A Little Dare

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.”

Dare nodded. “I want him to know I’m his father, Shelly.”

“I want him to know you’re his father, too, Dare, but we need to approach this lightly with him,” she whispered softly “He’s going through enough changes right now, and I don’t want to get him any more upset than he already is. I have an idea as to how and when we can tell him, and I hope after

hearing me out that you’ll agree.”

Dare went back to his desk. “All right, so what do you suggest?”

Shelly nodded and took a seat across from his desk. She held her breath, suddenly feeling uncomfortable telling him what she thought was the best way to handle AJ. She knew her son’s emotional state better than anyone. Right now he was mad at the world in general and her in particular,

because she had taken him out of an environment he’d

grown comfortable with, although that environment as far as she was concerned, had not been a healthy one for a ten- year-old. His failing grades and the trouble he’d gotten into had proven that.

“What do you suggest, Shelly?” Dare asked again, sitting down and breaking into her thoughts.