The Paternity Proposition

“We’ll pay you.”

“Excuse me?”

“A thousand in cash for a DNA sample right here, right now.”

She had to fight for breath. Not only did he think she would abandon her own baby, now he appeared to believe she had to be bribed to prove she was telling the truth. If Julie had a wrench in her hand right now, this jerk would be parting his hair on the other side for a long, long time to come.

“Get … out!”

His jaw worked. Those blue eyes iced into her. “This isn’t over between us,” he warned.

“What are you gonna do?” she sneered. “Get your PI to follow me around and snatch my coffee cup to steal a saliva sample?”

“That’s one option. There are others.”

He let his glance make a circuit of the messy office. Slowly. Deliberately. Then he brought that knife-edged gaze back to her.

“The offer’s on the table for the next twenty-four hours. Think about it.”

She ached to give him a few things to think about. A swift knee to the gonads came immediately to mind. She settled for slamming the door behind him so hard it bounced back and almost whapped her in the face.

Two

“A thousand dollars!”

Dusty Jones’s creased, roadmap of a face lit up with delight. He’d returned less than a half hour after Alex Dalton’s departure. A small, bow-legged old coot with wiry gray hair that sprang out in every direction beneath a beat-up straw Stetson, he strutted like a banty rooster whenever he wasn’t in the cockpit. He wasn’t strutting now. He was slapping his knee and whooping with glee.

“Whoooeee! A thousand for a hair or a lick of spit! That’ll almost pay for the chemicals I ordered last week.”

“You ordered a new load?”

Momentarily diverted from the subject of Alex Dalton’s outrageous offer, Julie brought the front legs of her chair down with a thud. The violent movement provoked a hiss from Belinda. After scarfing up the tacos Dusty had faithfully delivered, the cat had draped herself across Julie’s lap like a fat, furry blanket. She now proceeded to announce her displeasure at having her post-taco siesta disturbed by digging her claws into Julie’s thigh. The needle-sharp talons pierced right through her coveralls and came close to drawing blood.

“Ow!” Julie returned the cat’s one-eyed glare and detached her claws before appealing to the second man crammed into the tiny office. “Chuck, will you puh-leez remind our partner we still haven’t paid for the last load of chemicals?”

The mechanic shifted his plug and dutifully complied. “We ain’t paid for the last load, Dusty.”

Julie ground her back teeth. If she didn’t love these two geezers so much, she’d let them sink and get back to having a life! Hanging on to her temper with both white-knuckled fists, she glared at her partner.

“You promised!”

“I know, I know.” Dusty rubbed a thorny palm across the back of his neck. “But we’re coming up on winter wheat planting season. Can’t make any money if we don’t service our customers. So give this guy Dalton some spit, missy, and get us out of the hole.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Julie asked, exasperated. “The man thinks I dumped a baby on his doorstep.”

“Thought you said it was his mother’s doorstep.”

She flapped an impatient hand. “His, hers, what difference does it make?”

“Ha! You wouldn’t ask that if you’d ever crossed paths with Delilah Dalton.”

“And you have?”

“Yes’m, I have. Must have been thirty, forty years ago. Del and her husband were just starting out in the oil field re-supply business then. He was what we used to call in them days a real rounder. Now Delilah …” He shook his head in mingled admiration and chagrin. “That woman was one fine female. Probably still is. But so uptight you could bounce a dime off her ass and get nine cents change.”

“Which is all the more reason for me to refuse her son’s demand for a DNA sample,” Julie huffed. “I don’t want anything to do with him or his mother.”

“But, missy! A thousand dollars?”

“No.”

“Just for a little spit?”

“No.”

He heaved a long-suffering sigh, as though she was the one who’d plugged last season’s profits into the slots.

“Awright, already. I hear what you’re sayin’. But …”

“No, Dusty.”

He sighed again and retrieved his cat from Julie’s lap. Belinda hung over his arm like a horse blanket as he delivered a last bit of advice. “If the Daltons are as hot to find the baby’s mama as you say they are, I ‘spect this isn’t the last you’ll hear from them. Or their lawyers.”

“Lawyers?”

