A Father's Secret

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“How’s that for timing?” Sasha said with a grin. “Now, where’s my boy?”

Erin leaned forward to give her friend a quick hug before stepping back to let her through. “He’s on his mat in my sitting room and is thoroughly entranced by the play gym you gave him. You spoil him, you know.”

“Ah, he’s easy to spoil. And how are things going with Mr. Handsome?” Sasha asked, waggling her eyebrows. “This old married lady wants to live vicariously.”

Erin laughed, wondering what Sam would think of Sasha grilling her about him. “Old? I don’t think so. And ‘things’ as you so neatly put it, are going just fine. Mr. Thornton is the perfect guest. Not a single complaint from him so far.”

“And what would I have to complain about?”

Erin’s cheeks flared with heat for the second time that morning. She wheeled around to see Sam leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb that led into the kitchen. Damn it, but the man could move as silently as a ghost. Just how much had he heard? She suffered a moment of silent agony at the thought that he might have caught Sasha’s moniker for him, and hoped like mad that he wouldn’t have thought it had come from her.

“Nothing, I hope,” she said with what she hoped was a calmness she was far from feeling on the inside.

“Of course not,” Sasha interjected. “Erin’s one of the best in the business. Hi, I’m Sasha Edsell.”

“Sam Thornton.” Sam offered his hand. “Sorry to interrupt you ladies, but I just wanted to confirm what time we’re leaving?”

“About a quarter past nine, if that’s okay with you?”

“Great, thanks. Nice meeting you, Sasha.”

Sam excused himself to get ready, leaving the two women alone. As he disappeared from view, Erin puzzled over the way it almost seemed that he’d wanted to meet Sasha for himself, as if he hadn’t believed her when she said she trusted her friend with Riley. She eschewed the idea as quickly as she thought it. It wasn’t as if Sam had any say or interest in Riley’s welfare beyond that of a casual observer.

Sasha fanned herself theatrically. “Oh, my, you weren’t kidding when you said he was handsome. I don’t blame you for taking him with you today. If you left him behind I might have been inclined to jump his bones myself!”

“Sasha, please!” Erin said, putting a finger to her lips to caution her friend to silence. Sometimes Sasha’s enthusiasm for an idea was simply irrepressible and Erin couldn’t fight the smile that tweaked at her lips. “Besides, Tony would never approve.”

She didn’t for one minute think that Sasha would cheat on her husband. Her friend was very happily married but, as she’d pointed out more than once, she wasn’t blind.

“How are you going to manage with the gorgeous Sam for your trip into town?” Sasha asked as they entered the sitting room before picking Riley up for a cuddle.

“It won’t be a problem. He needs some stuff from the office supply store so I’m leaving him there. It’s just across the road from the lawyers. He said he’ll wait for me until I’m done.”

“Did you notice something familiar about him?” Sasha asked. “I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Familiar? No. Maybe you’ve seen him in the papers or something. I believe he’s some high-flying businessman in San Francisco, but he’s here on some kind of sabbatical to write a book.”

“Hmm, you could be right. Ah well, it’ll come to me if it’s important. You should go and get yourself ready if you’re going to leave on time,” Sasha urged. “Riley will be just fine with me.”

“Thanks, Sash,” Erin said. Satisfied that Riley was in safe hands, Erin shot through to her bedroom to change her clothes and get ready.

As she dressed, she thought about how grateful she was for her friend’s help. She wanted her wits about her for the meeting this morning, so not having the distraction of Riley there was a relief. Talking about the problems with the fertility clinic would be hard enough without having her beautiful, perfect son in front of her to remind her how much she stood to lose.

Sam drummed his fingers on the desk in his office, staring out at the tranquil bay beyond and wondering about the contents of the letter Erin had written to his lawyers. He knew exactly what was in the letter that had been sent to Erin, and he’d expected to have heard from his lawyer by now regarding her response. Now, it appeared she’d been dragging her feet over a reply. The knowledge that she’d been taking her time to write back when she could simply have called them on the phone or sent an email, lit a slow simmering anger inside of him.

