by Lisa Jackson
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Good question. One I can’t wait to ask her, but let’s just say that your sister and I aren’t on the best of terms.”
‘Is that why you hired your friend?” What was Nola involved in? Normal, regular people didn’t employ investigators—or even have their friends check up on old lovers. Or did they? Something was wrong here. Very, very wrong. He moved closer to her and she found herself so near this man she could barely breathe. The air in the little cottage seemed suddenly thick, the light through the windows way too dim.
“Nola lied. About a lot of things. Not just the baby.”
“Such as?” Annie’s heart was knocking, her breathing shallow as her gaze dropped from his to the contour of his lips, so bold and thin. Too much was happening, way too fast. She felt as if her life was spinning out of control.
“She set me up.”
“For?”
He shrugged. “My guess is to get the blame off whoever she’s protecting. She claimed she knew that before she left Belfry Construction, I was embezzling. One night, when she just happened to be driving by, she saw me go into the office. She concluded I’d gone to doctor the company books and was surprised by the security guard, so of course I killed him.” He didn’t elaborate, just stared at her with unforgiving eyes. “I didn’t do it, Annie. I swear.”
“But—but why would she lie?” Oh, God, what was he saying? Nola wouldn’t . . . couldn’t fabricate something so horrid. A man was dead. Murdered from the sound of it and Nola thought O’Shaughnessy was involved? “I—I think you’d better start from the beginning.”
He did. In short, angry sentences he told her about his work, the projects he’d overseen, the discrepancy in the books, and Nola’s suddenly recanted testimony that she’d known he was at the office that night. The problem was that he had been there, but when he’d left, Bill Arness was very much alive. Liam had thrown a wave to the old man as he’d stepped off the elevator and Bill had locked the door behind him. He finished there; he didn’t tell her about being watched by the police, eventually hauled into jail, fingerprinted, and booked, only to have the charges dropped. Hell, what a nightmare.
Annie stared at him with disbelieving eyes. “On top of all this—which is damned incredible, let me tell you—you’re sure that you’re the baby’s father and Nola’s her mother?”
“I wouldn’t put Nola in the same sentence with mother.” O’Shaughnessy glanced down at the basket as Carol uttered a soft little coo. The hard line of his jaw softened slightly and a fleeting tenderness changed his expression, but only for a moment. In that instant Annie noticed the wet streaks in his hair where snow had melted and the stubble of a beard that turned his jaw to gold in the dim fireglow. As he unbuttoned his coat and rubbed kinks from the back of his neck, Annie was nearly undone.
She had to think, to buy some time and sort this all out. Since he was bound and determined to take the baby with him, she had to entice him to stay. At least for a while. “Would you like something? I’ve got a Thermos of instant coffee I made on the fire this afternoon. It’s not gourmet by any means, but I can guarantee that it’s hot.”
“That would be great.” He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over the back of the couch as Annie hurried to the kitchen, twisted the lid of the Thermos, and quickly poured two cups. Her hands were trembling slightly, not out of fear exactly, but because she was a bundle of nerves around this man.
“So tell me again about last night,” he suggested as she handed him a steaming mug. His gaze kept wandering back to the basket where the baby slept.
Quickly, she repeated her story of finding the baby, the note, seeing no one, not even footprints leading away from the porch, nothing. As she spoke, he sipped from his cup and listened, not interrupting, just hearing her out. “. . . So this morning, once I could get through, I started making calls. Everyone from the sheriff’s department to social services and the hospitals around here, but no one seems to know anything about her.”
“I do.”
“You think. You really don’t know that Carol—”
“Carol?”
“I named her, okay? The point is that there’s no way to be sure she’s your daughter.”
The baby, as if sensing the tension building in the small room, mewled a small, worried whimper.
