The Drifter Read Free Page B

“Time to meet your daddy.”

2
    C HASE SHIFTED his weight from one booted foot to the other as he watched passengers funnel out of the jetway. Amanda would appear any minute now. He adjusted his hat and flexed his shoulders, feeling like a teenager on a first date, with the same sweaty-palmed excitement, the same nervous hopes for the night ahead. Well, perhaps greater hopes than a teenager on a first date might have, he thought with a smile. After all, he and Amanda had become lovers ten months ago.
    Her handwritten note had been short. If it’s convenient, I’d like to take you up on your offer. Except for listing her flight number and arrival time, that had been it. He couldn’t consider it a proposition, exactly, but why else would she come to the ranch? She could afford to vacation anywhere in the world. Copying her style, he’d sent a short note back— I’ll meet your plane. Maybe he and Amanda didn’t need words between them. Their bodies had done most of the talking the night they’d met.
    He was glad she hadn’t come out six weeks earlier, when he’d first arrived at the ranch. Thanks to laps in the pool and massages by the head wrangler, Leigh Singleton, his back was in much better shape. He would have hated it to spasm at some awkward moment, like in the middle of making love. He’d asked Freddy Singleton, Leigh’s sister and the ranch foreman, to reserve the little honeymoon cottage for Amanda. Marriage was the last thing on his mind, but the cottage stood in a mesquite grove several hundred yards from the main house, which gave it lots of privacy. Not as much as the curtained bunk of an 18-wheeler on a snowy night, but more than the guest rooms in the main ranch house.
    The steady flow of people from the plane slowed to a trickle. With a sick feeling of disappointment Chase wondered if Amanda had changed her mind. Maybe she’d read the weather reports for Tucson and decided her fair skin wasn’t suited for the desert summer. He’d worried about that and had planned to make sure she wore hats and long sleeves when she was outside. In the six weeks he’d been on the ranch, his skin had bronzed to a rich brown, but Amanda’s skin was so much more delicate.... He licked dry lips and stood on tiptoe to peer deep into the empty tunnel leading to the plane. Maybe he should ask someone if she’d been on the flight.
    Then he saw a flash of red hair as a woman came out of the gloom toward him. His heart hammered in his chest. She looked exactly as he’d remembered, only perhaps more beautiful. Her face had the most wonderful glow to it, and her hair was the color of an Arizona sunset. He’d have to remember to tell her that.
    He couldn’t see the rest of her very well. She had a large piece of luggage slung over one shoulder and was carrying something, holding it close to her chest. He stared at the bundle. It looked a lot like...
    The breath rushed out of him and he grabbed the back of a chair for support. Slack-jawed, he stared as the bundle in her arms squirmed. Oh, God. Oh, God!
    She came forward slowly, her blue gaze fastened on him.
    He braced himself as if standing against a stiff wind. She’d had a baby! His baby! An explosion of wonder left him weak and dizzy.
    As she drew near, fragments of questions formed and disappeared in his mind like campfire smoke. At last he focused on the fire itself, the burning anger of betrayal.
    â€œHello, Chase.” She sounded out of breath.
    Fury made him tremble as he glared down at her. “Liar,” he said in a voice gone dead with shock. The baby began to cry.
    * * *
    N OT A GOOD BEGINNING , Amanda thought as she hurried to keep up with Chase’s long strides on the way to baggage claim. His expression reminded her of the hurricanes that sometimes buffeted her parents’ summer cottage on Long Island. He looked different—taller, more muscular and definitely more