Claiming His Family Read online

  But then he’d seen the baby.

  He glanced at the sleeping bundle next to him on the passenger seat. His little pajama-clad body. His nearly white hair that barely covered his scalp.

  Andy had learned a lot about Dex Harrington while he’d been stewing in that hellhole. A lot about him. He knew Harrington and the redhead had been tight. They’d almost been married, the private investigator he’d hired had said. That’s why Andy had chosen her as his first after getting out of prison. That coupled with the fact that she’d performed the DNA test that had gotten him out of prison seemed too ironic a combination to pass up. But seeing the kid had thrown him. He’d figured the kid had to be Harrington’s.

  Just as his chat with the redhead had confirmed.

  Andy gathered the sleeping kid in his arms. Throwing the strap of the bag filled with baby things he’d swiped from the bedroom over his other shoulder, Andy climbed out of his Vette. He carried the child to the door of the house and rang the bell.

  A light blinked on in the bedroom. Great. Nanny had been asleep. She wouldn’t be happy with him for waking her, but it couldn’t be helped. As soon as she saw the baby, she’d forgive him. Nanny never could hold a grudge.

  The frilly white curtain over the front door’s small window lifted and a withered eye peered out. It widened in surprise. The curtain fell and the door rattled then opened.

  “Do you know what time it is, Andy?” Nanny stood in the doorway watching him with stern yet gentle eyes, the way she used to every day when he was growing up.

  For a moment he felt like a puny little kid again, crawling to Nanny for comfort after his mother had treated him to another of her cruel and belittling tirades.

  He shoved the feeling aside and stepped past the old woman and into the house. He would never be puny and weak. Never again. And neither Dex Harrington’s scathing words nor Alyson Fitzroy’s superior tone would make it so. Tonight he hadn’t come for Nanny’s comfort. He’d come for her help. He walked into a tiny living room jammed with so much furniture it would have looked like a warehouse if not for the crocheted doilies covering every surface.

  Nanny followed him on tottering legs. “What do you have there? A child?”

  He turned his best pitiful expression on her. “My child, Nanny. His mother doesn’t want him. She abandoned him as soon as I was freed from prison.”

  “Your child? That child is too young. You were in prison when it was conceived.”

  “Haven’t you heard of conjugal visits? They arrange them for prisoners, you know.”

  She nodded as if this was a totally plausible explanation.

  Andy laughed to himself. If she bought that story, this was going to be easier than he’d thought. “I was in love with his mother. I wanted to marry her.” He dropped his head as if he were ashamed. “Unfortunately she didn’t feel the same way.”

  Pity and concern washed over Nanny’s wrinkled face.

  “I need your help, Nanny. I need you to take little Bart.”

  She frowned.

  “You know me,” he continued, “I can’t take care of myself, let alone a baby.”

  “Well that’s true enough.”

  “Besides, I want my son to have the best care a boy can have. I want him to have the only thing that was good about my childhood. I want him to have you.”

  Nanny’s old face softened into a smile. Amazing. Sometimes he didn’t even have to come up with a lie to manipulate people. Sometimes he had only to tell the truth.

  She held out her arms for the baby. “Give him here. I hate to see you worrying about your poor child, Andy. Not after all you’ve been through. You’re right. He’s better off with me.”

  Andy placed the baby in her arms and set the bag on the floor. Then he slipped his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a wad of hundreds and set them on a crocheted doily.

  The old lady eyed him, hardness stealing back into her face. “I’m not taking your money, boy.”

  “The baby needs things. I want my son to have the best. This money is for him.”

  She paused then nodded, her thin, wrinkled lips stretching into a smile once again. “You’re a good daddy, Andy, taking care of your baby this way. I’m proud of you.”

  Andy couldn’t keep the grin off his face. A good daddy. That was him. A regular chip off the old Smythe block. He stifled his laugh until he bade the old woman goodbye and closed the door behind him.

