A Bride Before Dawn

Could he really be a Sullivan? His eyes were blue-gray, like Reed’s, but his hair was dark like Marsh’s and Noah’s.

“How old do you think he is?” Noah asked.

Reed made a few clicks on his computer. Eying the baby again, he said, “I would estimate him to be right around three months.”

Although none of them were in a relationship at the present time, they did some mental math, and all three of their throats convulsed on a swallow. If Joey was indeed a Sullivan, he could conceivably have been any one of theirs.

The baby fell asleep before the bottle was empty. Too agitated to sit still, Noah handed him to Marsh, who was sitting the closest to him. When the child stirred, they all held their breath until his little eyelashes fluttered down again.

“I don’t see how I could be his father,” Marsh said so quietly he might have been thinking out loud. “I always take precautions.”

“Me, too,” Noah said, almost as quietly.

“Same here.”

The baby hummed in his sleep. His very presence made the case of the reliability of protection a moot point.

“We’re going to need a DNA test,” Reed declared.

“I have a better idea,” Noah said, already moving across the room toward the kitchen and escape.

“Not so fast!” Reed admonished, stopping Noah before he’d reached the arched doorway.

It rankled, but Noah figured he had it coming for all the times he’d hightailed it out of Orchard Hill in the past. “Can you guys handle the baby on your own for a little while?” he asked.

Two grown, capable, decent men cringed. It was Marsh who finally said, “We can if we have to. Where are you going?”

Noah looked Marsh in the eye first, and then Reed. “I heard Lacey’s in town.”

“Do you think she left Joey here?” Marsh asked.

Noah couldn’t imagine it, but he’d never imagined that he and his brothers would find themselves in a situation like this, either. “I saw somebody on the front lawn when I buzzed the orchard earlier,” he said. “It was a woman with bags slung over her shoulders. She was hunched over, so I couldn’t see her well, but now I think she was hiding Joey under an oversize sweatshirt or poncho.”

Reed got to his feet. “Was it Lacey?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She was wearing a scarf or a hood or something. I couldn’t even tell what color her hair was.”

“Why would Lacey leave her baby that way?”

“Why would anybody?” Noah said. “I guess we’ll know soon enough if it was her. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

He strode through the house, where the television was still muted and where diapers and bottles and other baby items lay heaped on the table and countertops. Pointing his old pickup truck toward town seconds later, his mind was blank but for one thought.

If Joey was his, Lacey had some explaining to do.

Just once, Lacey Bell wanted to be on the receiving end of good luck, not bad. Was that too much to ask? Truly?

Looking around her at the clutter she was painstakingly sifting through and boxing up, she sighed. She was searching for a hidden treasure she wasn’t sure existed. Her father had spoken of it on his deathbed, but he’d been delirious and, knowing her dad, he could have been referring to a fine bottle of scotch. She so wanted to believe he’d left her something of value. Once a dreamer, always a dreamer, she supposed.

She’d emptied the closet and was filling boxes from her father’s dresser when the pounding outside began. She wasn’t concerned. She’d spent her formative years in this apartment and had stopped being afraid of loud noises, shattering beer bottles and things that went bump in the night a long time ago. It had been the first in a long line of conscious decisions.

Ignoring the racket, she swiped her hands across her wet cheeks and went back to work. After he’d died a year ago, she’d given her father the nicest funeral she could afford. She’d paid the property taxes with what little money was left, but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going through all his things, knowing he would never be back. A year later, it was no easier.

He’d lived hard, her dad, but he’d been a good father in his own way. She wished she could ask him what she should do.

She filled another carton and was placing it with the others along the kitchen wall when she realized the noise wasn’t coming from the alley, as she’d thought. Somebody was pounding on her door.

Being careful not to make a sound, she tiptoed closer and looked through the peephole. Her hand flew to her mouth, her heart fluttering wildly.

It was Noah.

“Lacey, open up.”

She reeled backward as if he’d seen her. Gathering her wits about her, she reminded herself that unless Noah had X-ray vision he couldn’t possibly know she was inside.

