The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 5

U nbelievable. That was all Eric could think of as he watched her walk away from him. The woman was simply unbelievable. Made of solid ice. Not a compassionate bone in her body. He’d wasted his breath on her. Furious with himself for trying, he twirled the shovel around and jammed it viciously into the layer of matted straw at his feet.

Something-maybe the silence-finally got to him. He realized that she hadn’t opened the door, letting in the expected blast of cold and noise. He stopped his shoveling. Hating himself, contemptuous of himself for wondering about her, he couldn’t stop himself from turning to look.

What’s she waiting for? he silently raged when he saw that Devon was still standing by the door. Why doesn’t she go on and get the hell out of here? He desperately wanted her out of his space, his place of sanctuary, his peace. Because if there’d ever been a moment in his life when he’d needed those things, it was now.

He wondered again how she could turn her back on her sister like she’d done. Even if those people were her parents, how could she protect them, let alone even think about giving them custody of a baby girl? She must have known what was going on in that house. She must have. At the very least, suspected. Maybe she even… Maybe…

That was when his body grew still, giving his mind a chance to listen to the tentative rustlings of a new idea.

Devon had been standing with her back to him and her head bowed, her forehead against the door. And maybe it was because she was some distance from him and the light was dim, and that he couldn’t see that beautiful, arrogant face, but it struck him all at once that what she looked most of all was…vulnerable.

No way! He wanted to argue with himself, totally reject the thought. But he couldn’t. That was when it came to him-the notion, the possibility that would change everything. Change his perspective. Make it a whole new picture.

What if… Oh, he’d read it somewhere-about people suppressing memories that were too painful to bear. He began, now, to wonder if this cold-hearted attitude of Devon’s might be nothing more than armor she wore to protect herself from truths she couldn’t bring herself to face. If…

What if-it seemed not only possible, but made all kinds of sense-Devon had been a victim of abuse as well? Everybody had different ways of coping with the bad stuff in life-he’d learned that lesson well enough. What if the only way she’d been able to deal with that, grow up and live a normal life in spite of it, had been to block it out of her mind?

What did he know, after all, about her life, Susan’s-any of it-growing up the way he had in a home as normal and wholesome as apple pie? He’d been judging the woman. And he’d been taught better. How many times had his mom and dad both told him he had no right to judge someone until he’d walked a mile in their shoes?

He wanted in the worst way to hate Devon O’Rourke. It would make things a lot simpler for him if he could. Hating what she stood for and what she meant to try and do to him and the little one, and at the same time having his feelings for the woman herself turn soft and sympathetic on him-that was something else entirely. He could see how that kind of conflict was going to make for some serious emotional turmoil.

Slowly, slowly, Devon’s mind grew quiet again. It’s not his fault, she reminded herself. He only knows what Susan told him. And, she told herself, it wasn’t really Susan’s fault, either. She was disturbed, sick. More so than I realized.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She had to try and talk to Eric. Make him understand that.

If only he weren’t so damned difficult.

It struck her suddenly how quiet it was in the middle of such a storm. Storms-both inside and out.

Too quiet…

An awareness, a presentiment-not of danger, just of something-gripped at her spine, making her turn abruptly with her heart inexplicably pounding. She saw that Eric was leaning on the handle of his shovel, intently watching her, as if she were some unfamiliar new animal whose behavior and responses he couldn’t be sure about. Her breath caught, and that same awareness, a tiny frisson, shivered down her spine.

Defying her own uneasiness, she forced herself to walk toward him, managing a casual stroll, hands jammed deep in the pockets of her borrowed parka. He watched her for a few moments, saying nothing, then hefted his shovel and went deliberately back to pitching straw.

This time Devon was prepared, and sidestepped the shovelful of smelly hay he carelessly heaved her way. Safely past the danger zone, she leaned her folded arms once more on the stall gate and quietly watched him work while she waited for her pulse rate to return to normal.

For some reason, it didn’t. It wouldn’t.

There was something fascinating, almost hypnotic about the way his body moved. The bunch and ripple of muscles in his torso as he bent and straightened, the way the light played over his back and shoulders, shiny wet with sweat, the lock of hair that dangled across one eye every time he leaned forward…

She tore her gaze away.

