The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 2

E ric knew what their next question would be, and answered it before they could ask. “Her mother’s dead. Died when Emily was born. I’ve been looking after her.”

And while he was saying that his eyes were moving slowly around the room, seeing it all with a strange sense of déjà vu. Weird, he thought. Not a thing’s changed.

Not that he’d really thought anything here would have changed, but what he hadn’t been prepared for was that he hadn’t. He’d thought he’d managed to grow up in the ten years or so he’d been on his own, but damned if he didn’t feel exactly the same as when he’d last stood in this kitchen, just a kid, then, and all frustrated and misunderstood yearnings. It was as if time had stood still, as if he’d left home only hours ago, not years. He even felt the same itchy and indefinable sense of guilt.

Maybe it was the guilt that made it so hard to look at his mother just then. Because he didn’t want to see any new lines around her eyes, unfamiliar streaks of gray in her hair. Didn’t want to see the love, the joy, the anguish he’d caused her plainly written on her face. He imagined she’d be wanting to touch him. Of course she would. She’d never been overly demonstrative, Lucy hadn’t, but she had her little ways. She’d be wanting to reach out to stroke his arm, hug him quick and tight, sniffle and cough and give him that fierce little frown she thought could hide the fact that she was crying.

It surprised him to realize that, deep down inside, it was what he wanted, too-to feel his mother’s arms around him, soothing his fears away and mending his hurts the way she’d always done when he was a child. It was because he wanted it so badly that he wouldn’t let himself get close enough to her to give her the chance.

Truth was, present feelings to the contrary, he knew he had changed. He was a long way from being that boy she remembered. He’d seen too much of all the bad stuff she’d tried so hard to protect him from. Yes, he’d come back to his childhood home in order to make his stand, but that had been instinct more than logical thinking, like a cornered animal looking for a tree to climb. In the final analysis he knew this was his battle and his alone, and when it came time for the showdown, he was going to have to fight it alone.

All of which he meant to explain to them, eventually. Tomorrow. Or was it today, already? He’d lost track of time. Right now, all he wanted to do was sleep. He had to sleep. He’d tell them everything…later.

“Son. Don’t you think you could have called?”

Eric heard the anger, no matter how quiet his dad’s voice might be. Dad was angry with him for the way he’d hurt Mom, which was something Eric could understand. Now. In fact, he understood a lot of things he never had before, now that he’d experienced those protective paternal feelings himself, firsthand.

He rubbed the back of his neck and felt the tiredness there creep right on down into his bones. Bracing himself, he turned to look his father straight in the eyes. “Sorry, Dad. I just didn’t think I could afford to stop. I was afraid that storm was going to catch up with me before-”

“You didn’t stop?” Lord help him, his mother had found her voice. And it was as sharp-edged and scratchy as he remembered it. He felt an unexpected surge of emotion as she rounded on him, all puffed up like an angry hen. “You mean, you drove all the way here from…what, L.A.? With that tiny baby in the car? Without stopping? Eric Sean Lanagan, I swear-”

“I stopped when she needed feeding or changing,” he protested. And damned if he wasn’t starting to feel like that kid again, defensive and resentful-until he caught a glimpse of something way back in his father’s eyes, something he’d have sworn was laughter. He managed a smile then, though his face felt stiff with it; it had grown unaccustomed to that particular exercise. “She’s a real good baby-took to traveling like she was born to it. I’m tired, though…” He made no attempt to cover his yawn, then felt his smile turn crooked. “What about it, Mom? Still got a bed here for me?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at him with her chin high and her arms folded across her chest, riled up and breathing hard. He had the feeling she might be holding her arms like that because she was using them to keep herself together. There was a shiny, fragile look around her eyes that made him want to pull his gaze away from her-only he couldn’t. She looked so tiny…so much smaller than he remembered. He wondered if it was because she’d actually shrunk, or because he’d grown.

Then…“There always has been, Eric,” she said in a furious, breaking voice. And there was a suspenseful little silence, like the moments between the lightning and the thunder.

It wasn’t a thunderclap but something much smaller that broke the silence-a series of snuffling, snorting noises. Eric turned toward it-he was well-conditioned to that noise by now-but his mother was there before him, reaching into the nest of blankets in the infant carrier and making crooning sounds. Startled, he glanced at his father, but his dad wasn’t looking at him. His dad was watching his mother as she lifted the little one from her carrier and held her up so they could both look at her…and look, and look, and look.

