Paternity Unknown

by Barrett, Jean

  “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly.

  She could see memory surfacing behind his frown. “But we used protection.”

  “And sometimes protection fails.”

  “My kid,” he muttered, struggling to accept it.

  As though needing further verification, he turned back to the crib, leaning down for a closer look. No longer fearful of him, aware only of a maternal need to protect her child, Lauren flew to the crib. She hovered there, prepared to defend Sara against any threat.

  She needn’t have been worried. Her daughter certainly wasn’t. Her wide, blue-green eyes gazed up at the face of the man above her with trust and interest, her tiny fists waving in contentment.

  And Sara’s father?

  Lauren turned her head to glance at him. Ethan’s face had softened, the expression on it tugging at her in spite of her resistance.

  “The blanket is pink,” he said. “Does that mean—”

  “Yes, a girl. Her name is Sara.”

  The precious moment they shared didn’t last. Ethan straightened, his bold mouth hardening again as he faced her.

  “And just when were you planning to tell me I had a daughter?”

  The thing that had terrified Lauren all these months was no longer just a possibility. It had arrived in the shape of a formidable Ethan Brand. She knew she had to meet his inevitable demands with courage and determination, but she couldn’t seem to find her tongue. Her silence condemned her.

  “You weren’t going to tell me, were you? You were going to go on preserving this little secret.”

  He would never understand the torment that had prefaced her ultimate decision. Wouldn’t think, as major as all this was to him, that she deserved his sympathy. She didn’t try.

  “Damn it, Lauren, you should have contacted me when you realized you were pregnant. I had a right to know about Sara.”

  Here it was, the angry accusation she had prayed she would never have to hear and deal with. “Yes, you did,” she agreed, “but—”

  “But what?”

  Lauren drew a slow breath to steady herself. When she spoke again, she tried to choose her words with care. But there was no way to ease their inherent cruelty.

  “I felt I had to keep Sara’s paternity a secret from everyone. Even from the man who fathered her.”

  “Is this supposed to make sense?”

  “Think about it, Ethan,” she said, pleading for his understanding. “You’d been arrested for murder. The opinion of every news report I heard was that you would be convicted, sentenced to years in prison.”

  She had been unable to avoid wounding him. She could see it in his eyes.

  “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “The guy you’d made the mistake of going to bed with had been branded a killer, and no way did you want to be associated with that.”

  “For Sara’s sake!” she cried. “Don’t you see how that knowledge would have hurt her growing up in a conservative place like this? I wasn’t going to do that to her.”

  “The daughter of a man who’d murdered his own grandfather, huh? Not a very nice reputation. Okay, I can buy that. Public opinion can be pretty nasty. But what about you, Lauren? What was your opinion while I sat there in jail?”

  She was silent again. Helplessly silent.

  His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “So you condemned me, too.”

  “No, I—I didn’t know what to think. When all was said and done, you were a stranger. I knew next to nothing about you, and I couldn’t take the chance of—”

  “Believing I might be innocent. All for the sake of Sara, wasn’t that it? Well, I wasn’t convicted and I am innocent. And if there are any lingering doubts about that, and I guess there are, I’m going to see to it that you, along with the good people of both Elkton and Seattle, are relieved of them. With or without the help of Hilary Johnson. And when I’m done clearing myself…”

  There was a decisive look now on his face that scared her. She didn’t want to hear what he intended, but he went on to tell her in words that were as sharp as razors.

  “Whether you like it or not, Lauren, I’m going to play a role in my daughter’s life. Make no mistake about that.”

  Trembling, she refused to listen to another word. “Get out,” she commanded him angrily. “Just go.”

  “I’m leaving, but I’ll be back. You can count on it.”

  And with that forceful promise cutting into her heart, he turned and strode out of the bedroom, out of the cabin. From a side window, she watched him climb into a blue sedan and drive away. He was gone, but he was not out of their lives.

  What was she going to do about him? What could she do?

  Sara was beginning to whimper. She wanted to be fed.

  It was while Lauren was fixing her daughter’s bottle that she made a decision. She needed professional advice.

  WITH OR WITHOUT the help of Hilary Johnson.

  Ethan’s rash pledge to Lauren mocked him as he headed back to his motel two discouraging hours later. At this moment, after trying to track down the elusive ex-housekeeper without result, he was beginning to think he would have to clear himself without her.

  He had started with her address in Elkton, an old frame house in need of paint. Like its neighbors who shared the quiet residential street, the place was shaded by maples in the full blaze of autumn.

  Hilary wasn’t at home. Ethan had parked himself on the front porch, hoping she would turn up. The old man next door, curious about his presence, had stopped raking the leaves in his yard and come over to speak to him. He’d been reluctant at first to answer questions, but Ethan had finally convinced him that it was important.

  “She keeps to herself,” the old man had told him, tugging at the brim of a baseball cap that was splitting at the seams. “Just like her parents, who left her the property. Used to be a sister, but I think she died, too.”

  “Any idea where I could locate her?”

