Kiss Me, Kill Me. Maggie Shayne

thought in silence. “I was just responding to what you said—the press in town digging for secrets, yada, yada.”

      She blinked as if her mind were having trouble processing his words. He decided to cut her a little slack, though he wouldn’t forget the clue she’d dropped here tonight. She had a secret. She didn’t like the press digging around town. And he knew what the press had been digging for. Information about Livvy, dead all these years. Information about her baby, the one that might be his. Now why would the local medico be nervous about questions like those?

      “So what made you rent out the room when you’d already decided not to?” he asked.

      She shrugged. “This lady was a lot easier to turn down on the phone than she was in person.”

      “She came to your house?”

      Carrie nodded. A red curl dropped onto her nose, and she brushed it away with the back of one hand. “Yeah, just as we were getting ready to meet you at the firehouse. That’s why I didn’t make it.” She shook her head. “She’s really sweet, and all alone, and it just would have been mean to say no.”

      “Besides, she doesn’t look like a reporter, right?”

      “Right.”

      “Then again, who does, huh?”

      She shrugged.

      “I mean, you accused me of being a reporter when we first met. Do I look like one?”

      “No. I mean, not an airbrushed, suit-wearing, hair-styled, talking head sort of reporter, anyway. You look more like an embedded, in the line of fire, risk-taking, rogue type.”

      “I do?”

      She nodded. “It’s the hair.”

      “The hair?” He ran a hand over his head, from the front to the ponytail in the back.

      “This hair, too,” she said, and then he felt her palm on his whiskered cheek and experienced an electrical storm in his pants. Holy shit.

      He cleared his throat, sought ways to change the subject, to distract himself, if not her. “Your son is great. You’ve done an incredible job raising him.”

      She lifted her brows. “Thank you. I agree completely. Sam’s amazing.”

      “Have you done it all on your own?”

      “Mmm-hmm.”

      “So then, you were never married…? To his father, I mean.”

      She slanted him a look. “I’ve never been married to anyone.”

      He studied her face briefly. “So Sam’s father isn’t in your life. Is he in Sam’s?”

      “No.”

      “Do you even know who he is?”

      She widened her eyes. “Are you suggesting I sleep with so many men I can’t keep track?”

      “I didn’t mean it like that at all. I just—I mean, do you think you have the right to keep Sam from getting to know his father?”

      “You don’t know that I’m keeping Sam from doing anything.”

      “That’s true, I don’t know. Are you?”

      She looked at him. “I would never do anything to hurt my son. If he wants to know about his father, all he has to do is ask. And he will, when he’s ready. And then I’ll tell him everything I know. But I don’t have to tell you any of it.”

      “Everything you know?” he repeated. “That’s an odd way to put it.”

      “Why are you asking so many questions about my son?”

      He felt a rush of guilt for taking advantage of her slightly inebriated state. Sam looked a little like him, maybe a lot like him, and he had the right birthday, and damn, he sure did have a gorgeous mother, to boot. But that didn’t prove anything. And he thought again that maybe this thing he’d been calling a gut feeling was nothing more than a serious case of wishful thinking gone awry.

      Still, her evasiveness made him more suspicious than before. He would definitely be looking into Sam Overton’s records—the public ones, anyway. Sadie’s and Kyle’s, too. The problem was, adoption records weren’t public, so he wasn’t sure his search would tell him much.

      He wasn’t worried, though. Nor was he in any big hurry. He was here to find the truth, and he had no doubt he would. He’d waited sixteen years—admittedly without knowing he was waiting—so a few more days or even weeks wouldn’t hurt anything. Impatience wasn’t a trait he much liked. He was relaxed, laid-back, easy. He trusted that things would work out the way they were supposed to. That he’d been led here, that he’d learned about Livvy’s baby at all, seemed to him to be proof of that. He had time. Time to find his child. And time to do so without alienating the most fascinating woman he’d met in years.