Unsurprisingly, Larissa Miller didn't take my refusal to let her stay at my place in River Bend – or my refusal to talk to her rather than work out our arrangements through our lawyers – well. What should have been clear that very first night she showed up with Bentley – namely that she was less interested in me having a relationship with our son than she was in me having a relationship with her – became even clearer as the days passed. She ignored my requests not to call me for anything other than arranging a visit with Bentley and took to calling me at all hours to yell about the many ways in which I'd ruined her life. And when she wasn't yelling about that she was begging me to give her a chance.

Giving Larissa Miller a 'chance' was one thing that was definitely not going to happen. The whole reason I'd made it a habit to only sleep with tourists or visitors was precisely because I was trying to avoid emotional entanglements with women. It worked, too. Until it didn't.

Larissa's unwelcome presence in my life did give me one thing, though – a way to avoid thinking about Tia. With the ranch, the livestock and the constant harassment from a crazy woman, it wasn't too much work to keep telling myself that Tia was a slip-up and nothing more. A mistake. A beautiful, warm, funny, sweet mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. It was my traitor subconscious that let me down on that point, constantly bringing the girl with the dark, almond-shaped eyes back to me in my dreams. I woke up many a morning with a hard-on so stiff it could have been used to cut diamonds and an ache in my heart that stubbornly refused to let go.

I missed her. It was a deep, visceral feeling, a sudden pang of loneliness when I came home from the fields in the evening and sat alone at my table eating canned soup or a sad looking sandwich I'd bought at the grocery store the next town over – which I was now shopping at so I could avoid seeing the one person who was capable of breaking me. Not that I admitted the latter fact to myself at all. It's only now, in hindsight, that it all seems so obvious.

When Larissa realized I was serious about not being interested in a relationship with her, she started threatening me. At first it was just annoying – she knew people, bad people, bad guys, and she was going to send them to my house. To do what? She never said. I didn't think she knew any bad guys, but if she did I knew how to handle myself. I also knew how to handle the shotgun I kept propped up against the wall behind the front door. Soon, though, the threats became more serious. They started to center on my family, and the trouble she thought she could cause if word got out that Jacqueline and Bryan Corbett's wayward son had fathered an illegitimate child.

It's not so much that I cared about any scandal that would hurt my parents – they had more money and power than they knew what to do with, and I was pretty sure they'd be more than happy to hand Larissa a tiny chunk of it to make her go away. It was that I simply didn't want to involve them in my life. I'd been very clear with them before I moved to Montana that they'd badly let me down after my return from Iraq, and I simply didn't want to be dragged back into exactly the kind of family drama I'd moved away to avoid.

Ken Stone, my lawyer, brought up the idea of a paternity test seemingly out of the blue. It's not that I wasn't aware that men could be tricked into believing they had fathered children that they hadn't, it just didn't really occur to me in a serious way until he pressed the issue. Maybe it was ego, maybe it was just Larissa's seemingly absolute certainty that I was the father, I don't know. I asked Ken if he thought it was really necessary.

"Are you kidding?" he responded, surprised.

"Well, no, not really. She seems pretty sure."

"They always seem sure, Dallas. They usually seem extra sure when the father is wealthy."

"But she didn't know I was wealthy," I replied. "Not, uh, not when it happened."

Ken chuckled. "I'm surprised you're being so blasé about this. I know you can afford support payments, but don't you want to know? Don't you want to be certain? I've never had a client who didn't."

I only consented to asking Larissa to bring Bentley to an agreed-upon medical facility for a DNA test to appease my lawyer. It was later that night, sitting alone in my cabin as the evening shadows stretched across the room, that I got to thinking about why it didn't seem to matter to me as much as it should have.

I'm not the most introspective guy, but all it took was some brief rumination to realize what was going on – I wanted Bentley to be my son. Larissa was a problem, that was obvious, but I was pretty sure she could be persuaded to back off with a big enough financial incentive. But Bentley – he was mine. Wasn't he? And my head was already filled with visions of teaching him how to fish, how to ride a horse, guiding him through the journey of his childhood the way my wealthy, spoiled parents had utterly failed to do with me. Sure, I had every material thing a kid could want, but my dad wasn't around most of the time, he was always off on business trips and attending meetings. My mom didn't have much to do except focus on me. I became her confidant at an early age, and most of my childhood was spent emotionally supporting a grown woman in her privileged but lonely life as the wife of a powerful man.

