Daddy by Design
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Muriel Jensen
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14
Chapter 1
Memorial Day weekend, the following year
It was good to be home. Dillon smiled and stretched wearily as he drove past the Welcome to Dancer’s Beach sign. Actually, the little beach town wasn’t home yet, but it would be soon.
Last fall, Dillon and his brothers had bought an old house here to use as a summer retreat. Duncan, the oldest, was a successful actor, with an elaborate place in Malibu, who sought rest and anonymity between films. At the moment he was somewhere in Africa.
Darrick, the middle McKeon brother, was administrator of a hospital in Edenfield, Oregon, just south of Portland, and spent all his free time with a golf club in one hand and a fishing pole in the other.
Dillon was an orthopedist who ran a clinic in Edenfield in partnership with several friends, and donated a considerable amount of time to the Northwest Medical Team, a crisis response group. He’d just flown in to the Portland Airport last night after six weeks in Nicaragua, where the team had helped victims of an earthquake outside Matagalpa.
Dillon took a deep breath of salty air and thought how fresh and clean it smelled after the oppressive odors of Nicaragua’s dampness, rotting vegetation and crowded hospitals.
He listened to the roll of the surf, the call of a seagull, then smiled again. Peace. He was so ready for four weeks of nothing to do but buy furniture for the summerhouse.
Before he and his brothers had split up last fall to go their separate ways, they’d stood on the porch steps and divided the duties of making the place comfortable.
Darrick, who had the first vacation, was to paint the interior and fix the small hole in the roof. He was the most logical and reliable of the three brothers. Dillon was sure Darrick had had it all done by the time their parents arrived for this Memorial Day weekend, which was also their father’s birthday.
Dillon was to use the resources they’d pooled to buy furniture. He was looking forward to the task. He was also an orthopedist where furniture was concerned: he loved to rebuild and refinish old pieces. They didn’t have to be valuable antiques, either, just old things with abused or broken parts.
Duncan had a gift for gardening, and was responsible for landscaping and buying lawn furniture. He was expected home at the end of June or early July.
Dillon glanced into the rearview mirror to check the picnic table he’d bought in McMinnville on his way to the coast. He was probably usurping part of Duncan’s job, but he’d driven right by a discount store and had spotted the table placed out in front with several other sale items. A tent sign on it boasted a ridiculously low price. He’d stopped and bought it along with the two accompanying benches. The happy clerk had helped him tie them into the back of his old pickup.
Satisfied that they were still solidly tied, he followed the turn in the road and spotted the white house in the distance. It sat back about thirty yards and up on a little knoll. And it had been painted!
He knew the Realtor had agreed to contract someone for them, but it was still a pleasant surprise to see the bright white of fresh paint on the wide two-story with its full front porch that wrapped around on the north side. He could pick out the center gables on the first and second floors, and the openwork porch railing interrupted at ten-foot intervals by elegant columns.
As he drew closer, he noticed the green shutters and trim. He also noticed Darrick’s white luxury sedan in the driveway, and his parents’ car with a trailer attached. He couldn’t help the low laugh that erupted from him, and the anticipation of the warmth and good cheer that always defined their family gatherings.
He knew his mother would look into his eyes to assess his emotional health. He would have to tell her everything he’d eaten in Nicaragua and then explain in detail how he felt physically and spiritually.
His father would check over his truck, possibly even wash it, and tell him for the tenth time that he should trade it in for something newer and safer.
Dori would hug him ferociously, then remind him that he hadn’t written to her once during her year at Oxford and that, generally, he was a terrible communicator.
Darrick would give him that quick once-over glance that took in everything. But he wouldn’t berate or criticize. He’d wait until Dillon brought up a problem, then he would offer the perfect solution. And Dillon would want to kill him.
