The Paternity Promise

by Merline Lovelace

  Like now. She swiveled the stool, cradling her bowl of double chocolate fudge ripple, and felt the flutter as Blake entered the kitchen through the utility room connected to the garage. He moved with the athletic ease she so admired and looked as classy as ever, although the open shirt collar and the tie dangling from his suit coat pocket added a definite touch of sex to the sophisticated image.

  They hadn’t reached the stage of casual, hello-honey-I’m-home kisses yet. Grace wasn’t sure they ever would, although she knew darn well they couldn’t sustain indefinitely the searing heat they’d ignited during their honeymoon. She felt it sizzle now, though, as he nudged her knees apart so he could stand between them and cupped her nape.

  “Did you and Alex get your Japanese execs all wined and dined?”

  “We did.”

  His palm was warm against her skin, his eyes a smoky blue as his head bent toward hers. Tipping her chin, Grace welcomed him home with a kiss that left her breathless and Blake demanding a second one just like the first. She gave both willingly, as greedy as he was, but had to jerk back when the fudge ripple threatened to slide into her lap.

  Blake eyed the bowl’s contents with interest. “That looks good.”

  “Sit down, I’ll get you some.”

  “I’ll just share yours.”

  “Hmmmm.” Her brow furrowed in a mock scowl. “In the ‘just for future reference’ category, I don’t usually share my ice cream. Or my fries.”

  “Noted. But you’ll make an exception in this instance, right?”

  Since he was still wedged between her thighs and didn’t look as though he planned to move anytime soon, she yielded the point.

  “Okay. Here you go.”

  He downed the heaping spoonful in one try, prompting a quick warning.

  “Whoa! You’ll get a brain freeze gobbling it down like that.”

  A slow, predatory smile curved his mouth. “No part of me is liable to freeze like this.”

  He moved closer, spreading her wider. The Spurs jersey rode up, and Grace felt him harden against her.

  “I see what you mean,” she got out on a gasp when he exerted an exquisite pressure at the juncture of her thighs. “No danger of frost down there.”

  Or anywhere else!

  The pressure increased. The muscles low in her belly clenched. He splayed his hands on her hips to keep her anchored, and the wild, throbbing sensation built with each rhythmic move of his lower body against hers.

  “Blake!” She tried to wiggle away but the counter dug into her back. “We’d better slow down. I can’t… You’ve got me too…”

  “Hold on.”

  Like she could? Especially when he spanned her waist and lifted her in a smooth, easy move from the stool to the counter. She didn’t even realize she still held the now-melted ice cream until he took the bowl and let it clatter into the sink. Then the jersey came up and over her head. Her bikini briefs got peeled off. Her mouth was level with his now, her hips in line with his belt. She should have felt completely, nakedly exposed. All she experienced was the urgent need to get him naked, too.

  “Your jacket… Shirt…”

  He shed the top half of his clothing with minimum movement and maximum speed. The bottom half stayed intact as he buried a fist in her hair, and took her mouth with his.

  There was something different in this kiss, in the maddening pressure he exerted against her. He was a little rougher, a little harder, yet somehow more deliberate. As though he could demonstrate some sort of mastery over her if he wanted to but chose to restrain himself. Or not. Grace didn’t register more than that hazy impression before he replaced his lower body with his hand and drove everything resembling rational thought out of her head.

  She came mere moments later in a burst of bright colors and pure sensation. The explosive climax arched her spine and brought her head back. She slapped her palms on the counter to support her taut, shuddering body, but her arms folded like overstretched elastic.

  Blake scooped her off the counter before she went horizontal and carried her limp and still quivering with pleasure to the bedroom. When he shed the rest of his clothes and joined her in bed for the grand finale, he was so gentle and tender Grace completely forgot that odd moment in the kitchen.

  * * *

  It came back with a vengeance less than a week later.