“Oh, great. See what you’ve done?” Disregarding the fact that he was a good foot taller than she and, if he decided, could stop her from doing anything, Annie hurried to the basket, gently withdrew baby and blankets, and held the tiny body close to hers. “It’s okay,” she whispered into the baby’s soft curls and realized that the blond hair and blue eyes of this little sprite were incredibly like those of the irate man standing before her.
The baby cried again and Annie all but forgot about Liam O’Shaughnessy with his outrageous stories and damned sexy gaze. “She’s wet and hungry and doesn’t need to deal with all this . . . this stress.”
“She doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“I think that makes three of us!” Annie felt him silently watching her as she changed Carol’s diaper, then warmed her bottle in a pan of water that had been heated in the coals of the fire.
“Here we go,” she said softly as she settled into the creaky bentwood rocker and, as she fed the baby, nudged the floor with her toe. For the first time since O’Shaughnessy had pounded against her door, there was peace. The wind raged outside, the panes of the windows rattled eerily and a branch thumped in an irregular tempo against the worn shingles of the roof, but inside the cottage was warm, dry, and cozy. Even O’Shaughnessy seemed to relax a little as he rested one huge shoulder against the mantel and, while finishing his coffee, surveyed his surroundings with suspicious eyes.
“Okay,” Annie finally said once Carol had burped and fallen asleep against her shoulder. “Instead of arguing with each other, why don’t we figure out what we’re going to do?”
“You think you can trust me?” he asked, trying to read her expression.
“I don’t have much choice, do I?”
That much was true. He was here and definitely in her face. She couldn’t budge him if she tried. Annie McFarlane was a little thing, but what she lost in stature she made up for in spirit. He cradled his cup in his hands and tried not to feel like a heel for barging in on her, for destroying her peace of mind, for intending to take away the baby that already appeared to mean so much to her.
“Nope, you don’t.”
“Great. Just . . . great.”
Firelight played in her red-brown hair. High cheekbones curved beneath eyes that shifted from green to gold. Arched eyebrows moved expressively as she spoke with as sexy a mouth as he’d ever seen. A sprinkling of light freckles spanned the bridge of her nose and her hazel eyes were always alive, quick to flare in anger or joy.
What he knew of her wasn’t much. She was divorced, had moved from somewhere on the East Coast, saw her sister infrequently, and did some kind of secretarial or bookkeeping work.
“Come on, O’Shaughnessy,” she prodded as she carefully placed Carol into the basket. “Why would Nola lie to you and about you? Did she just want to get you into trouble?”
“A good question.” He wasn’t quite ready to tell her that he’d spent several days in a jail cell because of Nola and her lies. If he confided in her now he was certain she’d be frightened or, worse yet, call the police. There was no telling what she might do. Maybe she’d accuse him of trespassing or kidnapping if he insisted upon taking Carol—Carol?—with him. Good God, he was already giving the baby the name she’d put on the kid. She looked up to find him staring at her. “How’d you find me? Wait, let me guess. Your friend the detective, right?”
“Jake’s pretty thorough.”
“I don’t like my privacy invaded.”
“No one does,” he admitted, “but then, I don’t like being lied to about my kid.” Or lied about. He finished his coffee and tossed the dregs into the fire
. Sparks sputtered and the flames hissed in protest. “So why did Nola leave the baby here for you without so much as a word? It seems strange.”
“I—I don’t know.”
She was lying. He could smell a lie a mile away.
“Sure you do.”
“It’s personal, okay?”
“So’s my daughter.”
She stopped cold, took in a long breath, and seemed to fight some inner battle as the baby began to snooze again. “I don’t know what your relationship was with Nola,” she said. “As close as my sister and I are, we don’t share everything and she . . . she’s been distant lately.” Clearing her throat, she stepped over to the makeshift bassinet as if to reassure herself that the baby was still there. “I’ve been wrapped up in my own life, settling here, rebuilding, and I guess Nola and I kind of lost touch. The last time I called her apartment, a recording told me the number was disconnected. No one in the family—not even my brother or mother—has heard from her in a few weeks.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“For Nola?” A smile touched her lips and she shook her head, “Unfortunately, no.”
