Название: Untamed Cowboy
Автор: Maisey Yates
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Вестерны
isbn: 9781474083461
isbn:
He frowned and got out of the car, and by the time he did the police officer was already rising up to meet him.
“Are you Bennett Dodge?”
“I suppose that all depends on whether or not I’m getting served.”
“Not getting served,” the officer said.
“Okay.”
If somebody were dead he would have been called already. If somebody had died Wyatt would be here. Unless it was Wyatt who was dead. But then Grant would be here. Or Jamie. And if something had happened to Jamie... Well, Grant and Wyatt would both be here.
In a fraction of a second his brain concocted a thousand different events that might have happened to wipe out every last one of his siblings.
Or maybe it was his dad. Who was currently in New Mexico with his new wife, Freda. Maybe something happened to one of them. An accident with that damned motor home of theirs.
“Just tell me nobody’s dead,” Bennett said.
The officer looked shocked for a moment. “Oh, no one’s dead,” he said. “But we’re here to talk to you about a matter of custody.”
“Custody?”
The only thing he could think that might mean was they needed to take him into custody, but he hadn’t done anything. He was sure he hadn’t. But of course, he found himself cataloging his every action from the past week. Whether or not somebody had seen him get in the car after his half a beer last night.
But that was ridiculous. Mostly.
“You look confused,” the police officer said.
“I am,” Bennett responded.
“It’s about your son, Mr. Dodge.”
Bennett frowned, no immediate emotional reaction bubbling up to the surface. Mostly because the guy was just plain wrong. He had to be.
“I don’t have a son,” Bennett said.
“The paperwork I have says you do. You’re welcome to contest that. But what I have is a kid that’s going to end up in a group home if he can’t stay with his father.”
As if on cue the door to that SUV opened and a woman in a severe-looking outfit got out, followed by a teenage boy. Fifteen years old or so, Bennett figured.
Brown hair, tall, lanky. And he looked up at Bennett with simmering fury in brown eyes that matched Bennett’s perfectly.
“Hi, Dad,” he said. “I guess it’s been a while.”
“YOUR MOTHER IS Marnie Claire?”
Bennett was sitting at the kitchen table across from the boy and the social worker. The police officer was outside. Apparently, he had been required to act as an escort because the social worker wasn’t confident in her ability to keep the boy from running off. The boy. Dallas.
Dallas Dodge.
That was his name. His legal name. Though, Bennett had had no idea of his existence. In fact, Bennett had been told that the pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. He had lived with it like a weight ever since. Everything he had heard about Marnie, what had happened to her, the kind of life she had fallen into. He had blamed himself. She had been so distraught when she had broken up with him. When she had left and he had been convinced that any dire straits she was in was partly his fault. But if any of this was true, if this was his son... Then she had lied to him. She had lied to him almost sixteen years ago.
And he was a father.
To a teenager.
Dammit to hell.
“That’s right,” the social worker, who was named Grace, answered the question for Dallas.
“How old are you?” Bennett said, addressing the kid straight on. Talking around him was insulting, and even if he did seem like he was a little punk, Bennett wasn’t going to treat him like he was invisible. He knew what that was like.
When his mother had died that was what everyone did. They talked over his head like he was stupid, like he couldn’t possibly understand what was happening. Addressing all manner of sympathy to his father, to his older brothers, and treating Bennett like he had no idea what was happening in his own life. “Fifteen,” the kid said.
“There isn’t a foster family that has been able to cope with him. And he’s extremely lucky that the owner of the last store he robbed didn’t press charges.”
“It wasn’t robbery,” Dallas said. “You make it sound like I had a gun.”
“That’s armed robbery,” Bennett supplied.
“Well,” Dallas continued. “It wasn’t as badass as that. It was shoplifting. Shoplifting would be a pretty pussy thing to go to jail for.”
“But it is something you could have gone to jail for,” the social worker said, clearly well versed in Dallas’s brand of attitude, and pretty damned fed up with it too.
Which was fair enough, he supposed.
“What happened to your mom?” Bennett asked.
“I don’t know.” Dallas shrugged. “She used to come around sometimes, but I haven’t seen her in a few years.”
“His mother lost custody a few years ago,” Grace explained.
Bennett rounded on her. “If this is my kid then why didn’t anyone contact me then?”
“Because we didn’t know,” she said. “There is no father listed on Dallas’s birth certificate. We didn’t know where the last name Dodge came from.”
“How did you find it now?”
“It was in something of my mother’s,” Dallas said. “Something that I kept.”
“He showed it to me when I told him about the group home,” the social worker said.
Bennett just sat there, shock making him numb. And it was probably a damn good thing.
But on some level, this angry, feral-looking kid wanted to be with him. Or at least, he wanted to be with him more than he wanted to be in a group home. But...it was clear he didn’t want to be here that much. And... Bennett couldn’t close the gap that he felt. With the facts in his brain, the words that had been planted there and the feelings in his heart.
This was his son. In all likelihood it was.
Not only did he look quite a bit like a combination of СКАЧАТЬ