Drive-By Daddy

Grinning, proud, he ducked his head, nodding his you’re-welcome. “Nothing to it, ma’am. Like I said, just glad I could help.”

Darcy couldn’t believe his humble speech. “Help? You saved us. Literally. I don’t know how to repay you.”

He put his hand atop hers now and gently squeezed it. His blue-eyed gaze and wide grin warmed her more than the sun above. “No need. It’s payment enough for me to have been here when you needed me.”

When she needed him. Darcy’s chin trembled, her eyes teared up. He was the only man in her life with the exception of her now-deceased father, who’d ever been there for her when she needed him. “Well, still…thanks.”

He winked at her, and released her hand as he stood. And became all business. “We need to wrap this baby girl in something before we hit the road.” He began unbuttoning his shirt. “About the only thing I’ve got—” He pulled the shirt off, tossed it to the truck bed, and began tugging his white cotton T-shirt out of his waistband “—is my T-shirt. It’s clean enough, I suppose. Probably only smells like man and sweat and dust and aftershave. What more could you want?”

What more could I want. He’d meant it to be funny. Darcy knew that. But mesmerized, lost in watching him, and holding her child close in her arms, Darcy swallowed, feeling her growing admiration of him, of his resourcefulness—not his physical presence. His kindness. Not his tanned and muscled chest. She bit at her bottom lip. Not his gorgeous smile or his blue-eyed gaze. No. Not any of those. Or even the whole mixture of them all.

Because now that she had her daughter, she was through with men. Over them. And some Montana cowboy who’d come upon her in her hour of need wasn’t going to change that.

2

“I NEVER SAW the like of that navel knot your cowboy tied yesterday. Must be something they use on a ranch.”

“I suppose. And he’s not my cowboy, Mother.”

Darcy watched her mother shrug. “Anyway, your 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter now has an innie navel. Dr. Harkness fixed it nice, didn’t he?”

From the comfort of her hospital bed, all stitched up and still sore from yesterday’s truck-bed birth, Darcy nodded as she eyed her mother. “Yes, he did. And no, I don’t want to go out with Dr. Harkness.”

“Well, not now. It’s a little too soon.”

“No. It’s a little too late, Mother. Not soon. Late.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Darcy stared at her mother. “Yes, I do. Dr. Harkness is 800 years old, if he’s a day. Why don’t you go out with him?”

Her mother pursed her lips. “I can’t. I’m saving myself for Brad Pitt.”

They’d had this conversation before. “Brad Pitt is too young for you, Mother.”

Margie Alcott bristled in her chair next to Darcy’s bed. “Well, thanks. I needed that.”

Darcy sighed. “No offense meant. But admit it, Brad Pitt is even too young for me.”

“Darcy, the man is in his mid-thirties. About six years older than you.”

“Well,” Darcy groused, crossing her arms, “he seems younger than me.”

“Everybody’s younger than you, honey. You’re such a little old lady. Always have been. Anyway, I think you two would make a nice couple.”

“Who? Brad and me? Or Dr. Harkness and me?”

A sly look came over her mother’s pleasantly rounded face. “Actually, you and that cowboy.”

“Here we go.” Darcy threw her hands up, more to dispel her persistent thoughts about her mystery cowboy than to wave away her mother’s words. Still, those she had to challenge. After all, she’d stuck herself firmly in this I-don’t-need-a-man corner for the past nine months. She couldn’t now, because of a chance meeting, admit that she was wrong. Darcy exhaled sharply, signaling her determination to reentrench herself in her own views. “What makes you think I need a man?”

“Well, that tiny little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes down there in the nursery, for one thing. She needs a father. You know—that nucleus family thing you hear so much about.”

“Nuclear, Mother.”

“Is that it? Well, it’s the same thing.”

“I guess.” Darcy looked down at her hands and picked at a nail. Could she feel more guilty right now? It had taken her by surprise, this feeling of being alone in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Could it be that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother? She shook her head. No. The last thing she needed right now was to doubt herself. She couldn’t, not with another life depending on her to be the adult here.

“It’s not as if I’m deliberately denying my daughter a father,” Darcy suddenly blurted into the silence that had settled between them. “I’m not trying to make some politically correct feminist statement here. Being a single mother wasn’t exactly in the game plan, remember.” To her distress, Darcy’s chin quivered.