Impossible.

This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t supposed to be attracted to a man who’d just hurled the most vile and unspeakable accusations at her and her family. The man, moreover, whom she was about to annihilate in a court of law. The enemy.

Know thine enemy…

Girding herself with reminders of her reasons for being where she was, Devon took a deep breath. She looked up, down, all around, everywhere but at that perfectly ordinary body-she insisted it was ordinary-before she cleared her throat and dove in. “Um. It’s quiet in here.”

As a conversation starter, it proved a miserable failure. Eric grunted and went on shoveling. “Peaceful,” Devon added hopefully.

That won her a snort. “Yeah. That’s why I like it.”

“Ah.” An actual sentence. Encouraged by a tone that was at least not unfriendly, she drew another breath and shifted gears. “Eric-” she began, and was interrupted by a flurry of flapping noises from somewhere in the gloom overhead. She gave a shriek, to her own disgust, then asked in a hushed and shaken whisper, “What was that?” She was thinking of bats.

“Bird, probably.” Eric paused long enough to point the handle of his shovel toward the hayloft.

“Really?” And it was only relief that made her sound so breathless and eager. “What kind?”

He shrugged and reluctantly set aside his shovel, then looked at her the same way-reluctantly, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with her. “Doves, sparrows, maybe an owl. Probably lots of birds up there in the rafters. Looking for shelter.” He gave her a crooked, reluctant smile. “Didn’t you ever wonder where birds go when it storms?”

She shook her head as she watched him stroll toward her. Fascinated by the sudden change in him, she felt uneasy too, like a bird herself, watching the cat prowl closer.

He held her eyes while his voice lowered and grew growly. “‘The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow…’”

She knew it was a quote of some kind. And that he expected her to recognize it. Unable to think of a word to say, Devon just looked at him; her heart had quickened again.

Separated from her by the width of the stall gate and not much more, Eric halted. His eyes flicked upward to touch her hair before coming back to snare hers.

“‘And what will the robin do then, poor thing?’”

It occurred to her suddenly, irrelevantly, that he had beautiful eyes. Warm and golden-brown, like brandy.

“‘Sit in the barn,’” he prompted, answering his own riddle. “‘Keep herself warm…’” He stopped there, watching her, his head slightly canted, eyes quizzical and searching.

She shook her head, still at a loss for the answer he seemed to expect. Heat and the scent of his body enveloped her. “I don’t-I’m sorry-”

“It’s a nursery rhyme.” His voice was curiously gentle. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard it.”

“Oh, well.” She felt the vestiges of her panic drain away, and defensive disdain take its place. “I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with nursery rhymes.” She looked away, holding herself rigid and aloof. She hated him for making her feel at such a disadvantage, especially when she didn’t know why she should. She didn’t have children, why would she know nursery rhymes? Chin lifted, she prepared to defend what seemed to her a perfectly understandable ignorance.

When she found his eyes on her, curious, and curiously intent, the words faded to a whisper and died on her tongue.

Softly, he said, “Didn’t your parents read you nursery rhymes when you were a little kid? You know-‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’…stuff like that?”

Devon shifted, once more fighting down anger. She was trying her best to establish some kind of rapport with this man, and he wasn’t making it easy. Dammit, she wasn’t used to being the one under fire. She was the one who was supposed to do the cross-examining, not the other way around.

“I’m sure they did,” she said in her coldest voice. “That was a long time ago.”

She pushed off from the gate and turned away from him. She didn’t want to be angry with the man any more than she wanted to be attracted to him; both were equally unprofessional-and unproductive. For the first time he’d been talking to her-actually talking. She wanted it to continue. She couldn’t let her personal feelings get in the way of finding out all she could about him. The enemy.

Know thine enemy.

She moved a few steps away from him and paused to take deep breaths, gulping in air that was cool and smelled only of damp hay and animal waste, with no unsettling traces of a hardworking and unnervingly attractive man. She said brightly, “I can see why you-and the birds-like it in here. It’s cozy. It’s not even that cold.”

