies cry a lot, you know. And make real stinky messes in their diapers. And their hands get tangled in my hair." The girl sank her chin into the palm of her hand, waiting out the peculiar feeling she got sometimes, like an itchiness on the inside that you couldn't scratch. It wasn't fair, having to get up in the middle of the night to go with Mama when one of her ladies had her baby. But thinking about that made the itchiness worse, so she pushed the thoughts away and said instead, "We could read, maybe."

  "Reading's boring," the boy said, but the girl had a pretty good idea he said that because he didn't read as well as she did. "I got a new puzzle. Wanna do that?"

  "I don't like working puzzles with you, you never do 'em right."

  The boy thought for a minute, then said, "We could go dig in the backyard if you want."

  "S'too hot." They sat there for a long time, listening to their own thoughts—well, the girl was, anyway, she was never sure what the boy thought about, if anything—until she suddenly said, if for no other reason than the silence was beginning to hurt her head, "Brenda Sue Mosely called me a bad word today."

  The boy looked like this could be interesting. "What kinda bad word?"

  "I can't say it."

  "Sure you can. I mean, I won't tell." When she slanted her eyes at him, he crossed his heart. "Promise."

  So she leaned over and whispered the word in his ear, thinking she liked how he smelled, like earth and animals and apple, and how it made her feel safe for some reason. She'd heard the word several times before, but she wasn't exactly sure what it meant. She just knew it was meant to hurt her.

  "Brenda Sue Mosely is stupid," was all the boy said, giving the girl the impression he didn't know what the word meant, either. "If she was a boy, I'd beat her up for you."

  "I don't want you beatin' anybody up for me, Cal Logan, you hear me? I can stick up for myself…."

  "Dawn? What the hell?"

  She jumped a foot, her memories scattering like the roaches in her apartment when she turned on the light in the middle of the night. Panic sliced through her, knotting her stomach. His long, denimed legs wading through an entourage of dogs of all shapes, sizes and parentages, a very much grown-up Cal Logan approached the car, his face creased with concern. A cool breeze ruffled that same unkempt hair, now darker than it had been as a child, and bam! Just like that, even though the thought of sex with anybody right now made her green around the gills, every nerve ending she had screamed, "Remember?"

  Not fair.

  All her life, Cal had been just Cal. Well, mostly. There'd been the odd tickle of fantasy from time to time, but then, what else was there to do in this town besides fantasize? Their single sexual encounter had been an aberration, a momentary detour off the Road of Reason. She knew that, he knew that, they'd discussed it like rational adults the morning after and she had put the whole episode behind her, chalking it up to One of Those Things. Thought she had, anyway. Her current, totally unexpected condition didn't change the aberration aspect of this. His "just Cal-ness."

  Except, now, as her gaze slithered over the body that was no longer a mystery underneath his workshirt and jeans, she silently dubbed herself six kinds of fool. What on earth had she been thinking? That she could simply forget how good the man was in bed? How good he made her? That within twenty minutes he'd changed her mind about sex from whatever to whoa?

  That she'd start salivating at the sight of him?

  Be that as it may. Salivating didn't change anything, other than perhaps raising her standards for future encounters. If there were any future encounters, which at the moment looked highly doubtful. One minute they'd been old, albeit lapsed, friends, the next they were lovers. Unfortunately, it was about this gaping hole in between. A hole they'd never, ever, be able to fill in a million years.

  Except for this child they'd made that would now bridge that gap, in some ways, forever.

  Just as Cal had bridged the gap between his house and her car. Dawn's swallow wedged in her throat, mere inches above her heart. Then she noticed he seemed far more interested in the car than her. She couldn't decide whether to be relieved or offended.

  "This Scooter Johnson's old GTO?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Cal chuckled. With good reason. Her mother had taken the ghastly vehicle in trade for delivering the Johnsons' second baby, but Scooter had definitely gotten the better end of that deal.

