The Black Sheep's Baby. Kathleen Creighton

to be blindsided, and that never happened. When she thought about why it had happened, all she could come up with was an appalling list of mistakes. Her mistakes. Devon hadn’t gotten to be where she was—that is, one of the most respected and feared young attorneys in Los Angeles—by making mistakes.

      Mistake number one, she’d failed to prepare herself. So far, the information she’d been able to assemble on Eric Lanagan was proving to be woefully inadequate. Most of what she knew was in the form of statistics gleaned from Emily’s birth certificate: age, race, state of birth. From that, with the help of her firm’s private investigators and a judge’s court order, she’d been able to put a trace on his credit cards. Finding him, tracking him down—that had been the easy part. Finding out who he was—that was where she’d slipped up.

      Mistake number two, she’d fallen victim to her own preconceived notion of what kind of person Eric Lanagan was.

      Which had led directly to Mistake number three, seriously underestimating her opponent.

      And why not? she furiously asked herself. Twenty-eight-year-old man with no employer of record befriends nineteen-year-old homeless woman and gets her pregnant—that sure said Punk-Sleazebag-Loser loud and clear to her! Didn’t it?

      She’d come prepared to despise Eric Lanagan and to fight him tooth and nail on behalf of her parents for custody of her sister’s child. But she hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t expected him to have parents who would unhesitatingly take her in in the middle of a blizzard and give her a bed and pajamas and an old flannel bathrobe that smelled of sunshine. She hadn’t expected Eric Lanagan to have such an interesting and compassionate face, and eyes—like his father’s, she was startled to realize—that gave the impression they’d seen way too much of the world’s failures and cruelties.

      And, she thought with a curious little flutter high up under her ribs, it was damn hard to despise a man while he was holding a tiny baby in his arms, tenderly, expertly feeding, burping and then rocking her to sleep.

      “So—you live in Los Angeles, then?”

      Devon jerked her gaze and her attention back to the two people who were sitting at the table, sipping coffee and watching her—one warily, the other with that quiet curiosity she found so unnerving. She chewed toast, drank coffee, swallowed.

      “That’s right—downtown L.A., actually.” It was Mike who’d asked, but she addressed her reply to Lucy as well. And all the while she was telling the Lanagans about her high-rise corner condo—from one side of which, on a clear day, she could see the Pacific Ocean, and from the other, snow-capped mountain peaks—making bright, tension-easing conversation, with another part of her mind she was gnawing and nibbling at the problem—the enigma—of their son, like a dog with a thorn in its paw.

      I need to find out more. I have to get to know him.

      Footsteps thumped on the stairs, making no effort to be stealthy. Devon’s heart lurched, and so did her hand; she swore under her breath as hot coffee slopped onto the front of the flannel bathrobe. Again Lucy started to get up, and again Mike held her where she was. The footsteps clumped down the hallway; a bulky shape flashed past the service room, past the open kitchen doorway. The door to the back porch opened, then banged shut. A moment later the outer door did, too. Three pairs of eyes jerked toward the windows, as if pulled by the same string.

      “Chore time,” Lucy announced. And this time when she pushed back her chair, her husband didn’t try to stop her.

      The windows were filled now with a swirling, milky light. Dawn had come, and no one had noticed.

      Devon retreated to her room while around her the farmhouse awoke to the routines of a snowy winter morning. Footsteps clumped up and down stairs, doors banged, buckets rattled—activity as incomprehensible to Devon as some mysterious ritual performed by aliens. She wished she could be interested in, or at least curious about what was going on. When, after all, was she ever again likely to find herself on a farm? But all she felt was frustrated. Thwarted. Boxed in. She had things to do, important things. But right now none of those objectives seemed achievable. Without the means to accomplish her purpose, without the ability to change her circumstances, she felt powerless—and Devon O’Rourke did not like feeling powerless.

      She’d have to call her office, at least—let them know what had happened. Still too early for that, though; the offices in L.A. wouldn’t be open for hours. Even if she’d had her cell phone with her, which she didn’t. What had she been thinking of, to leave it in the car? And where, exactly, was the car?

      Pacing to the windows did nothing to soothe her restlessness. In fact, it made her feel even more as if she’d been shut into a box—all she could see out there was a wall of swirling white. Now and then the snow thinned enough to unveil shadowy shapes—nearby, the gnarled skeletons of great oak trees, and farther away, the hulking mass of a huge old barn, the kind she’d heretofore seen only on the pages of calendars and in children’s picture books. She couldn’t see any sign of the rented Lincoln Town Car complete with GPS—though she knew it had to be out there, somewhere, under all that snow. She hoped it wasn’t in the road, at least. She hoped it wasn’t—though she suspected it might be—in a ditch.

      Someone, a bulky and indistinguishable shape in a parka, was crossing the snowy swath between the house and the barn, accompanied by two smaller shapes which romped and frisked in excited circles around the bulky one. Mike, apparently, because a moment later there was a soft tapping at Devon’s door, and Lucy put her head in.

      “Hi—” her voice was scratchy-soft, her smile strained. “I just wanted to check and make sure…Mike and I have to go out and do chores. Since Eric’s not…uh… Can you keep an ear out for the baby in case she wakes up?”

      Suppressing panic, Devon gulped and said, “Oh—sure, yeah, that’s fine. No problem.”

      “Eric’s gone out.” Lucy gave an embarrassed little shrug and left it hanging.

      “So I gathered. But, if you don’t mind my asking—” Hell, she’d ask it anyway, in utter exasperation. “Where could he possibly go, in this?”

      Lucy’s smile slipped, became gentler, less strained. “Oh—the barn, I imagine.” She stepped into the room, still holding the doorknob, and leaned against the partly open door. She was wearing quilted snow overalls, Devon saw, over a thermal turtleneck pullover. “It’s where he always used to go when he was upset about something…or mad at us.” Devon hadn’t said a word or changed her expression, but Lucy suddenly shrugged and looked uneasy. “Well, you know how kids get.”

      “Not really,” said Devon in a companionable sort of way. “Never having had any myself.”

      Lucy made a sound like swallowed laughter. “Well, you were one—and not so very long ago, either. You must remember what it was like.”

      “Not really,” Devon said dryly.

      Lucy looked at her for a moment as though she didn’t believe her, then smiled again, that same soft little smile, and for some reason this time it seemed almost unbearably poignant. “You said your sister was headstrong and rebellious? That pretty much describes Eric, when he was growing up. Maybe that’s part of what drew them to one another, do you suppose? Kindred spirits….”

      Her eyes flew to the windows and she drew herself up, looking fierce and faintly embarrassed. “I’ve got to see to my animals. Sorry to bother you—just wanted to make sure—”

      “Go ahead. I’ll look in on the baby, no problem.”

      “Okay…well…shouldn’t be long…” Halfway out the door, Lucy turned back to sweep Devon with a quick, appraising look. “If you need any warmer clothes, help yourself to whatever’s in the closet. It’s mostly just things I haven’t gotten around to giving away, anyway.”

      “Okay, thanks.” Devon stepped quickly forward when Lucy would have closed the door. Wedging herself into the open space she said in a low voice, terrified that she might wake the sleeping baby, “Uh, you said Eric’s