Did she not care at all that Riley might have a living father? A man who wanted to love him and be a part of his life just as much as she was? A man who, if the tests checked out, had every right to be? A man who had denied himself the right to have a child, or even to love again, after letting down his wife so badly? That very same man was now faced with the enthralling opportunity to be a father after all, and she was stalling to keep him from it.

All it would take was a cheek swab. He’d already registered his own with the testing laboratory. This waiting around felt interminable. He’d wondered already how it would stand if he’d done the swab of Riley’s cheek himself, when she wasn’t in the room, but he had a suspicion that somewhere along the line her permission would be necessary before the legal eagles would accept such evidence in a bid for any kind of custody.

His fingers curled into a fist of frustration, clenching so tightly his knuckles ached. His lawyers had warned him the process could take more time than he was willing to allow. It was part of the reason he’d hired an investigator to find her and definitely part of the reason why he’d come here. Waiting had never come easy for Sam. He was a results-oriented person and to get results you had to do things. Still, it wasn’t as if he had any other option right now, but to wait. A glance at his watch reminded him that it was time to head downstairs.

Erin waited for him in the lobby. As he did every time he saw her, he felt that familiar tug of temptation and, oh, boy, did she look tempting. She’d changed from her usual jeans and a blouse to a simply tailored navy dress with white piping, one that left her slender arms bare, with a wide neckline that exposed her collarbones. His mouth dried as he imagined tracing those delicate hollows with the tip of his tongue. Swallowing against the dryness and averting his eyes from examining the rest of her body, Sam reached for the front door.

“Shall we go then?” he said.

“Yes, I’m all ready.”

They walked outside to the driveway where she’d parked the all-wheel-drive station wagon a little earlier. The car was much like the one he used to drive before the accident, right down to the color. A cold fist gripped his chest, making it difficult to draw a breath. He hadn’t taken the wheel of a vehicle since that fateful day. In fact, Ray was the only person he’d trusted enough to drive him since the accident. Even then, it had taken several nail-biting months before he’d relaxed enough to sit in the front passenger seat.

A cold sweat broke over his body. This had been a stupid idea. He had no idea what kind of driver Erin was. She could be a speed freak for all he knew. A trickle of moisture ran down his spine.

Oblivious to what was going through his mind, Erin smiled beside him and held up a key ring, offering it to him. “Would you like to drive?”

“Hell no!” he erupted.

She looked taken aback by his short outburst but calmly palmed the keys and went around to the driver’s side of the vehicle. He forced himself to take the necessary final step that would get him to the car door. His hand shook as he reached for the handle, lifting it and pulling the door open. He shouldn’t have suggested he come with her. He should simply have stayed in his room and kept working. But he refused to back down now. he hadn’t gotten where he was today by backing down from challenges—even if the only one challenging him was himself.

Somehow he seated himself in the passenger seat. He scrabbled for the seat belt, yanking it so swiftly the mechanism locked and failed to let him pull the belt out far enough to clip it.

“If you just let it roll back a bit,” Erin suggested, giving him a strange look, “it’ll let you pull it out slowly.”

He gave it another tug, a hard one, and it locked again. To his surprise, Erin leaned across him, her breasts pressing against his arm as she reached around him and her hand settled over his.

“Here,” she said, “like this.”

He forced himself to relinquish his death grip on the seatbelt and allowed her to release the belt before pulling it smoothly across his chest and lap.

“There you go,” she said securing it into the buckle. “All safe.”

Safe? She was kidding right? You were only as safe as the skill set of the next idiot on the road. In his case, he’d been that idiot, and Laura had paid the ultimate price for his arrogance. Sam forced himself to breathe slowly—in through his nose, out through his mouth—and try to relax.

“Thanks,” he said abruptly, his eyes locked on the windshield in front of him.

Erin started the car and eased it into gear, rolling slowly down the driveway. So far, so good, Sam thought, but all sense of safety fled the moment she turned onto the road. He tried to relax his grip on the door’s hand rest, but he failed miserably.

“How long is the trip?” he asked, his voice sounding unnaturally strained, even to his ears.

“Twenty-five minutes or so,” Erin said, her eyes flicking from the rearview mirror and back to the road in front of them again.

