“Tell me the truth,” she said quietly when Julie dropped into her chair again. “Did Alex resent me for keeping my cousin’s secret?”
“He did, for maybe a day or two after Blake showed him the final DNA results. He’s a big boy, though. He worked through his disappointment.” Her eyes took on a wicked glint. “I might have helped the process by redirecting his thoughts whenever I thought they needed it.”
“Yes, I bet you… Oops, that’s Blake’s phone. He said something about expecting a call from Singapore. This may be it.”
She scooped up the device he’d left on the table and checked caller ID. The number was a local one.
“Guess it’s not Singapore.”
Evidently the caller decided his message was too urgent to go to voice mail. Grace had no sooner set the phone down than it buzzed again, this time with a flashing icon indicating a text message.
“I’d better take this in to him. Keep an eye on Molly for me.”
“Will do.”
Phone in hand, she followed the sound of football fans in midroar to the den. Hoping it was the Dallas Cowboys who’d precipitated that roar, Grace shifted the phone to her other hand.
She honestly didn’t mean to hit the text icon. Or read the brief message that came up. But a single glance at the screen stopped her dead in her tracks.
Have an update on Petrie. Call me.
Ice crawled along Grace’s veins. The hubbub in the den faded. The papered walls of the hall seemed to close in on her. She couldn’t move, could barely breathe as Jack Petrie’s image shoved everything else out of her mind. Smooth and handsome at first. Then smooth and sneering, as he was the last time he’d allowed Grace to visit his home. His home. Not her cousin’s. Not one they’d made together. The house was his, the car was his, every friggin’ dollar in the bank was his, to be doled out to his wife penny by penny.
The ice splintered. An almost forgotten fury now speared through Grace. Caught in its vicious maw, she let an animal cry rip from her throat and hurled the phone at the wall.
The Dalton men came running almost before the pieces hit the floor. Alex erupted from the den first.
“What the…?”
“Grace!” Blake shoved past his brother. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Fury still clawed at her throat.
“Has something happened to Molly?” He gripped her upper arms. “Alex! Go check on Julie and the baby!”
He could have saved his breath. His brother was already pounding down the hall.
“Talk to me, Grace.” Blake’s fingers bit into her flesh. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“You got a call. That’s what happened.”
“What?”
She wrenched out of his hold. With a scathing look, she directed his attention to the shattered phone. He frowned at the pieces in obvious confusion.
“It was a text message.” She fought to choke out the words. “My thumb hit the icon by mistake. I didn’t intend to read the message. Wasn’t intended to read it, obviously.”
“What are you talking about? What message? Who was it from?”
“I’m guessing your friend, the P.I. What’s his name? Jerrold? James?”
His jaw went tight. “Jamison.”
“Right,” she said venomously. “Jamison. He wants you to call him. For an update on Petrie.”
“Oh, hell.”
The soft expletive said it all. Spinning, Grace stalked down the hall and almost bowled over the two who emerged from the library. Any other time she might have noted with interest that a good portion of Delilah’s crimson lipstick had transferred from her mouth to Dusty Jones’s. At the moment all she could do was snap a curt response when Delilah demanded to know what was going on.
“Ask your son.”
She brushed past them, wishing to hell she’d pocketed the keys to the snazzy new Jaguar Blake had insisted on buying her. She needed to get out. Think through this shock. But the keys were on the dresser. Upstairs. In the guest suite. Grace hit the stairs, grinding her teeth in mingled fury and frustration.
By the time she reached the luxuriously appointed suite, she’d added a searing sense of betrayal to the mix. She snatched the keys off the dresser, digging the jagged edges into her palm, staring unseeing at other objects scattered across the polished mahogany.
“Going somewhere?”
She jerked her head up and locked angry eyes on her husband. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Mind if I ask where?” he asked calmly.
Too calmly, damn him! She’d always admired his steady thinking and cool composure. Not now. Not with this hurt knifing into her.
