Cassidy's Kids

“The truth is, little guy, that when I think about it, almost any one of them could be responsible.”

After testing the warming formula on the inside of her wrist, Ellie settled into the rocker her mother had had brought down from the attic. Until that night, Ellie had been hoping Cody wasn’t really a Maitland at all, but rather a scam on the part of some sick woman to tap into the Maitland fortune.

But holding the baby close to her breast, taking in features that were distinctive even at such a young age, she knew in her heart what Megan must have known from the minute she’d first unwrapped him in the doorway of Maitland Maternity a month ago. Cody could very well be a Maitland.

Sucking greedily, the baby ate, innocently unaware of the commotion his existence was causing in the lives of so many people. Ellie had only thought about the damage the baby’s sudden appearance was doing to the Maitland family and, by extension, the clinic. Now, as her heart and body warmed at the noisy sounds of the baby eating, as his little fist came to rest intimately against her breast, she couldn’t help but think about the damage that could be done to this innocent little child.

Was he to live with the stigma of his abandonment for his entire life? Was it going to remain like a dead weight, creating feelings of unworthiness that would follow him into adulthood?

Getting angrier, and more possessive, by the moment, Ellie gently burped Cody and rocked him long after he’d fallen asleep in her arms. Who, in her right mind, could hold this precious bundle in her arms and then abandon him? How could one of her relatives have slept so irresponsibly with such a woman?

And who was the baby’s father? R.J.? As Maitland Maternity’s president, he’d certainly have reasons not to come forward if he were responsible. But would his personal integrity allow him to stay silent? Of course not.

And what about Mitch? Ellie couldn’t believe he’d lied when he’d so sheepishly admitted that he hadn’t been with a woman in over a year. He was a fertility specialist. He’d know that eventually the baby’s paternity could be proven, once their mother approved the testing. He’d know it was useless not to come forward. Unless he’d donated some of his own sperm to his experimental bank and didn’t know it had been used…

Then there was Jake. A tear splashed against the sleeping baby’s face, and Ellie started guiltily, wiping the wet drop away. Jake was the most likely suspect of her three brothers. And the one she least wanted it to be. She adored all of her brothers, but Jake was special. He was different. He was her hero. He’d never have fathered this helpless child without knowing it. And he’d never have allowed the baby to be abandoned. No matter what lines Jake crossed in his life, he’d never cross that one.

Ellie rocked the baby until her muscles were cramped. An hour passed, then two, and still she wasn’t ready to give up her burden. It was a night out of time. A secret night, when Ellie could be Ellie, and no one would ever know; a night that would never ask questions.

Finally, when she was afraid her tears would wake the baby again, she laid him gently in his crib, covered his diaper plump rear with a light blanket and tiptoed back to her room. She’d hoped the stark familiarity of her room would shock her back to normalcy. Wiping the tears away, she wanted to pretend that they’d never fallen. That the tiny body in the other room hadn’t opened up a door she’d thought rusted shut years before.

Changing her stained pajamas for a clean pair, she climbed between her sheets, trying to soothe herself back to sleep using numbers, the way she’d been doing for most of her life. She started with smaller figures, afraid her concentration would be overstimulated by the larger ones she more commonly used these days. But even the smaller ones wouldn’t line up. They danced around on the stage in her mind. Changing colors. And form. Trying to escape, to get away from her before she could force them into their logical places.

And as she struggled, tossing and turning in her attempt to control the images in her head, the numbers were replaced by Sloan’s face. By two imaginary little female versions of his face. One plus two equals three. With baby Cody’s heat still warming her body, she couldn’t stop the images, couldn’t help wondering if Sloan’s baby girls would feel just as wonderful, just as right, up against her.

Then onto the scene came a fourth image. Three plus one, after all, always equaled four. Marla. The mother of Sloan’s children. The beautiful woman Sloan had never stopped dating during the entire time he’d known Ellie. The woman he’d been out with after he’d kissed Ellie so passionately.

She’d be a fool to open herself up to that kind of pain again. And Ellie Maitland was no fool.

CHAPTER TWO

SLOAN HID OUT in the barn the next morning. Mary had come to work with Charlie again, wanting, she claimed, to spend as much time with her brother as she could before leaving. But instead of staying in the house with Charlie, she was watching Sloan’s girls. Sloan half wondered if maybe the woman wasn’t trying to figure out a way to take his daughters home with her.

