Surrogate Escape

The doctor leaned in, speaking to Lori, who recorded something—the weight, Jake assumed—in the chart neatly held to the metal clipboard.

Lori then set aside the chart and expertly lifted the tiny pink girl and bundled her in a soft-looking flannel wrap. She placed the girl on her shoulder and did a little bounce to comfort the infant. She seemed completely relaxed with a baby on her shoulder. Jake found himself smiling. It was at that moment she turned and noticed him there. Their gazes met, and she smiled back. He knew this by the crinkling of her eyes at the corners. She turned the newborn so he could see the tiny face, as if he were the nervous father coming to see his baby girl. Lori nodded at the baby and then glanced back to him. Look what we did, she seemed to say. We saved this little one.

He nodded, his smile broadening as a familiar warmth welled inside him. This was how she had once looked at him, and he missed it.

The warm welcome in Lori’s eyes as she continued the rhythmic bounce made her look so different from how he usually saw her. They’d begun a routine of her spotting him when he had business at the clinic and him pretending not to see her, his eyes shifting away as he searched for an escape route. The only time he allowed himself to look at her was when she didn’t know he was there. Until today. Now he saw her and she saw him. Something inside his chest tightened.

Tinnin made a sound in his throat. “That baby is white.”

“I think so,” said Jake.

“All white, I mean.”

“Agreed.”

“So, if the papa wasn’t Apache, why would a white girl come up here to have a baby?”

* * *

LORI SET THE sleeping baby into the bassinet and then let Chief Tinnin and Jake Redhorse into the delivery room. Hauser lowered his mask to offer a greeting as he stepped past them. Then he headed down the corridor toward the urgent-care area and the patients already waiting. Lori offered her two visitors both a mask. Tinnin’s limp was growing worse by the minute.

“How is she?” asked Tinnin, holding the mask to his face.

“She’s perfect. A little small but otherwise healthy.” She glanced at Jake, keeping her distance. The joy had fled, and now her steady gaze held a familiar caution.

Her attention flicked back to the chief.

“We need a blood type,” said Tinnin.

“We do that routinely. I’ll be sure you get a copy of the results.”

“What about the baby?” Jake interjected.

“I’ll be here until Burl arrives.”

Burl Tsosie was one of the four nurses here, along with Lori, Nina and Verna.

“Any word from Protective Services?” asked Tinnin.

“Not yet, but they usually make us the temporary guardians. That gives them time to secure placement, if the mother isn’t found.”

“She’s not getting that baby even if she is found.” Jake’s outrage crept into his voice. “Because I’m placing her under arrest.”

Lori’s eyes rolled up, and the breath she let out was audible.

He glanced at the baby, sleeping peacefully, her tiny eyelashes fanning her pink cheeks. She’d be placed and adopted, he realized. Why did that eventuality make his chest ache? He met Lori’s gaze and saw she also looked troubled. They’d found her, and somehow that gave him a personal stake in what happened to this baby girl.

“When?” said Tinnin, referring to the arrival of a Protective Services representative.

“I’m not sure,” said Lori. “They have an office in Globe and one in Flagstaff. Depends on what other business they have.”

“I’ll stay,” said Jake.

Lori’s brow wrinkled. “It might not even be today.”

Jake set his jaw but said nothing.

Tinnin cast him an odd look.

“It’s a lock-in area,” Lori said to Jake, offering her upturned hands with her explanation. “No one but the parents get near one of our babies.”

“I’m still staying.”

It was clear from the placement of one hand on her hip that Lori did not appreciate his intrusion into her territory.

Jake and Lori squared off.

Tinnin turned to hobble toward the door, pausing to look back at Jake. “Suit yourself, Redhorse. You’re off duty. But try to get a few hours sleep.”

The door closed behind him, and the chief wobbled past the viewing window and out of sight.

Lori returned her attention to Jake.

“Mask,” she said, pointing to the mask he now held at his side.

He tied the top string around his head, then looked down at the newborn he’d found in his truck. She was very pale, but beautiful. He’d never thought babies were beautiful before. His chest ached again, and he itched to hold her. He reached out with one finger to stroke the infant’s cheek.

