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“Hello—I’m Devon O’Rourke. I hope I’ve found the right place. I’m looking for Eric Lanagan.”
Startled, Lucy blurted out before she thought, “Eric! But, he said—” then caught Mike’s eye and the tiny but unmistakable shake of his head and stopped herself in time. She finished it only in her mind: He said the baby’s mother was dead.
“I’m afraid Eric’s asleep right now,” Mike said smoothly, falling back once more on those polite conventions that sounded so ludicrous to Lucy, given the circumstances. “Would you like some coffee? Is there anyone with you? I don’t see your car.”
At that the woman seemed to hesitate, glancing uneasily back toward the door as if she feared she might have entered some sort of trap. It was what came of living in the city, Lucy thought. Nobody trusted anybody anymore. Probably, she reflected, with good reason.
“It’s down there—” the woman gestured vaguely toward the dark windows “—somewhere. I couldn’t get it up the driveway. I think it might be stuck in a ditch.” She gave a shiver, then a resigned sigh. “And no, there isn’t anybody with me.” A look of surprise flitted briefly across her face as she said that, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d admitted such a dangerous thing.
Mike chuckled in his reassuring way. “We’re Eric’s parents. You’re safe here. Tell you what—let’s all go in the kitchen while we figure out what to do, shall we? Lucy?”
“Right,” said Lucy.
But her mind was racing. Maybe it was because she was already emotionally battered, and on top of that, jittery from getting woken up out of a sound sleep twice in one night, but the woman’s suspicious nature seemed to be rubbing off on her. She had an uneasy feeling about this girl, this Devon O’Rourke. Protective maternal instincts she’d all but forgotten and long presumed dormant were springing to life inside her. Maternal instincts that had somehow expanded to include not only Eric, but a baby girl named Emily.
Devon was an early riser and lifelong insomniac, so she was neither surprised nor particularly annoyed to find herself awake in total darkness. A myopic squint at the illuminated face of her digital watch told her it was nearly 5:00 a.m., which seemed to her a reasonable enough getting-up hour—though even if it hadn’t, it would never have occurred to her to go on lying in bed, trying to force herself back to sleep. An utter futility, she knew from experience.
She sat up, groped for the lamp on the nightstand and turned it on. Throwing back the comforter, she swung her feet to the uncarpeted wood floor, shuddering at the unexpected coldness of it. She wasted no time finding and putting on the slippers she’d so generously been given last night, along with the flannel pajamas she was currently wearing and the bathrobe draped across the foot of the bed.
Strange people, these Iowans, she thought as she pulled the bathrobe around her shoulders, pausing to sniff the worn, slightly stiff and nubbly flannel. Soap, fresh air and sunshine… She could almost see the bathrobe flapping on a clothesline in a stiff spring breeze.
These Iowans, these Lanagans—Eric Lanagan’s parents. She wasn’t sure what to make of them. She’d never met anyone quite like them before. Most people, she was sure, even out in the country like this, would have been suspicious, even frightened at finding a stranger at their door in the middle of the night. But these people had not only invited her in, they’d insisted on making her fresh hot coffee, giving her dry clothes and a bed for the night. What kind of people would do such a thing, in this day and age?
Of course, she had mentioned Eric’s name. No doubt they’d taken her for a friend of their son.
That thought made her squirm with an unfamiliar guilt, which she shrugged away. It was their fault if they’d jumped to the wrong conclusion; they’d no business being so trusting.
Hugging the bathrobe around her, she paced to the windows, and in doing so discovered two things. One, that the storm responsible for her demoralizing fiasco last night was showing no signs of abating; and two, that she was ravenously hungry. Those facts led her to two more obvious conclusions: One, she wasn’t likely to be leaving here any time in the immediate future; and two, someone was bound to be getting up soon, this being a farm, after all. Didn’t farmers always get up at the crack of dawn? She felt certain no one would object if she made coffee, and maybe some toast.
She left her room, tiptoeing, and made her way to the stairs. She could see well enough; someone had thoughtfully left a light burning in the downstairs hallway—and somehow she knew this wasn’t usual, that it had been left on this particular night for her, the stranger in the house. She felt again that annoying twinge of guilt.
Her descent of the stairs wasn’t as quiet as she’d have liked. A couple of the steps creaked—a sound that seemed appallingly loud in the sleeping house. She paused once to listen to see if she’d woken anyone but heard only the howling of the wind.
