It Takes a Family. Victoria Pade

      Karis nodded a third time, feeling like a new inmate being instructed by the warden. Thanking him seemed inappropriate so she didn’t do it.

      “Do you need anything else?” he asked.

      “No.”

      And with that Luke Walker headed for the door.

      “I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, when he reached it and turned to look at her again.

      “Unless I make a run for it,” she answered facetiously, not shying away from meeting his cold, hard expression.

      He didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he said, “Don’t expect me to take care of her when she gets up.”

      “You won’t have to,” Karis said, replacing her sarcasm with defensiveness.

      Apparently satisfied with her response, he turned in the doorway and went out.

      Before he closed the door behind him, Karis got another glimpse of that great posterior, and admiring it just came as a reflex.

      A reflex she curbed the instant she realized what she was doing.

      Because regardless of the man’s physical attributes, she reminded herself, they were of no interest whatsoever to her.

      She’d come to Northbridge to get her life back on track and what that was going to require would not make her any friends here.

      And she certainly wasn’t going to enter into any other kind of relationship.

      Especially not with her sister’s wronged and scorned ex-husband.

      Regardless of how drop-dead gorgeous he was.

      Chapter Two

      As he lay in bed early Saturday morning after a nearly sleepless night, Luke Walker was still coming to grips with the fact that his ex-wife had died.

      He’d gone straight to the telephone when he’d left Karis Pratt in the attic the evening before. Placing a call to Cutty Grant—a member of Northbridge’s police force who was on duty overnight—he’d asked for the number of the Denver police department. Then Luke had called Denver, identified himself and requested confirmation of a report that a woman named Lea Pratt or Lea Walker or Lea Pratt Walker was one of three fatalities in an explosion there six weeks ago.

      Within twenty minutes he’d had the confirmation— Lea really had been killed. Her sister had told the truth to that point anyway.

      And Luke had been left with one more shock to deal with when it came to Lea.

      He’d wished comeuppance on her when she left him, but he’d never wished her dead. What she’d done here—to him and to the Pratts—was rotten and lowdown and lousy, but not rotten, lowdown and lousy enough for a death sentence.

      He just didn’t know what he was supposed to feel now. Grief? Remorse? Loss?

      He’d gone through all of that when she’d taken off. All of that and so much more.

      But eventually, after what had seemed like an eternity spent in an emotional pit that had felt like the deepest, darkest hallway in hell, he’d come out of it. He wasn’t sure how—he guessed time had taken care of it—but little by little he’d begun to be able to look at the whole thing as one huge mistake. A lapse in his own judgment that he’d paid for—a lot.

      Little by little he’d gotten over his feelings for Lea—all of his feelings for her. The good feelings that had gotten him into trouble in the first place, and the bad feelings Lea had left him with.

      Little by little, he’d come to see that although she might have shared his house, his bed, his life for a while, he hadn’t really known her at all. Who and what she actually was hadn’t been revealed to him in any way until she’d walked out on him. She’d been a complete stranger. A stranger who had put on an elaborate act. A monumental ruse. A hell of a con job. But a stranger nonetheless. And only a stranger.

      Which meant that now, in a way, hearing about her death was like hearing about the death of a stranger. He wasn’t glad, he wasn’t sad. He was just sobered, he thought, by the fact that someone he’d been involved with had come to a violent end.

      And that was all there was to it for him now.

      So if her sister thought the news of Lea’s death was going to turn him into some kind of bleeding heart and make him an easy mark for a second attempt at passing Amy off as his, she was mistaken. No one would be more surprised than him if Amy proved to be his child. He just didn’t think that was possible.

      Daylight was dawning and, after glancing at the hint of sun through the window, he decided he was never going to get any sleep, so he rolled out of bed. It was anybody’s guess what today would bring and he might as well shower, dress and be prepared.

      But even as he went into the bathroom connected to his bedroom, Lea was still on his mind. Lea and Amy and the claim that Amy was his again.

      Yes, once upon a time he’d believed what Lea Pratt had said. About everything.

      He’d believed she wasn’t aware that she was going twenty-six miles over the speed limit and was sorry and would slow down. He’d believed she was nothing more than the local Pratts’ curious half sister who had buzzed into Northbridge to finally meet them and satisfy her curiosity. He’d believed every single thing she’d told him, including that the baby she’d delivered eight months after their whirlwind, love-at-first-sight courtship, was his premature daughter.

      He’d believed it all until Lea had nearly ripped his heart out by taking away the baby he’d cared for and loved for five weeks as if she were his.

      Then he and the Pratts had had their eyes opened. And faster than Lea had come into their lives, she was gone.

      And so was Amy.

      Luke had made it into the bathroom, but not to the shower. Lost in his thoughts, he’d stopped at the sink and was gripping the edge with both hands, elbows locked, head hanging between his shoulders as the memory of his own stupidity tormented him.

      A sucker—that’s what he’d been. A sucker for a pretty face, a great body and a lot of smooth lies.

      He raised his head and pushed himself from the counter, making it to the shower this time and turning on the water.

      A lot of smooth lies…

      And now here was Lea’s sister with a tale of her own. A tale of woe.

      After Karis Pratt had made her announcement, Luke’s first thought was that Lea wasn’t dead. That she’d sent Amy with her aunt and another pack of lies to get rid of the child. That was why he’d checked up on the explosion story.

      That hadn’t been a lie. Lea was dead. And so was Ted Pratt. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything else Karis Pratt had said was true.

      True or false—not easy to tell, Luke thought as he stepped under the spray of the shower.

      Hard-luck stories usually netted a bigger payoff. That was what Lea had used at the end on her half siblings. Maybe that was the angle Karis Pratt was working again.

      Financially wiped out by something Lea had done.

      Planning to sleep in her car in a snowstorm last night.

      She loved Amy but couldn’t afford to keep her….

      Going over the laundry list of Karis Pratt’s claims, Luke was scrubbing his head so hard it hurt.

      He eased up, muttering a word his mother had washed his mouth out with soap for saying when he was eight.

      It was just that it ticked him off to realize, as he mentally replayed what had happened in his entryway the previous evening, that there was a part of him that kept wondering if it was a scam.

      But Karis Pratt had been telling the truth about Lea’s death. What if