Eric stood and watched them all from what felt like a great distance, or-the more apt analogy came to him-as if he were seeing them through the lens of one of his cameras. There was Emily, blinking and squinting the way she did when she was getting herself waked up, working her way through her repertoire of expressions. His father’s expression he couldn’t read at all. But his mother’s…oh, man. His mom’s face was rapt, radiant, beautiful. The everpresent camera in his mind clicked madly away, and his photographer’s heart grieved for the priceless moment…the once-in-a-lifetime shot lost.

His emotions were a mess, a hopelessly tangled, senseless knot, and because he didn’t want to begin to try to pick those emotions apart, he said gruffly, “Her formula and stuff are in the diaper bag. It’s in the car. I’ll get it.” And he fled from the warmth and love and security he’d come so far to find and plunged back into the darkness he’d grown accustomed to, the darkness and all-enveloping loneliness.

And the cold.

He’d forgotten about that cold. It shocked his body but cleared his mind, so that when he came back into the kitchen he was violently shivering but better prepared to deal with it all-his dad’s questions and his mom’s fussing, and Emily’s much less complicated demands.

“It’s snowing,” he announced as he placed the diaper bag on the kitchen table.

But nobody was paying any attention to him.

“So, your flight got delayed, huh?” The young man at the car rental counter clicked his tongue in sympathy. “Too bad-happens a lot, these days. You’re lucky you got in at all. I imagine they’re gonna be shutting down here, pretty soon.”

“Shutting down?” Devon glanced up from the rental agreement fine print she’d been speed-reading through and frowned. “Not the interstate, I hope.”

“No, no-I meant the airport. Although, they’ll probably close down the interstate, too. This one’s supposed to be bad-a real Arctic Express.”

“Wonderful…” She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d be using the interstate, but it didn’t sound like good news; the interstate was probably the last thing that would close, and if that happened it didn’t bode well for the lesser roads.

Her perusal of the agreement completed, she nudged it toward the young man with an inaudible sigh of vexation. Devon didn’t like monkey wrenches thrown into her well-laid plans.

The rental agent jerked his eyes away from their rapt appreciation of her hair. He gave a covering cough and murmured, “Okay, Ms. O’Rourke, if you’ll initial here, here, and here, and then sign at the two X’s, we’ll have you on your way. That’s one Lincoln Town Car, non-smoker, with CD changer and GPS.”

“Snow tires?” Devon asked hopefully.

“Uh, all our cars are equipped with all-weather tires, ma’am. But it can be hard to find your way around in a blizzard, especially at night. If you’ve got very far to go, you might want to think about getting a hotel someplace close by, and just riding it out.”

She shuddered inwardly. The size of the airport had come as enough of a shock to her; the idea of being stuck in one of the adjacent hotels was appalling. “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she said briskly as she picked up her keys. “It’s only about thirty miles or so from here, I believe, and I have the GPS. Now, if you’ll just tell me which one’s mine…” She hitched the strap of her traveling combo handbag-laptop-attache case over her shoulder and reached for the handle of her rolling carry-on.

The rental agent gave a “don’t say I didn’t warn you” shrug. “It’s right outside that door there, ma’am-space number sixteen.” He paused, then, unable to help himself, added, “Must be important, to send you out on a night like this.”

“Oh, it is.” Devon’s smile wasn’t pleasant. The court order stashed away in her attache case seemed to flare and glow in her mind’s eye. Too bad, she thought with grim satisfaction. Mr. Eric Sean Lanagan was about to learn the hard way that one simply did not skip out on Devon O’Rourke, or her clients.

For the second time that night, the barking of the dogs awakened Lucy. This time she was actually in bed, cozy and warm and snuggled against Mike’s back. It seemed like only minutes since she’d closed her eyes.

It had been after midnight by the time she’d gotten Eric and the baby settled in Eric’s old room-he’d insisted on staying there instead of in the clean guest room, bedding down amongst all the boxes of dusty books and old clothes ready to go to the church rummage sale. He’d also insisted on keeping Emily with him, though Lucy had offered to take her-begged to take her-and let him get some decent rest.

Oh, but it had been hard to see him looking so exhausted. So drained and distant-like a stranger. This wasn’t the Eric she remembered, the son she’d yearned for and dreamed of welcoming home again. In her husband’s arms, in the privacy of their room she’d at last allowed herself to cry for that boy whom she knew in her heart she was never going to see again.

“Oh, Mike,” she’d sobbed, “he’s so different.”

“He’s grown up,” her husband replied, stroking her back.

