The Black Sheep’s Baby Read online

  Devon O’Rourke was his enemy. But hadn’t he heard it somewhere-or read it, more likely? An old saying: Keep your friends close…and your enemies closer.

  The cement mixer inside Eric’s brain ground slowly to a halt. Still with his head back, gazing into the rafters, he drew a quick, catching breath and closed his eyes. Yes.

  His instincts, it seemed, hadn’t been so far off after all. It was clear to him, now, what he had to do. In order to win this battle he was going to have to get very close to his enemy, very close indeed. The O’Rourkes had the law and blood on their side; all Eric had was the secondhand testimony of a woman who wasn’t available now to tell her own story. His one witness-his only witness-was the vulnerable and possibly damaged child locked inside the memory of Devon O’Rourke.

  Somehow, he had to find a way to set her free.

  Chapter 6

  A s if the gods understood that Devon, a Californian born and bred, was in no way equipped to deal with such things as blizzards, the storm seemed to let up a little as she fought her way back to the house. The wind dropped; instead of the feral wail and shriek she’d almost grown accustomed to, a lovely whispering silence fell. Snow still swirled, but not in an impenetrable curtain. It lent an almost Christmas-card quality to the farmhouse huddled on the crown of the hill beneath the stark bare branches of trees.

  Oh, God-Christmas. She remembered, then, with a small sense of shock, that Christmas was only a few days away-she’d lost track of exactly how many. Back in Los Angeles, in a world a universe away, Christmas decorations would be wilting in eighty-degree sunshine, and shoppers coming to blows-sometimes worse-over the last available spaces in the mall parking lots. An unheralded wave of homesickness swept over her, filling her with an intense longing for a freeway traffic jam, a nice hot Santa Ana wind.

  Christmas was no big deal to Devon. She personally didn’t go in for a lot of the sentimental trappings, but she wasn’t one of those people who got mopey and depressed during the holidays, either. Her shopping had been done weeks ago with a minimum of fuss, all her purchases gift-wrapped at the store where she’d bought them and now stacked neatly on the bed in her seldom-used guest room. She never bothered with a tree, since she was so rarely home to appreciate it. On Christmas Eve, as always, she would have dinner with her parents at their home in Canoga Park. As for the day itself, she was currently “between relationships” so there would be no leisurely Christmas morning cuddle with mugs of eggnog in front of a gas log fire. Devon planned to catch up on some paperwork, and later perhaps drop in on one or more of the holiday parties to which she’d been invited. Or, maybe she’d skip them all and go to a movie. The advantage of being single, she thought, was that she could do pretty much anything she pleased. Which was the way she liked it.

  As she approached the house, two medium-sized dogs-they’d sounded much larger in the dark last night-came romping out to meet her. Not being accustomed to dogs-or animals of any kind-and remembering the ferocious-sounding welcome they’d given her upon her arrival, Devon froze in her tracks. Holding her hands and arms close to her chest and trying to look as stumplike as possible, she ventured in a quavering voice, “Hello, doggy. Nice doggy…?” However, no doubt smelling familiar clothing, they greeted her like a returning prodigal, with wriggling and giddy joy.

  “Nice doggy,” Devon confirmed as she pushed past wet, questing noses and clomped on up the snow-dusted steps to the back porch.

  Shedding her muddy boots and snow-crusted parka in the service room, as instructed, she went into the kitchen. Her cheeks and fingers were tingling, her nose running; she felt exhilarated for having survived all Mother Nature could throw at her. And something else-a curious sense of…almost of expectation…of the warmth and light and welcome that awaited her there. Odd-when she’d never felt like that coming into her own home, or even her parents’ home when she was a child. Had she?

  Such a simple, basic thing. A feeling of home, of welcome and security. Why couldn’t she remember even that?

  As it turned out, the kitchen was empty. But it smelled of coffee and bacon and maple syrup, and there were two places set at the oval oak table. More dishes, washed and stacked in a drainer in the sink, suggested Mike and Lucy had already eaten.

