The Black Sheep’s Baby Read online

  The Black Sheep’s Baby

  Kathleen Creighton

  The Black Sheep’s Baby is part of Creighton’s “Into the Heartland” series. I gather from the references to other characters that this is an inter-generational series and that the hero of the current release, Eric Lanagan, is the son of characters from the earlier books. I assume that the circumstances that turned him into a “black sheep” were delineated in a previous story.

  This tale begins with Eric driving down the interstate towards his parent’s home in Iowa. The prologue also introduces us to Los Angeles lawyer, Devon O’Rourke, who wakes dreaming of her dead sister Susan’s pleading for help. She begins to pack her bags for her trip to Iowa.

  What is bringing Eric and Devon together is five-week old Emily, Devon’s sister’s daughter. Eric, a photojournalist, had been on assignment from an LA paper to do a story about runaway teens when he met nineteen year old Susan O’Rourke. He took Susan under his wing and learned her tragic story. Abused by her prosperous father and unable to get help, she had fled home at fourteen and lived on the streets with all its terrors. When it became clear that she would not survive the birth, she asked Eric if she could name him as Emily’s father. She made him promise that he would never allow Emily into the custody of her father.

  The O’Rourkes had learned of Susan’s death and Emily’s birth. They had sued for custody and a judge had ordered Eric to take a DNA test to determine his parentage. Rather than submit, Eric had fled the state and headed for home. Devon, guilty over having somehow failed Susan, is determined to protect her infant daughter from someone she believes is incapable of giving Emily the life she deserves.

  The two meet up at the Lanagan family homestead in the middle of a blizzard and with Christmas coming on. Lucy Lanagan has been missing her son and hoping that he will be home for Christmas. She is understandably delighted when he turns up and even more pleased when he presents her with Emily, the grandchild she has dreamed of.

  When Devon appears, stranded in the snow, Lucy welcomes her as well. When she learns that the lawyer wants to take Emily away from Eric, she decides on a bit of matchmaking. This may not make much sense, but I guess it made sense to Lucy. After all, before long Eric and Devon – antagonists to the core – begin experiencing a seemingly inexplicable attraction to each other.

  However attractive he may find Devon, Eric does have a hidden agenda. He is convinced – and Devon’s complete lack of childhood memories supports his belief – that she too was abused by her father. If he can just get her to remember, then he won’t have to worry about the O’Rourkes’ custody suit.

  While I am generally a fan of Creighton’s stories, this one didn’t quite work for me. Perhaps my lack of familiarity with the previous books detracted from my enjoyment of The Black Sheep’s Baby. More probably, the romance just didn’t work for me. Devon is clearly a wounded soul. Despite her academic and professional success, she is hiding something terrible from herself. Eric is actually a less well-defined character. Clearly his rejection of family tradition and the family farm was a formative factor in his and his family’s life, but it is not really fully explored. Why the hero and heroine fall in love never quite seems clear, given the circumstances.

  I am sure that those who have read and enjoyed Creighton’s “Into the Heartland” series will want to read this next installment. I suggest that other readers may want to think twice.

  – Jean Mason

  Kathleen Creighton

  The Black Sheep’s Baby

  A book in the Into The Heartland series, 2002

  Dear Reader,

  July is a sizzling month both outside and in, and once again we’ve rounded up six exciting titles to keep your temperature rising. It all starts with the latest addition to Marilyn Pappano’s HEARTBREAK CANYON miniseries, Lawman’s Redemption, in which a brooding man needs help connecting with the lonely young girl who just might be his daughter-and he finds it in the form of a woman with similar scars in her romantic past. Don’t miss this emotional, suspenseful read.

