Crystal Green – From Doctor...to Daddy / When the Cowboy Said ''I Do'': From Doctor...to Daddy (страница 7)

Dillon checked his watch. When his gaze met hers, he motioned to one of the small, black wrought-iron tables. “I’ll get my coffee and join you.” He really didn’t want to give her a chance to say no.

Indecision flickered across her face, but then she nodded and crossed to one of the tables, one a bit removed from the others in a shadowed corner. Did she not want anyone to see them together? Because of all that gossip Stacy had mentioned?

When he joined her, she was seated, staring into her coffee as if it held the schedule for her day. He didn’t sit across from her, but rather beside her. She didn’t move her chair away.

As she looked up at him, he asked, “So do you drink straight coffee or one of those exotic drinks?”

That’s obviously not what she’d expected him to ask. “Do you really want to know?”

His arm was on the table and he leaned a little closer to her. “Yes, I want to know … in case I pick up coffee for the two of us some morning.”

“I think that’s on my roster of duties.”

He shrugged. “Not necessarily. It’s simply a courtesy. So what do you drink?”

“A double-shot latte. And you?”

“Straight espresso.”

“Now that that’s settled, why did you really ask me to join you for coffee?” she asked him, choosing to be direct.

“Because I like you.”

Again, surprise showed on her face. “You always say the unexpected.”

“Maybe that’s because you think men are predictable.”

Tilting her head, she studied him more assessingly. “So you’re telling me you’re not like most men.”

“I don’t know. What do you expect from most men?”

“That’s beside the point.” She lowered her gaze to her coffee again as if she didn’t want to reveal any secrets.

Even sitting next to her like this, he could feel the attraction between them. He wouldn’t let her put him in the same category as other men in her life. “That’s exactly the point. You never told me why you ran away from me at the Hitching Post.”

“I didn’t run away,” she protested, her chin lifting, her eyes flashing a bit, revealing passion he realized he’d like to tap.

He liked her flash. “You just evaded my question. Evading is pretty much the same as running away.” If he challenged her, he might get to the root of the problem.

Her grip tightened on her coffee. “All right. It was the way you talked about possibly spending time with your cousins’ children. You were so detached … like you were saying the words but you didn’t really mean them.”

She was perceptive … way too perceptive. After practicing the past few years, he thought he had his neutral face down pat. But this wasn’t the place to tell her why he tried to be detached. To tell her about Toby … and Megan. “How did you interpret the detachment?”

She weighed his question, apparently understanding he was giving nothing away. “It meant you don’t want the responsibility of children because you believe they’re a burden. You don’t necessarily ‘like’ kids.”

“I like kids,” he said quietly.

“And parenthood is a huge responsibility.”

He certainly didn’t disagree with her on that. But he wanted to keep this conversation about her. “Do you believe most men don’t want the responsibility of fatherhood?”

After a few heartbeats, she finally replied, “I know two in particular who didn’t—my father and Emilia’s father. I’m sure you’ve heard gossip.”

“Actually, I haven’t. I had no idea you had a daughter. Why do you keep her a secret?”

“She’s not a secret. Almost everyone in Thunder Canyon knows about her. But I try to separate my professional life from my personal life. I haven’t always done that and I found it’s better this way.”

“No pictures on your desk? No mention of her?”

Erika set her cup on the table and her hand fluttered toward him. “I don’t need a picture of her to hold her in my heart twenty-four hours a day.”

“So essentially, you were just keeping her a secret from me.”

“Dillon, she’s not a secret. I just—”

“You just didn’t trust me enough to tell me about her. You didn’t trust me enough to believe I’d understand what had happened.”

Her gaze didn’t evade his. “It’s not as if we know each other.”

Although he was physically attracted to Erika, there were so many other qualities he liked about her, too. Her blunt honesty was one of them. So he was just as bluntly honest. “Do you want to get to know me?”

It wasn’t difficult for Dillon to see the turmoil Erika was in and he guessed one of the reasons why. “This isn’t a boss-secretary situation, you know. You’re a free agent. You’re coordinating Frontier Days. You’re just helping me out with my schedule and phone calls while I’m here.”

Her brown eyes conveyed her concern. “You can still turn in a report about me after you leave that can affect my future.”

Keeping his gaze on hers, he assured her, “I could write that report now and be done with it. It took me about an hour on our first day together to learn you’re organized, you practically have a photographic memory and you’re a perfectionist. What more could any employer want?”

“So you’d write a letter of recommendation now and file it away until you leave?”

“Yes. If doing that would mean you’ll have dinner again with me tonight.”

“I can’t.”

Dillon kept his expression neutral, denying how disappointed he felt. Maybe he was all wrong about the two of them connecting. Maybe he was the only one aware of the electricity in the air when they were sitting close together like this. But then he leaned back in his chair, leveled his gaze on her and knew he wasn’t wrong. Still, this was her call. He wasn’t going to pressure her.

“Okay,” he said, pushing his chair back. “That’s settled then.”

But before he could pick up his cup of coffee, her hand clasped his forearm. The electricity was there all right—sparking, buzzing, tingling.

“I have a commitment tonight,” she explained. “It’s a potluck dinner with some of the women in my neighborhood. But …” She gave him an intriguing half smile.

“But?” he asked, denying the fact his heart rate had sped up.

“But you’re welcome to come along.”

“Won’t I be the only guy?”

“Is that too much of a challenge?” she teased.

He knew she wasn’t teasing entirely. It didn’t take a genius to realize this was probably some kind of test. She was throwing down a gauntlet. He’d spent much of his life picking up gauntlets. The future was always more exciting when he did.

“A potluck dinner sounds great. What can I bring?”

That evening Dillon’s rented luxury sedan followed Erika’s small Ford to an older section of Thunder Canyon, possibly an original section. The row houses—a mixture of brick, clapboard and stone—jutted in and out along tree-lined streets.

Erika pulled up in front of a narrow redbrick house that rose two stories. A windowsill box of colorful mums decorated the front window. The house next door, in gray brick instead of red, had a similar box at its front window.

As Erika stepped out of her car, Dillon joined her. She said, “I have to pop inside my place first to get my contribution to the supper, then we’ll go over and gather up Emilia.”

“Your mom lives next door?”

“Yes. It’s more than convenient. It’s wonderful really.

For a while I lived there with her and she wanted me to stay. But I needed a place of my own. This one went up for sale right when I was thinking of buying a house. I knew it was fate. It took every penny of my savings for a down payment, but I wanted something I could invest in and have for a lifetime, maybe even leave to Emilia someday. It’s not very big, but it’s perfect for the two of us.”

She walked up the two front steps and unlocked the door.

Leaning against the wrought-iron railing, Dillon asked, “Mind if I come inside?”

“Not at all.”

When Dillon walked in, he wasn’t sure what to expect. But right away he could see this little gem of a house was something special.

She saw him looking down at the gleaming wood floors and said, “They just needed to be refinished. I did it myself with a little help from our neighbor.”

“You do home improvement?” he asked with a smile.

“I watch the Home and Garden channel when I have a chance. I’ve learned a lot. I also go to the local hardware store and the clerks there fill me in on what I don’t know.”