Читать книгу Found: One Secret Baby - Nancy Holland - Страница 6

The usual flicker of nerves made Rosalie Walker stand up straighter as the receptionist opened the door to show her visitor in. The appointment had been made this morning and she’d been too busy to Google this new client. Would Morgan Danby be a man or a woman?

She looked up, far up, into blue eyes fringed with thick, black lashes.

Definitely a man. A man she could have sworn she’d dreamed about.

The spark of interest she saw in his eyes filled her mind with images of naked bodies intertwined on white sands along sun-sparkled seas. She allowed herself one second to feel like a woman before the lawyer took over.

She extended her hand. “Rosalie Walker.” An involuntary purr shadowed her words.

But the spark in his eyes had burned itself out. He engulfed her hand in his, his no-nonsense expression just a step short of downright cold. “Morgan Danby.”

His voice was deep, and as sexy as the rest of him, but like his face, it held no warmth. Only for that one moment had his eyes shown any sign of a flesh-and-blood man hidden behind the mask.

“Sit down, Mr. Danby.” She gestured to the chair across the desk and sat in hers.

What would bring a gorgeous man in a hand-tailored suit and diamond cufflinks to a family law practice miles from Los Angeles’ center of glamor and wealth?

“How can I help you?” The tell-tale purr lingered, but luckily he didn’t seem to hear it.

“I’m here to learn more about the late Maria Mendelev.”

The way he mispronounced Márya’s name froze Rosalie’s breath in her chest.

“What is your interest in the late Ms. Mendelev?” she managed in a neutral tone once her heart began to beat again.

He made a dismissive gesture with one aristocratic hand. “I’m not interested in her.”

Anger closed Rosalie’s throat, but she forced her lips to keep a smile of polite interest.

“I’m interested in the child she may have left behind.”

The world spun away, then fell back into place on a less stable axis.

Rosalie fought to keep her eyes fixed on Mr. Danby’s face without even a glance at the small photo stuck to the edge of her computer monitor.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to talk to the man who would be this supposed child’s father?” Her voice sounded almost normal, but the rest of her body echoed with shock. “I understand he can be reached at San Quentin for the next thirty years or so.”

“I’ve talked to him, but he insists he never got Ms. Mendelev pregnant.”

It was hard to believe the man who murdered her friend would say the right thing for the right reason.

“Doesn’t that settle the matter?”

Mr. Danby shook his head. “I suspect he’s worried that if he admits he fathered a child, money will be taken out of his trust fund to support it.”

That sounded more like her friend’s killer.

“Why don’t you contact Child Welfare Services?” Contempt colored her voice. “They would be responsible for a child with a deceased mother and an incarcerated father.”

“It’s unclear which county would be responsible for the child, given the Mendelev woman’s wanderings in the last months before she died.”

The Mendelev woman. How could he talk about Márya like that?

Rosalie stood up. “I don’t think I can help you, Mr. Danby. I’m sure there are many other lawyers in Los Angeles who could find the information you want.”

He looked up at her, one eyebrow raised. “You’re the only lawyer who was a witness at the hearing on Ms. Mendelev’s order of protection against her alleged abuser.”

Rosalie closed her eyes against the mounting panic. Too much was at stake to let this man bait her into losing control. She put her hands on the desk and leaned into his personal space. The musky scent of his body distracted her for half an instant before she pushed it out of her mind.

“That ‘alleged’ abuser is the man who murdered her.”

Something dangerous lit in Morgan Danby’s dark blue eyes. Staying so close pushed Rosalie’s courage to the limit. His gaze dropped to her breasts, now at his eye level. Her mind cringed, but she didn’t move.

“He’s also my brother,” Danby said.

A burst of pure panic made her blink. The monster’s family had finally shown up.

Morgan shifted in his chair. Claiming Charleston Thompson as a brother always made him feel as if he’d stepped in something vile.

