MILLION DOLLAR BABY

by Patricia Ryan

  * * *

  MILLION DOLLAR BABY

  Patricia Ryan

  ~Harlequin Temptation #806~

  * * *

  * * *

  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  ^»

  Damn, not another reporter.

  The man walking purposefully toward Dean Kettering on the pier was one of those bulky, aging, Irish ward boss types with a thatch of snowy hair and a candy-apple-red nose, his trench coat flapping open over a suit and loosened tie.

  Facing away from him, Dean untied the last of the lines securing the canvas tarp that shielded the Lorelei from snow and ice. A wooden boat needed to breathe, so Dean liked to take advantage of sunny mornings like this to give her a little air – even if it was colder than hell. Winter was dragging on pretty late this year all over the Northeast, but its claws had sunk particularly deep in New England, pummeled over the past couple of weeks by a barrage of March snowstorms.

  "Mr. Kettering?" the man called in a deep-chested wheeze.

  Muttering a curse under his breath, Dean leaped onto the thirty-six-foot sloop and started hauling up the weighty canvas. He had neither the time nor inclination to play hero du jour on the ten o'clock news. You'd think the local press would have figured that out by now.

  "Mr. Kettering?" The stranger's shoes crunched heavily on the ice-crusted pier. "’Scuse me. You are Dean Kettering, aren't you?"

  Dean twisted his wind-whipped hair and shoved it under the turtleneck collar of the oversize Shetland sweater that he wore over two sweatshirts. Adjusting his fingerless gloves, he started dragging the tarp over the Lorelei's well-varnished teak deck.

  "This is you, right?" Dean's unwanted visitor held up a copy of the Providence Journal – the March 19 edition, Dean saw, because he recognized yesterday's front-page article headlined Portsmouth's Publicity-Shy Hero.

  The article was accompanied by two pictures of Dean. The first was a posed portrait of him neatly shorn and in the Air Force uniform he hadn't worn in four years. The second, snapped yesterday during the press onslaught, showed him turning away from the camera, his face half obscured by his overgrown hair, holding a hand up to ward off the photographer.

  Hauling up the tarp, Dean said, "You're wasting your time, pal. Take your little steno pad and go home."

  "I don't have a steno pad."

  "Your tape recorder, then."

  "Listen, pal, I don't know who you think I am, but my name is George Walsh, and I'm here to give you—"

  "Go away."

  "Are you always such a pain in the ass to strangers?"

  "Only when I want them to go away."

  "And you're not in the least bit curious as to why I'm here?"

  "I know why you're here." Dean grunted as he yanked the tarp back. "You want to ram those fifteen minutes of fame down my throat whether I like it or not – only I'm not playing that game."

  "You've got it all—"

  "The interview is over." Dean turned his back on Walsh as he worked.

  "I didn't come here to interview you, Kettering."

  "Look, don't try and pull one over on me, okay? Whatever it is you think you're gonna finesse me into—"

  "I came here to give you a million dollars."

  Dean paused and gave an incredulous little shake of his head. "Go away."

  "Did you hear what I said?"

  Dean turned, hands on hips, to face Walsh. "Listen, I told you—"

  "Here it is." Walsh unzipped his bulging Lands' End briefcase, withdrew a green envelope and held it out to him.

  "What's that?"

  "A check for a million dollars."

  "Uh-huh. Right." Dean continued gathering up the tarp.

  Walsh rolled his eyes. "Just look at it, for cryin' out loud. It's a cashier's check for a million dollars made out in your name."

  "Go. Away."

  "I don't think you understand. I really and truly am giving you a million dollars here. Tax free."

  "And what do I have to do to earn it? Get interviewed on national television and kiss my privacy goodbye forever?" Having uncovered the Lorelei's deck, Dean stood and rotated his shoulders.

  "I'm no reporter, Kettering. I'm a lawyer." Walsh dug a business card out of the inside pocket of his suit coat; approaching the boat, he offered it to Dean. Dean peered at the card, making out Walsh's name and, beneath it, the words Attorney at Law.

