The Paternity Promise Read online

  “Anne called me,” she said instead. “Told me she’d picked up a vicious infection. Begged me to come. I jumped a plane that same afternoon but when I got there, she was already slipping into a coma. She died that evening.”

  Blake angled back to face her. His eyes burned with an unspoken question. Grace answered this one as honestly as she could.

  “Anne didn’t name you as Molly’s father. She was almost out of it from the drugs they’d pumped into her. She was barely coherent… All I understood was the name Dalton. I knew she’d worked here, so…so…”

  She broke off, her throat raw with the memory.

  “So you brought Molly to Oklahoma City,” Blake finished, spacing every word with frightening deliberation, “and left her on my mother’s doorstep. Then you called Delilah and said you’d just happened to hear she needed a temporary nanny.”

  “Which she did!”

  He gave that feeble response the disgust it deserved. “Did you enjoy watching my brother and me jump through hoops trying to determine which of us was Molly’s father?”

  “I told you! I didn’t know which of you it was. Not until I’d spent some time with you.”

  Even then she hadn’t been sure. The Dalton twins shared more than razor-sharp intelligence and devastating good looks. Grace could see how her cousin might have succumbed to Alex’s charisma and self-confidence. She’d actually figured him for Molly’s father until she’d come to appreciate the rock-solid strength in quiet, coolly competent Blake.

  Unfortunately, Blake’s self-contained personality had made her task so much more difficult. Although friendly and easygoing, he kept his thoughts to himself and his private life private. If he’d had a brief affair with a woman who’d worked for him, only he—and possibly his twin—had known about it.

  Grace had hoped the DNA tests they’d run would settle the question of Molly’s paternity. She’d been as frustrated as the Dalton brothers at the ambiguous results.

  Then they’d launched a determined search for Molly’s mother and thrown Grace in a state of near panic. She’d sworn to keep her cousin’s secret. She had no choice but to do just that. Molly’s future depended on it. Now Blake had unearthed at least a part of that secret. She couldn’t tell him the rest, but she could offer a tentative solution.

  “As I understand it, Molly’s parentage can’t be absolutely established unless the father’s DNA is matched with the mother’s. She…Anne…was cremated. I don’t have anything of hers to give you that would provide a sample.”

  Not a hairbrush or a lipstick or even a postcard with a stamp on it for Molly to cling to as a keepsake. The baby’s mother had lived in fear for so long. She’d died the same way, mustering only enough strength at the end to extract a promise from her cousin to keep Molly safe.

  “You could test my DNA,” Grace said, determined to hold to that promise. “I’ve read that mitochondria are inherited exclusively through the female line.”

  She’d done more than read. She’d hunched in front of the computer for hours when not tending to Molly. Her head had spun trying to decipher scientific articles laced with terms like hypervariable control regions and HVR1 base pairs. It had taken some serious slogging, but she’d finally come away with the knowledge that those four-hundred-and-forty-four base pairs determined maternal lineage. As such, they could theoretically be used to trace a human’s lineage all the way back to the mitochondrial Eve. The Daltons didn’t need to go that far back to confirm Molly’s heritage. They just needed to hop over one branch on her family tree.

  The same thought had obviously occurred to Blake. His eyes were chips of blue ice as he delivered an ultimatum.

  “Damn straight you’ll give me a DNA sample. And until the results come back, you’ll stay away from Molly.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I want you out of this house. Now.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  She discovered an instant later that he wasn’t. In two strides he’d closed the distance between them and wrapped his fist around her upper arm. One swift tug had her off the sofa arm and marching toward the library’s door.

  “Blake, for God’s sake!” As surprised as she was angry, she fought his grip. “I’ve been taking care of Molly for weeks now. You can’t seriously think I would do anything to hurt her.”

  “What I think,” he returned in a voice as icy as his eyes, “is that there are a helluva lot of holes in your story. Until they’re filled in, I want you where I can watch you day and night.”

