Wife By Deception. Donna Sterling

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СКАЧАТЬ least she still had Arianne. A simple glance at her niece filled her with warm, comforting love…as well as concern. It had taken Kate more than five months—until last Friday, to be exact—to ask a lawyer about adoption proceedings. Because Arianne’s father presented an unknown variable, she’d felt she had too much to risk by bringing Arianne to the attention of the courts.

      Government bureaucracies always worried her. The Department of Family and Children Services had ruled her and Camryn’s lives from the age of five—when they lost their parents in an automobile accident—until the day they turned eighteen. As humiliating and dehumanizing as that experience had been, they’d actually fared better than many of the children trapped within that frightening system. At least Cam and she had had each other.

      Now Kate hesitated to contact the authorities for fear that some obscure regulation would result in their taking Arianne away from her. She shuddered to think of her dear little niece at the mercy of the heartless court system. Kate swore that Arianne would be raised by her— not shuffled around between foster homes or dumped into an orphanage, as Camryn and she had been.

      But Kate knew she couldn’t simply keep Arianne indefinitely. Too many questions would be asked—by doctors, school officials and the like. Kate believed in building a strong, unshakable foundation on which to base one’s life. That foundation was a person’s only real security. Arianne’s foundation would require the paperwork that made her a legal citizen of the United States and Kate’s legally-adopted daughter. Neither status was readily available without Arianne’s birth certificate.

      Her lawyer had warned her, too, that an adoption would be difficult without permission from Arianne’s father. And Kate had no idea who he was or where he lived. She had no record of Arianne’s birth, where she was born or even what her legal last name was.

      “Isn’t there a way around the red tape?” Kate had asked. “My sister told me Arianne’s father doesn’t want her. Even if we somehow learn his name, I doubt that we’ll find him. Knowing the kind of men my sister was involved with, he’s probably a drifter, or on the run from the law.”

      Although the attorney foresaw dozens of obstacles, he promised to delve into the matter as quickly and discreetly as possible.

      For the umpteenth time, Kate fervently wished she’d gotten more details from Camryn about her ex-husband. Unfortunately, Camryn hadn’t wanted to talk about him. All she’d told her was that his name was Mitch, he didn’t want a wife or daughter and he’d been “mean.”

      “Abusive?” Kate had asked, horrified.

      “Very,” Camryn had confirmed in a choked whisper.

      Kate had tried to pry more information from her, but to no avail. The very idea of a man abusing her sister and niece infuriated Kate. In order to get to sleep that night, she had to remind herself that in Camryn’s mind, “abusive” could cover anything from physical battery to a refusal to fly her to Tahiti. She had seemed extremely upset at the very mention of this man’s existence, though.

      Then again, Camryn had closed the subject of her ex-husband with a sigh. “I don’t know why I married him in the first place. I guess I’m just a sucker for a big, strong male body and sexy golden-green eyes.” An odd wistfulness had crossed her face. “And he does have the sexiest eyes.”

      Ah, Camryn! There’d been times when Kate had wanted to shake her.

      If only she’d shaken some information loose from her that night. But Camryn had been too exhausted to chat for long. She fell asleep within an hour. Kate, on the other hand, spent half the night reeling from the news that her twin had married again, given birth and divorced since they’d last spoken. She mulled over those developments while walking the floor with Arianne, who’d been wretchedly suffering from teething woes.

      Kate hadn’t handled a baby in years, but her vast experience from growing up in the Tallahassee Methodist Children’s Home came in handy that night…and ever since.

      It had been so typical of Camryn, dropping in unexpectedly after eighteen months without contact and blindly assuming that Kate would baby-sit for weeks at a time. She’d also stolen her car, leaving nothing but a mechanically challenged convertible and a brief note that thanked Kate in advance for keeping Arianne while Camryn went to New York to get them roles in a soap opera.

      Oh, Cam.

      The call had come less than an hour after Kate had read the note. The highway patrol contacted her from the number listed on the car’s registration. Looking back, Kate was glad that Camryn had taken her car, or Kate might never have known what had become of her twin. Whatever identification papers she’d carried had gone up in flames. The head-on collision had rated only a brief mention on the evening news, without names or pictures of the deceased.

      Grief, regret and a terrible sense of loss haunted Kate, especially in the oppressive silence of night. During the day, she kept herself busy tending her motherless niece. Despite the financial strain and interruption to her career, Kate had taken the spring and summer semesters off from teaching to spend time with Arianne during these formative months of her life.

      Kate had lost her twin after failing her in some fundamental way long ago. She couldn’t remember a time she hadn’t felt vaguely guilty over Camryn’s emotional neediness. She should have tried harder to take her parents’ place in Camryn’s life; to supply more of the love she’d so clearly needed. Until the day she died in that fiery wreck, Camryn had been desperately searching for validation of her own worth…and always in the wrong places….

      Kate swore she wouldn’t allow Arianne to travel the same path. Bright, beautiful Arianne would remain her top priority from now on.

      Kate felt only pleasure at the prospect. The baby filled a void in her heart that she hadn’t known existed. She brought sweetness and warmth to her home and a deeper meaning to her life. Kate loved her more intensely with every passing day.

      I’ll take good care of her, Cam. I won’t let you down again.

      As she turned a corner into her own subdivision, clouds drifted across the late-afternoon sun, throwing the suburban Tallahassee street into momentary shade. She savored the respite from the July heat and pushed the stroller past neat lawns and brick homes toward her own modest ranch-style house.

      By the time she reached the welcoming shadows inside her attached garage, Arianne was snoozing. Kate parked the stroller alongside the red Mustang convertible Camryn had left, ignoring the grief the sight of the car induced. Drawing the house key from a pocket of her khaki shorts, she turned to unlock the door.

      A form loomed up from behind her. Before she could react, a hard hand came down over her mouth and jerked her backward against a large, solidly muscular body.

      “Hello, Camryn,” a gruff voice rasped in her ear. “Long time no see.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      FEAR PARALYZED KATE into absolute stillness. Her assailant thought she was Camryn.

      At the sound of footsteps behind her and a muffled murmur, she realized he wasn’t alone. Though he’d greeted her in perfect English, he rattled off some brusque instructions to his accomplice in a language sounding like French. The only word she recognized meant “baby.”

      She tried to cry out, but the sound barely escaped the callused hand he’d clamped over her mouth. Dread slowed her heartbeats to a near standstill. Arianne was sleeping СКАЧАТЬ