  When it dawned on Walsh that Dean wasn't going to take the card, he shoved it back in the pocket. "I represent the grandmother of one of those kids you pulled out of the drink the other night – Agatha Pierce Campbell, of the Newport Campbells. She's known for her philanthropic—"

  "Yeah. I've heard of her."

  "Mrs. Campbell is extremely grateful to you for having saved her grandson's life. She's asked me to demonstrate that gratitude by giving you a million dollars, free and clear." Walsh held up the green envelope. "I've seen to all the legal hoo-ha and taken care of the taxes. All you have to do is sign a few papers, take the check, and you're a million dollars richer. Not bad in exchange for freezing your butt off in ice water for ten minutes, no?"

  Ten minutes? It had taken days for the chill to leave Dean's bones.

  He frowned at the green envelope. This couldn't be for real.

  "Look." Walsh buttoned up his trench coat with red, quivering fingers. "Speaking of butts freezing off, I'm not exactly dressed for the weather here. Why don't you just do us both a favor and take the damn letter. Please."

  After a moment's hesitation, Dean hopped down onto the dock, took the envelope from Walsh and ripped it open. Inside was the promised million-dollar cashier's check made out to him. "What's the catch?"

  "No catch. Except—" Walsh retrieved some official-looking forms and a pen from his briefcase "—you've got to give me your John Hancock in about half a dozen places, and the money is yours. This is a gift, plain and simple. All you have to do is figure out how to spend it."

  A million dollars; it wouldn't make him rich, not by today's standards, but it was a tidy little chunk of change. If there was any one thing about Dean's life that he would change if he could, it would be the ongoing need to raise funds to keep the Lorelei afloat and put food in his belly. Summers weren't too bad; he generally had all the charter business he could handle. But this time of year was rough; every time the money started drying up, he had to bang out another magazine article on his battered old manual typewriter with the sticky P.

  No, that was wrong. There was something else he would change if he could. Or rather, there was something he would have done differently six years ago, a mistake he would have avoided so that he wouldn't have to live forever with a memory that shamed him to his bones.

  It wasn't just what he'd done that long-ago night that filled him with remorse; it was all the years since then. It was having to live with knowing what kind of a man he really was – the kind who could promise his best buddy, as he lay dying, that he'd look after his wife, and then…

  Dean swore under his breath and dragged a hand through his hair, ignoring George Walsh as he thrust the pen and papers toward him.

  And then there was that night, the night Dean wished to God had never happened, although from time to time he awoke sweating and trembling and breathing Laura's name after reliving it in his dreams. There was that night, and then there were the six years since, six long years during which he'd tried to forget what he'd promised Will Sweeney after a truck bomb had demolished their barracks in Dhahran and carved a hole in Will's chest.

  "I'll take care of her," he'd sworn – and meant it. After all, Laura had been his friend since their freshman year at Rutgers, just a
s Will had. Dean would make sure she was provided for, that she'd always have a roof over her head and enough money to get by, and that no harm would ever come to her. But Will had put his faith in the wrong man. He should have known Dean would just screw things up.

  For six years Dean had left her on her own, neglecting his promise because he couldn't face her after that night. He'd told himself it was for her own good, but the bottom line was, if he hadn't messed up so bad, he might have had the guts to stick around and keep his promise to Will. He would have been able to look after her, not just hope she did okay on her own.

  She had done okay, she and her daughter, according to that P.I. he'd hired a couple of years back to check up on her – but just barely. She supplemented her Social Security and military survivor benefits by painting seascapes, but the income from that kind of thing was modest and sporadic. Dean knew money was an ongoing struggle for her, but though he would have liked to help her out financially – in part as recompense for how unconscionably he'd acted the last time he'd seen her – he'd never had the means.

  Until now.

  "Kettering, for crying out loud." Walsh grabbed Dean's free hand and shoved the pen and forms into it. "Just sign this crap and take the check, so I can go."

  Dean inspected the check. "Can you endorse a cashier's check to a third party, like with a regular check?"

