скачать книгу бесплатно
He didn’t expand immediately on his order for her to hold on, though. Instead, he continued to stare at her, studying her, taking her measure, maybe considering what to do next.
Karis endured the silence and the scrutiny, but if he was waiting for her to beg, he had a long wait.
Then, after she’d seen his jaw clench and unclench repeatedly, he finally said, “I’ll have the DNA tests done so I know once and for all if she’s mine, even though I don’t think she is.”
“And you’ll keep her in the meantime?”
There was another long silence before he shook his head. “Not without you here, too.”
Karis didn’t understand the edict, but rather than question it, she said, “I’m not leaving Northbridge for a few days. I have other business here.”
“If it’s with the rest of the Pratts, I’d tread carefully,” he warned in a way that held a bit of authoritative threat to it. “But just telling me you’ll be around town and only for a few days isn’t enough. If I let you out of my sight you could do what, for all I know, you planned to do all along—disappear and stick me with a baby you know isn’t mine.”
“Amy isn’t something to stick anyone with,” Karis said angrily. “You’d be lucky to have her. Lucky if she is yours. Amy is the only right thing my sister ever did. And as for my disappearing, I’m not Lea, and leaving Amy with you in no way washes my hands of her. Even if she is yours and you keep her I have every intention of finding work and someplace to live that’s as near to here as possible so that I can—”
Luke Walker cut her off as if nothing she said carried any weight. “There’s a room with its own bath in the attic. You can use it and put Amy in her old room—the crib is still there.”
“I can’t do that. I have to get a job. If I stay here, too, it defeats the whole purpose—”
“I’m not keeping her without you being right here until I sort out who she belongs to. If she isn’t mine—”
“Fine,” Karis said before he could say more, recognizing an ultimatum when she was given one.
His eyes narrowed. “That was quick. Did I just play into your hand?”
“Are you always this suspicious of everything and everyone?” she shot back.
“Of everything and everyone who has to do with Lea,” he answered without missing a beat. “I learned it the hard way.”
Karis swallowed her own anger. She’d known she wouldn’t be going into an ideal situation. In Lea’s wake, she never did.
“My résumé is out, I’ll do follow-ups on the phone from here and try to do any interviews that way, too, if I can. I can check want ads for jobs in Billings or some of the other towns or cities I saw on the road signs I passed getting here. It isn’t what I had planned, but I’ll make it work,” she said, thinking out loud.
To give him the entire picture of why she hadn’t put up more of a fight, she said, “Am I thrilled with staying in a house with a man I don’t even know? No. But I need a place for Amy and if that’s the only way you’ll keep her, it’s the only choice I have. And if you want to know the whole truth, staying here is better than sleeping in my car, which was what I was going to do because I can’t afford a hotel room. Plus, at least if I’m here, I’ll still be with Amy. I can still watch over her and go on taking care of her, and she won’t wake up tomorrow morning in a strange place with only an unfamiliar face to greet her. If you call your invitation playing into my hand, then even though the thought of my staying here never occurred to me, yes, I guess you did. Want to change your mind?”
Again he didn’t hurry to answer, pinning her with his gaze.
Then, with resignation, he said, “No. But I’ll be watching you.” He held out his hand, palm upward. “And I’ll take your car keys so you can’t sneak out in the middle of the night.”
“How do I know you’re not some kind of maniac who’s going to keep me prisoner or something?” she said, reluctant to concede.
“You don’t. I guess we’re both having to act on some blind trust.”
“You don’t trust me at all,” Karis countered.
“No, I don’t.”
He had the advantage and he knew it. And since she’d never thought he was some kind of maniac or she wouldn’t have let him anywhere near Amy, she knew his motives really were what he’d claimed—not to allow her the opportunity to take off and stick him with a baby that might not be his.
But that didn’t mean giving him her keys wasn’t galling.
“I need things from the car and the trunk and then you can have them,” she said.
“Give me the keys and I’ll go out with you.”
Karis sighed, rolled her eyes to let him know she thought he was being ridiculous, and dropped her keys into the large hand waiting for them.