  “Could be she’s at one of those temp jobs. You know, filling in for secretaries and the like at offices around town. I know she does that sometimes.”

  Ethan wasn’t surprised by this information. He knew that Hilary had on occasion helped his grandfather in this capacity when her duties as a housekeeper had permitted it.

  “Which offices would those be?”

  The old man had offered him several suggestions. Ethan had waited for another fifteen minutes on the porch, but when Hilary failed to return, he went off to try those offices.

  It was while driving from insurance agents to real estate operations, none of which had employed her today, that Ethan realized he knew next to nothing about Hilary Johnson. Although she had served as his grandfather’s live-in housekeeper for over two years, she remained essentially a mystery to him.

  The questions that had troubled him even before his arrest continued to haunt him. Why had Hilary risked perjury charges by lying in her deposition and on the stand at both of his trials? He could see no possible motive. Nor could she, herself, have brutally struck down his grandfather like that. Whatever his age, Jonathan Brand had been a large, strong man and his housekeeper delicate almost to the point of being frail. Also, she hadn’t benefited in any way from his death.

  Just the same, Ethan couldn’t shake his conviction that she was in some way the key to everything. Providing he could find her. And providing she would even agree to talk to him. He could be in trouble with the law again if she complained about him. It was a possibility he was prepared to risk.

  But right now, he needed a shower and then something to eat. He had missed breakfast, and it was long past noon. Once revived, he would go back to hunting for his objective.

  His motel was off the far end of Elkton’s main street, but getting there was proving to be a slow crawl. The business district was heavy with traffic, both sides of the street crowded with shoppers.

  Must be the weather that brought them all out, Ethan decided as he halted at a traffic light. The afternoon was as warm as summer.

&
nbsp; If the circumstances had been otherwise, he might have been tempted to join all those people strolling along the sidewalks. Elkton was an attractive place.

  Situated between majestic mountain ranges, the town had once been a thriving lumber center. But now, as one of the gateways to Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, it was more tourist-oriented. The stores that in the frontier days had contained saloons, boarding houses and pool halls behind their brick fronts had been turned into gift shops and ice-cream parlors. Elkton was currently as respectable and picturesque as one of the postcards sold in those shops. Yeah, he could see why Lauren had come back here to live.

  Lauren. The sudden image he conjured of her brought both pleasure and pain. Not that he needed her image to be reminded of her. She had been in his thoughts all day.

  He had to face it. She was as much responsible for his low mood as Hilary Johnson. More so. He was suffering miserable guilt because of her, unable to get that scene in the cabin bedroom out of his head.

  What were you thinking to turn on her like that?

  But that was the trouble. He hadn’t been thinking, only feeling. And his emotions had resulted in a harsh anger that must have hurt her. He was sorry about that, just as he regretted not having been there for her during the months she was carrying his child. Independent though she was, it couldn’t have been easy for her dealing with that all on her own.

  The light changed. Ethan drove on to the end of the street, turned a corner and arrived at his motel in the middle of the block. It was a long, two-storied affair, with each of its rooms opening directly onto outdoor galleries.

  At this hour, there were no other cars in the parking area that adjoined the street. He was able to park the rental sedan in front of his ground floor room.

  His travel bag was waiting for him just inside the door, where he had hastily dumped it when he’d checked into the motel before starting his search for Hilary. Instead of grabbing it and heading into the bathroom for that shower, he stood there in the quiet dimness of the room.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about Lauren. Wondering if there was any chance of mending this thing between them.

  A baby ought to bring two people together, not divide them.

  Poor Sara. It wasn’t her fault she was the subject of a strong conflict between her parents. But, damn it, was he so wrong in wanting to be a part of his daughter’s life? The daughter whose existence still had him in a state of disbelief.

  Ethan didn’t think he was wrong, that he was entitled to share Sara. But as ferociously protective of her daughter as she was, Lauren wasn’t going to give him an easy time over that issue.

  Later. You can worry about it later.

  He decided that at this moment he needed an action more diverting than a shower to get his mind off a problem that seemed to have no solution. It wouldn’t hurt to check in with his office back in Seattle, learn how the current operation was going in his absence. That would claim his attention.

  Ethan was reaching for his cell phone when there was a pounding on his door. It had the sound of a pair of fists driven by a furious urgency.

  What in God’s name—

  His long legs carried him swiftly to the door. Pulling it back, he found himself confronted by a wild-eyed Lauren.

  “Where is she?” she demanded, her voice shrill with something close to hysteria. “What have you done with her?”

  Before he could open his mouth to ask her what she was talking about, she had thrust her way past him into the room. By the time he turned away from the door, she was searching the place, her frantic gaze raking every corner.

  “Lauren, what are you looking for?”

  He didn’t know why he wasted time in asking her when his initial bewilderment had already given way to a deep sense of uneasiness about exactly what she was looking for.

  “She isn’t here!” She whipped around to face him, her eyes registering her incredulity.

  “Are you telling me—”

  “Sara! Sara is missing!”