  Eileen Wilks provides the next installment in our twelve-book miniseries, ROMANCING THE CROWN, with Her Lord Protector. Fireworks ensue when a Montebellan lord has to investigate a beautiful commoner who may be a friend-or a foe!-of the royal family. This miniseries just gets more and more intriguing. And Kathleen Creighton finishes up her latest installment of her INTO THE HEARTLAND miniseries with The Black Sheep’s Baby. A freewheeling photojournalist who left town years ago returns-with a little pink bundle strapped to his chest, and a beautiful attorney in hot pursuit. In Marilyn Tracy’s Cowboy Under Cover, a grief-stricken widow who has set up a haven for children in need of rescue finds herself with that same need-and her rescuer is a handsome federal marshal posing as a cowboy. Nina Bruhns is back with Sweet Revenge, the story of a straitlaced woman posing as her wild identical twin-and now missing-sister to learn of her fate, who in the process hooks up with the seductive detective who is also searching for her. And in Bachelor in Blue Jeans by Lauren Nichols, during a bachelor auction, a woman inexplicably bids on the man who once spurned her, and wins-or does she? This reunion romance will break your heart.

  So get a cold drink, sit down, put your feet up and enjoy them all-and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the most exciting romance reading around…only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  Prologue

  December 20-Los Angeles, California

  S he woke in the milky twilight that passed for darkness in the city, knowing she’d dreamed of Susan again. As always, she couldn’t remember much about the dream-no details, not even a face. Just a voice-Susan’s voice, childish and frail, calling to her. Calling her, pleading with her. Help me…help me, Devon. Please…don’t leave me. Help me…

  She threw back the covers and rose, paced barefoot to the window. She stared out across the glittering jeweled carpet that stretched all the way to the sea, squinting hard to hold back angry tears. How was I supposed to help you, she thought, when I didn’t even know where you were? You ran away, damn you. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault!

  She held herself tightly as she shivered, and swallowed hard, once, then again. A tear ran warmly down her cold cheek.

  Susan had been fourteen when she’d run away-almost a woman. But the voice in her dream was that of a little child.

  Help me, Devon…

  Dammit, Susan, she thought, angry and weary at the same time. I am helping, can’t you see that? I’m sorry if I let you down, but I’m trying to make it up to you now, the only way I know. Isn’t that enough?

  She brushed at her cheek and jerked away from the window. The luminous numbers on the clock portion of the built-in entertainment center beside her bed glowed green-gold in the gray twilight-2:14 a.m. Way too early to even think about leaving for the airport. And yet she knew better than to try to go back to sleep. Calm, now, and resolute, she went to her walk-in closet and took her rolling overnighter from its shelf. She lifted it onto the bed, unzipped it and began, carefully and methodically, to pack.

  December 20-On I-80, Somewhere in Nebraska

  His eyes wanted to close-insisted on doing so, in fact, in spite of his strenuous arguments against it. That, plus an inarguable need for fuel, forced him off the interstate.

  He chose an exit somewhere east of Grand Island that promised half a dozen motels and at least that many restaurants. He bypassed all of them, though his stomach had been complaining for the last fifty miles, and pulled instead into a gas station where he could pay at the pump. While unleaded gasoline gushed into the tanks of his six-year-old Dodge, he stood with shoulders
hunched and hands in his pockets, rocking himself in the bitter Nebraska wind and reflecting on how the California winters had spoiled him.

  Just beyond the roof of the gas station’s convenience store he could see a big green Holiday Inn sign, like a beacon summoning his exhausted mind and body into a safe harbor. But as much as he yearned for rest, as much as he knew he needed rest, he also knew that right now there was only one harbor in the world that would feel safe to him.

  “We’ll be there by tonight,” he told his passenger, sound asleep in the back seat. “Five more hours…”

  The fuel nozzle clicked off. He replaced it in its cradle, climbed back into his car and, after a moment’s indecision, pulled across the parking lot and up to the drive-through window of the fast-food place next door. He ordered a double cheeseburger and a jumbo coffee and a short time later was back on the interstate, heading east toward evening.

  In his rearview mirrors he could see, reaching toward him out of the west like menacing fingers, the dark purple clouds of the oncoming storm.

  Chapter 1

  I t was the week before Christmas, and Lucy was sorting laundry.

