Substitute Daddy
Autorzy
Kate Welsh
Lektury
15,1K
Rozdziały
20
Chapter One
Brett turned left on Route 5 in Hughesville, Maryland. Tired from the long drive after several exhausting and frustrating weeks, he glanced at his directions then back to the road, ready now for the next turn. It had taken two months to track Melissa Abell, but the detective he’d hired through his law firm, Joe Brennan, had finally succeeded. Brennan had determined her address through notice of an inheritance left to her by her uncle. In a few more minutes Brett would, at long last, get the opportunity to confront her and to find out why she’d disappeared.
She’d clearly had plans that hadn’t included attending the funeral luncheon. Why not just say so? He’d wanted to offer help with the baby. A baby who was all that was left of his brother—the only person he had ever loved. Why go to so much trouble to deprive him of doing the one thing he could do? Be of financial help.
It made no sense. Melissa wasn’t prepared for single parenthood. She was only pregnant because she’d generously agreed to have Gary’s baby through artificial insemination after Leigh learned she was sterile because of an infection.
He fought the excess emotion he always felt whenever he thought of Melissa. They’d met at Bellfield the night before Gary and Leigh’s wedding. In town for the nuptials, Melissa had appeared to be every bit as sophisticated and cosmopolitan as her twin sister—a facade he hadn’t seen through in time.
By the time he’d held her in his arms on the dance floor, his fate had been sealed, and by the time the music changed beats, he’d wanted a lot more than dancing. Like her under him and them holding each other as close as two people can get.
Dancing soon led to a midnight walk in the gardens and a hot and heavy interlude in the pool house. If she hadn’t made a frustratingly naive comment, he would have taken her virginity then and there. But trepidation and near panic had flooded him, making him pause. Forcing him to think.
That moment had been the low point of his life because in a blinding flash he’d come face-to-face with the truth about himself. There in the pool house, on what had been the most magical night of his life, he’d come crashing back to reality. Virginity inherently meant some kind of deep commitment and he was lousy at deep and commitment. Too much like his father they all said. He’d been told so by enough women, his mother included, and it had finally sunk in.
He’d calmed things down quickly then, and he and Melissa returned to the party, which by that time had been breaking up. Troubled, he’d slept little that night. No woman had ever made him feel the way she had, and he’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to resist her again. Since Brett knew he’d eventually hurt Melissa terribly once she understood the kind of man he was, it was a given that their inevitable breakup would harm his relationship with Gary or at the very least, complicate Gary’s life.
So Brett had decided to be charming and friendly to Melissa at the wedding but to make himself scarce around her. That plan had gone by the boards when she’d walked down the aisle ahead of her sister. He’d nearly been knocked flat by the uncontrollable yearning to hold her again.
Still hurting over his epiphany the night before and the vision of the lonely future it had given him, he’d doubted his self-control around Melissa even more. Determined to thwart his own runaway emotions, Brett decided to enlist the help of an old family friend to use as a buffer between him and Melissa. He hadn’t counted on Melissa being hurt and angry so early in their non-relationship when she’d seen him with someone else, but he’d decided the damage was done and had let things stand—not trusting himself to go to her and explain.
Now, five years later, because she’d practically fled the city two months ago after the funeral service, he had to meet with her in private without the protection of fellow mourners as he’d planned. The prospect had his heart pounding as he drew closer to her home.
He was afraid—very much afraid—he was just as attracted to the pretty, sweet look of her now as he had been to her glamorous alter ego five long years ago. And he didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
Brett spotted his next turn and was soon flying along a winding road into the middle of nowhere. He passed one Amish farm after another, and several other properties in much poorer condition than their non-electrified Amish neighbors.
He had to go around several slow-moving horse-drawn buggies driven by bearded men in flat-crowned hats. For some odd reason the children peering out of the back windows took great pleasure in waving to him. It was just too hard to ignore their shining faces. He didn’t have a great deal of experience where children were concerned, but it felt wrong not to smile just as broadly and wave back.
Several miles farther along, when his frustration level reached a new high and his annoyance at his own trepidation over this meeting was right up there with it, he saw a listing, rusted mailbox. He brought the car to a screeching halt, kicking up a storm of dust in the gravel at the end of a long crushed-stone drive. Ancient, faded letters on the side of the box spelled out Abell.
He looked up the drive through the dark tunnel of trees and saw nothing but shadows. But she was there. He knew it. His search was over. He’d found her. And his brother’s child.
Trying to bury his feelings and hang on to the anger over all the trouble she’d put him through, Brett headed his sturdy little sports car into the rutted stone drive. After a sharp bend in the road, the tunnel of trees surrounding the vehicle abruptly ended.
Several smallish, broken-down barns and a clapboard farmhouse that had seen better days sat in the middle of the clearing. In the background were acres of grass and weeds bisected with weathered whitewashed fencing. The house and farm buildings were screened from the road by the thick trees and scrub that had been flying by his window minutes before.
He turned his attention back to the house and frowned. More than half of the white paint had peeled to bare, weathered wood and several of its forest-green shutters were missing. On the front porch, two wicker chairs rocked languidly in the warm early-summer breeze. A rainbow of flowers blooming along the foundation of the porch brightened the dismal setting, but only a little.