  Yielding to her mother-in-law’s indomitable will, she strapped Molly into her car seat to drive her over to the Nichols Hills mansion for some grandmother-granddaughter time. Grace herself had been instructed to shop for a cocktail dress for the big-dollar fundraiser Delilah insisted her sons and their wives attend the following evening.

  “Which I really do not want to go to,” she said via the rearview mirror to the infant happily banging a teething ring against the side window.

  Her eyes on the baby, she had to jam on the brakes to avoid an SUV cruising past the end of the drive. The near miss rattled Grace and reminded her to keep her attention on the road. The brief visit with Delilah didn’t exactly soothe her somewhat frayed nerves.

  “You should get your nails done while you’re out,” her mother-in-law suggested after a prolonged exchange of Eskimo kisses with a joyously squealing Molly. “Your hair trimmed, too.”

  “I look that bad, huh?”

  “You look gorgeous and you know it.” She hitched the baby on her hip and skewered her daughter-in-law with one of her rapier stares. “Just not as glowing as you did when you got back from Provence. Don’t tell me you and Blake have taken the sex down a notch already.”

  “I won’t,” Grace countered coolly.

  “Don’t get on your high horse with me, girl. If it’s not sex, it has to be that business with Jamison. Look, I don’t like to meddle in my sons’ lives but…”

  She paused and waited with a reluctant grin for Grace to finish snorting.

  “Okay, okay. Meddling is my favorite occupation. But I thought you and Blake had come to an understanding on that matter.”

  “We have. More or less.”

  The older woman let Molly play with her sapphire-and-diamond wrist bangle and skinned Grace with another serrated look. “I’m only going to say this once. I’ll never mention it again, I swear.”

  Grace believed that as much as she believed her former employer could keep her nose out of her sons’ affairs. Once Delilah got the bit between her teeth, she kept it there.

  “You did right standing by your promise to your cousin,” she said, “but she’s dead and you’re married now. You need to decide where your loyalty lies.”

  Grace went rigid, her eyes flashing danger signals. They bounced off Delilah’s thick hide.

  “Go,” she ordered brusquely. “Shop, have your nails done, and for God’s sake think about what I just said.”

  * * *

  Grace fumed all the way to the exclusive boutique she and Julie had discovered some months ago. She pulled into a parking slot two doors down and killed the Jag’s engine, then sat with her fists gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

  She didn’t need Delilah to lecture her about loyalty, dammit! She’d spent what felt like half her life and every penny of her income shielding Anne from her sadistic husband. If she closed her eyes, she could still see her cousin fighting desperately for her last breaths. Hear her rasping plea for Grace to take Molly to her father and please, please don’t let Jack know about her.

  Her knuckles whitened on the wheel. She stared at the shop window in front of the Jag. The window was bare except for a For Lease sign, but Grace barely noticed the empty expanse of glass and darkened interior.

  Maybe…

  Maybe the habit of protecting her cousin had become too ingrained. Maybe she’d been following instincts tainted by Anne’s bone-deep fear when she should be trusting Blake’s. He was calm and cool in a crisis. And more intelligent than any six people she knew. He could also wield resources every bit as if not more powerful than Jack Petrie’s. Most important, he was Molly’s father
. He’d strangle anyone who tried to harm her with his bare hands.

  Groaning, Grace dropped her forehead to the wheel. Heart and soul, she ached to hold to the promise she made her cousin. She couldn’t. Not any longer. Delilah was right. She had to let go of Anne’s past. Her future revolved around Molly and Blake. With a silent plea to her cousin to understand, she raised her head and fumbled in her purse for her cell phone.

  She pressed one speed-dial key. Her husband’s superefficient executive assistant answered before the second ring.

  “Blake Dalton’s office.”

  “Hi, Patrice, it’s Grace. Is Blake free?”

  “Hi, Grace. Sorry, but he’s in the middle of a conference call with the Association of Corporate Counsel’s executive committee. They want him to chair the next symposium, you know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Shall I pass him a note to let him know you’re on the line?”

  “No, just tell him… Tell him I was thinking about my cousin and…”

  Hell! She couldn’t put what she wanted to say on a yellow call slip.

