Bound to You Read online

  “Is he wearing his cap? Did you put the sunscreen on him?”

  Sam winced, checking Ethan for signs of sunburn. His cheeks and arms were a little pink, but he was always pink. “He’s fine. Stop worrying. How’s work?” he asked to change the subject.

  They chatted a few more minutes. Her day was going fine. She was dealing with some gossip about her promotion, but nothing too serious, she assured him, and her break was almost over. He remembered just in time to get her ring size.

  “Are we all good?” his dad asked as they nudged the horses.

  “She may have my hide for this,” Sam said, nodding to the horses. He winked at his son. “You tried to rat me out, boy.”

  Ethan lunged forward to hug Froggy’s neck and Knox pulled him back by the shirt. “My horsey,” Ethan said. “Daddy.”

  Sam yanked on the reins in surprise, causing Popcorn to back up and then sidestep. Knox stopped Froggy. “What?”

  Sam pointed urgently at Ethan. “Did you hear that?” he asked his dad. “You heard that, right? He said it.”

  Knox laughed and kept moving. “I think he plans to steal my horse, Daddy. Have to keep an eye on this kiddo.” He leaned forward to speak to Ethan. “Are you a horse thief, sonny boy?”

  “Yeah,” Ethan admitted.

  Sam watched them ride away, his heartbeat racing. He didn’t know if Ethan understood what he’d said or if he’d only heard the word a few times in the past hour, but it didn’t really matter.

  Sam let Popcorn trot to catch up. The word was now part of Ethan’s vocabulary, which meant one day soon he’d know Sam was his father.

  Which meant Sam would have to start acting like a father. A role he’d never really considered beyond the occasional and vague concept of one day in the future possibly having kids.

  But the concept was no longer vague or in the future. That day had arrived.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  At the end of a very tiring workday, Jenna returned home and found Ethan and Sam in the den. Sam was sitting on the couch drawing in a sketchpad. Ethan was lying on his stomach on the floor, slashing colors in his coloring book with a crayon.

  “Mama!” he yelled when he saw her. He ran to her and hugged her leg so she picked him up to give him a hug.

  Sam’s eyes lit up at the sight of her and she was equally glad to see him. “Hey, finally,” he said.

  Ethan squirmed from her arms and ran back to his coloring book.

  Sam came to give her a warm kiss and hug then led them back to the sofa where she gratefully fell back. “You look beat. Tough day?”

  “Tiring,” she admitted, covering her face and groaning. “I never thought about Brandon’s rumors getting around the office. You wouldn’t believe some of the looks and attitudes I got. Plus, Mr. O’Hara was out sick today and it was like they all thought I was responsible. How could they think I’d have an affair with Mr. O’Hara to get a promotion? He’s a grandfather.”

  She knew why but didn’t want to say it out loud. It was because she’d had Ethan and had kept Sam’s identity a secret. It was because she’d ruined her father’s reputation – and her own. Now people were willing to believe anything about her.

  Sam raised his eyebrows at her. “Doesn’t sound like you’re very happy there.”

  She nodded toward Ethan, wanting to forget about work for the rest of the day. “How was he today?”

  “We had a blast. He got to know everyone. My dad and I took him for a ride on the horses.”

  Sam tensed as if expecting a harsh reaction from her. But she could see her son was fine. “Did he like it?”

  Sam frowned at her, with that frown, but then smiled. “He loved it. He’s claimed my dad’s horse as his own. Seriously. He wants that horse.”

  Jenna needed the laugh. “He’ll forget about it later.”

  “You’d be proud of me. I saved his life.”

  That caught her attention and she sat forward to take a better look at her son. “What happened?”

  “He almost ate a grape. But I remembered and stopped him. We gave him apple slices instead. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Oh.” She sat back. “He just gets a little rash. The doctor said he’ll probably grow out of it. Apples are okay. But thank you for keeping a close eye on him.”

