The Paternity Promise. Merline Lovelace

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      Five heart-wrenching days later, she’d retraced that route with Molly. Instead of flying back to San Antonio with the baby, though, she’d paid cash for a bus ticket to Oklahoma City.

      She hadn’t used her cell phone or any credit cards in the weeks since she’d wrangled a job as Molly’s temporary nanny. Nor had she cashed the checks Delilah had written for her salary. She’d planned to go back to her teaching job once Molly was settled with her father. The longer she spent with the baby, though, the more painful the prospect of leaving her became.

      The thought of leaving Blake Dalton was almost as wrenching. Lately her mind had drifted to him more than it should. Especially at night, after she’d put Molly to bed. The increasingly erotic direction of that drift spurred pinpricks of guilt, then and now.

      “Tell me how you and Anne met,” she pleaded, reminding herself yet again Blake was her cousin’s love, the man she’d let into her life despite all she’d been through. “How… Well…”

      “How Molly happened?” he supplied.

      “Yes. Anne was so shy around men.”

      For shy, read insecure and cowed and generally scared shitless. Grace couldn’t imagine how Blake had breached those formidable barriers.

      “Please,” she said softly. “Tell me. I’d like to know she found a little happiness before she died.”

      He stared at her for long moments, then his breath eased out on a sigh.

      “I think she was happy for the few weeks we were together. I was never sure, though. Took me forever to pry more than a murmured hello from her. Even after I got her to agree to go out with me, she didn’t want anyone at DI to know we were seeing each other. Said it would look bad, the big boss dating a lowly file clerk.”

      He hooked his wrists on his knees and contemplated his black dress shoes. He must not have liked what he saw. A note of unmistakable self-disgust colored his deep voice.

      “She wouldn’t let me take her to dinner or to the theater or anywhere we might be seen together. It was always her place. Or a hotel.”

      It had to be that, Grace knew. Her cousin couldn’t take the chance some society reporter or gossip columnist would start fanning rumors about rich, handsome Blake Dalton’s latest love interest. Or worse, the paparazzi might snap a photo of them together and post it on the internet.

      Yet she risked going to a hotel with him. She’d come out of her defensive crouch enough for that. And when she discovered she was pregnant with his child, she’d had no choice but to run away. She wanted the baby desperately, but she couldn’t tell Dalton about the pregnancy. He would have wanted to give the child his name, or at least establish his legal rights as the father. Hope’s false IDs wouldn’t have held up under legal scrutiny, and her real one would have led Petrie to her. So she’d run. Again.

      “Did you love her?”

      Damn! Grace hadn’t meant to let that slip out. And she sure as heck hadn’t intended to feel jealous of her cousin’s relationship with this man.

      Yet she knew he had to have been so tender with her. So sensitive to her needs. His mouth would have played a gentle song on her skin. His hands, those strong, tanned hands, must have stroked and soothed even as they aroused and…

      “I don’t know.”

      With a flush of guilt, Grace jerked her attention back to his face.

      “I cared for her,” he said quietly, as much to himself as to her. “Enough to press her into going to bed with me. But when she left without a word, I was angry as well as hurt.”

      Regret and remorse chased each other across his face.

      “Then, when I got the report of the bus accident…”

      He stopped and directed a look of fierce accusation at Grace.

      “I wasn’t with her when it happened,” she said in feeble self-defense. “She was by herself, in her car. The bus spun out right in front of her and hit a bridge abutment. She was terrified, but she got out to help.”

      “And left her purse at the scene.”

      “Yes.”

      “Deliberately?”

      “Yes.”

      “Why?”

      Grace shook her head. “I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you any more than I have. I promised Anne her past would die with her.”

      “But it didn’t,” he countered swiftly. “Molly’s living proof of that.”

      She slipped off the sofa and onto her knees, desperate for him to let it go. “She’s your daughter, Blake. Please, just accept that and take joy in her.”

      He was silent for so long she didn’t think he would respond. When he did, the ice was back in his voice.

      “All I have right now is your word that Anne and I had a child together. I’ll send in the DNA sample you offered to provide. Once we have the results, we’ll discuss where we go from here.”

      “Where I need to go is back to your mother’s house! She’s exhausted from the wedding. She told me tonight she was feeling every one of her sixty-two years. She can’t take care of Molly by herself for the next few days.”

      “I’ll help her, and when I can’t be there I’ll make sure someone else is. In the meantime, you stay put.”

      He pushed out of the chair and strode to the wet bar built into the far wall. For a moment Grace thought he intended to pour them both a drink to wash down the hurt and bitterness of the past hour, but he lifted only one crystal tumbler from one of the mirrored shelves. He returned with it and issued a terse command.

      “Spit.”

      Three

      The melodic chimes of a doorbell pierced Grace’s groggy haze. When the chimes gave way to the hammer of an impatient fist, she propped herself up on one elbow and blinked at the digital clock beside the bed.

      Oh, God! Seven-twenty! She’d slept right through Molly’s first feeding.

      She threw the covers aside and was half out of bed before reality hit. One, this wasn’t her room in Delilah’s mansion. Two, she was wearing only the lavender lace bikini briefs she left on when she’d changed her maid of honor gown. And three, she was no longer Molly’s temporary nanny.

      Last night’s agonizing events came crashing down on her as the fist hammered again. Scrambling, Grace snatched up her now hopelessly wrinkled khaki crops and white blouse. She got the pants zipped and buttoned the blouse on her way to the front door. She had a good idea whose fist was pounding away. She’d spent almost a month now with Blake Dalton’s often autocratic, occasionally irascible, always kindhearted mother.

      So she expected to see the raven-haired matriarch. She didn’t expect to see the baby riding on Delilah’s chest, nested contentedly in a giraffe sling. Grace gripped the СКАЧАТЬ