He closed his fist around them and motioned toward the door. “Ladies first.”
Karis opened the door and went outside to her car. She gave Luke Walker plenty of room to unlock the driver’s side door. She took Amy’s diaper bag and her own purse from behind the front seat, slinging both straps over her shoulder before popping the trunk with the lever beside the seat.
Luke Walker had returned to the curb, where he watched as she took her suitcase and the cardboard box that held the remainder of Amy’s things from the rear of the vehicle.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He closed the trunk’s lid and then took the box and suitcase from her, leaving her only the diaper bag and her purse as they returned to the house.
He still didn’t spare Amy so much as a glance when they got back, though. Karis picked up baby and carrier.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
She hadn’t. But something made her not want to admit it, so she said, “I’m not hungry.”
He didn’t pursue it; he merely headed up the staircase that rose against one wall of the entry.
Following him, Karis tried not to notice that right at eye level was a pretty fantastic derriere. This was not the time or place or person for that, she lectured herself.
When they reached the top of the steps, he motioned to his left. “The nursery,” he said as if the words stuck in his throat.
He’d left it up all this time? That seemed odd, but Karis didn’t say anything. She just went into the pink-and-white nursery adorned with cuddly bunny wallpaper and borders around a white crib, bureau, changing table and rocking chair.
She set Amy on the floor again as Luke Walker did the same with the suitcase and box. Then he went about putting a crib sheet on the mattress while Karis eased the sleeping infant out of her coat.
“I’ll put your suitcase in your room,” her surly host said, leaving her to tend to the baby alone.
Amy was barely disturbed by the diaper change or by having her pajamas put on. When that was accomplished, Karis put her niece into the crib and covered her, propping Amy’s favorite toy, a stuffed elephant, in one corner of the crib so it would be within reach if the fifteen-month-old woke up and wanted it.
“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” Karis whispered after kissing the baby on the forehead. Then she silently left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Luke Walker was waiting in the hallway, arms again crossed over his chest.
Without saying anything he led her up a second set of stairs to the attic. It appeared to have been the room of another young girl, because daisy paper lined the wall behind the double-size brass bed.
“Sheets and blankets are clean,” he said of the bedding at the foot of the bare mattress. “The armoire is empty if you want to put your stuff in it.”
Karis nodded again.
“Bathroom is through there—” He pointed to a door to the left of the cheval mirror. “Towels are in a cabinet—I’m sure you can find them. If you decide you’re hungry, there’s food in the fridge. The kitchen is downstairs, at the rear of the house.”
Karis nodded a third time, feeling like a new inmate being instructed by the warden. Thanking him seemed inappropriate so she didn’t do it.
“Do you need anything else?” he asked.
“No.”
And with that Luke Walker headed for the door.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, when he reached it and turned to look at her again.
“Unless I make a run for it,” she answered facetiously, not shying away from meeting his cold, hard expression.
He didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he said, “Don’t expect me to take care of her when she gets up.”
“You won’t have to,” Karis said, replacing her sarcasm with defensiveness.
Apparently satisfied with her response, he turned in the doorway and went out.
Before he closed the door behind him, Karis got another glimpse of that great posterior, and admiring it just came as a reflex.
A reflex she curbed the instant she realized what she was doing.
Because regardless of the man’s physical attributes, she reminded herself, they were of no interest whatsoever to her.
She’d come to Northbridge to get her life back on track and what that was going to require would not make her any friends here.
And she certainly wasn’t going to enter into any other kind of relationship.
Especially not with her sister’s wronged and scorned ex-husband.
Regardless of how drop-dead gorgeous he was.
Chapter Two
As he lay in bed early Saturday morning after a nearly sleepless night, Luke Walker was still coming to grips with the fact that his ex-wife had died.
He’d gone straight to the telephone when he’d left Karis Pratt in the attic the evening before. Placing a call to Cutty Grant—a member of Northbridge’s police force who was on duty overnight—he’d asked for the number of the Denver police department. Then Luke had called Denver, identified himself and requested confirmation of a report that a woman named Lea Pratt or Lea Walker or Lea Pratt Walker was one of three fatalities in an explosion there six weeks ago.