The anger radiating from the woman who loomed over him didn’t help. He might have found her attractive under other circumstances. Brains always impressed him, although his tastes ran to tall, slender blondes, not chest-high brunettes with more attitude than charm.

He distracted himself from that inappropriate train of thought by glancing around the sleek, efficient office, straight out of a mid-range office-furnishings catalog.

Ms. Walker looked efficient too, but not quite as sleek. Wisps had escaped from the smooth cap of her hair to curl around her face, and a mysterious small white spot marred the shoulder of her suit jacket.

When she sank back into her chair, he could breathe more easily, but the flowery scent of her perfume lingered and kept his adrenalin, or some other stimulating hormone, at full force.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.

She was a cool one. Her face and body were frozen in the professionally appropriate attitude of polite attention. Only her fisted hands hinted at the anger he sensed boiling underneath the frosty façade, and she quickly dropped those to her lap, out of his sight.

An ice princess to match Lillian’s ice queen. He wished he’d let his stepmother fight this battle for herself.

But he’d promised Lillian he would find her grandchild before Charlie’s father did, and no small-time lady lawyer was about to freeze him out.

“Sorry my brother is a murderer, or sorry he’s my brother?”

“Take your pick. You know him better than I do.”

“You don’t know him at all. But that didn’t stop you from testifying against him.”

“I didn’t testify against him. I testified in support of Márya’s—Ms. Mendelev’s—petition for a court order to protect her from him.”

Márya. That explained the brief flash of fire in those green eyes when he called the dead woman “Maria.” But that was what Charlie called her. Why wouldn’t he know how to pronounce the woman’s name? Given Charlie, he probably called her whatever he damned well pleased.“How long had you known her when you testified?” he asked

“About four months.”

“That isn’t very long to determine the dynamics of a violent relationship.” The words left a nasty taste in his mouth, but he needed to break through Ms. Walker’s icy façade.

“I determined that as soon as I saw her broken arm. The yellowed bruises from the last time he’d beaten her pretty much backed up that conclusion.”

Morgan swallowed a bolt of anger at Charlie’s brutality. “So you took it upon yourself to intervene.”

“She begged me to help her.”

The woman paused, but her face yielded no clue to what might be going on inside her head. She’d be murder to face in a courtroom, a talent clearly wasted in this one-step-up-from-a-storefront family law practice.

“And she was pregnant.”

He allowed himself a thin smile. “So the investigator was right. There is a child.”

Ms. Walker lowered her eyes to the desk and shook her head. “She was three months’ pregnant and bleeding heavily.”

Damn. How could he tell Lillian that Charlie had managed to kill his own kid?

Morgan took out his smartphone and opened a file. “What hospital did you take her to?”

Ms. Walker was still staring at the desk. “Merced County General.” She spoke slowly, as if she needed to make an effort to remember, but that was ridiculous. All this had happened less than two years ago. Had her encounter with Charlie’s lady friend really been that traumatic?

“Why there?”

Laser-green eyes snapped back to his, brown specks turned to gold. “I found Márya hiding in a campground at Yosemite, which is in Merced County. Since your brother forced her to quit school and her job when he invaded her life, she didn’t have medical insurance.”

“But she filed for the order of protection in Los Angeles County.”

The tiniest shift in the woman’s ramrod posture. What didn’t she want him to know?

“It’s easier to hide in L.A.,” she said.

Rosalie hated to be reminded of those last months of Márya’s life. Her friend had lived in constant fear that Charlie would find her. She’d moved every week from one homeless shelter to another. If only she’d accepted Rosalie’s offer of a place to live until they got Márya’s visa straightened out so she could get a job.

If only … The words echoed through the silence left behind by her friend’s death.

Rosalie shook the memories off and refocused on the man who sat across from her.

How could Charlie Thompson have a brother who oozed wealth and power the way Morgan Danby did? Mr. Danby must have been four or five years younger than Charlie, and he didn’t look at all like the stocky, red-haired murderer.

