Paternity Unknown. Jean Barrett

do that. She deserves to know.

      Ethan made up his mind. He would tell her everything over breakfast. She might react very badly to the truth, order him out of the cabin and her life. He wouldn’t blame her if she did, even though it would kill him if she turned away from him now. No other choice, though. He would have to take his chances with her.

      It was when he turned off the shower that he was able to hear a kind of reverberating noise somewhere outside the cabin. Sounded like machinery.

      A snowmobile? he wondered. Had Lauren fired up her snowmobile?

      Puzzled, he flung back the shower door and grabbed a towel. It wasn’t until he emerged from the stall and was swiftly drying himself that he realized what he was hearing was a heavy-duty vehicle of some sort.

      The thing suddenly went silent, as if it had arrived at its destination. Seized by a grim understanding, his stomach lurched.

      Ethan dragged on a pair of jeans. He didn’t bother with any other clothes. He could hear voices out in the living room. He knew there was no point in trying to make a break for it. He wouldn’t get ten yards.

      His chest and feet bare, he left the bathroom, walked into the living room. He had been wrong in his judgment. Time had already run out on him.

      There were two of them, both of them with faces like stone. Maybe they were state troopers, or maybe they were from the local sheriff’s department. He didn’t know, didn’t care. All that mattered was Lauren. She stood there staring at him with an expression on her face that chewed him up inside.

      One of the uniforms held a gun on him while his younger partner approached him and began to cautiously check his jeans for any weapon he might be carrying.

      The officer with the gun addressed him, solemnly intoning, “Ethan Brand, you’re under arrest as a suspect in the murder of Jonathan Mortimer Brand. You have the right to…”

      Ethan didn’t listen to the rest, didn’t even look at their faces as he stood there without moving. The only face that mattered was Lauren’s. She still wore that stricken expression.

      He tried to meet her gaze, tried to send her a silent message of appeal, imploring her forgiveness. But she turned away from him. He had never felt such a miserable sense of abandonment.

      Eleven months later

      IT WAS ANOTHER Montana. The mountains and the forests were still there, just as he remembered them. But they weren’t wrapped in deep snow. The gaudy colors of early October tinted them now, the hardwoods ablaze with crimson and gold against the drab green of the pines. The air was kinder, too, almost balmy and wearing a faint autumn haze.

      Yeah, it was different, although Ethan was able to recognize the road he traveled, this time in a rental sedan that almost matched the clear blue of the sky. There were familiar landmarks, like the sign that advertised vacation cottages for rent in Elkton.

      Elkton. That was why he’d come back to this place. He had unfinished business with Hilary Johnson, who now lived permanently in her hometown.

      His grandfather’s former housekeeper had lied on the stand when they’d brought her back to Seattle as the chief witness in Ethan’s trials. Both juries had believed her, but her testimony hadn’t been enough to convict him. Insufficient evidence. He’d been acquitted in the end.

      Ethan should have let it go at that, gotten on with his life. He couldn’t. Whatever the final verdict, he knew that the police and the public continued to doubt his innocence. He had to know why Hilary Johnson had lied. Had to do whatever he could to clear himself, or this cloud of guilt would shadow him for the rest of his days.

      Hell, why was he playing games with himself? He had realized the moment he’d boarded the plane, even before then, that it was not just Hilary Johnson who was bringing him back to Montana. Lauren. He had to try to make it right with Lauren.

      The road climbed the ridge and swept around a bend. Ethan slowed the car. Another landmark. This was the spot where he had skidded and gone over the embankment.

      Recollections. And the worst of them was the gut-wrenching memory of Lauren’s face when those two cops had hauled him away from her cabin in cuffs. The look of betrayal on her face had haunted him all those long months they had kept him in jail.

      He had to try to make it right with her. If she would let him.

      He was seething with that hope when he reached the turn into her driveway and descended the long, winding lane. Maybe she wouldn’t be here. He hadn’t considered that.

      Swooping around a curve, he emerged from the trees. Another vehicle, a green compact, was parked at the edge of the clearing. He figured it had to be hers. He pulled in behind it and climbed from the rental.

      The ground here had been white when he’d last seen it, the lake frozen. Now the clearing was a golden brown with drifting leaves and the open waters of the lake a deep blue. No wind, either. The morning was tranquil.

      Ethan was aware of the stillness as he crossed the clearing to the cabin, mounted the steps of the porch and arrived at the front door. The door was slightly ajar. When he rapped on it, it spread inward.

      “Lauren,” he called softly. “You here?”

      No answer. The open door was an invitation. He probably had no right to look at it that way, but he did.

      Ethan walked into the living room and was immediately assaulted by memories. Some of them were raw and painful. Most of them were good memories. He tried to hang on to those, just as he had clung to them all those months in jail.

      The cabin was silent. There was no sign of Lauren. But sacks of groceries stood on the bar that divided the kitchen from the living room, as if she had recently arrived home from the store and hadn’t had time to unpack them.

      A movement through one of the windows at the side of the cabin captured his attention. Ethan went to the glass and looked out. Lauren was there in the yard putting seed in a bird feeder. The sight of her slim figure had emotions welling up inside him. They threatened to spill over when she left the feeder and trotted back around the corner of the cabin.

      She hadn’t heard his car, didn’t know he was here. He turned away from the window, waiting for her. When she came through the door and discovered his presence, she stopped, a look of naked shock on her face.

      Swiftly recovering herself, she challenged him with a sharp, “How did you get in?”

      It was not the greeting Ethan wanted to hear, even if he did deserve it. “The door was ajar. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

      She set the container of sunflower seeds on a small table just inside the door and then moved away toward the far end of the living room, as if she didn’t trust him to be anywhere near her.

      “How long have you been here?” she demanded.

      “I just got—” He broke off. He could see she was trembling. She was afraid. Afraid of him. Stung by her fear, he tried to reassure her, saying solemnly, “I told you once, Lauren, that I wouldn’t hurt you. I meant it. I mean it now.”

      “You turn up like this out of nowhere just to tell me that?”

      She was right. He should have phoned her first, asked if he could see her. Why hadn’t he? Maybe because he’d feared she would hang up on him.

      She raked her fingers through her auburn hair. That’s when he noticed she had cut it and that this shorter length suited her. Her action was evidence that she was still apprehensive. He tried again to ease her.

      “I wouldn’t hurt anyone, Lauren, and I didn’t. What I was accused of when they arrested me last year…well, I stood trial for that and was—”

      “I know. It was all over the news.”

      Yeah, given his grandfather’s wealth and prominence, he supposed the whole thing was sensational enough to have been covered even here in Montana.

      “Then