Chapter Four
“Do you want a refill?” Blaize nodded toward Carys’s empty mug.
“Yes, please.” She smiled, and it lit up her face, stirring something in his chest. An attraction wasn’t just inconvenient; it was out of the question.
He fixed her a cup and joined them at the table, sitting across from her.
“Thank you,” she said before taking a sip. The little mewl that passed over those pink heart-shaped lips stirred him in other places.
Great job, Wilde! Way to keep it in check.
“You are convinced that you’re not the father,” Carys started after a furtive glance toward Kit.
“I’m absolutely sure.” No question.
“May I ask how?”
“How old is she?” he asked.
“Three months.”
“And how long does it take for one of those things to cook?”
Carys’s eyebrow shot up. “Forty weeks if the pregnancy goes to full term.” Her finger absently traced around the rim of the mug as she studied him, head tilted to one side.
He performed a mental calculation. “So, basically, a week more than nine months.”
“That sounds right,” she said. “I don’t have personal experience to draw from, but it checks out with my mental math.”
“For me to be the father, I would have had to have sex with the mother almost exactly this day last year.”
Kit coughed at the outright mention of sex.
He glanced her way. “Forgive me for being direct.”
Her cheeks flushed and she giggled. “I’ve heard worse. You just caught me off guard.”
Turning his attention back toward Carys, whose crimson cheeks were sexy as hell, he said, “I’m certain that I didn’t father a child because that would require having sex with a stranger not long after I buried my wife.
I got to know one person during that time, but believe me when I say nothing came of it. ”
Carys brought her hand up to cover a gasp. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Now you know.” He didn’t normally shout his business from the rooftop. Blaize wasn’t exactly the sharing type.
Kit’s girlish smile wiped from her face. “I thought she left you.”
He shook his head. Now his private business was out there for anyone to see. Great.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kit asked.
“Lynn had been sick for a while.” He shrugged. “It was something we were going through.”
His wife had been fiery, opinionated, and almost wholly unpredictable. The first time he’d drummed up the courage to call her after a week of texting, the phone shook in his hands.
Lynn had been beautiful and carefree. She’d been the opposite of the women he’d gone for in the past. His exes were country down to their souls. Lynn was adventure and excitement. Falling for her hadn’t taken but a minute.
As they got to know each other, he uncovered a different side to her—serious and more calculated.
A side that thought about every move intensely before making it.
The dual sides of her personality had thrown him for a loop at first. But he’d already fallen for her and figured he would never be bored loving someone like her.
The truth had been a little more brutal when the first diagnosis came.
Bipolar disorder wasn’t something he was familiar with, but Lynn’s highs and lows along with her risk-taking behavior made more sense to him once he educated himself on the disorder.
Lynn was charismatic like no one he’d ever known on the highs, and she hit rock bottom on the lows.
Blaize and her doctor had gotten his wife on a good regimen with her meds.
Life began to resemble something that looked a lot like normal.
He’d let himself wonder if the two of them could think about starting a family together.
Until the worst diagnosis came the next year.
The one that was rarely survivable. The one there was no good medication for.
The one that hit hard and fast. They’d tried everything they could think of to slow the illness down and wipe it out.
Looking back, he’d tried. Lynn had gone along with whatever he said.
The experimental drug didn’t work, nor did the clinical trial.
Traditional Chinese medicine had no good answers.
Acupuncture was a bust as well as half a dozen other far-fetched therapies.
No amount of yoga, hypnotherapy, or Reiki could fix her.
They ran out of options. But Lynn had given up almost the day she’d learned about her illness. Part of him still resented her for it.
He looked up and realized he had two pairs of eyes trained on him, waiting for his response. “What good would it have done to bring anyone else down?”
“You wouldn’t have had to go through it alone,” Kit said in practically a whisper with the kind of reverence normally reserved for talking during church service.
“I knew you were there if I needed you.” Those words rang hollow. He had wallowed in self-pity for too many months after Lynn’s death. He’d cursed everyone and everything that had once been sacred to him.
“That’s not the same thing, and you know it.” Kit’s scolding tone struck a chord.
“You’re right,” he said. “I should have told you everything.”
“I knew Lynn was sick and that you’d had your ups and downs, but I didn’t know it was…” Her voice trailed up as she looked at him with the sincerest eyes. “Explains a lot about the last couple of years.”
He nodded. He knew she was talking about the way he’d withdrawn from her and everyone else. The lack of communication with his family. The way he’d treated brothers who didn’t take his calls now.
A dawn of understanding passed behind Kit’s eyes.
Rather than keep going down a path that couldn’t be undone, he shifted the conversation to the real reason Carys was here. “I’m confident that I wasn’t sleeping around a year ago. And now you know the reason. But that leaves this little girl in limbo, doesn’t it?”
“Officially? Yes.”
“What about unofficially?”
“You haven’t taken a paternity test to prove you’re not the biological father so I have no reason to disregard your name on the birth certificate.
” She put a hand up to stop him from protesting.
“I’m not saying you are. I believe you’re being honest. However, I have a government document that implicates you as the father and no DNA test to disprove it.
” She looked at him with pleading eyes. “If you are officially not the father, then Rue goes to a seriously understaffed orphanage while I hunt down next of kin. You are a good person. You came to the aid of a stranger in this horrific storm. Not many people would risk their own safety under these circumstances. In fact, most wouldn’t have called back. ”
“The name Stephanie Cross suddenly rings a bell,” he said, catching on and appreciating the show of confidence in him.