“Don’t touch the babies. You’re not clean.” Her crisp tone let him know that this was very definitely her dominion, and she did not appreciate him inserting himself here.

He wished he could keep the baby. Jake frowned. Of all the stupid ideas in his life, that fleeting thought was second only to the idea that he could control himself in the bed of his new pickup with Lori Mott back on that long-ago summer night when they were both sixteen. He never had been able to control himself around Lori. Still couldn’t. She riled him up. It was one of her special talents—making him crazy for her without seeming to do anything at all. He’d been young and dumb. They both had been. Everyone was mad at Lori for trying to snare him. He didn’t know if that were true. He did know that the idea of getting married so young had scared him. He was afraid they’d have a kid and then another until maybe he’d end up robbing a store out of sheer desperation, just like his father. During his junior year, he had carried the scholarship offers around with him, but he had known he wouldn’t use them. He had believed that he’d never get a four-year degree or come back to wear the uniform. Instead, he had thought that he’d marry Lori and live on the rez in public housing and work for the lumber mill or with the tribe’s cattle. His mother and her mother wouldn’t speak to one another. Still didn’t. And his mother had said she would not attend the wedding.

But he had been the one who had driven them out to the reservoir and afterward let Lori take the fall for what they had both done. It was his fault as much as Lori’s. That made him most angry of all.

Ty had told him that her older sister had tried to pin a baby on him because of his reputation, but he’d been smart enough to never sleep with Jocelyn. Ty said Joceyln had slept with so many boys in high school no one knew whose kid it was. Had Lori done the same to him?

Jake blinked, but his vision remained blurry. He rubbed his burning eyes and swayed. When had he last slept?

* * *

WHEN LORI CAUGHT Jake weaving with fatigue, she convinced him to sit down at the nurses’ station. It was a mistake, because in pressing him into a stool, she felt first the taut muscles that offered resistance, and then the warmth of his skin. Now her palms prickled. But she tore herself away from temptation and brought him something to eat and drink—yogurt, applesauce and orange juice, everything served in tiny clear plastic cups.

“Aren’t you tired?” he asked.

“I only came on duty at six a.m.”

“I called before six,” he said and blinked wearily at her.

“I was early.”

“Better than being late.” He grinned.

Was that a reference to when she had missed a period and had told him using those very words? She narrowed her eyes on him as her attraction warred with bitter memories.

“Go home, Jake. I can take it from here.”

He shook his head, reminding her of a hound. His eyelids drooped, making him look sexy as hell. Her stomach muscles squeezed, and she clamped her jaw against the tingling arousal threading through her body. Not this man.

Being seen with Jake Redhorse would only start tongues wagging and again make her a target for mockery. She acknowledged that not acting on the intense jolt of desire that grew with each moment she spent in his company was not the same as not feeling that desire. Lori accepted that her attraction for Jake Redhorse might be ever-present, a condition from which she would never recover. Just like when faced with the common-cold virus, avoidance was the best option.

The longer he hung around, the more difficulty she would have not succumbing to those come-hither stares and his sexy, lazy smile. It tore her up like shards of glass.

His mouth quirked, and she realized she’d been staring, remembering their night together. Had it really been that good?

“Go home, Jake. Seriously.”

“Naw,” he said at last, pushing his hat far back on his head and yawning. “I’ll stay till you hear from Protective Services. I want to be sure she’s staying on the rez.”

She didn’t say that there was a possibility they might take the baby to a different placement. She gnawed on her cuticle.

“I know that look,” he said. “You’re worried about something.”

She lowered her hand from her mouth, flicking the bit of ragged cuticle on her thumbnail with her index finger.

“We’ve never taken custody of a baby like this one.”

“You mean white?”

She nodded. “We keep and place all Apache infants within our tribe, but she has no protection under ICWA.”

He nodded, obviously familiar with the Indian Child Welfare Act, the legislation that sought to keep Indian children in Indian homes in response to the horrific number of indigenous children who had once been adopted away.

“She might be Indian, a member of the Turquoise Canyon tribe.”

Lori made a face. “It’s possible. Hard to say without knowing the identity of her parents.”

