to this town.
Lauren squared her shoulders and met his searching gaze. Taking his time so that he could analyze her more thoroughly, he reached into the back pocket of his faded jeans and removed his wallet. The March wind ruffled the duster around his legs, the flapping sound loud in the otherwise stark silence.
He flashed a Texas driver’s license. “Gray Longwalker,” he repeated, his tone wary now, as if he’d read her last thought. He shoved the worn leather wallet back into his pocket. “I’ve come for my daughter.”
The words, though expected, echoed all the way through Lauren’s soul. She blinked twice. Her skin felt clammy, and the hasty breakfast she’d wolfed down less than half an hour ago threatened to make a reappearance. She knew the symptoms and what would follow. She willed herself to calm, taking a slow, deep breath to fight the light-headedness already overtaking her. This was not the time to lose control. She focused on blocking the disabling sensations clawing at her.
“She’s not here,” Lauren informed him with surprising strength. She would not allow him to destroy their little family. Surely the man could be persuaded to see reason. But right now she had to get to Don’s office.
“You’re sure about that,” he pressed, easing a step closer, putting himself in her doorway.
Lauren suppressed the desperate words she wanted to blurt out and struggled to think rationally. Gray Longwalker didn’t know his child’s name or what she even looked like, yet he had come to claim her. He had to be reacting on impulse. How could he expect to just take her away? His gaze shifted to the hall behind her, then settled intently back on her.
“I said she’s not here.” She resisted the urge to retreat a step from his stare.
“I’d like to know where she is, then,” he said quietly, too quietly. “Please,” he added stiffly.
Lauren was certain that word hadn’t come easily. Something resembling the same desperation she felt glimmered from the gray depths that marked this man as the father of the child Lauren had called her own for almost a year now. He was every bit as anxious as she was, but beneath the surface a storm was brewing. She could feel it emanating from him in waves. Gray Longwalker was holding back, restraining something that felt very much like rage. Lauren knew with complete certainty that she should be afraid. She should be very afraid.
“I told you she’s not here.” Lauren lifted her chin in defiance of her own emotions. She had to be strong. She had to fight this man. He would not take her child away.
Something changed in his eyes then. The anger she’d felt simmering overrode his restraint. “Patience is not one of my strong suits, Ms. Whitmore,” he warned, his voice low, lethal. “I’ll ask you again, where is she?”
Her heart banged painfully against her chest, but Lauren ignored the ache. “I’ll get my keys and you can follow me into town to my attorney’s office.”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t want to see your attorney. I want to see my daughter.”
“Mr. Longwalker, if you have no consideration for my feelings, at least consider the child’s.” Lauren blinked back the sting of tears. “How do you suppose she would feel if you burst into her classroom and announced that you were her father?”
Realization dawned in his eyes.
Oh, God! Lauren realized at that same instant that she had just told Gray Longwalker where his daughter could be found. She could well imagine him roaming the halls of Thatcher Elementary, looking for a child he’d never seen and asking for a daughter whose name he didn’t even know. Somehow he didn’t appear the type to be thwarted by mere technicalities.
“Thank you for your kind assistance, Ms. Whitmore,” he said tightly, then turned and strode away.
Not a single doubt existed in Lauren’s mind that he fully intended to go straight to the school. He had already made it across the porch and down the steps before Lauren found her voice.
“Wait, please,” she called after him. By the time he turned back to face her, Lauren stood on the bottom step, practically at eye level with him. She shivered when his gray gaze collided with hers. A strange spark of awareness arced briefly between them, and Lauren felt oddly violated, as if he had looked right through to her soul.
“What?” he demanded, seemingly oblivious to the zing of electricity that had passed between them.
Lauren dismissed the unfamiliar sensation as a part of the lingering shock of finding Gray Longwalker at her door, not to mention the monster headache threatening. “Think,” she pleaded. “We both want what’s best for Sarah—”
“Sarah…that’s her name?” His features relaxed just a fraction, an almost-imperceptible vulnerability crept into his wary eyes.
“Yes.”
He looked away. Lauren watched the smooth movement of muscle beneath dark skin as he swallowed hard. However cold and ruthless this man was rumored to be, hearing his child’s name for the first time touched something deep inside him. That knowledge only served to increase Lauren’s mounting anxiety. God, why had he come? He couldn’t possibly love Sarah the way she did.
“Does she know anything about me?” His penetrating gaze locked back on Lauren’s. All signs of vulnerability had vanished. Those gray depths were like hard, metallic points probing past her defenses.
“No,” she said simply, and braced herself for his response.
Gray closed his eyes and then dropped his head. Lauren heard the heavy breath he released. She had expected him to explode into a rage, but he didn’t. For one fleeting moment she wanted to reach out to him…to tell him she was sorry about the whole situation. That maybe they could work something out, then Lauren remembered the promise she had made Sarah’s mother.
“Mr. Longwalker, I love Sarah. I must warn you that I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep her happy and safe.”
His head shot up, and his eyes blazed with a rage probably as old as he was. Startled, Lauren drew away from his fury as far as her precarious perch on the step above him would allow.
“Then we both want the same thing,” he said harshly.
Lauren shook her head, unsure as to how he would react to the words about to tumble from her mouth, but they had to be said. He had to understand. “I made a promise to Sarah’s mother on her deathbed that I would never let you take her child away and I intend to keep it.”
Pain and betrayal flashed in his eyes. Gray adjusted his black Stetson and gave her one last heated glare from beneath the brim. “You’d better get to your attorney’s office then, because you’ll need one if you think you’re going to keep my daughter from me.” He turned away and continued toward his truck. His movements were graceful and sleek like a cat’s, but at the same time more dangerous and determined than any animal’s, domesticated or otherwise, she had ever seen.
Lauren wasn’t a coward, but neither was she one to pick a fight—that fact didn’t stop her from bounding down that last step and grabbing Longwalker’s arm. She pulled him around to face her, which would have been impossible had she not taken him by complete surprise. He glared down at her, impatient and irritated by her lack of cooperation.
With a single lift of his
