The Paternity Promise

She’d known the time would come when she would have to drop out of Molly’s life. The longer she stayed here, the greater the risk Jack Petrie might trace her to Oklahoma City and wonder what she was doing here. Yet she felt a sharp pang of dismay when Blake finally condescended to call a little past 6:00 p.m. with a curt announcement.

“I need to talk to you.”

“All right.”

“I’m downstairs,” he informed her. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

At least she was a little better prepared for this face-to-face than she’d been for their last. Her hair was caught up in a smooth knot and she’d swiped on some lip gloss earlier. She debated whether to change her jeans and faded San Antonio SeaWorld T-shirt but decided to use the time to take deep, calming breaths.

Not that they did much good. The Blake Dalton she opened the door to wasn’t one she’d seen before. He’d always appeared at his mother’s house in suits or neatly pressed shirts and slacks sporting creases sharp enough to shave fuzz from a peach. Then, of course, there was the tux he’d donned for the wedding. Armani should wish for male models with builds like either of the Dalton twins.

This Blake was considerably less refined. Faded jeans rode low on his hips. A black T-shirt stretched across his taut shoulders. Bristles the same shade of amber as his hair shadowed his cheeks and chin. He looked tough and uncompromising, but the expression in his laser blues wasn’t as cold as the one he’d worn at their last meeting, thank God.

“We got the lab report back.”

Wordlessly she led the way into the living room. Electric screens shielded the wall of windows from the sun that hadn’t yet slipped down behind the skyscrapers. Without the endless view, the room seemed smaller, more intimate. Too intimate, she decided when she turned and found Blake had stopped mere inches away.

“Aren’t you going to ask the results?”

“I don’t need to,” she said with a shrug. “Unless the lab screwed up the samples, their report confirms Molly and I descend from the same family tree.”

“They didn’t screw up the samples.”

“Okay.” She crossed her arms. “Now what?”

Surprise flickered across his face.

“What’d you expect?” Grace asked, her chin angling. “That I would throw myself into your arms for finally acknowledging the truth?”

The surprise was still there, but then his gaze dropped to her mouth and it took on a different quality. Darker. More intense. As though the idea of Grace throwing herself at him was less of a shock than something to be considered, evaluated, assessed.

Now that the idea was out there, it didn’t particularly shock her, either. Just the opposite. In fact, the urge grew stronger with each second it floated around in the realm of possibility. All she had to do was step forward. Slide her palms over his shoulders. Lean into his strength.

As her cousin had.

Guilt sent Grace back a pace, not forward. He’d been Anne’s lover, she reminded herself fiercely. The father of her baby. At best, Grace was a problem he was being forced to solve.

“Now you know,” she said with a shrug that disguised her true feelings. “You’re Molly’s father. And I know you’ll be good with her. So it’s time for me to pack and head back to San Antonio. I’ll stop by to say goodbye to her on my way out of town.”

“That’s it?” His frown deepened. “You’re just going to drop out of her life?”

“I’ll see her when I can.”

After she was certain Jack Petrie hadn’t learned about her stay in Oklahoma City.

“There are legalities that have to be attended to,” Blake protested. “I’ll need Molly’s birth certificate. Her mother’s death certificate.”

Both contained the false name and SSN her cousin had used in California. Grace could only pray the documents would be sufficient for Blake’s needs. They should. With his legal connections and his family’s political clout here in Oklahoma, he ought to be able to push whatever he wanted through the courts.

“I’ll send you copies,” she promised.

“Right.” He paused, his jaw working. “I hope you know that whatever trouble Anne was in, I would have helped her.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I know.”

His eyes searched hers. “Anne couldn’t bring herself to trust me, but you can, Grace.”

She wanted to. God, how she wanted to! Somehow she managed to swallow the hard lump in her throat.

“I trust you to cherish Molly.”

Saying goodbye to the baby was every bit as hard as it had been to say goodbye to Blake. Molly broke into delighted coos when she saw her nanny and lifted both arms, demanding to be cuddled.

Grace refused to cry until her rental car was on I-35 and heading south. Tears blurred the rolling Oklahoma countryside for the next fifty miles. By the time she crossed the Red River into Texas, her throat was raw and her eyes so puffy that she had to stop at the welcome center to douse them with cold water. Six hours later she hit the outskirts of San Antonio, still mourning her severed ties to Molly and the woman who’d been both cousin and best friend to her since earliest childhood.