She caught her reflection in the mirror across the room. Her jeans were faded and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She wondered when the rubber band had slipped out of her hair. Orchard Hill was a small city, so it stood to reason that she would run into Noah. Did it have to be tonight when she wasn’t even remotely ready?

“I’m not leaving until I’ve talked to you,” Noah called through the door.

“I’m busy,” she said with more conviction than she felt.

“This won’t take long.”

Silence.

“Please, Lace?”

A shudder passed through her, for Noah Sullivan was proud and self-reliant and defiant. Saying please had never come easy for him.

“I’ll break the damn door down if I have to.”

Knowing him, he would, too. Shaking her head at Fate, she turned the dead bolt and slowly opened the door.

Noah stood on her threshold, his brown eyes hooded and half his face in shadow. He was lean and rugged and so tall she had to look up slightly to meet his gaze. The mercury light behind him cast a blue halo around his head. It was an optical illusion, for Noah Sullivan was no angel.

Before her traitorous heart could flutter up to her throat, she swallowed audibly and said, “What do you want, Noah?”

His eyes narrowed and he said, “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on.”

Chapter Two

Noah was as ruggedly handsome as ever in faded jeans and a black T-shirt. His dark hair was a little shaggy, his jaw darkened as if he hadn’t had time to shave, but that wasn’t what made it so difficult to face him tonight.

“Have you been crying?” he asked.

Lacey tried not to react to the concern in his voice. It was dangerous and conjured up emotions she wasn’t ready to deal with. “I must have gotten something in my eye. I’m in the middle of something here. Now’s not a good time.” She moved as if to close the door.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her so hard she almost believed he could have X-ray vision. “This won’t take long.”

“I mean it, Noah. You’re going to have to come back tomorrow. Or the next day,” she said, praying he didn’t hear the little quaver in her voice. The backward step she took was pure self-preservation, for the man was a weakness for which she had no immunity. “I’ve had a lousy day and I’m not in the mood for company.”

She was taking another backward step when he reached for her hand. Her senses short-circuited like a string of lights at the end of a power surge. His fingers were long, his grip slightly possessive. It brought out a familiar yearning born of loneliness, need and a great sadness.

“Aw, Lace, don’t cry,” he said, tugging lightly on her hand.

“I told you, I must have gotten something in my—” The next thing she knew, she was toppling into his arms.

Noah didn’t think about what he was doing, because what he was doing felt as natural as flying. Wrapping his arms around Lacey, he tilted his chin to make room for her head and widened his stance to make room for her feet between his. For once, it wasn’t the vibration of flight he sensed, but her trembling. At first she held herself stiffly, but slowly the tension drained out of her. He didn’t know what she’d been through since he’d last seen her, and he didn’t want to guess what was at the root of her tears. In that place where instincts lived and survival reigned, he knew only that she needed something as simple and basic as a human touch.

It had been a year since he’d inhaled the scent of her shampoo, since he’d felt her warm breath against his neck or held her soft curves against the hard length of his body. He heard the rush of blood in his ears and he knew the cause.

He needed to stop this. He’d come here for a reason, a damn good one.

She sighed and lifted her head from his shoulder. Splaying her fingers wide against his chest as if to push away, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. For a moment, neither of them moved, not even to breathe.

Her eyes were luminous and her lashes were damp. Noah’s heart skipped a beat then raced in double-time. Without conscious thought, he swooped down and covered her mouth with his.

He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Okay, he knew. He’d been imagining this ever since Digger told him Lacey was back in town.

He kissed her. It was demanding and rousing, and once it started, it was too late to ask what she was doing back in Orchard Hill, too late to ask her anything, or to do anything but pull her even closer and tip her head up and plunge into the heat and hunger springing to life between them.

She opened her mouth beneath his, and clutched fistfuls of his shirt to keep from falling. He wasn’t going to let her fall. Keeping one arm around her back, he moved his other hand to her waist, along her ribs, to the delicate edges of her shoulder blades. He massaged the knot at the back of her neck until she moaned. It was a low, primal sound that brought an answering one from deep inside him.