But her visitor had said something about a trust fund. And someone had had enough money to hire the best criminal defense lawyer in L.A. to represent Charlie. The investment had paid off. They’d plea-bargained down to life with the possibility of parole. The idea that Charlie would ever walk free again tightened Rosalie’s stomach one more notch.

Another if only—if only she could have claimed attorney/client privilege and refused to answer Mr. Danby’s questions. But she’d known from the start she couldn’t be Márya’s friend and her lawyer at the same time. And given her situation now, she didn’t dare openly obstruct the efforts of Charlie’s family to find out whether he had a child.

“Ms. Mendelev had no permanent address in Los Angeles,” Mr. Danby said. “So apparently you weren’t a good enough friend to give her a place to hide, as you put it, after she ended her relationship with my brother.”

“Relationship?” Rosalie’s temper finally snapped. “Like the one between a boxer and his punching bag?”

The corners of his mouth twitched. No doubt he was pleased he’d broken through her self-control. She softened her face to assume a professionally neutral expression again.

“I offered to let Márya live with me, but she was a proud woman. And once she had the protection order, she thought she’d be safe. Her attorney, the staff at the shelters where she lived, and I all tried to tell her otherwise, but in her home country defying a court order was something done only by the very brave or the very stupid.” She paused. “Given how viciously he murdered a defenseless woman, I’d guess bravery isn’t your brother’s problem.”

Mr. Danby had the decency to flinch. “I’ve read the police report on the incident.”

She swallowed another jolt of anger. A woman’s death was much more than an “incident.” At least, it was in Rosalie’s world. She wasn’t so sure about Morgan Danby’s.

“Where did you get your information?” she asked him.

“A private investigator.”

Maybe she could use that somehow. “A private investigator who worked for you?”

He glanced away. “For my stepmother Lillian, Charlie’s mother.”

So this man didn’t share a gene pool with Charlie Thompson. A tightness in her chest she’d scarcely been aware of loosened and she could breathe freely again.

“You must know it’s not necessarily in the P.I.’s best interest to tell his client everything he knows.” She let that sink in. “But it is in his interest to find leads he could be paid to follow.”

She might have struck a nerve. After all, Mr. Danby was here himself, which meant someone had had enough sense to fire the P.I. She’d bet it had been Danby.

“Why should I doubt the investigator’s integrity?” he asked her in a slightly bored tone.

“Did he provide your stepmother with a copy of the coroner’s report on Ms. Mendelev?”

Morgan Danby flinched again. “I assume the investigator didn’t think that was something she needed to see.”

“A smart move on his part. But you see my point.”

“You’re suggesting the P.I’s claim that a child had survived was a ruse to squeeze more money out of Charlie’s mother.”

“Did he find any documentary evidence Ms. Mendelev had given birth?”

She held her breath, outwardly calm, inwardly hollow with fear.

Danby shook his head.

“The P.I. found a few people who thought she’d been pregnant when she’d arrived at the homeless shelter in Fresno, and one woman at an L.A. shelter who said she’d seen Ms. Mendelev with a baby shortly before Charlie … before she died.”

“Staff members at the shelters or residents?”

“Residents. Staff members always claimed confidentiality when the P.I. talked to them.”

“As they should, of course. They need to protect their clients from unwanted intrusions into their private lives.” She gave him a pointed look, but he shook it off.

“Were Ms. Mendelev alive, I would have complete respect for her privacy.”

Which probably meant he’d have refused to give Márya a dime of Charlie’s money.

“But if she left a child behind,” Danby continued, “well, of course, that child’s grandmother has a keen interest in its welfare.”

Rosalie couldn’t stop another grimace at the “its”, but emotion was her enemy here.

“The operative word being ‘if.’ Without any proof such a child exists, I hope you will do as you suggested and respect the late Ms. Mendelev’s privacy.”

“Of course.” He stood up.