“Yes, but…I don’t know him. He wouldn’t even let me hug him. And…oh, Mike-a baby! I never thought-”

“Hey-you wished for grandkids, remember?” His voice was wry and amused…reassuring. “Goes to show you-be careful what you wish for. Someone might be listening.”

They’d laughed together, then, and she’d fallen asleep with Mike’s arms around her.

Now, she poked him and hoarsely whispered, “Mike-wake up. The dogs are barking. I think someone’s here.”

“Oh, Lord-not again…” He lifted himself on one elbow and squinted at the alarm clock on the nightstand, muttering thickly a moment later, “Tha’ can’t be right…”

Lucy was already out of bed and struggling into her favorite old bathrobe, the fuzzy yellow one that Mike said made her look like a newly hatched baby chick. A glance out the window told her the storm was continuing unabated, but aside from that, she couldn’t see a thing-no car lights coming up the drive, nothing but darkness and swirling snow.

But there was definitely someone out there; she could hear a distant thumping noise, now. Someone was pounding on the door. The front door, which only a stranger would use.

“What in the world?” Muttering breathlessly, she hurried-barefoot and as quietly as possible-out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Mike, grumbling under his breath, was close behind her.

She ran down the dark hallway, flipping light switches as she went. Through the frosted front door glass and heavy storm door she could make out a faceless, huddled form silhouetted by the outside lamp. It kept shifting from side to side and appeared to be wracked every few seconds by violent shivers.

It took Lucy only a moment to open both doors-being country-raised, it would never have occurred to her not to-and then for a second or two more she stared open-mouthed at the apparition standing on her front porch. Surely, it could not be an incredibly beautiful young woman with wild and windswept hair-crimson hair that glowed like fire in the porchlight, yet glittered with a crystalline frosting of ice. Her bare hands clutched a coat together under her chin-a cloth coat, some sort of raincoat, it appeared to be, totally unsuited to an Iowa blizzard.

“I’m so s-s-sorry to b-b-bother you so late,” said the apparition. “My…f-flight was delayed, and I was afraid…they were g-going to c-close the roads, and then it t-took longer than I…th-thought it would to f-find…” All at once the lovely frozen mask of her face seemed to crack, and her eyes took on a look that bordered on panic.

That was more than enough for Lucy. “Oh, good grief,” she exclaimed, and clutching a handful of snow-dusted coat sleeve, hauled the alien visitor inside. It was on the tip of her tongue to add a roundly scolding, “What in the world were you thinking of?” when she felt Mike come up behind her.

His polite “Can we help you?” struck Lucy as a silly question; obviously, if anybody’d ever been in need of help, it was this girl.

But for some reason, maybe the very conventionality of it, the words did seem to revive the young woman’s spirits. Her face once again arranged itself in its perfect mask, and she drew herself up and thrust out her hand in an abrupt way that to Lucy said “Big City” as plain as day.

“Hello-I’m Devon O’Rourke. I hope I’ve found the right place. I’m looking for Eric Lanagan.”

Startled, Lucy blurted out before she thought, “Eric! But, he said-” then caught Mike’s eye and the tiny but unmistakable shake of his head and stopped herself in time. She finished it only in her mind: He said the baby’s mother was dead.

“I’m afraid Eric’s asleep right now,” Mike said smoothly, falling back once more on those polite conventions that sounded so ludicrous to Lucy, given the circumstances. “Would you like some coffee? Is there anyone with you? I don’t see your car.”

At that the woman seemed to hesitate, glancing uneasily back toward the door as if she feared she might have entered some sort of trap. It was what came of living in the city, Lucy thought. Nobody trusted anybody anymore. Probably, she reflected, with good reason.

“It’s down there-” the woman gestured vaguely toward the dark windows “-somewhere. I couldn’t get it up the driveway. I think it might be stuck in a ditch.” She gave a shiver, then a resigned sigh. “And no, there isn’t anybody with me.” A look of surprise flitted briefly across her face as she said that, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d admitted such a dangerous thing.

Mike chuckled in his reassuring way. “We’re Eric’s parents. You’re safe here. Tell you what-let’s all go in the kitchen while we figure out what to do, shall we? Lucy?”

“Right,” said Lucy.

But her mind was racing. Maybe it was because she was already emotionally battered, and on top of that, jittery from getting woken up out of a sound sleep twice in one night, but the woman’s suspicious nature seemed to be rubbing off on her. She had an uneasy feeling about this girl, this Devon O’Rourke. Protective maternal instincts she’d all but forgotten and long presumed dormant were springing to life inside her. Maternal instincts that had somehow expanded to include not only Eric, but a baby girl named Emily.

