Child of Mine
Автор
Jennifer Mikels
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Chapter One
“This is the third night he’s been here.”
Carly Mitchell shot a look over her shoulder at the customer Renee Thompson was ogling. With his hand cupped around a glass of bourbon and water, he sat at a small round table in Dawn’s station. For that, Carly thanked the angel who kept a watchful eye over cocktail waitresses. The base of her neck had tingled from his continuous stare ever since his arrival half an hour ago. Carly had met the man’s cool green eyes, only briefly, because they trapped with their directness.
“Is he something?“
Something, Carly agreed. He had the air of a man used to wielding power. In his mid-thirties, he had a smooth, lightly tanned complexion, and unlike some of the other executive types who came in here, a lean body that indicated diligent efforts at racquetball or swimming or some health club torture. Instead of being conservatively cut, his dark hair hung a touch too long in back, brushing the collar of his shirt. Carly noted the distinct slash of cheekbones, the sensual mouth, the strength of his jaw. She felt a pull that set off a warning within her. This stirring for a stranger surprised her, but she savored the sensation because it had been so long since she’d felt it.
Beneath the dim lights, he’d given the impression of a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Ivy League graduate. Intelligent. An expert in the New York stock exchange whose favorite reading material included The Wall Street Journal and financial magazines.
His perfectly tailored dark suit, one her uncle would have nodded approvingly at, identified him as a typical customer of Top Hat, the hotel’s lounge. Many of them wandered into the place after indulging in pheasant under glass or rack of lamb.
Typical customers ranged from executives on business trips to bored yuppies clamoring to fit in with Denver’s elite. They all shared a common goal—an eagerness for fun. All of them except him. He appeared dead set against even smiling.
A stuffed shirt, Carly mused, and definitely the wrong type for her. But because it was her nature, she started to smile, offering a token of friendliness. She was a people person, the kind who would say hello to someone passing her on the street.
This time her smile froze before it could form as she noticed his gaze traveling up her. She’d been the recipient of lecherous looks that had bothered her less. There was nothing lascivious or seductive in his once-over. Annoyed, she met his critical stare squarely, even as she sensed he was used to intimidating with it. Not this time, buster. You’ve met your match. She waited a second longer than necessary just to prove she wasn’t unnerved, then presented her back to him, but her stomach somersaulted in mockery of her cool manner.
“Looks like money,” Renee murmured, reaching behind Carly for cocktail napkins and a stirrer located at a far corner of the bar.
Carly spoke her thought aloud. “Not too friendly-looking.” Her eyes shifted to Renee’s costume. High at the neck and sleeveless, the tuxedo top clung but showed no hint of flesh. The bottom of the costume bared legs and enticed the eye but revealed no more than a bathing suit would. Carly straightened her friend’s bow tie. With a teenage sister to support, she needed her job as much as Carly did.
Tipping her head, Renee’s reddish curls shone beneath the subdued lighting. “Am I perfect?”
Carly laughed. “Perfect.”
“Then I’d better get a move on.” She mumbled something about table five and an oilman from Texas.
Carly had one of them, too.
Behind her, the bartender slid a tall glass and two bottles in her direction. “Here’s your margarita, Carly.”
“Thanks, Vince.” She placed the cocktail and two beers on her tray and left the bar to deliver her orders.
Dressed in a Western-style suit and a Stetson, the Texan’s hand brushed hers as she placed his drink before him. “Thank ya, ma’am.”
Carly swept up the bills he’d placed at the edge of the table and returned a smile meant to be pleasant but not encouraging, then skimmed by the patrons at her other tables. A couple in the corner, draped all over each other, hadn’t touched their drinks.
“I need a vodka tonic, Vince,” Carly called out a step from the bar.
Sidling close to her, Renee nudged her with an elbow. “Wish me luck. I traded tables with Dawn.”
Carly gave her a good-luck smile. Better thee than me. She liked men with a sense of humor, men who smiled and laughed a lot, easygoing men who knew how to have fun. The object of Renee’s attention looked like one of those business types who would sprinkle crumbs of affection out to the woman in his life if he had time between financial coups.
“Wouldn’t you know it?” Renee pulled a face. “He’s leaving. And look who took his place.”