  Two

  “Get in.”

  Blake held open the passenger door of his two-seater Mercedes convertible. The heat of the muggy July evening wrapped around them, almost as smothering as the worry and fear that clogged Grace’s throat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Downtown.”

  “I need to tell Delilah that I’m leaving,” she protested. “Get some of my things.”

  “I’ll let my mother know what’s happening. Right now all you need to do is plant your behind in that seat.”

  If Grace hadn’t been so stunned by this unexpected turn of events, the brusque command might have made her blink. This was Blake. The kind, polite, always solicitous Dalton twin. In the weeks since she’d insinuated herself into Delilah’s home, she’d never known him to be anything but patient with his sometimes overbearing mother, considerate with the servants and incredibly, achingly gentle with Molly.

  “Get in.”

  She got. Even this late in the evening, the pale gray leather was warm and sticky from the July heat. The seat belt cracked like a rifle shot when she clicked it into place.

  As the convertible rolled down the curved driveway, Grace fought to untangle her nerves. God knew she should be used to having her life turned upside down without warning. It had happened often enough in the past few years. One call. That’s all it usually took. One frantic call from Hope.

  No, she corrected fiercely. Not Hope. Anne. Although her cousin was dead, Grace had to remember to think and remember and refer to her as Anne.

  She made that her mantra as the Mercedes sliced through the night. She was still repeating it when Blake pulled into the underground parking for Dalton International’s headquarters building in downtown Oklahoma City. Although the clicker attached to the Mercedes’s visor raised the arm, the booth attendant leaned out with cheerful greeting.

  “Evenin’, Mr. Dalton.”

  “Hi, Roy.”

  “Guess your brother ’n his bride are off on their honeymoon.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Sure wish ’em well.” He leaned farther down and tipped a finger to his brow. “How’re you doin’, Ms. Templeton?”

  She dredged up a smile. “Fine, thanks.”

  Grace wasn’t surprised at the friendly greeting. She’d made many a trip to Dalton International’s headquarters with Molly and her grandmother. Delilah had turned over control of the manufacturing empire she and Big Jake had scratched out of bare dirt to her sons. That didn’t mean she’d surrendered her right to meddle as she saw fit in either DI’s corporate affairs or in her sons’ lives. So Delilah, with Molly and her nanny in tow, had regularly breezed into boardrooms and conferences. Just as often, she’d zoomed up to the top floor of the DI building, where her bachelor sons maintained their separate penthouse apartments.

  The penthouse also boasted a luxurious guest suite for DI’s visiting dignitaries. That, apparently, was where Blake had decided to plant her. Grace guessed as much when he stopped at the security desk in the lower lobby to retrieve a key card. Moments later the glass-enclosed elevator whisked them upward.

  Once past the street level, Oklahoma City zoomed into view. On previous visits Grace had gasped at the skyline that rose story by eye-popping story. Tonight she barely noticed the panorama of lights and skyscrapers. Her entire focus was on the man crowding her against the elevator’s glass wall.

  She hadn’t been able to tell which Dalton twin was wh
ich at first. With their dark gold hair, chiseled chins and broad shoulders, one was a feast for the eyes. Two of them standing side by side could make any woman drool.

  It hadn’t taken Grace long to separate the men. Alex was more outgoing, with a wicked grin that jump-started female hormones without him half trying. Blake was quieter. Less obvious. With a smile that was all the more seductive for being slow and warm and…

  The ping of the elevator wrenched her back to the tortuous present. When the doors slid open, Blake grasped her arm again and marched her down a plushly carpeted hall toward a set of polished oak doors.

  Okay, enough! Grace didn’t get angry often. When she did, her temper flashed hot and fierce enough to burn through the fear still gripping her by the throat.

  “That’s it!” She yanked her arm free of his hold and stopped dead in the center of the hall. “You hustle me out of your mother’s house like a thief caught stealing the silver. You order me into your bright, shiny convertible. You drag me up here in the middle of the night. I’m not taking another step until you stop acting like you’re the Gestapo or KGB.”