“I believed you,” she threw at him. “When you said you could live with my refusal to betray Anne’s trust, I actually believed you!”
“I am living with it.”
“Like hell!”
His eyes narrowed but he kept his movements steady and unhurried as he turned, shut the door and faced her again.
“When you wouldn’t trust me with Anne’s secrets…”
“I couldn’t! Some of us,” she added viciously, “hold to our promises.”
“When you couldn’t trust me with Anne’s secrets,” he amended, his mouth thinning a little, “I had Jamison keep digging. I know now her real name was Hope Templeton.”
The telltale signs that he was holding on to his temper with an effort took some of the edge off Grace’s own anger. The hurt remained.
“I only had one cousin. Her birth is a matter of record. I’m surprised it took your hotshot P.I. so long to discover her real name.”
“I also know she got married at the age of seventeen.”
“How did you…? I mean, we…”
“Altered the record? I won’t bother to remind you that’s a crime.”
He was in full lawyer mode now. Legs spread, arms crossed. Relentlessly presenting the evidence. The two of them would have to have this out, Grace realized. Once, and hopefully for all.
Reining in the last of her temper, she sank onto the bed. “Go on.”
“What my hotshot P.I. did not find was any record of divorce. I can only assume Anne was still married when she and I met. I can also assume the marriage wasn’t a happy one.”
“And how did you reach this brilliant deduction?”
He shrugged aside the sarcasm. “The fact that Anne had left him, obviously. And that she used an assumed name, presumably to prevent him from finding her.”
Grace could add so much more to the list. Like Anne’s aversion to public places for fear Petrie or one of his friends would spot her. Her bone-deep distrust of all men until this one. Her abrupt disappearance from Blake’s life, even though she must have loved him.
“I had Jamison check out her husband,” he said, breaking into the dark, sad memories. “According to Texas Highway Patrol records, Jack Petrie is a highly decorated officer with two citations for risking his life in the line of duty. One for dragging a man and his son out of a burning vehicle. Another for taking down a drug smuggler who shot a fellow officer during a routine traffic stop.”
“You didn’t contact him, did you?” Grace asked with her heart in her throat.
“No. Neither did Jamison. But he made discreet inquiries.”
She breathed in, out. “And?”
“Jamison came away with the impression Petrie was a devoted husband who liked to show off his pretty young wife. Rumor has it he was devastated when she walked out on him.”
Blake waited for her to deny the rumor. When she didn’t, he got to the real issue. “That leaves Molly.”
“She’s your child, Blake!” The exclamation burst out, quick and passionate. “Not Petrie’s!”
“I know that. Even without the DNA evidence, Jamison’s sources confirmed Anne left her husband almost a year before she and I met. Still, they were married when she gave birth to Molly, and under the law…”
“To hell with the law! You’ve run the tests. If it
ever came to a legal battle, you’ve got more than enough evidence to support your paternity.”
She came off the bed, pleading now.
“But it doesn’t need come to a battle. Anne’s dead. Petrie has no idea she had a child. Just leave it that way.”
“What are you so afraid of, Grace? What was Anne afraid of? Did Petrie hurt her? Use his fists on her?”
“I…”
“Tell me, for God’s sake!”
She almost broke down then. She would have given her soul at that point to share the whole, degrading truth, but her promise hung like an anchor around her neck. All she would respond to was one specific question.
“It wasn’t physical. Not that I know of, anyway. But mental cruelty can be just as vicious.”
“All the more reason for me to protect Molly from this jerk.”
He had the training, the extensive network of connections to enact all sorts of legal sanctions. She knew that. She also knew the mere fact he’d had an affair with Anne would drive Jack Petrie to a jealous rage. The man was a sadist. He’d strangled his wife with a warped kind of love that others mistook for devotion. Anne was beyond his reach now, but her child wasn’t. Or her lover.