  She lifted the sketchpad and saw several doodles. Most were of clocks, but one in the corner was of what she was sure were her eyes.

  Sam took the sketchpad away from her, chuckling. “I’m not much of an artist. Your TV doesn’t work and I got bored while Ethan took his nap.” He pointed behind him. “But take a look. Good as new.”

  She followed his direction and saw her grandmother’s clock sitting on the chess table. The dark wood gleamed from a recent polish and the movement ticked steady and gentle. “Oh, you finished it.” She fell against him, shaky after an exhausting day at work, needing his strong arm around her. “You’re amazing.”

  “He called me Daddy today,” Sam said, pointing at Ethan.

  “He did?” She leaned back, a little startled, and perhaps a touch jealous. But the jealousy only lasted a moment and then turned into a sense of urgency. Sam had a lot to offer their son. Vital, valuable things, like laughter, optimism, and affection. And in that moment, she realized the seriousness of her situation. She had to keep Sam in Ethan’s life – it was imperative that her son have a decent, loving father to emulate.

  Even if she had to quit her job and move to Texas to make it happen.

  “I’m not sure he really knows what the word means, though,” Sam said. “You need to tell him who I am.”

  “I will,” she said, nodding.

  “Do it now,” Sam prompted.

  She frowned at him. He sounded exactly like her boss, a woman of about fifty whose skin seemed to be stretched tight across her skeletal figure from years of stress. “I need to think of a way to explain it so he’ll understand.”

  “Ethan,” Sam called. Their son lifted his head. “I’m your father. I’m your dad. Did you know that?”

  He blinked, twice, and then went back to coloring. “Yeah.”

  “Ethan, sweetie,” Jenna said, “can you say that word? Can you say ‘daddy’?”

  “Yeah,” Ethan answered.

  “Can you point to him? Where’s Daddy?”

  Ethan looked around with wide eyes and finally pointed to the TV.

  Sam crossed his arms, his eyes turning glassy. She patted his thigh. “I’ll explain it to him. I promise. We just have to keep telling him. He’ll catch on.”

  The doorbell rang and Bri came trotting down the stairs and answered the door. Jenna groaned, in no mood for Brianna’s friends.

  Then she heard traces of a tense conversation and sat up. “The showing. They must be late. I forgot all about that. We’re not supposed to be here.”

  Jenna went to intercede, to let Karen know they would get out of the way, but a young woman with dark blond hair carrying a baby pushed past her, looking right and left.

  “There you are,” she said, speaking to Sam. “I heard you were here.”

  Sam stood, frowning. “Are you looking for me?”

  “Sam Strickland, you prick,” the woman said. She held out her baby, a girl probably eight months old. “You think you can use me and then just dump me? You’re gonna pay for this. And pay big. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

  She turned around, and stopped short when she saw Jenna there. “Guess he used you, too,” the woman said. “My advice? Make him pay. And FYI? We’re not the only ones. There are others.” She looked back to glare at Sam. “Probably lots of others.”

  The woman left in a rush, and Bri went to close the door, her eyes wide.

  Jenna turned to face Sam.

  He slowly stepped forward, his eyes also wide. “I don’t know her,” he said, holding up his hands in defense. “I’ve never seen her before. I swear. That’s not my baby.”

  Jenna stared at Sam, a sudden realization coming over her. A harsh and shocking r
ealization. She didn’t know him. She barely knew that man standing there. What on earth had she been thinking?

  She turned and ran up the stairs.

  ***

  Sam could only shake his head as Brianna glared at him. He’d wanted to talk to her, about conspiring with the Strickland girls to teach Brandon Stewart a lesson, but none of that seemed to matter anymore.

  “That kid is not mine,” he told her. “I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”

  But Brianna only crossed her arms. “Maybe you just don’t remember.”

  “I’m not who you think I am. I know I used to have a reputation, but most of it wasn’t true. You should know all about rumors by now.”

  Her face reddened and she shook her head. “I defended you!”