Those thoughts ran through Dillon’s mind as he parked the truck behind the U-Haul and wondered why on earth he was eager to put himself in the middle of all that. But he didn’t wonder seriously or for very long. In his family, meddling meant they all loved and cared about one another. They had no concept of individual freedom or the theory of “live and let live.” They cajoled, harassed and bullied until you did what they thought was best for you.
Except in the case of Harper Harriman.
Harper. He could feel his blood pressure rise at the very thought of her. When he’d told his family that it was over between them and that he didn’t want to answer any questions about it, they’d actually respected his wishes. He’d been shocked and, frankly, suspicious.
Then he remembered that during his engagement to Harper his family had grown almost as close to her as they were to him. And that Harper and his mother and his sister always kept in close touch. They probably didn’t have to hear from him that Harper had packed all his clothes and shipped them to the Seattle offices of the Northwest Medical Team, claiming that there was no point in keeping them at home since he was never there. And that in retaliation, he’d nailed all her doors and windows closed before he moved out, leaving her a note that said he could think of no other way to assure her of the security she craved.
Harper had probably told his mother and Don everything, and they in turn had passed it on to everyone else in the family. Well, that was good because he didn’t want to talk about it—ever. Harper the Harridan was out of his life and good riddance.
Dillon strolled up the driveway and the front porch steps, then tried the front door. Locked. Of course. When his mother was around, doors were always locked to protect them from terrorists, thieves, and the odd random lunatic.
He pulled out his keys, found the shiny gold-colored one he’d never used before, and fitted it into the lock.
The sound of laughter and loud conversation came to him from the back of the house. He ignored it for a moment as he took in the freshly painted white living room with its carved fireplace and beautifully arched molding in the dining room doorway. The last time he’d seen it, it had been a dingy lavender.
An obviously used but comfortable-looking brocade loveseat sat in the middle of the room, and several odd chairs—really odd—were clustered around it as though ready to encourage conversation.
All right, he thought, feeling the same sense of rightness he’d experienced the first time he’d walked into this house. It was home. Already.
“Hi!” he called, striding toward the dining room. “I picked up a picnic table at Costmart. Can somebody help me?” He stopped abruptly as he caught sight of what appeared to be an old horse collar hanging over the fireplace as if it were the centerpiece of the room. Someone had had the appalling notion of putting a clock in the circle formed by the fat leather loop.
The creative part of him was horrified. But he smiled as the McKeon part of him guessed where it had come from. His parents. The antiquers from hell. The dearest, kindest people who fell in love with the ugliest and most atrocious remnants from another time. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to see them.
He went through the dining room, admiring its fresh paint, as he called, “Darrick? Dad?”
Dillon stopped suddenly in the doorway because the first face he saw, he didn’t recognize. It was female and quite beautiful, with blue eyes and surrounded by a thick mass of dark hair. Darrick had his arm around her and she was holding a baby.
She smiled tentatively at Dillon.
He was about to reach a hand out to her to introduce himself when he noticed that another woman stood several feet away from her. She was small but shapely in khaki shorts and a chambray shirt.
Short hair the color of a star was shaped in a ragged cut to frame startled hazel eyes, a small, straight nose, and full fuchsia-pink lips whose soft contours brought a thousand unwelcome memories flooding into his awareness.
Before he could defend himself against them, they became so real that he could feel her lips on his eyelids, on his mouth, at his throat, working down the middle of his chest and over his waist.
Harper.
“No,” he heard himself say quietly, plaintively. It was a response to the memories and not to her, but he immediately saw the startled look in her eyes changing to one of hurt. She’d never been one to give an uncertain moment time to sort itself out.
“Hello, Dillon,” she said airily, though he saw her take a quick swallow. “Try to be civilized, okay? We have an audience.”
There was an instant of tense silence, then he opened his mouth to explain his surprise. But Darrick left the pretty brunette to come and take Dillon in a bear hug. “Don’t mind us,” he said dryly with a grin at Harper. “You two have been fighting so long the rest of us just wait around for the next instalment of the drama.” He gave Dillon an affectionate clap on the back. “How are you? You put everybody back together?”
