His Child Or Hers?

“Oh, you’ve got company,” a woman said from the hallway.

Looking over, Natalie forced a smile as Hank said, “Audrey, this is Natalie Lawson. Audrey Chevalier, my housekeeper.

“Of course, you’ve already guessed that,” he added quietly to Natalie, nodding toward the report lying on the coffee table between them.

“Yes,” she murmured, thinking that both Hank and Audrey were far different from what she’d been expecting.

Learning he was a homicide detective had made her leap to some conclusions she’d already realized weren’t accurate.

Oh, not all of them were wrong. Being a big-city police officer was far from the safest job in the world. That was an undeniable fact. And to her mind, at least, it hardly made cops ideal father material.

But she’d been imagining Hank as a man who was much too involved in his work to really have time for a child—especially since he’d only adopted at his ex-wife’s insistence. Yet that wasn’t the impression she was getting now.

She gazed at him cuddling her son for another moment, a dull ache around her heart, then glanced toward the hallway once more.

She’d pictured Audrey as a stern woman too old to be caring for an active little boy. In reality, she seemed like a very pleasant, very young fifty-eight-year-old.

When Natalie focused on Robbie once more, he was watching her, his big brown eyes full of curiosity and a dried smudge of chocolate ice cream on his cheek.

He looked like Carlos.

She hadn’t been certain, just from seeing those photographs, but he did. And that sent a fresh rush of emotion through her. Getting him back would be getting back a part of her husband, as well.

She continued to gaze at the little boy snuggled in Hank’s lap, and realized that anyone who didn’t know better would never suspect the man wasn’t his natural father.

Hank didn’t actually resemble Carlos very much, but there were similarities. Regular yet rugged features. Hair that was almost ebony and eyes the color of black coffee. The sort of dark good looks that had always appealed to her.

Not that Hank Ballantyne appealed to her. Lord, no. He was the man standing between her and her son.

Focusing on Benjamin…Robbie, once more, she softly said, “Hi.”

The instant she spoke, he hid his face against Hank’s chest.

“We’re in a playing-shy-with-strangers phase,” he said.

Strangers. Nodding again, she tried not to let the remark sting. It did, though. Hard.

“Would you like me to make lemonade or anything?” Audrey asked.

“No, thanks,” Hank said quickly. “In fact, we’re going out for a while. We’ve got some things to discuss.”

CHAPTER TWO

HANK HAD DRIVEN Robbie to the lab in Englewood first thing, and Natalie had said she’d go as well. That meant, come tomorrow, they’d know for sure whether she was his mother.

However, the chance she wasn’t seemed so tiny that Hank hadn’t waited to consult a lawyer of his own.

By calling in a favor, he’d gotten a last-minute appointment with Doris Wagner—whom he’d known only by reputation until he’d walked into her office half an hour ago.

He eyed her as she sat gazing at her computer screen. A small, middle-aged woman, she looked as timid as a sparrow. However, she had a reputation as a veritable tigress in the courtroom, and was acknowledged to be one of the best lawyers around when it came to custody battles.

Not that he wanted to find himself in the midst of one. But he loved his son more than anything else on earth and there was no way he was letting Natalie Lawson take Robbie out of his life.

For the thousandth time, he recollected her words. “I realize that my walking in here and trying to take him away from you would not be in his best interest, so it isn’t what I’m trying to do.”

He mentally shook his head. How could she have said that in one breath and raised the idea of shared custody in the next?

Shared custody. Did she honestly believe that was even a possibility?

He suspected she didn’t. Because by the time they’d finished talking, he’d realized that the prospect of coming to any mutually acceptable compromise was virtually unimaginable.

Maybe, if there wasn’t such a major geographic obstacle, some sort of sharing would be feasible. But saying she didn’t live nearby was the understatement of the year.

He’d been surprised when she’d told him she was a doctor, and a quantum leap beyond surprised when she’d said she still lived in Guatemala.

She ran a clinic in Villa Rosa, a little town there, she’d explained. And…

He turned his thoughts back to the moment as Doris Wagner swiveled the computer screen away from herself and looked across the desk at him.

“Whoever Dr. Lawson consulted was right,” she said. “There’s virtually no relevant case law. Which means that even if a judge found in your favor an appeals court could easily find in hers. So I suggest you explore her proposal of a joint custody agreement very thoroughly before you reject it.”

“But I just can’t see any way one could work. Not with her in a different country.”

“Did you ask if she’d be willing to move back to the U.S.?”

“I didn’t come right out and ask, but I got the distinct impression it’s not an option. She told me how important the clinic and the people down there are to her. And if that’s where she sees her future, it makes her suggestion…”

The word on the tip of his tongue was ludicrous, but instead of saying it, he merely shrugged.

“She didn’t get any more specific about what she has in mind?” Doris asked. “Nothing more than you’ve already told me? Didn’t say how much time she wants?”

“No.”

“Then maybe things aren’t as bad as you think. She’s a single woman with a demanding career. And she knows as well as you do that nothing like Robbie alternating a week with her, a week with you, is possible. So she could be thinking more along the lines of a month or two a year.”

“I doubt it, although I could live with that. I wouldn’t like it, but…”

He paused, shaking his head. With Doris basically suggesting that he was probably looking at some sort of joint custody, what he’d like or wouldn’t like didn’t really matter.

“I have the sense that she wants him at least half the time,” he continued. “And once he starts school he’ll have to be in one place or the other for that, which throws even half-and-half out the window. School’s ten months a year, not six.”

After pausing again, he added, “I doubt there’s a hope in hell that she’d settle for only summer vacations. Not even summer vacations and Christmas.”

And he wouldn’t voluntarily agree to so little, either, which made it seem obvious that they had an insurmountable stumbling block.

“Guatemala’s a poor country,” Doris said. “She’ll be aware the education system here is far superior, and she undoubtedly wants the best for her child.”

“I’ve thought about that, and I’ll certainly use it as an argument. Even if I convince her, though…maybe she’d agree to only a little time at first. But what if that turned out to just be the proverbial thin edge of the wedge? What if she pushed for more and more until I eventually lost him entirely?”