He nodded. “Working on that. Until then, I’ll stay here to keep an eye on little Fortune.”

“Fortune?”

He shrugged. “That’s what you called her. Said she was fortunate.”

“She’s not a puppy we found, Jake. She’s a baby. You can’t name her.”

His face was strained, though from the pain or the subject matter, she didn’t know.

“A baby, all right. A baby girl,” he said.

Like the one they had lost. Same size, same big blue eyes. But this was not their child. Whose was it?

“When will they be here?” he asked.

“Well, since we’re a Safe Haven Provider, they might not even come. May just give us directions by phone.”

“But they can’t put her in temporary placement until we investigate for a missing child,” said Jake.

“She’s not missing.”

“I agree. Still have to run it through the system, though.”

He knew the law. She knew this particular bit, as she had been here when one teen mother appeared at the clinic to relinquish her child. The father had been contacted, and the young man had signed away his rights to his baby before the infant was placed. The Turquoise Canyon tribe had a 100 percent adoption rate of their children. Their tribe’s history of losing their youth to the training school that had once taken over the education and raising of Apache boys and girls made the tribe diligent in raising their own children.

In the past, parents did not have to agree to send their children, but once their people were resigned to the reservations, they faced a devil’s choice. They could keep their children home and lose their government subsidy and the only way to feed their families. Or they could send their children, receive the subsidies but lose the ability to teach their young their language and their heritage. The choice and the deep wound that remained made the tribe fiercely protective of its youth.

“What if she comes back?” he asked. “The mother, I mean.”

“She has parental rights,” said Lori.

“She shows up here and I arrest her. Glad to. Leaving Fortune out in the wind. Just wrong.” He wasn’t even using complete sentences now. This was bad.

“She might be young, Jake. Young people don’t always make the best decisions.”

He met her gaze, knowing the subject of the conversation had shifted.

* * *

HE LET THE fatigue drag at him, rounding his shoulders. His ears were ringing.

Jake’s head drooped and his words slurred. “Should be out investigating. Find who left her.” He gave a dull shake of his head. “Not right.”

“Detective Bear Den is at your house. They’re investigating.”

Which meant he’d drawn their only detective away from his other investigations, including a recent murder, the growing list of runaways and the relocation of the entire tribal headquarters to a temporary facility away from the river. He closed his eyes, swaying slightly on the stool.

“Come on, Officer Redhorse. Bedtime for you.”

Lori held his arm as she walked him to an empty birthing room with a comfortable bed and waited while he removed his open jacket and utility belt.

“Want me to lock that up?” Lori asked.

“Where?”

“Right there in the closet.” She pointed at the combination bureau and closet unit that backed up to the bathroom near the entrance. He judged the strength of the particle board and figured he could break it if he needed to.

“It’s safe,” she repeated. “But it’s a maternity wing. That—” she pointed at his gun “—needs to be locked up. So here or the nurses’ station.”

“Here. Leave the key.”

She opened the closet and he accepted her help to remove his jacket, mainly to feel her cool fingers brush his neck. Now the ache in his chest had more to do with regret than arousal. She’d taken a lot of crap back in high school, after word got out. It had been worse for her than for him. He didn’t know why, but, at the time, he’d been relieved.

He considered taking off his flak jacket but was just too tired.

He sat on the bed and she knelt to unlace his boots, placing them with his jacket, hat and belt. Then she locked the closet and handed him the key on a lime-green plastic accordion-style bracelet that he looped around his wrist.

He settled back into soft pillows and a mattress covered with something plastic beneath the white sheet.

“We’ll take care of her,” she assured him and stroked his forehead.

He was shaking his head again. “My job.”

“Why is it your job?” she asked, smiling down at him.

“Because I found her.”

She straightened and drew back, her smile gone. She sighed. “That is not how this works.”

“Lori? Does this mean that we’re talking again?”

He waited while she blew away a breath and then crossed her arms protectively before her, the shields coming up again.

“Maybe. But it’s hard, Jake. When I see you, I remember...”

“Our daughter.”

She dropped her chin and nodded.

“Yes, and everything else.”

