Daddy By Decision. Lindsay Longford

       Chapter One

      It was all those damned weddings.

      Since the second wedding in the Tyler family, Buck had been as itchy and cranky as a bull stomping and snorting in the pasture. Shoot, who’d have expected ol’ easygoing I’m-arambling-man Hank, the baby of the family, to waltz Jilly Elliott off to the altar in the wake of T.J. and Callie’s wedding?

      And all those kids running around! A man couldn’t take two steps without tripping over Gracie or Charlie or Hank’s fifteen-month-old twin terrors, Duke and Gorp. And Hank couldn’t stop patting Jilly’s swollen belly where Flynn-to-be waited to make his appearance.

      Buck picked up a package of crackers and a jar of cheese glop, scowling at the boxes of baby diapers stacked in front of him. Babies! Hell, Hank and T.J. were repopulating the whole damned county all on their own. He stared for a moment at the carton. The pink-cheeked infant’s smile was goofily appealing, the sparkle in the chocolate brown eyes—He stopped his thoughts.

      Gritting his-teeth, Buck shoved his sweat-stained hat back on his head. Who was he kidding? What he needed couldn’t be found in an all-night convenience mart. He sighed and scratched at the mosquito bite on the back of his neck.

      Hell of a note to find himself feeling like an outsider in his own family. He thought he’d gotten over that sense of being on the other side of the fence a long time ago, but there was nothing like a long night alone to bring back all those old feelings, that bottomless pit of loneliness welling inside and pulling him into its emptiness. He rubbed his bristly chin irritably. Maybe what ailed him was nothing more than the full moon making him restless and dissatisfied with his life, with himself.

      He’d never missed one of his mother’s birthday parties, and he wouldn’t have missed this one, not really, not even with this blue funk settling over him. But still—

      An elbow jostled him. “Sorry,” a husky voice muttered. Caught by the scent of flowers and cinnamon, he glanced up, welcoming the escape from his thoughts, but the woman had vanished behind a towering stack of jars of salsa, leaving behind her only a light fragrance and the memory of that low, soft bedroom voice.

      Buck slapped the jar of cheese spread back on the shelf and glared at the bright fluorescence of the Palmetto Mart’s nighttime world.

      He’d been a fool to leave the shabby isolation of his motel room. Nothing in that motel room to distract him, that was the problem, and he couldn’t stand staring at that two-bit painting of some pink and green tropical landscape one more second. In the face of those Pepto-Bismol pinks and puke greens, the Palmetto Mart had seemed like an oasis.

      “Frankie? Where did you hide the chunky peanut butter?” The husky voice rasped again along Buck’s raw nerve endings, a wet-dog shiver of a reaction.

      “Moved it, Miz McDonald. Next aisle over.” Frankie’s voice cracked on the last word.

      “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” Shoes squeaked against the floor, punctuating the low voice.

      Turning into the adjacent aisle as Frankie spoke, Buck saw a slim back and nicely rounded tush moving slowly down the aisle in front of him. And a very nice little tush it was, he decided, gratefully looking away from bright-eyed baby faces to study the slow sway of those curves under paint-spattered cutoffs. The frayed ends dangled against smooth, tanned thighs that curved down to sturdy calves and narrow feet in ragged sneakers and neon purple socks.

      Buck blinked. Maybe it was the Palmetto Mart’s lighting. Nope. At second glance, the socks were still blindingly purple. With small black and green race cars stitched into the sides. His gaze lifted to the slim, soft arm reaching for a bottle of orange Gatorade on the top shelf. With a quick stride he closed the space between him and the owner of the sweetest tush he’d seen in years. And then, too, there was that quite remarkable voice that slithered along his skin. Maybe the Palmetto had more possibilities than he’d imagined.

      Leaning against the display, one arm balanced along the top, he gestured to the shelf. “Need a helping hand?”

      “What I need is to be taller. Or, absent that miracle, I could use a stepladder,” she said with a self-mocking lift of her shoulder. She started to turn toward him and then went very still, her head dipping down.

      “No ladders around. Just me.”

      “I can manage,” she said in a cool little voice. Threequarters turned away from him, her face averted, she stared at the blue basket holding a loaf of bread and a shrink-wrapped miniature car. Streaky brown hair straggled loose from a scraped-back ponytail. Obscuring his view of her face, curly tendrils flopped, floated, and coiled with her jerky movements. Wild hair, warm brown and gold, the kind that made a man want to twine its strands around his fingers, stroke its silkiness and bury his face in its softness.

      Devilment and the long night stretching emptily in front of him loosened his tongue. Honesty made him admit to himself that maybe, too, he wanted to get a rise out of her after her cool dismissal. So, stretching out the syllables and slouching in the best Clint Eastwood tradition, he drawled, “No problem, little missy.”

      Her shoulders tightened, nothing more than a movement under her white shirt, and he wondered if “little missy” was going to stomp on his boots. Diverted, he didn’t move, merely waited to see what she would do.

      Not looking at him, she stretched on tiptoe and tilted the bottle next to the one he held. “As I said, cowboy, I’ll manage.”

      Cowboy? Intrigued, he straightened. Little missy had a razor-edged tongue. He had an urge to upend a broom, pull out a bit of straw and stick it into his mouth. Or find a chaw of tobacco. Anything to complete the image. With a fair degree of effort, he managed to kill the urge to thicken his drawl into molasses, but he couldn’t resist the impulse to tweak her. “Like I said, sugar, no problem.”

      Grabbing the bottle with a small, square hand, she snubbed him with four throaty syllables. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

      A peculiar sense of familiarity tugged at his memory and killed the teasing. Frowning, he leaned toward her. “Pardon me, ma’am, but—”

      Slipping around the corner of the aisle, she disappeared behind a cardboard drop of Fourth of July sparklers and American flags. Brushed by her hip, one of the flags stirred, moved in the breeze of her passing, then collapsed among the red, white and blues.

      Well, damn. Startled by the swiftness of her departure, Buck blinked again.

      Her message was real, real clear. A sensible man would have picked up his corn puffs and his beer and hit the road. Buck meant to leave. Hell, he knew that’s exactly what he should do. But he wasn’t quite ready to face Maxie’s Tropical Motel, and, anyway, something about that throaty voice kept nudging him in her direction.

      So he wasn’t a sensible man. What else was new?

      Watching her progression through the Palmetto Mart in the silvered metal camera in a corner overhead, he ambled back past the cheese spread and crackers, past the diapers and jars of creamed this and pureed that until he reached the middle of the aisle nearest the door and the checkout counter.

      Face-to-face with a row of very personal feminine products, he paused and shrugged. Probably not the best spot for him to linger. He moved back down the aisle toward the shelf of roasted, sugared and peppered peanuts.