The Drifter Read Free Page A

Amanda had been very cool three weeks ago when he’d called. But three weeks ago he’d simply been a trucker, and an injured one, at that. Today, his back was slowly mending, and soon he might be part owner in a ranch. In a few years, according to McGuinnes, he could be rich. That prospect had given him the courage to come here to issue an invitation to Amanda to come out to Arizona as his guest.
    He hoped she would, even though she’d told him straight-out that she didn’t think they had anything in common besides sex. And she was probably right. It was a damn strong suit, though. He’d made love to a lot of women, and he’d had a pleasant time with most of them. Yet that night with Amanda had shaken him to a depth he’d never reached with anyone. Her eyes, her soft body and her flame-colored hair had haunted him during eight months of long nights on the road. Knowing that Amanda would probably reject him if he asked her out, he’d tried to forget her with a lusty waitress in Atlanta and a sophisticated bartender in Hartford. And still he burned.
    * * *
    A S THE 747 cruised on in to Tucson International Airport, Amanda jiggled Bartholomew in her arms in an attempt to stop his wailing. This was such a bad idea, she thought, looking down at the desert, which at this altitude looked like the browned top of a crumb cake just out of the oven. The pilot had already announced the temperature in Tucson—one hundred and five degrees. She hated to think of how the heat would affect her, let alone a two-month-old baby.
    But she had a problem, one she hadn’t figured out a way to solve except by coming here. Her family had been shocked and embarrassed by the news of her pregnancy, but her concocted story of going to a sperm bank to get pregnant on purpose had mollified them. That had a classier ring to it than the word accident, not to mention the longer version of the truth—a one-night stand with a trucker. Her story had remained viable until the day little Clare, daughter of her best friend, Janice, was diagnosed with diabetes.
    â€œThank God we knew what to look for,” Janice had said when she broke the news. “It runs in the family, so we got on it right away.”
    In that moment, Amanda’s carefully constructed house of cards had tumbled down. This little dark-haired imp who in the past two months had become the center of her world could have a predisposition for any number of life-threatening diseases. She couldn’t position herself as his protector unless she knew what to fight. Only one person had the answers—the person waiting in the terminal to take her out to the True Love Guest Ranch.
    His move to Arizona had been a convenient one for her. Living so far away, he was less of a threat to her independence, and she could come out here, question him and return to New York without anyone back home being the wiser. She hadn’t told Chase about the baby when she’d written her letter telling him of her impending arrival. She didn’t think it was the sort of thing one revealed in a letter.
    But now, as the plane’s wheels bumped against the runway, she wished she had. The prospect of meeting Chase again for the first time since that snowy night was nerve-racking enough. To meet him while carrying his child in her arms might be more than either of them could handle.
    The plane taxied to the gate and Bartholomew stopped crying for the first time in two hours. Amanda remained in her seat fussing with his blanket and checking his diaper while passengers filed past her. At last she and the baby were alone with the flight attendants and she had no choice but to gather him in her arms, hoist the diaper bag over her shoulder and start that long walk down the jetway.
    She paused at the door of the plane and looked into Bartholomew’s blue eyes that already held a hint of green, like Chase’s. “Well, kid,” she said, taking a deep breath.