Devon was an early riser and lifelong insomniac, so she was neither surprised nor particularly annoyed to find herself awake in total darkness. A myopic squint at the illuminated face of her digital watch told her it was nearly 5:00 a.m., which seemed to her a reasonable enough getting-up hour-though even if it hadn’t, it would never have occurred to her to go on lying in bed, trying to force herself back to sleep. An utter futility, she knew from experience.

She sat up, groped for the lamp on the nightstand and turned it on. Throwing back the comforter, she swung her feet to the uncarpeted wood floor, shuddering at the unexpected coldness of it. She wasted no time finding and putting on the slippers she’d so generously been given last night, along with the flannel pajamas she was currently wearing and the bathrobe draped across the foot of the bed.

Strange people, these Iowans, she thought as she pulled the bathrobe around her shoulders, pausing to sniff the worn, slightly stiff and nubbly flannel. Soap, fresh air and sunshine… She could almost see the bathrobe flapping on a clothesline in a stiff spring breeze.

These Iowans, these Lanagans-Eric Lanagan’s parents. She wasn’t sure what to make of them. She’d never met anyone quite like them before. Most people, she was sure, even out in the country like this, would have been suspicious, even frightened at finding a stranger at their door in the middle of the night. But these people had not only invited her in, they’d insisted on making her fresh hot coffee, giving her dry clothes and a bed for the night. What kind of people would do such a thing, in this day and age?

Of course, she had mentioned Eric’s name. No doubt they’d taken her for a friend of their son.

That thought made her squirm with an unfamiliar guilt, which she shrugged away. It was their fault if they’d jumped to the wrong conclusion; they’d no business being so trusting.

Hugging the bathrobe around her, she paced to the windows, and in doing so discovered two things. One, that the storm responsible for her demoralizing fiasco last night was showing no signs of abating; and two, that she was ravenously hungry. Those facts led her to two more obvious conclusions: One, she wasn’t likely to be leaving here any time in the immediate future; and two, someone was bound to be getting up soon, this being a farm, after all. Didn’t farmers always get up at the crack of dawn? She felt certain no one would object if she made coffee, and maybe some toast.

She left her room, tiptoeing, and made her way to the stairs. She could see well enough; someone had thoughtfully left a light burning in the downstairs hallway-and somehow she knew this wasn’t usual, that it had been left on this particular night for her, the stranger in the house. She felt again that annoying twinge of guilt.

Her descent of the stairs wasn’t as quiet as she’d have liked. A couple of the steps creaked-a sound that seemed appallingly loud in the sleeping house. She paused once to listen to see if she’d woken anyone but heard only the howling of the wind.

Downstairs, she found that the light in the hallway provided plenty of illumination to the kitchen as well, so she set about making coffee in that soft, forgiving twilight. She’d watched Eric’s mother-Lucy, yes, that was her name-make coffee last night, so she knew where everything was; Devon was the sort of person who noticed and remembered details like that. She easily found bread and a toaster, popped in two slices and rummaged in the refrigerator for jam-Devon never ate butter-while the coffeemaker filled the room with heavenly smells and friendly sounds. She had located a jar of what looked as if it might be homemade apricot preserves when she heard, from close behind her, something that made her scalp prickle.

A snort of surprise.

And then, a most definitely unfriendly “Who the hell are you?”

Adrenaline surged through her, in part due to the shock of that unexpected voice, but certainly compounded by the fact that the jar of preserves she’d been in the process of reaching for had just gone shooting out of her hands like a bar of wet soap. For a few seconds she was too busy to give much attention to the owner of the voice as she grabbed at the jar, juggled it ungracefully and finally managed to clasp it to her chest, rightside up, thank God, against her wildly pounding heart.

Immediate disaster averted, she turned to face the man she’d come so far to find, and heard a hiss of indrawn breath and then a sound, not words, just a mutter of denial and rejection.

Oh, yes, and rejection was plain in his face, too. But that much she’d expected. For the rest, well, what had she expected?

Someone younger, for one thing. According to Emily’s birth certificate Eric Lanagan was twenty-eight-barely two years younger than Devon. Based on the way he’d been behaving-ignoring the court’s order, running away-she’d pictured him as some arrogant, irresponsible kid.

She hadn’t expected him to have so much presence-and presence wasn’t an easy thing to manage in tousled hair and bare feet, in pajama bottoms and a bathrobe hanging open-a flannel bathrobe, moreover, that was almost the twin of the one she herself was wearing.

She hadn’t expected a face with so many hard edges and sharp angles. Bathed in the warm yellow light of the open refrigerator, it still appeared pale as chalk, shadowed and gaunt.

