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“Oh, no. He’s made it plain he wants nothing to do with him.”
“Well, that’s good!”
“Mmm.” Mallory rubbed a hand over her nape. “But I feel uneasy. He’s been acting so strangely. Why would he think he had the right to order me to send my stuff back?”
“In my humble opinion, the man’s a control freak. Look how he tried to run Janine’s life! Now she’s gone, he wants to run yours too. But I recall Janine saying her brother hated small towns, so I don’t imagine he’ll hang around.”
Mallory’s nerves tightened as she watched Jordan cross the street, his lean energetic frame set off to perfection in a white T-shirt and taupe shorts. His beard gave him a rakish appearance and as she took in his black hair and rugged features, she had to admit he was an eye-catching sight. But he certainly was not her type! She liked men who were kind and compassionate; strong yet tender—
“Mallory?” Elsa’s voice broke into her musings. “Are you still there?”
“Mm? Oh…yes, Elsa, but I have to go now.”
“Good luck, dear. Let me know what happens.”
Mallory put down the phone and turning from the window, she scooped up Matthew, who was on his stomach, worming his way over the carpet. Slipping his blue T-shirt into his pants, she tucked him into the crook of one arm.
“You’re the most beautiful baby in the world.” She kissed his brow and inhaled the sweet scent of his skin. “And I want you to be a good boy when you meet your uncle. I know he doesn’t want to see you, but it wouldn’t be right to let him leave town without at least saying hello. He’s a bit of an ogre. Do you think you’re up to it?”
“Goo,” he gurgled. And tried to reach her topknot.
She laughed softly and arched her head back. “Oh, you just love to get your fingers into my hair, don’t you!” As she spoke, she heard steps crunching up the drive. And her pulse quickened when she heard Jordan come into the house.
“Mallory!” His deep voice reverberated from the front hall. The voice of a drill sergeant! “Where are you?”
With a fingertip, she tidied a wisp of Matthew’s hair. “Okay, sweetie,” she whispered, “let’s get this over with.”
Bracing herself, she walked out to the hall.
Jordan Caine was standing amid her belongings, with his back to her.
“I’m here,” she said.
As he turned, he held out a long white envelope. “I want you to read this—” He broke off when he saw the baby, and his brow lowered in a dark frown. “What’s going on?”
“I know you don’t want anything to do with Matthew, but it’s not going to kill you to say hi!”
Jordan stared at the baby wriggling in her arms, the infant’s gaze glued to her topknot as he endeavoured to reach it. This was Matthew? Well, he’d really screwed up there, hadn’t he! But it surprised him to see the delectable Ms. Madison with a child. She certainly hadn’t looked pregnant at her brother’s wedding…
He recalled Janine telling him that Tom’s sister was thirty-one and single. And he recalled saying irately to Janine, when she told him that unlike him, Mallory was enthusiastic about the upcoming marriage, “Tell that dried-up old spinster to butt out of our lives!”
That was before he’d met her, of course, and when he did meet her, on the wedding day, he’d found out that far from being dried-up, she was lush as a ripe exotic fruit. But not, definitely not, his type. He felt about redheads the way he felt about small towns…and about babies!
“I know this must be upsetting for you.” Mallory’s voice was apologetic. “I’m sorry. And I know how against the marriage you were, but Janine loved you so much, and I know she’d have wanted you to love this baby too.”
“Why the heck would Janine care if I loved this kid or not? Look, read my lips. I don’t like babies. And I have no interest in this one or any other. So if you’ll just put him back in his crib or whatever, then you and I can get on with business. This—” he waggled the white envelope at her “—is a contract I’ve just signed with Burton Barton, the local realtor. I’ve put the house up for sale.”
“House? Which house?”
“This house.”
“This house?”
“Number Five Seaside Lane. It’s mine.”
She couldn’t have looked more stunned if he’d told her he’d planted a bomb in the basement. “It can’t be yours!”
He felt a pang of compunction when he saw the panic in her eyes. He ignored it. “I bought it before the wedding, when I knew you’d beaten me and that come hell or high water those two were going to tie the knot—”
“It wasn’t a case of beating you! It wasn’t a competition, to see who would win—I just wanted what was best for Tom and Janine—”
“All the arrangements were made through my lawyer,” he continued tersely. “I knew your brother had taken a job in Seashore and I knew they were having a hard time finding a rental place they could afford so I bought this house and made sure they learned it was available—and for a minimal rent, because I wanted my sister to live comfortably.”