Her mother reached out, laying a hand on Darcy’s arm. “Oh, baby, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Darcy squeezed her mother’s hand…and felt worse. Now she’d upset her mother too. “I know. God, Mother, the hormones. I’m all over the page with this. One second I’m mad, the next crying. Is this normal?”

Margie Alcott nodded, her smile returning. “Oh, sure it is, baby. You’re a mess, and you’re fine. It’s all normal.” Her mother squinted, as if in thought…which she promptly shared. “Well, honey, as normal as you’ve ever been. You always have been a little bit different, you know. Special, I like to say.”

“Thanks,” Darcy replied. It was moments like these that reminded Darcy that the reason her mother knew where all her buttons were and how to push them was because she’d installed them.

“Now, Darcy, don’t you make that face that says I don’t know what I’m talking about. Because I do.”

Knowing she and her mother would never agree about Darcy needing a man in her life, she sighed and changed the subject. “Isn’t your little granddaughter the sweetest thing you ever saw?”

At the mention of the baby, Margie Alcott put her hand to her bosom, and her smile turned beatific. “She’s so beautiful, Darcy. I think she looks a little like that cowboy who brought you in yesterday.”

Well, that hadn’t worked. Here they were…back to the cowboy. Darcy shifted…painfully…in her bed. “Oh, stop that, Mother. He delivered her. He didn’t father her.”

“Well, I wish he had. I saw him when he brought you in yesterday, you know. A handsome man, with that white hat and white truck. It’s all just unbelievable, Darcy. And in the newspaper. You can see it for yourself right here. Big headlines. And a nice picture.” She handed Darcy the folded newspaper she brought with her.

“A picture?” In her mind, Darcy again saw the camera light flashing as she and her baby, wrapped in that Indian blanket, were being carried in by the cowboy whose unbuttoned chambray shirt had bared his chest to her cheek. “Dear God. Was I covered?”

“Well, I should say so. Look for yourself. It’s right there on page one.”

“Page one? Great. Slow news day in Buckeye, Arizona?”

Margie Alcott puffed up sanctimoniously.

“It was until you decided to deliver your baby out in the desert. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life, Darcy. Why, it’s a wonder your…stuff didn’t get all sunburned, just hanging out there like that. What if someone had come by and seen you?”

Darcy could only stare at her mother, and fight the heat staining her cheeks. “Someone did come by and see me, Mother.”

“I know. It’s all there. On page one. Look at it.”

Against her better judgment, Darcy finally looked. Yep, there she was. On the front page. Atop a gurney and being wheeled into surgery for stitching. The look on her face was probably the same one she’d have if she’d just escaped an alien abduction. But the accompanying picture was of her proud and grinning mother, fresh from the beauty shop, holding her new grand-baby, whose tiny little face was scrunched up in a scream. Darcy flopped the daily paper down. “Lovely. You look great, Mother.”

Margie patted her silver-gray hair. “You think? Let me see that.” She reached for the paper, and Darcy gave it to her, lovingly watching her mother scan the photo. “Well, I do, don’t I?” Then she began turning pages, perusing them carefully. “But I’m going to get after that Vernon Fredericks. After all, he’s the editor. And there’s not one picture in here of your hero.”

“My hero? You mean the Lone Ranger?”

Margie looked up from today’s copy of the Buckeye Bugle. “Is that what you call him? The Lone Ranger?”

Darcy shrugged, seeing again, in her mind’s eye, the man’s blue eyes and hearing his calm voice. “I have to call him something. In all the excitement, I forgot to ask him his name. And then, once we got here, he just drove off.”

Margie folded the paper and tossed it on the floor. “Well, who do you think he is?”

“Just some turned-around cowboy from Montana. At least, that’s what he said.”

Her mother pulled her chair closer. “I hope you at least thanked the man, honey. He did save your life. And your baby’s.”

“I know, Mother. And I did thank him.”

“What’d he say to that?”

Darcy exhaled her frustration sharply. The woman wanted all the details. “He said it was nothing, as I recall.”

Her mother sighed romantically. “Cowboys. They’re just the most polite breed of man around.”

Darcy shrugged. “I suppose.”

Her mother’s raised eyebrow said she’d detected something in Darcy’s shrug that she didn’t like. “Now, don’t go blaming him for what that stupid old professor of yours did to you.”

Darcy crossed her arms defensively. “Oh, you mean ask me to marry him, get me pregnant and then run off…for a second honeymoon with his wife?”

“I told you he was a married man.”

“You told me nothing of the sort. You didn’t even know him.”