Twenty-five minutes. It may as well be a lifetime, Sam thought as she guided the vehicle along the winding road. He had to admit she was a competent driver, not taking any unnecessary risks or taking any of the corners too wide. He could almost kid himself that he was starting to relax until he saw a car start to pull out of a driveway ahead of them. His foot stomped an imaginary brake, the action earning him another cautious sideways glance from Erin but, thankfully, she kept her thoughts to herself.

By the time they reached the office supply store he couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.

“Will you be okay if I leave you now?” Erin asked quietly as she got out of the car to stand beside him, one small hand resting on his forearm as if to offer him comfort.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine, thanks,” he said stoically.

“There’s a café right there,” she said, pointing to a bustling business not far from where she’d parked. “And I’ll be just down the road. Do you want my cell number, in case you need me?”

Need her? He hadn’t been able to stop wanting her since the moment he’d set foot on the soil of Connell Lodge, but need her? No, he didn’t want to need anybody.

“No, seriously, I’ll be fine. When you’re finished just come and get me at the café. I’ll buy you a coffee before we head back.”

“Sure, sounds like fun,” Erin said. “I won’t be far, anyway,” she continued, pointing to a two-story white building farther down the street.

Sam made out the signage at the front. Morin and Morin, Attorneys at Law. She was going to see a lawyer? What exactly did that mean? Was she going to try and fight his right to find out if he was Riley’s father? All sorts of irrational and angry thoughts peppered his mind as he watched her head down the road and enter the building she’d indicated.

He slipped his cellphone from his pocket and hit the speed dial for his lawyer’s direct line.

“Dave,” he said the moment he heard the man’s voice on the end of the phone. “I want you to get a court order to request the baby’s DNA, now.”

“Good morning to you, too, Sam,” David Fox’s amused voice echoed in his ear. “I thought we decided on a softer approach first time around, to gauge if the other party would enter discussions and testing willingly. You know, avoid potentially antagonizing the woman who might just be your baby’s mother? The woman you probably don’t really want to alienate?”

“I know,” Sam said, huffing out a breath of frustration. “But I don’t want to wait any longer. I want the tests done and I want those answers now.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the lawyer replied, his voice now all solemnity. Maybe he finally understood how serious Sam was.

“Good, call me when you have news.”

Sam disconnected the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. So, Erin Connell thought she could fight him. Well, she was in for a fight all right.

Four

As the receptionist showed Erin into the office, Janet Morin rose from the seat behind her desk and extended a hand.

“Erin, lovely to see you. How’s Riley doing?”

“Great, thanks. Growing like a weed,” Erin said and smiled in response. “And Amy? How is she?”

“The same.” Janet laughed. “Sometimes I regret that I made the decision to come back to work so soon, but I know staying home with her full-time would have driven me stir-crazy! Splitting the days at home versus in the office between my husband and me has been working out wonderfully. This way, we have the best of both worlds.”

Janet’s husband, the other half of Morin and Morin, shared child care duties. Erin envied them their sense of unity. While James had looked forward to being a father, he’d made it clear from the outset that he wouldn’t be hands-on until their baby was old enough to talk. She’d wondered if he might change his position once Riley was born, but on consideration she’d rejected the thought. Older than her by fifteen years, James had been so set in his ways he’d barely coped with the change in routine caused by marriage and sharing decision-making relating to the business. When it came to his child, he probably would have done exactly as he’d said.

Janet gestured to Erin to take a seat and settled back behind her desk.

“Tell me, what brings you here? I have to admit I was a bit curious. Don’t you use the Connell family lawyers?”

Erin felt her gut clench and she forced herself to relax and breathe evenly. “Yes, we do. For the lodge, anyway. But this is of a more personal nature.”

She briefly outlined the situation, thankful that Janet was already aware about the circumstances relating to Riley’s conception.

“The clinic is admitting liability?” Janet asked when Erin finished speaking.

“I’m not sure, but I understand they’ve been closed down.” She reached into her handbag. “This is the letter I was sent.”

Janet took it from her and sat back, reading it carefully. “Seems a reasonable enough request,” she commented, giving Erin a piercing look.

“James is Riley’s father.” He has to be, Erin amended silently.

“Let’s prove it then. If it turns out that this Party A is Riley’s father, I imagine you will want to know ahead of time exactly where you stand, right?”