Downstairs, she found that the light in the hallway provided plenty of illumination to the kitchen as well, so she set about making coffee in that soft, forgiving twilight. She’d watched Eric’s mother—Lucy, yes, that was her name—make coffee last night, so she knew where everything was; Devon was the sort of person who noticed and remembered details like that. She easily found bread and a toaster, popped in two slices and rummaged in the refrigerator for jam—Devon never ate butter—while the coffeemaker filled the room with heavenly smells and friendly sounds. She had located a jar of what looked as if it might be homemade apricot preserves when she heard, from close behind her, something that made her scalp prickle.
A snort of surprise.
And then, a most definitely unfriendly “Who the hell are you?”
Adrenaline surged through her, in part due to the shock of that unexpected voice, but certainly compounded by the fact that the jar of preserves she’d been in the process of reaching for had just gone shooting out of her hands like a bar of wet soap. For a few seconds she was too busy to give much attention to the owner of the voice as she grabbed at the jar, juggled it ungracefully and finally managed to clasp it to her chest, rightside up, thank God, against her wildly pounding heart.
Immediate disaster averted, she turned to face the man she’d come so far to find, and heard a hiss of indrawn breath and then a sound, not words, just a mutter of denial and rejection.
Oh, yes, and rejection was plain in his face, too. But that much she’d expected. For the rest, well, what had she expected?
Someone younger, for one thing. According to Emily’s birth certificate Eric Lanagan was twenty-eight—barely two years younger than Devon. Based on the way he’d been behaving—ignoring the court’s order, running away—she’d pictured him as some arrogant, irresponsible kid.
She hadn’t expected him to have so much presence—and presence wasn’t an easy thing to manage in tousled hair and bare feet, in pajama bottoms and a bathrobe hanging open—a flannel bathrobe, moreover, that was almost the twin of the one she herself was wearing.
She hadn’t expected a face with so many hard edges and sharp angles. Bathed in the warm yellow light of the open refrigerator, it still appeared pale as chalk, shadowed and gaunt.
She hadn’t expected him to look as if he’d just confronted a ghost.
Her next thought was that he looked instead like a man who wanted very much to strike her down where she stood—and might well have done so, but for the baby in his arms.
She gulped involuntarily and, eyeing the baby sideways as if it were a possibly dangerous wild animal, plunged into breathless explanations. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I came in late last night. In the storm. Your parents—” She was talking too quickly; her voice kept bumping up against her galloping heart.
My God, what was that all about? Devon O’Rourke didn’t scare easily, and besides, this was the man who’d befriended her sister, the man Susan had named as the father of her child. In spite of the harshness of his features, except for that brief flash of anger in his eyes, he didn’t look at all like someone capable of violence. In fact, there was something about him that was almost…oh, good heavens, the word sweet was the one that came most insistently to mind, with that endearing distraction, the juxtaposition of a fuzzy pink head and tiny waving fist against a naked, hard-muscled masculine chest. Her heart gave another horrifying lurch.
She could be in no danger here—not from this man—not right this minute, anyway.
Was she? He was coming toward her. Her mouth went dry. She couldn’t help it—she backed into the open refrigerator.
“I didn’t ask you how you got here. I asked who the hell you are.” His hand shot out, narrowly bypassing her head, and to her utter dismay, she flinched. He noticed it, too, and lifted one disdainful eyebrow, lending the half smile he gave her a devilish slant.
“You trying to warm things up in there?” he asked dryly as he plucked a bottle of formula from the refrigerator.
Feeling incredibly foolish, Devon ducked sideways to get out of the way while he closed the refrigerator door—and felt even more foolish when the toaster popped up just then and made her jump again. At the same moment, the coffeemaker launched burping and gurgling into its incongruously merry finale.
Never more glad to have something to do, she turned to the task of assembling a plate for her toast, a spoon for the preserves and a mug for the coffee. And all the while her unwelcome companion worked right alongside her, so close she had to be careful not to bump elbows with him as he ran tap water into a bottle warmer, plugged it in next to the toaster and plunked the bottle of formula into it.
Neither of them spoke a word, at least not to each other. The baby made impatient snorting, snuffling noises, which Devon was sure were a prelude to something much more disruptive. Eric responded with something that was probably meant to be a croon but in Devon’s opinion more resembled the ratchety sound a tiger makes when it purrs. If she’d hoped to use the interlude of activity to gain back a measure of her normal confidence and self-control, that sound alone would have made it an uphill battle. She felt the strain of it in her spine, her temples, the back of her jaw.
