second only to the idea that he could control himself in the bed of his new pickup with Lori Mott back on that long-ago summer night when they were both sixteen. He never had been able to control himself around Lori. Still couldn’t. She riled him up. It was one of her special talents—making him crazy for her without seeming to do anything at all. He’d been young and dumb. They both had been. Everyone was mad at Lori for trying to snare him. He didn’t know if that were true. He did know that the idea of getting married so young had scared him. He was afraid they’d have a kid and then another until maybe he’d end up robbing a store out of sheer desperation, just like his father. During his junior year, he had carried the scholarship offers around with him, but he had known he wouldn’t use them. He had believed that he’d never get a four-year degree or come back to wear the uniform. Instead, he had thought that he’d marry Lori and live on the rez in public housing and work for the lumber mill or with the tribe’s cattle. His mother and her mother wouldn’t speak to one another. Still didn’t. And his mother had said she would not attend the wedding.
But he had been the one who had driven them out to the reservoir and afterward let Lori take the fall for what they had both done. It was his fault as much as Lori’s. That made him most angry of all.
Ty had told him that her older sister had tried to pin a baby on him because of his reputation, but he’d been smart enough to never sleep with Jocelyn. Ty said Joceyln had slept with so many boys in high school no one knew whose kid it was. Had Lori done the same to him?
Jake blinked, but his vision remained blurry. He rubbed his burning eyes and swayed. When had he last slept?
* * *
WHEN LORI CAUGHT Jake weaving with fatigue, she convinced him to sit down at the nurses’ station. It was a mistake, because in pressing him into a stool, she felt first the taut muscles that offered resistance, and then the warmth of his skin. Now her palms prickled. But she tore herself away from temptation and brought him something to eat and drink—yogurt, applesauce and orange juice, everything served in tiny clear plastic cups.
“Aren’t you tired?” he asked.
“I only came on duty at six a.m.”
“I called before six,” he said and blinked wearily at her.
“I was early.”
“Better than being late.” He grinned.
Was that a reference to when she had missed a period and had told him using those very words? She narrowed her eyes on him as her attraction warred with bitter memories.
“Go home, Jake. I can take it from here.”
He shook his head, reminding her of a hound. His eyelids drooped, making him look sexy as hell. Her stomach muscles squeezed, and she clamped her jaw against the tingling arousal threading through her body. Not this man.
Being seen with Jake Redhorse would only start tongues wagging and again make her a target for mockery. She acknowledged that not acting on the intense jolt of desire that grew with each moment she spent in his company was not the same as not feeling that desire. Lori accepted that her attraction for Jake Redhorse might be ever-present, a condition from which she would never recover. Just like when faced with the common-cold virus, avoidance was the best option.
The longer he hung around, the more difficulty she would have not succumbing to those come-hither stares and his sexy, lazy smile. It tore her up like shards of glass.
His mouth quirked, and she realized she’d been staring, remembering their night together. Had it really been that good?
“Go home, Jake. Seriously.”
“Naw,” he said at last, pushing his hat far back on his head and yawning. “I’ll stay till you hear from Protective Services. I want to be sure she’s staying on the rez.”
She didn’t say that there was a possibility they might take the baby to a different placement. She gnawed on her cuticle.
“I know that look,” he said. “You’re worried about something.”
She lowered her hand from her mouth, flicking the bit of ragged cuticle on her thumbnail with her index finger.
“We’ve never taken custody of a baby like this one.”
“You mean white?”
She nodded. “We keep and place all Apache infants within our tribe, but she has no protection under ICWA.”
He nodded, obviously familiar with the Indian Child Welfare Act, the legislation that sought to keep Indian children in Indian homes in response to the horrific number of indigenous children who had once been adopted away.
“She might be Indian, a member of the Turquoise Canyon tribe.”
Lori made a face. “It’s possible. Hard to say without knowing the identity of her parents.”
He nodded. “Working on that. Until then, I’ll stay here to keep an eye on little Fortune.”
“Fortune?”
He shrugged. “That’s what you called her. Said she was fortunate.”
“She’s not a puppy we found, Jake. She’s a baby. You can’t name her.”
His face was strained, though from the pain or the subject matter, she didn’t know.
“A baby, all right. A baby girl,” he said.
Like the one they had lost. Same size, same big blue eyes. But this was not their child. Whose was it?
“When will they be here?” he asked.
“Well, since we’re a Safe Haven Provider, they might not even come. May just give us directions by phone.”
“But they can’t put her in temporary placement until we investigate for a missing child,” said Jake.
“She’s not missing.”
“I agree. Still have to run it through the system, though.”
He knew the law. She knew this particular bit, as she had been here when one teen mother appeared at the clinic to relinquish her child. The father had been contacted, and the young man had signed away his rights to his baby before the infant was placed. The Turquoise Canyon tribe had a 100 percent adoption rate of their children. Their tribe’s history of losing their youth to the training school that had once taken over the education and raising of Apache boys and girls made the tribe diligent in raising their own children.
In the past, parents did not have to agree to send their children, but once their people were resigned to the reservations, they faced a devil’s choice. They could keep their children home and lose their government subsidy and the only way to feed their families. Or they could send their children, receive the subsidies but lose the ability to teach their young their language and their heritage. The choice and the deep wound that remained made the tribe fiercely protective of its youth.
“What if she comes back?” he asked. “The mother, I mean.”
“She has parental rights,” said Lori.
“She
