Читать книгу: «Her Sister's Child»

Chapter One

“I’m not going to lose my daughter!”

Adam Callahan muttered the words aloud and scowled up at the second-floor windows of the building he was headed for. The late April daylight was still strong, and behind the immaculate black-and-gold lettering on the pristine glass, he was certain he saw the vertical blinds move slightly.

Was he being watched? he wondered.

It wouldn’t surprise him. He distrusted lawyers. Had he always distrusted them? Or was it only since last week, when he’d gotten the letter from Ms. Meg Jonas, Attorney at Law, Suite 201, 5608 West Broad-bank Avenue, Philadelphia? It didn’t matter. He distrusted this lawyer, and the people she represented. There was something cagey about her letter, something she was holding back, although the intentions of her clients were all too clear.

Easing his powerful black motorcycle backward so that the rear wheel nudged the curb, he muttered the words again, through clenched teeth this time. “I am not going to lose Amy!”

Now the statement had the force of a threat and the strength of a vow. There was desperation in it, too, when he thought of the other even darker fear that had been stalking him for the past few weeks, before he’d ever heard of Meg Jonas.

There was more than one way to lose a child, he reminded himself, while his heart seemed to lurch sideways in his chest. With Amy’s life itself on the line, he had to play this whole thing right. He needed these people, far more than he would ever have wanted to need the people who were disputing his right to the custody of his own child.

If he hadn’t needed them, he might have been able to dismiss them as he was convinced they deserved. He could have gotten a lawyer of his own to tell them just what they could do with their cruel and groundless custody claim. But as the situation stood now, and no matter how nasty things got later on, they’d all need to work together for the next few weeks with the common goal of Amy’s well-being.

The only person who was out of the loop on the issue, as far as he was concerned, was this lawyer. He didn’t care if he was over-reacting. She was a shark, breaking people’s lives apart in return for her fat fee.

He was already ten minutes late for his meeting with the woman. It wasn’t his choice. He’d been delayed at work and he’d tried hard to make up the time. He’d woven his way smoothly through the side streets and back alleys of Philadelphia on the bike. He’d calculated the likely peak hour traffic snarls in advance and avoided them as much as possible.

But now he rebelled. Let the lawyer woman wait a little longer! She and her clients were not about to get the idea that they had him on the run. They had no grounds for claiming custody of his daughter. None!

Unhurriedly, he pulled black leather gloves from his hands then began to unstrap his metallic black helmet. If Meg Jonas was watching him from her window, he’d give her a performance she wouldn’t forget…

From her window, with a finger hooked around one slat of the blind to shift it two inches out of the way, Meg saw the leather-clad stranger shaking out his thick, dark hair. Although it was tidily cropped at the sides, it was long enough on top to need those lean fingers threading through it, putting the spring back into the waves.

Meg had heard the dying throb of the bike’s engine a couple of minutes ago. Unnerved by the fact that he was late…unnerved by this whole situation, if she was honest…she’d gone over to the window with the deliberate aim of regaining control by getting an impression of Adam Callahan, assessing him before he had the chance to do the same to her.

He certainly wasn’t in any hurry. Wasn’t this meeting important to him, for heck’s sake? It was to her, and to her parents. Painfully important…

He folded the gloves together and wadded them into the helmet, then started to unzip his leather jacket. He left the jacket on, but let it gape loosely to reveal a plain blue shirt that fitted smoothly over his broad chest. When he started on the black leather pants, twisting to reach the side zip and making the leather stretch across his tightly muscled rear end before revealing dark gray trousers beneath, Meg felt an involuntary shiver course the length of her spine.

Her sister Cherie had wanted this man, she remembered. Had apparently loved him enough to have a child with him. It seemed totally out of character for Cherie, but if Meg had put the dates together right, the two of them must have been involved for over a year before the inevitable split. That would have to be a record. Cherie had never been able to stick to anything for very long. Not a man, not a plan, not an address.

Which was why Meg and her father had lost touch with Cherie all during those crucial months of her pregnancy. It was why they hadn’t even known about Cherie’s child until Adam Callahan’s letter to Dad in California had arrived out of the blue two weeks ago. But Cherie herself was dead…

Meg swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. Through no fault of her own, she had never really known her sister. They had gone for months or even years at a time with no contact. And for the past six months it had been too late to change that. Cherie was gone. But now, incredibly, they’d found that Cherie had a baby daughter, living with a ratbag low-life of a father, and this gave all of them a second chance.