  She acknowledged that fact with a sense of mild astonishment-and not-so-mild vexation, for Lucy Rosewood Brown Lanagan was not a person to whom the adjective “mild” could normally be applied. At least, not often or for long.

  “It’s too quiet to be Christmas!” she declared loudly, though more to herself than to her sister-in-law, Chris, who was sitting at the kitchen table thumbing through magazines, looking for recipes.

  “This looks good,” Chris said without looking up. “Walnut squares…”

  “Eric’s allergic to walnuts.”

  Lucy said it without thinking, an automatic response-which she realized a moment later when Chris looked up and eagerly asked, “Oh, is he going to be here for Christmas this year?”

  A familiar pain made Lucy’s voice uncharacteristically light when she replied with a shrug, “Haven’t heard from him.” And a moment later asked, “What about Caitlyn?”

  Chris’s eyes jerked away, shifting back to the magazines spread out on the table in front of her as she said in a tone as artificially cheery as Lucy’s, “She doesn’t know for sure. Says she’ll try her best to make it, at least for Christmas dinner.” And a poignant little silence fell between the two women, fraught with empathy and unvoiced yearnings.

  “It’s too quiet-” Lucy began again, just as, with faultless timing, a door banged sharply and loud thumping noises started up out on the back porch.

  Chris gave a gurgle of laughter. She and Lucy both looked toward the kitchen door as it burst open to admit their menfolk along with a gust of freezing wind. Lucy knew the smile in Chris’s shining eyes was only a reflection of her own, though it gave her as much embarrassment as satisfaction nowadays to admit, even after more than thirty years, that the sight of her husband’s face could still give her that seasick feeling under her ribs.

  “Getting colder,” the man himself announced as he ducked into the service room across the hall to wash up in the laundry tub. “That storm’s on its way. Be here before morning.”

  “Forecast said midnight.” Lucy’s brother Wood zigzagged over to give his wife a hello kiss, peeling off gloves and ski cap on the way. “Pack it up, darlin’. I want to get back to the city before this thing hits.”

  “Edward Earl,” Lucy said in a no-arguments voice-well aware that as his big sister she was the only person alive allowed to call him by his given name-“you’ve got plenty of time, you can stay and have some supper. I’ve got a roast in the oven and a Jell-O salad in the fridge, so you just go on in there and get washed up. Supper’ll be on the table in ten minutes.”

  “I’d do as she says, if I were you,” Mike said in a warning tone, grinning as he came into the kitchen, rolling down his shirtsleeves. He paused to give Lucy a peck on the cheek.

  “Smells good. What’ve you two been up to?”

  Though she wasn’t the demonstrative sort, she gave him an elbow in the ribs to let him know her heart was doing a happy little skip-hop at his nearness.

  “Looking up recipes. Everything all battened down out there?”

  “Everything that can be… More recipes?” Mike was looking sideways over Chris’s shoulder at the spread on the table. He cocked an eyebrow toward Lucy. “Who’re you cooking for, the third division?” In an aside to Wood he added, “We had leftovers from last Christmas dinner for Easter.” And then, probably because he knew very well how precarious Lucy’s mood had been lately, coming up on this particular holiday season, he wrapped his arms around her and murmured next to her ear, “Honey, there’s just gonna be the four of us. You don’t need to go to so much trouble.”

  “Five,” Chris said firmly, shuffling magazines into a stack as she stood up. And when nobody said anything for a second or two she lifted her head and looked her husband hard in the eyes. “Caitlyn’s coming. She said she would.”

  “She said she’d try.” Wood’s voice, too, was gentle.

  “She’ll be here.” Chris gathered up the pile of magazines and marched off to the parlor.

  Wood muttered what sounded like, “I hope so,” under his breath as he pulled out a chair and sat in it. And after a moment, “Sure does seem strange, doesn’t it? Not having a houseful of kids around for the holidays? Doesn’t seem like-”

  Lucy interrupted him with a swipe at his shoulder. “Edward Earl, take off your coat before you sit down at the table!”

