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Her statement would have carried more impact if her lips weren’t still wet and swollen from his kiss, but she could tell by the way he drew his next breath that she’d scraped a nerve.
“Tell me this,” he said, his hands going to his hips, too. “Did you leave Joey on our front porch tonight?”
She lifted her chin a notch, surprise momentarily rendering her speechless. Finally, she managed to say, “What do you think?”
“I think that if you did, it’s a hell of a way to tell a man he’s responsible for a kid.”
It was her turn to feel stung. Obviously, he didn’t know her at all. That was the problem, wasn’t it? He told her what he wanted and needed and she pretended to want and need the same thing. Until two-and-a-half years ago, that is. That was when the truth had come out. It was the same night they’d broken up. It hadn’t been pretty, but it had been necessary in order for her to move forward in her life, and all the other mumbo jumbo she read in self-help books.
She straightened her back and stiffened her upper lip. It rankled slightly that she had to remind herself that she’d done nothing wrong and, consequently, owed him nothing.
“If he’s mine,” he said, on a roll, “the least you could have done was sign the damn note so we wouldn’t have to wonder which of us is his father.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. Noah made her head spin. He always had.
She’d fallen in love with him when she was eighteen years old. By the time she’d realized that he’d needed his lofty dreams of freedom more than he’d needed her, it had been too late to guard her heart from getting broken every time he flew off into the wild blue yonder. Eventually, she’d found the courage to chase her own dream.
Now here she was, back where she’d started. No matter what Noah thought, she wasn’t the same girl she’d been ten years ago, or five, or even one. Now she had to think about what she needed.
She walked to the door and held it open. “I asked you to leave.”
“Are you going to answer my question?” he asked roughly, squaring off opposite her in the doorway.
Gathering her dignity about her, she said, “A baby. That would be the ultimate tether, wouldn’t it? What would you do if I said yes? Would you marry me, Noah?”
A slap wouldn’t have stunned him more.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, unable to close the door while his foot was in it.
Tires screeched and a horn honked out on the street. The fracas seemed to bring him to some sort of decision. Staring into her eyes as if he could see all the way to her soul, he said, “Dinner is at one at the homestead tomorrow. Be there.”
The deep cadence of his voice hung in the air for a long time after he left. Lacey closed the door, but she moved around the cluttered apartment as if in a trance.
Noah Sullivan had a lot of nerve. It was just like him to threaten to break her door down if she didn’t let him in and then trounce off as if everything that had happened was her fault. He made her so mad.
She closed her eyes, because that wasn’t all she felt for him. She’d gone an entire year without seeing him, without talking to him or touching him, and then, bam, she’d spent one minute in his presence and wound up in his arms. Why did her body always seem to betray her when it came to Noah?
She knew the answer, and it had as much to do with love as it did with passion. She stomped her foot at the futility of it all.
From what she could gather from the little he’d told her tonight, somebody had left a baby on the Sullivans’ doorstep. It wasn’t clear to her why Marsh, Reed and Noah were uncertain which of them was the father. The entire situation seemed ludicrous, but if Noah believed the child might have been a product of their night of passion last year, the baby must be an infant.
What kind of a mother left her child that way?
A desperate one, Lacey thought as she looked around the old apartment where she’d spent her formative years. She understood desperation.
Shortly after her father died last year, the company she’d worked for in Chicago had downsized and she’d found herself unemployed. Her meager savings had quickly run out. Part-time and temp jobs barely put food on the table. Before long she was behind on her rent. And then things got worse.
She placed a hand over the scar on her abdomen, then just as quickly took her hand away.
She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She couldn’t change the past, and who knew what the future held?
Right now, what she needed was a viable means of support. What she had—all she had—was this narrow building that housed her father’s boarded-up bar and this ramshackle apartment above it. Although she’d promised herself that she would never move back to Orchard Hill, the deed to this property gave her a handful of options she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She could reopen the bar, or rent out the building and this apartment, or sell it all—lock, stock and barrel.
As she returned to her packing, she thought about Noah’s invitation. Okay, it had sounded more like an order. Dinner was at one tomorrow, he’d said. He expected her to be there.
She wondered what he would do when she didn’t show up. She spent far too much time imagining what would happen if she did.
There were two types of guys. Those who asked permission. And those who begged forgiveness. Why, Noah wondered, did he always land in the latter category?
He’d had every intention of knocking on Lacey’s door and asking her one simple question. “Is Joey my son?”