Damn thing was, the way the girls responded to her, he wasn’t sure that wasn’t what they’d want, too, if they’d been old enough to have a say in the matter.

From his position inside Ronnie’s stall, he could hear them outside in the yard, giggling as they chased a butterfly. He stopped mucking long enough to peek out the door of the barn. Smiling, he watched his daughters play. Sloan was itching to join them, but forced himself to return to his mare’s stall, instead. If he gave in to his desire, if he went out into the yard, the happy little imps tumbling over their feet and laughing so delightfully would turn into demanding, whiny little patoots.

“You’ve got time to waste mucking out a clean stall?”

Sloan turned when he heard Charlie’s voice. The old man had been with Sloan since before he’d married Marla. Charlie’d lost a leg riding the rodeo circuit and had been wandering around the circuit drunk all the time, making what money he could as a bookie, when Sloan first hit the scene. But in spite of his own problems, Charlie had taken the teenaged Sloan under his wing, become a crotchety but caring father figure, and had coached Sloan all the way to the top. And when Sloan had made enough money to turn his parents’ dilapidated excuse for Texas farmland into the four-thousand acre growing cattle concern it was now, Charlie had gladly turned in his bottle and betting tallies for a dishrag and washing machine. Lucky for Sloan, the old man had turned out to be a halfway decent cook, too.

“Not really,” Sloan finally said, resuming the work he’d begun after checking the cattle’s salt and mineral supplements that morning. Though he hired part-timers to help with vaccinating and shipping calves, Sloan usually worked the ranch alone.

Charlie watched silently for a couple more minutes, and Sloan waited. Charlie must have something more on his mind than Sloan’s chores, to have made the trek out to the barn in the first place.

“Mary’s got the name of a woman who can come in every day during the week to watch those mites for ya.”

The old man could have saved himself the trip out if that’s what he’d come to say. “Thanks.”

“I’ll give her a call if you like—get her out here to meet with ya.”

“Not necessary, thanks.”

Charlie leaned against the edge of the stall. “You can’t do this all alone, Sloan, no matter how bad you want to.”

“I know.”

“So you’ll call this woman?”

“I don’t want my girls raised by a baby-sitter.” Sloan, wishing that Ronnie weren’t such a fastidious horse, that she made more of a mess, cleared the last of what little debris there was from the stall. “I may not be much in the way of parenting material, but I’m going to learn,” he said. “I can’t do anything about Marla’s abandonment, but I can damn well make certain that those babies don’t feel unwanted.”

“But you—”

“I mean it, Charlie,” Sloan interrupted, leaning on his pitchfork as he met the other man’s gaze. “I know what it feels like to be deserted, not just by a parent who left, but worse, by one who didn’t, who lived in the same house but just wasn’t there. My children will not suffer the same insecurities I had to work through.”

“Not to mention the loneliness,” Charlie said gruffly.

Sloan grunted and attacked the fresh bale of hay he intended to spread on the floor of Ronnie’s stall. Charlie knew far too much.

“That’s why you married Marla, wasn’t it? To get away from the loneliness?”

“I married her for the sex.”

Charlie nodded. “I figured it wasn’t for love.”

Stopping again, Sloan frowned. “I cared about Marla.”

“So much so that when she was fooling around with the jerks in town, you barely missed a beat.”

He could hardly hate his wife for infidelity when the same urge was something he fought every day of his life. He’d been stubborn enough to win the battle, blessed, apparently, with incredible self-control, but he could still empathize with his wife’s weakness. Sloan—the man who wanted every woman who’d ever been born.

“She was sorry. She stopped.”

“If you’d been in love with her, you’d have wanted to kill the guys.”

“I’m not the violent type.”

Charlie’s weather-worn face showed no expression. Unless, thought Sloan, you looked into the deep gray eyes that saw far more than they should.

“I didn’t notice you sheddin’ any tears when she finally left town.”

“I never stopped trying to make it work,” Sloan protested.

“But did you ever love her?”

“I worked at it every day of our marriage.”

“You can’t force love to happen.”

“What’s your point, old man?” Sloan asked, getting impatient. “Don’t you have some dishes to wash or something?”