Before Dillon could answer the question, he was swarmed over by the rest of his family, and kissed, hugged, questioned, as he was passed from his mother, to Dori—who also held a baby—to his father.
Then his mother took over again, pulling him toward the pretty brunette back in Darrick’s arm. She was a little disheveled but glowing, he noticed, as though she’d just been through something traumatic and had risen victorious.
“We have all kinds of...surprises for you!” his mother said, her cheerful manner just a little forced.
No kidding, he thought, carefully keeping his eyes from Harper. He’d been so looking forward to this weekend with his family and he refused to admit to himself that Harper’s presence was going to ruin it for him.
But he reasoned, they would all be going home on Monday and he would finally have the place to himself. He’d get his peace after all. He could put up with Harper until then. Especially if he could lock her in a closet.
“Dillon, these are your neighbors,” his mother said, “Cliff and Bertie Fisher. They live in the yellow house over the hill.”
Dillon shook hands with a cheerful and smiling older couple, the woman short and plump, the man taller and graying.
“Our daughter was your Realtor,” Bertie said. “She told us three handsome young men had bought the Buckley house. But I hadn’t realized how handsome.”
“Thanks, Bertie,” Darrick teased. “You never said that to me.”
Bertie gave him a friendly shove with her elbow. “Oh, now, you’re gorgeous and you know it. But your brother looks dangerous.” She smiled at Dillon with a look that told him Cliff probably had his hands full. “It’s no secret that women like that. Even old women.”
“Don’t fall for her line, son,” Cliff said gravely. “I did and I’ve been nothing but her plaything ever since.”
Dillon laughed, liking both of them. “A noble fate,” he said.
“And this,” his mother went on with a Vanna White-esque wave of her arms, “is your new sister-in-law, Skye Fennerty McKeon, Darrick’s wife. She’s a pilot. Skye, this is Darrick’s younger brother, Dillon.”
Dillon shelved the problem of Harper for a moment and stared in amazement. He’d only been away a few weeks...
His sister-in-law laughed as she gave Dillon a spontaneous hug. “Hi!” she said warmly. “It’s wonderful to meet you at last. I understand you’re a brilliant chef.”
“Ah...brilliant might be a little strong,” he said, holding her at arm’s length, appreciating Darrick’s impeccable taste in women. Trust him to find a woman who was beautiful and sweet. “You’re an airline pilot?”
“No. I run a little flight service in Mariposa, California.” Her expression turned suddenly rueful. “I’m sure you remember when Darrick was trying to get home for your parents’ anniversary party and crashed in the Siskiyous?”
Dillon remembered the family’s panic when Darrick hadn’t arrived on schedule. It had been a long night of trying to track his change of plans, finally relieved the following morning when Darrick called to report that he’d survived a forced landing in a light plane and was on his way.
“You were flying the plane that crashed?” he asked.
She corrected pleasantly, “I was flying the plane that landed your brother safely in the woods.”
“In a tree,” Darrick added.
She glared at him teasingly.
He pretended innocence. “Just getting the story straight.”
She turned back to Dillon. “Anyway, I ran the flight service out of Mariposa until Darrick arrived with the... twins.” Her smile waned a little and she sent Darrick an uncomfortable glance.
Dillon turned to his brother. His mother certainly had been right about surprises. He grinned. “Twins?” He pointed from Skye to Darrick as he stepped closer to peer at the baby. “You two have twins?”
Darrick gave him a steady look, opened his mouth as though to reply, then changed his mind. There was a protracted silence.
Dillon shifted his weight, trying to understand. “They’re not your twins?”
“No.”
“Whose are they?”
Everyone looked at everyone else, then all eyes seemed to settle on Darrick. Dillon didn’t know why, but he found himself taking a defensive posture. He turned slowly toward Harper.