  He arched a brow at her rant, then coolly, deliberately shot back the cuff of his pleated tux shirt to check his gold Rolex.

  “It’s nine-twenty-two. Hardly the middle of the night.”

  She wanted to hit him. Slap that stony expression right off his too-handsome face. Might have actually attempted it if she wasn’t sure she would crack a couple of finger bones on his hard, unyielding jaw.

  Besides which, he deserved some answers. The detective’s report had obviously delivered a body blow. He’d loved her cousin once.

  The fire drained from Grace’s heart, leaving only sadness tinged now with an infinite weariness. “All right. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  With a curt nod, he strode the last few feet to the guest suite. A swipe of the key card clicked the lock on the wide oak doors. Grace had visited the lavish guest suite a number of times. Each time she stepped inside, though, the sheer magnificence of the view stopped her breath in her throat.

  Angled floor-to-ceiling glass walls gave a stunning, hundred-and-eighty-degree panorama of Oklahoma City’s skyline. The view was spectacular during the day, offering an eagle’s-eye glimpse of the domed capitol building, the Oklahoma River and the colorful barges that carried tourists past Bricktown Ballpark to the larger-than-life-size bronze sculptures commemorating the 1889 land run. That momentous event had opened some two million acres of unassigned land to settlers and, oh, by the way, created a tent city with a population of more than fifty thousand almost overnight.

  The view on a clear summer night like this one was even more dazzling. Skyscrapers glowed like beacons. White lights twinkled in the trees lining the river spur that meandered through the downtown area. But it was the colossal bronze statue atop the floodlit capitol that drew Grace to the windows. She’d been born and bred in Texas, but as a social studies teacher she knew enough of the history of the Southwest to appreciate the deep symbolism in the twenty-two-foot-tall bronze statue. She’d also been given a detailed history of the statue by Delilah, who’d served on the committee that raised funds for it.

  Erected in 2002, The Guardian, with his tall spear, muscular body and unbowed head, represented not only the thousands of Native Americans who’d been forced from their homes in the East and settled in what was then Indian Territory. The statue also embodied Oklahomans who’d wrestled pipe into red dirt as hard as brick to suck out the oil that fueled the just-born automobile industry. The sons and daughters who lived through the devastating Dust Bowl of the ’30s. The proud Americans who’d worked rotating shifts at the Army Air Corps’ Douglas Aircraft Plant in the ’40s to overhaul, repair and build fighters and bombers. And, most recently, the grimly determined Oklahomans who’d dug through nine stories of rubble to recover the bodies of friends and coworkers killed in the Murrah Building bombing.

  Grace and Hope… No! Grace and Anne had driven up from Texas during their junior year in high school to visit Oklahoma City’s National Memorial & Museum. Neither of them had been able to comprehend how the homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh could be so evil, so twisted in both mind and morals. Then, less than a year later, her cousin met Jack Petrie.

  Frost coated Grace’s lungs. Feeling its sick chill, she wrapped both arms around her waist and turned away from The Guardian to face Blake Dalton.

  “I can’t tell you about Anne’s past,” she said bleakly. “I promised I would bury it with her. What I can say is that you’re the only man she got close to in more years than you want to know.”

  “You think I’m going to be satisfied with that?”

  “You have no choice.”

  “Wrong.”

  He yanked on the dangling end of his bow tie and threw it aside before shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket. His black satin cummerbund circled a trim waist. The pleated white shirt was still crisp, as might be expected from a tailor who catered exclusively to millionaires and movie stars.

  Yet under the sleek sophistication was an edge that didn’t fool Grace for a moment. Delilah bragged constantly about the variety of sports Blake and his twin had excelled at during their school years. Both men still carried an athlete’s build—lean in the hips and flanks, with the solid chest and muscled shoulders of a former collegiate wrestler.