“Point is,” Charlie said, straightening, his prosthesis not even noticeable as he walked toward the barn door, “you couldn’t force yourself to love Marla no matter what you’d made up your mind to do, and you can’t force them girlies to be happy, either.”

“I love them. That should be enough.”

“You spoil them.”

“I love them,” Sloan said firmly.

“You let them run you around worse than that self-centered bitch you married.”

“I love them.” Sloan wasn’t backing down. He was used to Charlie’s bluntness.

“Then figure out how to do it right, or hire someone to come do it for you,” Charlie shot back. “Those babes are hell to live with when you’re around.”

His housekeeper’s parting words stung.

NOT WANTING A REPEAT of the morning before, Ellie skipped breakfast at home and went in to work early. It was just lucky coincidence that by missing breakfast, she also managed to avoid her family members—and baby Cody—as well. She hadn’t slept well. Was cranky and out of sorts. She needed to immerse herself in her work, remind herself what mattered in her life. As uptight and serious as she was, her career was all she was going to have, and she was damn well going to be happy about that.

But by ten o’clock that morning, she was also starving. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and she’d robbed herself of that sustenance. She was falling asleep at her desk. A tall glass of diet cola and one of Joe’s four-cheese western omelettes were definitely in order.

A dose of Mary Jane’s sweetness wouldn’t be amiss, either. Grabbing the Asleep at the Wheel CD she’d found for her country-western-fanatic friend, Ellie checked out with Megan and took a much-needed break.

Austin Eats Diner, located right next door to the clinic on the corner of prestigious Mayfair Avenue and Hill Drive, was just the diversion Ellie needed. Mary Jane Potter who was waiting on a group of cowboys at the counter, looked up and waved as Ellie walked in. Feeling better already, Ellie smiled, waved back and seated herself at a table for two. Though Mary Jane was three years younger than Ellie, she was one of Ellie’s closest friends. The petite brunette had grown up next door to Lana Lord, Ellie and Beth’s other best friend, and the four had seen each other through all the crises of adolescence.

Watching Mary Jane keep everyone in the bustling diner happy, Ellie relaxed for the first time since she’d seen Sloan Cassidy the day before. She hadn’t told anyone about Sloan’s unexpected visit. Nor was she certain she was going to. But she wasn’t going to deny herself the comfort of drawing silent strength from her friends.

“You skipped breakfast again?” Mary Jane asked, bringing Ellie the diet cola she hadn’t yet asked for.

“I had some work to catch up on,” Ellie said, meeting the smile in Mary Jane’s eyes.

Mary Jane’s gaze turned to concern. “You’re going to work yourself to death, Ellie, and it’s just not worth it.”

Taking in the mostly full tables around her, Ellie chose to ignore her friend’s warning. Mary Jane just didn’t understand. No one did. “I’ve only been in the position six months,” she defended herself. “There’s always a lot of extra time invested in a new job.”

“Fourteen hours a day?” Mary Jane scoffed, seemingly unaware of the thirty other patrons sitting in the brightly colored restaurant. “You haven’t been out with Lana and Beth and me in months.”

“School started,” Ellie responded. “I’ve got classes at night.”

“One night a week.”

“Hey, what is this?” Ellie started to get annoyed, but only because she so desperately needed Mary Jane’s support. “I come here to eat and get yelled at?”

Mary Jane sighed. “I’m not yelling, El. I just care.”

“I know.” That was the sustenance she’d really been after. “Things’ll calm down soon, I promise.”

Mary Jane nodded but didn’t look any happier; she pulled her pad and pen out of her pocket. “You want the omelette?”

“Yes, please.” Ellie picked up the CD from the seat beside her. “I brought you this.”

“‘Let’s Ride With Bob’ by Asleep at the Wheel?” Mary Jane’s eyes lit up. “Where’d you find it?”

“A record shop downtown. I needed some more George Winston.”

Reaching into her pocket, Mary Jane asked, “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Ellie replied, brushing it off. “Just don’t make me listen to any more of Bob Will’s Texas swing band stuff. I prefer horns to fiddles and steel guitars.”

“Thanks, El—”

Mary Jane smiled warmly again, and Ellie got all the payment she needed.

“I can’t believe you remembered I wanted this. You’re the best.”

