The Paternity Promise. Merline Lovelace

paused, trying not to think of the life she’d put on hold, forcing herself to blank out the image of the young teens she took such joy in teaching.

      “Until a few months ago,” Blake repeated in the heavy silence, “when you asked for an extended leave of absence to take care of a sick relative. That’s the story you gave us, isn’t it? And the principal of your school?”

      She knew they’d checked her out. Neither Delilah nor her sons would allow a stranger near the baby unless they’d vetted her. But Grace had become so adept these past years at weaving just enough truth in with the lies that she’d passed their screening.

      “It wasn’t a story.”

      Dalton’s breath hissed out. Those sexy blue eyes that had begun to smile at her with something more than friendliness the past few weeks were now lethal.

      “You and Anne Jordan were related?”

      Anne Jordan. Emma Lang. Janet Blair. So many aliases. So many frantic phone calls and desperate escapes. Grace could hardly keep them straight anymore.

      “Anne was my cousin.”

      That innocuous label didn’t begin to describe Grace’s relationship to the girl who’d grown up just a block away. They were far closer than cousins. They were best friends who’d played dolls and whispered secrets and shared every event in their young lives, big and small.

      “Were you with her when she died?”

      The question came at her as swiftly and mercilessly as a stiletto aimed for the heart. “Yes,” she whispered, “I was with her.”

      “And the baby? Molly?”

      “She’s your daughter. Yours and…and Anne’s.”

      Blake turned away, and Grace could only stare at the broad shoulders still encased in his tux. She ached to tell him she was sorry for all the lies and deception. Except the lies had been necessary, and the deception wasn’t hers to tell.

      “Anne called me,” she said instead. “Told me she’d picked up a vicious infection. Begged me to come. I jumped a plane that same afternoon but when I got there, she was already slipping into a coma. She died that evening.”

      Blake angled back to face her. His eyes burned with an unspoken question. Grace answered this one as honestly as she could.

      “Anne didn’t name you as Molly’s father. She was almost out of it from the drugs they’d pumped into her. She was barely coherent… All I understood was the name Dalton. I knew she’d worked here, so…so…”

      She broke off, her throat raw with the memory.

      “So you brought Molly to Oklahoma City,” Blake finished, spacing every word with frightening deliberation, “and left her on my mother’s doorstep. Then you called Delilah and said you’d just happened to hear she needed a temporary nanny.”

      “Which she did!”

      He gave that feeble response the disgust it deserved. “Did you enjoy watching my brother and me jump through hoops trying to determine which of us was Molly’s father?”

      “I told you! I didn’t know which of you it was. Not until I’d spent some time with you.”

      Even then she hadn’t been sure. The Dalton twins shared more than razor-sharp intelligence and devastating good looks. Grace could see how her cousin might have succumbed to Alex’s charisma and self-confidence. She’d actually figured him for Molly’s father until she’d come to appreciate the rock-solid strength in quiet, coolly competent Blake.

      Unfortunately, Blake’s self-contained personality had made her task so much more difficult. Although friendly and easygoing, he kept his thoughts to himself and his private life private. If he’d had a brief affair with a woman who’d worked for him, only he—and possibly his twin—had known about it.

      Grace had hoped the DNA tests they’d run would settle the question of Molly’s paternity. She’d been as frustrated as the Dalton brothers at the ambiguous results.

      Then they’d launched a determined search for Molly’s mother and thrown Grace in a state of near panic. She’d sworn to keep her cousin’s secret. She had no choice but to do just that. Molly’s future depended on it. Now Blake had unearthed at least a part of that secret. She couldn’t tell him the rest, but she could offer a tentative solution.

      “As I understand it, Molly’s parentage can’t be absolutely established unless the father’s DNA is matched with the mother’s. She… Anne…was cremated. I don’t have anything of hers to give you that would provide a sample.”

      Not a hairbrush or a lipstick or even a postcard with a stamp on it for Molly to cling to as a keepsake. The baby’s mother had lived in fear for so long. She’d died the same way, mustering only enough strength at the end to extract a promise from her cousin to keep Molly safe.

      “You could test my DNA,” Grace said, determined to hold to that promise. “I’ve read that mitochondria are inherited exclusively through the female line.”

      She’d done more than read. She’d hunched in front of the computer for hours when not tending to Molly. Her head had spun trying to decipher scientific articles laced with terms like hypervariable control regions and HVR1 base pairs. It had taken some serious slogging, but she’d finally come away with the knowledge that those four-hundred-and-forty-four base pairs determined maternal lineage. As such, they could theoretically be used to trace a human’s lineage all the way back to the mitochondrial Eve. The Daltons didn’t need to go that far back to confirm Molly’s heritage. They just needed to hop over one branch on her family tree.

      The same thought had obviously occurred to Blake. His eyes were chips of blue ice as he delivered an ultimatum.

      “Damn straight you’ll give me a DNA sample. And until the results come back, you’ll stay away from Molly.”

      “What?”

      “You heard me. I want you out of this house. Now.”

      “You’re kidding!”

      She discovered an instant later that he wasn’t. In two strides he’d closed the distance between them and wrapped his fist around her upper arm. One swift tug had her off the sofa arm and marching toward the library’s door.

      “Blake, for God’s sake!” As surprised as she was angry, she fought his grip. “I’ve been taking care of Molly for weeks now. You can’t seriously think I would do anything to hurt her.”

      “What I think,” he returned in a voice as icy as his eyes, “is that there are a helluva lot of holes in your story. Until they’re filled in, I want you where I can watch you day and night.”

      Two

      “Get in.”

      Blake held open the passenger door of his two-seater Mercedes convertible. The heat of the muggy July evening wrapped around them, almost as smothering as the worry and fear that clogged Grace’s throat.

      “Where are we going?”

      “Downtown.”

      “I need to tell Delilah that I’m leaving,” she protested. “Get some of my things.”

      “I’ll let my mother know what’s happening. Right now all you need to do is plant your behind in that seat.”

      If Grace hadn’t been so stunned by this unexpected turn of events, the brusque command might have made her blink. This was Blake. The kind, polite, always solicitous Dalton twin. In the weeks since she’d insinuated herself into Delilah’s home, she’d never known him to be anything but patient with his sometimes overbearing mother, considerate with the servants and incredibly, achingly gentle with Molly.

      “Get in.”

      She got. Even this late in the evening, the pale