  That chest loomed far too large in Grace’s view at the moment. It invaded her space, distracted her thoughts and made her distinctly nervous.

  “How many cousins do you have?” he asked with silky menace. “And how long do you think it will take Jamison to check each of them out?”

  “Not long,” she fired back. “But he won’t find anything beyond Anne’s birth certificate, driver’s license and a few high school yearbook photos. We made sure of that.”

  “A person can’t just erase her entire life after high school.”

  “As a matter of fact, she can.”

  Grace moved to the buckskin leather sofa and dropped onto a cushion. Blake folded his tall frame onto a matching sofa separated by a half acre of glass-topped coffee table.

  “It’s not easy. Or cheap,” she added, thinking of her empty savings account. “But you can pull it off with the help of a very smart friend of a friend of a friend. Especially if said friend can tap into just about any computer system.”

  Like the Texas Vital Statistics agency. It had taken some serious hacking but they’d managed to delete the digital entry recording Hope Patricia Templeton’s marriage to Jack David Petrie. By doing so, they’d also deleted the record of the last time Grace had used her maiden name and SSN.

  A familiar sadness settled like a lump in Grace’s middle. Her naive, trusting cousin had believed Petrie’s promise to love and cherish and provide for her every need. As the bastard had explained in the months that followed, his wife didn’t require access to their bank account. Or a credit card. Or a job. Nor did she have to register to vote. There weren’t any candidates worth going to that trouble for. And they sure as hell didn’t need to talk to a marriage counselor, he’d added when she finally realized he’d made her a virtual prisoner.

  Financially dependent and emotionally battered, she’d spent long, isolated years as a shadow person. Jack trotted her out when he wanted to display his pretty wife, then shuffled her back into her proper place in his bed. It hadn’t taken him long to cut off her ties with her friends and family, either. All except Grace. She refused to be cut, even after Petrie became furious over her meddling. Grace wondered whether those horrific moments when her gas pedal locked on the interstate were, in fact, due to mechanical failure.

  Grace and Hope had become more cautious after that. No more visits. No letters or emails that could be intercepted. No calls to the house. Only to a pay phone in the one grocery store where Jack allowed his wife to shop. Even then it had taken a solid year of pleading before Hope worked up the courage to escape.

  Grace didn’t want to remember the desperate years that followed. The mi
ndless fear. The countless moves. The series of false identities and fake SSNs, each one more expensive to procure than the last. Until finally—finally!—a woman with the name of Anne Jordan had found anonymity and a tenuous, tentative security at Dalton International. She’d been just one of DI’s thousands of employees worldwide. An entry-level clerk with only a high school GED. Certainly not a position that would bring her into contact with the multinational corporation’s CFO.

  Yet it had.

  “Please, Blake. Please believe me when I tell you Anne wanted her past to be buried with her. All she cared about in her last, agonizing moments was making sure Molly would know her father, if not her mother.”

  Or more accurately, that her baby would have the name and protection of someone completely unknown to Jack Petrie.

  Grace prayed she’d convinced Blake. She hadn’t, of course. The lawyer in him wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d dug up and turned over every bit of evidence. But maybe she could deflect his inquisition.

  “Will you tell me something?”

  “Quid pro quo?” His mouth twisted. “You haven’t given me much of a trade.”

  “Please. I…I wasn’t able to talk or visit with Anne much in her last year.”

  She hadn’t dared. Jack Petrie was a Texas state trooper, with a cop’s wide connections. Grace knew he’d had her under surveillance at various times, maybe even bugged her phone or planted a tracking device on her car, hoping she would lead him to his wife. Grace had imposed on every friend she had, borrowing their cars or using their phones, to maintain even minimal contact with her cousin.

  Jack didn’t know about Grace’s last, frantic flight to California. She’d made sure of that. She’d emptied her savings account, had a friend drive her to the airport and paid cash for a ticket to Vegas. There she’d rented a car for a desperate drive across the desert to the San Diego hospital where her cousin had been admitted.