After she’d poured herself a cupful of strong black coffee and taken a testing sip, she leaned back against the counter and watched sideways through the steam as the man lifted the bottle from the warmer and, expertly juggling the baby, squirted a few drops of formula on his wrist to test its temperature. She couldn’t help but notice that his hands, though large, were sensitive looking, with long-boned agile fingers, and that not even the boyish lock of nut-brown hair that had fallen across his forehead did much to soften his hawkish profile.
“You must be Eric,” she said after a long silence, and was pleased with her cool, friendly tone. “And this is Emily?”
“Okay, so you know who we are.” Still intent on what he was doing, it was a moment or two before he cocked that sardonic half smile once more in her direction. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
Eric was fairly proud of the way he’d handled the situation so far. Especially considering the shock it had given him to walk into the kitchen expecting to find his mom up early and making breakfast, the way he remembered her doing most all the mornings of his growing up. And instead seeing…her. Like coming face-to-face with a damn ghost.
It was all he could do to make himself look at the woman. He kept his eyes on the little one instead, and found himself smiling way down inside the way he always did when he watched her eat and listened to her make those hardworking squeaky drinking sounds. He felt himself go calm and quiet, and didn’t look up when the woman told him, in her brisk lawyer’s voice, what he’d already guessed.
“I’m an attorney. I represent Gerald and Barbara O’Rourke, Emily’s grandparents. I have a court—”
“I know what you are.” He was able to keep it low, but couldn’t quite manage soft. The words grated between his teeth like he was chewing on glass. “Now you tell me who you are, or I swear you’re gonna be out that door, blizzard or no blizzard.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be leaving right away, Eric.” Now her voice was just as hard-edged as his. “Not unless that baby goes with me. I have a court order—” A gasp interrupted her, and both of them jerked like guilty children toward the sound.
Eric’s heart gave an exultant leap. For there was Lucy, coming through the kitchen doorway, wearing a look he remembered well—the look of a mama bear charging to the aid of her cub.
Chapter 3
Before his mother could say a word, Eric sang out with false cheer, “Hey, Mom!” He motioned her into the room with a savage little jerk of his head. “Say hello to the viper you let into your house last night.”
Then he got out of her way while his mother swept past them both, her house shoes making sandy noises on the linoleum floor. When she reached the table she halted and rounded on them, fired up and vibrating like some kind of self-contained energy source. And, darned if Eric even remembered that old yellow bathrobe she was wearing, the one that had made her seem to the little boy he’d been like a tiny broken-off piece of sunshine.
“What’s this?” she rasped in that rusty-file voice of hers, glaring at her houseguest. “Devon? Something about you taking Emily? What’s this about a court order?”
The lawyer’s mouth popped open, but Eric, who was beginning to enjoy himself, got there first. “That’s right, Ma.” He lifted the bottle and squinted at what was left in it before placing it on the counter, then shifted the little one to his shoulder. “This lady has chased me—” he said that in a crooning tone as he patted “—all the way from L.A. She means—ah, there you go, darlin’—to take Emily, here, away from me.”
Beside him, Devon carefully put down the piece of toast she’d been holding and dusted crumbs from her hands, like someone preparing to do battle. Folding her arms across her chest, she turned her head toward him and said in a low, even tone, “I wouldn’t have had to chase you if you hadn’t skipped town. You do know I could have sent marshals to arrest you and bring you back by force?”
His mother heard that, and exclaimed, “Arrest you?” She glared, outraged, at Devon, then glanced wildly toward the back porch door. For one lovely moment Eric thought she might be about to do what he’d threatened to do—throw her houseguest out on her rear, blizzard or no.
Apparently that thought occurred to Devon, too, because she pushed away from the counter and appealed to Lucy in a hurried and breathless voice. “Mrs. Lanagan—Lucy—please believe me, that’s the last thing—”
“You said you were a friend of Eric’s!”
She shook her head emphatically. “No. I said I was looking for Eric. I’m sorry if you misunderstood.”
From his spectator’s spot at the counter, Eric sourly muttered, “Lawyers.”
Devon shifted her attention back to him; he could feel her eyes even though he still couldn’t bring himself to look directly at her. That once had been more than enough.
“Look,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be like this.” He had to admit that quiet but vibrant voice would be a real killer in the courtroom. “I wanted to come myself, to meet you in person and, perhaps, appeal to your sense of compassion.”
“Compassion!” With one word, she obliterated the emotional shell he’d built around himself, like popping a balloon.