  "Honey, even with you in it, that is one butt-ugly car." His light mood abruptly departed, however, when he once again focused on her face. The man wasn't stupid. And by the time she'd forced herself to open the car door, untangle herself from her long broomstick skirt and haul herself to her feet, she could tell from his expression that he'd jumped to the only conclusion he could have.

  Hope struggled for purchase in worried green eyes. "Dawn? Why are you here?"

  Dogs milled about them, panting and wriggling; birds chirped; yellowing leaves danced against a peaceful blue sky in a place as far away from the life she'd made for herself as the moon. And Dawn, who still had no idea what to think about any of this herself, hauled in a huge breath and said, "Remember the condom that broke?"

  Then her knees gave way.

  * * *

  A few choice epithets flashed through Cal's brain as he carted Dawn into the family room, that long, crinkly skirt of hers clinging to him like plastic wrap, her soft white blouse smelling of flowers. With a grunt he clumsily laid her on the old tan leather sofa that had stood in the center of the scuffed, slanted wooden floor ever since he could remember. Ethel, the Logans' housekeeper for even longer, came streaking in from the kitchen, a glass of water trembling at the end of a spotted, chicken-skinned arm.

  "I saw it all from the kitchen window. She sick or something? Oh! She's comin' 'round!"

  Cal felt set apart, like he was watching one of those reality shows on TV, as Dawn stirred and grimaced and finally opened her eyes. Talk about your life changing in an instant. He had thought—hoped—when he hadn't heard after a month, that they'd been lucky. Not that the idea of making babies with Dawn Gardner hadn't crossed his mind a time or six over the past decade or so. He just didn't figure the fantasy was reciprocated, was all. Actually, judging from the edge to her voice when she mentioned the busted condom, he was sure of it.

  "Here, sugar," Ethel was saying, simultaneously offering Dawn the water and wriggling her ample butt, stuffed as usual into a pair of jeans made for a woman a good size or two smaller, onto the edge of the sofa beside her. Cal noticed her peach-colored hair could do with a touch-up. "Drink this."

  Dawn obeyed, her waist-length braid slipping back over her shoulder as she struggled to sit up so she could take the glass. It was always eas
ier to just do what Ethel asked.

  "You look absolutely terrible, child," Ethel said. "The heat got to you?"

  Now fully upright, if still wobbly, Dawn glanced at Cal, then smiled for Ethel. "That must be it," she said, taking a sip of the water.

  Ethel crossed her arms over the sleeveless blouse crammed into those too-tight jeans and said, "Uh-huh," which prompted Cal to ask if she didn't have something she needed to be tending to in the kitchen, because he was not about to discuss this very private matter with anybody—not even Ethel—before he'd have five seconds to come to terms with it himself. News'd get out soon enough.

  Still, he was hard-pressed not to wither under Ethel's glare before she popped to her feet, spun around hard enough to make her tennis shoe squeak against the floor, and marched back to the kitchen. The silence left in her wake was so heavy, Cal half expected the room to tilt.

  Dawn noiselessly set the glass down on the end table, then fingered the lace table topper, yellow with age. "I can't believe this is still here." She glanced around the room, frowning slightly at the collection of Early American furniture, the worn fake oriental rugs, the card table set up by the window with a half-finished jigsaw puzzle spread out on it. It occurred to him she hadn't seen the living room the last time she was here, neither of them being much interested in a house tour just then. "Incredible. Everything's exactly the same. From when we were kids, I mean. Even the piano," she added with a nod toward the baby grand taking up the far corner of the room.

  Cal linked his arms across his chest. "I like it like this."

  Her deep-brown eyes met his, her fingers curled around the edge of the sofa. That slightly pitying expression women got when faced with home-decor issues flickered across her features before she said, on a sigh, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you, showing up out of the blue like this."

  Worry settled into the pit of his stomach like it planned on staying for a while. She looked like death warmed over, too pale, too thin, no makeup, bits of her tea-colored hair—still long, even after all those years of living back East—hanging like tipsy snakes around her face. And yet, even motionless, she seemed to vibrate with the same restless energy that had marked her as different from everyone he knew—especially himself—from the time they were kids.