  "Sure, I guess, but…" Walsh frowned in evident bewilderment. "You want to give it to someone else? The whole million?"

  "Yeah, I don't want it."

  Walsh blinked at him. "You don't want it."

  Dean clicked the pen. "Turn around."

  "What?"

  "Around." He gestured in a circular motion with the pen.

  Walsh pivoted slowly, his expression dubious. Dean stuck the green envelope and the check between his teeth, flattened the forms down on Walsh's back, signed them and handed them to the lawyer.

  Walsh handed a couple back, saying, "These are for you," and stowed his copies in his briefcase with a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Mr. Kettering. It's been a pleasure—"

  "Stay put." Slipping the forms in his pocket, Dean laid the check facedown on Walsh's back, wrote "Pay to the order of Laura Sweeney" on the reverse side and signed it. "Here." He handed the lawyer the check.

  "Uh…" He turned it over in his hand. "Why are you giving this to me?"

  "So you can deliver it for me."

  "Whoa!" Walsh wheeled around, but Dean grabbed him and faced him away again.

  "Hold still," Dean ordered. "You'll need to know where she lives." Holding the green envelope against Walsh's back, he wrote Laura's name and address on it.

  "Look, pal," Walsh said, "my job was to give you the check, and now I've done that, so—"

  "I'm not asking you to hand-deliver it," Dean said. "You can send it by courier, mail it, whatever…"

  "So can you."

  "I'd rather it went out from your office." If Dean knew Laura, her first impulse would be to return the money, but she could only do that if she knew where he lived. Any guaranteed postal or courier service would display his return address right there on the outside of the package. He handed Walsh the envelope and pen.

  "You know," Walsh said as he slid the check back into the envelope, "it's risky entrusting a cashier's check this size to a courier service. You really want to deliver something like this in person. She lives where?" He squinted at the address Dean had written on the envelope. "Seven Cliffside Drive, Port Livingston, New York?"

  Dean nodded. "It's this little village on the north shore of Long Island." He'd always liked Port Liv, one of those quaint old waterfront communities with way too many antiques shops and tourist traps, but a pretty good marina. According to the P.I.'s report, Laura lived in what used to be her grandmother's summer place, an old stone cottage covered with ivy, where Dean and Will and Laura used to spend blissful long weekends away from the demands of college and, for Will and Dean, Air Force ROTC – Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

  "Well, I'm not going all the way to Long Island," Walsh said. "But maybe you should."

  "Not an option."

  "You sure? 'Cause it's really not safe, sending a cashier's check by—"

  "Real sure."

  "Just so you understand I'm not liable if anything goes—"

  "Understood."

  Walsh shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'll overnight it today." Nodding toward the Lorelei, undraped and basking in the wintry sun, but still almost completely iced in, he said, "Is it true you live on that thing? Year-round?"

  Dean nodded. "That's right. I spend my summers sailing and my winters here in this marina."

  "Seriously? I mean, it must be cool in the summer, but I think I'd go squirrelly spending my winters all alone on that thing, surrounded by ice."

  "You wouldn't do it in the first place if you weren't already completely toasted."

  Walsh's shaggy eyebrows quirked. "What do you know. The Ancient Mariner has a sense of humor."

  I did once, Dean thought, remembering how it was back in college, cracking jokes with Laura while Will laughed his ass off. Resolving to lighten up on Walsh now that he'd agreed to send the check to Laura, Dean forced a smile and said, "What's this 'ancient' stuff? Do I look that old to you?"

  Walsh studied him for a long, solemn moment. "Your eyes do."

  Dean's smile faded.

  The lawyer squinted at the writing on the green envelope. "Laura Sweeney," he murmured. Extending the envelope toward Dean, he said quietly, "Are you sure you don't want to bring this to her yourself?"

  "Yeah." Dean shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. "I'm sure."

  With a weighty sigh, Walsh shoved the envelope into his briefcase and zipped it up. "It's been real, Kettering," he said over his shoulder as he turned and trudged away.