  She ran away, just like her sister, and Sam could only yell, “I didn’t do anything!”

  He looked down and Ethan was now standing, staring on, absorbing this disturbing situation. Sam forced himself to calm down. “Everything’s all right, buddy. People just get grumpy sometimes.”

  He took a step toward his son, but Ethan ran away, away from him, through the other door leading out into the hall beneath the stairs.

  Sam found himself alone, utterly confused. He’d been no angel, especially during high school and college, and a couple of years after, but he’d grown up, eventually. He worked his mind trying to think of a way out of this. The woman’s baby was less than a year old - that was obvious. Add nine months and where did that put him? In Texas.

  Except that he’d made several visits back home during that time. But none of that mattered. He knew he wasn’t that baby’s father. Somehow, he had to convince Jenna. That was what mattered.

  If the woman dared to pursue this, he’d demand a DNA test. That would clear him. But it would take time. By then, Jenna might have decided to shut him out of her life. And Ethan’s.

  And imagining that felt like a kick to the chest. He couldn’t let that happen. Not now.

  He took several deep breaths, steeling his resolve, and headed upstairs. Jenna’s door was closed and probably locked. He knocked lightly.

  At first, he didn’t think she would answer, but then the knob turned and the door slowly swung open. Her face was red but she wasn’t crying. He’d been afraid he’d find her crying and full of damning accusations.

  “I don’t know what that was,” he said before she could say anything. “I don’t know that girl.”

  Jenna stepped back and invited him in with the wave of her hand. More than he’d expected.

  She shut the door behind him and sat on the bed. He stayed near the door. “I promise you,” he said, “that baby is not mine.”

  “I know,” she said.

  He was surprised, and glad to hear her say it, but she was holding on to a mood. A quiet and distant mood. One he’d seen before. And one he didn’t like.

  “The baby had brown eyes,” she said. “You and the mother have blue eyes. And I know that’s not really proof. But I recognize her. She’s been in the law office a few times. She’s going through a divorce. Her husband’s related to Brandon Stewart somehow. I can’t remember. A cousin, maybe. I heard she was getting shafted because he has all the lawyers. Brandon set this up, paid her to do that. I’m sure of it.”

  Relieved to the point of weakness, Sam sat on the bed beside her. He put his hand on her back but she stiffened, and wouldn’t look at him.

  “He stopped me on the way to work this morning,” she said. “He said he was waging war against you. That’s all this was. His revenge. Trying to break us up.”

  He’d hoped to keep the barn incident from her, seeing no point in bringing it up. Now he had to. But he decided to keep Brianna out of it. “I think my cousins roughed him up a bit.”

  “More than a bit,” she said. “He looked, and smelled, awful. But I don’t care about that. I know I should. I don’t like that kind of thing. But I can’t care right now.”

  He tried to stroke her hair, but she stood and moved away from him. He stood with her, now more confused than ever. She wasn’t upset about the ruse Brandon Stewart had set up. She wasn’t even upset members of his family had turned to mischief in her defense. He couldn’t imagine what was left.

  “I just realized,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “For a moment, before I recognized her, there was this one moment of doubt. And I realized. I don’t really know you. We had a month together - three years ago. And now, it hasn’t even been a week and we’re planning to get married? That’s crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t marry you. I must be out of my mind.”

  Sam sat down again realizing this was worse than any revenge Brandon Stewart could cook up. A few days ago, he might have been relieved, afraid of committing. But today, her words filled him with a new kind of fear. The fear of losing her. He’d leave the ranch. He’d do whatever he had to do. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. “Time doesn’t matter,” he said. “We work. We’re right. I love you, and you said you love me. That’s all that matters.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, backing up until she hit the high-backed armchair in the corner. The one filled with Ethan’s toys. She swept the toys off to the floor and sat down. “I’ve been confused. Afraid. All the problems with the house and Bri’s college, and the future. I wasn’t thinking straight and then you came along and you were a relief. A bright, shining relief. You made everything else seem unimportant. I can’t marry you because you make me laugh. Or because of the financial help. It’s all wrong.”

