The Daddy Secret

Finally, when he and Mallory were alone, Rick folded his arms across his chest, shifted his weight to one hip and gave her a pointed look.

“Cute kid,” he said.

Mallory flushed brighter still, and she wiped her palms along her hips, tugging at the fabric of her robe.

Nervous, huh? Rick’s internal B.S. detector slipped into overdrive.

Well, she ought to be.

When he’d found out about her pregnancy, he’d only been seventeen, but he’d offered to quit school, get a job and marry her.

However, her grandparents had decided that she was too young and convinced her that giving her child up for adoption was the only way to go. So they’d sent her to Boston to live with her Aunt Carrie until the birth.

Yet in spite of what she’d promised him when she left, she hadn’t come back to Brighton Valley. And within six months’ time, he’d lost all contact with her. She might blame some of that on him, but he didn’t see it that way.

Either way, she’d had a change of heart about the adoption. And about the feelings she’d claimed she’d had for him.

At the thought of Mallory’s deception, something rose up inside of him, something dark and ugly and juvenile, something that reminded him that he might always be prone to bad genetics and a lousy upbringing. But he tamped it down, as he’d learned to do in recent years, and glared at the woman he’d once loved instead.

As a teenager, Mallory had attended church regularly. Now she stood warily in the center of her living room looking as guilty as sin.

“Excuse me for being blunt,” Rick finally said, “but your son looks a lot like my brother Joey did as a kid.”

“It’s not what you think.”

What he thought was that she’d lied to him, that she’d kept their baby. Was she saying that she hadn’t?

“If I’m off base, suppose you set me straight.”

She glanced upstairs. “Not here. Not tonight.”

Rick wasn’t sure if Lucas could hear their conversation or not. But she was right. Any further discussion ought to be done in private.

“All right,” he said. “Another time. Preferably tomorrow. You tell me when.”

“I...” She bit down on her lip, then glanced upstairs again. “I have a job interview at two o’clock and have already lined up Alice Reilly to babysit. I’ll ask her to keep Lucas longer. Would that work for you? We can meet here in the late afternoon.”

He had a pretty full schedule at the clinic tomorrow, as well as a couple of minor surgeries. “That’s fine, as long as it’s after five.”

“Okay.” She started for the door, signaling that it was time for him to leave.

All right. He’d go for now.

Mallory might have shut him out of her life when they were teenagers, deciding she’d rather raise their son on her own, but a lot of things had happened since she’d been gone. A lot had changed.

When Rick stepped out of the house, she closed the door behind him, shutting him out once again, it seemed.

But he was going to get to the bottom of this once and for all. He intended to learn more about the baby they’d conceived.

And about the boy who looked like Rick and who called Mallory Mom.

* * *

“Excuse me, Dr. Martinez. But there’s a lady and a little boy asking to see you. She said her name is Alice Reilly and that you told them to stop by.”

Rick, who’d just placed a plastic cone on a German shepherd’s head so he couldn’t chew at his sutures, glanced up at Kara Dobbins, his receptionist. “They’re here? Now?”

“Should I tell them to come back another time?”

Rick glanced at his wristwatch. It was 2:25. “Is there anyone in the waiting room?”

“Just Mrs. Reilly and the boy. Tom Randall called and cancelled his two-thirty appointment. He said Duke seems to be doing much better today.”

“Tell them I’ll be right there. I need to put Samson back in the kennel until the Hendersons come to pick him up.”

“I can do that for you,” Kara said.

Rick knew he’d told Alice she could bring Lucas to visit the clinic, but he hadn’t expected them to show up so soon. Besides, he’d hoped to have that talk with Mallory first. But apparently that wasn’t to be. So he’d have to keep his rising suspicion at bay and play things by ear.

When he entered the waiting room, Lucas, who’d been sitting next to Alice, jumped to his feet. “Hi, Dr. Martinez. Thanks for letting us come see your office and all the animals.”

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” Alice said. “I really hadn’t meant to bring Lucas today, but he was so insistent.”

“That’s fine,” Rick said. “Come with me. I’ll show you around.”

After a tour of the exam rooms, as well as the hospital boarding area, where Lucas met several of the recovering furry patients, Rick showed him the pharmacy area and the lab. He then let them peer through the glass window into the operating room.

“When I grow up,” Lucas said, “I’d like to be a veterinarian, too.”

An unexpected sense of pride surged through Rick. Apparently they both shared a love of animals. Did they share anything else?

It’s not what you think, Mallory had said.

Oh, no? Then, if Lucas wasn’t Rick’s son, what had happened to their baby? Had she given it up as she’d said she was going to do? And if so, why did the boy look more like a Martinez than a Dickinson?

According to what Lucas had told Rick yesterday, he had a father. When we lived in the city, my dad said it wouldn’t be fair to an animal to keep him cooped up inside all day long.

So who had Mallory married? Did he look like Rick? Did he have dark hair and an olive complexion?

Were they still together? Had he moved to Brighton Valley with her?

Rick didn’t think so. She hadn’t been wearing a ring yesterday. He’d checked again last night. When she’d stood behind the door—hid behind it was more like it—he’d checked out her left hand again. And just as it had been earlier, her ring finger had been bare.

Is that why she’d moved home? For a fresh start?

Probably so. That’s why she’d gone to Boston and stayed there, wasn’t it? To put Rick behind her?

Alice’s voice drew Rick from his musing. “I think you’d make a good veterinarian, Lucas. How good are you in math and science?”