From Here To Paternity

He glanced away, his hand on the table tightening to a fist. She watched him control himself. When he spoke again, it was softly. Carefully. “Okay. I shouldn’t have said that. I realize your sister’s a sensitive subject with you.”

Sensitive didn’t even begin to cover it. She’d always felt so guilty about the way Sissy got sent away after their parents died. She’d fought and fought hard to keep Sissy with her. But she’d been eighteen and single. And the judge had been the kind who thought a nine-year-old would be better off in a two-parent home.

If Brand had only—

But no.

There was no point in going there. That was then and it was over. They needed to talk about what to do now. Still, she couldn’t resist getting on him about the more-recent past. “You should never have hired her to work for you last year.”

He looked at the note again, touched the edge of it, pulled his hand away quickly. “I was only trying to help.”

She stared at him dead-on and refused to say another word to him until he lifted that golden head and met her eyes. Then she instructed, slowly and clearly, “Do me a favor. Don’t help. Ever.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Charlene. I know you want to believe the worst of me, but—”

“That’s not true!” She said it much too fast and much too loud, as if she were trying to convince herself as much as him. Mia stirred and whimpered.

Brand only shook his head.

Something about that, about the simple denial in the movement, got her fury building again. It would accomplish nothing to start screaming at him. Still, she burned to give him a giant-size piece of her mind.

Mia whimpered some more.

Poor little thing. She was probably picking up on the tension Charlene was trying so hard to control.

“Shh. It’s okay, honey,” Charlene whispered, not looking at Brand, trying to think peaceful thoughts, rocking the baby gently back and forth, rubbing her tiny, warm back. “It’s okay….”

Mia sighed and snuggled close again, going loose and limp once more.

The coffeemaker gave a final sputter. Brand rose, went to the counter, filled a pair of mugs and returned to the table. He slid one mug toward her as he sipped from the other.

She ignored the coffee and challenged in a voice she somehow managed to keep low and calm, “So. That’s your story, huh? You’re insisting this baby isn’t yours.”

“It’s not a story. It’s the truth. That is not my baby—and by the way, where’s Sissy?”

Exactly the question she didn’t want to answer. “Um. What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. How come she sent you here to do her dirty work?”

“Dirty work?” She tried to sound superior and aloof.

“Figure of speech. Where’s Sissy?”

“How would I know? You read the note.”

He looked down at the wrinkled note again. “You want me to figure the situation out for myself, is that it?” He slanted her a glance. When she refused to respond, he continued, “Okay. I’ll take a crack at it. You haven’t seen Sissy since last year. You haven’t even talked to her. She left that baby on your doorstep along with this note. She abandoned her own kid, dropped her off with you and took off again.”

It hurt. A lot. To hear him say it right out loud like that. “Not on the doorstep,” she argued, sounding ridiculous and knowing she did, taking issue with a minor point to soften the enormous awfulness of what Sissy had done. “Not on the doorstep. On the couch. I…found her there, this morning, on my way out the door.”

“You found her on the couch?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“Sissy broke into your house and abandoned her own baby—but still, you’ll take her word against mine.”

Mia stirred again. Charlene patted her to soothe her. “Sissy has a key, so she didn’t break in. My house is her house, always. And she didn’t abandon Mia, either. She left her with me. Sissy knows she can trust me to take good care of her.”

Brand gave her a long, level look. “And that makes it all right, somehow, that she abandoned her kid with you?”

“Stop saying that word.”

“What word? Abandoned?”

“Oh, I could reach right out and slap you silly about now.”

For that, all she got was another slow shake of his head.

She counted to three and then said with slow care, “I’m not here to talk about Sissy.”

“Getting that. Big and bold as a whole new day.”

“Are you denying that Mia is yours?”

“What? You didn’t hear me? I denied it five minutes ago, I’m denying it now. I’ll always deny it. Because that baby isn’t mine.”

“Then I’ll expect you to take a paternity test.” She delivered the ultimatum and waited for him to start squirming.

He nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. And I want it done right. I don’t want there ever to be any question of the results. I want a legally binding test by a reputable lab, strict chain of custody of the DNA samples, so everyone involved is satisfied with the outcome.”

She cleared her throat. All right. She had to admit, for a guy who was trying to weasel out of taking responsibility for his child, he seemed pretty eager to get to the truth….

But then, as an attorney, maybe he knew some way to falsify the test results.

Charlene shut her eyes. No. Whatever she thought of him, she didn’t believe that. He might be lying to himself, telling himself he couldn’t be the father.

But he wouldn’t rig the test. He wouldn’t stoop that low.

She said, “I want to get going on it right away.”

He said, “Good. Get ahold of Sissy, tell her we need a copy of the baby’s birth certificate and she’ll have to show up at the collection location to sign a permission form to have the test done.”

“Uh. The collection location?”

“The lab where you’ll take the baby to have the DNA sample collected. It’s a simple, quick procedure. They run a cotton swab on the inside of the cheek. Painless.”

“But I don’t…” She cradled Mia closer, breathed in the sweet baby scent of her skin. “You’re saying we need Sissy’s permission?”

“Charlene. Think about it. You don’t go performing tests on minors without the approval of a parent or a legal guardian.”