  The baby would be safe and well cared for with Nanny. Contrary to what he’d told the redhead, he had no intention of hurting the kid. He wasn’t a sicko, unlike some of the scumbags he’d done time with. And he was no baby killer, either. The baby was safe.

  But the father? Not a chance. The baby would give Andy just the leverage he needed to turn Dex Harrington’s life into a living nightmare. And in the process, he’d see he got a piece of the oh-so-superior redhead, too.

  Revenge would be sweet.

  ALYSON GRIPPED the wheel with white-knuckled fingers and struggled to quell the trembling that claimed every nerve. Stomping on the accelerator as hard as she dared, she steered her Volvo around sharp corners and down quiet streets. She trained her eyes on the road ahead, keeping her gaze from wandering to the rearview mirror, to the reflection of the empty child’s safety seat belted in back.

  She couldn’t give in to the panic, the rush of loss that threatened to overwhelm her. She had to stay rational. She had to reach Dex. She had to get Patrick back.

  And whatever that took, she’d do it.

  The roofline of Dex’s sprawling old bungalow loomed on the edge of the lake, a dark shadow against the moonlight-kissed waves beyond. Alyson swerved onto the dead end street, pulled to the curb and scrambled from the car.

  Built into the bank of Lake Mendota, Dex’s house was his pride and joy. Alyson could still picture the satisfaction on his face the day he’d bought the scarred old former fraternity house and started putting his renovation plans into motion. It was as if he’d finally arrived, finally proven he had transcended his desolate upbringing.

  Her heart pounded in her ears, drowning out the lapping of the waves against the shore. The humid June air clogged her throat. She climbed the stone steps and stepped onto the porch. A light shone from the back of the house. Pressing a trembling finger to the doorbell, she held her breath.

  A chime sounded through the old structure. Footsteps thudded on the hardwood floor inside. The door opened.

  “Alyson.” Dex stood silhouetted against light glowing behind him. But even in the shadow she could see his brow furrow, the muscles along his cleft chin hardening in unswerving judgment.

  Some things never changed. But his judgment of her didn’t matter. Not anymore. The only thing that mattered now was Patrick. Alyson forced her voice to function. “I need to talk to you.”

  Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his midnight-blue eyes seemed to grow darker, harder. He took in a deep breath and expelled it. “I suppose you heard about the governor’s pardon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that what you need to talk about?”

  “In part, yes.”

  “Is it something about the testing you did? Something I should know?”

  After Smythe’s pardon today it was logical Dex would assume she was coming to see him about the DNA test she’d done—the test that had sprung the rapist from prison. “No. It’s not that. The testing was accurate. The two samples were a match.”

  His gaze raked over her, as if trying to determine her true motive for showing up on his doorstep.

  “I need your help.” Her words trembled with barely controlled panic. “It’s urgent.”

  As if hearing the edge in her voice, he gave a succinct nod and backed from the doorway, allowing her inside.

  As she stepped into the house, a shiver stole up her spine. Sights, smells and feelings from the past washed over her. The tickle of dust in her nose as she and Dex hauled box after box of ancient junk from the attic after he bought the house. The scent of
paint, varnish and wallpaper paste as they reclaimed the scarred walls and floors. The sound of hers and Dex’s laughter mingling and filling the empty halls. Memories of happy times, before her father’s crimes, before she learned exactly how precarious her position was in Dex’s heart.

  She shut the memories out of her mind. They were merely sentimental longing. And she didn’t have time for sentiment. “Can we sit down?”

  His eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “You can’t tell me here?”

  Her knees quivered. “Please. I need to sit down. And so should you.”

  He raised his brows at her last comment. But instead of grilling her further, he mercifully turned and led her through the house.

  She followed, forcing her eyes to move over her surroundings. Forcing her mind to focus on something safer than the panic thrashing inside her, threatening to shred what little control she had.