It didn't take a trained therapist to see that, in Bentley, part of me saw a second chance for myself. Ken was right, though. The paternity test had to be done, even if I was already half-dreading one of the possible outcomes. I'd never considered parenthood. When Larissa showed up and almost literally dropped a new reality into my lap, I got used to it a lot faster than I thought I would. I called Ken the next day and officially instructed him to demand shared custody, and to take the option of no visitation off the table completely, pending the outcome of the paternity test.

* * *

A trip into River Bend a couple of days later was unavoidable. I needed a part for one of my pieces of farm equipment and it would have meant an hours long drive to go anywhere else. So I saddled Ranger up and tied him in the usual spot, outside Parson's Grocery. I did not look inside to see if I could spot Tia. In fact I did a fairly good job of convincing myself I wasn't even thinking about her. When I was leaving the auto-parts store, though, I almost ran smack into Amber Ketcher.

Instead of apologizing, I just dodged around her, pretending I didn't see the angry look on her round face.

"Hey."

She was talking to me. I ignored it.

"Hey!"

Footsteps. She was following me. Goddamnit. I got back to Ranger and started untying him.

"HEY!"

Amber shoved me and anger flared up in my chest. "You're going to get kicked if you don't back off," I growled. "Ranger isn't friendly."

"How noble of you to hide your own failings behind a horse," she responded, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I don't think he's ever been dangerous, has he? You're just an asshole. And you use this horse to intimidate everyone in town."

That made me turn around. Who the hell did Amber Ketcher think she was? The goddamn decent person police?

"What?" she asked, seeing that I was pissed off. "Don't like being called an asshole? That's weird, you seem to go out of your way to make everyone think that's exactly what you are."

I admit I was surprised by the level of hostility. I know women are protective of their girlfriends but Tia didn't seem like the type to lie just to cause drama. If Amber knew about Bentley she must also have known that he was conceived before I ever met Tia, and that I didn't even know he existed until very recently.

"What's your problem?" I asked. "I don't even know you."

Amber opened her mouth, as if she was going to say something, and then shut it again. I mounted Ranger and pulled on one of the reins, nudging him with my ankles. Amber's screechy, angry voice followed me.

"You should learn to wrap it up, Dallas Corbett! That's all I'm saying!"

Ugh. The last thing I needed was another woman telling me what a jerk I was. I'd already had enough of that to last several lifetimes. I rode away, totally ignoring the annoyed sighing coming from behind me at the same time as I actually kind of admired it. She was being protective of her friend – of Tia. And I wanted Tia to have people in her life who felt protective of her.

That evening, after the new part had been fitted, my lawyer called again.

"It's not your kid."

I didn't hear him at first, I was making too much noise washing dishes.

"Hold on, let me sit down."

I turned the water off and sat down. "What was that?"

"Don't go celebrating just yet, Dallas, but I'm pretty sure the kid isn't yours."

I heard the words, but it took a few moments for them to sink in.

"Huh?"

"Larissa Miller is fighting the paternity test. We've got her by the balls."

"I – uh, wait – so she hasn't even had Bentley tested yet? So why are you saying –"

"They never try to dodge a DNA test if they aren't worried about the results. Now, I'm not saying he definitely isn't yours, but this is a good sign. A very good sign. And we can press the issue for sure – if she refuses to submit to the test, no judge is going to award her any financial support."

The sweat on my neck suddenly felt cold and clammy. Larissa was fighting the DNA test – and I didn't really need Ken Stone to explain to me what that might mean.

"So," I started, trailing off when I realized I had no idea what to say – or what to feel.

"So, for now, nothing. I'm going to talk to her lawyer tomorrow, but I wanted to keep you in the loop. This is looking good. If all goes well, you could be off scot-free by next week. I'll call you when I know more."

Ken hung up and I leaned back in my chair, trying to take it all in. She wouldn't do that, would she? Sure, she seemed nuts, but she didn't seem totally stupid. Who would try to fake paternity in the modern world, knowing that DNA tests exist? But, on the other hand, who would get cagey about having her baby DNA tested if she was as sure as she said she was about paternity? My head was spinning. And even as it spun, I knew that the one thing I wanted to do was impossible. I wanted to call Tia. I wanted to see her, to talk to her. There was no one else in my life who made me feel that way.

I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. Was I entirely full of shit? Had I just spent three years pretending I was fine with living my life for myself alone – rather than actually being fine with it? And why did I think Tia would even be interested in hearing my sob story? She'd probably written me off within a couple of days of our last conversation.

There was a raw bleakness in my heart that night as I lay in the dark just before falling asleep. I was supposed to be OK alone. Not just OK but good. But there was no denying the fact that Tia was gone. And now it looked like Bentley might be gone, too. And I knew I wasn't ready to face what either of those things really meant.