A Little Dare Read online

She couldn’t open her mouth to get the words out. It seemed fate wouldn’t be as gracious as she’d thought after all.

  Dare was looking down at the papers in front of him, however, the pause went on so long he glanced up and looked at her. He had known Shelly long enough to know when she was nervous about something. His eyes narrowed as he wondered what her problem was.

  “What’s his real name, Shelly?” he repeated.

  He watched as she looked away briefly. Returning her gaze she stared straight into his eyes and without blinking said. “Alisdare Julian Brockman.”

  Two

  Air suddenly washed from Dare’s lung as if someone had cut off the oxygen supply in the room and he couldn’t breathe. Everything started spinning around him and he held on to his desk with a tight grip. However, that didn’t work since his hands were shaking worse than a volcano about to explode. In fact his entire body shook with the force of the one question that immediately torpedoed through his brain. Why would she name her son after him? Unless ..

  He met her gaze and saw the look of guilt in her eyes and knew. Yet he had to have it confirmed. He stood on non-steady legs and crossed the room to stand in front of Shelly. He grasped her elbow and brought her closer to him, so close he could see the dark irises of her eyes.

  “When is his birth date?” he growled, quickly finding his equilibrium.

  Shelly swallowed so deeply she knew for certain Dare could see her throat tighten, but she refused to let his reaction unsettle her any more than it had. She lifted her chin. “November twenty-fifth.”

  He flinched, startled. “Two months?” he asked in a pained whisper yet with intense force. “You were two months pregnant when we broke up?”

  She snatched her arm from his hold. “Yes.”

  Anger darkened the depths of his eyes then flared through his entire body at the thought of what she had kept from him. “I have a son?”

  Though clearly upset, he had asked the question so quietly that Shelly could only look at him. For a long moment she didn’t answer, but then she knew that in spite of everything between them, there was never a time she had not been proud that AJ was Dare’s son. That was the reason she had returned to College Park, because she felt it was time he was included in AJ’s life. “Yes, you have a son.”

  “But—but I didn’t know about him!”

  His words were filled with trembling fury and she knew she had to make him understand. “I found out I was pregnant the day before my graduation party and had planned to tell you that night. But before I got the chance you told me about the phone call you’d received that day, offering you a job with the Bureau and how much you wanted to take it. I loved you too much to stand in your way, Dare. I knew that telling you I was pregnant would have changed everything, and I couldn’t do that to you.”

  Dare’s face etched into tight lines as he stared at her. “And you made that decision on your own?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “How dare you! Who in the hell gave you the right to do that, Shelly?”

  She felt her own anger rise. “It’s not who but what. My love for you gave me the right, Dare,” she said and without giving him a chance to say another word, she angrily walked out of his office.

  Fury consumed Dare at a degree he had never known before and all he could do was stand there, rooted in place, hell-shocked at what he had just discovered.

  He had a son.

  He crossed the room and slammed his fist hard on the desk. Ten years! For ten years she had kept it from him. Ten solid years.

  Ignoring the pain he felt in his hand, he breathed in deeply when it hit him that he was the father of John Doe. No, she’d called him AJ but she had named him Alisdare Julian. He took a deep, calming breath. For some reason she had at least done that. His son did have his name—at least part of it anyway. Had he known, his son would also be wearing the name Westmoreland, which was rightfully his.

  Dare slowly walked over to the window and looked out, suddenly seeing the kid through different eyes—a father’s eyes, and his heart and soul yearned for a place in his son’s life; a place he rightly deserved. And from the way the kid had behaved earlier it was a place Dare felt he needed to be. It seemed that Alisdare Julian Brockman was a typical Westmoreland male—headstrong and stubborn as hell. As Dare studied him through the windowpane, he could see Westmoreland written all over him and was surprised he hadn’t seen it earlier.

  He turned when the buzzer sounded on his desk. He took the few steps to answer it. “Yes, Holly?”

  “Ms. Brockman is ready to leave, sir. Have you completed the paperwork?”

  Dare frowned as he glanced down at the half-completed form on his desk. “No, I haven’t.”

  “What do you want me to tell her, Sheriff?”

  Dare sighed. If Shelly for one minute thought she could just walk out of here and take their son, she had another thought coming. There was definitely unfinished business between them. “Tell Ms. Brockman there’re a few things I need to take care of. After which, I’ll speak with her again in my office. In the meantime, she’s not to see her son.”

  There was a slight pause before Holly replied. “Yes, sir.”

  After hanging up the phone Dare picked up the form that contained all the standard questions, however, he didn’t know any answers about his son. He wondered if he could ever forgive Shelly for doing that to him. No matter what she said, she had no right to have kept him in the dark about his son for ten years.

  After the elder Brockmans had retired and moved away, there had been no way to stay in touch except for Ms. Kate, the owner of Kate’s Diner who’d been close friends with Shelly’s mother. But no matter how many times he had asked Kate about the Brockmans, specifically Shelly, she had kept a stiff lip and a closed mouth.

