It Takes a Family. Victoria Pade

after she’d seen his jaw clench and unclench repeatedly, he finally said, “I’ll have the DNA tests done so I know once and for all if she’s mine, even though I don’t think she is.”

      “And you’ll keep her in the meantime?”

      There was another long silence before he shook his head. “Not without you here, too.”

      Karis didn’t understand the edict, but rather than question it, she said, “I’m not leaving Northbridge for a few days. I have other business here.”

      “If it’s with the rest of the Pratts, I’d tread carefully,” he warned in a way that held a bit of authoritative threat to it. “But just telling me you’ll be around town and only for a few days isn’t enough. If I let you out of my sight you could do what, for all I know, you planned to do all along—disappear and stick me with a baby you know isn’t mine.”

      “Amy isn’t something to stick anyone with,” Karis said angrily. “You’d be lucky to have her. Lucky if she is yours. Amy is the only right thing my sister ever did. And as for my disappearing, I’m not Lea, and leaving Amy with you in no way washes my hands of her. Even if she is yours and you keep her I have every intention of finding work and someplace to live that’s as near to here as possible so that I can—”

      Luke Walker cut her off as if nothing she said carried any weight. “There’s a room with its own bath in the attic. You can use it and put Amy in her old room—the crib is still there.”

      “I can’t do that. I have to get a job. If I stay here, too, it defeats the whole purpose—”

      “I’m not keeping her without you being right here until I sort out who she belongs to. If she isn’t mine—”

      “Fine,” Karis said before he could say more, recognizing an ultimatum when she was given one.

      His eyes narrowed. “That was quick. Did I just play into your hand?”

      “Are you always this suspicious of everything and everyone?” she shot back.

      “Of everything and everyone who has to do with Lea,” he answered without missing a beat. “I learned it the hard way.”

      Karis swallowed her own anger. She’d known she wouldn’t be going into an ideal situation. In Lea’s wake, she never did.

      “My résumé is out, I’ll do follow-ups on the phone from here and try to do any interviews that way, too, if I can. I can check want ads for jobs in Billings or some of the other towns or cities I saw on the road signs I passed getting here. It isn’t what I had planned, but I’ll make it work,” she said, thinking out loud.

      To give him the entire picture of why she hadn’t put up more of a fight, she said, “Am I thrilled with staying in a house with a man I don’t even know? No. But I need a place for Amy and if that’s the only way you’ll keep her, it’s the only choice I have. And if you want to know the whole truth, staying here is better than sleeping in my car, which was what I was going to do because I can’t afford a hotel room. Plus, at least if I’m here, I’ll still be with Amy. I can still watch over her and go on taking care of her, and she won’t wake up tomorrow morning in a strange place with only an unfamiliar face to greet her. If you call your invitation playing into my hand, then even though the thought of my staying here never occurred to me, yes, I guess you did. Want to change your mind?”

      Again he didn’t hurry to answer, pinning her with his gaze.

      Then, with resignation, he said, “No. But I’ll be watching you.” He held out his hand, palm upward. “And I’ll take your car keys so you can’t sneak out in the middle of the night.”

      “How do I know you’re not some kind of maniac who’s going to keep me prisoner or something?” she said, reluctant to concede.

      “You don’t. I guess we’re both having to act on some blind trust.”

      “You don’t trust me at all,” Karis countered.

      “No, I don’t.”

      He had the advantage and he knew it. And since she’d never thought he was some kind of maniac or she wouldn’t have let him anywhere near Amy, she knew his motives really were what he’d claimed—not to allow her the opportunity to take off and stick him with a baby that might not be his.

      But that didn’t mean giving him her keys wasn’t galling.

      “I need things from the car and the trunk and then you can have them,” she said.

      “Give me the keys and I’ll go out with you.”

      Karis sighed, rolled her eyes to let him know she thought he was being ridiculous, and dropped her keys into the large hand waiting for them.

      He closed his fist around them and motioned toward the door. “Ladies first.”

      Karis opened the door and went outside to her car. She gave Luke Walker plenty of room to unlock the driver’s side door. She took Amy’s diaper bag and her own purse from behind the front seat, slinging both straps over her shoulder before popping the trunk with the lever beside the seat.

      Luke Walker had returned to the curb, where he watched as she took her suitcase and the cardboard box that held the remainder of Amy’s things from the rear of the vehicle.

      “Is that it?” he asked.

      “Yes.”

      He closed the trunk’s lid and then took the box and suitcase from her, leaving her only the diaper bag and her purse as they returned to the house.

      He still didn’t spare Amy so much as a glance when they got back, though. Karis picked up baby and carrier.

      “Have you eaten?” he asked.

      She hadn’t. But something made her not want to admit it, so she said, “I’m not hungry.”

      He didn’t pursue it; he merely headed up the staircase that rose against one wall of the entry.

      Following him, Karis tried not to notice that right at eye level was a pretty fantastic derriere. This was not the time or place or person for that, she lectured herself.

      When they reached the top of the steps, he motioned to his left. “The nursery,” he said as if the words stuck in his throat.

      He’d left it up all this time? That seemed odd, but Karis didn’t say anything. She just went into the pink-and-white nursery adorned with cuddly bunny wallpaper and borders around a white crib, bureau, changing table and rocking chair.

      She set Amy on the floor again as Luke Walker did the same with the suitcase and box. Then he went about putting a crib sheet on the mattress while Karis eased the sleeping infant out of her coat.

      “I’ll put your suitcase in your room,” her surly host said, leaving her to tend to the baby alone.

      Amy was barely disturbed by the diaper change or by having her pajamas put on. When that was accomplished, Karis put her niece into the crib and covered her, propping Amy’s favorite toy, a stuffed elephant, in one corner of the crib so it would be within reach if the fifteen-month-old woke up and wanted it.

      “Sleep tight, sweetheart,” Karis whispered after kissing the baby on the forehead. Then she silently left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

      Luke Walker was waiting in the hallway, arms again crossed over his chest.

      Without saying anything he led her up a second set of stairs to the attic. It appeared to have been the room of another young girl, because daisy paper lined the wall behind the double-size brass bed.

      “Sheets and blankets are clean,” he said of the bedding at the foot of the bare mattress. “The armoire is empty if you want to put your stuff in it.”

      Karis nodded again.

      “Bathroom is through there—” He pointed to a door to the left of the cheval