Discreetly, Carly glanced back then laughed as an Alfred Hitchcock look-alike settled on the vacated chair.
“Very funny,” Renee mumbled.
For the first time in the past forty minutes, Carly no longer felt like tugging at the back of the high-cut legs of her costume. Usually she skirted around tables and never gave the costume’s brevity a second thought. After months of working at Top Hat, she’d become immune to the stares at her legs. She considered them one of her finest assets. But tonight had been different, and she knew why. One man had unnerved her.
She gave her head a shake to forget about him. She had another male to think about. After she delivered an order for a bourbon and a scotch and water, she wound her way around tables toward the public telephone in the back of the lounge.
She plunked coins in the slot and punched out Miriam Bonwick’s number.
“Hi, Carly,” her neighbor said as a greeting because it was exactly eight-thirty and Carly’s time to call.
“Is he near?” Carly asked.
“Right here.”
“Hi, Billy. How’s my boy?” Carly laughed as her nephew babbled back at her in the predictable fashion of a seven-month-old. Was it her imagination or had he managed a childish version of her name? “Yes, it’s Carly,” she answered, wanting to believe Billy knew her name. “You go to bed now. Sweet dreams.”
“He just finished his bottle,” Miriam informed her.
A little ache nudged at Carly’s heart. Though she fed her nephew his breakfast and lunch, she never was home for the dinner hour. “How did he like the peas?”
“I’m wearing them.”
Carly laughed again. “He definitely has a mind of his own.” Peripherally, Carly caught the manager’s scowl. “I’d better go. I’ll pick him up at the usual time, Miriam.”
Drumming up her brightest smile, Carly passed Roland Caldwell and sidestepped another waitress burdened with a full tray, then greeted some newly arrived customers, the first of many who would stroll in before closing.
* * *
At two in the morning, the city streets were deserted. The neighborhood was declining, buildings getting older, gangs getting stronger. Still, Carly hummed to herself and walked unconcerned. She was comfortable walking the streets at night. She often talked to strangers. Though not reckless, she simply believed that a person couldn’t live, really live, if they were paranoid about everything.
On the final block before her apartment, she drew in a deep breath. The lingering aroma of garlic from a neighbor’s dinner drifted to her on the cool summer breeze. She never understood why people allowed themselves to miss so much. The smells, sounds, sights of the city beckoned for a person’s attention. She tried to capture it all to memory. An impossible task. But still she tried.
Dressed in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, she stared down at her sneakers. Dirty and worn, they needed to be replaced, but she would make do with them. Her next paycheck was slated to pay a pediatrician’s bill.
At the sound of footsteps behind her, a rarity during her walk home, she looked over her shoulder. Instantly, her cheerful mood slithered away.
He was behind her. The man she’d seen earlier at Top Hat. Though the darkness of night mantled his eyes, she knew they were green.
She’d never been the type to scream while watching scary movies. She wasn’t skittish by nature, but the inevitable anxiousness when a woman walking alone at night realized she was being followed slammed into her.
Quickly she fished inside her oversize shoulder bag for the pepper spray attached to her key chain. Not once during the four months she’d been walking home after midnight from the lounge had she used it.
She let her mind clear for a second and tried to ignore the quickening beat of her heart. Being followed annoyed as well as frightened her. Courage in place, she pivoted around to give him a few choice words.
He was gone.
While she wanted to believe she’d scared him off, that seemed unlikely. At five foot six, she was no match for a six-footer. Laughing at herself, she dashed up the steps to her apartment. He hadn’t been following her, she decided. More likely, he’d simply been in the same place at the same time.
* * *
Alex Kane was annoyed. For days, he’d been trying to determine how to approach her. He prided himself on being able to key in on people. That was what had made him successful. But Carly Mitchell puzzled him, and he didn’t like that one bit. Nor did he like where she worked or where she lived.
He had to do something soon.
When he’d arrived in Denver at the beginning of the week, he’d had no trouble tracking her down. The first night he’d come to the lounge, he’d planned to talk to her. Intuition had kept him quiet. Instead, he’d watched her, trying to gauge the type of woman she was.