  Never a big breakfast eater at the best of times, and with a stomach full of knots left over from that confrontation with Eric in the barn, Devon poured herself a cup of coffee which she sipped standing at the counter, frowning at nothing while she digested unaccustomed feelings of disappointment and loneliness.

  “Crazy,” she muttered to herself, not even sure what she meant by it. Only silence answered her.

  No, not quite silence. She became aware all at once of a sound, one that had been there all along, but one so familiar, so much a part of her customary habitat, it hadn’t registered. The faint and distant clickety-clack of computer keys.

  Carrying her coffee, she wandered down a dim hallway toward the front of the house, head cocked and ears pricked like a hunter alert to the snap of a twig or the rustle of leaves. On one side of the house a formal living room stood dark and, Devon suspected, seldom used. Across from it an open doorway spilled warmth and light and busy noises into the hallway murk.

  Devon announced herself with a polite “Knock knock” as she stepped into what was obviously these people’s real “living room,” and a welcoming clutter of books and family photographs, afghans and worn but comfortable furniture.

  “Come on in.” Mike was peering intently at a computer monitor that was sitting on an old wooden desk placed endwise to a window through which Devon could see snowflakes swirling amongst bare black branches. A moment later the keyboard clatter ceased and he turned from the screen, peeling off a pair of dark-rimmed glasses as he rose with a welcoming smile.

  “Oh, please,” she said, holding up a hand, palm outward, “don’t stop. I’m sorry-I’m interrupting you.” But she couldn’t keep curiosity out of her voice, and, she was sure, her face. The desk was piled high with papers and books, and a low table under the window held a sophisticated combination printer-scanner-fax machine. Granted, Devon hadn’t much firsthand knowledge, but it seemed to her a little much for a farmhouse in the middle of Iowa.

  “No problem,” Mike cheerfully assured her. “I was just killing time. Deadline’s still a ways off. Did you find breakfast? I think Lucy left it in the oven to keep warm.”

  “What? Oh-yes, thanks…” She waved her coffee cup and offered an apologetic smile. “Actually, though, coffee’s all I want right now. I had some toast earlier, so I wasn’t really hungry. Maybe later?”

  “That’s fine.” There was a pause, and then, with a cautious smile, he asked, “Eric still shoveling manure in the barn?”

  Devon murmured an affirmative and managed to avoid his eyes by taking a sip of coffee, but not before she’d caught the compassionate twinkle in his eyes.

  “Where’s Lucy?” she asked as she turned away to begin a casual exploration of the room.

  “Take a guess.” He pointed at the ceiling as he joined Devon in front of an old upright piano topped with a collection of framed photographs she was looking at without really seeing. “First thing Lucy did this morning after chores was unearth the bassinet and her rocking chair. She’s taking to this grandmother business in a big way.”

  Devon would never be mistaken for a sentimentalist. She gave him a quick glance, and her mouth opened to tell him the truth in her customary blunt and forthright manner. But something-an unexpected constriction-suddenly made it impossible, and instead she swallowed the words with an audible sound she tried to hide in a gulp of coffee.

  Mike wasn’t fooled. “What?” he prompted gently.

  Devon shrugged, keeping a shoulder turned to him, avoiding his eyes. “Nothing-I was just…”

  “I take it she isn’t.” It was matter-of-fact. And not a question.

  She gave him another quick, hard look; then, letting go of a breath, nodded. “He admitted it to me just now-d
own in the barn.” Oddly, right now she felt no sense of victory.

  After several long seconds of silence, Mike murmured on an exhalation of regret, “Well, Lucy will be disappointed.”

  Devon felt an alien bump of empathy. Startled, even a little frightened by it, she moved on to the fireplace, where still more photographs crowded the mantelpiece and a fire sputtered and crackled with a merry eccentricity that could only be real wood.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” she remarked, holding her hands toward the fire even though they weren’t cold, watching them so she wouldn’t have to look at the gallery of photographs arrayed before her. She couldn’t have said why; normally she liked photographs. Moreover, these were Eric’s family. She wanted to know more about him, didn’t she? And here they all were, his entire family spread out in front of her, all those friendly eyes and wholesome smiles. Nice people…good people.