God, this woman was gorgeous. Her eyes were round and bright, a gray-green that reminded him of a pine-scented forest hazy with soft morning fog.
“I’ve got to find her.”
“Why? What good would it do?”
He considered that for a second. “First, I want sole custody of my child.” He saw the disappointment in her features and felt suddenly like the scum of the earth. “And then there’s the little matter of my innocence in Bill Arness’s death. I want to talk to good old Nola and find out why she wanted to set me up. I’ve been cleared, sort of, though I think I’m still a—what do they call it when they don’t want to say suspect?—a ‘person of interest’ in the case. I want to talk to Nola, find out why she lied about the break-in at Belfry and—” He jerked his head toward the basket.
“—The baby,” she finished for him. “You know, O’Shaughnessy, you make it sound as if my sister’s involved in some major criminal conspiracy.”
As the fire hissed in the grate and the wind whistled through the trees outside, Liam leveled his disturbing blue eyes at her. “Your sister’s in big trouble.”
“With you.”
“For starters. I think the D.A. might be interested as well.”
“Well, if you think I can help you find her, you’d better think again. She’s a free spirit who—”
“Is running for her life, if she’s smart.”
The baby let out a wail certain to wake up the dead in the next three counties.
“Oh, God.” Annie jumped up as if she were catapulted by an invisible device, then carefully extracted the little girl from beneath her covers as if she were born to be this child’s mother.
Liam couldn’t hear what Annie was saying as she whispered softly and rocked gently, holding the child close to her breast. As if a fourteenth-century sorceress had cast a quieting spell, the infant instantly calmed.
It was damned amazing. Could he work this magic with the kid? Hell, no! Could Nola? At the thought of that particularly selfish woman, he frowned and plowed stiff, frustrated fingers through his hair. What was he going to do?
Carol—if that’s what the kid’s name was—sighed audibly and a smile tugged at the corners of Annie’s mouth. For an instant Liam wondered what it would be like to kiss her, to press his mouth against those soft, pliant lips and . . . He gave himself a quick mental shake. What was he doing thinking of embracing her, believing her, wanting to trust her, for crying out loud?
He cleared his throat. “Look, Annie, the bottom line is this: You have my daughter. I want her. And I’ll do anything—do you hear me?—anything to gain custody of her.”
“Then you’ll have to fight me,” Annie said, her chin lifting defiantly and her back stiffening. “You don’t have any proof that Carol is yours.”
She tried to look so damned brave as she held the child and pinned him with those furious hazel eyes. For a second his heart turned over for her. She obviously cared about the baby very much. No matter what her true motives were, she had strong ties to the child, probably a helluva lot stronger than Nola’s. Nonetheless he was the kid’s father and as such he had rights, rights he intended to invoke.
“She’s mine, all right.”
“Then you won’t be averse to a paternity test.”
“For the love of Mike. It’s not like you could take a maternity test, right?”
“I’ve already talked to the powers that be. I’m not claiming to be the baby’s mother.”
“Fine. No problem. I’ll take any damned test.” He glanced out the window and scowled at the snow piling over his footsteps. Though he’d been inside less than an hour, the marks made by his boots were nearly obscured. In all truth, there was a problem, a big one. His four-wheel drive rig had barely made it to the end of the driveway because of the packed snow and ice on the roads. Without chains, his wheels had slipped and spun, nearly landing him in the ditch. Though sanding crews had been working around the clock, the accumulation of snow and freezing temperatures had reduced the snow pack to ice. As it was, driving any distance was out of the question, especially with an infant and no safety car seat.
Annie cast him irritated looks as she attended to the baby. Finally, when the child’s eyelids had drooped again, Annie carefully placed Carol into the basket. She tucked a blanket gently around the baby and smiled when the infant moved her tiny lips in a sucking motion. “She’s so adorable,” Annie said. “If she is your child, Mr. O’Shaughnessy, she’s darned near perfect, and you’re one very lucky man.”