He’d done his homework, learning she was twenty-eight, that she dabbled in pottery and had once taken a class in archaeology. He decided she either lacked drive and ambition or was spending an extended time finding herself. He found neither of those possibilities admirable.
He knew Carly Rochelle Mitchell wore too many hats. Overworked, she poured twenty-six hours of living into a twenty-four-hour day.
While watching her work, he’d noted that she moved fast around tables. Obviously, she wasn’t lazy. She smiled a lot and laughed easily. She charmed customers with a breezy tone, a candid look, a natural friendliness.
A whisper of a woman, her lithe body was almost boyish. She possessed a flawless, pale complexion with a pert nose and a stubborn chin. He’d not only seen understated sensuality but had also felt it. During a fleeting second, as if taunting him, she’d swept past his table offering him a hint of a flowery scent that had aroused thoughts of a spring evening.
He’d seen a woman with the charm to incite duels if she’d been born a century ago. He’d seen a woman who could effortlessly dazzle a man. But none of that disturbed Alex. He never allowed emotion to interfere with his goals.
* * *
Carly hated Tuesdays. It was the one day a week when her class in art and design at the nearby college got out so late that she had barely an hour before she had to be at work. That meant only minutes with Billy.
At the third floor of her building, she shouted a hello to an elderly woman with a hearing problem, then charged up the next flight of stairs to her door.
Breezing into her apartment, she dumped her books on the table she’d bought at a thrift store and had refinished, grabbed her bag with her costume and scurried out of the apartment and down one flight of steps.
With a quick knock on Miriam’s door, she rushed inside. His dark hair mussed from a nap, his feet and hands in motion, Billy squealed at her from the high chair. His face was smeared with something sticky and yellow; Carly assumed it was applesauce. A kiss on his cheek verified her guess. Taking a chair next to him, she laughed as he placed a sticky finger on her nose. “You are a mess.”
As if she’d told him differently, he giggled with delight.
At the stove, Miriam poured a cup of coffee. A small, middle-aged woman, she was a godsend, baby-sitting for little pay while assuring Carly it was her pleasure to take care of Billy. “Have a sip of coffee,” she said. “And I’ll finish that.”
“I have time,” Carly assured Miriam, though she knew she would have to run all the way to get to work on time. “I’ll finish feeding him.” She dipped a spoon into the jar of applesauce on Billy’s tray.
Smiling at her, Miriam bobbed her head. “You do what my mother used to call burning the candle at both ends.”
The plight of all single mothers. “I manage.” She stared at the coffee cup Miriam insistently held out to her. The caffeine wouldn’t hurt, she decided. Usually, she avoided drinking more than a cup or two, but Tuesdays required more energy. She accepted the cup, sipped quickly, then concentrated on Billy again.
An accomplished babbler, he played out a string of sounds while grabbing at her hand for the spoon.
“I know you manage,” Miriam said, her back to Carly now as she puttered around the kitchen. “Quite well, too. But you need some time for yourself.”
With a half laugh, Carly lifted a shoulder.
“Did you eat?” Miriam asked her.
“I’ll grab something.” While Carly watched Billy’s bow-shaped mouth open in anticipation of the spoon, she heard Miriam clucking behind her. Life wasn’t as complicated as Miriam thought. “Do what you have to do” was Carly’s motto.
She scraped the bottom of the jar and spooned the last of the applesauce into Billy’s mouth. With a damp cloth, she dabbed his face clean, then gave him a quick kiss. This was the part she hated most. Leaving him. If she had any complaint in life—and she didn’t have many—it was not being able to spend more time with him. “Got to go.”
Miriam stood by the door. “Here.”
Carly stared at the cellophane-wrapped sandwich in Miriam’s hand. “Miriam, you didn’t—”
“Have to. I know. It’s ham and cheese. Eat it now.”
“I will. While I walk. Thank you,” she said and dashed out the door.
She ran the moment her sneakered feet hit the sidewalk. At a red light, she unwrapped the sandwich and munched on half of it. The other half she dropped into her purse as the light changed.
By the time she’d shimmied into her costume, she had one minute to spare. She sent an impatient-looking Roland a cheery hello in passing and geared up for a busy night as a group of conventioneers from the hotel restaurant wandered into the lounge.
