she pulled herself together and looked at him with sudden dignity that gave him an odd, burning sensation beneath his breastbone. “Thank you for your time, Captain Brenner. I’m sorry if this felt like I was attacking you or something. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Then she inclined her head, as regal as a princess, and walked beside her foster mother to his door. She carried herself proudly, and he felt like scum.
“Sierra.” His voice emerged rough.
She paused without turning. Ms. Malone did.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
The lips that had spoken so softly to the girl tightened. Ms. Malone nodded, and the two of them left, carefully closing the office door behind them.
He didn’t move; just stood there, stunned, and saw his chances of becoming sheriff implode. And knew he was a son of a bitch to even let that cross his mind after looking into the eyes of a girl tossed into the foster-care system because she had no family who wanted her—a girl, he had no doubt, who was his daughter.
CHAPTER TWO
JON DIDN’T KNOW how he got through the day. He had several other appointments, and had to attend a potluck dinner at a seniors’ center and then, later in the evening, a volunteer fair at a community center. The brief talks he gave to the seniors and the volunteers came by rote, for which he was grateful. He was getting good at running for office, which these days seemed to matter more than whether he’d be an effective sheriff. He could tell his tough-on-crime stance went over better with the old folks than it did with the activist kinds at the fair. They were inclined to be softhearted. He found their suspicion of him ironic, considering his core belief was that every person should take responsibility for his or her own actions. He believed in a kind of morality that was very personal. Wasn’t it that same sense of morality, a need to take responsibility, that had driven all of them to give of their precious time to some cause?
The whole time he talked, listened, smiled, shook hands, he felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. He would have sworn he was standing outside himself watching critically.
Knowing the guy he watched was a hypocrite.
He argued for a morality that should govern every choice a person made, a sense of responsibility that wouldn’t let you look away when it was convenient to do so.
Responsibility. Now, that was funny, coming from a man who’d sold his sperm. Who might have a whole bunch of unacknowledged kids out there. Kids who were deeply wanted, he’d told himself back when he was twenty-one and saw the sperm donation as a quick and easy way to bring in bucks. He was doing the world a favor. After all, he was healthy, smart, athletic; he carried no genetic booby traps of which he was aware. What was wrong with helping women have babies, if their husbands were sterile or they’d chosen to go the single-parent route?
He’d returned to the clinic two or three times, hating the sordid feel of the process itself. But he’d been working as many hours as he could and still keep his grades up, and yet struggled to pay his tuition and rent and buy food and books. He’d been damned if he would take a cent from his father. He would do anything not to have to surrender his pride enough to ask for help from his parents.
He worked his butt off. And, when necessary, he’d sell sperm, and he’d sell blood. He had done both.
Personal responsibility wasn’t the strong suit of twenty-one-year-old boys. He’d been blithe enough about jacking off and handing over the tube of milky liquid, until one day he was waiting for a bus near a medical clinic. A pregnant woman came out and sat on the bench near him. He remembered looking at her sidelong. He didn’t know how pregnant she was. She was round, but not waddling. Five or six months, maybe. No husband with her. He’d wondered a little disapprovingly why not. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have to wait for the bus. What if it was full and she had to stand? Or she got jostled and bumped hard against the sharp edge of the seats? There were punks who hassled lone women on buses. And then he’d thought, Oh, my God. She might not have a husband, or a boyfriend. She could be pregnant with my baby.
He’d sat there in shock, trying not to stare but unable to help sneaking looks. Of course the kid she was carrying wasn’t his; that was stupid even to think. What were the odds? The sperm bank supplied fertility clinics all over the country and even abroad. Not just locally.
But it could be.
Man, that had given him cold chills. After that he’d stuck to donating blood when he was desperate. It wasn’t as if the money had been that fabulous. He pretended to himself he didn’t even notice the pregnant women who seemed to be everywhere.
It was a couple of years before an obviously pregnant woman didn’t seem to light up like a neon sign to him, and before he succeeded in putting from his mind the fact that probably some of his sperm had been put to use, that at least a few babies had been born that were blood of his blood.
And now, he thought as he stood outside himself and watched while he went through the motions of politicking, he’d met one of those children. Sierra Lind.
The question was, what was he going to do about it? About her?
Had she meant it when she said she didn’t expect anything? That she wouldn’t tell anyone he was her father if he didn’t want to acknowledge her?
Maybe. He thought she did mean it now. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t change her mind.
It would matter less later, once he’d won the election, if he could put her off.
He felt cold-blooded even thinking that.
Even if Sierra kept her mouth shut, what about her foster mother? Ms. Malone had started dubious and moved right along to mad because all she could see was that he was hurting her precious chick’s feelings.
And he had. Jon didn’t like to remember the wounded look in those blue eyes or the pride with which Sierra—his daughter—had carried herself when she assured him that he had no obligation to her. Sierra might even believe that she’d been operating on mere curiosity, that she had no secret wish for him to hold out his arms and gather her into the bosom of his family. But he knew better. She’d lost her mother, and her only other relative didn’t want her. She’d gone to extraordinary effort to find him. Of course she hoped, desperately, that he would feel an immediate bond. Curiosity to match hers.
So…what did he feel?
He had no idea.
No surprise, even after having downed a shot of straight Scotch while watching the late-night news, that he couldn’t sleep.
The day had been muggy enough that he’d left the ceiling fan running. He slept naked, the moving air cooling the sweat on his body. Lying on his back, arms crossed behind his head, he gazed at the pale square of moonlight that fell through the open window onto the bed. Most of him was in the dark, leaving only his knees, calves and feet exposed by that cool light.
He wondered if she was able to sleep tonight. What had she felt, meeting him? Anything in particular? Had there been some sort of recognition, on a cellular level, or did she imagine there was? Was she lying awake right now, too, hungrily remembering his face or the pitch of his voice and the set of his shoulders, deciding which bits and pieces of him had been echoed in her by the genes that had imprinted her?
He muttered a soft imprecation. Those long, skinny arms and legs… He’d gone through