“—and fairness—”
“Good God—fairness?” Eric was so incensed he could hardly believe what he was hearing, much less articulate a reply. All he could do was stare down at the upturned face of the baby, now asleep and snoring gently on his chest, keep swallowing hard over and over again, trying without success to ease the knots of emotion inside him. Knots of fear, and anger and fierce protective devotion.
“Yes, fairness.” Having put him out of action for the moment, Devon was appealing once more to Lucy. “I’m an attorney, Mrs. Lanagan. I represent the O’Rourkes—”
“O’Rourke?” Lucy sounded like a startled frog.
“Emily’s grandparents. Parents of Susan O’Rourke, Emily’s mother. They’ve filed a petition for custody—”
“Wait a minute,” Lucy interrupted, “didn’t you say your name was O’Rourke?”
Eric swore softly but savagely.
“Mrs. Lanagan…please—”
“Hey,” Mike said from the doorway, not even trying to smother a yawn. “What’s going on?”
Eric let out his breath in an audible hiss. He had mixed feelings about his dad walking in just then. On the one hand, the interruption was at least something of a safety valve; he could feel tensions easing, not only in himself but in the room as well, as though everyone in it had taken the moment to retreat and regroup. On the other hand, his confidence in his own adulthood was having a hard enough time finding its compass in this house where he seemed to be constantly and confusingly tilting back and forth between being someone’s father and someone’s son.
“Mike.” Lucy pressed a hand to her forehead. “She’s a lawyer. She says she has a court order. She means to take Emily away.”
“Now wait a minute.” Devon had a hand up as if to ward them all off. “That’s for a judge to decide. All my clients want is a fair hearing. They have a right—”
“Your clients?” Three faces turned toward Eric, wearing almost identical expressions of surprise, as if, he thought, they’d all forgotten he was there. The little one chose that moment to stir on his shoulder and draw a long shuddering breath. He shifted her into the cradle of his left arm and began automatically to rock her, soothing her, soothing his anger. “Who’re you kidding? Just who are you, really? Come on, quit lying to us.”
“I’m not—”
“Evading, then. Come on—your name’s O’Rourke.” His lips curved stiffly, though he felt no amusement at all. Bracing himself, he forced his eyes to meet the ones he’d been so steadfastly avoiding. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Or did you think I’d consider it a coincidence that you happen to look just like her?”
Well…not just like her, he realized now that he was looking at her, really looking, for the first time. Hardship and drugs had robbed Susan O’Rourke of the beauty and vitality she’d been born with, long before Eric had ever laid eyes on her, dulling the fiery hair to a coarse and tarnished bronze, turning luminous alabaster skin to the color and texture of dirty chalk. But it was the eyes that made him understand, maybe for the first time, just how cruelly Susan O’Rourke had been cheated of everything she could have—should have—been. The eyes that glared back at him now held sparks of green fire. They glowed with life and energy and intelligence. Staring into them made him burn with sadness and anger, remembering Susan’s eyes, especially the way he’d seen them last—sunken pools, shadowed with hopelessness and despair, fading to flat, final emptiness.
“Susan was my sister.”
The words broke the tension that had been building in that dimly lit kitchen, like a baseball hurled through a window. Totally engaged with each other in some sort of tug-of-war of wills, Devon and Eric both ignored Lucy’s gasp, Mike’s small gesture warning her to be still.
“I wasn’t trying to evade anything,” Devon went on, in a voice utterly devoid of emotion, speaking only to Eric, now. “And I certainly didn’t intend to lie to anyone about my identity. I simply didn’t think it was relevant. As I said, I’m here acting as attorney for the O’Rourkes—period. The fact that they also happen to be my parents, and that the baby you’re holding is my niece, has no bearing on anything. You know that a judge has ordered you to submit to tests to prove your claim of paternity. If you are, in fact, this child’s father, then you will have an opportunity to explain to a judge why you think you, a single man with a globe-trotting lifestyle, should be granted custody of an infant over a mature and loving couple able to provide a secure and stable home.”
Loving couple. Stable home.
To Eric the words were knives, stabbing at his heart. He caught his breath and held it, afraid that if he let it loose all the rage and grief inside him would come with it. And he didn’t want to take that risk, not while he was holding the little one. He’d promised—he’d sworn on his life—to protect her. He’d vowed to make sure none of it touched her, ever—neither the violence nor the ugliness of the images in his mind.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lanagan—please, hear me out. Let me explain…” He could hear Devon appealing to his parents in that cold, intelligent voice, so different from Susan’s. Susan’s voice had been higher pitched, sweeter, but cracked and ruined, so that she sounded like a little girl with a sore throat.