She stood too, but didn’t extend her hand until he did, then shook his with a distaste she didn’t bother to hide. “Goodbye, Mr. Danby.”

“Goodbye, Ms. Walker. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure.”

Under other circumstances, she might have smiled at that exit line. The man was witty as well as drop-dead sexy. He was also a major threat to everything that mattered in her life.

She showed him to the door, closed it behind him, and walked back to her desk on legs that barely held her. She sank gratefully into her chair, her whole body shaking.

After he left Rosalie Walker’s office, Morgan did some quick research on his laptop at a nearby coffee house before he drove the rented Porsche past a house not far away.

Nothing unusual about the place or about anything he’d been able to dig up on the Walker woman, except that she owned the house free and clear. Given the location in a solidly middle-class L.A. neighborhood, it was hard to know how she’d managed to buy it without a mortgage. Maybe she’d inherited it. Or maybe she wasn’t the one who’d paid for it.

Could the lady lawyer have a “sugar daddy,” as his father would have said? For some reason the idea rankled. Still, it fit the contrast between the low-profile law practice and the high-priced house. She was an attractive woman, if you ignored the pit-bull personality, and she probably kept that leashed around the man who’d paid for the cozy little bungalow. If she did have a sugar daddy, though, it didn’t look as if he lived in the house. Too many flowers in the garden. Two black-and-white cats lounged on the back of a flowered sofa in the front window. If Morgan didn’t know better, he would have thought the house belonged to some little old lady. But he’d spent an uncomfortable part of the afternoon trying not to stare at Ms. Walker’s breasts, so he knew for a fact that she was no old lady.

He reminded himself he didn’t like short, curvy women. Or lady lawyers. He especially didn’t like lady lawyers he didn’t trust.

Rosalie wasn’t able to escape her office for another three hours. As she crossed the lobby on the way to the parking lot, she ran into her friend Vanessa, who was headed back in with a latte and muffin from the local coffee house.

Five-foot-ten and reed-thin, Vanessa could have been a supermodel, but she had a CPA along with her law degree and made her living in the arcane realm of tax law. Friends since college, for the last two years they’d shared an office suite, along with a receptionist and two paralegals, with three other solo-practice attorneys.

“Leaving early?” asked Vanessa. “Lucky you!”

Rosalie smiled. “I’m going home to my guy.”

“Must be true love.” Vanessa winked, took a sip of her coffee, and headed to her office.

Rosalie let herself into her elderly Saab and dumped her briefcase onto the passenger seat. Time to set aside the lawyer part of her life and focus on the part that made it all worthwhile.

Morgan Danby’s face flashed across her mind, but she pushed the memory aside. His face may have stirred up a welter of half-forgotten longings, but she never wanted to see it again.

Ten minutes later she held the man in her life tight in her arms. Her eyes stung with tears of happiness as she kissed his cheek and felt his lips brush hers.

“Were you a good boy today?” she asked.

Joey blinked cornflower blue eyes at her and blew a soft raspberry.

Rosalie brushed a lock of strawberry blonde hair out of his chubby face and hugged his small body so tightly he tried to wiggle out of her arms.

Joey must have had a busy day at day care because he didn’t indulge in his usual protest at being strapped into his car seat and fell asleep as soon as she started the engine. Which left her with nothing to do on the way home except think about Morgan Danby’s visit.

She couldn’t believe he hadn’t questioned her more closely about how many months’ pregnant Márya had been when they’d first met. Rosalie had never been a good liar because she rarely lied. She understood the power of truth.

Her mother had always told the truth about the long illness that had eventually taken her life. Her honesty had made it possible for Rosalie to trust that she always knew the worst. And that, in turn, had given her the strength to move beyond the slow tragedy playing itself out at home and thrive in the world.

She’d only lied today because she’d panicked, but it had worked. Nothing else mattered. Even her mother would have understood that.

