The Black Sheep’s Baby

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.