Unaccountably, inside the borrowed parka she was sweating herself, now, and she could feel a heat flush in her fair, redhead’s skin. She unzipped her coat and was fanning the two halves to cool herself when Eric pushed open the stall gate. She felt vulnerable without the fence between them, like a lion tamer without the chair.

“I see you helped yourself to my closet,” he said in what she thought seemed a conversational, even mildly friendly tone.

She looked down at herself, at a faded gray sweatshirt imprinted with a dark blue bucking horse and the word BRONCOS in block letters arranged in an arch above it. “Your mom’s closet,” she defended herself. “She told me to help myself-I didn’t exactly come prepared for this.” She waved a hand in the general direction of the howling storm beyond the barn walls, then looked up at him curiously. “Why, is this yours?”

“Was. When I was in high school.” He gave a grunt of surprise. “Can’t believe Mom kept it all these years.”

“Well, I personally am rather glad she did,” Devon said dryly. “I hope you don’t mind if I borrowed it?”

He looked slightly affronted. “Good Lord, why would I? Probably wouldn’t fit me now, even if I wanted it.”

Devon plucked the sweatshirt away from her chest so she could look at it again, and a wash of cold air swept under it and peppered her sweat-damp stomach with goose bumps. She felt her breasts grow hard and tight. “Broncos…” she said, fighting down shivers. “I suppose that’s your team mascot?”

“Yeah.” He smiled that reluctant, lopsided smile. “Used to be the Indians, back when Mom was in school, but a few years before I got there somebody evidently decided that was politically incorrect, so they changed it to Broncos.”

Devon smiled back. It came easier, this time. “I can understand that, I guess. ‘Native American’ doesn’t have quite the same punch to it.”

“Hard to make a good cheer out of it.” As if he’d realized he was openly smiling at her and feeling guilty about it, Eric’s brows suddenly knitted in a frown. “So, what was yours?”

“What?” She’d been gazing at his chest again, thinking how incredibly smooth it was, except for those hard-pebbled nipples, noticing that his skin was dusky but thinking it was more with the flush of exercise than suntanned. Caught, she felt her heart thud against her ribs and her breath grew sticky. “What was my…I’m sorry?”

“Your high school mascot.” His eyes watched her, intent and amused, with that particular masculine awareness that said he knew very well what she’d been looking at and what she was thinking. “Where’d you go to school-L.A.?”

“Canoga Park, actually.” She frowned and touched her forehead. “Our school mascot? Oh, God, I don’t know-some sort of animal, I think. I really don’t remember.” Desperately, she blurted out, “Aren’t you freezing?” Grasping at anything, just to change the subject. “Without a shirt? Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch cold?”

“You just said it wasn’t cold.” Oh, definitely amused.

“I said it wasn’t that cold,” she said tartly. “That’s a relative observation.”

“Ah,” said Eric, his smile tilting.

Suddenly, irrationally, she wanted to hit him. “Don’t put words in my mouth,” she snapped. “I’m a lawyer, remember?”

“Oh, I’m not apt to forget that.” When had he moved closer to her, with his arms folded across his chest and his hands tucked in his armpits? And he was no longer smiling at all. Just that quickly, it seemed, the cease-fire was over. His voice rumbled in his chest like distant artillery fire. “Look-let’s cut the crap, okay?”

“What?” She held her ground. She was proud of that, when what she really wanted to do was turn tail and run. This isn’t supposed to happen, she thought again.

“You must have had a reason for coming all the way out here in a blizzard to find me.” His voice was soft, but there was a dangerous light in his eyes. He came closer still, leaned toward her. “What the hell is it you want?”

It took all her willpower not to step back, leaving her no reserves with which to control the tremor in her voice. “I told you. I wanted a chance to talk to you. I thought we should at least try to understand each other. As I said, we’re going to-” She stopped, belatedly remembering that he wasn’t the father of Susan’s baby, and that they wouldn’t be family after all. Lamely, she finished, “I thought we might get to know one another, that’s all.”

There was a long pause while he studied her, and she tried-utterly without success-to decipher the emotions that flickered behind his whiskey-brown eyes. The only thing she could be certain of was that there was no longer any anger in them. And why she found that more unnerving she had no idea.