  “Just tell him I called.”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks.”

  She tapped End, feeling much like Julius Caesar must have when he brought his legionnaires across the Rubicon. She couldn’t go back now. She didn’t want to go back. She’d charge full steam ahead with Blake and Molly and a life without the specter of Jack Petrie hanging over it.

  * * *

  She was still riding the relief of that decision when she emerged from Helen Jasper’s boutique some time later. As usual, the shop owner’s eye had proved as unerring as her taste. She’d purchased the entire line of a young Oklahoma designer she was sure would make a splash in the fashion world. Grace ended up buying not only a tea-length cocktail dress in dreamy shades of green, but two beaded tops and a pair of slinky palazzo pants with accessories to match. She’d also had Helen bundle up the outfit she’d worn into the store and now felt very autumnal in heavyweight linen slacks in cinnamon-brown, a matching tank top and a pumpkin-colored silk overblouse left unbuttoned to show off a faux lizardskin belt as wide, if not as clanky, as Delilah’s.

  Smiling at the thought of Blake’s reaction to the backless and darned near frontless cocktail dress, she bunched her shopping bags in one hand and fumbled in her purse for the car keys. She popped the door locks, dropped her purse on the front seat and was about to add the shopping bags when a black SUV wheeled into the slot next to hers. The idiot driver cut into the space so sharply she had to quickly yank on the open door to avoid having it dinged.

  Mentally giving him the bird, she bent to retrieve the tissue-stuffed bags her quick move had sent tumbling to the floor mat. When she straightened, she caught a glimpse of the other driver from the corner of one eye. He’d exited his vehicle but hadn’t moved away from it.

  A prickly sense of unease raced along her spine. He was standing close to her Jag. Too close. A half dozen tips from the various self-defense articles she’d read crowded into her mind. She went with the only one she could.

  Jamming her car keys between her fingers, she closed her fist to form a spiked gauntlet and started to turn. She didn’t get even halfway around before something hard rammed against her shoulder blade and her world turned red.

  Thirteen

  “She doesn’t answer her phone.”

  Blake paced his brother’s office on the twentieth floor of Dalton International’s headquarters. Wall-to-wall windows offered a different perspective of downtown Oklahoma City than that in his own office at the opposite end of the long corridor bisecting the CEO’s suites. But Blake had no interest in the sweeping panorama of the round-domed capitol building in the distance or the colorful barges meandering along the river in the foreground. He took another few paces, his fists jammed in the pocket of his slacks.

  “I’ve left three voice mails. The first was around ten-thirty, the last one a half hour ago.”

  Although it was now just a little past two, Alex understood his brother’s concern. He’d spent several tense hours himself when Julie took off in search of a missing Dusty Jones, her cell phone died and Alex didn’t know where the hell she’d disappeared to. When he reminded Blake of that knuckle-cracking episode, his brother shook his head.

  “I thought of that, but her phone was sitting in the charger next to mine when I left the house this morning. It’s fully juiced.”

  “And Mother didn’t know where Grace was heading?”

  “Not specifically. Just that she was going shopping and maybe to get her hair or nails done.”

  “That sure narrows it down,” Alex said drily as he reached for the phone on the broad plane of his desk. “I’ll call Julie. I remember her mentioning some boutique or other that she and Grace really like.”

  Luckily, he caught his wife on the ground between crop-dusting runs. Julie had come to a reluctant decision to quit flying agro-air, worried that its high concentration of chemicals could affect the baby she and Alex had decided to try for. She was in the process of training a replacement now—and acclimating the poor guy to the challenges and dubious joys of working with Dusty.

  Blake tried to suppress his nagging worry while his brother explained the situation to his wife and scribbled a couple of numbers on a notepad before promising to call back once they’d located Grace.

  “She said to try a boutique owned by a woman named Helen Jasper.” Alex punched in the first number. “Also a nail salon on… Hello? Ms. Jasper? This is Alex Dalton.”