“Yes.” Erin exhaled on a breath before drawing in a new one. “About payment—”

“Let’s not worry about that unless it looks as if we have to go to court on any of this, okay?”

Tears sprang to Erin’s eyes. “Are you sure, Janet?”

“Of course I’m sure. I know you’ve had it tough,” Janet said empathetically. “We’re friends, right? Custody issues are not my specialty, but I will do more research for you. It might take me a while to get around to it because I have a rather full few days ahead, but I’ll do what I can and call you, okay?”

“Thank you so much.”

“Now, let’s make sure we have all our details right,” Janet said, reaching for a pen and paper and starting to make notes.

Erin answered Janet’s questions as best she could even though the prospect of having to share custody with Riley terrified her. Rationally, she knew that if James wasn’t her baby’s father that Riley’s biological father should have some right to his son’s life. But emotionally…well, that was another story.

As a girl who’d grown up with nothing and who’d run away from home at sixteen to escape a mother who wished she’d never been born, Erin had fought hard to be where she was now—to have what she had now. And she’d gone through hell and back to have her baby boy. He was hers—heart and soul—and she’d do whatever she had to do to keep it that way.

An hour later, Erin slid her sunglasses on her face as she exited the building. She wished it were as easy to walk away from the glaring fear that held her stomach in a tight knot as it was to walk away from the building. At least she knew that Janet was taking steps to protect her and her son.

While Janet had agreed that her request for more information from the other party’s lawyers was a way of stalling things, she felt it might carry more weight if the request came from her, acting as Erin’s lawyer. She’d also recommended that Erin instigate her own testing to prove James was Riley’s father.

This, of course, engendered its own problems. Janet had called an independent laboratory that would courier a testing kit to Erin overnight. All she apparently needed was a strand of James’s hair, or even an old toothbrush of his, together with a mouth swab from Riley. That would allow the lab to extract enough DNA to prove paternity.

Swabbing Riley’s mouth would be the easy part, but finding something of James’s, that was another story. He’d made it clear when he knew he was dying that he didn’t want her to hang on to his things unnecessarily. Respecting his wishes, after he’d passed she’d donated his clothes to a shelter and distributed specific possessions to his friends as he’d requested. His more personal effects had been boxed up to give to Riley when he was old enough to start asking about his dad. But even if she got them out now, she doubted she’d find anything among his photo albums and awards from which DNA could be extracted.

She thought for a moment of the silver-backed clothes brush that she’d also packed away. A family heirloom that dated back to his great-grandfather, the original Connell of Connell Lodge, she’d carefully wrapped it in acid-free tissue and put it in the box with James’s other things. She couldn’t remember ever seeing James use the brush, but maybe there would be a stray hair still locked within its bristles.

Satisfied she had a starting point, Erin walked toward the café where Sam had said he’d wait for her. She cast a quick look at her watch and groaned inwardly at the time. He had been waiting quite a while. Hopefully he was a patient man, although somehow that particular description wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when she thought of him.

And she did think of him. A lot. Her guest had worked his way into her thoughts with next to no effort on his part. Into her thoughts and into her dreams at night. It was unsettling. She was still so newly a widow. She shouldn’t be having feelings for another man like she was. But as hard as she fought against the attraction, there was a part of her that relished every moment with him. Awake or asleep.

In the dark of night she’d tried to rationalize everything. She’d gone a long time without intimacy, so it was only natural that she’d miss it. Sam was the first man she’d spent any significant time with since James’s death. And even when James was alive, before he got sick, their relationship had not been sensual or physically satisfying for a while.

She and James had begun to grow apart long before they’d won the lottery run by the IVF clinic that gave them the chance to finally have a child. Trying to conceive had turned the focus of their marriage into a constant round of temperature charts and cycles and performance on command.

It was no wonder, really, that two years ago James had sought comfort in another woman’s arms. When, almost a whole year later, Erin had discovered his infidelity, he’d lain the blame firmly at her feet. According to him, she’d destroyed every last moment of spontaneity in their marriage with her obsessive quest to become a mother. Of course he’d sought a simple, uncomplicated affair with someone who only craved his company and made no other demands upon him.