“I know his big-city kind.”

“You do not. Buckeye’s the only place you’ve ever lived. And Dad was the only man you’d ever known.”

Her mother’s chin rose a notch. “That may be. But I read a lot. And I watch those talk shows on TV. I’ve learned a few things.”

What a sweet, confined little world her mother lived in—one Darcy had hated to intrude on, last Christmas at semester’s end, with her own harsh reality. “I’ll bet you have.”

“I have. Now I’ve been thinking about something else, too.”

“Dear God.”

“Don’t be disrespectful, Darcy Jean Alcott. I’ve been thinking about your cowboy. I think this whole thing—him being there when you needed him—is not just chance or luck. No, he was supposed to be here at that time for you. That’s all there is to it. After all, his home state is off the beaten path.”

Darcy remembered him saying the same thing yesterday. But she wasn’t about to tell her mother that. “Off the beaten path? Like Buckeye, Arizona isn’t? We’re fifty miles southwest of nowhere, Mother.”

“Hardly. Phoenix is just down the road. I swear, Darcy, you act like you left civilization when you came here from Baltimore. But anyway, what was I talking about?”

Darcy sighed. It was pointless to fight. “My screwed-up life.”

“That’s right.” With that, Margie Alcott opened her sack lunch, arranging everything atop Darcy’s bedside tray. She pulled a roast beef sandwich from a plastic bag. Darcy had to grin. It was ten-thirty in the morning. Volunteering was a hungry business.

“So. What was he doing down here? That cowboy, I mean.”

Relentless, the woman was. Darcy could only stare at her sweet mother in her pink hospital uniform as she bit into her early lunch. “You mean besides delivering your granddaughter?”

“I do,” she said, chewing. “I can’t imagine.” She swallowed, grabbed her soda, held it out for Darcy to pop the top, and then slurped from the can. Finally, she pointed at her daughter. “And don’t you ever go off again without that cell phone, you hear me? It scared me to death yesterday when you were brought in. I don’t think I could go through that again.”

“I think you came through just fine, Mother. After all, you were front-page news.” Darcy didn’t have to be told how the Buckeye Bugle was there to get its headline. Who didn’t know that Barb Fredericks’s son, Vernon, was the editor? The same Barb who weekly played bridge with Darcy’s mother and their two other partners in crime, Jeanette Tomlinson and Freda Smith. The bane of Buckeye. All four of them.

“Don’t be silly,” Margie Alcott said, crunching now on potato chips. “That cowboy is the star. And, of course, my new granddaughter.”

“And me,” Darcy reminded her.

“Of course, you. I was just mentioned because I’m the one who called Barb and got Vernon on the story. It’s not every day something like this happens.”

“Well, certainly not to me.” Darcy decided to try one last time to change the subject before her mother started her speech on how 50-year-old Vernon would make a great husband and father…if he could ever move out of his mother’s house. “Have you seen the baby today?”

“Have I seen her? Is my name Margie Alcott? Of course I’ve seen her. I’ve all but conducted tours by the window that looks into the nursery. Why, she’s the most beautiful child on the face of this earth. Everyone says so.”

Everyone better. Darcy knew that much, knowing her mother—the social ringleader, as well as the resident bridge champ, of her group of lady friends.

Just then, her mother set down her soda and pursed her lips. This was never good. “Well? Have you named her yet? You’ve known for months you’d have a girl. And yet my grandchild is a day old and doesn’t even have a name. ‘Baby Alcott, female’ it says on her little wrist ID. That’s just plain awful. Everyone’s calling her Louisa May. I just won’t have that, Darcy. Louisa May Alcott. Why, the very idea…naming her after some dead romance writer.”

Sighing, Darcy the English Lit professor reached over to the bedside table and picked up the form the nurse had left her to fill out, hoping her mother wouldn’t obsess on the still-empty box marked “Father.” She just couldn’t bring herself to write Hank’s name in the space. The very married Hank Erickson wanted nothing to do with her or his new daughter. He had two of his own with his wife, Darcy now knew. “Relax. I named her. See for yourself.”

Her mother took the clipboard Darcy offered her…and read aloud. “Montana Skye Alcott.” She looked up, a tremulous smile on her lips. “That’s beautiful, honey. Really pretty. Little Montana.” Then a knowing look claimed her grandmotherly features. “Something to do with the Montana cowboy who helped bring her into this world?”