Still, Rosalie wished she’d started adoption proceedings when she’d first gotten custody of Joey. She hadn’t because it would have alerted Charlie’s relatives to Joey’s existence. She’d thought they wouldn’t care enough to look for the boy, but she’d been wrong.

She glanced in the rearview mirror at the sleeping child who filled her life with such joy. She’d do whatever was necessary to protect him.

“I don’t care what you have to do,” Márya had told her right before she died, after she signed the papers giving Rosalie custody of her son, “Keep Joey away from Charlie’s family.”

Morgan raised his gaze from the laptop and looked down Wilshire Boulevard, the lights of Los Angeles nothing more than so many colored stars from the twentieth floor condo his company owned here. He took a sip of wine and rolled his shoulders.

When his smartphone beeped he made the mistake of checking to see who it was.

Lillian. He’d have to talk to her some time. Might as well do it now.

He saved the spreadsheet he was working on and answered on the second beep.

“Hello, Lillian. You’re up late.”

“Why didn’t you call me with the report about your meeting with that woman who testified against Charleston?”

He swallowed the familiar irritation. “I told you I’d call when I learned something.”

“You didn’t learn anything at all about my grandchild?”

If she hadn’t sounded more like a major general barking orders than a grieving grandmother, he might have had more sympathy for her.

“We’re not sure there was … is a grandchild, remember? I have a couple of new leads to follow up, but nothing definite.”

“This is taking too long. Are you sure we shouldn’t have kept the private investigator?”

“We can always hire another P.I. if we need to.” Preferably one smart enough not to try to bribe the bleeding-heart workers at some homeless shelter who’d not only refused to give him any information, but had also gotten his license suspended. Morgan disapproved of unethical behavior, but he could not tolerate stupidity.

“If you’re sure.” Lillian’s voice sounded weary, older. “Call me if you learn anything.”

“I will, but it may be a day or two. I have to drive up to Merced to check out those leads.”

“Merced? Is that even in the United States?”

“Yes, it is. Good night, Lillian.”

He needed to get this over with, and soon. Almost daily interaction with his father’s second wife was not good for his mood.

She meant well—most of the time. But the woman pushed buttons and pulled strings she probably had no clue were there. Every time he talked to her he felt drained afterwards, and vaguely angry. He sometimes wondered if his own mother would have had the same effect on him, if she’d bothered to stick around.

Morgan wished he could simply hire another P.I., but he couldn’t shake the image of Charlie’s child in some overcrowded foster home, subject to who knew what kind of abuse from the older kids. Kids could be cruel, especially if their victim couldn’t fight back. And it was often easier for a paid caretaker to turn a blind eye than deal with bullying. He should know.

Besides, Morgan couldn’t ignore the possibility that Charlie’s father might locate the child first and claim custody. A judge could consider the elder Thompson’s young new wife better mother material than Lillian, but two generations of abuse in the Thompson family was enough. More than enough.

Morgan pinched the bridge of his nose to forestall a headache that threatened to knock him off-task. Danby Holding Company needed his full attention if they were going to maximize their opportunities in this kind of market. He rolled his shoulders again and refocused on work.

Two days later Morgan understood the P.I.’s impulse to resort to bribery.

Death certificates were public records, but without a full name or date, the clerks couldn’t tell him if such a record existed.

Medical records might be available to a family member, but since Charlie had never bothered to marry the Mendelev woman and there was no proof he was the father of any child she might have had, Morgan couldn’t get anywhere near those records.

He was reduced to reading back copies of the Merced newspaper from the time when Charlie and the woman had lived in the area, but he found no mention of her or of any child. Only a paragraph about Charlie’s arrest when he’d tried to break into the hospital to get at her.

When he called Lillian to say he’d hit a dead end, she was unconvinced.

“What about the woman lawyer?” his stepmother asked. “If she and that woman were such good friends, she should want to help you find my grandchild. We can offer the little darling a life someone like his mother could never have imagined. Far better than being in foster care with who-knows-what kind of people.”