Her tiny condo in one of the city’s older suburbs felt stale and stuffy when she let herself in. With a gulp, she glanced from the living room she’d painted a warm terra-cotta to the closet-size kitchen. She loved her place, but the entire two-bedroom unit could fit in the foyer of Delilah Dalton’s palatial mansion.

As soon as she’d unpacked and powered up her computer, Grace scanned the certificates she’d promised to send Blake. That done, she skimmed through the hundreds of emails that had piled up in her absence and tried to pick up the pieces of her life.

The next two weeks dragged interminably. School didn’t start until the end of month. Unfortunately, the open-ended leave of absence Grace had requested had forced her principal to shuffle teachers to cover the fall semester. The best he could promise was hopefully steady work as a substitute until after Christmas.

At loose ends until school started, Grace had to cut as many corners as possible to make up for her depleted bank account. Even worse, she missed Molly more than she would have believed possible. The baby had taken up permanent residence in her heart.

Only at odd moments would she admit she missed Molly’s father almost as much as she did the baby. Like everyone else swept up in the Daltons’ orbit, she’d been overwhelmed by Delilah’s forceful personality and dazzled by Alex’s wicked grin and audacious charm. Now that she viewed the Dalton clan from a distance, however, Grace recognized Blake as the brick and mortar keeping the family together. Always there when his mother needed him to pull together the financing on yet another of her charitable ventures. Holding the reins at Dalton International’s corporate headquarters while Alex jetted halfway around the world to consult with suppliers or customers. Grace missed seeing his tall form across the table at his mother’s house, missed hearing his delighted chuckle when he tickled Molly’s tummy and got her giggling.

The only bright spot in those last, endless days of summer was that she heard nothing from Jack Petrie. She began to breathe easy again, convinced she’d covered her tracks. That false sense of security lasted right up until she answered the doorbell on a rainy afternoon.

When she peered though the peephole, the shock of seeing who stood on the other side dropped her jaw. A second later, fear exploded in her chest. Her fingers scrabbled for the dead bolt. She got it unlocked and threw the door almost back on its hinges.

“Blake!”

He had to step back to keep from getting slammed by the glass storm door. Grace barely registered the neat black slacks, the white button-down shirt with the open collar and sleeves rolled up, the hair burnished to dark, gleaming gold by rain.

“Is…?” Her heart hammered. Her voice shook. “Is Molly okay?”

“No.”

“Oh, God!” A dozen horrific scenarios spun through her head. “What happened?”

“She misses you.”

Grace gaped at him stupidly. “What?”

“She misses you. She’s been fretting since you left. Mother says she’s teething.”

The disaster scenes faded. Molly wasn’t injured. She hadn’t been kidnapped. Almost reeling with relief, Grace sagged against the doorjamb.

“That’s what you came down to San Antonio to tell me?” she asked incredulously. “Molly’s teething?”

“That, and the fact that she said her first word.”

And Grace had missed both events! The loss hit like a blow as Blake’s glance went past her and swept the comfortable living room.

“May I come in?”

“Huh? Oh. Yes, of course.”

She moved inside, all too conscious now of her bare feet and the T-shirt hacked off to her midriff. The shirt topped a pair of ragged cutoffs that skimmed her butt cheeks.

The cutoffs were comfortable in the cozy privacy of her home but nothing she would have ever considered wearing while she’d worked for Delilah—or around her son. She caught Blake’s gaze tracking to her legs, moving upward. Disconcerted by the sudden heat that slow once-over generated, she gulped and snatched at his reason for being there.

“What did Molly say?”

“We thought it was just a ga-ga,” he said with a small, almost reluctant smile. “Mother insisted she was trying to say ga-ma, but it came out on a hiss.”

She sounded it out in her head, and felt her stomach go hard and tight.

“Gace? Molly said Gace?”

“Several times now.”

“I…uh…”

He waited a beat, but she couldn’t pull it together enough for coherence. She was too lost in the stinging regret of missing those first words.

“We want you to come back, Grace.”

Startled, she looked up to find Blake regarding her intently.

“Who’s we?” she stammered.

“All of us. Mother, me, Julie and Alex.”

“They’re back from their honeymoon?”

“They flew in last night.”

“And you…” She had to stop and suck in a shaky breath. “And you want me to come back and pick up where I left off as Molly’s nanny?”

“Not as her nanny. As my wife.”

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