Darcy shrugged. “I suppose. It seemed like the right thing to do, don’t you think?”

“Well, I’ll say I do.” Margie handed back the form and looked down, swiping at some crumbs on her uniform. “Too bad you don’t know what that cowboy’s name is,” she said with oh-so-much innocence in her voice. “Otherwise, you could put his name here in the blank place for a father.”

Darcy slowly pulled herself up in her bed. “Look at me, Mother. He’s not the father. Not. Even if I knew his name, I wouldn’t do that. It’s not right. Or legal.”

Her mother fingered a bedside flower arrangement—one of about twenty in the room—and played with the card. “Well, we wouldn’t want to do anything against the law, now would we?”

“Mother.” Margie looked at Darcy, her brown eyes wide and guileless. Darcy wasn’t going to fall for that. The last time she had, she’d ended up going to the senior prom with her nerdy, pimply-faced cousin Mel when her own date had stood her up—the start of a definite trend in her life, it seemed. Darcy shook her head for added emphasis. “No. We. Wouldn’t. Say it with me.”

Instead, Marge said, “You know, we could find out who he is.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Yes, we can. Ask me how.”

“No. I don’t care how.”

“You do, too.”

Silence followed. Darcy stared at her mother. Her mother stared at her. Darcy caved. “All right. How?”

Margie smiled triumphantly. “By some of the things he left behind.”

Darcy flopped the clipboard onto her bed and folded her hands together in her lap. “Like what?”

“Like that Indian blanket. And a matchbook with the name of a fancy Phoenix hotel on it. I forget which one just now. And a pocketknife with engraved initials. T.H.E. His initials, don’t you think? Anyway, those things were all tangled up in the blanket’s folds. And I have them.”

Darcy remembered the knife and the matchbook. But his initials were THE? The what? Tom? Terry? Ty? Her interest quickened…before she remembered she wasn’t interested. But it was too late. Her mother had noticed. Great. “What about them?” she was forced to ask, even as she tried hard, and failed, to sound as if she couldn’t care less.

“Johnny Smith. That’s what about them.”

A sick feeling came over Darcy. She gripped her covering sheet in her hands. “Not Johnny. Mother, what are you thinking of doing? Don’t do it. I swear—”

“Not in front of me you won’t.” With that, Margie Alcott stood up and collected her lunch leavings. “Now you rest easy, honey. They’ll be bringing Montana in to you in a minute, I believe. And I’ve got to get back to work. That sweet little old lady, Mrs. Hintzel, is back in the hospital. I think she’s just lonely. But I swear, that tiny stick of a woman—you know she’s 87?—well, she just plain worries if I don’t come around. So I’ll go check on her first and then—”

“Don’t practice medicine, Mother. You know how the doctors get. You’re supposed to be volunteering in the admissions office. Not making patient rounds.”

Her 70-year-old mother pursed her lips. “I know what my job is, Darcy. But it doesn’t hurt a thing if I visit those poor old people. I can’t imagine why that young Dr. Graves can’t figure out Mrs. Hintzel has something wrong with her uterus. Must be inexperience.”

Darcy sighed out her breath. “Or the fact that Mrs. Hintzel had a hysterectomy thirty years ago. You told me that the last time she was admitted.”

Margie Alcott frowned. “I see your hormones are making you testy again. I’m going to go check on Mrs. Hintzel. And then I’m going to call Johnny Smith.”

Darcy’s mouth dried. Johnny Smith, bachelor son of bridge-playing Freda Smith, was also one of the small town’s few policeman. The man looked like a bloodhound. But if anyone could track down a Montana cowboy…with no more information than what her mother had to give him…it would be Johnny Smith.

This was not good. For her. Or for T.H.E. Lone Ranger.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT The Ranch, an upscale hotel in Phoenix, Tom Harrison Elliott was back in his room after the morning’s meeting with the land brokers who were interested in his grandfather’s plot of land here. Quickly changing clothes, Tom picked up his white Stetson, settled it low on his brow, headed for the door…and called himself a fool in love.

He stopped…as if he’d smacked into an invisible brick wall…and just stood there, staring into space as the realization washed over him. He was in love. Instantly. This was the way it happened in his family. Every one of them. One day you’re just walking down the street, minding your own business, when you see that special someone and…bam, right between the eyes. In love. First-sight love. And here he’d thought the rest of his family was crazy. He’d teased his sister and cousins mercilessly about succumbing to—and believing in—the old family tradition. And now, here he was…succumbing. To two women. Well, a woman and her baby girl. Head-over-heels in love with both of them…since the moment he’d taken Darcy in his arms to lift her out of her car, and when he’d first held the baby girl in his arms.