He’d rejected her overtures before, bluntly and even cruelly. She expected him to do so again. And once again he surprised her.

“We could do that,” he said softly. She stifled a tiny, gasp as his hand came from nowhere to touch her jaw, lightly brushing the place where it curved into her neck.

She couldn’t stop a shiver. And instantly, as if he’d felt it, he lifted his head and looked intently into her eyes. “You had some straw,” he said, and then… “Are you afraid of me or something?”

“Afraid?” It came out sharp and angry, not at all convincing. “Of what? Why would I be? I’m a-”

“A lawyer…I know.” His voice was dry, his eyes amused; she could see at their corners the beginnings of the laugh lines he’d have when he grew older.

“I was going to say, a grown-up,” Devon coldly replied. “Childish games don’t impress me.”

Something flared again in his eyes, so close to hers. And again, she knew with utter certainty it wasn’t anger. “Then why,” he said in a silken whisper, “is your pulse so fast?”

She realized then that his fingers were still curved around the side of her neck, and that his thumb was stroking up and down, up and down over her throat, measuring the ripple of her swallows. His hand was warm, and far from objecting to his touch, she felt an insane desire to melt into it, like a friendly cat.

This isn’t supposed to happen. This can’t be happening…not to me. Not to me!

She said nothing-how could she? For a time measured only in heartbeats she held herself absolutely still while Eric measured her pulse with his thumb, and, she thought, her soul with his eyes.

Then, just when she thought she wouldn’t be able to stand the suspense one second longer, he gave his head an almost imperceptible shake, murmured something she couldn’t quite hear, released her and turned away. Her neck felt cold where his hand had been. She had to resist an urge to cover the spot with her own hand.

“Not because of you, that’s for sure,” she said as she hooked the two halves of her parka together, masking the panicky unevenness of her voice with motion as she jerked at the zipper and yanked the hood over her head.

She might have saved her breath. Eric was yards away from her now, and totally occupied with pulling a black turtleneck shirt over his head. His back was turned to her and his movements as unself-conscious as if he were alone. Frustrated, Devon stared laser beams at his back, but it was her eyes that burned. Burned and stung until tears came. Alarmed, she hurled herself around like an out-of-balance top, so full of confused and contradictory wants and urges she knew her only salvation was to flee.

Look at me, damn you! Answer me…

No-don’t look at him. She never wanted to have to see him again. Speak to him again

Touch me again…

Damn this storm! If only she could get away from this place, these people. Jump in her rented Lincoln with the GPS, drive to the city and take the first flight back to L.A. and let the authorities deal with Eric Sean Lanagan. The man was a loose cannon-she’d been crazy to think she could reason with him!

Reason? How could she possibly reason with a man who wouldn’t even talk to her like an adult?

The northwind doth blow and we shall have snow,

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

She’ll sit in the barn and keep herself warm…

It came to her then-a tiny flash of memory, clear and bright and sweet as a single raindrop splashing onto her upturned face.

And hide her head under her wing.

She uttered a stricken sound, somewhere between a laugh and a whimper, and turned and ran-literally-to the barn door. Throwing her weight against it, she shoved at the old-fashioned wooden latch until it gave and the wind opened the door for her. Mindless and uncaring, she plunged into icy howling whiteness.

Inside the barn, Eric swore furiously as he sprinted to close and latch the door Devon had left open to the blizzard. His anger was for himself, not her.

He was an idiot. An idiot.

What in the world had gotten into him? He could neither explain nor excuse his behavior, except…he was thinking that maybe he’d been too long in the dark and slimy underbelly of L.A., living among people who’d so long ago lost the ability to speak to the sun-dwellers that they no longer tried to make themselves understood.

Cold, now, he stood in the vast open center of the barn with his head thrown back, staring up into the gloom that shrouded the loft and rafters like fog. Like my brain, he thought bitterly. Nothing seemed clear to him anymore. He was lost-not so much in the sense of what or where, but who. I don’t know who I am, he thought. I used to, but now I don’t.

Somewhere in those mean Los Angeles streets, he’d lost himself.

He thought of Emily, wondering whether the way he felt about her had anything to do with his having lost himself, but if it did, his fogged mind couldn’t piece it together.