“A chance for Dad and me to do something for Cherie’s daughter that we could never do for Cherie herself…” Meg murmured aloud, and it was almost a prayer. A prayer for it all to work out.

How would Adam Callahan take the idea? Would it come as a relief to him to give his baby over to a pair of loving grandparents? Or did Meg and her father and her new stepmom, Patty, have a battle brewing? Patty, in particular, had set her heart on this so much.

For a moment, with his leathers now bundled and locked in a black box attached near the back of the motorcycle, Adam Callahan didn’t look quite so dark and menacing. His helmet was tucked innocently under his arm. His blue shirt and dark pants were conservative and well-fitting. But then he looked up at her window, almost as if he could see into her eyes, and there was such steel-hard anger and determination in his cleanly chiselled face that, for the second time, Meg shivered.

She’d suspected all along that this man must be dangerous. He’d been a danger to Cherie. He’d apparently involved her in a near-fatal motorcycle accident with his reckless driving, and that wasn’t all.

What kind of a threat is he going to be to me? she wondered with an intuitive sense of dread.

“Get a grip, Meg!” she scolded herself aloud. “This is a business meeting, not a confrontation. Not yet, anyway. I’m a lawyer, acting for clients. Just because one of those clients happens to be my father…Oh, but maybe I should have listened to my very first instinct and not let Dad talk me into taking it on. I’m too close, too personally involved.”

Searching for an emotional anchor, she looked around the office she was so proud of. She’d been in practice for just about seven months, since passing the Pennsylvania bar exam back in early September, but her client load was building steadily and already she’d tackled a couple of cases that were really satisfying. Nothing high-profile, no fat corporate fees or sensational court appearances, just wills and real estate closings and one fairly painless divorce.

But it was the work she had wanted to do, helping ordinary people with ordinary legal issues. She knew her clients were satisfied and several of them had said so. Word was getting around.

“But can I satisfy Dad and Patty? Can I satisfy myself? I wasn’t ever planning to handle custody disputes. A case like this is completely different from what I know, and with my personal involvement…”

She heard footsteps on the stairs and knew it was Adam Callahan. Her receptionist in the outer office, Linda, had gone home half an hour ago. Maybe she shouldn’t have suggested a meeting so late in the day, but she’d wanted to give it time, and she was committed to the confrontation now.

I’m not going to mess this up with what I feel, Meg vowed silently.

Smoothing the skirt of her teal-blue suit, she went to open the door.

Not what I expected.

That was Adam’s first thought as he and the lawyer woman, Meg Jonas, shook hands and introduced themselves. Her fingers were warm and dry and fine, and her grip was like al dente spaghetti—firm without being brittle, just as a handshake should be. She offered him coffee, and her voice held a tiny thread of huskiness. Accepting automatically, although he didn’t have the slightest desire for coffee—straight scotch might have suited his mood better—Adam found himself wondering if that husky note was always there or if it was just there today, now. He felt like his own voice might come out husky, too.

Because she was definitely not what he’d expected! He quickly tallied all the points of difference. Mid-twenties, when he’d assumed forties. Soft pink mouth and soft gray eyes, when he’d imagined a hard, bored face, glazed over with a well-fitting veneer of professional competence and good manners.

And pretty. He absolutely hadn’t expected her to be so pretty. Lawyers just didn’t come in packages like this, with heart-shaped faces and long dark lashes and dark hair, the color of some richly glinting rain-forest timber, waving softly around their shoulders. They weren’t neat and petite in pretty blue suits and clinging white blouses, either. And they definitely didn’t have full, bow-shaped lips perfectly painted in a subtle cinnamon-pink gloss.

Actually, her lips reminded him of someone. Someone important.

They were set firmly now, after her initial murmured greeting, but not as if the firmness came naturally. She was having to make an effort to stay calm, and he wondered why. He heard her clear her throat, saw those fine fingers tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. A moment later, the coffee was splashing untidily into the two cups she’d set out on the credenza, as if her hand wasn’t quite steady.

And for the first time in weeks he didn’t feel quite so hunted, or so despairing. There was something about this woman, something that soothed his suspicions and his bristling pain, something he instinctively wanted to respond to and trust. It was insane. It made no sense at all. But for the moment, feeling that he might actually have the upper hand, he went with that powerful gut instinct and let himself relax.

She had reached for the carton of cream now, her fine-boned hands still fluttering and distracted.

“No cream, thanks,” he told her, but she’d already splashed some into her own cup and automatically moved the carton to hover over his.