Embarrassed, Ellie shook her head. “What I am is hungry.”

Mary Jane grinned. “Be right back.” And then she was off, pouring coffee, delivering heavy plates of food, spreading her cheery smile all over the room. Sitting back, watching her friend, Ellie counted her blessings.

She was taking the last bite of an incredibly delicious omelette when Shelby Lord, the diner’s owner and Lana’s triplet sister, suddenly appeared from the back room with a young blond woman at her side. Spotting Ellie, Shelby made a beeline for her table, stranger in tow.

“Ellie! I’m glad you’re here,” Shelby said. “I want you to meet Sara. She’s going to be waitressing here starting this afternoon.”

The blonde looked to be about Ellie’s age, but there didn’t seem to be twenty-five years of life lurking in her blue eyes. Rather, her gaze appeared almost vacant, though intelligent. If such a contrast were possible.

Shelby put a supportive arm around Sara’s back, drawing her forward.

“Sara’s suffering from amnesia,” Shelby said softly. Motioning for Sara to take the chair across from Ellie, Shelby pulled up a third chair for herself.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone to know,” she continued, “but I thought you should.”

Instantly filled with compassion, Ellie took in the other woman’s soft features. “You don’t remember anything?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine something so horrible. To have no control at all.

Sara shook her head. “A policeman found me in an alley, and I had no idea how I came to be there. He took me to a women’s shelter.”

“How frightening.”

Sara smiled sadly. “It was. I remember waking up, but I had no idea where I was. I only know that it was really dark. And my head hurt.”

Horrified, Ellie leaned forward. “You’d been attacked?”

“We don’t know.” Sara shrugged nonchalantly, but her eyes told a different story. Filled with fear, they testified to the seriousness of her predicament. “The shelter sent me to a free clinic to get checked over, and they couldn’t find anything wrong, other than the bump on my head. It had been bleeding, and I had a bit of a concussion, but nothing serious.”

“And they couldn’t tell how that bump came to be there?” Ellie was a stickler for details. She was never satisfied until she had all the answers. And this woman, with her sweet smile, looked like she deserved some answers.

“I could have been attacked, I suppose, but it’s just as likely that I fell, or that something fell on me.”

“She had nothing on her when she wandered into the shelter,” Shelby added. “No purse, no jewelry, nothing.”

Experiencing the woman’s pain almost as though it were her own, Ellie couldn’t let go. “So what are you going to do?”

“Work here, be patient, hope my memory comes back soon.” Sara’s tone implied there was little else she could do.

“Did you check, the missing persons’ reports?”

“Yeah,” Sara’s eyes clouded. “Apparently no one has reported me missing, at least not in Austin.”

“What about the papers?” Ellie asked.

“The police have no way of knowing how far back to check,” Shelby said, reaching over to give Sara’s hand a quick squeeze. “They’ve gone back a couple of weeks from the time of her appearance, and found nothing.”

As she sat there, Ellie put herself in Sara’s shoes. And suddenly the problems she’d been having with the press seemed almost a blessing. At least she had a life to report about.

“Where are you going to stay?” Ellie asked, as Mary Jane dropped off another diet cola and was gone.

“Mrs. Parker’s Inn,” Sara replied, her features more relaxed. “I’ve already seen the room—it’s quite nice, actually, and the house is cozy. I just needed to make certain I had a job before I moved in.”

Ellie was familiar with the boarding house. It was comfortable and within walking distance of the diner.

“Speaking of which, we better let you go get settled in so you can be back this afternoon,” Shelby said, standing.

Sara scrambled to her feet, as well, including both Ellie and Shelby with her genuine smile. “I’ll see you later, then. Nice to meet you, Ellie.” And she was gone.

As Ellie walked back to the clinic and the mounds of work waiting for her there, she couldn’t get Sara out of her mind or her heart. In losing her memory, Sara had in essence lost her life, lost everything that mattered.

After the previous night with Cody, Ellie couldn’t help wondering if she’d lost touch with things that mattered in her life, as well.

Except my goals, she reminded herself as she applied herself to the day’s work. She would be the best damn administrator Maitland Maternity had ever seen. Her goals might have changed through the years, but having them had always sustained her. They’d given her a reason to get up in the morning, led her to every success she’d ever had. She couldn’t forget that.

