I didn't see Tia for a couple of days after our dinner together. My alfalfa field was on the cusp of needing to be harvested and I was working from dawn to dusk trying to arrange for a couple of farmhands to help bring it in, arranging the equipment rental and just making sure the livestock were fed, watered and healthy.

Sure, I could have made time somewhere in there to see her. But I didn't. The connection I felt to her was so intense. The look in her eyes when she gazed up at me was so real – and I knew that part of the connection was based on her pain, as fucked up as that sounds. I was ill at ease. Not with her so much as with everything her brief presence in my life was stirring up. So I rode Ranger out to the alfalfa field in the afternoon the next day and checked the state of the plants, their levels of greenness, how dry they felt. It was simple, like everything in River Bend. Well, everything except Tia Kinsley.

She needed someone. It was obvious. Was I that person? Was I that man? It didn't seem possible. And yet I cared about her, which perplexed me to no end, since caring about other people was something I definitely thought I'd left behind me. I caught myself thinking about her a lot, wondering where she was, what she was thinking or whether or not she was missing me. When my phone rang one afternoon after just before the harvest was about to begin, I answered it without noticing the 'Unknown Caller' on the screen.

"Tia?"

There was a lengthy pause and then a female voice. "No."

It wasn't Tia. I had no idea who it was, but whoever they were, they sounded angry.

"Is this Dallas Corbett?"

"Who's asking?"

"This is Larissa Miller."

"OK," I replied warily. I had no idea who Larissa Miller was, or why she was giving me attitude.

"You don't remember me, do you?"

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. "No, I don't. And I'm pretty busy with the harvest here, so get to the point."

It didn't even occur to me that she could be one of the women I met at the bar in River Bend. I never gave any of them my number. There was a bitter laugh from the other end of the phone.

"I can't say that I'm surprised, Dallas. You didn't seem like the remembering type."

I felt a lick of anger in my chest. Who the fuck was this woman and why did she think she could speak to me in that bitchy tone? "Yeah, as I said," I told her, "I'm extremely busy so if you're not going to get to the point, I'm going to hang up."

"I know who you are, Dallas."

"Do you, now?" I shot back, bemused. "Great. And?"

"Dallas Corbett. Son of Bryan Corbett, Texas oil billionaire. You sure did a good job hiding the fact that you were rich."

I took the phone away from my ear and looked down at the screen for a second before ending the call. I still had no idea who Larissa Miller was, but just hearing my father's name spoken aloud put me in a state of dull rage. Less than a minute later, the phone rang again. I ignored it. Then it rang again and again until I picked it up.

"Stop calling me," I snarled. "I don't know who the fuck you are, but stop calling me. If this is some kind of scam, you should know I have no contact with my family. Now do me a favor and leave me the fuck alone."

I was about the hang up again when the sound of a baby cooing came down the line.

"Do you hear that?"

I didn't reply.

"That's your son."

I was walking back to the cabin when I took that call. And I kept walking for seven or eight more steps before coming to a sudden, dead stop as my blood ran cold.

"What?"

"That's your son," Larissa spat, her voice angrily triumphant. "You don't remember me, Dallas, but I remember you. You fucked me in that shitty little cabin of yours last year. I mean, I'm not surprised you don't remember, you seemed like kind of an asshole, to be honest."

My heartbeat thrummed in my ears. It couldn't be true. It couldn't be. A baby? Not possible. I always used condoms. Always. Well, I'd slipped up with Tia, but with those girls from the bar? Never, not once. I made a point of it.

"You've got the wrong man," I said tightly. "We used a condom. I know this because I always use condoms. So whatever bullshit this is I suggest you –"

"He's yours," Larissa cut me off. "There was no one else but you, Dallas. I don't know why you're so angry – accidents happen, right? I didn't even have to call you, I'm doing it as a courtesy. Just letting you know."

She was waiting for me to respond but I couldn't speak, I was too angry, too shocked, still convinced Larissa Miller was full of shit. Eventually, she kept going.