He could almost hear her thoughts churning. From inside her own head, they must be deafening because she obviously hadn’t heard what he’d said about the cream. He repeated it, and closed his hand lightly over hers just in time to stop the liquid from spilling over the tilted lip of the carton.

The moment of contact was strangely intimate. Her head whirled around to look up at him and he felt her start like a frightened animal. The feeling ran across into his own body like an electric current, and he took his hand away quickly, before something burst into flames. What was happening here?

“No cream?” she echoed, as if she’d never heard that coffee could be enjoyed that way.

“Or sugar,” he told her patiently, hiding what he’d felt as their hands touched.

“Or sugar. Right. Neither do I.”

“I guess I’m starting to understand why you became a lawyer,” he drawled. Keep it light, Adam. Keep that upper hand.

She looked at him, even more startled this time. She’d moved away from him after their electric moment of physical contact and picked up a spoon. Now she plunged it into the hot black liquid and began to stir. She stammered, “Why? I mean…”

“Because you couldn’t cut it as a waitress.” He gave a half grin, waited for a fraction of a second and got his reward.

She laughed, a delighted, delightful sound. “You got it,” she said. “It’s my secret tragedy. I can’t serve coffee.”

“And I can tell it’s blighted your whole life. Here, give it to me before the cup goes into orbit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Most people don’t consider that black, sugarless coffee needs to be stirred quite that fast, or for quite that long.”

“Oh. Right. I’m sorry. Should I start over?”

“Stirring doesn’t actually ruin it, however.”

“No…” She smiled, then sighed, and he saw the hunted look come back into her gray eyes again.

No, hunted wasn’t the word. That was how he had felt lately. Hunted, and maybe already caught. Her eyes were more haunted. Sad. Grieving. Was she grappling with some difficult loss in her private life?

Adam, this is not your concern! he lectured himself. There’s nothing about this woman’s personal life you need to know or care about, and if she’s nervous on top of whatever else is bothering her, so much the better. Use it!

Suddenly, all his wariness and latent hostility returned in full force, swamping that weird, intuitive chemistry between them and drowning it out completely.

“Where are the Fontaines?” he growled. He ignored the green leather chair she had ushered him toward, in her private office. “Shouldn’t they be here, too? And what about Cherie? Where is she? What is this? I need some answers Ms. Jonas, and I intend to get them.”

Mistake.

Why had he lost his cool like that, within a few minutes of their greeting? Well, he knew, of course. His throat tightened as if an iron hand had gripped it. His baby. Amy was only fourteen months old, and already this was the fourth—count it, the fourth!—time he’d had to face the prospect of losing her. He had every reason in the world to blow his control, but unfortunately he couldn’t plan to win this fight on a sympathy vote. He had to keep a clear head.

The lawyer woman slid into the neat little sage-toned office chair behind her walnut desk and he placed his coffee carefully on a coaster, then leaned his splayed hands on the smooth wood of the desk for a moment, still standing.

He looked down at her. He wasn’t sorry that he appeared to tower over her from this position. He added quietly before she could reply to his initial tirade, “Your letter was very brief. And pretty short on facts. All I know is that you’re acting for Cherie’s parents, and they’re claiming custody of my daughter. I’d like to know more.”

He stepped back and sat down, forcing himself to take it slowly, and to think rather than simply act and feel. Feelings could be deceptive. Witness that uncanny electricity a few moments ago when their hands had touched.

Ms. Jonas had evidently decided to take things slowly, too, although he could tell that this was still far harder and more emotional for her than it should be.

“First,” she said, then stopped, buying time with a sip of coffee. Her sensitive, sensual top lip looked fuller as it closed over the white china. “Do you have any legal representation of your own in this matter?”

Short answer. No. But should he bluff and say he did?

Adam decided on the simple truth. “Not yet. I’m hoping we can resolve this amicably, since I’m confident of my own claim to Amy and I have other priorities than this custody issue, when it comes to her well-being. I would have preferred if the Fontaines had written to me personally rather than bringing a lawyer in to mess with the situation before each of us even knows where the other is coming from.”

Meg Jonas allowed herself a little smile, and he saw a glint of pearly white between those pretty pink lips. Lips that he was finding it hard to look away from. “You don’t like lawyers?” she said.

“I didn’t say that,” he growled, bristling like a big cat.

“You didn’t have to,” she pointed out dryly, then took a deep, steadying breath. “Look, as you’ve said, I should clarify a few things first. For a start, my clients are not named Fontaine. It was a natural assumption on your part, since they’re her parents, but Fontaine was Cherie’s professional name, which she began using in child beauty pageants at the age of five. You need to know that I’m acting on behalf of Burt Jonas and his wife Patricia.” She waited silently for a moment, correctly anticipating his reaction.