But he’d seen her tears, and he’d reached for her hand, and one thing had led to another. Now here he was, pulling into his own driveway, the remnants of unspent desire congealing in his bloodstream while guilt fought for equal space. Since there wasn’t much he could do about his failings right now, he pulled his keys from the ignition, turned off his headlights and got out.
The house was lit up like a church. Even the attic light was on. The windows were open, but other than the bullfrogs croaking from a distant pond and a car driving by, he didn’t hear anything. He hoped that was a good sign.
He went inside quietly, and found Marsh and Reed in the living room again. They were standing in the center of the room, staring down into the old wooden cradle between them. There was a streak of dirt on Marsh’s white T-shirt and Reed’s hair was sticking up as if he’d raked his fingers through it. Repeatedly.
Noah waited until they looked at him to mouth, “How long has he been sleeping?”
After glancing at his watch, Marsh mouthed back, “Four minutes.”
“Did you talk to Lacey?” Reed whispered.
Noah nodded and tried not to grimace.
As if by unspoken agreement, they moved the discussion to the kitchen. Keeping his voice down once they were all assembled there, Noah said, “Lacey didn’t leave Joey on our doorstep.”
“She told you that?” Reed asked.
“She didn’t have to. If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have realized it right away. If she’d been pregnant with my kid, she would have gotten in my face or served me with papers. She wouldn’t have left the baby on my porch and then crept away without telling me.”
“You’re positive?” Reed asked.
“Covert moves aren’t her style,” he said. “If Joey is a Sullivan, he isn’t mine.”
Marsh, Reed and Noah had personalities very different from one another. But one thing they had in common was an innate aversion to asking permission to do what they thought was best. Consequently, Noah wasn’t the only member of this family who sometimes wound up in the uncomfortable position of asking for forgiveness. Remembering all the times these two had been waiting for him when he’d broken curfew or worse, and all the times they must have wondered what the hell they were going to do with him, he felt an enormous welling of affection for his brothers.
“Obviously, you were both with somebody a year ago. Do either of you have an address or phone number?” he asked.
The first to shake his head, Reed was also the first to drag out a chair and sit down. “She was a waitress I met when I was in Dallas last summer. She spilled salsa in my lap and was so flustered she tried to clean it up. I stopped her before—Anyway, she blushed adorably and said her shift was almost over. She had a nice smile, big hair and—” His voice trailed away.
“What was her name?” Marsh asked after he’d taken a seat, too.
In a voice so quiet it wasn’t easy to hear, Reed said, “Cookie.”
Noah didn’t mean to grin. Marsh probably didn’t, either. It was just that the fastidious middle Sullivan brother normally went out with women named Katherine or Margaret or Elizabeth.
“What’s her last name?” Noah asked.
“I’ve been trying to remember ever since we brought Joey inside.”
Reed Sullivan had sandy-blond hair, but his whisker stubble was as dark as Noah’s and Marsh’s. Letting whisker stubble accumulate was a rare occurrence, so rare in fact that Noah had forgotten how dark it was. Scratching his uncommonly stubbly cheek, Reed looked beyond mortified. If he expected chastisement, he wasn’t going to get it from either of his brothers.
“You said she was a waitress,” Noah said, trying to make a little sense of a very strange situation. “What was the name of the restaurant?”
Reed said, “It was a small Mexican place near the airport. Now I wish I’d used a credit card so there would be a paper trail.”
Noah turned his attention to Marsh, who had grown unusually quiet. “What about you? Are you dealing with a one-night stand, too?”
Marsh shook his head. “Her name is Julia Monroe. At least that’s what she told me.” His voice got husky and took on a dreamy quality Noah had never heard before. “I met her on vacation last year on Roanoke Island. We slept under the stars and visited just about every coffee shop up and down the Outer Banks.”
“Have you talked to her since the week was over?” Reed asked, obviously as curious as Noah.
“The number she gave me was out of service,” Marsh answered.
That seemed odd to Noah, but there wasn’t much about this dilemma that didn’t seem odd. “What about the note?” he asked. “Does the handwriting look familiar to either of you?”
Marsh and Reed wore similar expressions of uncertainty. After a moment of quiet contemplation, Reed asked, “Why wouldn’t she have signed the note? Or addressed it?”
It was just one more thing about this situation that didn’t make sense. Leaning back in his chair, Noah thought about the note. It hinted at desperation, contained a written plea and a promise that Joey’s mother would return for him. Maybe that was all she wanted them to know.
“Does the middle name Daniel mean anything to either of you?” Noah asked.
Again, Marsh and Reed shook their heads.