Julie swallowed a groan. That’s all she needed. With a forty-five-year-old Pawnee leaking oil like a sieve and a partner who couldn’t stay away from the casinos, she now had to worry about a horde of lawyers swooping in to gnaw at the flesh of Agro-Air.

“Look, I’ll contact Dalton tomorrow, after I’ve cooled down a little, and confirm that I’m not the mother of his child. But I’m not taking money from the man, Dusty.”

“I’m just sayin’,” he intoned as he knuckled Belinda’s head. “Better be prepared, missy. Dalton didn’t look to be the kinda man to wait around for answers.”

Alex’s jaw remained locked for most of the two-hour drive back to Oklahoma City. Julie Marie Bartlett didn’t have a clue who she was tangling with.

Who she had tangled with. Christ! He’d almost forgotten the dark copper hair that had first snagged his interest when he’d walked into that operations shack in Nuevo Laredo. And those odd-colored eyes. Not to mention the full lips, taut breasts and slender hips that went with them.

But the truth was, he hadn’t remembered any of those enticing attributes until two weeks ago. That’s when his mother had called and demanded his instant appearance at her Oklahoma City mansion. His, and his twin’s. She’d met them at the door with a bundled infant in her arms. Alex could still feel the remnants of their collective shock when she’d announced someone had left a baby on her doorstep. Then she’d thrust out the note alleging the six-month old infant was Delilah Dalton’s grandchild.

After they’d recovered enough to speak, both Alex and Blake had questioned the authenticity of the note. With good reason. In the past five years their mother had transitioned from wistful to vocal to downright obnoxious in her attempts to push one of them to the altar. Delilah didn’t care which of her sons married which of the spouse candidates she’d thrown at them. She just wanted them settled and happy. And, oh by the way, producing grandchildren. Lots of grandchildren. As she’d tartly reminded them, she wasn’t getting any younger. Nor were they. Her sons had chalked the baby up to another of their mother’s Machiavellian plots until she announced she’d had a DNA test run.

Alex kept his eyes on the flat checkerboard of Oklahoma countryside outside his windshield but his mind replayed that surreal scene in his mother’s living room. Either he or his brother had, in fact, fathered a child.

The shock of her announcement was still thundering in Alex’s ears when he’d cradled the baby in his arms. Blue-eyed, pink-cheeked Molly had pretty much won his heart with her first gummy smile. Then she’d gurgled and blown him a bubble. Alex would have claimed her as his right then and there, but Blake had reminded him of the thirty-point swing in the DNA analysis and Delilah had stressed the need to nail down the mother.

As a result, Alex and his brother had spent the past two weeks contacting the women they’d connected with early last year. Their lists hadn’t been anywhere near equal. As Dalton International’s Vice President of Operations, Alex got around a lot more than its Vice President for Financial Strategies.

Given the narrow window of opportunity, however, even Alex’s list hadn’t been all that long. It had included the lawyer he dated off and on for almost six months. The divorcee his mother had foisted on him when she’d realized he and the lawyer weren’t serious. The mega-hot state senator’s daughter Delilah had paired him with at the Oklahoma City Country Club’s annual charity ball. And Julie Bartlett.

The first three had responded to his query with looks ranging from astonishment to amusement. The last …

It had to be Bartlett. She’d been out of the country for most of last year, moving from job to job and one remote airstrip to another. The PI Alex had hired to dig into her activities and physical condition during those missing months had hit a couple of blind alleys but should produce results soon.

Not that Alex needed further confirmation. Julie Bartlett wouldn’t have refused to provide a DNA sample unless she had given birth and subsequently abandoned her baby.

His brother agreed with his assessment. To a point.

Alex cornered Blake in his office in the glass-and-steel tower housing the headquarters of Dalton International. The floor-to-ceiling windows showcased a bustling downtown Oklahoma City with its Bricktown Ballpark, busy restaurants, and newly diverted river spur ferrying tourists to the Land Rush sculpture park. Neither of the Dalton brothers had any interest in the colorful barges meandering the tree-lined river, however.

“The fact that she wouldn’t voluntarily give a DNA sample is pretty telling,” Blake agreed, “but not prima facie evidence that she’s the mother.”

“So where does that leave us?” Alex worked off his frustration by pacing the office. “Can we take her to court and force her to provide a sample?”