  Mike had come beside her again. “Oh, I was pretty sure Eric wasn’t Emily’s biological father.”

  Devon tilted her head and fixed him with a look of honest curiosity. She was a lawyer; she hadn’t missed the precise and, she was sure, deliberate terminology. “May I ask why?”

  He smiled, though not with his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, the way he told us, I guess. Eric’s always been careful with words-what comes of having a writer for a father. What he said was, ‘she’s mine.’ You understand? Not, ‘she’s my daughter,’ or ‘I’m her father.’” The smile made it to his eyes then, just as his mouth tilted into irony. “I know my son.”

  Once again she was caught unawares, this time by the poignancy in that particular combination of words and smile. “I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, frowning at her coffee cup. “I know this is awkward-my being here. Like this.”

  “Wasn’t much anybody could have done about it.” Mike gave a little shrug. “Couldn’t very well let you freeze to death on our doorstep.”

  Devon laughed. “Well, yes, actually, you could have.” Somber again, she looked him straight in the eye-one of her best weapons in the courtroom-and said earnestly, “You have to believe I never meant it to be like this. The storm-”

  “What did you mean it to be like?” His interruption surprised her. Suddenly alert, she realized the eyes that gazed back into hers, eyes that before had held only gentleness and compassion, now held a keen and probing light. “Just curious,” he said quietly, studying her, arms folded on his chest. “Seems a little unusual for an attorney to personally take on something like this. Why didn’t you let the authorities handle things?”

  Devon made a sound, a soft, unamused laugh, and turned her back on the homey crackle of the fire. “You’re right, it is unusual for the attorney to get personally involved. I chose to, for several reasons. I definitely would have handled it differently if Emily hadn’t been my niece-that’s one. However, since in the normal course of things, Emily winds up in foster care and your son possibly in jail on contempt charges-” Aware that her voice had developed a hard and brittle edge, she abruptly changed both her tone and tactics, schooling her gestures and body language as she would in handling a delicate courtroom situation.

  “You have to understand,” she said, one hand upraised, quietly earnest again. “I had no idea what kind of person your son was, what his background was, nothing. Except that my sister Susan evidently trusted him and thought enough of him to leave her baby in his care, even though she knew he wasn’t the biological father.” Her poise slipped and she gave another mirthless laugh. “Of course, my sister was a homeless, screwed-up kid, probably a drug addict, so what does that tell you?”

  She told me she’d been abused by her father. Your father.

  She gulped cold coffee and just did manage to keep from choking on it. The struggle for control hardened her voice again as she continued, “So, the upshot of it is, I had our firm’s P.I. track him down. Once we had this as his home address, and credit card gasoline receipts started popping up showing him heading east on a direct course to Iowa, it wasn’t hard to figure out where he was going. I thought I’d beat him here, actually. I thought the unexpectedness of my being here, waiting for him, would demonstrate the futility of running, and that I could convince him the best course of action for everybody concerned would be for him to bring Emily back to Los Angeles voluntarily. For Susan’s sake, I didn’t want to see him arrested. And I definitely didn’t want Emily in the hands of social services.”

  “Especially,” Mike said dryly, “at Christmastime.”

  Devon looked at him and made a faint “Humph” sound. “Believe it or not, I never even thought about that. I keep forgetting it’s Christmas.” She looked around, only then realizing that, comfortable and warm as the room-the whole house-was, she hadn’t seen any sign of holiday decorations. No Christmas tree or wrapped presents, no creche, no wreaths or garlands, not so much as a twinkling light or red velvet bow.

  Mike had followed her gaze, and apparently her thoughts. “I know what you mean. We’ve been having the same problem around here. Been meaning to do it-the boxes of decorations are sitting upstairs in Lucy’s work room. Tree’s in a bucket on the back porch. Just haven’t gotten around to it. Lucy’s been in a mood this year…” He paused, then added softly, “She’s been missing the kids more than usual. Eric’s coming home was…like the answer to a prayer.”

