Ranger Daddy Read online

  “Ranger Sims is on line one for you, Jeff.”

  “Thanks, Diane.”

  It was ten to three. Knowing Gabi was at his house, Jeff couldn’t concentrate on his work any longer and was ready to leave the office. But he had to take this call. After emailing instructions to the plumbing crew installing some new latrines at Hodgdon Meadow, he picked up. “Mark? What’s happening?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Jeff grunted. “What kind of a question is that?”

  “Maybe I misunderstood about you keeping Sergei with you while Cal’s away on his honeymoon.”

  “No. I’ve got him.”

  “Did you hire a dog handler to babysit him while you’re at work? Whoever she is has caught the eye of a half-dozen rangers here in the village.” Jeff shot out of his chair. “The calls have been coming in about this gorgeous female with black hair attached to Cal’s dog. I thought I’d better check on it.”

  “That woman is an old family friend of mine who’s just passing through the park.”

  “Every ranger should have that kind of an old friend.”

  “It isn’t what you’re thinking, Mark. She’s with her daughter. I guess they decided to take Sergei for a walk until I got off work.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Jeff was trying to see the humor in it. “Did any of those Peeping Toms mention Nicky was with her?”

  “Not that I recall. This wouldn’t be the woman Ranger Finlay was checking on for you yesterday, would it? He said you burst into the office like you were on the verge of having a heart attack. Now that he’s seen her, he can understand why.”

  Damn. “Tell the guys to calm down.”

  “That’s kind of hard to do now that the beautiful filly is out of the barn, so to speak. Finlay did a little detective work and found out she’s staying at the Yosemite Lodge tonight.”

  That was news to Jeff. Gabi had gotten busy while he’d been at work.

  “Does that mean you wouldn’t be averse to Ranger Finlay or Ranger Ness, who saw her first, dropping in on her at the lodge this evening for a friendly visit?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with me, but you should know she’s just come out of a divorce and needs peace of mind for a little while.”

  “I was only doing what the guys asked me to do. Now that you’ve explained, I’ll let everyone know she’s off-limits, without giving anything away.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “How long have you been friends?”

  “Since I was fifteen.”

  Mark whistled.

  “Our families lived next door to each other in Alhambra. She’s having trouble with her ex-husband and wanted a few days off from worry.” If the time came that Jeff needed extra security for her while she was here, Mark would be the man to call on for help.

  “Is he stalking her?”

  Jeff decided to be honest with him, and told him what he knew.

  “If the man’s been in the military, then that adds an extra layer of complication, for several reasons,” Mark theorized. “Why don’t you let me cancel the lodge reservation.”

  “You’re reading my mind. While you’re at it, erase her from the system. She’ll be staying with me.”

  “I’ll get right on it and spread the word that any info about her is classified.”

  “Thanks, Mark. For now, she’s waiting on the advice of her attorney.”

  “Yeah, well, we all know that an abusive ex-husband who has seen action and is upset knows no boundaries. He’ll ignore a gag or restraining order without giving it a thought.” Jeff’s thoughts exactly. “Keep in touch.”

  “Will do.”

  Relieved to have an ally, he hung up and left headquarters before anything else could prevent him from getting out of there. On the way home he stopped for groceries. With that taken care of, he was halfway down the street to his house when he caught sight of three heads. Two with black hair, one with blond.

  Nicky and Ashley were holding the dogs’ leashes. Gabi walked behind them. Given her coloring and looks, he couldn’t blame the other guys for staring. Having a baby had filled out her figure. The shape of her head, the enticing Gypsy hairstyle… She had everything feminine that called out to a man.

  Seeing her here was still hard to believe. Though he wished she’d come for a different reason, he wasn’t going to complain. Catching up with her again would allow him to explain a few things. Forced to leave Alhambra the way he did had torn him up inside. If nothing else, he wanted her to know why there’d been no time to talk.