She met his eyes, her own lethal. Then she scooped the baby from Darrick and walked out of the room, headed for the stairs, murmuring something about changing a diaper. Dori followed her with the other baby. His father said he had to fire up the barbecue, and that seemed to require his mother and the Fishers to help.
Dillon now stood alone in the kitchen with Darrick and Skye. “All right,” he said, a weird sense of trepidation playing along his spine. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll go upstairs and...um...” Skye backed toward the doorway to the stairs. “Make the bed.”
“We have beds?” Dillon asked. “I thought I was supposed to buy furniture.”
Darrick nodded. “You are. She means the sleeping bag.”
“She’s going upstairs to ‘make’ the sleeping bag?”
Darrick blew a kiss at Skye. “Go ahead. In his defense, he’s usually not this stupid.” To Dillon, he said, “She’s trying to give us privacy so we can talk.”
From the doorway, Skye sent Dillon a smile that seemed composed of sympathy and a little sadness. “Nice to meet you, Dillon,” she said and disappeared upstairs.
Dillon frowned at Darrick, his skin prickling with the sudden certainty that however much he craved peace and quiet, he wasn’t going to get it. His family was behaving strangely. While that wasn’t unusual in itself, this particular strangeness had an air of potential trouble about it. “Darrick, what the hell is going on?” he demanded.
Darrick pointed him to the kitchen table and pulled a couple of mugs out of the cupboard. “Want some coffee?”
Dillon pulled out a chair and sat. “Sure.”
Dillon watched Darrick pour with the easy grace he’d always envied. He’d always thought Darrick would have made a good surgeon because of his economy of movement and his steadiness, but his brother had been more interested in the workings of business than the workings of the body.
He brought his mind back to the question at hand as Darrick handed him a steaming mug of coffee and sat across from him. A sudden ugly thought struck him.
“Is somebody ill?”
Darrick reassured him with a quick shake of his head. “No. Everybody’s fine.”
“Then, what? It’s something to do with the twins?” He leaned back in his chair as another alarming thought formed. “Are they Dori’s?”
“No.” Darrick folded his arms on the table and met Dillon’s gaze. He wore the same expression, Dillon thought, that he’d worn all those years ago when he’d told him Donovan had died. “They could be yours.”
It took Dillon a full minute to absorb the impact of the words. His. His. The small word vibrated around him like the sound of cymbals in a closet.
He struggled for coherent thought, for reason.
“They were born at Valley Memorial on May 10th,” Darrick said in a slow, calm voice, “to a woman called Rachel Whitney, who abandoned them the following day. She—”
Dillon shot out of the morass of his thoughts like a rocket, his muddled mind suddenly free. “I don’t even know a Rachel Whitney,” he said. “I’ve never heard...”
When Darrick’s expression didn’t change, Dillon felt the fog close in on him again. “That was an alias,” Darrick said.
“What?”
“It wasn’t her real name.”
Dillon leaned toward his brother impatiently. “I know what an alias is, but I don’t understand why a woman would have babies using one. What’s the point? I mean, if she was claiming I was the father, wouldn’t she have used McKeon as the alias?”
“She used D. K. McKeon as the father’s name on the birth certificate,” Darrick explained.
Dillon took a quick sip of coffee. “But we’re all D. K. McKeon. They could be yours. Or Duncan’s.”
Darrick nodded. “I thought they were mine.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I was at a conference on hospital security the weekend the twins were born, and when I got back the staff was waiting for me, thinking, because of the name on the birth certificate, that some woman I’d impregnated and left to her fate was paying me back by leaving the babies to me.”
Dillon did a moment’s calculations. “But Maddie had already dumped you. Who...?”
“Skye,” Darrick replied. “The night we crashed in the mountains, we—” he hesitated, then grinned “—kept warm.”
Dillon would have grinned in response, but he thought suddenly that he knew where this was going—and he didn’t like it. He thought harder, desperate for an out.
“But that makes just a little over eight months.”
“The twins came early.”
“Without RDS? jaundice?”
