Her Lost And Found Baby

“We have to figure out a way to get DNA samples,” Tabitha was saying, sipping wine with more passion than usual.

“Unless Jason’s father gives consent, you’d need a warrant,” he stated the legal facts. And if Jason’s father was Tabitha’s Mark, the chances of him giving consent were nil.

But...what would it hurt to help her try to get the sample? Let the science tell her the boy wasn’t hers?

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. They’d buy some time. He’d be able to help her one hundred percent. And someone else could be the bearer of bad news—at which point, she’d still have his support and they’d keep looking.

“Do you think we should ask to speak with Jason’s father, then? That we should just ask Mark, or whatever he’s calling himself these days, to prove that Jason isn’t Jackson?”

He didn’t immediately respond to her question. If he went along with this, helped her as though he believed, maybe he could prepare her for the possibility that the test, once they found a way to compel it, could come back negative.

Yes. He liked this idea. It was a good one.

With that thought, he drank some of his wine. He could delve into the legal problem at hand. Be a partner to Tabitha again.

“That’s not a good idea,” he finally replied. “We don’t want to force his hand and have him run off again.”

“I know. But now that we’ve found him, maybe if we just confront him...”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Do you think he’s going to give up his son at this point and let himself be carted off to jail?”

She held his gaze for a moment. Long enough to make him feel good all over. To forget, for just a second, what they were doing there. And then she said, “No, of course not.”

He nodded. “So we need to keep being Chrissy’s parents, keep our undercover identities, and see if there’s any more we can find out. We need something compelling enough that when we go to the police, they can do more than just question Mark...which would only tell him it’s time to run again—which is why I think we need to stay physically away from the daycare. If that boy is Jackson, you don’t want Mark to come walking in and find you there. What we need is to somehow get enough of a lead to help Alistair. A last name would be a great place to start. He could look into this Jason’s father.”

She nodded, then took a sip of her own wine. In his opinion, the wine was excellent. She seemed to think so, too. He stood up to get the bottle to top off both their glasses.

“You don’t think we should go to the police yet? Call Detective Bentley? Or have someone here in San Diego at least do a wellness check on Jason?”

Her pleading glance made him sit closer to her as he shook his head and rejoined her on the couch.

“First of all, Mallory—whom you obviously trust—didn’t give the slightest hint that there’s anything wrong. Unless there’s some reason to suspect something’s wrong, more than we currently have on Jason, they won’t be able to do any more than tell him someone asked for a wellness check. They’d more than likely see that he’s well.”

“Couldn’t we have them ask him for a DNA sample, just to settle this?”

“If they’d even agree to do that, which is highly unlikely with only circumstantial evidence, I can almost guarantee you his answer would be an unequivocal no. And then, if it is Mark, he’ll definitely be tipped off.”

“Wouldn’t that be like an admission of guilt?”

“You’d think so, but no. People guard their privacy, especially these days. But what it could do is make Mark nervous...”

“...and that we don’t want. Not while he still has Jackson. Not only because he could run again, but because we have no idea if...”

The stark fear in her gaze burned a hole so deep in him, he felt places he hadn’t known existed. “You’ve said all along that he’s gentle and kind. Patient. Great with kids,” he quickly reminded her. He didn’t know whether a man who was unhinged enough to kidnap his son because his own mother had died would be capable of hurting the boy. He just knew that Tabitha’s clutching that fear served no good purpose.

“He is.” She nodded once again, her smile filled with the kind of thanks a man wanted to hold on to.

He wanted to hold on to her. To pull her into his arms and keep her there. For a little while, anyway. Then he’d let her go. Before violating their friendship, making things messy, which would lead to an earlier end to their relationship than planned.

He didn’t want that.

Tabitha wasn’t anything like the other women in his world—and had absolutely no interest in becoming one of them—a woman who lived in the society he’d been born to. And he couldn’t see himself as anyone other than Johnny Brubaker, top legal counsel for his father’s holdings until the old man retired, if he ever retired, at which point the holdings would belong to Johnny. It had all been loosely mapped out before his birth.