  Eric. Devon didn’t want to think about Eric, didn’t want to hear his name or remember those unsettling moments she’d just spent with him down in the barn. And yet, she knew she must if she was to regain-and maintain-the upper hand here, where she was so clearly out of her element.

  “This is all so different than I imagined,” she said on an exhalation, strolling to the window and on the way trailing her fingers idly across an antique wind-up Victrola and a worn recliner draped with a brightly colored afghan.

  Behind her, Mike’s voice sounded amused. “Considering how little you knew of my son, I’m sure it is.”

  The desk, the computer monitor, were right in front of her. She touched the monitor, remembering things he’d said before. She said brightly, conversationally, “You said you’re a writer?”

  “Journalist, actually. I write a nationally syndicated column-just twice a week, now. And once a month on a rotation for Newsweek.”

  Devon turned to stare at him. “Wow. I’m sorry-I feel I should know who you are.” She smiled her regret, meaning it. “The truth is, I don’t have much time for reading newspapers and magazines-mostly what I read are legal briefs and court documents.”

  “Ouch,” Mike said with a good-natured wince. “I hate to say it, but it sounds boring as hell.”

  She smiled. “It can be. But not always.”

  “Sounds as though you like what you do.” Again his eyes had turned probing.

  “Yes, I do.” But she was never comfortable talking about herself, and steered the conversation firmly back to the subject she was most interested in. “So you’re a writer-sorry, journalist-and Lucy’s a farmer. That’s an unlikely combination, isn’t it? How did you two meet?”

  “A long story. Part of the family folklore.”

  Devon waited, but he said no more. She gave a dismissive shrug and said lightly, “I hope you’ll tell it to me some time.” But she was conscious of the same vague disappointment she’d felt, coming in from the cold and finding the kitchen empty. Plagued by unfamiliar and perplexing emotions, she fought down irritation and tried again. “Eric’s not an only child?”

  “We have a daughter, four-no, almost five years older.” He picked up a framed photograph from the mantel and handed it to her. “Rose Ellen. She’s a biologist-works for the government. She and her husband are out of the country at the moment-in fact, most of the time these days.”

  Devon recognized the pretty, wholesome-looking girl she’d seen in so many of the photos on the walls of Eric’s room. After a moment she nodded and handed it back. “A biologist-wow. And Eric’s a photographer.” She was on the verge of asking how such a thing had come about when
Mike interrupted her.

  “Photojournalist,” he corrected firmly.

  Devon laughed. “He said exactly the same thing to me, you know-down in the barn.”

  “It’s an important distinction.” Mike’s eyes were smiling. “As is writer versus journalist.”

  “I’ll remember that.” For the first time, she felt some of her own awkwardness and tension ease. “I saw the photographs upstairs in his room,” she said, touching one or two of the frames on the mantelpiece before turning to a collection hanging on the wall next to the fireplace. “Did he take these as well?”

  “No, not those.”

  Alerted by something in his voice, Devon leaned over to peer at one photograph in particular, a dramatic picture of helicopters flying in formation over a jungle river at sunset. As beautiful as it was, there was something subtly menacing about it. “This looks familiar. Is it Vietnam?”

  “It is.” Devon turned to look at him; for once he hadn’t moved up beside her, but stood a little way off, hands in his pockets. “Those are my dad’s. He was a photojournalist, too. A pretty famous one-Sean Lanagan. He was killed in a helicopter crash during the Tet Offensive. Which I realize you’ve probably never heard of.” He tilted his head toward the wall of photographs. “Those came from magazines, actually-some of them. Others I got from my mother. My personal collection, the ones he’d sent me from all over the world when I was a kid, were lost in a fire years ago.”

  He paused, then went on in a musing tone, still gazing at the photos. “Eric idolized his grandfather. Always wanted to be just like him.” Again his smile tilted crookedly. “Until recently, I think his biggest disappointment had been not having a war to go to.”