  A number of the older residents in town who had kept an eye on his and Shelly’s budding romance during those six years had been pretty damn disappointed with the way he had ended things between them. Even his family, who’d thought the world of Shelly, had decided he’d had a few screws loose for breaking up with her.

  He sighed deeply. As sheriff, he of all people should have known she had returned to College Park; he made it his business to keep up with all the happenings around town. She must have come back during the time he had been busy apprehending those two fugitives who’d been hiding out in the area.

  With the form in one hand he picked up the phone with the other. His cousin, Jared Westmoreland, was the attorney in the family and Dare felt the need for legal advice.

  “The sheriff needs to take care of few things and would like to see you again in his office when he’s finished.”

  Shelly nodded but none to happily. “Is there anyway I can see my son?”

  The older woman shook her head. “I’m sorry but you can’t see or talk to him until the sheriff completes the paperwork.”

  When the woman walked off Shelly shook her head. What had taken place in Dare’s office had certainly not been the way she’d envisioned telling him about AJ. She walked over to a chair and sat down, wondering how long would it be before she could get AJ and leave. Dare was calling the shots and there wasn’t anything she could do about it but wait. She knew him well enough to know that anger was driving him to strike back at her for what she’d done, what she’d kept from him. A part of her wondered if he would ever forgive her for doing what she’d done, although at the time she’d thought it was for the best.

  “Ms. Brockman?”

  Shelly shifted her gaze to look into the face of a uniformed man who appeared to be in his late twenties. “Yes?”

  “I’m Deputy Rick McKade, and the sheriff wants to see you now.”

  Shelly stood. She wasn’t ready for another encounter with Dare, but evidently he was ready for another one with her.

  “All right.”

  This time when she entered Dare’s office he was sitting behind his desk with his head lowered while writing something. She hoped it was the paperwork she
needed to get AJ and go home, but a part of her knew the moment Dare lifted his head and looked up at her, that he would not make things easy on her. He was still angry and very much upset.

  “Shelly?”

  She blinked when she realized Dare had been talking. She also realized Deputy McKade had left and closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. “I said you could have a seat.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to sit down, Dare. All I want is to get AJ and take him home.”

  “Not until we talk.”

  She took a deep breath and felt a tightness in her throat. She also felt tired and emotionally drained. “Can we make arrangements to talk some other time, Dare?”

  Shelly regretted making the request as soon as the words had left her mouth. They had pushed him, not over the edge but just about. He stood and covered the distance separating them. The degree of anger on his face actually had her taking a step back. She didn’t ever recall seeing him so furious.

  “Talk some other time? You have some nerve even to suggest something like that. I just found out that I have a son, a ten-year-old son, and you think you can just waltz back into town with my child and expect me to turn my head and look away and not claim what’s mine?”

  Shelly released the breath she’d been holding, hearing the sound of hurt and pain in Dare’s voice. “No, I never thought any of those things, Dare,” she said softly. “In fact, I thought just the opposite, which is why I moved back. I knew once I told you about AJ that you would claim him as yours. And I also knew you would help me save him.”

  Eyes narrowed and jaw tight, Dare stared at her. She watched as immediate concern—a father’s concern—appear in his gaze. “Save him from what?”

  “Himself.”

  She paused, then answered the question she saw flaring in his eyes. “You’ve met him, and I’m sure you saw how angry he is. I can only imagine what sort of an impression he made on you today, but deep down he’s really a good kid, Dare. I began putting in extra hours at the hospital, which resulted in him spending more time with sitters and finding ways to get into trouble, especially at school when he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. That’s the reason I moved back here, to give him a fresh start—with your help.”

  Anger, blatant and intense, flashed in Dare’s eyes. “Are you saying that the only reason you decided to tell me about him and seek my help was because he’d started giving you trouble? What about those years when he was a good kid? Did you not think I had a right to know about his existence then?”

  Shelly held his gaze. “I thought I was doing the right thing by not telling you about him, Dare.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “Well, you were wrong. You didn’t do the right thing. Nothing would have been more important to me than being a father to my son, Shelly.”

  A twinge of regret, a fleeting moment of sadness for the ten years of fatherhood she had taken away from him touched Shelly. She had to make him understand why she had made the decision she had that night. “That night you stood before me and said that becoming a FBI agent was all you had ever wanted, Dare, all you had ever dreamed about, and that the reason we couldn’t be together any longer was because of the nature of the work. You felt it was best that as an agent, you shouldn’t have a wife or family.” She blinked back tears when she added. “You even said you were glad I hadn’t gotten pregnant any of those times we had made love.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “How do you think I felt hearing you say that, two months pregnant and knowing that our baby and I stood in the way of you having what you desired most?”

  When AJ’s laughter floated in from the outside, Shelly slowly walked over to the window and looked into the yard below. The boy was watching a uniformed officer give a police dog a bath. This was the first time she had heard AJ laugh in months, and the sheer look of enjoyment on his face at that moment was priceless. She turned back around to face Dare, knowing she had to let him know how she felt.