Darrick shook his head. “No respiratory distress syndrome. No jaundice. You saw them. They’re perfect.”
“Oh, God.” Dillon ran a hand down his face as a very possible scenario formed in his mind—a scenario that could very well mean the twins were his.
Darrick studied him empathetically. “They could be Duncan’s,” he said, “but he’s been out of the country so much this past year.”
“Oh, God,” Dillon said again, the fervor of prayer behind the words.
Darrick sat forward, leaning his arms on the table again. “What? You think they are yours?”
Dillon closed his eyes, remembering Harper and the night of his parents’ anniversary party. No. This couldn’t be. Surely if a pregnancy had resulted from that night, she’d have told him. Surely if Harper was the mother of the twins, she wouldn’t have abandoned them?
But she’d been in Seattle for the past year, and he hadn’t seen her once. And while there’d been a time when he’d have sworn she didn’t have a selfish, vindictive bone in her body, he’d since had proof to the contrary.
“I think they could be mine,” he said, looking Darrick in the eye as he pushed away from the table. “Excuse me.”
HARPER HURRIEDLY PACKED the few things she’d brought with her. Dori and Skye watched, each pacing and bouncing a sleepy baby.
“This is ridiculous!” Dori said, pulling on the T-shirt with Betty Boop on it that Harper tried to put into her bag. “I like that and I haven’t gotten to borrow it yet.”
Harper relinquished it and stuffed her makeup bag in on top. “It’s yours.”
“But how are you going to get home?” Skye asked. “You rode with Peg and Charlie.”
“I’ll take a cab to the airport,” Harper answered, zipping the functional gym bag closed. “Wait till I get my hands on your mother. She told me she was sure Dillon wouldn’t make it back this weekend.”
“The airport is sixty miles away!”
“I’ve got a company card. I’ll write it off.”
Michelle, in Skye’s arms, began to fuss.
“Harper, you can’t leave,” Skye said gently, standing squarely in her path as Harper shouldered her purse and picked up her bag. “Michelle’s really gotten attached to you.”
Harper sighed, put the bag down, and leaned over the babies as Skye and Dori stood side by side. She’d grown attached to the twins, too, and would miss them. But now that Dillon was home, she couldn’t stay. And he’d made it more than clear that he didn’t want her to.
Her features softened as she touched first one tufty dark head, then the other. “Be good babies,” she cooed softly. “Even if Dillon is your daddy, you’re beautiful and precious enough to survive such misfortune. And I’ll be thinking about you—”
“Harper!” The sound of a man’s voice came sharply from the doorway.
She straightened and turned to see Dillon standing there, looking like a thundercloud. She’d always thought him the most handsome of the McKeons, and her anger with him hadn’t altered that view.
All the brothers had the same dramatic, dark coloring and the long, lean frames from which a woman’s dreams were spun. Darrick was good-looking in a Wall Street three-piece-suit sort of way, and Duncan had the beautifully sculpted eyebrows and the square jaw of a matinee idol.
But Dillon had the bad-boy looks—hair always a little too long, eyes a little too frank, mouth a little too full.
And the fact that he wasn’t a bad boy at all, but a man completely devoted to his work, only contributed to his mystique.
She’d fallen for it twice. And that had been more than enough.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said, glancing cursorily past her at Skye and Dori. “Excuse us. I’m going to take her away for a minute.”
“No, you’re not.” Harper picked up her bag. “I’m leaving.” She turned to smile sadly at her friends. “Come and visit me.”
Dillon stood squarely in the doorway as Harper walked toward it. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, “until we’ve talked.”
“Really.” She raised an eyebrow and met his direct glare. “I seem to recall you told me you were through talking to me.”
“That was about my work. This is another matter.”
“Well, whatever it is,” she said, trying to push past him, “I don’t feel like talking about it.”
He didn’t budge. “Whatever it is?” He repeated her words with indignant disbelief, and for a moment she was confused.