“Jonas?” he echoed. “But that’s your—!”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Burt Jonas is my father, Patty is my stepmother and Cherie is…Oh, damn…was…my younger sister.”

“What do you mean ‘was’?” Adam demanded hoarsely, his heart beginning to thud with sickening heaviness in his chest. Were those tears she was blinking back?

This was coming from way out in left field. Another tragedy, and, impossibly, yet another threat to Amy. Aside from any other issues of grief and loss, if something had happened to Amy’s closest blood relative, what did that do to her own chance of living?

“I’m sorry,” Meg Jonas said, and it was clearly an effort for her. The words were jerking from her mouth. “We could tell from the wording of your letter to Dad, asking him to put you in touch with her, that you didn’t know. Cherie was killed about six months ago, while on a modeling assignment in the Caribbean. A light plane crash. Another model, the photographer and the pilot all lost their lives. It was very difficult for Dad. It still is. For over a year, he hadn’t known where she was, what she was doing, how to reach her…”

“That sounds like Cherie,” Adam agreed shakily. “I had the same problem with her more than once.”

“She was…erratic,” Meg agreed. “We all know that. But then, within weeks of her getting in touch again and letting us know, at last, that she was doing fine and getting her modeling career back on track, came her death.”

Adam swore softly. “It must have been—I mean, dammit, even for me it’s—”

Meg Jonas nodded silently, and they both sat for what must have been several minutes, wrapped in difficult thoughts. She was the one to speak first. “Mr. Callahan, I—”

“Doctor,” he corrected automatically, staring into the distance.

“Dr. Callahan? You’re a doctor? A practising medical doctor?”

“Yes.” He looked up. “A third-year resident in pediatrics. Why? Is that a surprise?” he demanded. She was leaning forward, examining him with unnerving intensity.

“Yes,” she admitted bluntly. “I—A couple of things Cherie said about you…”

“Cherie told you about me?” Now he was surprised. Their involvement had only lasted about two months. Just a fleeting blip on Cherie’s emotional radar screen.

“Not much,” Meg Jonas said.

“But nothing about Amy?”

“No. Until Dad got your letter two weeks ago, we had no idea she had had a baby. Absolutely no idea. She never said a word. Another shock.” The faint, tired smile didn’t reach those pretty eyes.

“Too many of them,” Adam agreed. His thoughts swirled in his brain like bats in a cave, and he knew that for Cherie’s sister, perhaps the biggest shock was still to come…when he judged the time was right to deliver it.

“Far too many,” Meg said. “I never felt I knew Cherie very well.” She was speaking slowly, staring down at her desk so that he couldn’t see her gray eyes, just her thick creamy lids edged by those dark lashes.

“Mom and Dad split up when I was eight and Cherie was three,” she went on.

Adam listened, amazed. Lawyers didn’t bare their souls like this, to someone on the opposite side of the legal fence from their own client. But it was obvious by now that this wasn’t a situation this particular lawyer had been in before. And as for Adam himself…

“They agreed they’d each take one of us. I went with Dad,” she said, “while Cherie stayed with Mom. I’ve always felt guilty about that.”

“Guilty?”

“I got the better deal. I don’t know if she told you much about her childhood…”

“Bits,” Adam replied. “Like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Snatches of color and tone that I couldn’t ever put together as well as I wanted, because she never gave me the whole picture.”

Again, Meg gave that faint, weary smile. “That’s Cherie. Mom was the same. Constantly in search of some new dream, but never slowing down long enough to explain to anyone quite what it was. It took her all over the country, with Cherie in tow, moving once, even twice a year. Dad got frantic at first. He never knew, when he called, if the phone would be disconnected. He never knew if his plans to see Cherie during school vacations would get cancelled at the last minute because they’d moved on again and hadn’t given us the new address. At some point, I think, he gave up.” She stopped.

“Gave up?” Adam prompted. He was learning an incredible amount about this complex, sensitive woman just from the way she was telling the story. He could feel his attitude and his emotions changing every minute. Right now, he was too caught up in Meg’s words to think about what that really meant.

“Kind of encased his love for Cherie in a thick layer of cement so it couldn’t do him damage. Like nuclear waste, or something.” She spread her fine hands helplessly, as if asking him to indulge the clumsy comparison.

“I think I understand.”

