“Offhand, I’d say they’re custody papers,” she said, her voice flat. Her gaze swept over him before settling into a challenging glare. “Why the hell would your brother be fighting you for custody of Robby?”
Despite his promise to Peg, Luke really hadn’t wanted to get into this tonight. They’d had a long, exhausting, stressful day as it was. He’d hoped when he laid it all out in the morning—before Peg had a chance to do it for him—Katie would be fresh, maybe even receptive. Right now she looked anything but. In fact, she seemed inclined to tar and feather him. He couldn’t in all honesty say he blamed her. He reminded himself that he’d invested ten thousand dollars thus far in at least getting her to listen.
“It’s a long story,” he said wearily.
“As I recall our vows, there was something about till death do us part,” she said. “We have time.”
Luke winced at her sarcasm. It appeared the honeymoon was over.
* * *
Katie’s cheeks burned with humiliation as she squared off against her new husband. It appeared she had let Luke make a fool of her not once, but twice. The papers she clutched in her hand proved that he had lied to her. As if his spoken reasons for marrying her hadn’t been flimsy enough, now it appeared they were nothing compared to those he’d kept silent. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that whole story was. Why the dickens would Tommy think he had any claim at all to Robby?
“I’m waiting,” she said, glaring at Luke.
“Maybe we’d better sit down. This could take a while,” Luke said.
With some reluctance, Katie sat, choosing a chair rather than the sofa, to keep Luke from sitting next to her and clouding her ability to reason. The immobilizing effect he had on her brain was what had gotten her into this mess.
“I wanted to tell you,” Luke swore, his gaze pleading with her to believe him.
“Why didn’t you? Did the cat have your tongue?”
“You said you didn’t want to get into anything serious,” he reminded her.
“When did I say that?”
“Friday night.”
Katie regarded him incredulously. “The night before the wedding? Wasn’t that a bit late to be bringing up the little matter of a custody dispute over your son? Don’t you think you should have mentioned it, oh, perhaps when you first asked me to marry you?”
“Probably.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid if I got into everything, you’d turn me down.”
Katie didn’t deny it. She had a gut-deep feeling his fears had probably been justified. “Maybe I’d better hear what everything is before I tell you what my response would have been. Come on, Luke. Spit it out. From the beginning.”
Luke walked over to the window and stood staring out. “It all started six years ago,” he said.
His voice was so low Katie had to strain to hear him. “Six years ago,” she repeated just to be certain she had heard correctly.
Luke nodded. “Betty Sue Wilder came to me and told me she was pregnant.”
Katie had already guessed that much. As much as it hurt to think that Luke had slept with another woman around the same time he had made love to her, she had accepted that. “So you did the honorable thing,” she said.
“It was a little more complicated than that. She wasn’t carrying my baby.”
She stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. “I beg your pardon? The baby wasn’t yours? Then what did it have to do with you?” she asked, even though she was already beginning to get the picture.
“Tommy is Robby’s natural father.”
“Tommy is Robby’s father,” she repeated slowly, realizing even as she said it that she wasn’t nearly as surprised as she should have been.
“No,” Luke said angrily, turning to face her. “Robby is my son. I’m his father in every way that counts. When Tommy wouldn’t accept responsibility for Betty Sue’s pregnancy, I stepped in. I was there in the delivery room when he was born. I gave him my name. I’ve stayed up nights with him when he was sick. I was there for his first step. I took him to his first day of school. Tommy has never even laid eyes on him.”
His voice throbbed with barely contained rage. Whatever else might be true, Katie recognized that Luke considered Robby as much his as if he had made Betty Sue pregnant. There could be no disputing the love he felt for his son. She knew from being raised by her aunt that the bonds formed by day-to-day parenting were as powerful as any connection through biology alone.
And now Tommy was threatening that relationship. She could understand Luke’s outrage. What she didn’t comprehend was why Tommy would wait all this time to stake a claim to his son. Or exactly where she fit into this.
“Why would Tommy turn up to ask for custody after all this time?”
Luke’s mouth twisted. “Money, why else?”
“I don’t understand.”
“He doesn’t want Robby, not really. He expects me to pay him off to stay out of Robby’s life.”
Kate felt sick to her stomach. “Surely you’re wrong. Not even Tommy would turn a little boy’s life upside down just so he could get a payout from you.”
“He doesn’t think it will come to that, of course. I’m sure he’s convinced I’ll settle with him to keep Robby from ever finding out the truth.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t,” Katie said.
“If I thought that would be the end of it, I might have,” Luke admitted. “But it wouldn’t. It would be the beginning. Every time Tommy needed cash, he’d be back making his threats again. I want it over with here and now. I want a judge to put an end to it. Somehow I’ll make sure that the truth doesn’t hurt Robby.”
It took every bit of strength Katie had left to voice the fear that no amount of rational tap-dancing around it could silence.