"Yeah, so anyway. My lawyer told me not to call you."

Her lawyer? Jesus Christ.

"He said I should just serve you with papers. I did some checking, you know. About who you were, where you come from. If you want me to play hardball, I will. I know you come from money. The only reason I'm calling, and the only reason I'm putting up with your rudeness, is because I want to give you a chance."

"A chance?" I spluttered. "A chance?! A chance to what? You're basically threatening me, do you realize that?"

"A chance to do the right thing without this having to get... messy. You know, courtrooms and lawyers and all that. We can avoid that, if you want."

My stomach was churning and my mind was whirring so fast I was barely taking anything in. I didn't have any memory of this Larissa Miller. But her intention couldn't have been clearer. Money. She wanted money. Fuck that. I hung up without a word, switched my phone off and stumbled the rest of the way back to the cabin, collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table as Beau looked up at me, whining softly.

I stayed there, at the table, for a long time. Hours. At first I was just enraged, in denial. But as the shadows grew longer it began to seem terribly possible that the woman wasn't lying. I'm not an idiot. I know condoms break, I know mistakes happen. The sound of that baby's babble haunted me. Could it be? Could that baby, wherever he was, be mine? My son?

Beer, I needed beer. Then another and another and another until I climbed up to the loft and fell into a dark, drunken sleep.

In the morning, when I woke up to the sound of birdsong in the trees outside my window, I didn't remember the phone call right away. And when I did, through my hung-over haze, it seemed more likely that I'd dreamed it. But, no, I hadn't dreamed it. When I turned my phone on there were more missed calls and a few missed messages. With a feeling of foreboding in my heart, I clicked on them. The first one was brief and she'd added her number to the end of it.

"I don't know what to say. You have two days. Get in touch or this is going to get ugly. You don't want that, trust me."

The second one was angrier, three paragraphs of ranting about how awful I was, how terrible the sex had been, how I was going to pay dearly if I didn't call back.

The third one was from Tia. I almost couldn't read it.

"Hey. I know you said you were going to be busy but I just wanted to say that teaching you how to make ratatouille the other day (and the other parts!) was probably the happiest I've felt since the accident. I almost didn't say 'the accident' there but it's weird, I feel like it's OK to say it to you. Anyway, I hope it doesn't rain on your wheat and call me when you have some time! Tia xo"

My very first reaction, above anything else, was to feel a certain softening in my heart at her calling my alfalfa 'wheat.' It was just...cute. City girls, man. But the feeling dissipated as quickly as it had arisen and I was left looking down at the message, knowing that if what Larissa Miller was saying was true, Tia's easy, open affection towards me was going to die like an ember in a downpour.

What was there to do? Nothing but deal with it. Some things go away. Feelings, ways of being. People. But I had an inkling that Larissa Miller was not going to be one of them. After feeding the livestock and forcing myself to eat a breakfast I wasn't hungry for, partly because of the hangover and partly because it made me think of Tia, I called Larissa. When she picked up, her voice was suspiciously friendly. Flirtatious, even. It made my stomach turn.

"Dallas!" she cooed brightly. "I'm so glad you called!"

Jesus, you'd think we were arranging a dinner party.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "Sure. So, I guess my main question is what exactly is it you want from me?"

I expected her to say money. It was only when she didn't say it that I realized it would have been a lot easier if she had.

"I want you to meet him."

I coughed. "You – what? Meet who?"

"Your son, silly! We live in Washington State, close to the border. It's less than a day's drive from River Bend."

"You want me to meet him. Why?"

"Because every son needs to know his daddy!"

Why did she sound like some overly peppy cheerleader? The feeling that I was being roped into something was so strong I could taste it, but what could I do? If that baby was my son, it didn't matter what kind of insane person his mother was. It wouldn't be fair to deny him a relationship with me, even if that relationship could never be a traditional one, just because I loathed his mom. And loathe her I did. Something about her tone of voice was making my skin crawl.