Before ten o’clock Carly’s adrenaline pumped, triggered by one man’s constant stare. No, he wasn’t just staring. His deep-set eyes were scrutinizing her. Enough, she finally decided. Call it a stubborn streak or an ornery one, but she would go nose-to-nose with him if necessary. She planned to find out now why he’d followed her last night.
Feeling knots in her shoulders, she rolled them slightly. She was already having a terrible night. Twice, she’d messed up orders because of him, because she couldn’t think about anyone else.
A tray in her hand, Renee grumbled in Carly’s ear, “He just left. As usual, one drink and then he leaves.”
“He’s gone?” Carly swung around for verification.
“Yes, he’s gone. What’s going on?” Renee inclined her head questioningly. “He never took his eyes off you. If I were you, I’d be thrilled, except I know he hasn’t said a word to you. And that gives me the creeps.”
“Ditto. I wish I knew what he wanted. But whatever it is, I don’t like it.” More at ease now, Carly delivered a smile to new customers and took their orders, then bantered with others. Though she stared into the faces of strangers, one man’s face lingered in her mind.
A while later, tired and drained from underlying tension, she was ready to go home. She surveyed the room, her gaze stopping at the table where he’d sat. What if he followed her again? “Vince.” She waited until the bartender looked up from wiping off the bar. “Could I ask a favor?”
He presented his best anything-you-want look. With his dark good looks, he often attracted women who willingly spent money on drinks just to engage in conversation with him. They were wasting their time. Happily married and awaiting fatherhood, he was true to his wife.
Carly laughed in response to his flirtatious expression.
“What favor?”
“There’s a guy here who I think followed me last night.”
“Can’t blame him,” he said, smiling.
Carly didn’t return it. Vince teased a lot, and she usually went along with his good humor, but not this time.
“Hey, this is serious?”
“Very. I don’t know what he wants.”
“Which guy?” he asked, inclining his head to scan the few stragglers who hadn’t left yet.
“He was the one at table eight. He’s not there now. He left a while ago, but—”
“Why don’t I walk you home, just to be on the safe side,” he volunteered as she’d hoped.
“I’d appreciate that, Vince.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Carly felt some of the evening’s tension easing. She listened to Vince’s humorous stories about the birthing class he and his wife, Joanne, had attended. Carly laughed with him, but she couldn’t totally relax as they walked.
She hated the need to keep glancing around for one man and hoping she didn’t see him.
“There’s no one behind us,” Vince said as she looked back yet again.
“I’m probably being silly.”
“If he keeps bugging you, call the cops.”
That was something she would have to think about. She didn’t like getting anyone in trouble. And whoever he was, he seemed to have stopped trailing her.
Reaching the corner of her street, she noticed an approaching bus that was half a block away. At two in the morning, if Vince missed that bus, he would have to wait for another half hour. “Go home now.”
“I’ll walk you the rest of the way.”
Feeling foolish, Carly offered him a quick smile. “Thank you for walking me, but I’m fine.”
“I could wait here until you reach your building.”
“No, go home. Your wife’s due any minute. She might need you. And there’s a bus coming. Thank you for walking me this far.”
He gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. “Anytime,” he assured her in brotherly fashion and sprinted across the street to reach the corner before the bus.
Her thoughts on sleep, Carly retrieved her keys from the bottom of her shoulder bag. It was footsteps behind her that swept away her relaxed mood. Sensation skittered through her like a warning, even before she made herself look back.
He stood a few feet away beneath the light of a street lamp. “Can we talk?”
Whatever he wanted didn’t matter. She couldn’t afford to get mugged or attacked and end up in the hospital. Who would take care of Billy? All he had was her.
Carly quickened her stride to a clipped pace and bolted up the few steps of her building. She could hear him following her. Only when her finger was poised on Miriam’s buzzer did she whirl around to face him. “Who are you?”
He halted at the bottom of the stoop. “Alex Kane.”
Beneath the faint light, she saw the frown in his eyes deepen. “What do you want?” she asked.
“My son,” he said so softly that she barely heard him.
“What?”
With a subtle shift of his body, he seemed to move closer. “You have my son.”