Jake opened his arms and gathered her up as she rested her forehead on his shoulder. She kept her arms crossed but let him hold her, rub her back. He hadn’t held her since they’d lost their own baby, and that had not gone well. The time before that had been in his truck. She’d said yes, yes to everything. And that was her fault as much as his.

Lori drew back first, of course, and he let her go. It seemed that was all he ever did.

“I’d like to be able to talk to you, Lori. And not just about what happened.”

Her eyes were cautious. She had reason to be suspicious, but not as much reason as he had to be suspicious of her.

“Talk, huh?” She gave him a look that cut through the bull. He wanted many things, but talk wasn’t exactly one of them.

She changed the subject, dismissing him and the topic.

“Your captain said you were on patrol last night, that you covered the traffic fatality and who knows what else. So, bed. Now.”

He stroked a strand of her hair that had escaped the tight knot. Instead of drawing back, she let him cup her head in his hand. He met her gaze, letting her know what he intended and giving her time to step away.

It was a bad idea, but he was still going for it. No stopping himself, just like the last time they were alone. But he was older now. His control was better.

Liar. She still stripped away all control. There was no containing the fire that burned within him for this woman. His brain shrieked a warning as he pulled her in tight.

Her eyes widened as she sucked in air through flaring nostrils. The small gesture made his chest constrict. He flexed his arm, bringing her in closer. Her fingers slipped into the opening of his uniform at the collar, nails raking his chest. His blood surged and he took the kiss, his mouth hungry. Her arms threaded around his neck as he deepened the kiss, tasting the sweetness of her mouth. She was like a drug for him. The habit he thought to break, and all the while it had lingered inside him, waiting for a chance to have her again. If she had learned anything, she should be running for the door because they were alone again, and there was a bed right beside them.

He turned her in his arms and brought her to the mattress. She stiffened and broke the kiss. He lifted to his elbows to give her a questioning look. She gaped at him and then shoved away, slipping from his grasp. He sat on the bed while she stood panting beside him. He’d dragged the forked comb from the tight bun and let her hair fall. Then he raked his fingers through the strands until her hair fell about her shoulders in soft waves.

“Jake, you can’t do that.”

But he just had. His mouth quirked.

“That so?”

“Yes, that is so, Jake Redhorse. You might be the golden boy to everyone else, but you and I know better. Don’t we?” She reclaimed her hair fastener.

That stung. He drummed his fingers on his thigh.

“I said I’d marry you, didn’t I?”

She gave a sharp, audible exhale and folded her arms over her chest. “My hero,” she said, her tone mocking. Then she spun on her heels and marched out of the room.

He had half a mind to follow her.

Jake flopped back onto the bed. And what was that “my hero” gibe about? She’d gone with him, let him do what he liked. They’d both been there, both been stupid kids. It wasn’t his fault. At least not all his fault. His mistake had been thinking he could control himself with Lori. He’d even had the damn condom in his pocket. But that wasn’t how a condom worked, was it?

He hadn’t used protection and she had never asked about it. Thinking a Mott girl would use protection was like expecting a cow to wear pajamas. That was what his brother Ty had said. Kee had said it was an unfortunate but predictable occurrence given family history. The whole thing still made him burn deep inside, shame and hurt and desire all firing at once. But he would admit that whatever appeal Lori had for him had only grown stronger with time.

What was it about Lori Mott that drew him like a lamb to slaughter?

“No,” he promised to the empty room and settled down in the bed alone. The pillow smelled like Lori. He breathed deep and then growled, rolling to his side, ignoring the stirring of his body for her.

Not again.

Chapter Four

Lori stomped away to the nurses’ station. She was so mad she could spit nickels. She plunged into work, muttering to herself. Officer Redhorse was no white knight. She knew it even if no one else did. But somehow he always came out of every situation smelling like a rose. It burned her up inside.

Did he actually believe what everyone had said about her? He’d been there, for heaven’s sake. He knew exactly how it had played out. But in the days and weeks after the miscarriage, Jake had disappeared. Bolted like a branded calf. She’d learned from her older sister Rosa that Jake had been congratulated on his escape.

