A Father's Secret

Need her? He hadn’t been able to stop wanting her since the moment he’d set foot on the soil of Connell Lodge, but need her? No, he didn’t want to need anybody.

“No, seriously, I’ll be fine. When you’re finished just come and get me at the café. I’ll buy you a coffee before we head back.”

“Sure, sounds like fun,” Erin said. “I won’t be far, anyway,” she continued, pointing to a two-story white building farther down the street.

Sam made out the signage at the front. Morin and Morin, Attorneys at Law. She was going to see a lawyer? What exactly did that mean? Was she going to try and fight his right to find out if he was Riley’s father? All sorts of irrational and angry thoughts peppered his mind as he watched her head down the road and enter the building she’d indicated.

He slipped his cellphone from his pocket and hit the speed dial for his lawyer’s direct line.

“Dave,” he said the moment he heard the man’s voice on the end of the phone. “I want you to get a court order to request the baby’s DNA, now.”

“Good morning to you, too, Sam,” David Fox’s amused voice echoed in his ear. “I thought we decided on a softer approach first time around, to gauge if the other party would enter discussions and testing willingly. You know, avoid potentially antagonizing the woman who might just be your baby’s mother? The woman you probably don’t really want to alienate?”

“I know,” Sam said, huffing out a breath of frustration. “But I don’t want to wait any longer. I want the tests done and I want those answers now.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the lawyer replied, his voice now all solemnity. Maybe he finally understood how serious Sam was.

“Good, call me when you have news.”

Sam disconnected the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. So, Erin Connell thought she could fight him. Well, she was in for a fight all right.

Four

As the receptionist showed Erin into the office, Janet Morin rose from the seat behind her desk and extended a hand.

“Erin, lovely to see you. How’s Riley doing?”

“Great, thanks. Growing like a weed,” Erin said and smiled in response. “And Amy? How is she?”

“The same.” Janet laughed. “Sometimes I regret that I made the decision to come back to work so soon, but I know staying home with her full-time would have driven me stir-crazy! Splitting the days at home versus in the office between my husband and me has been working out wonderfully. This way, we have the best of both worlds.”

Janet’s husband, the other half of Morin and Morin, shared child care duties. Erin envied them their sense of unity. While James had looked forward to being a father, he’d made it clear from the outset that he wouldn’t be hands-on until their baby was old enough to talk. She’d wondered if he might change his position once Riley was born, but on consideration she’d rejected the thought. Older than her by fifteen years, James had been so set in his ways he’d barely coped with the change in routine caused by marriage and sharing decision-making relating to the business. When it came to his child, he probably would have done exactly as he’d said.

Janet gestured to Erin to take a seat and settled back behind her desk.

“Tell me, what brings you here? I have to admit I was a bit curious. Don’t you use the Connell family lawyers?”

Erin felt her gut clench and she forced herself to relax and breathe evenly. “Yes, we do. For the lodge, anyway. But this is of a more personal nature.”

She briefly outlined the situation, thankful that Janet was already aware about the circumstances relating to Riley’s conception.

“The clinic is admitting liability?” Janet asked when Erin finished speaking.

“I’m not sure, but I understand they’ve been closed down.” She reached into her handbag. “This is the letter I was sent.”

Janet took it from her and sat back, reading it carefully. “Seems a reasonable enough request,” she commented, giving Erin a piercing look.

“James is Riley’s father.” He has to be, Erin amended silently.

“Let’s prove it then. If it turns out that this Party A is Riley’s father, I imagine you will want to know ahead of time exactly where you stand, right?”

“Yes.” Erin exhaled on a breath before drawing in a new one. “About payment—”

“Let’s not worry about that unless it looks as if we have to go to court on any of this, okay?”

Tears sprang to Erin’s eyes. “Are you sure, Janet?”

“Of course I’m sure. I know you’ve had it tough,” Janet said empathetically. “We’re friends, right? Custody issues are not my specialty, but I will do more research for you. It might take me a while to get around to it because I have a rather full few days ahead, but I’ll do what I can and call you, okay?”

“Thank you so much.”

“Now, let’s make sure we have all our details right,” Janet said, reaching for a pen and paper and starting to make notes.

Erin answered Janet’s questions as best she could even though the prospect of having to share custody with Riley terrified her. Rationally, she knew that if James wasn’t her baby’s father that Riley’s biological father should have some right to his son’s life. But emotionally…well, that was another story.

As a girl who’d grown up with nothing and who’d run away from home at sixteen to escape a mother who wished she’d never been born, Erin had fought hard to be where she was now—to have what she had now. And she’d gone through hell and back to have her baby boy. He was hers—heart and soul—and she’d do whatever she had to do to keep it that way.

An hour later, Erin slid her sunglasses on her face as she exited the building. She wished it were as easy to walk away from the glaring fear that held her stomach in a tight knot as it was to walk away from the building. At least she knew that Janet was taking steps to protect her and her son.

While Janet had agreed that her request for more information from the other party’s lawyers was a way of stalling things, she felt it might carry more weight if the request came from her, acting as Erin’s lawyer. She’d also recommended that Erin instigate her own testing to prove James was Riley’s father.

This, of course, engendered its own problems. Janet had called an independent laboratory that would courier a testing kit to Erin overnight. All she apparently needed was a strand of James’s hair, or even an old toothbrush of his, together with a mouth swab from Riley. That would allow the lab to extract enough DNA to prove paternity.

Swabbing Riley’s mouth would be the easy part, but finding something of James’s, that was another story. He’d made it clear when he knew he was dying that he didn’t want her to hang on to his things unnecessarily. Respecting his wishes, after he’d passed she’d donated his clothes to a shelter and distributed specific possessions to his friends as he’d requested. His more personal effects had been boxed up to give to Riley when he was old enough to start asking about his dad. But even if she got them out now, she doubted she’d find anything among his photo albums and awards from which DNA could be extracted.

She thought for a moment of the silver-backed clothes brush that she’d also packed away. A family heirloom that dated back to his great-grandfather, the original Connell of Connell Lodge, she’d carefully wrapped it in acid-free tissue and put it in the box with James’s other things. She couldn’t remember ever seeing James use the brush, but maybe there would be a stray hair still locked within its bristles.

Satisfied she had a starting point, Erin walked toward the café where Sam had said he’d wait for her. She cast a quick look at her watch and groaned inwardly at the time. He had been waiting quite a while. Hopefully he was a patient man, although somehow that particular description wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when she thought of him.

And she did think of him. A lot. Her guest had worked his way into her thoughts with next to no effort on his part. Into her thoughts and into her dreams at night. It was unsettling. She was still so newly a widow. She shouldn’t be having feelings for another man like she was. But as hard as she fought against the attraction, there was a part of her that relished every moment with him. Awake or asleep.

In the dark of night she’d tried to rationalize everything. She’d gone a long time without intimacy, so it was only natural that she’d miss it. Sam was the first man she’d spent any significant time with since James’s death. And even when James was alive, before he got sick, their relationship had not been sensual or physically satisfying for a while.

She and James had begun to grow apart long before they’d won the lottery run by the IVF clinic that gave them the chance to finally have a child. Trying to conceive had turned the focus of their marriage into a constant round of temperature charts and cycles and performance on command.

It was no wonder, really, that two years ago James had sought comfort in another woman’s arms. When, almost a whole year later, Erin had discovered his infidelity, he’d lain the blame firmly at her feet. According to him, she’d destroyed every last moment of spontaneity in their marriage with her obsessive quest to become a mother. Of course he’d sought a simple, uncomplicated affair with someone who only craved his company and made no other demands upon him.