Her Baby's Hero. Karen Sandler

his temper in check, to keep from roaring out at the injustice as he had as a child. All those years of careful self-control nearly went out the window. So he’d held his tongue as Maureen played every card in her deck of accusation and condemnation, calling him an idiot for falling prey to Ashley six months ago, and his decision to accept her child as complete insanity. She accused Ashley of using the baby as a ploy to force him to marry her so she could get her hands on the Kerrigan money. His repeated assurance that marriage most definitely wasn’t in the cards barely appeased his stepmother.

      She’d insisted he demand a DNA test the moment the baby was born. Ranted that by acknowledging the child without any empirical proof was further confirmation of his father’s error in placing Kerrigan Technology into his son’s hands. He would drive the company into the ground, destroy his father’s life’s work.

      His father had nearly done that on his own with a few bad decisions not long before the heart attack that killed him. His acquisitions of a struggling digital media company and a moribund Internet-based data storage firm had nearly broken the company’s back.

      He ran his fingers lightly over the keyboard of his laptop. A half-dozen high-priority e-mails awaited his immediate response. A security report required his input, as did a stack of résumés from applicants for a VP of marketing position. He had plenty to occupy himself with tonight.

      But with Ashley so close, he couldn’t seem to think straight. It made no sense, when he’d barely given her a second thought since he’d left Berkeley.

      That wasn’t entirely honest. Sometimes, during strategy sessions with Kerrigan’s Marketing Department or the interminable discussions with his father’s estate lawyer, she’d drift into the periphery of his consciousness. Sometimes it would just be her face in his mind’s eye, sometimes that one incredible night of pleasure would unroll like a movie, obliterating any other thought.

      Those images invaded now, drumming through him, scents and sensations as real as if she sat beside him. He grabbed the bottled water on the table beside his laptop and gulped down half of it. Dumping it on his head would have been more effective.

      He felt so antsy in the small, overdecorated room, the prospect of waiting until tomorrow morning to see her again seemed unbearable. Especially with the specter of his interaction with Maureen still fresh in his mind. He wanted to stand in the same space as Ashley, breathe in the scent of her skin, let the silk of her hair stroke his palm.

      He was half out of his chair, hand on his car keys before he stopped himself. Dropping the keys on the small table he’d made into his desk, he forced himself to sit, to focus on his computer.

      He tapped at the keyboard until his hands were stiff and his neck ached. Ashley’s face kept floating up like a screensaver on the laptop, her sweet smile, her soft brown gaze fixed on him. Likely, whatever he’d typed in those e-mails he’d sent over the last few hours would be unreadable garble and he’d end up sending them all over again tomorrow.

      When his stomach rumbled, he was shocked to see it was nearly eight o’clock. He rose, tried to stretch out the kinks in his back. As small as it was, the room was the largest the inn had to offer, with a queen-size bed wedged between two side tables, an armoire and the worktable squeezed in at the other end. It wasn’t a business suite by any stretch of the imagination, although some might call its frilly touches homey.

      Not like any home he’d ever lived in, though. The Kerrigan mansion had been furnished by a professional interior designer, each piece chosen to suit Maureen’s taste. Every room seemed staged, with just the right painting on the wall precisely placed above outrageously priced antiques. The house might as well be a museum.

      And yet…there was a memory, buried away, of a different place, a tiny cottage north of San Francisco, its rooms packed with mismatched furniture, its walls crammed with pictures. He’d been five when Kerrigan Technology had taken off, when they’d moved to the mansion. In the three years before his mother died, she’d never quite put her touch on that expansive Tudor in San José.

      He pushed up the window fronting Main Street to let in the cool evening air. Hart Valley had just about rolled up its sidewalks for the night, nearly every storefront dark. Only Nina’s Café across the street was still open, but the last car parked out front pulled away as he watched.

      Thank God he was only staying a day or two. He was used to the vibrancy of San José and San Francisco. This sleepy little town unsettled him, gave him too much quiet space. The high tension of the Bay Area suited him better, kept his mind active, distracted him from the darkness that always edged his life.

      Headlights approaching from the other direction caught his attention. The car, an old-style VW bug, slipped into the parking slot next to his. A woman stepped from the car, the dim light from the Hart Valley Inn sign revealing the gold-red color of her hair. Ashley. She was here.

      His heart thundered at breakneck speed, and he gripped the windowsill as she lifted her gaze to the inn’s second floor. She found his window, although it wasn’t the only one lit. The VW’s door still open, she stood there, frozen. She looked ready to climb back into the car.

      Don’t go! The sound of his own voice rang in his ears, and he realized he’d said it out loud. In the preternatural silence of Main Street, she had to have heard. Still she clung to the car as if planning her escape.

      Finally she slammed the door shut and started for the inn’s front door. Relief surged through him. It alarmed him that her arrival meant so much to him, and he clamped down on the emotions that threatened to bubble up.

      Backing from the window, he looked around the room and realized how hazardous it would be to have her here, especially after their close call in her living room. He’d catch her downstairs before she came up. They could meet down in the parlor where the inn hosts set up coffee in the morning.

      By the time he stepped out onto the landing, Ashley had already reached the bottom of the stairs. Her beauty stunned him momentarily, so she’d climbed several steps before he could speak.

      “I’ll come down,” he told her, starting toward her.

      Gripping the rail, she hesitated. “I have to talk to you.”

      He stopped on the step above hers. “You’d better not be here to tell me to leave.”

      “I’m not,” she said, tension edging her tone.

      “We can’t go to my room.”

      Heat flared in her eyes. “No. We can’t.”

      He edged past her, putting out a hand. “We’ll sit downstairs.”

      He might as well have been offering her a snake instead of his hand, but she took it. The way she leaned on him as they descended the last few steps told him she needed his help more than she would likely admit.

      She let go the moment they reached the bottom, but he held on long enough to guide her toward the parlor. “Is that normal?”

      Hands lightly on her belly, she glanced at him sidelong. “What?”

      “You’re exhausted.” He took her hand again to help her down onto the sofa in the parlor.

      “Why wouldn’t I be?” She leaned her head against the unforgiving high back of the Queen Anne sofa. “It’s late.”

      “It’s eight-thirty.” He sat beside her, keeping a decorous two feet between them. “At Berkeley we’d stay up all night arguing economic theories.”

      She smiled, looking his way. “You argued economic theories. I lectured you on Shakespeare.”

      Her eyes were half-lidded from tiredness, he realized, but he could so easily picture that red-gold head on a soft pillow, bedroom eyes beckoning him. “What did you want?”

      Her gaze slid away. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

      His heart pounded as irrational fear surged through him. “There’s something wrong with the baby.”

      Startled,