And she’d just kissed him again. She must be out of her mind. Lori gave Fortune a bottle of formula and brought baby Leniix to her mother for feeding. She spoke to Betty Mills briefly about the new arrival. When she finally felt herself again, she returned to give Jake a piece of her mind and found him puffing softly in slumber. Lori permitted herself the pleasure of looking at the handsome boy who had grown into an even more handsome man. You just couldn’t tell from the outside what lay inside. Sometimes you learned that only when it was too late. When her throat began to ache, she crept out.

She was in the women’s health clinic with Dr. Redhorse all morning and was called to the urgent-care unit twice when they became swamped. Midmorning, Lori noticed Jake’s mother at the clinic, accompanied by her new husband, Duffy Rope. May Redhorse Rope never liked Lori after what had happened and had been strongly in favor of letting the baby go to adoption within the tribe so her precious son would not have to be encumbered by a marriage to the likes of her. When Jake had announced that he planned to marry Lori, May would not speak to her, but she made sure Lori heard what she thought. May’s words were engraved in Lori’s memory like letters on a tombstone.

He shouldn’t have to spend a lifetime tied to a girl like that because of one simple mistake.

Lori and May made eye contact, and May glowered. Lori went to fetch Dr. Kee Redhorse. She didn’t need any extra rancor this morning.

She later learned that May had a new ulcer on her foot above her big toe amputation and needed special wound care twice a week. Kee had made an appointment in Darabee with a specialist. Lori did not like Jake’s mother, but she would not wish her troubles on anyone.

Dr. Kee left for lunch and Lori ordered in, then returned to the computer to code entries while she waited. They didn’t have a proper cafeteria, but they had a break room and a standing arrangement with the diner across the street to have food delivered when needed.

Her order arrived with a familiar deliveryman. Bullis had left the grill to hand-deliver her meal. He’d been after her for months for a date, but she had put him off. He owned the diner and was a nice guy. But he just didn’t make her tingle all over—like Officer Redhorse. More was the pity. Nathan was the better choice because he gave her something Jake never had—respect.

“Extra sandwich,” said Nathan, lifting a bag. “Roast beef with mustard, lettuce, tomato, with potato salad and a bag of chips. Plus one sixteen-ounce iced tea.” He glanced around. “This for Nina? She usually drinks diet.”

“No. A, er, visitor. Jake Redhorse. Sleeping in there.”

Nathan frowned. “Why?”

News would get out anyway. It always did. “He found a baby in his truck.”

“A baby? No way. Can I see it?”

She held her smile and handed over a twenty. “Family only, I’m afraid.”

Nathan expertly made change. “Just found it, huh?”

“Yes. She’s doing well.”

“Ain’t that something.” He just stood there staring at her, and she felt sure he was going to ask her out yet again.

“Well.” She glanced at her computer. “Better get back to work.”

Nathan nodded and finally left, looking back only once this time.

Lori resisted the urge to check on Jake, but instead sent Nina to pop her head in. She returned a few minutes later with her report. “Still sleeping. Still cute. I left him a pitcher of ice water by his bed.”

Lori sighed as she returned to seeing patients and finished up the afternoon paperwork. The women’s health clinic closed at two o’clock on weekdays. The urgent-care unit stayed open until four from Monday to Saturday. After that, the tribe knew to wait until morning or call the volunteer fire department, now relocating until Piñon Forks was safe again. This week was unusual for them, too, because they’d be moving lock, stock and barrel to Turquoise Ridge tomorrow.

Baby Leniix and her mother had been discharged, leaving only baby Fortune, as Lori was now thinking of her. Lori and Nina packed boxes until nearly six.

“I’m going to wake up Officer Redhorse and see about getting him home,” said Lori.

“Okay,” said Nina, casting her a smile that showed much pink gum above her teeth before she returned to the computer and the records.

Lori retrieved the bag lunch and carried it to the room where Jake rested.

The golden September sunlight stretched across Jake’s bare arm and chest. At some point he’d removed his vest and his shirt now flapped open, giving her an eyeful of his heavily muscled torso. Her breath caught and she worried her lip as she considered turning tail.