  “There’s Jeff!” he heard Nicky cry as he pulled in the driveway. Jeff jumped down from the cab and walked toward them. Sergei saw him and lunged forward, causing the leash to pull away from Ashley.

  “Hey, buddy!” He hunkered down to hug him. “Have you been a good boy for her?” He looked up into the adorable face that reminded him so much of her mother.

  “He obeyed me all the time until just now.”

  Jeff smiled at her. “I’m glad to hear it. Sounds like you did a great job of taking care of him.” He pulled out his wallet and gave her a ten-dollar bill. “That’s for being such a good dog walker. This ought to pay for a Yosemite Sam T-shirt.”

  “They’re cool!” Nicky interjected.

  “Thanks!” The cute little pixie put it in her jeans pocket. “We’re glad you came home.”

  His gaze flicked to Gabi, who was staring down at him with the kind of soft expression in those periwinkle eyes he remembered. “It’s nice to know someone around here missed me,” he murmured.

  “You were at work!” Nicky reminded him. “Aren’t you still supposed to be there?”

  Nicky, Nicky. The boy was sounding more and more like the chief every day. “I thought I’d get started fixing dinner for us.”

  “You must be hungry to come home this early.”

  You don’t know the half of it, sport. “Yup.”

  “Are we going to have hot dogs?”

  “Nope. Tortilla pie with guacamole.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Gabi will tell you.” He liked being able to put her on the spot.

  “What is it, Mommy?”

  “It’s like tacos, but you make it like a pie with lots of cheese. Jeff’s mother used to fix it all the time.”

  “Did you like it?” Ashley asked her.

  “I loved it,” she muttered. “Come on, everyone. Let’s go in the house. The dogs need a drink.”

  Jeff got to his feet. “Nicky? You know where the checkers are. While I freshen up, why don’t you start a game with Ashley in the living room?”

  “Okay. I brought Match-Up, too. We can play it when we get tired.”

  “I play that with Jessica,” Ashley informed him.

  “Who’s Jessica?”

  “My best friend. She lives across the street from me. I win at that game more than she does.”

  “So do I. My dad says I’m hard to beat.”

  Gabi’s eyes met Jeff’s. Their laughter would be heard all over the park if they dared let it out.

  He went inside ahead of them. Sergei went straight to the kitchen, and a few minutes later reentered the living room and lay on the floor next to the kids, who’d started their checkers game.

  Jeff found Gabi in the kitchen. “I don’t see your suitcases anywhere.”

  She rubbed the palms of her hands against her jean-clad hips, drawing his attention to them. “I put them back in the car. Now that we’re alone I wanted to tell you I’ve made a reservation at the Yosemite Lodge for tonight. Ashley and I will leave after we’ve eaten.”

  Jeff got started on their dinner. She helped him, just like old times. They worked in harmony. “I’m afraid your reservation has been cancelled by the chief of park security.”

  Color filled her cheeks. “I wish you hadn’t asked him to do that, Jeff. Don’t you understand I don’t want to impose on you?”

  “How could you possibly be imposing when I’m
the one who followed you to El Portal?” He started browning the ground beef for the pie. “I told him about your situation and he agreed that should your ex-husband get desperate, he’ll go to any lengths to find you.

  “I doubt he’d be able to trace you here, but to be on the safe side your name has been erased from the park’s system. We can’t do anything about your stay at the Travelodge last night.”

  If the redhead at the front desk was given the chance, she’d probably tell all if Gabi’s ex were to show up asking questions. Jeff would worry about that remote possibility at a later date.

  Gabi shook her dark head. “Jeff—”

  “It’s settled,” he insisted. “There’s a cot in the guest bedroom and the couch turns into a pullout bed, so the sleeping arrangements are all taken care of.”

  “I should never have come,” she whispered.

  He put the pie in the oven before opening the fridge to pull out the ingredients for a green salad. “I’m glad you did. We have unfinished business between us.”

  With her head still averted, she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What, exactly, did your foster mother tell you after you found out I’d left Alhambra?”