“Not without more justification. We would need hospital records, statements from witnesses that she was pregnant, some hard facts to support the petition for a court order.”

Alex had expected the answer. Blake was precise and deliberate by nature, and the framed law degree hanging on the wall behind his desk had only exacerbated his tendency to examine any and all sides of an issue before jumping on it.

He’d been that way even as a kid. Alex would hurtle himself head first at every challenge, whether it was a new toy or a kite caught in a tree or a schoolyard bully. His twin would hold back and assess the situation, although Blake would always wade in whenever necessary—usually after Alex’s nose had been bloodied or he’d shimmied up a tree and couldn’t get down. The present situation, he thought grimly, had too many parallels for comfort.

“I should have just invited her to lunch,” he said in disgust. “I could have picked up her fork or glass or napkin and strolled off with it.”

“You could have,” Blake agreed mildly. “None of which would have helped us in court. For a paternity suit, or in this case, a maternity suit, the sample has to be taken under controlled conditions.”

“But at least we would know.”

“Maybe. I’ve done some digging into DNA testing. There was a case in Virginia a few years ago. The principals battled it out in court for two years despite the fact that the DNA test showed an almost hundred percent probability the defendant was, in fact, the father.”

“Yeah, we know about those probabilities.”

“The judge finally ruled against the claimant when it came out that the DNA lab employed a total of five people processing more than a hundred thousand paternity tests a year, with one supervisor certifying the results every four minutes. The margin for error was too wide for absolute certainty.”

Alex stopped his restless pacing and faced his brother. An outsider probably couldn’t have told them apart. They were both six-two, blue-eyed, and built on exactly the same lines. But the differences were there and readily apparent to anyone who knew them well. Blake’s hair was a darker gold and parted on the left. Alex sported a scar on his chin from a close encounter with a fence post as a kid.

They had that unique twin ability to almost read each other’s thoughts, though, and Alex didn’t particularly care for the vibe he was receiving at the moment.

“So you’re saying Molly may not be ours?”

The possibility carved an unexpected hole in his heart. He’d had two weeks to get used to the idea of being a father. Or uncle. Either way, the idea that neither he nor Blake might have a claim on the baby left a hollow feeling inside him.

“I’m saying it might not hurt to run another test,” Blake was saying. “Especially considering who arranged for the first.”

“You’re right.” Alex huffed out an exasperated breath. “I wouldn’t put it past our dear, sweet mother to have sent in baby hair from one of us instead of from Molly.”

“Me, either.” Laughter lightened Blake’s somber expression. “How many prospective brides has she thrown at you in the past six months?”

“Eight. You?”

“Five.”

Now they had a whole new set of issues to work. With his characteristic decisiveness, Alex wanted the matter of Molly’s parentage settled. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. First, we’ll have another test run to confirm Molly is ours. Second, we convince Ms. Bartlett to submit a DNA sample. If it turns out she’s not Molly’s mother, we go back and …”

The buzz of the intercom cut him off. Irritated, Alex scowled when his brother reached for the phone.

“I told your secretary not to interrupt us.”

“She’s not a secretary,” Blake corrected in his precise way. “She’s my executive assistant.”

As much as Alex loved his twin, there were times he itched to stick a firecracker down his shirt collar and light the fuse. This was one of them.

“Just tell her … Oh, crap!”

He couldn’t suppress a groan as the office door flew open and their mother sailed in. With her megawatt personality, waist-length raven hair showing only a trace of silver, and fingers flashing their usual ten or twelve carats worth of diamonds, Delilah Dalton tended to put a stone-cold finish to conversation whenever she made one of her flamboyant entrances.

The diamonds were absent today. She’d removed them two weeks ago to avoid scratching the tender skin of the infant now cradled to her chest. Instead, her tall, spare figure was encased in black leggings and a print tunic sprouting a profusion of leafy geraniums in eye-popping pink. The sling snuggling the baby against her chest was made of the same wild print.

“Well?” she demanded as she swept in. “How did it go with the Bartlett woman?”

Alex parried her imperious demand with one of his own. “Where did you get that outfit?”

“An on-line shop called Baby Glam and Mama, Too.” Preening, she patted the baby’s back. “It’s got the most delicious inventory. I’m thinking of ordering matching leopard-skin tights and headbands for Molly and me.”