Tom made a face. Lordy, he’d never hear the end of this once he got home. Well, he’d never hear the end of it, if there was something to report. He supposed he ought to check on the beautiful woman he knew only as Darcy to see if she’d felt anything, too. But maybe not today. After all, she’d had a baby yesterday. Might not be in a mood to think about love right now, given the wriggling consequences that she could now hold in her arms.

Take it slow, Tom, he warned himself. One bright and shiny in-love day at a time. Give the lady some time. Speaking of which, it was time to go. Snapping out of his reverie, Tom turned around, checking his room, then himself. He had everything he needed. Tom still couldn’t believe he was doing this. He never did this. But then again, he’d never been in love before.

He’d bought flowers. A huge bunch of flowers. Pink roses, to be exact, along with something else the kindly white-haired lady in the lobby’s flower shop had dubbed a beautiful baby spray. Looked like a bunch of different colored flowers in a tub-sized ceramic baby cradle, if you asked him. Pink and blue and silver balloons with streamers sprouting from all angles out of the danged thing.

But the nice lady had said it was appropriate and, since what he knew about flowers wouldn’t fill a boot heel, Tom had trusted her. Signing the cards was another matter. After much thought, he signed, Congratulations on your new daughter. Tom Harrison Elliott. On the other one, in a moment of whimsy he now regretted—since he didn’t have another card and the flower shop was closed—he’d written Glad to have been at your coming out party, baby girl. He’d signed it The Lone Ranger and Silver.

Now, that was about the dumbest thing he’d ever done. Next to buying the flowers, and getting ready to make the trip back to Buckeye to see mother and daughter. And, yes, most likely…father. Because even though one hadn’t been in evidence yesterday, there had to be a father somewhere. And with Tom’s luck, the man was also Darcy’s husband.

Tom wasn’t reassured by her lack of an engagement or wedding ring. Hell, a lot of pregnant women didn’t wear them. Their fingers swelled, was his understanding. At least that’s what Sam said. And his older sister ought to know. She and Luke had given him two nieces and three nephews—so far. At 37, Samantha was pregnant again.

Tom shook his head as he plucked up the flowers and put the two cards in his shirt pocket. Then he crossed the room in long-legged strides more suited to raising Montana dust and tried to convince himself that a return visit to the maternity ward in Buckeye, despite his true feelings—feelings he had no intention of acting on…today—was nothing more than a polite call. After all, with Sam and Luke doing their best to populate the entire state of Montana, there was no call for him to marry and father a child.

Fighting the fact that he’d fallen in love…fighting because reason told him there was most likely a husband.…Tom reminded himself that he was a man who liked his space. The kind of space you find out riding the range. The kind of space where you don’t see another soul for days. Just you and your horse. And the mountains. And the big sky. He had no time for a family. Not when he had the ranch to run. It’d been that way for over a hundred years of Elliotts. With its thousands of acres and as many head of cattle every year to tend, it kept a man busy. It didn’t give him time to think about much of anything else. Like love.

Juggling the flowers in one hand, Tom wrestled the door open and waited while it swung closed behind him. Making sure it locked, he then transferred the roses to his other hand and set off toward the bank of elevators. As much as he tried not to, he couldn’t help thinking about the young woman he’d helped. He felt he knew her intimately. And he didn’t mean anything disrespectful by that. No, she’d done everything she could until he got there. He could respect that…and did.

She’d seemed an intelligent sort, too, from the little bit of talking with her he’d done. Probably a woman over his head, in terms of education. Not someone to look twice at him. But, hell, no matter how he felt about her, the odds were…given that suspected husband…he wouldn’t be here long enough to worry about that. Right now, he just wanted to see her—and her daughter—once more. To make sure they were really okay. And that was it.

No, it wasn’t. He stopped in front of the elevators and pushed the down button. And fought the fire of need that burned at his insides like a hot branding iron. He needed to leave the woman alone. He needed to take his silly Elliott love-at-first-sight heritage and get on back to Montana. If he had a lick of sense he’d do that. But he couldn’t. There was more here at stake than love. There was honor. He’d been raised to believe in the cowboy code…a life saved was a life owned. Darcy and her baby were now his responsibility in ways her husband probably wouldn’t understand.