“It just hurt too much,” she went on. “He’s an organized, sensible man, while my Mom—she died several years ago—was…” She looked up again, and this time her smile was wider, though just as complicated. The wisdom in what she said belonged to someone much older. “Well, let’s just say, don’t let anyone tell you that opposites attract!”

“No?” Adam was thinking of Cherie. Cherie and himself and that first, chance meeting of theirs in a Philadelphia shopping mall. A disastrous quirk of fate in so many ways, yet how could he wish it had never happened? He couldn’t.

“Well, okay, maybe they do attract,” Meg conceded. “In the beginning. That was the case with Mom and Dad, at first, and they were as opposite as it comes. But opposites can’t make it last, when it comes to a relationship.”

“That, I agree with.”

“So I grew up not knowing my sister, and hardly knowing my mom. It was…incredible to find out that Cherie had a child. How did you track Dad down? We were confused, at first, because you’d gotten the name wrong, and all.”

My turn to bare my soul, Adam thought.

But some instinct told him not to, just yet, not fully. For a start, he definitely wasn’t going to talk about Amy’s illness yet, and what she needed. There was time for that, and it was too important to get it wrong. He distrusted this lawyer, he reminded himself firmly. Despite the endearing fact that she couldn’t serve coffee and that she could speak to a stranger like him from the heart.

Scratch the surface, and she was probably cut from the same cloth as his former college roommate, Garry, who seduced my girlfriend behind my back and then laughed when I found out and told me to “join the real world,” he remembered.

The guy was a celebrity defense lawyer now. “The guiltier my clients, the happier I’ll be,” he used to say. “They’ll pay more that way.”

For this woman, did it come down to money, too?

“I needed to get in touch with Cherie,” he said, deliberately avoiding detail. “But I didn’t know how. I tried her old modeling agency, but they hadn’t kept any records and they didn’t want to know. They weren’t exactly a top-flight establishment. They only had a few staff members to handle all their clients and their wannabes. And I think they’d written Cherie off.”

“Perhaps a few of us had,” she came in quietly. “You, too?”

“I…didn’t think to try a bigger, better agency, no,” Adam admitted. “After Amy was born…or even before…Cherie seemed like she was headed on the opposite trajectory. Down, not up.”

“I know,” Meg nodded. “That was the one thing that made her death easier for Dad. That she’d turned her life around. That she died doing what she had wanted to do, and was on the edge of real success.”

“So I was just about to put the whole thing in the hands of a private investigator. I even wondered if she might be living on the streets.”

“I know,” Meg nodded again. “We’ve had those fears, too, in the past.”

“Then I was flipping through an old notepad by my phone and I caught sight of her handwriting, and there it was. Just a scribble. It had to be well over a year old, and I could hardly read it. ‘Dad in ’Frisco after November 1st.’ Something like that, followed by his address. She hadn’t mentioned him often. I didn’t know if she was still in touch with him. But it seemed like the best lead I had, so I tried it. I just addressed it to ‘Mr. Fontaine.’ I never knew Fontaine was only Cherie’s professional name.”

“Her legal one, too, for most of her life. Mom had it changed officially when she was seven. It was meant to help Cherie’s modeling career, as well.”

“Part of Amy’s name, too. Amy Fontaine Callahan.” He said the “Callahan” part with deliberate emphasis, claiming his child. Amy was a Callahan, and she would stay a Callahan. His.

Was the pretty lawyer, Cherie’s sister, trying to soften him up? Of course she was! He distrusted her. He must not lose sight of that fact. He’d trusted Cherie at first, too, believing that she was as bright and sincere and in control of her life as she’d then seemed.

They didn’t look alike, the two sisters. They had the same mouth, that was all. Cherie had been model-perfect, with a lifetime of training in how to be beautiful, thanks to the roll call of pageants her mother had pushed her through for years. By twenty, when he’d met her—although initially she’d lied and told him she was twenty-four—she had a model’s tall, lean build, wide sultry eyes, carefully graceful movements and gorgeous, pouting mouth.

Yes, Meg definitely had the same mouth. The rest of her was different, though. She wasn’t blond. She wasn’t as tall, and she wasn’t as lean. Her blue suit covered some very feminine curves. And you couldn’t really say she was beautiful. These days, beauty wasn’t an innocent quality, and in Meg Jonas’s unstudied prettiness, there was an unmistakable innocence.

Hey…

Adam pulled himself up short. What was happening to him? Who was he kidding, here? This woman? Innocent? She was a lawyer! She practised a profession that could draw the cynics and hard-hearts and opportunists of this world like blood drew sharks. She was Cherie’s sister, under her very different skin. And she was trying to win his daughter away from him.