His thoughts exactly, but what more could he do?

“Lillian, I have a business to run. The same business that supplies most of your income. I don’t have time for this wild goose chase. I need to get back to the office.”

“I don’t ask for much, after the years I spent raising you.”

Paying other people to raise me, he corrected silently.

“But to have Charleston’s child to love in my old age …” She gave an artful sniff.

He sighed. He hated it when she tried to play him like that, but she was the closest thing he had to a family, give or take a mother in Key West he hadn’t seen or spoken to in almost thirty years.

“Okay. I’ll talk to her.” For some reason the idea of seeing Rosalie Walker again made him smile. “But don’t get your hopes up. I doubt I’ll learn anything new.”

“I knew I could rely on you, Morgan. You were always such a good child.”

I had to be or you might have walked out, the way my mother did. He ignored the little boy’s voice inside him and resigned himself to a few days more in California.

Rosalie escaped the overheated courtroom and flipped open her phone. Her heart lurched when she clicked the calendar. Her appointments for the afternoon now included Morgan Danby.

The noisy courthouse lobby swirled around her with the same black panic that had almost overwhelmed her when Mr. Danby first mentioned Márya’s child. After three days, she’d thought the man was gone for good.

She sat down hard on a well-worn wooden bench and forced air into her lungs. Then she punched her office number and tried to act as if her world hadn’t just been turned upside down—again.

“The judge is running late,” she told her receptionist when he answered. “Please tell my afternoon appointments I’ll be there as soon as I can, and reschedule anyone who can’t wait.”

And please, please make it so that Morgan Danby can’t wait and can’t reschedule, she added in silent prayer.

Not that she had much hope of that. For all his casual air, Mr. Danby didn’t strike her as a man who would give up easily or be a gracious loser. But she had to win this one for Joey’s sake.

When she reached her office building four hours later, the expensive black sports car in the parking lot warned her that her prayer had not been granted.

Mr. Danby stood in the reception area outside her office, staring at one of the paintings that decorated the wall, an impressionistic hibiscus in brilliant red with broad strokes of yellow, green, and black.

“Are you an art critic, Mr. Danby?” she asked, in lieu of the polite greeting she couldn’t force out.

He scanned her wind-blown hairdo and crumpled linen suit. She ignored the urge to straighten herself the same way she’d ignored the flutter in her chest when she first saw him.

“Rough day in court?” he asked with one sexily raised eyebrow.

“Rough day on the freeway. I won in court.”

“Congratulations.” He turned back to the painting. “I didn’t have a chance to look closely at this when I was here before. It’s quite good. They both are.” He gestured to the painting on the other wall, a golden poppy with the same bold strokes of contrast.

“Thank you.”

“You painted them?”

She allowed herself a smile at his surprise. “My mother.”

“She’s very talented.”

Her smile faded. “Was very talented. She’s deceased.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” His tone was more calculating than sympathetic.

“It’s been a few years,” she told him as she crossed to her office and gestured him in.

He gave the hibiscus another look before he followed her.

She went to her desk and set down the bag that held her tablet computer. Mr. Danby had his back to her, intent on the painting of a flower garden on the wall across from her desk.

“Your mother again?”

She nodded, fighting to ignore the tingle his gaze sent through her.

“And that one?” This time he pointed to the painting of a child in a sandbox that hung behind her. “Is that you?”

She refused to let him see the sudden flash of grief. “Yes.”

“Your mother had a remarkable talent for that kind of middle-brow art.”

Middle-brow art? Rosalie stiffened and gestured toward the chair across from her.

“Did she sell many of them?” He lowered his long, lean body into the chair.

Why should he care, if it was middle-brow art? She sat down and jiggled the mouse to turn on her computer monitor. “No. It was a hobby. She gave a few to friends.”

He crossed his legs and leaned back to watch her face. “I came up blank in Merced.”

Irritation morphed into dread. She sat up straighter and gave him an empty smile.