Within twenty minutes he’d had the confirmation— Lea really had been killed. Her sister had told the truth to that point anyway.
And Luke had been left with one more shock to deal with when it came to Lea.
He’d wished comeuppance on her when she left him, but he’d never wished her dead. What she’d done here—to him and to the Pratts—was rotten and lowdown and lousy, but not rotten, lowdown and lousy enough for a death sentence.
He just didn’t know what he was supposed to feel now. Grief? Remorse? Loss?
He’d gone through all of that when she’d taken off. All of that and so much more.
But eventually, after what had seemed like an eternity spent in an emotional pit that had felt like the deepest, darkest hallway in hell, he’d come out of it. He wasn’t sure how—he guessed time had taken care of it—but little by little he’d begun to be able to look at the whole thing as one huge mistake. A lapse in his own judgment that he’d paid for—a lot.
Little by little he’d gotten over his feelings for Lea—all of his feelings for her. The good feelings that had gotten him into trouble in the first place, and the bad feelings Lea had left him with.
Little by little, he’d come to see that although she might have shared his house, his bed, his life for a while, he hadn’t really known her at all. Who and what she actually was hadn’t been revealed to him in any way until she’d walked out on him. She’d been a complete stranger. A stranger who had put on an elaborate act. A monumental ruse. A hell of a con job. But a stranger nonetheless. And only a stranger.
Which meant that now, in a way, hearing about her death was like hearing about the death of a stranger. He wasn’t glad, he wasn’t sad. He was just sobered, he thought, by the fact that someone he’d been involved with had come to a violent end.
And that was all there was to it for him now.
So if her sister thought the news of Lea’s death was going to turn him into some kind of bleeding heart and make him an easy mark for a second attempt at passing Amy off as his, she was mistaken. No one would be more surprised than him if Amy proved to be his child. He just didn’t think that was possible.
Daylight was dawning and, after glancing at the hint of sun through the window, he decided he was never going to get any sleep, so he rolled out of bed. It was anybody’s guess what today would bring and he might as well shower, dress and be prepared.
But even as he went into the bathroom connected to his bedroom, Lea was still on his mind. Lea and Amy and the claim that Amy was his again.
Yes, once upon a time he’d believed what Lea Pratt had said. About everything.
He’d believed she wasn’t aware that she was going twenty-six miles over the speed limit and was sorry and would slow down. He’d believed she was nothing more than the local Pratts’ curious half sister who had buzzed into Northbridge to finally meet them and satisfy her curiosity. He’d believed every single thing she’d told him, including that the baby she’d delivered eight months after their whirlwind, love-at-first-sight courtship, was his premature daughter.
He’d believed it all until Lea had nearly ripped his heart out by taking away the baby he’d cared for and loved for five weeks as if she were his.
Then he and the Pratts had had their eyes opened. And faster than Lea had come into their lives, she was gone.
And so was Amy.
Luke had made it into the bathroom, but not to the shower. Lost in his thoughts, he’d stopped at the sink and was gripping the edge with both hands, elbows locked, head hanging between his shoulders as the memory of his own stupidity tormented him.
A sucker—that’s what he’d been. A sucker for a pretty face, a great body and a lot of smooth lies.
He raised his head and pushed himself from the counter, making it to the shower this time and turning on the water.
A lot of smooth lies…
And now here was Lea’s sister with a tale of her own. A tale of woe.
After Karis Pratt had made her announcement, Luke’s first thought was that Lea wasn’t dead. That she’d sent Amy with her aunt and another pack of lies to get rid of the child. That was why he’d checked up on the explosion story.
That hadn’t been a lie. Lea was dead. And so was Ted Pratt. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything else Karis Pratt had said was true.
True or false—not easy to tell, Luke thought as he stepped under the spray of the shower.
Hard-luck stories usually netted a bigger payoff. That was what Lea had used at the end on her half siblings. Maybe that was the angle Karis Pratt was working again.
Financially wiped out by something Lea had done.
Planning to sleep in her car in a snowstorm last night.
She loved Amy but couldn’t afford to keep her….