  Reaching into his back pocket, Dean pulled out his wallet and withdrew the time-weathered photograph he kept tucked in its own little slot. It was a wallet-size studio portrait of Laura and Will dressed for their wedding, Will smiling proudly in his dress blues, Laura more incandescent than ever in that simple white gown, her honeyed-silk hair crowned by a wreath of daisies. Will's mother had tried to talk her into rosebuds, or lilies, or orchids, protesting that daisies lacked a certain cool sophistication, to which Laura had replied that she lacked a certain cool sophistication, and that daisies suited her just fine.

  They had. She'd looked astonishing that day, pristine and bewitching, her eyes – those soulful amber eyes – alight with pleasure. Her joy had been almost painful to behold; never had Dean felt so acutely empty.

  Dean slipped the photograph carefully back into its slot, closed the wallet and shoved it back in his pocket. A million dollars. It wasn't enough, not by a long shot. But it would have to do.

  *

  "You lose your way or something?"

  The ruddy-cheeked young FedEx guy on Laura Sweeney's front stoop kept his polite smile in place, but cocked his head. "Ma'am?" he said, expelling a cloud of vapor that hovered in the frigid air.

  "You need directions?" asked Laura, who had never until now seen a Federal Express truck pull up in the driveway of the remote stone cottage she had called home for the past five years. Glancing down at the oversize envelope in his hand, she said, "What address are you looking for?"

  "This one, I think." The young man held up the envelope. "This is 7 Cliffside Drive, right?"

  Laura frowned at her name and address typed into the "To" section of the waybill in the plastic pouch on the front of the envelope. Under "Sender's Name" it said George Walsh, Attorney at Law, and underneath that an address in Newport, Rhode Island.

  "I think there must be some sort of mistake," Laura said.

  "Are you Laura Sweeney?" he asked.

  "Uh, yeah, but—"

  "Then there's no mistake." He clicked a pen and handed it to her, along with a clipboard. "Just sign right here if you would." Sniffing the warm, sweet aroma wafting out of Laura's kitchen in the back of the house, h
e added, "Smells great in there."

  "We're making oatmeal cookies. You want one?"

  "Raisins?"

  "Yeah."

  "Nah."

  "Ooh, FedEx!" Laura's best friend, Kay, came into the front hall from the kitchen, brandishing a spatula. With her great cloud of wiry, prematurely gray hair and her batik caftan, Kay looked like the Wicked Witch of Haight-Ashbury. "Who's it from?"

  Laura shrugged as she signed her name. "Some lawyer in Rhode Island."

  "Don't accept it!" Kay snatched the pen out of Laura's hand. "You're probably being sued."

  The FedEx guy blinked at Kay and then at Laura.

  "Kay, honestly." Laura gestured toward herself, clad today in her Suzy Homemaker uniform of baggy jeans and flowered apron. "Who'd want to sue me?"

  "You never know," Kay said. "People sue over the craziest things nowadays. There are all kinds of nuts in the world."

  "You should know." Laura grabbed the pen back and completed her signature, then accepted the envelope and closed the door on the swiftly departing FedEx guy. Turning the nine-by-twelve-inch cardboard envelope over in her hands, she said, "How does this thing open?"

  "There's a little strip you pull," Kay said as the kitchen buzzer went off. "I'll do it." She handed Laura the spatula and plucked the envelope out of her hand. "You get that batch out of the oven. The last one almost burned."

  In the homey little kitchen, with its herb-festooned rafters and gingham curtains, Laura found her daughter, Janey, crossing to the antiquated oven, her bulbous tyrannosaurus-head slippers bobbing beneath the hem of her adult-size apron. The apron, like her face and blond braids, was liberally dusted with flour.

  "No, you don't," Laura scolded as Janey reached for the handle of the oven door. "You know you're not allowed to open that." She turned off the timer and grabbed two oven mitts.

  "But I'm a big girl now. You said. I'm five."

  "Barely." Janey's fifth birthday was New Year's Day. "You need a little more experience being five before I let you start reaching inside hot ovens. Now stand back while I get these cookies out."