The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,46

broke. “She was buried on my eighteenth birthday.”

Dallas could practically see the images of that. Joelle, no more than a kid herself, burying a child. Their child. It must have broken her heart, the way it was doing to him now, but Dallas still couldn’t go to her.

Not with this anger and hurt stabbing through him.

“You should have told me you were carrying my child,” he finally managed to say. His teeth were clenched. Every muscle in his body was so stiff he was in physical pain.

“I considered it,” Joelle said. “But I also considered what you would have done if I’d told you.”

“I would have married you!” he practically shouted.

“Exactly. You would have married me and tossed away your scholarship. You wouldn’t have become a marshal.”

“You don’t know that. I would have found a way to do both, but you didn’t even give me a chance.”

She paused, gathered her breath. “I was going to tell you. I saw her face after she was born, and I decided that you should know. But she never even opened her eyes, Dallas.”

Hell. Each word was like a knife to the heart.

“I should have been there,” he insisted.

“I thought I was protecting you,” Joelle insisted right back.

He jabbed his index finger at her. “You weren’t. You were keeping a secret that wasn’t yours to keep. I fathered her, and I should have had the chance to see her.”

The pain crushed him, hard, and it mixed with another surge of anger that was stronger than the first. Dallas wasn’t sure how to deal with it, but he knew he didn’t want any interruptions. Unfortunately, he heard the movement in the hall and snapped toward the visitor, figuring it was Kirby’s nurse, Jackie Hall. It was, but she wasn’t alone.

Kirby was with her.

He was leaning against the nurse, but he was on the verge of falling so Dallas rushed to him. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“Had to,” Kirby mumbled. “Heard you arguing.”

“I’m sorry,” Joelle said, going to him. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.” Kirby dragged in a ragged breath. “I knew about the baby, but I didn’t tell you, either.”

Dallas swung his gaze back to her, but Joelle shook her head. “You knew?” she asked Kirby.

“Highly suspected,” he confirmed. “And I didn’t do a thing to encourage you to tell Dallas.”

Damn. How could these two people—who supposedly cared about him—do something like this?

How?

Dallas was sure they didn’t have the right answer because it wasn’t right, plain and simple.

“I went to visit Joelle,” Kirby said, his voice getting weaker with each word. “To check on her and make sure things were going okay with her foster family. But they were in the backyard when I got there, and before they spotted me I overheard them talking about a baby.”

Joelle made a sound as if trying to recall that. “You heard me say I was pregnant?”

“Not exactly, but I put one and one together. I also did some other math. You were seventeen, and Dallas was a year older. An adult in the eyes of the law.”

Her breath became thin. “But Dallas and I had been lovers for months, well before he turned eighteen. And the baby was probably conceived when we were both underage.”

“Yeah,” Kirby conceded. “I’m not saying it was right, but you were a ward of the state then, and I didn’t want anyone trying to make an example out of Dallas by filing charges against him.”

“Oh, mercy,” she mumbled. Dallas wanted to mumble something much harsher.

“I was wrong not to tell you what I suspected,” Kirby added, looking at Dallas now. “So if you’ve got to blame somebody, son, blame me.”

He didn’t want to blame anyone. He wanted back the opportunity he should have been given sixteen years ago.

Kirby groaned, a sound deep within his throat, and he would have collapsed if all three of them hadn’t caught him. His father had once outweighed Dallas by a good thirty pounds, but the cancer had eaten away at him, making it easy for Dallas to scoop him up in his arms.

“You got to forgive Joelle,” Kirby mumbled. “And me. I made a lot of mistakes raising you boys, and I told myself it’s because I wanted you to grow up right.”

Yeah. Dallas had always known that was one of Kirby’s concerns. He owed Kirby, but Dallas couldn’t give the forgiveness that he’d just requested. Not now, anyway.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Dallas settled for saying. He put Kirby back into bed, covered him