She hadn’t expected him to look as if he’d just confronted a ghost.

Her next thought was that he looked instead like a man who wanted very much to strike her down where she stood-and might well have done so, but for the baby in his arms.

She gulped involuntarily and, eyeing the baby sideways as if it were a possibly dangerous wild animal, plunged into breathless explanations. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I came in late last night. In the storm. Your parents-” She was talking too quickly; her voice kept bumping up against her galloping heart.

My God, what was that all about? Devon O’Rourke didn’t scare easily, and besides, this was the man who’d befriended her sister, the man Susan had named as the father of her child. In spite of the harshness of his features, except for that brief flash of anger in his eyes, he didn’t look at all like someone capable of violence. In fact, there was something about him that was almost…oh, good heavens, the word sweet was the one that came most insistently to mind, with that endearing distraction, the juxtaposition of a fuzzy pink head and tiny waving fist against a naked, hard-muscled masculine chest. Her heart gave another horrifying lurch.

She could be in no danger here-not from this man-not right this minute, anyway.

Was she? He was coming toward her. Her mouth went dry. She couldn’t help it-she backed into the open refrigerator.

“I didn’t ask you how you got here. I asked who the hell you are.” His hand shot out, narrowly bypassing her head, and to her utter dismay, she flinched. He noticed it, too, and lifted one disdainful eyebrow, lending the half smile he gave her a devilish slant.

“You trying to warm things up in there?” he asked dryly as he plucked a bottle of formula from the refrigerator.

Feeling incredibly foolish, Devon ducked sideways to get out of the way while he closed the refrigerator door-and felt even more foolish when the toaster popped up just then and made her jump again. At the same moment, the coffeemaker launched burping and gurgling into its incongruously merry finale.

Never more glad to have something to do, she turned to the task of assembling a plate for her toast, a spoon for the preserves and a mug for the coffee. And all the while her unwelcome companion worked right alongside her, so close she had to be careful not to bump elbows with him as he ran tap water into a bottle warmer, plugged it in next to the toaster and plunked the bottle of formula into it.

Neither of them spoke a word, at least not to each other. The baby made impatient snorting, snuffling noises, which Devon was sure were a prelude to something much more disruptive. Eric responded with something that was probably meant to be a croon but in Devon’s opinion more resembled the ratchety sound a tiger makes when it purrs. If she’d hoped to use the interlude of activity to gain back a measure of her normal confidence and self-control, that sound alone would have made it an uphill battle. She felt the strain of it in her spine, her temples, the back of her jaw.

After she’d poured herself a cupful of strong black coffee and taken a testing sip, she leaned back against the counter and watched sideways through the steam as the man lifted the bottle from the warmer and, expertly juggling the baby, squirted a few drops of formula on his wrist to test its temperature. She couldn’t help but notice that his hands, though large, were sensitive looking, with long-boned agile fingers, and that not even the boyish lock of nut-brown hair that had fallen across his forehead did much to soften his hawkish profile.

“You must be Eric,” she said after a long silence, and was pleased with her cool, friendly tone. “And this is Emily?”

“Okay, so you know who we are.” Still intent on what he was doing, it was a moment or two before he cocked that sardonic half smile once more in her direction. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

Eric was fairly proud of the way he’d handled the situation so far. Especially considering the shock it had given him to walk into the kitchen expecting to find his mom up early and making breakfast, the way he remembered her doing most all the mornings of his growing up. And instead seeing…her. Like coming face-to-face with a damn ghost.

It was all he could do to make himself look at the woman. He kept his eyes on the little one instead, and found himself smiling way down inside the way he always did when he watched her eat and listened to her make those hardworking squeaky drinking sounds. He felt himself go calm and quiet, and didn’t look up when the woman told him, in her brisk lawyer’s voice, what he’d already guessed.

“I’m an attorney. I represent Gerald and Barbara O’Rourke, Emily’s grandparents. I have a court-”

“I know what you are.” He was able to keep it low, but couldn’t quite manage soft. The words grated between his teeth like he was chewing on glass. “Now you tell me who you are, or I swear you’re gonna be out that door, blizzard or no blizzard.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be leaving right away, Eric.” Now her voice was just as hard-edged as his. “Not unless that baby goes with me. I have a court order-” A gasp interrupted her, and both of them jerked like guilty children toward the sound.

Eric’s heart gave an exultant leap. For there was Lucy, coming through the kitchen doorway, wearing a look he remembered well-the look of a mama bear charging to the aid of her cub.