Free Best-Kept Lies by Lisa Jackson

wasn’t making one of the biggest mistakes of her life. She stared Striker straight in the eye and admitted to him something she rarely acknowledged herself. “You’re right. Okay? Joshua’s father, and I use the term soloosely it’s no longer coiled, is Sam Donahue.” Her tongue nearly tripped over Sam’s name. She didn’t like saying it out loud, didn’t like admitting that she, like too many others before her, had been swept off her feet by the charming, roguish cowboy. It was embarrassing and, had it not been for her precious son, a mistake she would have rued until her dying day. Joshua, of course, changed all that.
    Striker didn’t say a word. Nor had his lips curled in silent denunciation. And he didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow in mockery. No. He played it straight, just observing her, watching her every reaction.
    “So now you know,” she said, standing. “I hope it helps, but I don’t think it means anything. Thanks for dinner.” She walked out of the bar and up the steps to the wet streets. The rain had turned to drizzle again, misting around the street lamps, and the air was heavy, laced with the brine from Puget Sound. Randi felt like running. As fast and far as she could. To get away from the claustrophobic feeling, the fear that compressed her chest, the very fear she’d tried to flee when she’d left Montana.
    But it was with her wherever she went, she thought, her boots slapping along the rain-slick sidewalk as she hurried to her car. The city was far from deserted, traffic rushed through the narrow old streets and pedestrians bustled along the sidewalks. She carried no umbrella, didn’t bother with her hood, let the dampness collect on her cheeks and flatten her hair. Not that she cared. Damn it, why had she told Striker about Sam Donahue? Her relationship with Sam hadn’t really been a love affair, more of a fling, though at one time she’d been foolish enough to think she might be falling in lovewith the bastard. The favor hadn’t been returned and she’d realized her mistake. But not before the pregnancy test had turned out positive.
    She hadn’t bothered to tell Donahue because she knew he wouldn’t care. He was a selfish man by nature, a rambler who followed the rodeo circuit and didn’t have time for the two ex-wives and children he’d already sired. Randi wasn’t about to try to saddle him with the responsibility of another baby. She figured Joshua was better off with one strong parent than two who fought, living with the ghost of a father whom he would grow up not really knowing.
    She knew her son would ask questions and she intended to answer them all honestly. When the time came. But not now…not when her baby was pure innocence.
    “Randi!” Striker was at her side, his bare head as wet as her own, his expression hard.
    “What? More questions?” she asked, unable to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Well, sorry, but I’m fresh out of shocking little details about my life.”
    “I didn’t come all the way to Seattle to embarrass you,” he said as they rounded a final corner to the parking lot.
    “That’s how it seems.”
    “No, it doesn’t. You know better.”
    She’d reached her Jeep and with a punch of the button on her remote, unlocked it once more. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re not finished? That you won’t be satisfied until you’ve stripped away every little piece of privacy I have.”
    “I just want to help.”
    He seemed sincere, but she’d been fooled before. By the master, Sam Donahue. Kurt Striker, damn him, wasof the same ilk. Another cowboy. Another rogue. Another sexy man with a shadowy past. Another man she’d started to fall for. The kind to avoid. “Help?”
    “That’s right.” His eyes shifted to her lips and she nervously licked them, tasting rainwater as it drizzled down her face. Her heart thudded. She knew in that second that he was going to kiss her. He was fighting it; she saw the battle in his eyes, but in the