“Did they know,” she asked, “that it was yours?”
“No.”
“You did that for them?” This secret, generous gesture put him in a new light. Mallory felt herself soften towards him. “That was so kind of you—”
“I did it for Janine,” he interrupted rudely. “I no longer have any need of the place. End of story.”
Her momentary softness dissipated in a flash. “I’ve signed a one-year lease,” she said in a defiant tone. “So you can’t evict me. At least, not till the year is up.”
“I can,” he said. “And I intend to. The moment the property changes hands, your lease becomes null and void.”
She seemed to shrink back from him. Then she shook her head and her upper lip curled. Unmistakably, contemptuously curled. “You’re quite something, Jordan Caine.”
He hadn’t known that tawny brown eyes could look so cold. “It’s business,” he said curtly. “And there’s no room for sentiment in business.”
“Tom was wrong about you. He believed that despite your overbearing attitude, you were a good man at heart. I’m glad he’s not here to see that you have no heart at all.” She clenched her jaw as she prepared to humble herself. “Can you at least let me keep the house for the summer, to give me time to look for someplace else?”
“No can do. It’s May already and Barton’s going to advertise Number Five as an ideal house for a bed-and-breakfast business, so it will be to a buyer’s advantage to move in immediately, before the start of the tourist season.”
“You’d throw me out in the street—with this baby?” She took in a deep breath and when she went on, her voice had a distinct tremor in it. “I gave up my job in Seattle so that I could work at home and be a good mother to Matthew. I’m on a very tight budget now. I’d never have been able to swing it if I hadn’t been able to factor in the low rent.”
“That’s not my problem. Before you got yourself pregnant, you should have looked to the future. Where’s the baby’s father? Doesn’t he contribute to his upkeep?”
She gaped at him as if he’d sprouted an extra head.
He stabbed the envelope at her. “It’s your responsibility and his. Not mine. What happened anyway? Did he dump you, or did—”
“You think—” she swallowed hard “—that this is my baby?”
He raised a cynical eyebrow. “If he isn’t,” he retorted, “then whose is he?”
“He’s Janine’s, of course!” She sounded as if she was spelling out something incredibly simple to a dim-witted child.
“You’re lying.” He glared at her. “Janine died in the train wreck.” He felt an ache in his heart, the same ache he always felt when he thought about his sister. “She was eight months pregnant, but—”
“Janine had her baby two weeks before the accident!”
He stared at her, his mind reeling.
Hugging Matthew close, she went on in a tone of utter dismay, “Didn’t she call you at the time and let you know?”
He felt the hair at his nape prickle. “You’re saying…this is really Janine’s child?”
She nodded. “Yes, this is really her child.”
“Dear God.” He exhaled a shaky breath. “No, Janine didn’t call…our arrangement was that I would phone her. I knew I’d be out in the jungle most of the time so I told her I’d be incommunicado in August but I’d get back to the mining camp around her due date and give her a call. I was actually back earlier than I’d expected, but before I had a chance to call her, you phoned with the news about the train crash. I was shattered when you told me Janine and Tom had died—and when I asked about the baby, you said there were no survivors in that compartment of the train. I assumed Janine was still pregnant, of course. And at that point, you broke down so I didn’t press you for details.”
“I’d told you everything I knew. But…didn’t you get the message I left for you at the camp the following day?”
“No.” He frowned. “I didn’t get any message.”
“Jordan, the police turned up at my apartment, hours after they’d notified me about Tom and Janine. They told me the baby had been found in the wreckage, miraculously alive and unhurt. I phoned the camp a second time but you weren’t there so I left a message.” Tears welled up and she blinked them back. “I can’t believe you didn’t get it.”
He struggled to get his thoughts in order. “Why were Janine and Tom traveling by train with a new baby?”
“They were on their way home from L.A.—they’d gone down there for a friend’s wedding. Matthew was born there.”
“Was he premature?”
“No, he was a full-term baby—Janine had made a mistake with her dates. Anyway, Matthew decided during the wedding reception that he was ready to make his way into the world! After they got him out of hospital, Tom and Janine stayed on in their friends’ apartment for ten days. Then they bought a car seat to transport Matthew home.” Mallory’s voice trembled. “The police said it saved his little life.”
For a long moment, she and Jordan looked at each other in silence. Without taking her eyes from him, she wiped a tear away with a fingertip. And then another.