  Ethan’s uneasiness was replaced by an understanding that had his insides knotting with a sour alarm. “What do you mean she’s missing? How can she be missing?”

  Lauren didn’t answer him. She started for the door, but he blocked her path.

  “Get out of my way! I’ve got to find her!”

  “Lauren, calm down and tell me what happened.”

  “I told you! She’s gone!”

  “How? From where?”

  “Her car seat! She was there in the back when the bicycle went down and I rushed out to help, and then when I came back, she wasn’t there! And if you don’t have her—”

  Her voice cracked on a note of desperation, threatening to slide into uncontrollable sobs. Ethan could see she was in no state to make sense. Sorting it out would have to wait. There was something more immediate that needed attention.

  “Hang on,” he said grimly.

  He went to the phone on the stand beside the bed, lifted the receiver and punched in the number for the front desk. When the attendant on duty answered, he asked her to send for the police, stressing it was an urgent matter.

  Lauren was still standing in the middle of the room when he hung up, fists pressed tightly to her mouth in an attitude of bleak despair. The sight of her like this tightened the knot in his stomach.

  “Sit down,” he commanded her.

  She shook her head. He went to her, placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her over to the bed.

  “Sit down before you fall down.”

  She didn’t resist him this time. She sank on the edge of the bed, hands in her lap. Ethan hunkered down on the floor in front of her, taking her limp hands in his. They were cold with shock.

  “The police are on their way. Now tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I can’t. I should be out—”

  “We have to wait for the police, Lauren. There’s nothing we can do until they get here. Now tell me.”

  Maybe telling him would ease her shock, prepare her for the detailed account the cops would want when they arrived.

  She hesitated, then made the effort to give him what he asked for. “I came into town to keep an appointment with a lawyer. His office is just across the street. I was turning into the parking lot when this bicycle…well, it just seemed to shoot in front of me out of nowhere.”

  “You hit it?”

  “No, I slammed on the brakes in time. But the rider lost her balance and went down. The first thing I did was check on Sara behind me. She was all right, still asleep in her car seat.”

  “Then what?”

  “I got out to see to the woman. She was on the ground. I asked her if she needed medical aid, but she kept insisting she wasn’t hurt, just needed a minute to collect herself. She wouldn’t let me call anyone. I helped her to her feet, and we looked at the bicycle. She said it was fine. She got on it and pedaled off.”

  “And when you got back to the car?” Not that he needed to ask. Hadn’t he already heard the worst before he called the desk?

  “Sara had disappeared! Vanished!”

  Her voice rose again as she relived the horror that must have gripped her. Ethan squeezed her hands.

  “Easy,” he said.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t see how it could have happened. Not without my knowing, not when I couldn’t have had my back to the car for more than a few minutes. But she was gone, lifted right out of her harness.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the area? Anyone at all?”

  “No, there was no one by then but me. I started to run toward the corner, thinking I might catch up with whoever had taken her. And that’s when I saw—”

  She broke off. There were tears now on her cheeks.

  “What?” Ethan insisted, already guessing what she’d seen but needing to hear it. “What did you see?”

  “Your car across the street in front of the motel. I recognized your car.”

  He knew the rest now, didn
’t he? How she’d raced across the street, banged on his door, accused him of—

  Feeling a sudden anger surging through him, Ethan tried to steady himself. Tried to remember that, in her panic, Lauren had been beyond logic. Even so, how could she have considered him capable of abducting his own daughter like that?

  “This appointment with the lawyer,” he said quietly. “It couldn’t have been about me, could it?”

  Looking up into her face, he could see by the sudden, wary expression in her moist, golden brown eyes that it was. Only then did she seem to realize he was holding her hands. She drew them quickly away from his grasp.

  “The things you said back at the cabin…you scared me with them. I had to learn just what rights you had about Sara, whether you could—”

  “You thought I might try to take her away from you? That I’d actually do something like that?”

  “I was worried. I didn’t know whether, with all your money, you could end up winning custody of—”

  “Lauren, I’m not rich. Nothing like it.”

  What was he doing? This wasn’t the time to argue about something like that. Not when she was suffering from the loss of her daughter, and he was as sick about that as she was. Not when all that mattered was concentrating their energies on recovering Sara.

  Any explanation about the inheritance he had renounced wouldn’t have been possible anyway. There was someone knocking on the door.

  Getting to his feet, Ethan went to answer it. He opened the door to two men. Both of them wore uniforms. There was a cruiser behind them parked next to his rental car.

  “You folks got trouble here?”

  It was the elder of the two who addressed him. He had a paunch, a ruddy complexion and a full moustache that matched his red hair. Ethan stood back, permitting them to enter the room. Lauren had risen from the bed to anxiously face them.

  “Sheriff Howell,” the one in charge introduced himself. He tipped his head in the direction of the younger man, who wore a stoic look on his narrow face. “And this is Deputy Wicowski.”

  Neither of them offered to shake hands. The sheriff peered at Lauren. “I know you, don’t I?”