Reed said, “We’re back to square one. We’re going to need a DNA test. I checked online a little while ago. Kits are available at drugstores everywhere. The test looks pretty straightforward and simple to perform, but it can take up to six weeks to get the results.”
“I don’t want to wait six weeks,” Marsh said firmly.
“Neither do I,” Reed said with the same amount of force. “Our only alternative is to hire a private investigator.”
Reed reached across the table for his laptop. Marsh went to the cupboard and dragged out an old phone book.
Before either of them went a step further, Noah stopped them. “You can’t pluck some name off the internet or from the phone book for something this important.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Reed asked.
As a matter of fact, Noah did. For once in their lives, having a hellion for a brother was going to come in handy. “A few years ago I tested an airplane for a guy calling in a favor. He’s a P.I. over in Grand Rapids and flies a blue biplane called Viper. I don’t have a business card but I know somebody who does. I’ll make a few phone calls first thing in the morning.”
“Is this investigator any good?” Marsh asked.
Noah said, “He’s found runaways and exes and bail jumpers and just about everything in between.”
His stomach growled audibly. Trying to remember how long it had been since he’d eaten, he went to the refrigerator and opened the door. He saw various cartons, bags and containers of leftover takeout, one of which was starting to resemble a science experiment. This was why he always cooked when he was home.
“When are you leaving?” Marsh asked.
“I’m not,” Noah said, cautiously sniffing a carton before tossing it into the trash. The science experiment went in next.
“You don’t have another flying engagement lined up?” Reed asked.
“It’ll keep.” Unlike the leftovers on the top shelf. “I’m not going anywhere until this is resolved. I figure we can use a couple of extra hands around here.”
While Noah threw out everything except eggs, butter, condiments and cans of soda and beer, Marsh and Reed talked about what they might expect on Joey’s first night here. According to the information Reed had gotten from the 83,000 Google hits, children this age generally required a feeding every two to six hours.
“You’re saying we could be in for a long night,” Noah said, closing the refrigerator.
Reed was fast at work on a preliminary schedule. Following a little discussion, Noah was assigned the third watch.
He ate a peanut-butter sandwich standing up. After chasing it down with a cold beer, he strode to the stairway on the other side of the room. “I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me up when you need me. I mean it. We’re in this together.”
“Noah?” Marsh said quietly.
With one hand on the doorknob, Noah looked back at his oldest brother.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Marsh said.
“Glad barely scrapes the surface,” Reed said, closing his laptop.
Something constricted deep in Noah’s chest. “I’m glad to be here.” It was the honest-to-God truth.
He could have left it at that, but opportunities like this didn’t come along every day, so of course he cocked his head slightly and said, “Sex on the beach, and big hair and big—” He cleared his throat. “Who knew you two had it in you?”
He dodged the roll of paper towels Marsh threw at him, and took the steps two at a time. In his room at the end of the hall, he emptied his pockets of his keys and change and put the check from Tom Bender on his dresser, then quickly stripped down. Heading for the only bathroom on the second floor, he thought about the apology he owed Lacey.
He turned on the shower. While he waited for the water to get hot, he considered possible ways he might say he was sorry. Red roses, he thought as he lathered a washcloth and scrubbed the day’s grime from his arms, chest and shoulders. In his mind’s eye he saw a dozen red roses upside down in Lacey’s trash can. A box of chocolates would meet with the same fate.
By the time he dried off, he knew what he had to do. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Begging forgiveness never was.
Chapter Three
Sure, the rusty thermometer on the light pole in the alley behind Bell’s Tavern registered eighty-one degrees, but the bright afternoon sunshine wasn’t the only reason Ralph Jacobs was sweating.
“You’re getting a bargain,” Lacey said patiently as her dad’s former customer placed another bill in her outstretched hand.
“Six hundred’s a little steep, doncha think?” he groused, mopping his forehead with a folded handkerchief. “That old Chevy is close to twenty years old, you know.”
She glanced at the pickup truck now sitting on Ralph’s flatbed trailer. She could have gotten more for her dad’s pickup if she’d had time to advertise, and they both knew it.
Turning her attention back to the transaction, she watched as Ralph wet his finger and reluctantly added another hundred spot to the others in her hand. “Dad always took good care of that truck,” she said. “It was ten years old when he bought it. Remember how proud he was that day? It still has low mileage and started just now the first time you turned the key. You and I agreed on $600.”
“It has four flat tires,” he insisted.
“I threw those in at no extra charge.”
Ralph made a sound she would have been hard-pressed to replicate. When he finally parted with the sixth hundred-dollar bill, she handed him the signed title and tucked the money into the pocket of her faded cutoffs for safekeeping.