JANELLE MAITLAND WAS NOT a patient woman. And she’d been waiting every day for thirty years to claim what was hers. Looking in the cracked mirror of the seedy hotel room in this nameless little dirt-hole Texas town, she felt the unwelcome pressure of frustrated tears behind her eyes. She was a pretty woman, she thought. Her long dark hair and brown eyes screamed privilege. It wasn’t right that she had to suffer for her father’s weaknesses. She wasn’t the one who’d decided to leave the family clan, to squander her life and her share of the family fortune in Las Vegas. She’d had no choice in the way he’d forced her to grow up.

But she wasn’t a kid anymore. Her father was dead, which had turned out to be a really good thing. She had choices now, and she was damn well tired of waiting to exercise them. Why did everything have to take so long? She’d been waiting for Petey to get back from his makeover at the hairdresser’s for over an hour. She was hungry. She wanted lunch.

And not some damn take-out lunch, either. She was a Maitland. She deserved better.

ELLIE HEARD THE COMMOTION in the hallway before she actually saw them. She’d been poring over needle codes and standards, planning to upgrade the kind they’d been using at the clinic for more than ten years, when the first shrill “No!” reached her ears. Followed quickly by a babyish “Da-ee! Up!”

Before she could go to investigate, the sounds came closer, and three bodies materialized in her doorway. Sloan, carrying two of the loveliest baby girls she’d ever seen. Or attempting to carry them. Baby girl on the right apparently didn’t want to share her daddy’s arms and was attempting to push baby girl on the left back down to the floor.

“No!” the baby on the right screamed again. “Isha, down.”

To which the toddler on the left let fly with her rendition of “Up! Da-ee, up!”

“Ariel, Alisha, stop this instant.” Sloan’s voice could have carried a bit more conviction. He smiled apologetically at Ellie before taking a seat in front of her desk and settling the twins, still squabbling, one on each knee.

“Can I help you?” Ellie said, dumbstruck. What in hell was he doing here?

At the sound of her voice, the girls stopped fussing and stared.

“I wanted you to meet them,” Sloan said simply. “These are my daughters. Ariel—” he nodded to the baby on the right “—and Alisha. Alisha has the little swirled tuft in the middle of her hairline. I couldn’t have ordered up a better way to tell them apart.”

When Ellie looked at Ariel, she buried her face in Sloan’s chest. Alisha continued to stare, a leftover tear trembling on her lashes.

Ellie fell in love.

“They’re beautiful,” she said, forgetting that she wanted this man out of her life forever.

“They take after Marla.”

The prick of pain wasn’t overwhelming, as pain went, but it shocked Ellie back into the present in a hurry. The girls did take after their blond, beauty-queen mother. And Sloan had taken off after her, too. He’d asked Marla to his senior prom only a week after he’d introduced Ellie to the mysteries of making out.

“I really need your help, El.” Sloan’s eyes beseeched her.

“No.” She couldn’t. She wasn’t that strong. “I have no time as it is,” she said lamely. “I’m still getting settled in here. I’m going to school for my MBA. I haven’t even been out with my friends in weeks.”

No matter how compelling the argument sounded to Ellie, Sloan didn’t look convinced.

“Sounds familiar,” he said, smiling instead. “As I recall, you were in a similar predicament your sophomore year in high school.”

The year she’d met Sloan.

“You didn’t want to help with the homecoming float because you were in all the honor classes and were studying for early entrance into college, too. You hadn’t been to any of the parties with Beth since the beginning of the school year.”

And he’d talked her into helping with the float. It had been the start of the most wonderful—and most painful—time of her life. She’d felt valuable as a person, and as a woman, for the first time ever. In the end, though, she’d had her insecurities about her sexuality humiliatingly confirmed when Sloan had given her her first kiss and then told her the very next day that they couldn’t be friends anymore. He hadn’t even waited for the steam to clear before he’d asked Marla to the prom.

“You thanked me for showing you that there was more to life than books, Ellie.”

And he’d rewarded her gratitude with heartache. “I can’t help you, Sloan.” The babies were squirming, but she refused to look at them. She had to get rid of them before she turned traitor on herself, on all she’d learned, on all she’d painstakingly accepted about herself.