A Bride Before Dawn

Her statement would have carried more impact if her lips weren’t still wet and swollen from his kiss, but she could tell by the way he drew his next breath that she’d scraped a nerve.

“Tell me this,” he said, his hands going to his hips, too. “Did you leave Joey on our front porch tonight?”

She lifted her chin a notch, surprise momentarily rendering her speechless. Finally, she managed to say, “What do you think?”

“I think that if you did, it’s a hell of a way to tell a man he’s responsible for a kid.”

It was her turn to feel stung. Obviously, he didn’t know her at all. That was the problem, wasn’t it? He told her what he wanted and needed and she pretended to want and need the same thing. Until two-and-a-half years ago, that is. That was when the truth had come out. It was the same night they’d broken up. It hadn’t been pretty, but it had been necessary in order for her to move forward in her life, and all the other mumbo jumbo she read in self-help books.

She straightened her back and stiffened her upper lip. It rankled slightly that she had to remind herself that she’d done nothing wrong and, consequently, owed him nothing.

“If he’s mine,” he said, on a roll, “the least you could have done was sign the damn note so we wouldn’t have to wonder which of us is his father.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Noah made her head spin. He always had.

She’d fallen in love with him when she was eighteen years old. By the time she’d realized that he’d needed his lofty dreams of freedom more than he’d needed her, it had been too late to guard her heart from getting broken every time he flew off into the wild blue yonder. Eventually, she’d found the courage to chase her own dream.

Now here she was, back where she’d started. No matter what Noah thought, she wasn’t the same girl she’d been ten years ago, or five, or even one. Now she had to think about what she needed.

She walked to the door and held it open. “I asked you to leave.”

“Are you going to answer my question?” he asked roughly, squaring off opposite her in the doorway.

Gathering her dignity about her, she said, “A baby. That would be the ultimate tether, wouldn’t it? What would you do if I said yes? Would you marry me, Noah?”

A slap wouldn’t have stunned him more.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, unable to close the door while his foot was in it.

Tires screeched and a horn honked out on the street. The fracas seemed to bring him to some sort of decision. Staring into her eyes as if he could see all the way to her soul, he said, “Dinner is at one at the homestead tomorrow. Be there.”

The deep cadence of his voice hung in the air for a long time after he left. Lacey closed the door, but she moved around the cluttered apartment as if in a trance.

Noah Sullivan had a lot of nerve. It was just like him to threaten to break her door down if she didn’t let him in and then trounce off as if everything that had happened was her fault. He made her so mad.

She closed her eyes, because that wasn’t all she felt for him. She’d gone an entire year without seeing him, without talking to him or touching him, and then, bam, she’d spent one minute in his presence and wound up in his arms. Why did her body always seem to betray her when it came to Noah?

She knew the answer, and it had as much to do with love as it did with passion. She stomped her foot at the futility of it all.

From what she could gather from the little he’d told her tonight, somebody had left a baby on the Sullivans’ doorstep. It wasn’t clear to her why Marsh, Reed and Noah were uncertain which of them was the father. The entire situation seemed ludicrous, but if Noah believed the child might have been a product of their night of passion last year, the baby must be an infant.

What kind of a mother left her child that way?

A desperate one, Lacey thought as she looked around the old apartment where she’d spent her formative years. She understood desperation.

Shortly after her father died last year, the company she’d worked for in Chicago had downsized and she’d found herself unemployed. Her meager savings had quickly run out. Part-time and temp jobs barely put food on the table. Before long she was behind on her rent. And then things got worse.

She placed a hand over the scar on her abdomen, then just as quickly took her hand away.

She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She couldn’t change the past, and who knew what the future held?

Right now, what she needed was a viable means of support. What she had—all she had—was this narrow building that housed her father’s boarded-up bar and this ramshackle apartment above it. Although she’d promised herself that she would never move back to Orchard Hill, the deed to this property gave her a handful of options she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She could reopen the bar, or rent out the building and this apartment, or sell it all—lock, stock and barrel.

As she returned to her packing, she thought about Noah’s invitation. Okay, it had sounded more like an order. Dinner was at one tomorrow, he’d said. He expected her to be there.

She wondered what he would do when she didn’t show up. She spent far too much time imagining what would happen if she did.

There were two types of guys. Those who asked permission. And those who begged forgiveness. Why, Noah wondered, did he always land in the latter category?

He’d had every intention of knocking on Lacey’s door and asking her one simple question. “Is Joey my son?”

But he’d seen her tears, and he’d reached for her hand, and one thing had led to another. Now here he was, pulling into his own driveway, the remnants of unspent desire congealing in his bloodstream while guilt fought for equal space. Since there wasn’t much he could do about his failings right now, he pulled his keys from the ignition, turned off his headlights and got out.

The house was lit up like a church. Even the attic light was on. The windows were open, but other than the bullfrogs croaking from a distant pond and a car driving by, he didn’t hear anything. He hoped that was a good sign.

He went inside quietly, and found Marsh and Reed in the living room again. They were standing in the center of the room, staring down into the old wooden cradle between them. There was a streak of dirt on Marsh’s white T-shirt and Reed’s hair was sticking up as if he’d raked his fingers through it. Repeatedly.

Noah waited until they looked at him to mouth, “How long has he been sleeping?”

After glancing at his watch, Marsh mouthed back, “Four minutes.”

“Did you talk to Lacey?” Reed whispered.

Noah nodded and tried not to grimace.

As if by unspoken agreement, they moved the discussion to the kitchen. Keeping his voice down once they were all assembled there, Noah said, “Lacey didn’t leave Joey on our doorstep.”

“She told you that?” Reed asked.

“She didn’t have to. If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have realized it right away. If she’d been pregnant with my kid, she would have gotten in my face or served me with papers. She wouldn’t have left the baby on my porch and then crept away without telling me.”

“You’re positive?” Reed asked.

“Covert moves aren’t her style,” he said. “If Joey is a Sullivan, he isn’t mine.”

Marsh, Reed and Noah had personalities very different from one another. But one thing they had in common was an innate aversion to asking permission to do what they thought was best. Consequently, Noah wasn’t the only member of this family who sometimes wound up in the uncomfortable position of asking for forgiveness. Remembering all the times these two had been waiting for him when he’d broken curfew or worse, and all the times they must have wondered what the hell they were going to do with him, he felt an enormous welling of affection for his brothers.

“Obviously, you were both with somebody a year ago. Do either of you have an address or phone number?” he asked.

The first to shake his head, Reed was also the first to drag out a chair and sit down. “She was a waitress I met when I was in Dallas last summer. She spilled salsa in my lap and was so flustered she tried to clean it up. I stopped her before—Anyway, she blushed adorably and said her shift was almost over. She had a nice smile, big hair and—” His voice trailed away.

“What was her name?” Marsh asked after he’d taken a seat, too.

In a voice so quiet it wasn’t easy to hear, Reed said, “Cookie.”

Noah didn’t mean to grin. Marsh probably didn’t, either. It was just that the fastidious middle Sullivan brother normally went out with women named Katherine or Margaret or Elizabeth.

“What’s her last name?” Noah asked.