“So,” she whispered finally, “where do we go from here?”
“Janine’s baby. It’s…hard to take this in.”
She smiled wanly through her tears. “He looks like Janine, except for the fair hair.” As she spoke, she moved over to him. “Isn’t he adorable?”
Dazedly, he looked at the infant but as soon as Matthew saw him, the child emitted a scream of terror.
“Honey!” Mallory’s tone was startled. “What’s wrong?”
The baby wrenched himself around and grabbing her shirt, buried his face against her bosom. But even that didn’t altogether muffle his screams.
“Sweetie, what’s the matter?” asked Mallory urgently. “What is it?”
The child twisted his head around, eyes flooded with tears, but the mere sight of Jordan sent him off into a renewed session of frantic screaming.
“It would seem,” Jordan said in an ironic tone, “that my nephew doesn’t like me.”
“Hush, Matthew, hush, sweetheart.” Mallory held the baby against her shoulder and rubbed his back soothingly. To Jordan, she said, “It must be your beard.”
“He’s never seen a beard before?”
“He’s not used to men—bearded or clean-shaven. Through the week, Elsa has been looking after him—”
“Elsa?”
“Elsa Carradine. She lives a few doors along from here. She’s been baby-sitting Matthew during the week. Matthew’s used to being with her, and with her boarders—the three Barnley sisters.”
The baby’s screams had been replaced by convulsive sobs. Mallory went on hurriedly, “I’m going to take him through to the bedroom and settle him, then I’ll put him down for his nap. When I come back, we’ll talk.”
She added, as she left, “And I hope you’ll rethink your decision to sell the house, now that you know the reason for my present financial situation.”
Worn out after his crying bout, Matthew fell asleep as soon as Mallory tucked him into his crib.
Glad to have a quiet moment to herself, she crossed to the bedroom window and looked out. What a shock it had been to discover that Jordan owned the house—and that he was the one who had set the incredibly low rent. She could hardly believe he’d behaved so generously, considering how adamantly he’d opposed the marriage.
How the two of them had fought about it!
She sighed as she remembered the first time they’d spoken. He’d phoned her from somewhere in South America after Janine had told him she was pregnant and planning to marry. He’d called Tom every name under the sun. Unable to fly home immediately as he was under contract to finish a mining job, he’d demanded that Mallory talk the couple out of getting married. She had refused.
He’d been furious. He’d phoned her several times over the next few days, but she’d remained firm. Tom wanted to marry Janine and as far as she was concerned, that was the end of it. Her brother had always had a good head on his shoulders and she had the utmost faith in both him and his good judgment of people.
She hadn’t actually met Jordan Caine till the day of the wedding. She’d been dreading that first meeting, but to her surprise, his attitude had been nonconfrontational.
Only later had he revealed his true colours.
The reception had been held at a lakeside hotel outside Seattle, and after Tom and Janine had left for their honeymoon, Mallory had been feeling weepy. She’d stolen away from the party, and had walked down to the beach.
The evening was late but the summer air was still warm. She’d thought herself totally alone as she’d stood gazing out over the moonlit waters—until she’d heard Jordan Caine’s voice come harshly from behind her.
“I’ll never forgive you.”
She’d turned, her heart thumping wildly against her ribs. He was standing a few feet away, his tux jacket shoved back by hands fisted on his hips as he glared at her.
She blinked away the tears that had been blurring her gaze, and tried to gather herself together. But before she could respond, he went on,
“Your brother should be locked up! My sister’s only eighteen—for heaven’s sake, she’s just finished high school! He took advantage of her, got her pregnant, it’s an absolute disgrace—”
“They’re married now. Can’t you just accept that?”
“She’s just a baby herself! She could have had the child adopted—”
“Janine desperately wanted to keep her baby—”
“She’s immature! She’s hardly able to look after herself—”
“Tom will look after them both.” Mallory kept her voice steady despite a spurt of anger. “You need have no worries about Janine…or the baby.”
“Dammit, you’re every bit as stubborn and irresponsible as he is! If you’d backed me up, this wedding would never have taken place. My sister could have had the baby adopted and then gone on with her life—”
“She is getting on with her life. And it’s going to be a good life. Tom starts work in Seashore when they come back from their honeymoon, and they’ve rented a lovely house there, for next to nothing. They were lucky, I admit. If it hadn’t been available, they’d have had to settle for a basement suite…but still, they’d have been happy, because they’re in love—”