Brett pushed open his door and climbed to his feet. He looked around, unable to connect this place with the woman he’d been tracking. Or at least his image of her. Had everything she said been a lie? This did not look like the house of a decorator.
Now that he thought about it, if, indeed, she’d been an interior designer with a business of her own and plans for an antique shop, as she’d said at the wedding, how could she have left all that behind five years later to stay with Gary and Leigh in their spare room until the baby was born? That kind of absence would be death to a business.
And if all that was a lie too, how did she expect to support a child? The detective’s report had said the place was run-down, but that it would be worth good money to a developer. It also said she had made no move to sell so that clearly wasn’t part of her plan. What the report or his detective hadn’t warned him of was that she was impoverished.
Brett stood there appalled, his anger growing. This was where Melissa planned to raise Gary’s baby? He pictured a barefoot child who looked like Gary, wearing tattered clothes, crouched by the side of the road watching the world go by without him. And shuddered.
What advantage would the child have living in poverty in the back of beyond? Even having him as a guardian would be better than this! He could hire a nanny to provide the everyday security a child needed and he’d make sure to be there for the big moments whenever possible.
Straightening his shoulders, Brett walked forward, prepared to do battle for his brother’s son. He’d just put his foot on the bottom step when Melissa spoke through the sagging screen door. “What do you want?” she demanded, her tone hostile.
He took a deep breath. “You skipped lunch,” he quipped, striving to keep this meeting as friendly as possible. He was a man on a mission with a child’s well-being at stake and alienating the child’s mother wouldn’t help matters. And he couldn’t let his brother’s child be brought up this way.
“I had nothing more to say to you or your family,” she answered. Her expression was calm. Almost serene. “‘Doing lunch’ would have been overkill.”
Brett arched an eyebrow. “Is that why you ran? Because you had nothing to say?”
“I didn’t run. I drove home. It’s a free country,” she said, still annoyingly composed though no less unfriendly.
He took another calming breath. “We need to talk,” he reiterated.
“Oh? What could we possibly have to talk about?” She pushed open the rickety screen door and stepped onto the porch.
She was still delicate and thin, the pregnancy not showing at all. Her blue-green eyes flashed with anger. He fought a smile that tugged at his lips. She might be angry and sound tough, but with her blond hair curling loosely about her lovely heart-shaped face and the soft material of her light-blue dress fluttering around her calves she looked sweet and innocent. And seductive as hell.
What the hell’s the matter with you?
“Look, what I have to say won’t take long,” he said, forcing his thoughts back on track. “Gary’s baby is all I have left of my brother. I have a proposition. Come back to Pennsylvania and live in the carriage house on the estate. It’s an attractive little place. Warm. Clean. After the baby’s born, if you sign over custody, I’ll set you up in business in any city of your choice. You could even have standard visitation rights. It’s your smartest way out of the jam Gary and Leigh’s deaths have left you in.”
Melissa blinked, her mouth a silent O, then suddenly her blue eyes shot sparks and the words came out in a torrent. “And I thought my first encounter with you left a lingering bad taste.” She took a step forward. “You will never get my baby, Brett Costain. Do you understand?”
“We’re talking about a lot of money. And a lot of responsibility off your shoulders.”
“A baby is not a responsibility. It is not a jam. A baby is a cherished gift.”
Brett felt the heat of his emotions rise as words tumbled out of his mouth. “I’ll go as high as $100,000. That’s the best deal you’ll get and you know it.”
“Deal? Money? That’s all your family cares about, isn’t it? I’d heard the tales from Leigh and Gary all these years but I had no idea how—” She broke off and shook her head looking terribly, terribly sad. Her teeth clamped on her bottom lip, and she turned her head to stare out over the barren fields. “Your family hurt Gary for years. And Leigh…” Her sister’s name was a broken sigh on the summer breeze. “Go away!”
“Look, Melissa—”
“No. You look. I want you to leave. Now! I went to high school with Sheriff Long. He’s a good friend. I think he’d take my word that you’re trespassing. This is my baby now and no Costain is getting their mercenary hands on my child.”
“Not if a judge decides otherwise,” he countered, all thought of equitable settlements blasted away by fear for Gary’s child.
Melissa’s eyes widened then narrowed. Her voice now held no sadness, only rage. “If you aren’t off this property in two minutes, I’m calling Hunter Long. That would give you about twenty minutes to get out of this county with him hot on your tail. The clock’s ticking. If you tangle with Hunter Long, your name and money won’t help you a bit. Have a nice day.”
She turned regally, her skirt swishing seductively, walked inside and slammed the heavy front door, rattling every window in the dilapidated house. Brett stalked back to his BMW roadster and threw himself behind the wheel. He wasn’t in the mood to tangle with a county mountie on the warpath so he turned his car around and drove out to the main road. Once there, he pulled to a stop, needing a moment to collect his thoughts.
He’d come here to ask for the occasional visit with the child. But after seeing the way she lived, there was no way he could have left it at that. The only thing that was clear was that he wasn’t going to get Gary’s baby without a fight.
Brett blinked. Get the baby? A fight? What the hell had he said? What the hell had he done?