The kiss stopped and started a dozen times. Raw and savage, it tore through him until his heart was thundering and holding her wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

His ears rang and his lungs burned and need coursed through his veins. He was guilty of slipping his hands beneath her shirt, guilty of succumbing to her beauty and his need. His right hand took a slow journey the way it had come, along her ribs, to the small of her back and lower. She locked herself in his embrace and buried her fingers in his hair, as guilty of wanting this as he was.

He covered her breast with his other hand, the thin fabric of her bra the only barrier between her skin and his. He massaged and kneaded until she moaned again, her head tipping back. His eyes half-open, he made a sound, too, his gaze going to the boxes lining the room.

“You’re packing,” he said, easing the strap of her tank top off her right shoulder. “Where are you going?”

“It’s no concern of yours.”

“You leave a kid on my doorstep, it’s sure as hell my concern,” he said against her skin.

The censure in Noah’s voice brought Lacey to her senses. Stiffening, she opened her eyes. She drew her right shoulder away from his lips and yanked herself out of his arms. Unable to get very far away without running into boxes, she had to make do with six feet of space between them.

She pulled her shirt down and pushed her strap up. Her breathing was ragged and her thoughts jumbled. Trying to get both under control wasn’t easy. What an understatement. The passion that had erupted had temporarily thrown her into her old habits, for she’d never been able to resist him.

Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror again, she pushed her hair behind her ears and took several calming breaths. From six feet away she could see Noah’s vehemence returning.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?” he asked.

Something crashed in Lacey’s mind like a whiskey bottle hurled against the alley wall below. That was why Noah was here? Because for some unfathomable reason he believed she’d gotten pregnant? If she could have laughed, it would have been bitter.

“Are you going to answer my question or aren’t you?” he demanded.

Again, she heard the censure in his voice. When other young girls were learning to say please and thank you and how to walk in heels and fit in with their peers, Lacey had been learning how to fend for herself. Eventually, she’d acquired those other skills from teachers and friends, books and television, but self-preservation was as deeply ingrained as her pride.

She may have been raised over a shabby bar, but she didn’t have to accept his or anyone else’s unwarranted reproach. “I want you to leave,” she said. “Now.”

His eyes narrowed. “What game are you playing, Lacey?”

She squared off opposite him. “I’m not playing with you anymore. I thought I made that clear a year ago.”

Her statement would have carried more impact if her lips weren’t still wet and swollen from his kiss, but she could tell by the way he drew his next breath that she’d scraped a nerve.

“Tell me this,” he said, his hands going to his hips, too. “Did you leave Joey on our front porch tonight?”

She lifted her chin a notch, surprise momentarily rendering her speechless. Finally, she managed to say, “What do you think?”

“I think that if you did, it’s a hell of a way to tell a man he’s responsible for a kid.”

It was her turn to feel stung. Obviously, he didn’t know her at all. That was the problem, wasn’t it? He told her what he wanted and needed and she pretended to want and need the same thing. Until two-and-a-half years ago, that is. That was when the truth had come out. It was the same night they’d broken up. It hadn’t been pretty, but it had been necessary in order for her to move forward in her life, and all the other mumbo jumbo she read in self-help books.

She straightened her back and stiffened her upper lip. It rankled slightly that she had to remind herself that she’d done nothing wrong and, consequently, owed him nothing.

“If he’s mine,” he said, on a roll, “the least you could have done was sign the damn note so we wouldn’t have to wonder which of us is his father.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Noah made her head spin. He always had.

She’d fallen in love with him when she was eighteen years old. By the time she’d realized that he’d needed his lofty dreams of freedom more than he’d needed her, it had been too late to guard her heart from getting broken every time he flew off into the wild blue yonder. Eventually, she’d found the courage to chase her own dream.

Now here she was, back where she’d started. No matter what Noah thought, she wasn’t the same girl she’d been ten years ago, or five, or even one. Now she had to think about what she needed.