  Dex had changed things since she’d helped him decorate following the renovation. He’d replaced the simple curtains she’d chosen with wood-slat blinds. He’d furnished the rooms with heavy leather instead of the light-fabric couches and chairs she’d helped him select. It was as if he’d obliterated her from his life. As if she’d ceased to exist in his world.

  And of course, she had.

  But he’d never disappeared from her world. His presence went far deeper than blinds and furniture. She felt his presence every time she looked into Patrick’s blue eyes or kissed that tiny cleft chin.

  Patrick.

  Panic rose in her throat like bile. Choking it back, she followed Dex into the glassed-in porch they used to sit in together watching thunderstorms come in off the lake. He gestured to a wicker chair. She took her place among the cushions.

  He lowered himself into a chair facing her. “We’re sitting. What is it?”

  She tangled her fingers together in her lap and took a deep breath. There were so many things that had been said between them. And even more things that had not been said. Before she told him about Patrick, she had to give him some idea why she hadn’t told him about his son. She had to make him understand. “I tried calling you. Several times. After my father was killed. You refused my calls. And you didn’t call back when I left messages on your machine.”

  Dex’s brows snapped low over his eyes. “I didn’t want to talk to you, Alyson. I don’t want to rehash the past. I hope that’s not why you came here tonight.”

  “You turned your back on me, Dex. And my only crime was that I loved my father.”

  He stood and paced the length of the sunporch. He stopped, his back to her, his shoulders obviously tight under his crisp white dress shirt. Slowly he turned to look at her with hard eyes. “Your father was a criminal. The worst kind of criminal. He used his title of district attorney to sell justice. He perverted the entire system. And you defended him.”

  “He was my father. I didn’t believe he could do something like that.”

  “You didn’t want to believe it. You didn’t want to believe me.”

  She swallowed into a dry throat. “That’s why I called. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I was wrong about my father. That I was sorry I didn’t believe you when you first told me what you suspected. But that’s not the only thing I wanted to tell you.”

  “What are you saying? Why are you here, Alyson?”

  “I wanted to tell you I was pregnant.” She rubbed clammy hands over her jeans and willed herself to look at Dex, to meet his gaze. “I gave birth to our son seven months ago.”

  Dex didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to breathe. “I have a son.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.

  “Yes.”

  He folded himself into a chair. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed a hand over his face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You wouldn’t take my calls, remember?”

  “You could have come to see me. You could have made me listen.”

  She could have. She’d known it then, and she knew it now. If she’d really wanted to tell Dex, she wouldn’t have let anything stop her. “I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid you would take him away from me.”

  A muscle tensed along his jawline. “Why the hell would you think that?”

  She shot him an incredulous look. What she’d done had been wrong, cowardly. But she’d had reason. “Because you hated me, Dex. You were so hard and uncaring and judgmental. You shut me out of your life and wouldn’t give me a second chance. And after what my father did, there isn’t a judge in Dane County who wouldn’t be biased against me in a custody fight, wrong or not.”

  “So you thought I would use your father’s sins to convince the court you were an unfit mother?”

  “I couldn’t take the chance.”

  His face flushed with anger. Cords of muscle stood out along his neck. “First you believed I was lying about your father, then you believed I would rob my son of a mother. What kind of a rotten SOB do you think I am?”

  “I don’t— I didn’t— I was afraid.”

  “You should have trusted me to do the right thing. You should have damn well told me.”

  She sat still and let his anger buffet her. He was right, she’d known it in her heart all along. She should have told him. Despite her fear. Despite the risk. “I’m here now. I’m telling you now.”

  “Why are you here now, Alyson? Why did you pick tonight of all nights to tell me I have a son?”

  “Because…” She forced the words through the thickness in her throat, through the fear tightening her lips. “Because he’s gone.”

  Chapter Three

  “Gone?” Dex’s heart stuttered in his chest. He shot up from his chair, muscles tensed to fight. “What the hell do you mean?”

