Found: One Secret Baby. Nancy Holland

could Charlie Thompson have a brother who oozed wealth and power the way Morgan Danby did? Mr. Danby must have been four or five years younger than Charlie, and he didn’t look at all like the stocky, red-haired murderer.

      But her visitor had said something about a trust fund. And someone had had enough money to hire the best criminal defense lawyer in L.A. to represent Charlie. The investment had paid off. They’d plea-bargained down to life with the possibility of parole. The idea that Charlie would ever walk free again tightened Rosalie’s stomach one more notch.

      Another if only—if only she could have claimed attorney/client privilege and refused to answer Mr. Danby’s questions. But she’d known from the start she couldn’t be Márya’s friend and her lawyer at the same time. And given her situation now, she didn’t dare openly obstruct the efforts of Charlie’s family to find out whether he had a child.

      “Ms. Mendelev had no permanent address in Los Angeles,” Mr. Danby said. “So apparently you weren’t a good enough friend to give her a place to hide, as you put it, after she ended her relationship with my brother.”

      “Relationship?” Rosalie’s temper finally snapped. “Like the one between a boxer and his punching bag?”

      The corners of his mouth twitched. No doubt he was pleased he’d broken through her self-control. She softened her face to assume a professionally neutral expression again.

      “I offered to let Márya live with me, but she was a proud woman. And once she had the protection order, she thought she’d be safe. Her attorney, the staff at the shelters where she lived, and I all tried to tell her otherwise, but in her home country defying a court order was something done only by the very brave or the very stupid.” She paused. “Given how viciously he murdered a defenseless woman, I’d guess bravery isn’t your brother’s problem.”

      Mr. Danby had the decency to flinch. “I’ve read the police report on the incident.”

      She swallowed another jolt of anger. A woman’s death was much more than an “incident.” At least, it was in Rosalie’s world. She wasn’t so sure about Morgan Danby’s.

      “Where did you get your information?” she asked him.

      “A private investigator.”

      Maybe she could use that somehow. “A private investigator who worked for you?”

      He glanced away. “For my stepmother Lillian, Charlie’s mother.”

      So this man didn’t share a gene pool with Charlie Thompson. A tightness in her chest she’d scarcely been aware of loosened and she could breathe freely again.

      “You must know it’s not necessarily in the P.I.’s best interest to tell his client everything he knows.” She let that sink in. “But it is in his interest to find leads he could be paid to follow.”

      She might have struck a nerve. After all, Mr. Danby was here himself, which meant someone had had enough sense to fire the P.I. She’d bet it had been Danby.

      “Why should I doubt the investigator’s integrity?” he asked her in a slightly bored tone.

      “Did he provide your stepmother with a copy of the coroner’s report on Ms. Mendelev?”

      Morgan Danby flinched again. “I assume the investigator didn’t think that was something she needed to see.”

      “A smart move on his part. But you see my point.”

      “You’re suggesting the P.I’s claim that a child had survived was a ruse to squeeze more money out of Charlie’s mother.”

      “Did he find any documentary evidence Ms. Mendelev had given birth?”

      She held her breath, outwardly calm, inwardly hollow with fear.

      Danby shook his head.

      “The P.I. found a few people who thought she’d been pregnant when she’d arrived at the homeless shelter in Fresno, and one woman at an L.A. shelter who said she’d seen Ms. Mendelev with a baby shortly before Charlie … before she died.”

      “Staff members at the shelters or residents?”

      “Residents. Staff members always claimed confidentiality when the P.I. talked to them.”

      “As they should, of course. They need to protect their clients from unwanted intrusions into their private lives.” She gave him a pointed look, but he shook it off.

      “Were Ms. Mendelev alive, I would have complete respect for her privacy.”

      Which probably meant he’d have refused to give Márya a dime of Charlie’s money.

      “But if she left a child behind,” Danby continued, “well, of course, that child’s grandmother has a keen interest in its welfare.”

      Rosalie couldn’t stop another grimace at the “its”, but emotion was her enemy here.

      “The operative word being ‘if.’ Without any proof such a child exists, I hope you will do as you suggested and respect the late Ms. Mendelev’s privacy.”

      “Of course.” He stood up.

      She stood too, but didn’t extend her hand until he did, then shook his with a distaste she didn’t bother to hide. “Goodbye, Mr. Danby.”

      “Goodbye, Ms. Walker. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure.”

      Under other circumstances, she might have smiled at that exit line. The man was witty as well as drop-dead sexy. He was also a major threat to everything that mattered in her life.

      She showed him to the door, closed it behind him, and walked back to her desk on legs that barely held her. She sank gratefully into her chair, her whole body shaking.

      After he left Rosalie Walker’s office, Morgan did some quick research on his laptop at a nearby coffee house before he drove the rented Porsche past a house not far away.

      Nothing unusual about the place or about anything he’d been able to dig up on the Walker woman, except that she owned the house free and clear. Given the location in a solidly middle-class L.A. neighborhood, it was hard to know how she’d managed to buy it without a mortgage. Maybe she’d inherited it. Or maybe she wasn’t the one who’d paid for it.

      Could the lady lawyer have a “sugar daddy,” as his father would have said? For some reason the idea rankled. Still, it fit the contrast between the low-profile law practice and the high-priced house. She was an attractive woman, if you ignored the pit-bull personality, and she probably kept that leashed around the man who’d paid for the cozy little bungalow. If she did have a sugar daddy, though, it didn’t look as if he lived in the house. Too many flowers in the garden. Two black-and-white cats lounged on the back of a flowered sofa in the front window. If Morgan didn’t know better, he would have thought the house belonged to some little old lady. But he’d spent an uncomfortable part of the afternoon trying not to stare at Ms. Walker’s breasts, so he knew for a fact that she was no old lady.

      He reminded himself he didn’t like short, curvy women. Or lady lawyers. He especially didn’t like lady lawyers he didn’t trust.

      Rosalie wasn’t able to escape her office for another three hours. As she crossed the lobby on the way to the parking lot, she ran into her friend Vanessa, who was headed back in with a latte and muffin from the local coffee house.

      Five-foot-ten and reed-thin, Vanessa could have been a supermodel, but she had a CPA along with her law degree and made her living in the arcane realm of tax law. Friends since college, for the last two years they’d shared an office suite, along with a receptionist and two paralegals, with three other solo-practice attorneys.

      “Leaving early?” asked Vanessa. “Lucky you!”

      Rosalie smiled. “I’m going home to my guy.”

      “Must be true love.” Vanessa winked, took a sip of her coffee, and headed to her