And that moment was all it took for him to take the bag from her, toss it back into the room, and haul her with him down the stairs.
She pulled against him, grabbing at his fingers.
He turned, put a shoulder to her waist and tipped her over it.
She yelped in surprise, then delivered a fierce kidney punch he didn’t even seem to notice.
She was aware of his parents and the neighbors going by upside down as Dillon strode to the front door.
“Charlie!” she implored, pushing against Dillon’s back to raise her head and upper body. “Do something!”
Charlie shook his head. “Never could do anything with that boy.”
Then Harper’s eyes were skimming over the pebbles in the walk, the blacktop of the road, beach grass that eventually thinned out and disappeared leaving only sand. And that was where Dillon finally stopped.
He set her on her feet several yards from the ocean and held her arms a moment to steady her.
She erupted upright, arms swinging like a windmill. “You amoeba-brained, prehistoric, bug-eating—!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, catching her wrists and holding them still until she was forced to look at him. “I want to know about the twins.”
Her first instinct was to kick him in the shins and run. But there was another, more powerful instinct at work. She wasn’t sure how to define it, but it was some touch-memory that took the grip of his angry hands and turned the feeling into the tender touch he used to use to stop her when she walked past his chair and to pull her into his lap.
Their nights together came back to her with the vivid purity of favorite recollections—firelit evenings, popcorn and wine, the feeling of being held in the hollow of his shoulder as they watched an old movie or listened to music. Even their one-night reunion had left her with haunting memories.
For a moment they were so sweet that she forgot she and Dillon had become enemies.
“What about the twins?” she asked breathlessly.
“Are they ours?” he demanded sharply.
The sweet memory dissolved instantly and she had to fight the flood of color to her face, fight any betrayal of guilt.
“No, they’re not ours,” she replied as sharply, yanking free of him. Yes, he’d expect anger from her. “What woman in her right mind would have a baby with you?”
She turned to trudge through the sand to the road, but he caught her wrist again and pulled her back. “The timing’s right,” he said, his tone a little less angry, a little more defensive. “There was that night of my parents’ party.”
She stood impassive under his hold, telling herself that she had it all under control. All she had to do was remain calm. “If you recall,” she said, “we talked about the risk and I told you I had protection.”
Unfortunately there’d been no protection against the emotional risk.
“But you wanted me to quit the medical team and settle down.” He spoke the words mildly, so she missed the implication until he finished the thought. “You could have been setting me up for fatherhood so you could finally have the nine-to-five husband you’ve always wanted.”
Harper hit him in the middle of his chest with her open hand and shoved him as hard as she could. And this was no act. In her temper, however, she forgot that he still held her other hand in his. When he jerked backward, she went, too, and slammed up against him.
But this time there was no warm memory of being held by him. All she knew was fury, resentment, regret.
“What a despicable thing to say!” she shrieked at him. “And stupid as well! If that had been my plan, wouldn’t I have told you the moment I was pregnant? Wouldn’t I have been feathering my nest all this time? Would I have abandoned my babies in the hospital instead of telling you that you were about to be a father?”
It was apparent by the sudden shift in his expression that he hadn’t considered that.
Harper took advantage of the quiet to press her point home. The purse she’d slung over her shoulder when she’d intended to leave the cottage was still in place. She delved into it for the photos of her new studio that she’d brought to show Peg and Charlie.
She sorted through them until she found the right photo—the one of herself and Wade taken two months previously for the new promotional brochure.
She pointed to her slender image in a form-fitting, mid-calf-length woolen dress. “See that?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Dillon replied stiffly.
She turned the photo over to point to the date applied by the photo shop that had developed her film. “April 11. I’d have been big as a house then if the twins were mine.”
She replaced the pictures in her purse again and adjusted the bag on her shoulder. “You may very well have fathered Michelle and Gabrielle,” she said, her voice irregular with anger, “but you didn’t do it with me. Goodbye.”
And she headed for the house to call a cab.