She walked to the door and held it open. “I asked you to leave.”

“Are you going to answer my question?” he asked roughly, squaring off opposite her in the doorway.

Gathering her dignity about her, she said, “A baby. That would be the ultimate tether, wouldn’t it? What would you do if I said yes? Would you marry me, Noah?”

A slap wouldn’t have stunned him more.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, unable to close the door while his foot was in it.

Tires screeched and a horn honked out on the street. The fracas seemed to bring him to some sort of decision. Staring into her eyes as if he could see all the way to her soul, he said, “Dinner is at one at the homestead tomorrow. Be there.”

The deep cadence of his voice hung in the air for a long time after he left. Lacey closed the door, but she moved around the cluttered apartment as if in a trance.

Noah Sullivan had a lot of nerve. It was just like him to threaten to break her door down if she didn’t let him in and then trounce off as if everything that had happened was her fault. He made her so mad.

She closed her eyes, because that wasn’t all she felt for him. She’d gone an entire year without seeing him, without talking to him or touching him, and then, bam, she’d spent one minute in his presence and wound up in his arms. Why did her body always seem to betray her when it came to Noah?

She knew the answer, and it had as much to do with love as it did with passion. She stomped her foot at the futility of it all.

From what she could gather from the little he’d told her tonight, somebody had left a baby on the Sullivans’ doorstep. It wasn’t clear to her why Marsh, Reed and Noah were uncertain which of them was the father. The entire situation seemed ludicrous, but if Noah believed the child might have been a product of their night of passion last year, the baby must be an infant.

What kind of a mother left her child that way?

A desperate one, Lacey thought as she looked around the old apartment where she’d spent her formative years. She understood desperation.

Shortly after her father died last year, the company she’d worked for in Chicago had downsized and she’d found herself unemployed. Her meager savings had quickly run out. Part-time and temp jobs barely put food on the table. Before long she was behind on her rent. And then things got worse.

She placed a hand over the scar on her abdomen, then just as quickly took her hand away.

She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She couldn’t change the past, and who knew what the future held?

Right now, what she needed was a viable means of support. What she had—all she had—was this narrow building that housed her father’s boarded-up bar and this ramshackle apartment above it. Although she’d promised herself that she would never move back to Orchard Hill, the deed to this property gave her a handful of options she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She could reopen the bar, or rent out the building and this apartment, or sell it all—lock, stock and barrel.

As she returned to her packing, she thought about Noah’s invitation. Okay, it had sounded more like an order. Dinner was at one tomorrow, he’d said. He expected her to be there.

She wondered what he would do when she didn’t show up. She spent far too much time imagining what would happen if she did.

There were two types of guys. Those who asked permission. And those who begged forgiveness. Why, Noah wondered, did he always land in the latter category?

He’d had every intention of knocking on Lacey’s door and asking her one simple question. “Is Joey my son?”

But he’d seen her tears, and he’d reached for her hand, and one thing had led to another. Now here he was, pulling into his own driveway, the remnants of unspent desire congealing in his bloodstream while guilt fought for equal space. Since there wasn’t much he could do about his failings right now, he pulled his keys from the ignition, turned off his headlights and got out.

The house was lit up like a church. Even the attic light was on. The windows were open, but other than the bullfrogs croaking from a distant pond and a car driving by, he didn’t hear anything. He hoped that was a good sign.

He went inside quietly, and found Marsh and Reed in the living room again. They were standing in the center of the room, staring down into the old wooden cradle between them. There was a streak of dirt on Marsh’s white T-shirt and Reed’s hair was sticking up as if he’d raked his fingers through it. Repeatedly.

Noah waited until they looked at him to mouth, “How long has he been sleeping?”

After glancing at his watch, Marsh mouthed back, “Four minutes.”

“Did you talk to Lacey?” Reed whispered.

Noah nodded and tried not to grimace.