  Alyson took in a shaky breath as if trying to hold back tears. “I went into Patrick’s room to check on him, and Smythe grabbed me. He pressed a chloroform-soaked cloth over my face. When I woke up, Patrick was gone. Smythe took him.”

  “Smythe? Are you sure?” Dex had been living and breathing Andrew Clarke Smythe in the months since the DNA match had been made. But to now learn he had a son, and that Andrew Clarke Smythe had kidnapped him, was too surreal to absorb.

  “Smythe called me. Somehow he knew you were Patrick’s father. He took our baby to get back at you for convicting him two years ago.”

  Rage, pure and hot, surged through Dex’s blood. Smythe had kidnapped his son. His son. If the son of a bitch wanted to make things personal, he’d succeeded. And he’d soon wish he hadn’t. If Dex had anything to say about it, the scum would be strung up before daybreak. Crossing to the door in three strides, he left Alyson huddled on the porch. His footsteps thundered down the hall, echoing on the hardwood floor like the beat of war drums. Reaching the library, he circled his desk and reached for the cordless phone perched on the credenza.

  “Wait.”

  Finger poised over the number pad, he looked up into Alyson’s emerald eyes.

  “Smythe told me if we got the police involved, I would never see Patrick again.” Her voice broke. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t let them wind down her cheeks. “If you call the police, he’ll find out. He said he has sources. He could have someone watching us right now.”

  She was probably right about Smythe’s sources. Heir to Smythe Pharmaceuticals, the poor little rich boy had endless money at his disposal. And money could corrupt even the purest police department. Or district attorney’s office. Dex had seen it happen.

  Expelling a long breath, he set the cordless phone on the desk and studied her face in the library’s bright light. Fine lines framed her mouth and eyes. Shadows lurked in the hollows under her cheekbones, making her normally smooth face appear almost gaunt. He’d seen these signs of stress many times in his work. Hell, he’d grown up surrounded by desperation. “So what else did Smythe say?”

  “I have a tape. I recorded part of what he said.” She pulled a tiny cassette from her pocket and held it out to Dex wit
h shaking fingers.

  Dex took the tape from her hand. After rummaging through his desk, he produced a microcassette recorder and slipped the tape inside. He pushed the play button.

  Andrew Smythe’s voice wound through the library, smooth as a snake’s hiss. Dex had heard it many times in press conferences after court, in pleas from prison, and it always sounded the same. No fear. No pity. Nothing but an unfeeling smugness that set Dex’s teeth on edge.

  Much more striking was the sound of Alyson’s voice. So naked. So desperate.

  Dex tried to steel himself against the vulnerability in her voice. He tried to focus on Smythe’s words. On what he was saying. Only when the tape ended did he allow himself to look at her.

  Her eyes searched his, desperate for answers. Answers he couldn’t give.

  He ejected the cassette. “That’s Smythe, all right. But there are no threats on the tape. Nothing I can use to convince a judge to grant an arrest warrant.”

  Her gaze fell to the desktop. “I must not have pressed the button soon enough.”

  “What did Smythe say? Exactly. Think.”

  “He said I should tell you that Patrick is your son.”

  He gritted his teeth. If Smythe hadn’t demanded she tell him about Patrick, he never would have known. That was clear enough. And that knowledge stabbed into him with the force of a sharp blade in malevolent hands.

  He clamped down on the bleeding. What Alyson would or wouldn’t have done wasn’t important anymore. “What else did he say?”

  “That he’d be in touch with us. And he’d let us know what to do next.”

  Dex grimaced. That’s what he was afraid of. Leveling her with hard eyes, he shook his head. “I’m not playing a part in any twisted puppet show Smythe has planned.”

  Her eyes widened. Leaning toward him, she gripped the edge of the desk. “If we do what he says, he’ll give Patrick back.”

  “Smythe has no intention of returning Patrick.”

  “But he said—”