  “When I found out I was pregnant there was no question in my mind that I wouldn’t tell you, Dare. In fact, I had been anxiously waiting all that night for the perfect time to do so. And then as soon as we were alone, you dropped the bomb on me.”

  She inhaled deeply before continuing. “For six long years I assumed that I had a definite place in your heart. I had actually thought that I was the most important thing to you, but in less than five minutes you proved I was wrong. Five minutes was all it took for you to wash six years down the drain when you told me you wanted your freedom.”

  She stared down at the hardwood floor for a moment before meeting his gaze again. “Although you didn’t love me anymore, I still wanted our child. I knew that telling you about my pregnancy would cause you to forfeit your dream and do what you felt was the honorable thing—spend the rest of your life in a marriage you didn’t want.”

  She quickly averted her face so he wouldn’t see her tears. She didn’t want him to know how much he had hurt her ten years ago. She didn’t want him to see that the scars hadn’t healed; she doubted they ever would.

  “Shelly?”

  The tone that called her name was soft, gentle and tender. So tender that she glanced up at him, finding it difficult to meet his dark, piercing gaze, though she met it anyway. She fought the tremble in her voice when she said, “What?”

  “That night, I never said I didn’t love you,” he said, his voice low, a near-whisper. “How could you have possibly thought that?”

  She shook her head sadly and turned more fully toward him, not believing he had asked the question. “How could I not think it, Dare?”

  Her response made him raise a thick eyebrow. Yes, how could she not think it? He had broken off with her that night, never thinking she would assume that he had never loved her or that she hadn’t meant everything to him. Now he could see how she could have felt that way.

  He inhaled deeply and rubbed a hand over his face, wondering how he could explain things to her when he really didn’t understand himself. He knew he had to try anyway. “It seems I handled things very poorly that night,” he said.

  Shelly chuckled softly and shrugged her shoulders. “It depends on what you mean by poorly. I think that you accomplished what you set out to do, Dare. You got rid of a girlfriend who stood between you and your career plans.”

  “That wasn’t it, Shelly.”

  “Then tell me what was it,” she said, trying to hold on to the anger she was beginning to feel all over again.

  For a few moments he didn’t say anything, then he spoke. “I loved you, Shelly, and the magnitude of what I felt for you began to frighten me because I knew what you and everyone else expected of me. But a part of me knew that although I loved you, I wasn’t ready to take the big step and settle down with the responsibility of a wife. I also knew there was no way I could ask you to wait for me any longer. We had already dated six years and everyone—my family, your family and this whole damn town—expected us to get married. It was time. We had both finished college and I had served a sufficient amount of time in the marines, and you were about to embark on a career in nursing. There was no way I could ask you to wait around and twiddle your thumbs while I worked as an agent. It wouldn’t have been fair. You deserved more. You deserved better. So I thought the best thing to do was to give you your freedom.”

  Shelly dipped her chin, no longer able to look into his eyes. Moments later she lifted her gaze to meet his. “So, I’m not the only one who made a decision about us that night.”

  Dare inhaled deeply, realizing she was right. Just as she’d done, he had made a decision about them. A few moments later he said. “I wish I had handled things differently, Shelly. Although I loved you, I wasn’t ready to become the husband I knew you wanted.”

  “Yet you want me to believe you would have been ready to become a father?” she asked softly, trying to make him see reason. “All I knew after that night was that the man I loved no
longer wanted me, and that his dream wasn’t a future with me but one in law enforcement. And I loved him enough to step aside to let him fulfill that dream. That’s the reason I left without telling you about the baby, Dare. That’s the only reason.”

  He nodded. “Had I known you were pregnant, my dreams would not have mattered at that point.”

  “Yes, I knew that better than anyone.”

  Dare finally understood the point she’d been trying to make and sighed at how things had turned out for them. Ten years ago he’d thought that becoming a FBI agent was the ultimate. It had taken seven years of moving from place to place, getting burnt-out from undercover operations, waking each morning cloaked in danger and not knowing if his next assignment would be his last, to finally make him realize the career that had once been his dream had turned into a living nightmare. Resigning from the Bureau, he had returned home to open up a security firm about the same time Sheriff Dean Whitlow, who’d been in office since Dare was in his early teens, had decided to retire. It was Sheriff Whitlow who had talked him into running for the position he was about to vacate, saying that with Dare’s experience, he was the best man for the job. Now, after three years at it, Dare had forged a special bond with the town he’d always loved and the people he’d known all of his life. And compared to what he had done as an FBI agent, being sheriff was a gravy train.

  He glanced out of the window and didn’t say anything for the longest time as he watched AJ. Then he spoke. “I take it that he doesn’t know anything about me.”

  Shelly shook her head. “No. Years ago I told him that his father was a guy I had loved and thought I would marry, but that things didn’t work out and we broke up. I told him I moved away before I had a chance to tell him I was pregnant.”

  Dare stared at her. “That’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it. He was fairly young at the time, but occasionally as he got older, he would ask if I knew how to reach you if I ever wanted to, and I told him yes and that if he ever wanted me to contact you I would. All he had to do was ask, but he never has.”