“You’ve just proved my point,” Grace countered with a touch of desperation. “You think Anne’s husband won’t want vengeance? He’ll try to milk you for millions. Drag a paternity suit out in court for years. Have you thought of that?”
“Of course,” he snapped. “I’m not afraid of a fight, legal or otherwise.”
Okay. All right. She had to breathe deep. Slow down. Remember she wasn’t dealing with someone as unbalanced as Jack Petrie.
“Put your own feelings aside for a moment, Blake. Think what a long, drawn-out court battle could do to Molly. When she’s older she’ll be curious about her mother. All she’d have to do is surf the Net. You can imagine the headlines she’ll stumble across. Billionaire’s Love Child Center of Vicious Paternity Dispute. Decorated Police Officer Calls Wife a Whore. Secretary Hooks Rich Boss with Sex And…”
“I’ve got the picture.”
He got it, and he didn’t like it. She didn’t, either, but they couldn’t ignore it.
“Don’t dig any further, Blake. Please! In a year, two years, everyone outside our immediate circle will just assume Molly’s our child. Petrie won’t have any reason to question it.”
He looked as if she’d punched him in the gut. Or square in his sense of right and wrong. His eyes went cold, his voice flat and hard.
“So you want to live a lie. Like your cousin.”
For Molly’s sake she gave the only answer she could. “Yes.”
Twelve
“She just can’t bring herself to trust me.”
Blake gripped his beer and ignored the buzz from the crowd gathered in the watering spot a few blocks from Dalton International’s corporate headquarters. He and his brother had wrapped a bitch of a meeting with senior executives from Nippon Steel earlier that evening, then taken their Japanese visitors to dinner at one of Oklahoma City’s finest steak houses. The Nippon execs had taken a limo back to their hotel, leaving Blake and Alex to lick their wounds over a beer and a bucket of peanuts before heading home to their respective spouses. Despite the round of tough negotiations, it was Blake’s spouse who occupied his mind more than the Japanese.
“I accept that Grace promised to keep Anne’s secrets,” he said, stretching his long legs out beneath a tabletop littered with peanut shells. “I respect her for holding to that vow, but Christ! We’ve been married almost a month now and she still doesn’t think I can handle this character Petrie.”
Shrugging, Alex attempted to take the middle road on the subject he and his twin had already beaten into the ground a number of times. “Grace knows Petrie. We don’t.”
“We know enough! The bastard terrorized his wife and forced her into a shadow life. Now he’s doing the same thing to my wife.”
Frustration ate like acid at Blake’s gut. It was doing a serious number on his pride, too. He yanked at the knot of his tie and popped the top button of his shirt before downing a slug of beer.
“Mother says Grace stays in the background at the charity functions she’s involved her in and ducks whenever a photographer shows up. She does the same when we attend a concert or some black-tie affair. The woman is fixated on maintaining a low profile until our marriage is old news.”
“So? You don’t exactly chase after the spotlight yourself.”
“Dammit, bro, you’re not helping here.”
“You wanted a sounding board, I’m doing my best board act.” Peanut shells crunched as his twin leaned his elbows on the table. “I’ve told you what I really think.”
“Yeah, I know. You think I should take a quick trip to San Antonio and confront this guy. Let him know who he’d be dealing with if he got any smart ideas.”
“Correction. I think we should take a quick trip to San Antonio.”
“It’s my problem! I’ll handle it.”
“You’re doing a helluva job with it so far.”
Blake’s lips drew back in a snarl. He managed to choke it off. Barely. Alex knew damned well he was spoiling for a fight. Obviously, his twin was prepared to step in and draw the punches.
“Well, at least you’ve got Jamison’s sources keeping an eye on Petrie,” Alex commented.
“I’m getting regular updates.”
“Does Grace know?”
“She knows.”