"OK, I understand that. But... what do you think is going to happen? Do you think I'm going to want a relationship with you because you had my baby? Because I'm not – and I really can't emphasize that enough. If we –"

"Oh, no," Larissa replied, in a tone that suggested she was dealing with a disobedient toddler. "It's nothing like that, Dallas. Good lord, is that what you thought? No, not at all. I just want him to meet you. His name is Bentley, by the way. I just want Bentley to meet his daddy, is all. We can worry about everything else later."

Bentley. My son was named after a luxury car? Ridiculous. Although I suppose I wasn't really in a position to talk about ridiculous names.

"Well," I started, hesitant and still more than a little suspicious, "if you want to bring him out here for a visit, that would be fine. I'm in the middle of the harvest right now but –"

"Oh excellent! That would be great, Dallas! I'm just going to need your address first."

In a daze, I recited my address and we hung up. I tried to tell myself it was a good thing, that playing nice and allowing Larissa to bring her – our – son to meet me might go some way to heading off some kind of nightmarish, time-consuming legal situation.

There was no denying, however, the foul taste the conversation with her had left in my mouth. She'd been so thoroughly unpleasant when she first called me the previous afternoon, and now she was seemingly bubbly and happy? Obviously, I didn't trust her. Not at all. But what choice did I have? All I wanted was a peaceful life. A quiet life. If placating a crazy woman meant I could continue with that life, I was willing to give it a try.

It was stupid, of course. Immensely stupid. I should have told someone. Not that there was anyone to tell except Tia, and she certainly didn't want to hear that I suddenly had a baby son. For the first time in years I felt a twinge of regret at cutting ties with my family. My father was ruthless. As ruthless with his money as he had been with his children. But certain situations call for ruthlessness.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I should have done a lot of things I didn't do. Who knows if it would have changed anything in the end?

The harvest began that afternoon and finished just over twenty-four hours later. I didn't message Tia back, because I hadn't yet worked out what to say. I knew I didn't want to lie to her. So I had to think on it, had to come up with some way to fill her in without making her freak out. Problem was, I didn't know if there was any way to do that.

The evening after the harvest was completed, and the field was dotted with alfalfa bales wrapped tightly in plastic, I made ratatouille. Or, I tried to make ratatouille. It turned out to be more of a mushy vegetable soup, but it tasted good and it made me think of Tia. It was while I was washing the dishes that I heard a car pull up outside the cabin. Tia. It had to be her. And even as I dreaded having to tell her about Larissa, I couldn't help the way my heart leapt at the thought of holding her in my arms again. I dried my hands on a towel and bounded down the front steps, only to stop dead in my tracks when a woman stepped out of a car I didn't recognize and lifted a baby out of the back seat before turning to face me with a big, fake grin plastered across her face.

As soon as I saw that grin something in my mind clicked. I did remember her. Vaguely. Blonde, skinny, kind of trashy. Yeah. It was coming back to me. We'd both been very drunk, and she'd been surprisingly aggressive.

"Dallas!"

I had no idea what to say. Or what to do. So I just stood there, awkwardly taking the baby out of her arms when she handed him to me and feeling like I was watching a movie of someone else's life, rather than participating in my own. I looked at the baby. Chubby cheeks, blonde hair, a worried look on his face like he wasn't sure about me. It was surreal. To me, it just felt like holding a baby. But my mind was suddenly crowded with memories of my own childhood. Was I going to be that person now, to another tiny human being? Was I going to be the person who marked his life, for good or bad? Was this infant going to stand holding his own baby one day, thinking of me the way I was now thinking of my own father?

It was overwhelming. I was almost glad of the distraction when Larissa threw her thin, pale arms around me and sloppily kissed my cheek. "So happy to see you after so long, Dallas!"

"Er, yeah," I replied. "I – uh, I don't have much room, you know. There's a motel in town, they –"

"We don't need much space!" she responded cheerily. "Bentley can sleep in his car-seat, I can sleep on the sofa."