He couldn’t agree more as he stared at the tiny bit of flesh that sighed softly in a swaddle of pink blankets. An unaccustomed lump filled his throat. He’d never expected any kind of emotional attachment to the baby, not like this. Sure, he’d felt obligated to take care of the kid—duty-bound to see that his offspring was financially and emotionally supported. He planned on hiring a full-time nanny to start with and then, as the kid grew, employ the best tutors, coaches, and teachers that money could buy. If he had to, he had supposed, he could even get married and provide a mother of sorts.
He glanced at Annie and felt a jab of guilt, though he didn’t know why. “However,” Annie said, planting her hands on her hips, “if the blood tests prove that you’re not her father, O’Shaughnessy, then you’ll have a helluva lot of explaining to do. Not only to me, but to the police.”
CHAPTER 4
The woman had him. No doubt about it. The last thing he wanted to do was get the police involved. She was smart, this sister of Nola’s, and the firelight dancing in her angry green eyes made him think dangerous thoughts—of champagne, candlelight, and making love for hours.
“I’ve already told you I don’t want to call the authorities. Not until I understand what’s going on.”
She lifted a finely sculpted eyebrow and desire, often his worst enemy, started swimming in his bloodstream. “And I’ve already told you,” she said, poking a finger at his broad expanse of chest, “that I’ve talked to the police about the baby. I’ve got nothing to hide, so why don’t you level with me?”
“I am.”
Her hair shone red-gold in the dying embers of the fire. “I don’t think so.” Resolutely she crossed her arms under her chest, inadvertently lifting her breasts and causing Liam’s mind to wander ever further into that dangerous and erotic territory. He couldn’t seem to think straight when she was around; his purpose, once so honed and defined, became cloudy.
“I want you to help me find Nola.”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to her and find out why she lied about the baby, why she lied about the break-in, why the hell she wanted to set me up for murder.”
“If she did.”
“She did, all right.” Liam had no doubts. None whatsoever when it came to Nola Prescott. Annie was another story altogether. Her forehead wrinkled in concentration,
but she didn’t budge and he figured he should back off, at least a little. “Think about it and I’ll do something about the heat in here, okay?” He didn’t bother waiting for an answer, but threw on his jacket and walked outside. Firewood was already cut and stacked on the back porch, so he hauled in several baskets of fir and oak, restocking the dwindling pile on the hearth and adding more chunks to the fire.
Annie busied herself with the baby, feeding her, changing her, burping her, rocking her, cooing to her, and looking for all the world as if she were born to be a mother. Idiot, he told himself. Don’t be fooled. She and that sister of hers share the same blood.
The phone jangled and they both jumped. Annie froze and just stared at the instrument, but Liam was quick and snagged the receiver before the person on the other end had a chance to hang up.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Who is this?” a male voice demanded. Whoever the hell he was, he didn’t sound happy. “I’m calling Annie McFarlane.”
“Just a sec—”
Liam handed the phone to Annie and, without a word, took the baby. It was incredible how natural it felt to hold the kid, even though his hands were larger than the baby’s head. Little Carol gurgled, but didn’t protest as Annie, eyes riveted on him, placed the receiver to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Annie?” It was Joel, her brother. “For crying out loud, who was that?”
“A—a friend.” Why she thought she had to protect O’Shaughnessy she didn’t know, but somehow she thought it best not to tell her brother about his wild story and her plight.
“A friend? I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried. I’m glad you’re not pining over David, but from what the news here says, you’re in the middle of one helluva storm. I’ve been trying to get through for hours.”
“Me, too,” she said and since she didn’t offer any further explanation about O’Shaughnessy, Joel didn’t pry.
“So you’re okay?”
“All things considered.” She watched Liam with the baby and her heart did a silly little leap. He was so big and the infant was so tiny, yet she sensed that this man who exuded such raw animal passion and fury would protect this child with his very life.