Alex and Blake shared a quick glance. They knew their mother. Once she latched on to something, she didn’t let go. If she’d decided Molly was really her granddaughter …

Aw, hell! Who were they kidding? Alex and Blake had latched on to that same possibility two weeks ago. Even if subsequent tests proved otherwise, the baby was now permanently etched on both their hearts.

That much was obvious when Blake rounded his desk and approached their mom. Smiling, he gazed down at the sleeping infant. His fatuous expression must have mirrored Alex’s because their mother could hardly conceal her glee as she glanced from one son to the other.

“Tell me,” she demanded of Alex. “What did the Bartlett woman say?”

“Her name’s Julie,” he reminded her.

“Whatever.” She flapped an impatient hand. “Did she admit to being Molly’s mother?”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll soon discover the truth of that! When is she going in to supply a DNA sample?”

“She’s not.”

“What?”

Delilah’s small shriek startled the baby. Molly’s head popped up. She blinked and looked right, left, then right again. Driven by an instinct as nervous as it was protective, Alex reached for the child.

“Here, let me take her.”

Delilah unhooked the sling and let him extract the baby. When she saw his smile as he cradled Molly in his arms, she had to bite back an exultant whoop.

She couldn’t have scripted this scenario any better! She was ready. More than ready. All those long, hard years hopping around oil fields and even harder years expanding Dalton International to its present level of operations had taken their toll. Delilah wanted to kick back. Enjoy the wealth those grueling years had generated. Lavish all her loving energy on her tall, handsome, annoyingly independent sons. On the baby Alex now cradled in his arms.

“Tell me,” she ordered again. “What did Bartlett say? Is she the mother or isn’t she?”

“I don’t know.” Frowning, he brushed a knuckle over Molly’s cheek. “I would have said no based on her initial reaction. But when I asked for a DNA sample, she got all huffy and hot-tempered.”

“Ha! There you go! Refusing that simple request proves the woman’s got something to hide. Did you tell her our primary goal is to ascertain Molly’s parentage so we can do a medical history?”

“Yeah, I did.”

His knuckle made another tender sweep over the baby’s cheek. The sight would have filled Delilah with untrammeled glee if not for his grim expression.

“I also offered to pay for a sample,” he related. “That seemed to set her back up.”

“Then you didn’t offer enough.” The hard-headed businesswoman took precedence over Delilah’s rampaging motherly/grandmotherly instincts. “Everyone’s got a price. You just haven’t found hers yet.”

Alex knew she was right. He and Blake had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their mother as she’d faced down competitors who made the mistake of thinking they could prey on their father’s amiable good nature to cut into the Daltons’ growing empire. Delilah had taught her sons to move in, take over, and leave no prisoners behind. As a result Dalton International had gobbled up their competition over the years, including any number of small, two-bit ventures like Agro-Air.

Their mother zoomed in on that like a crow diving on roadkill. “Did you check out this company she works for?”

“Of course,” Blake answered. “We ran a complete financial analysis before Alex drove out to the Panhandle.”

“And?”

“Agro-Air is operating on a shoestring. The old timer who founded it …”

“Careful!”

“The, er, individual who founded it is a throwback by the name of Josiah Jones.”

“Josiah Jones!” Delilah looked as though the floor had just rolled under her feet. “Aka Dusty Jones?”

Alex settled the baby against his shoulder and shared a look with his twin. He couldn’t remember the last time either of them had seen their mother’s set back on her heels.

“I think …” Alex said slowly. “No, I’m sure Julie mentioned that was one of her partners.”

“Oh, Lord!”

The two brothers locked gazes again. What the heck was this all about?

“You want to tell us how you know this Dusty character?” Alex asked.

The question seemed to shake her out of a trance. “We locked horns decades ago. Damned if I can remember why. But I do remember that bowlegged bastard could fly his rickety ole biplane like nobody’s business.”

“He’s progressed from biplanes to single-wing PA-36’s.” A tight smile stretched Alex’s lips as he recalled the oil dripping from the Pawnee’s engine. “Still pretty rickety, though.”