I'm normally not a man who gets steamrolled. But I think I can cut myself a little slack, given that I was just meeting a son who I didn't even know existed a couple of days ago. Larissa didn't take him back, either, even when he reached out for her to do so. We walked inside and sat down in the tiny living room. Bentley stared at me. I stared back. He was cute. Even in that brief window of two or three minutes I'd gone from thinking he looked exactly the way all babies look to thinking he was an especially adorable specimen. Biology kicking in?

"I can't believe your family is rich, Dallas," Larissa commented, looking disapprovingly around the cabin. "Why do you live in a place like this?"

No comment about our son, just a slam about the spartan nature of my living arrangements.

"I live in a 'place like this' because it's what I choose," I told her, annoyed. "I'm a rancher, I don't need a mansion or a private jet. That was the whole point of moving out here."

Her eyes widened. "A private jet? Wow. Does your family have one of those?"

What was this woman's problem? I didn't like where the conversation was going at all so I changed it, asking her how old Bentley was.

"Three and half months. He was born in May. It's been really hard, Dallas."

I hated the way she kept saying my name unnecessarily, like she was trying to sell me something.

"Yeah, I hear babies aren't the easiest things to look after."

"I don't have any help at all. I even had to quit my job! And he's really fussy, he cries a lot. It drives me crazy. You wouldn't believe how sleep-deprived I am. But I'm not complaining, he's the light of my life!"

Admittedly, I had not been around Bentley for that long, but he seemed content to be held by a stranger. Not that I knew anything about babies – I'd never even held one before that night. He reached out and grabbed at my face, seeming to enjoy the feeling of my stubble on his hand.

"You like that?" I asked, smiling without even realizing it. "Huh? Feels funny, doesn't it?" I opened and closed my mouth a few times, which made him laugh.

"He likes you," Larissa said, watching us together. "He doesn't have a man around at home, maybe that's why?"

My heart sank a little when she said that. It made me think of Bentley – my son – without a father around to do – well, to do whatever it is that fathers do with their babies.

We didn't hang out for long before Bentley and I both began to fade. The harvest had been tough, and there was nothing I wanted more than to sink into my bed and let one of the weirdest days of my life give way to slumber.

"You can have the bed," I told Larissa. It wasn't misguided chivalry, I just didn't like the idea of the baby sleeping in his car-seat, and I was fine with the couch.

She turned to me and I was horrified to realize that the look in her eyes was seductive. I stepped back. She stepped towards me.

"Hey," I said, keeping my voice low so as not to upset Bentley. "This isn't – Larissa, this isn't what this visit is about."

"Are you sure?" she asked, biting her lip and sliding one hand around my neck. "It doesn't have to be a thing, you know, Dallas. We can just, you know. It doesn't have to be a –"

"No!" I said, a little more forcefully, removing her hand from my neck. "Damnit, Bentley is right here. What are you doing?"

Larissa waved her hand in the air dismissively. "Oh come on, Dallas. It's not like he knows what the fuck is happening."

It hit me, then. The truth. I really, truly, did not like this woman. Not one bit. When she tried to make a grab for my crotch I held her off again and gave her a choice to either keep her hands off me or take Bentley to the local motel and stay there for the night. After some ridiculous pouting, she gave in and went to bed up in the loft. I grabbed a blanket and settled on the sofa, laying awake for quite awhile and wondering just what the hell I'd gotten myself into.

Before I fell asleep I sent Tia a message. We had to talk, that was clear, but it had to be in person. I just told her the harvest was over, that I was going to be busy for another day or two, and that we could see each other after that. After sending it I lay back down with a heavy sigh. It was difficult to imagine her – or any woman – having a positive reaction to the sudden appearance of a baby.

I missed her, though. A lot. I wasn't entirely comfortable with that fact, but it was the plain truth whether I acknowledged it or not.