That had caused another rough scene. Grace argued that Petrie was a cop. Sooner or later he would pick up on a surveillance, become suspicious, track it to the source. Blake countered with the assertion that Jamison and his associate in San Antonio were pros. They wouldn’t tip their hands. In either case, Blake flatly refused to turn a blind eye to a potential threat.
Grace had conceded that point. Reluctantly, but she’d conceded. Still, the fact they were living with this guy Petrie’s shadow hanging over them locked Blake’s jaw every time he thought about it. He’d promised his wife he wouldn’t confront the man without talking it over with her first. That discussion was fast approaching. In the meantime, he and Grace each pretended they understood and accepted the other’s viewpoint.
“I get that Grace saw firsthand the hell Petrie put her cousin through,” Alex said, attacking the matter from another angle. “What I don’t get is why she doesn’t want to take him on. I didn’t know Anne all that well, but I do know Grace. My sense is she’s much stronger than her cousin was.”
“Stronger, and a whole bunch more stubborn,” Blake agreed with a grimace.
“She’s also got us to do the muscle work. All of us. Mother and Julie want in on this. Dusty, too.”
Momentarily diverted, Blake raised a brow. “Yeah, what’s with that? The old coot’s at Mom’s house just about every time I stop by there these days.”
“They’re consulting,” Alex replied, deadpan. “As Julie’s business partner and coowner of one of Dalton International’s subsidiaries, Dusty prefers to talk shop with someone who worked the same oil patches he did.”
“Oh, Lord! I’m not going to tell you the image that just jumped into my head. But…” Blake raised his beer. “Here’s to ’em.”
Grinning, the brothers clinked bottles. Alex signaled the waitress to bring two fresh ones before returning to the issue digging at them both.
“Back to Grace. She’s got to know she can count on you, on all of us, to protect her from this asshole Petrie.”
“She knows,” Blake said grimly. “The problem is she thinks she’s protecting us. Or Molly and me, anyway.”
His brother winced. “That’s got to stick in your craw.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
He didn’t go into further detail. As a kid Alex had been the one to wade fist-first into battle. Blake had always had his brother’s back, though, and Alex his. The fact that his wife didn’t trust him to have hers rubbed him raw. Feeling the grate yet again, he circled
his beer bottle on the littered table and sent a shower of peanut shells to the already carpeted floor.
“So how long are you going to play this by her rules?” Alex wanted to know.
Blake’s head snapped up. The uncompromising answer came fast. “The rules change the moment I sense so much as a hint of a real threat.”
* * *
Grace was perched on one of the kitchen counter stools when she heard the muted rumble of the garage door going up. She’d put Molly down for the night at seven-thirty and indulged in the sybaritic luxury of an hour-long soak in scented bath oil that evoked instant memories of Provence’s hot sun and endless lavender fields. Barefoot and supremely comfortable in a well-washed, black-and-silver San Antonio Spurs jersey that came almost to her knees, she’d curled up with a biography of Van Gogh before deciding to treat herself to a bowl of double chocolate fudge ripple. After so many years of busy days in the classroom and nights grading papers, she loved having the time and the freedom to read whatever struck her fancy. She loved even more reading to Molly, which she’d started doing before they’d moved into the house Grace was having such fun furnishing.
All in all, her days were perfect. The nights came pretty darn close.
Grace had gotten past her anger over Blake directing his P.I. to dig into the past her cousin had tried so desperately to escape. She’d also recovered—mostly—from the stinging sense of betrayal that he’d done it after she’d begged him to let that past stay buried. She understood his rationale. She didn’t agree with it, but she understood it.
Unfortunately, a difference of opinion on something so crucial couldn’t help but affect their continually evolving relationship. The strain it had caused was like a small but irritating itch they’d mutually decided to ignore.
Despite the itch, they still took pleasure in discovering new facets to each other’s personalities. The quirks, the unconscious gestures, the ingrained habits. What’s more, they still shared the sheer joy of Molly. And Grace’s pulse still bumped whenever her husband walked into a room.
The Paternity Promise Page 12