  He held up a hand hoping to stop this before it spiraled out of control. But she held up a hand of her own.

  “You’re Ethan’s father,” she said. “That’s a fact. And I won’t keep you from him. I want you in his life. He needs you in his life. But this thing we’ve been doing, acting like two kids playing a game? I can’t do that. We’ll wake up one day soon and realize we’re strangers. And we’ll be worse off than we were before.”

  He looked around for some way to get closer to her but she was sitting far across the room in the only chair and the chair seemed to cocoon her. So he got up, dragged the chair over near the bed, and sat down again. He tried to hold her hands, but she crossed her arms.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. We’re just getting to know each other again. And we don’t have to get married tomorrow. We can take it slow. As slow as you want. Just don’t say it’s over.”

  She frowned but seemed to take in his words. “You’re leaving soon. You have a life in another state. I have a life here. What were we planning to do?”

  So, she’d been worried about that, too. He remembered something else his granddad had told him, probably fifteen years ago during one of Sam’s summer visits, one night when his granddad had been sitting by the cold fireplace drinking scotch. Sam had forgotten until now. He’d told Sam not to live his life alone. The day his wife died, his granddad had said, was the day his life lost meaning. From that day on, routine was all that had kept him going. Sam didn’t want to live on routine alone. He’d never minded before, but now with the prospect of something better, returning to his old life of routine seemed like the same as death.

  “I’ll leave the ranch,” he told her. “I’ll move here. I don’t care. As long as we can be together.”

  The frown eased, erasing the lines between her eyes. “I thought you’d expect me to move to Texas with you.”

  He placed his hands on her knees, glad when she didn’t recoil from his touch. “Whatever you want. Here, there, wherever. You, me and Ethan together. That’s what I care about. Say you still want me.”

  She laughed as tears filled her eyes again. “I do. I—”

  She pushed the chair back so she could stand and went to her bedside table. She looked inside the drawer and brought something back. An 8x10 picture. She handed it to him and sat down again.

  He looked at himself back in high school, in his football uniform, sweaty, smiling, carrying his helmet. A candid black and
white photo someone had taken of the team leaving the field. Probably the school photographer.

  “I used to sleep with that picture,” she said, laughing softly. “I did it my entire freshman year. I fell asleep looking at your face. I would have died for just one word from you. That’s the secret Bri threatened to tell you about.”

  Ah, the picture she’d mentioned. He set it aside. “I punched one of my best friends in the face for telling a dirty joke about you,” he confessed, while they were confessing. “I didn’t even know you then. But I knew you were mine.”

  She laughed for real and leaned forward, holding his hands when he reached for her. “You did not,” she said.

  He kept a tight grip on her, so happy to see her smiling again. “I did. And he never spoke to me again.” He shrugged. “I feel bad about it now, but….”

  “So, it’s not all of a sudden,” she said, nodding as if hoping to convince herself, not him. “This has been going on for years.”

  “Years and years, baby.”

  She lunged forward and let him roll her back on the bed, and hold her in his arms. He draped his leg over hers, wanting to surround her and never let her go.

  He stroked her soft cheek with his thumb. “So, we’re still getting married?” he asked.

  “We’re still engaged. We’ll talk about the marriage part later.”

  Good enough. He kissed her and let his hand roam her body, needing her more than he ever had. She sank into the hot kiss, grabbing at him, spreading her legs so he could settle down over her, and press against her. He was about to strip off her shirt when she gasped suddenly and pushed against him.

  “I don’t know where Ethan is. Is he with Bri?”

  Sam sat back, still dizzy, but suddenly just as concerned. A boy Ethan’s age was very mobile, and could be anywhere by now. “I don’t know. Your sister ran off.”

  Jenna pushed again so he rolled off her and followed her out of the room as they went in search of their son.