  The silence lasted so long, he wondered if she’d even heard him. “Gabi?” he prodded.

  “She said you’d decided to go away to college.”

  “That was it?”

  “Yes.”

  He made a sound in his throat. “Did you ask my dad?”

  “When I saw his truck pull in the driveway the next evening, I went over to your house to talk to him. Ellen answered the door and told me you’d moved out. I asked her where you’d gone. She said that if you wanted me to know, you’d get in touch with me. When she shut the door in my face without telling your father I’d come over, I got the message and never went back.”

  Jeff had to tamp down his anger. There were too many truths Gabi didn’t know anything about yet, but now wasn’t the time to divulge Bev’s role in the story. For the moment Bev was Gabi’s friend, not the enemy. He would allow Gabi to go on believing that until a later time, when the danger from her ex was over. But he could be honest about his father’s part in what had happened.

  “My dad could see how close we were getting, Gabi. He was afraid my interest in you would prevent me from going away to college. To be blunt, he feared I might get you pregnant. Ellen backed him up and added that it would be considered statutory rape, because you were only seventeen.”

  “That’s true.” She grabbed a knife and started chopping onions for the salad. “Bev gave me and Nora several lectures on the same subject before Nora turned eighteen and left Alhambra, after you did.”

  Jeff just bet Bev had. “I told my dad we hadn’t slept together, but he warned me it would only be a matter of time.” His father had been right about that.

  “I told Bev we hadn’t done anything wrong,” Gabi said, “but I don’t think she believed me. Now that I’m older, I can see why she was worried. We spent too much time together.”

  “They were all worried about us,” he admitted. “Dad finally convinced me you were too young for me, and needed the chance to get through the rest of high school without me being around. But it wasn’t until he brought up your past that I made the decision to go.”

  “My past?”

  “Yes. He asked me if I wanted history to repeat itself where you were concerned. When I asked him what he meant, he said that your birth mother and father were probably underage and that’s why you’d been abandoned after you were born.”

  She froze, then glanced at Jeff. “You and I already had that discussion and came to the same conclusion.”

  “Yup. There wasn’t anything Dad said that you and I hadn’t already thought or talked about.” Jeff finished slicing the tomatoes and put them in the salad bowl. “After he ended his lecture, I told him I would move out. Ellen was thrilled to see the back of me and couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”

  Ellen had said a lot of things to Jeff in private, claiming that Gabi was nothing more than trash coming up through the government system. That he could do much better for himself once he got out in the world.

  “I think she was jealous of your mother’s memory.”

  He nodded. “She wanted Dad to herself, but soon found out Mom was impossible to replace.”

  “I loved Ruth,” Gabi whispered.

  “So did I.”

  “Her death changed your father. So did his second marriage.”

  “Life was never the same after that,” Jeff agreed. “Dad was continually on my case. He made me promise I wouldn’t phone or write you. ‘A clean break,’ he said. ‘No goodbyes. Just leave and give Gabi time to grow up first, son. Then if she’s still around and you’re still interested…’”

  “I see,” Gabi said in a tremulous voice.

  “So I took off, determined to make some good money and start college, to give you space. The week after you turned eighteen, I came back to Alhambra to bring you a birthday present and talk to you, but Bev told me you’d moved out.”

  Gabi gasped quietly and lifted her head. “You came to the house?” He nodded. “She never said a word.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. I asked her for a forwarding address or phone number, but she said she couldn’t give it to me without your permission.”

  A pained expression crossed Gabi’s face. “That’s true. You left in June. I waited the whole month to hear from you. When July came and you still hadn’t come home or phoned or sent me a letter, I told Bev that if you ever tried to contact me, she was to say I didn’t want to see or talk to you again. But that didn’t mean—” She stopped midsentence. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. “

  He grimaced. Bev had gotten her wish, and had definitely enjoyed telling him Gabi was better off without him. “After leaving the way I did the first time, without saying goodbye to you, I deserved that, Gabi.”

  “Where were you living by then?”