If he could buy some time for Carys to find a suitable home for Rue, he wouldn’t stand in the way.
It felt like he could finally do something good for someone else.
He felt useful for the first time in a long time.
Carys shot him a look. “What are you saying?”
“I was hitting a lot of bars a year ago. Drinking more than my fair share.” His admission got a stern look from Kit. “I’m not proud of it, but I figure honesty is the best policy.”
“And this is true?” Carys asked.
He raised his right hand with three middle fingers extended while his thumb held down his pinky finger in the Scout Sign. “Hand to god.”
“Okay, I can work with that narrative,” she said on a slow exhale, needing to revise her report.
Blaize caught Kit’s gaze. “You okay with a baby staying here for…what?” He looked to Carys.
“A couple of days, maybe more,” she said.
“Next of kin will have to be found, then notified of Stephanie’s death if that proves to be the case, and I can screen them for suitability.
This girl is too young to remember anything that we do for her, but believe me when I say it’ll matter in the long run more than you can know. ”
The heaviness in those words struck Blaize. Had Carys lost someone important to her at a young age?
“IT’LL BE NICE to have a little one around again,” Kit said. “We haven’t had a crib in this house in a lot of years. Your father got rid of everything I kept for you and your brothers. Said this wasn’t a storage facility.”
Carys noted the tick in Blaize’s jaw at the mention of his father.
She would mention that safety standards were different now and it wasn’t advised to use cribs and such that were decades old if that would make it better.
Based on his tense expression, it wouldn’t.
This conversation was bigger and had more weight.
It was about casually throwing away memories.
She got it. Her father hadn’t been any better.
He’d gotten rid of all Carys’s memorabilia, too.
“You’ll have to tell me when you’re ready to take the DNA test,” she said to Blaize. “I appreciate you buying time for me.”
Thunder cracked.
“Do you want to settle in for the night?” Kit asked, surprising Carys with the question.
“I don’t have any clothes or supplies for myself,” she stammered. “I’m sure the storm will blow over, and then maybe…”
When she really thought about it, she needed to stay.
Kit would be fine taking care of Rue. Still, leaving felt strangely like abandonment.
Was it because paternity hadn’t been established?
Was that the niggling feeling in the back of Carys’s mind warning her to stick close to Rue?
Did it have to do with guilt for pushing an infant on a family where she didn’t technically belong?
Definitely all of those things. She couldn’t imagine walking out that door, going home, and getting any sleep tonight. Especially not after what happened. Was her car even drivable?
“On second thought, I’d love to take you up on your generosity,” she said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
Kit smiled as her gaze bounced from Carys to Blaize and back. “It sure is nice to have a few more females in the house for a change.” She seemed to catch the implication of her casual comment when she shook her head. She flashed her eyes at Blaize. “I don’t think that came out right.”
“No offense taken,” he said warmly. He clearly cared a great deal about his grandmother. He’d lost a wife. It hadn’t dawned on Carys to ask if he had any other children.
Kit motioned for help with the baby. Blaize was by her side, helping her place Rue in the carrier. For a man of his size, he was surprisingly gentle with his grandmother and the baby.
For a split second, Carys was sure she saw something in his eyes that looked a lot like longing when he looked down at Rue. Had to be a mistake on her part.
When Kit left the room, Carys figured it was a good time to ask the questions on her mind. She remembered how much her father drank on certain days that she would later realize was her mother’s birthday and their wedding anniversary. Forget major holidays. Those were never the same.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t ask a couple of questions,” she said, wincing. They’d extended hospitality to her and Rue. The last thing she wanted to do was slap them in the face with rude questions.
“Okay-y-y.”
“It’s just…the thing is…”
Wow, she was really winning with words, wasn’t she?
“Were you serious about going out drinking this time last year?”
“Yes,” he said. It dawned on him where she was going with this. “I can admit that I drank too much when I was swimming in loss and self-pity.”
“Where did you hang out?”
“Austin bars mostly,” he said.
“Do you mind making a list?”
“What good would that do?” His right eyebrow hiked up.
“I need to track down information about Stephanie and—”
“You think it’s possible I was so drunk that I don’t remember having sex with her.” The disappointment in his voice stabbed her.
“It’s nothing personal,” she said, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice. “If she listed you on the birth certificate, you must have had some contact with her.”
He exhaled a slow breath. His eyebrows pinched together as he pursed thick, kissable lips. “That’s a reasonable guess.”
Carys cleared the sudden dryness in her throat. “I’m at a loss as to figuring out who her relatives are. I’ll take any thread I can get no matter how loose it might be.”
“What are you saying?” he asked. “Stephanie Cross might be a cover?”
“It could be that or someone who wanted to disappear,” she said. “It’s not impossible to create an identity. Forgers are amazing with identification nowadays.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“I have no list of next of kin and a name on a birth certificate for a father who swears he’s never heard of this person,” she said. “I don’t know what to think but Rue deserves for me to do everything I can to make sure her mother isn’t alive somewhere, hiding.”
“What do you make of the person you said was trying to get inside your vehicle?” he asked.
Carys was just now letting herself begin to think about the possibilities there. “Could have been someone stranded in the storm and panicking.”
He nodded. Then he stared out the window. “It’s possible. I didn’t see a vehicle anywhere near.”
“I don’t remember passing a stranded car, either.”
“Someone is out there and could be watching the house,” he said.
Creepy crawlies ran wild up and down her spine at the thought.
“It’s time to make that call to the sheriff,” he said.
Did that mean she wasn’t safe here?