The Black Sheep’s Baby

at her, really looking, for the first time. Hardship and drugs had robbed Susan O’Rourke of the beauty and vitality she’d been born with, long before Eric had ever laid eyes on her, dulling the fiery hair to a coarse and tarnished bronze, turning luminous alabaster skin to the color and texture of dirty chalk. But it was the eyes that made him understand, maybe for the first time, just how cruelly Susan O’Rourke had been cheated of everything she could have-should have-been. The eyes that glared back at him now held sparks of green fire. They glowed with life and energy and intelligence. Staring into them made him burn with sadness and anger, remembering Susan’s eyes, especially the way he’d seen them last-sunken pools, shadowed with hopelessness and despair, fading to flat, final emptiness.

“Susan was my sister.”

The words broke the tension that had been building in that dimly lit kitchen, like a baseball hurled through a window. Totally engaged with each other in some sort of tug-of-war of wills, Devon and Eric both ignored Lucy’s gasp, Mike’s small gesture warning her to be still.

“I wasn’t trying to evade anything,” Devon went on, in a voice utterly devoid of emotion, speaking only to Eric, now. “And I certainly didn’t intend to lie to anyone about my identity. I simply didn’t think it was relevant. As I said, I’m here acting as attorney for the O’Rourkes-period. The fact that they also happen to be my parents, and that the baby you’re holding is my niece, has no bearing on anything. You know that a judge has ordered you to submit to tests to prove your claim of paternity. If you are, in fact, this child’s father, then you will have an opportunity to explain to a judge why you think you, a single man with a globe-trotting lifestyle, should be granted custody of an infant over a mature and loving couple able to provide a secure and stable home.”

Loving couple. Stable home.

To Eric the words were knives, stabbing at his heart. He caught his breath and held it, afraid that if he let it loose all the rage and grief inside him would come with it. And he didn’t want to take that risk, not while he was holding the little one. He’d promised-he’d sworn on his life-to protect her. He’d vowed to make sure none of it touched her, ever-neither the violence nor the ugliness of the images in his mind.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lanagan-please, hear me out. Let me explain…” He could hear Devon appealing to his parents in that cold, intelligent voice, so different from Susan’s. Susan’s voice had been higher pitched, sweeter, but cracked and ruined, so that she sounded like a little girl with a sore throat.

“Eric, you have to keep my baby safe. Don’t let them get her. Please…promise me you won’t let them have her. Please…”

“I will…I will. I promise.”

Those were the last words Susan had ever heard. In the next moment the monitor’s alarm had gone off and nurses had come running, shoving him roughly aside. He’d stood then almost exactly as he was standing now, holding the little one just like this, gazing down at her perfect, innocent face while his insides filled up with the ache of an angry sadness, and elsewhere in the room people went on speaking to each other in words that had no meaning to him.

“It’s true, Lucy…Mike.” Devon had her back to him now, addressing his parents as if they were a jury-which was, he understood, just what they were: a jury of two. Her voice was vibrant, but the emotion in it seemed calculated to him; she sounded like an actress-a good one-doing a scene from a play.

“Susan-Emily’s mother-was my younger sister. She ran away from home five years ago, when she was fourteen. My parents tried everything they knew of to find her, without success. We hadn’t heard a word from her in all that time-we didn’t know whether she was alive. We probably still wouldn’t know, except that when your son brought her to the hospital, she was unconscious and he-” she tossed a little nod toward Eric “-claimed he didn’t know her last name. They listed her as Susan Doe. Eventually, the police identified her from fingerprint records my parents had given when they’d filed the missing person report. They’d had us both fingerprinted when we were kids, apparently.” She paused for just a moment, and Eric saw her touch her forehead as if that troubled her, somehow.

Then she drew a regrouping breath and went on. “Of course, my parents rushed to the hospital. They were too late. Susan had died.” With flawless timing, she let the words hang there.

Lucy, his mom-tough as nails on the outside but, as Eric well knew, with a marshmallow interior-made a distressed sound. He saw her reach for his dad’s hand. To hide her triumph, Devon turned from them and took two slow steps toward Eric. Her eyes burned into his as she continued her relentless summation…burned with that cold green fire.

And in spite of himself, in spite of everything, he found himself admiring her. He thought, my God, she’s incredible. Incredible. How, he wondered, could a woman look so damn beautiful so early in the morning, with smudged makeup, uncombed hair and wearing his dad’s old flannel bathrobe?

How could someone so damn beautiful be so damn wrong? And how could looking at someone that beautiful make him feel so full of…what was it he felt? Not hate-hate was cold, bitter, a decay in the soul. This was something white-hot in his gullet, like a slug of straight whiskey; a fire underneath his skin, an electrical charge delivered straight to his brain. Watching her, listening to her, made him burn with anger, seethe with frustration, vibrate with excitement.

Damn her. She made him feel-there was only one word for it-aroused.

“She’d regained consciousness,” Devon said softly, still speaking to his parents but holding his eyes, “long enough to provide the information for her baby’s birth certificate. Since she had named Eric Lanagan as the father, Emily had been released to his custody.” Displaying a nice flair for the dramatic, she whirled back to face her real audience. “Since then, he has refused to allow my parents-Emily’s grandparents!-to visit her. You can imagine how much grief this has caused these people-to find their lost child after so many years only to lose her forever-” at which point, predictably, Lucy sniffed, coughed ferociously and dabbed at her nose “-and then on top of it, to be denied the chance to see and hold their grandchild. I’m sure you can understand why Susan’s parents are hoping to have the chance to raise their daughter’s little girl.”

“Like a second chance,” Mike said, and there was a suspicious gruffness even in his voice.

“Exactly…” It was a sigh of satisfaction. Eric halfexpected her to add, “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”

He looked defiantly straight at them, then, because he could feel them all watching him. Three pairs of eyes arrayed against him, full of questions and accusations. His mom and dad sitting close together at the table, Lucy with one hand clutching Mike’s and the other clamped across her mouth and her eyes suspiciously bright. And Devon standing, half facing them, with one hand on the back of a chair and her head turned toward Eric, as if she’d just finished addressing a jury. As, of course, she had. And it was obvious to him that he’d already been found guilty.

He had to get out of there, blizzard or no blizzard. He had to find a way to calm his mind, prepare himself for the battle ahead. He could put the little one down in his room-she’d sleep awhile, yet-and go someplace peaceful and quiet.

And he knew, suddenly, just where he could go. The place he’d escaped to so often during the turbulent years of adolescence.

But first, he couldn’t hold back the question. One question. He hurled it at Devon and it shattered the silence like a shovelful of gravel slung against a wall.

“Why’d she run away?”

“What?”

Ah-was it only his imagination, or had Devon suddenly gone still…still as a marble statue? Except, he thought, no statue had ever had hair that vivid.

“You heard me,” he said harshly, staring at her so hard his eyes burned. “If your parents’ house was such a great place to raise a kid, why did Susan run away from it?”

Her eyes shifted downward to the hand that rested on the chair back, for that moment the only thing alive in her frozen face. Then she pulled in a breath, drew herself up, and said stiffly, with none of the previous vibrancy, “My sister was always…a difficult child. She was headstrong, spoiled. Rebellious. I imagine she ran away because she didn’t like my parents’ rules. I’m sure she thought she was being mistreated-”

He couldn’t stop a laugh; it made a sound like blowing sand. “No kidding.” Tucking the little one more securely