“I think what we need to do first is fill out that application and see if we can get Chrissy enrolled at The Bouncing Ball.” Legal pitfalls bounced all around him. Over him.

“Don’t we need a two-year-old girl to do that?”

“She’s not the one who’ll be looked at. We will be.” He’d already perused the application. It was general stuff. Their jobs. Addresses. “We can use your home address and then the address of the commissary I rented here for the week...” Food truck laws in California required a street address for the business, one that passed health code regulations for storing and preparing food, and included a place where the truck could be parked. “I’ll rent it for the rest of the month. We can explain that we’re moving here and that Chrissy’s at home with...my mother.”

For the first time that day, Tabitha’s features relaxed. She looked like herself. Because they had a plan.

He thought about his mother...and Tabitha...and started to squirm inside again.

Tabitha knew his family had money, that he and Angel had gone to private school with limousine transportation to and from. She knew he’d been legal counsel for his father’s business. She didn’t know how rich they were and that he’d been groomed to be lead counsel for a team of about twenty. And his parents had no idea how or where he was currently living. There was no way he was inviting them to the little place he’d bought. They’d worry about him more than they already were. They’d agreed to give him his year to grieve Angel, to leave him alone as long as he called regularly.

And he couldn’t very well just show up at the mansion with Tabitha, unless he gave her some kind of heads-up.

It wasn’t like his family owned a business that she could just look up on the internet and learn all about them. More like, his father invested in many diverse interests, from patents to oil rigs, but only with his own capital. He wasn’t an investor for others. Sometimes he invested in failing companies and brought them around. It was always about the next challenge to him. Just as it had been for his father before him.

“I don’t know how to thank you, Johnny,” she said, “But if you need me to wash your clothes for you for the rest of your sabbatical, I’m game.” Her grin was like a hundred others she’d given him over the months and the world righted itself.

Then he caught a glimpse of a random drop of moisture on her top lip. He couldn’t look away. And knew he’d pay a high price for what that minute drop of wine made him want to do.

Chapter Four (#ulink_0885d569-ef0a-553e-88dc-7e62fbb3357c)

Tabitha stared at Johnny’s bare feet. He had nice feet. Toes aligned. Tanned. Nothing knobby about them. Good enough to be a foot model, if he’d been so inclined. She’d told him so once.

He’d quirked his eyebrow at her and continued whatever conversation they’d been having at the time.

“Did you go barefoot a lot growing up?” she asked now, still thinking about him saying they’d say that “Chrissy” was with his mother as they sat together on the couch in their suite sipping wine. She understood why she hadn’t met his family, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wonder about them.

Other than this year away, his entire life revolved around them. He worked for the family. Had married his parents’ best friends’ daughter. Lived close enough to them that he’d made it to his own bed with his own two feet after getting blistering drunk in his father’s den, with his father, on the night of his wife’s funeral. He had more aunts, uncles and cousins than she had acquaintances. And he was an only child.

She didn’t know that man. But as their time together grew shorter, she wanted to know him. Felt she needed to know him.

She was ready to recover her son. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to lose the friend she’d found in Johnny. Wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for that.

And yet she realized she had to be. She was a loner. Other than her small circle, anonymity was her comfort.

He hadn’t answered her question. He was watching her, though. Probably wondering why she was talking about feet when they’d been discussing their plan to get Jackson back.

“I like it that you go barefoot,” she told him, needing to have a moment of non-Jackson conversation. To breathe. “You’re so...smart. And together. It’s not surprising that everything you touch turns to gold. You have life so figured out, it actually works the way it’s supposed to—well other than Angel, of course...” She paused, and then added, “But your whole life has been a plan...and yet your feet...they’re free. You’ve got things together enough to leave room for freedom.”

If there’d ever been babbling, that was it. Award-winning wine was potent.

“I’d never gone barefoot in my life, other than at the beach, the pool or in the shower, until I moved next door to you.”

Wait. Was he saying he was barefoot because of something she’d done? That she’d released something inside him?