Sullivan's Child. Gail Link

really doesn’t answer my question.”

      Cat paused a moment before speaking. “It’s not an especially original story.”

      “What is?”

      That remark brought a smile to Cat’s lips. “Rory didn’t want kids.”

      “He told you that?”

      Cat nodded her head. “In no uncertain terms. A few weeks after we started seeing one another, I ran into a college friend with her new baby. We stopped to chat for a few minutes and when she left, I mentioned to Rory that Nancy got what she’d always wanted, a child. I saw that chance meeting as an opening, to see what he thought about having kids. You know how important family is to me.

      “Well, that was when he informed me they had no place in his future, in how he saw his life. They demanded too much time, too much energy, energy he could put to better use, he said, getting ahead in the academic world. So you see, a child would have been the last thing Rory would have wanted to know about.”

      “He might have changed his mind if you had told him.”

      Cat shook her head. “I doubt it. He wanted no ties, no commitments. Nothing to hold him back from where he was going and what he wanted to do.”

      “But that was then.”

      “And this is now,” Cat replied. “I know.”

      “So what’ll you do?”

      “Go home and think how I can best to tell my daughter that I have a surprise for her.”

      Rory doffed his black leather jacket upon entering his town house, removing the photo from it beforehand. Walking to the butler’s table, he poured himself a stiff whiskey, took a seat and set the photo down where he could see it.

      Sipping the potent liquid, Rory contemplated the truth that the picture contained.

      A daughter. Flesh of his flesh. Blood of his blood. A part of him that he hadn’t known about until now. No clue. No inkling. No warning.

      Children had never played an important part in his life, nor had he thought they ever might. He had other priorities, other interests in life.

      Nice in theory.

      But theory had been shot to hell less than an hour ago. Now he was faced with reality in the shape of a dimpled, black-haired little girl who smiled with his face.

      And he didn’t even know her name.

      “Rory knows.”

      The man Cat addressed her words to hadn’t even joined her in the booth of the popular restaurant that catered to the legal crowd in Cedar Hill before she spoke. Bulging briefcases, three-piece suits, beepers and cell phones were de rigueur for all the attorneys present. The man who slid his tall, lean frame into the seat opposite her was no exception.

      “And what’s he going to do about it?”

      “How should I know, Brendan?”

      “He gave you no hint of what he intends?” His tone was direct and to the point, the same way that he conducted himself in the courtroom.

      Cat let out an exasperated sigh. Sometimes her big brother could be so infuriating with his cool, precise legal mind. “I wasn’t speaking to you as a client.”

      “Sorry,” he said, extending his hand across the width of the table that separated them, giving hers a squeeze. “Force of habit.”

      Cat suspected that it was just that, and maybe the influence of that overly cool woman that Brendan lived with. She often wondered how her brother, the warm and open man she knew and loved, managed sharing his life with someone who derived her greatest pleasure from her work, first and foremost. People came a distant second.

      “I forgive you, but you know that already, don’t you,” she said.

      Brendan gave her one of his lazy, winning smiles and held up his left hand toward her, fingers folded, thumb extended.

      Cat smiled at the familiar gesture and held up hers, pressing it against her brother’s in an automatic response. Both carried a small scar from their childhood upon their respective thumbs when they decided to become what they called “double blood” brothers. To the five-and nine-year-old, that was a stronger bond than merely being brother and sister. This sharing and mixing was a sacred trust. It was a promise made and forever kept.

      Their moment was interrupted by the arrival of the waitress, who served a mug of hot tea to Cat and a large glass of dark, imported beer to Brendan.

      “I warned you that this might happen when he came back.”

      “I know. It’s just that…”

      “What?” Brendan probed, his handsome face reflecting his concern for his sister’s welfare.

      “Rory’s changed.”

      “How?”

      “In subtle ways,” she explained. “I saw it in his eyes. Heard it in his voice.”

      Brendan put his half-empty glass back on the table. “Maybe you were seeing what you wanted to see, sis. Underneath,” he said with a sharp, revealing tone, “he’s probably still the same selfish bastard that took advantage of your trust and your love.”

      Cat smile at her brother’s staunch defense of her, but she couldn’t pretend that she had been a helpless victim in her affair with Rory. “I knew what I was doing.”

      Brendan cocked his head to one side. “Did you? He was your first lover, someone a lot more experienced than you.”

      Her first lover. Her only lover. “Yes. It wasn’t really his fault if I misunderstood what he wanted out of the relationship, if I fell in love and he didn’t.”

      “He pursued you,” Brendan pointed out, the tactics he used every day in his job as an assistant district attorney slipping through once again. He was making a case, laying out the facts as he saw them.

      “Because I wanted him to, Brendan.”

      He rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe that you’re defending him.”

      “I’m not,” Cat protested. “I’m merely stating how it was.”

      “I know how it was,” her brother replied, concern for his younger sister evident in his long-lashed, hazel-green eyes. “I saw for myself that it damn near killed you when he walked away from the relationship.”

      “But I survived.”

      “Without him,” he said sharply.

      “Yes, but with a part of him that grew inside me, the best part of him and me.”

      “And now he wants what exactly? To take up where he left off? To try again to screw up your life?”

      “Honestly—” she said “—I don’t know.” Cat paused, taking another sip of her drink before she continued. How could she know what Rory wanted? It wasn’t as if she had a pipeline into his brain, or his heart. Maybe, once. Or so she had flattered herself into thinking.

      “Come on, Cat,” Brendan insisted. “He must have given you some indication why he suddenly showed up on your doorstep.”

      “Perhaps for old time’s sake.”

      Brendan made a sound of disbelief.

      “Why he came is not the point.”

      “Then what is?”

      “The reaction I saw on his face when he looked at Tara’s picture. A look I’d never seen before.”

      “Ego,” Brendan retorted. “I’ve seen far too many cases of that in my work. A shot of sperm doesn’t make someone a father. It doesn’t automatically endow them with the qualities of a good parent. It takes caring, concern, responsibility and the ability to love.