“Eric, you have to keep my baby safe. Don’t let them get her. Please…promise me you won’t let them have her. Please…”
“I will…I will. I promise.”
Those were the last words Susan had ever heard. In the next moment the monitor’s alarm had gone off and nurses had come running, shoving him roughly aside. He’d stood then almost exactly as he was standing now, holding the little one just like this, gazing down at her perfect, innocent face while his insides filled up with the ache of an angry sadness, and elsewhere in the room people went on speaking to each other in words that had no meaning to him.
“It’s true, Lucy…Mike.” Devon had her back to him now, addressing his parents as if they were a jury—which was, he understood, just what they were: a jury of two. Her voice was vibrant, but the emotion in it seemed calculated to him; she sounded like an actress—a good one—doing a scene from a play.
“Susan—Emily’s mother—was my younger sister. She ran away from home five years ago, when she was fourteen. My parents tried everything they knew of to find her, without success. We hadn’t heard a word from her in all that time—we didn’t know whether she was alive. We probably still wouldn’t know, except that when your son brought her to the hospital, she was unconscious and he—” she tossed a little nod toward Eric “—claimed he didn’t know her last name. They listed her as Susan Doe. Eventually, the police identified her from fingerprint records my parents had given when they’d filed the missing person report. They’d had us both fingerprinted when we were kids, apparently.” She paused for just a moment, and Eric saw her touch her forehead as if that troubled her, somehow.
Then she drew a regrouping breath and went on. “Of course, my parents rushed to the hospital. They were too late. Susan had died.” With flawless timing, she let the words hang there.
Lucy, his mom—tough as nails on the outside but, as Eric well knew, with a marshmallow interior—made a distressed sound. He saw her reach for his dad’s hand. To hide her triumph, Devon turned from them and took two slow steps toward Eric. Her eyes burned into his as she continued her relentless summation…burned with that cold green fire.
And in spite of himself, in spite of everything, he found himself admiring her. He thought, my God, she’s incredible. Incredible. How, he wondered, could a woman look so damn beautiful so early in the morning, with smudged makeup, uncombed hair and wearing his dad’s old flannel bathrobe?
How could someone so damn beautiful be so damn wrong? And how could looking at someone that beautiful make him feel so full of…what was it he felt? Not hate—hate was cold, bitter, a decay in the soul. This was something white-hot in his gullet, like a slug of straight whiskey; a fire underneath his skin, an electrical charge delivered straight to his brain. Watching her, listening to her, made him burn with anger, seethe with frustration, vibrate with excitement.
Damn her. She made him feel—there was only one word for it—aroused.
“She’d regained consciousness,” Devon said softly, still speaking to his parents but holding his eyes, “long enough to provide the information for her baby’s birth certificate. Since she had named Eric Lanagan as the father, Emily had been released to his custody.” Displaying a nice flair for the dramatic, she whirled back to face her real audience. “Since then, he has refused to allow my parents—Emily’s grandparents!—to visit her. You can imagine how much grief this has caused these people—to find their lost child after so many years only to lose her forever—” at which point, predictably, Lucy sniffed, coughed ferociously and dabbed at her nose “—and then on top of it, to be denied the chance to see and hold their grandchild. I’m sure you can understand why Susan’s parents are hoping to have the chance to raise their daughter’s little girl.”
“Like a second chance,” Mike said, and there was a suspicious gruffness even in his voice.
“Exactly…” It was a sigh of satisfaction. Eric halfexpected her to add, “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”
He looked defiantly straight at them, then, because he could feel them all watching him. Three pairs of eyes arrayed against him, full of questions and accusations. His mom and dad sitting close together at the table, Lucy with one hand clutching Mike’s and the other clamped across her mouth and her eyes suspiciously bright. And Devon standing, half facing them, with one hand on the back of a chair and her head turned toward Eric, as if she’d just finished addressing a jury. As, of course, she had. And it was obvious to him that he’d already been found guilty.
He had to get out of there, blizzard or no blizzard. He had to find a way to calm his mind, prepare himself for the battle ahead. He could put the little one down in his room—she’d sleep awhile, yet—and go someplace peaceful and quiet.
And he knew, suddenly, just where he could go. The place he’d escaped to so often during the turbulent years of adolescence.
But first, he couldn’t hold back the question. One question. He hurled it at Devon and it shattered the silence like a shovelful of gravel slung against a wall.
“Why’d she run away?”