As if by unspoken agreement, they moved the discussion to the kitchen. Keeping his voice down once they were all assembled there, Noah said, “Lacey didn’t leave Joey on our doorstep.”

“She told you that?” Reed asked.

“She didn’t have to. If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have realized it right away. If she’d been pregnant with my kid, she would have gotten in my face or served me with papers. She wouldn’t have left the baby on my porch and then crept away without telling me.”

“You’re positive?” Reed asked.

“Covert moves aren’t her style,” he said. “If Joey is a Sullivan, he isn’t mine.”

Marsh, Reed and Noah had personalities very different from one another. But one thing they had in common was an innate aversion to asking permission to do what they thought was best. Consequently, Noah wasn’t the only member of this family who sometimes wound up in the uncomfortable position of asking for forgiveness. Remembering all the times these two had been waiting for him when he’d broken curfew or worse, and all the times they must have wondered what the hell they were going to do with him, he felt an enormous welling of affection for his brothers.

“Obviously, you were both with somebody a year ago. Do either of you have an address or phone number?” he asked.

The first to shake his head, Reed was also the first to drag out a chair and sit down. “She was a waitress I met when I was in Dallas last summer. She spilled salsa in my lap and was so flustered she tried to clean it up. I stopped her before—Anyway, she blushed adorably and said her shift was almost over. She had a nice smile, big hair and—” His voice trailed away.

“What was her name?” Marsh asked after he’d taken a seat, too.

In a voice so quiet it wasn’t easy to hear, Reed said, “Cookie.”

Noah didn’t mean to grin. Marsh probably didn’t, either. It was just that the fastidious middle Sullivan brother normally went out with women named Katherine or Margaret or Elizabeth.

“What’s her last name?” Noah asked.

“I’ve been trying to remember ever since we brought Joey inside.”

Reed Sullivan had sandy-blond hair, but his whisker stubble was as dark as Noah’s and Marsh’s. Letting whisker stubble accumulate was a rare occurrence, so rare in fact that Noah had forgotten how dark it was. Scratching his uncommonly stubbly cheek, Reed looked beyond mortified. If he expected chastisement, he wasn’t going to get it from either of his brothers.

“You said she was a waitress,” Noah said, trying to make a little sense of a very strange situation. “What was the name of the restaurant?”

Reed said, “It was a small Mexican place near the airport. Now I wish I’d used a credit card so there would be a paper trail.”

Noah turned his attention to Marsh, who had grown unusually quiet. “What about you? Are you dealing with a one-night stand, too?”

Marsh shook his head. “Her name is Julia Monroe. At least that’s what she told me.” His voice got husky and took on a dreamy quality Noah had never heard before. “I met her on vacation last year on Roanoke Island. We slept under the stars and visited just about every coffee shop up and down the Outer Banks.”

“Have you talked to her since the week was over?” Reed asked, obviously as curious as Noah.

“The number she gave me was out of service,” Marsh answered.

That seemed odd to Noah, but there wasn’t much about this dilemma that didn’t seem odd. “What about the note?” he asked. “Does the handwriting look familiar to either of you?”

Marsh and Reed wore similar expressions of uncertainty. After a moment of quiet contemplation, Reed asked, “Why wouldn’t she have signed the note? Or addressed it?”

It was just one more thing about this situation that didn’t make sense. Leaning back in his chair, Noah thought about the note. It hinted at desperation, contained a written plea and a promise that Joey’s mother would return for him. Maybe that was all she wanted them to know.

“Does the middle name Daniel mean anything to either of you?” Noah asked.

Again, Marsh and Reed shook their heads.

Reed said, “We’re back to square one. We’re going to need a DNA test. I checked online a little while ago. Kits are available at drugstores everywhere. The test looks pretty straightforward and simple to perform, but it can take up to six weeks to get the results.”

“I don’t want to wait six weeks,” Marsh said firmly.

“Neither do I,” Reed said with the same amount of force. “Our only alternative is to hire a private investigator.”

Reed reached across the table for his laptop. Marsh went to the cupboard and dragged out an old phone book.