  He listened a moment and smiled.

  “Yes, I am. Very lucky. So is my brother. That’s why I’m calling, actually. We need to get in touch with Grace, but her cell phone’s not working. She was going shopping, and Julie said to try your place.” His glance cut to Blake. “She did? All right, thanks.”

  Some of the tension riding Blake’s shoulders left when Alex reported his wife had spent several hours and what sounded like a big chunk of change in the boutique.

  “She left a little before noon. Maybe she stopped somewhere for a leisurely lunch.”

  “Maybe.” The tension ratcheted up again. “But I can’t see her lingering over a long lunch without calling to check on Molly.”

  “Let’s try this nail place. She could have…”

  Alex broke off, frowning when the door to his office opened. His executive assistant sent him an apologetic look as Delilah swept in pushing Molly’s stroller, unannounced as usual. The matriarch of the Dalton clan—and nominal president of DI’s board of directors—saw no reason why she had to wait for an underling to grant her access to either of her sons.

  She halted the stroller in front of Blake. “Your assistant said you were here with Alex.”

  He barely had time to absorb her knee-high boots, black leggings and rust-colored tunic cinched with a monster leather belt decorated with an assortment of dangling, clinking zoo animals in silver and gold before Molly gave a joyous screech.

  “Da-da!”

  His heart turning over, Blake responded to his daughter’s outstretched arms by unclipping the stroller’s safety belt and gathering her in his. She brought with her that ever-fascinating, always changing combination of baby smells. Today it was powder and strained peaches and a faint, yeasty scent he couldn’t identify.

  “Have you heard from Grace?” Delilah demanded while Molly planted wet kisses on his cheek.

  “No, but we know she left her favorite boutique a couple of hours ago.”

  “I was just saying she may be treating herself to a late lunch,” Alex put in.

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Delilah asserted flatly. “Not without giving me a call first to check on Molly.”

  The skin at the back of Blake’s neck stretched taut. His mother had just confirmed his own thoughts.

  “Patrice said Grace left a message for you earlier,” she continued. “She didn’t communicate her plans for the rest of the day?”

  “Just that she wanted me to call
her.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No.” Blake’s jaw tightened. “After she didn’t reply to my second voice message, I grilled Patrice. She said Grace mentioned wanting to talk about her cousin, then changed her mind and just asked Patrice to tell me she called.”

  “Her cousin?”

  Despite the distraction of Molly’s palm slapping his cheek, he didn’t miss the sudden flicker of guilt in his mother’s eyes.

  “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “Well…”

  With a sudden premonition of disaster, Blake passed Molly across the desk to her uncle and locked on his mother. “Tell me what you did.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she huffed. “I merely suggested to my daughter-in-law that she might want to think about whether she owes her loyalty to her dead cousin or her very much alive family.”

  “Dammit! I told you not to interfere in this.”

  “You’re raising a daughter,” she fired back. “You should know by now that being a parent gives you the inalienable right to interfere when necessary.”

  Too furious to counter that broadside, Blake strode to the windows. He knew damned well that Grace did think about where her loyalty lay. Continuously. The matter twisted her in as many knots as it did him.

  Had she gotten fed up with the pressure he and now Delilah had put on her? Was that why she hadn’t responded to his return calls? Had she decided she needed some downtime, away from the Daltons, mother and son?

  Christ! Would she just disappear? Walk out of his life as Anne had?

  The thought put a hard, fast kink in his gut. Just as fast, Blake unkinked it. There was no way Grace would do that to him. She had too much integrity, too strong a sense of fair play. They’d argued over this whole mess, sure, but she knew he loved her too much to let her just disappear from his life.

  Didn’t she?

  Brought up short, he tried to remember if he’d articulated the actual words. Maybe not, but he’d sure as hell showed her how he felt. The fact that he couldn’t keep his hands off her spoke louder than words. As if it were an implied-in-fact contract, the attorney in him asserted, she could certainly infer his feelings from his actions.