  “Yes’m.” He rose obediently, not trying to hide a grin.

  “And hang it up, too-you know where it belongs.”

  “Just like old times…” he grumbled good-naturedly as he carried his chore clothes across the hall to the service room.

  “Old times…” Lucy muttered angrily, turning to the sink. It wasn’t that she was angry, really, just that she could feel a familiar heaviness creeping around her heart, thinking about the season…the quietness. She hated that heaviness; it made her feel old and scared, panicky and depressed, all at once. Old times. How I miss them… Mama, Daddy, Gwen. And the children. Where did the children go?

  Not to be put off, Wood was saying as he reclaimed his chair at the table, “Speaking of ‘old times,’ I was thinking about how it used to be, you know? When we were kids.” His wife came back in just then, and he craned to look up at her and reached for her hand. “You should have been here, Chris.” And then he laughed. “I’m surprised you weren’t, actually. Mom had this habit of inviting people. Anybody who didn’t have anyplace else to go, Mom made ’em welcome here at our house. But even without the strays, we always had a crowd-remember, Luce? Aunts, uncles, cousins-whatever became of all those cousins, anyway? Does anybody ever see them anymore?”

  “We mostly lost touch after Mama and Daddy died,” Lucy said without turning from the sink where she was washing green beans. “I get cards from some of them at Christmastime. You know, those letters everybody sends now that they’ve all got their own computers.”

  “What I can’t figure out,” said Wood, lacing his fingers together behind his head and gazing around the kitchen, “is where we used to put everybody. This room-this house-sure seems a lot smaller that it did when we were kids.”

  “Everything seems smaller than it did when we were kids,” Mike put in. He’d taken his usual place at the foot of the oval oak table and was indulging in a back-cracking stretch. “Something about perspective.” Everybody paused to look at him alertly in case he meant to go on, since it wasn’t Mike Lanagan’s way to do much talking at times like this. Mostly, Lucy’s husband liked to just watch and listen, like the reporter he’d been and still was, she knew, in his heart.

  “What we did, was,” she said when it had become apparent Mike had said all he was going to for the time being, answering Wood’s question even though she knew he hadn’t really expected an answer, “we put all the leaves in this table and the grown-ups squeezed in right here in the kitchen. The kids got to eat in
the parlor. Dad would bring in two sawhorses and put planks on them, and Mom would put the oilcloth tablecloth from the kitchen table over that. The good linen tablecloth went on this table, along with the good china.”

  Lucy turned on the faucet to run water over the beans. “Us kids got to eat on plastic or paper plates, like a picnic. I’m surprised you don’t remember that, Earl. You always used to try to start food fights with your cousin Donnie- Donnie Hewitt, remember him? He could make milk come out of his nose, which is a talent I don’t imagine benefited him much later in life.”

  Wood passed an embarrassed hand over his eyes. His wife was gazing at him in wonderment. “That was a long time ago. I guess we’ve grown up some since then.” There was a reminiscing silence, and then he added without any laughter at all, “I wonder sometimes, you know? About Mom and Dad-what they’d think if they could see the way we turned out.”

  Lucy didn’t say anything, but became intent on chopping up bacon to go on the green beans. She was thinking about Wood-Earl-and how he’d been just in high school when their parents were killed in that car accident in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. Thinking about it, even though it had been so many years ago, made her throat tighten up.

  It’s this season, she thought. She hoped she wasn’t turning into one of those people who hate the holidays just on general principles.

  Wood went on, after clearing his throat in the loud way men do when they’re in danger of showing emotion. “They’d have to be surprised about old Rhett becoming president of the United States.” Everybody laughed at that.

  Lucy surprised everyone, herself most of all, when she turned, swiped the back of her hand across her nose and said fiercely, “They’d have been just as proud of you, Earl, becoming a teacher. Just think of all the lives you’ve-” Embarrassed, she broke it off and jerked back to the sink.