  “In Culver City.” At the revelation her eyes dimmed. “I asked around the neighborhood about you. No one knew where you’d gone. Before I drove back home, I went by Kim’s house, hoping she might give me some information about you. To my surprise, her family had moved. Someone else lived there and didn’t know anything.”

  “Her father got a job in Portland.” Gabi’s color had faded. “Excuse me for a minute.” She left the kitchen.

  Alarmed, Jeff followed her down the hall, where she hurried into the guest bathroom and shut the door. Unfortunately, Ashley saw her.

  “Mommy?” she called out in a panic, running toward the bathroom.

  “It’s okay, honey.” Jeff rushed to pick her up. “Your mom just got a nosebleed,” he lied without compunction. “She’ll be out in a minute.”

  “My mom got a lot of them before Parker was born,” Nicky informed her. “Is your mom going to have a baby?”

  GABI CLUNG TO the bathroom sink for a minute in order to deal with Jeff’s stunning revelations. He’d left home because of Mr. Thompson? She’d always thought Jeff’s father liked her. She couldn’t take it in.

  When Jeff had come by the house a year later, it was her own fault Bev hadn’t given him any information. Yet in all the years since the divorce, her foster mother hadn’t once mentioned anything about that incident. Surely it would have been the kind thing for Bev to do. She’d known how much Gabi had suffered through her last year of high school because Jeff had gone away.

  The face staring at her in the mirror looked pale. She leaned over and washed it with warm water, then put on fresh lipstick. When she’d gotten her nerves under some semblance of control, she left the bathroom and walked into the living room, where everyone had congregated.

  “Mommy?” Ashley ran over to her. Sergei followed her. “Are you going to have a baby?” she whispered.

  Gabi blinked. “Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”

  “Because Jeff said you had a nosebleed.”

  That
was quick thinking. “I did have one, but it’s gone now and I’m all better. Why do you think that means I’m going to have a baby?”

  “Because Nicky’s mom got them before her baby was born.”

  “Ah.” Gabi hugged her daughter before addressing her and Nicky. “People get nosebleeds for all kinds of reasons, but I’m not going to have a baby. I bumped my nose on the kitchen door by accident.”

  Jeff shot her a smiling glance. “I did the same thing the other day. Maybe I should take it off the hinges. Come on. Dinner’s ready. We’ll eat in the dining room. Everyone can help.”

  Before long the four of them were seated around the table. The dogs had assembled, hoping for any crumb that dropped. Gabi had no appetite, but she needed to pretend for her daughter’s sake. And Jeff’s.

  Everything he’d told her in the kitchen had come as a shock, and he knew it. But she didn’t want him reading anything significant into it. Theirs was a past history, better forgotten now that she knew the truth. As he’d said earlier in the day, she looked as if she could use a friend. Until she and Ashley left tomorrow, she could pretend, and do the old-friend thing.

  When there was a knock on the front door, Jeff got up from the table and disappeared into the other room. In a second Gabi heard another deep male voice. Nicky heard it, too. “That’s my dad. Hey, Dad—we’re in here!”

  Two attractive men entered the dining room. The chief ranger wasn’t the boy’s biological father. He had dark hair and wore a broad smile. “Hi, sport!”

  “Hi! We’re eating tortilla pie. It’s pretty good!”

  The grown-ups chuckled, and Jeff introduced everyone. “Chief Rossiter, this is Ashley Rafferty and her mother, Gabi, an old friend of mine from Rosemead.”

  He shook their hands. “Welcome to Yosemite. What do you think of the park so far, Ashley?”

  “I like it, but how come there’s no water at Yosemite Falls?”

  He smiled. “August is the month it’s mostly a trickle, but later on, with more rainfall, the water will start to cascade down again. Spring is when the views are most spectacular and Yosemite Falls is at its mightiest.”

  Jeff nodded. “If you want to see a beautiful waterfall now, I’ll take you to Bridalveil Falls in the morning. I have to go up there early for an inspection.”