A familiar combative light leaped into their mother’s eyes. “And that’s who your one-night stand is partnered with?”

“Her name is Julie,” he repeated tersely. “Julie Bartlett.”

Almost purring with pleasure, Delilah eased the baby from his arms. Satisfaction radiated from her in waves as she tucked Molly back into the sling.

“Unless the Dusty I knew forty years ago has shed his skin and grown a new one, he’s up to his elbows in one kind of trouble or another. Put that PI of yours on him. I’ll bet my new chinchilla coat you’ll find some leverage to hold over him and that tart you slept with.”

“Julie,” Alex ground out. “Her name is Julie.”

“Like I care?” With a wave to her sons, she headed for the door. “This is your daughter we’re talking about. Yours or Blake’s. So don’t screw around. Go for the jugular.”

Alex took the elevator to one of the penthouse apartments on the top floor of the Dalton International building and put the rest of that afternoon and evening to productive use.

He knew he’d inherited his mother’s killer instinct. More to the point, he itched to show a certain green-eyed, slender-hipped crop duster he was not someone she could eradicate from her life like she would a pesky aphid.

Okay! All right! It was more than an itch. During the long drive back to Oklahoma City, it had become almost a compulsion. He could chalk it up to his naturally competitive nature but he knew that was only part of the equation. As she had the first time they’d met, Julie Bartlett had spurred a gut-level response in him.

Once in his sprawling apartment with its panoramic view of the city, he splashed Crown Royal onto ice and settled at his desk. His first task was to turn his PI onto Dusty Jones as Delilah had suggested. It didn’t take long for Jamison to come back with a report on the crop duster’s personal ups and downs. Mostly downs in recent months, he related. Big downs.

While that was in the works, Alex spent several hours at the computer. He and Blake had already run the stats on Agro-Air’s operations and revenue once. Wouldn’t hurt to dig a little deeper. By the time he called it quits sometime after midnight and hit the sack, Alex suspected he’d gathered more information about the company than its principal owner wanted either of his partners to know.

Lacing his hands behind his head, he stared up at the moonlight streaming through the skylights. Now that he’d had time to sort through his roller-coaster day, he could admit the truth. It wasn’t his mother’s acerbic comments or his brother’s legalese or the all-consuming question of Molly’s parentage that had spurred all these additional queries. It was Julie Bartlett.

The prickly, uncooperative, grease-smeared redhead had gotten under his skin this afternoon, even more than the pilot who’d snagged his interest in down in Nuevo Laredo. His bone-deep competitive instincts wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew whether she was or was not the mother of the child that might or might not be his. In the process, he might just finesse the woman into bed again.

Yeah, right! Like he needed that complication in his life right now.

On the other hand …

Images from their night together drifted into his mind, came into focus, sharpened. Alex was damned if he could remember the name of the restaurant they’d eaten at or the motel across from the airport they’d adjourned to. But now that he’d seen Julie Bartlett again, he couldn’t get the vivid, 3-D image of her naked and flushed with desire out of his head. Grunting, he rolled over and punched his pillow.

Three

Alex’s first call Wednesday morning was to his mother. Since she’d turned over most of the Dalton International’s operations to her sons, Delilah had taken to sleeping more than the four or five hours a night she’d grabbed while she was raising her boys and building the corporation from the ground up almost single-handedly. Molly had rekindled old habits, however. Delilah was once again up with the sun and crashed as soon as she tucked the baby in for the night.

She sipped her first cup of coffee while she listened to Alex’s plan. When he hung up, she sat for a long time in the kitchen of her sprawling mansion. She would never admit to either of her sons that she felt more comfortable in this cheerful kitchen with its watermelon striped wallpaper and collection of dented copper tea kettles than in any of the other seventeen rooms, all decorated by outrageously expensive interior designers.

She’d wanted more for her sons than the shack she’d grown up in. More than the tar-paper shanty their father had called home before hiring out to Conoco-Philips Petroleum when he turned thirteen. Neither she nor Big Jake had finished high school. Yet their sons had not only racked up several advanced degrees, they’d acquired a sophistication that secretly thrilled Delilah almost as much as it frustrated her. Alex and Blake should be married by now, damn it. Should be giving her the grandbabies she craved. Babies like Molly.