The Paternity Promise. Merline Lovelace

Jack David Petrie. By doing so, they’d also deleted the record of the last time Grace had used her maiden name and SSN.

      A familiar sadness settled like a lump in Grace’s middle. Her naive, trusting cousin had believed Petrie’s promise to love and cherish and provide for her every need. As the bastard had explained in the months that followed, his wife didn’t require access to their bank account. Or a credit card. Or a job. Nor did she have to register to vote. There weren’t any candidates worth going to that trouble for. And they sure as hell didn’t need to talk to a marriage counselor, he’d added when she finally realized he’d made her a virtual prisoner.

      Financially dependent and emotionally battered, she’d spent long, isolated years as a shadow person. Jack trotted her out when he wanted to display his pretty wife, then shuffled her back into her proper place in his bed. It hadn’t taken him long to cut off her ties with her friends and family, either. All except Grace. She refused to be cut, even after Petrie became furious over her meddling. Grace wondered whether those horrific moments when her gas pedal locked on the interstate were, in fact, due to mechanical failure.

      Grace and Hope had become more cautious after that. No more visits. No letters or emails that could be intercepted. No calls to the house. Only to a pay phone in the one grocery store where Jack allowed his wife to shop. Even then it had taken a solid year of pleading before Hope worked up the courage to escape.

      Grace didn’t want to remember the desperate years that followed. The mindless fear. The countless moves. The series of false identities and fake SSNs, each one more expensive to procure than the last. Until finally—finally!—a woman with the name of Anne Jordan had found anonymity and a tenuous, tentative security at Dalton International. She’d been just one of DI’s thousands of employees worldwide. An entry-level clerk with only a high school GED. Certainly not a position that would bring her into contact with the multinational corporation’s CFO.

      Yet it had.

      “Please, Blake. Please believe me when I tell you Anne wanted her past to be buried with her. All she cared about in her last, agonizing moments was making sure Molly would know her father, if not her mother.”

      Or more accurately, that her baby would have the name and protection of someone completely unknown to Jack Petrie.

      Grace prayed she’d convinced Blake. She hadn’t, of course. The lawyer in him wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d dug up and turned over every bit of evidence. But maybe she could deflect his inquisition.

      “Will you tell me something?”

      “Quid pro quo?” His mouth twisted. “You haven’t given me much of a trade.”

      “Please. I… I wasn’t able to talk or visit with Anne much in her last year.”

      She hadn’t dared. Jack Petrie was a Texas state trooper, with a cop’s wide connections. Grace knew he’d had her under surveillance at various times, maybe even bugged her phone or planted a tracking device on her car, hoping she would lead him to his wife. Grace had imposed on every friend she had, borrowing their cars or using their phones, to maintain even minimal contact with her cousin.

      Jack didn’t know about Grace’s last, frantic flight to California. She’d made sure of that. She’d emptied her savings account, had a friend drive her to the airport and paid cash for a ticket to Vegas. There she’d rented a car for a desperate drive across the desert to the San Diego hospital where her cousin had been admitted.

      Five heart-wrenching days later, she’d retraced that route with Molly. Instead of flying back to San Antonio with the baby, though, she’d paid cash for a bus ticket to Oklahoma City.

      She hadn’t used her cell phone or any credit cards in the weeks since she’d wrangled a job as Molly’s temporary nanny. Nor had she cashed the checks Delilah had written for her salary. She’d planned to go back to her teaching job once Molly was settled with her father. The longer she spent with the baby, though, the more painful the prospect of leaving her became.

      The thought of leaving Blake Dalton was almost as wrenching. Lately her mind had drifted to him more than it should. Especially at night, after she’d put Molly to bed. The increasingly erotic direction of that drift spurred pinpricks of guilt, then and now.

      “Tell me how you and Anne met,” she pleaded, reminding herself yet again Blake was her cousin’s love, the man she’d let into her life despite all she’d been through. “How… Well…”

      “How Molly happened?” he supplied.

      “Yes. Anne was so shy around men.”

      For shy, read insecure and cowed and generally scared shitless. Grace couldn’t imagine how Blake had breached those formidable barriers.

      “Please,” she said softly. “Tell me. I’d like to know she found a little happiness before she died.”

      He stared at her for long moments, then his breath eased out on a sigh.

      “I think she was happy for the few weeks we were together. I was never sure, though. Took me forever to pry more than a murmured hello from her. Even after I got her to agree to go out with me, she didn’t want anyone at DI to know we were seeing each other. Said it would look bad, the big boss dating a lowly file clerk.”

      He hooked his wrists on his knees and contemplated his black dress shoes. He must not have liked what he saw. A note of unmistakable self-disgust colored his deep voice.

      “She wouldn’t let me take her to dinner or to the theater or anywhere we might be seen together. It was always her place. Or a hotel.”

      It had to be that, Grace knew. Her cousin couldn’t take the chance some society reporter or gossip columnist would start fanning rumors about rich, handsome Blake Dalton’s latest love interest. Or worse, the paparazzi might snap a photo of them together and post it on the internet.

      Yet she risked going to a hotel with him. She’d come out of her defensive crouch enough for that. And when she discovered she was pregnant with his child, she’d had no choice but to run away. She wanted the baby desperately, but she couldn’t tell Dalton about the pregnancy. He would have wanted to give the child his name, or at least establish his legal rights as the father. Hope’s false IDs wouldn’t have held up under legal scrutiny, and her real one would have led Petrie to her. So she’d run. Again.

      “Did you love her?”

      Damn! Grace hadn’t meant to let that slip out. And she sure as heck hadn’t intended to feel jealous of her cousin’s relationship with this man.

      Yet she knew he had to have been so tender with her. So sensitive to her needs. His mouth would have played a gentle song on her skin. His hands, those strong, tanned hands, must have stroked and soothed even as they aroused and…

      “I don’t know.”

      With a flush of guilt, Grace jerked her attention back to his face.

      “I cared for her,” he said quietly, as much to himself as to her. “Enough to press her into going to bed with me. But when she left without a word, I was angry as well as hurt.”

      Regret and remorse chased each other across his face.

      “Then, when I got the report of the bus accident…”

      He stopped and directed a look of fierce accusation at Grace.

      “I wasn’t with her when it happened,” she said in feeble self-defense. “She was by herself, in her car. The bus spun out right in front of her and hit a bridge abutment. She was terrified, but she got out to help.”

      “And left her purse at the scene.”

      “Yes.”

      “Deliberately?”

      “Yes.”

      “Why?”

      Grace shook her head. “I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you any more than I have. I promised Anne