He thought of his mother, and the fact that he hadn’t let her hug him hello, and shame weighed so heavily on him it sagged his shoulders. What kind of son am I? he wondered. What kind of man?

He thought of Devon O’Rourke. The enemy.

Before this morning that was all she’d been to him. One of them, the O’Rourkes. His enemies. In the jumble of phone messages left on his answering machine, in the pile of legal documents shoved into his mailbox, it had never occurred to him to associate the name Devon O’Rourke with lawyers. He’d seen the name, but in the turmoil of his life, hadn’t registered in exactly what context. Probably he’d assumed it was one of the parents; Susan hadn’t mentioned a sister.

Then, this morning he’d walked into the kitchen and come face-to-face with Susan’s ghost. A lawyer, she’d said, and then her name: Devon O’Rourke. And the pieces had fallen into place.

Except that place, it seemed, was a cement mixer. Everything was going around and around inside his brain. He’d come out here to the barn, to the peace and quiet he remembered, hoping the churning would stop and let him sort things out. Instead, he’d had a few more shovelfuls thrown into the mix, and now things were murkier than ever.

It didn’t help that she was so damn beautiful.

He found himself thinking about that-Devon’s looks. As a photographer Eric had had experience with more than his share of gorgeous women, a good many of them real stinkers as human beings. As a result, he liked to think he wasn’t all that impressed with pure physical beauty. He couldn’t have explained why he was so knocked out by this particular woman, especially since this morning he’d have definitely put her in the stinker category, no question about it.

What was it about her that fascinated him so? So she had sea-green eyes and hair an incredible shade of deep, vivid red he couldn’t even think of a comparison for-so what? So did thousands of women, probably. So she had skin so fine and clear-and soft! The sensory memory jolted him viscerally, a twisting in his belly so powerful it made him groan out loud.

What was I thinking of, to touch her?

What had he been thinking? He’d been thinking about that hair, and not how beautiful but how vulnerable the back of her head had looked, bowed against the barn door. He’d been thinking, not about the shape of her breasts but the way she’d shivered in his borrowed sweatshirt. He’d been thinking, not about the unusual shade of green her eyes were, but the panicky look in them when he’d told her a nursery rhyme, and asked her questions about her childhood she couldn’t answer.

He’d been thinking about what it might have been like, her childhood, and how, being a stronger person than Susan, she might have figured out her own better ways of surviving.

He’d been thinking about all those things and a whole lot more-Susan, and Emily and all the throwaway kids he’d met during the months of living on the streets of Los Angeles-and suddenly he’d wanted, not just to touch her, but to hold her. As he’d held Susan. Put his arms around her and fold her close and whisper into her hair that she was okay, she was safe, now.

That was the way he’d meant to touch her. But then he’d felt how smooth her skin was, and her pulse racing against his fingertips. And he’d wanted to hold her, not just because she was vulnerable, but because she was a woman. Not just because she was cold, but because she ignited a fire inside him. Not because she’d looked so lost, but because he felt lost, too.

The enemy. Oh, she was that, and he couldn’t let himself forget it, even for a moment. No matter how beautiful or damaged or vulnerable she was, Devon O’Rourke was still the dragon he had to vanquish in order to keep his promise to a dying mother. He meant to keep that promise, no matter what it cost him. This was a fight he had to win, because the alternative was unthinkable.

Devon O’Rourke was his enemy. But hadn’t he heard it somewhere-or read it, more likely? An old saying: Keep your friends close…and your enemies closer.

The cement mixer inside Eric’s brain ground slowly to a halt. Still with his head back, gazing into the rafters, he drew a quick, catching breath and closed his eyes. Yes.

His instincts, it seemed, hadn’t been so far off after all. It was clear to him, now, what he had to do. In order to win this battle he was going to have to get very close to his enemy, very close indeed. The O’Rourkes had the law and blood on their side; all Eric had was the secondhand testimony of a woman who wasn’t available now to tell her own story. His one witness-his only witness-was the vulnerable and possibly damaged child locked inside the memory of Devon O’Rourke.

Somehow, he had to find a way to set her free.