A Mother's Claim. Janice Kay Johnson

managed to swallow much of his breakfast, either.

      Nolan was reaching for his phone to order delivery from a local deli when the bell on the door rang and a woman walked in. He froze, hand outstretched, and watched her look around as she approached the counter. She might be a customer...but he was betting not.

      No—he knew she wasn’t. The resemblance between this woman and Christian was too obvious.

      Tall and yet slight to the point of appearing fragile, Dana Stewart wore honey-blond hair in some kind of twist on the back of her head. Her bone structure echoed her son’s—no, he supposed it was the other way around. Her cheekbones were almost too sharply defined, leaving hollows beneath. There was a tension to the way she carried herself, shoulders squared, head high, as if she wouldn’t let herself relax in any way. The hand not clutching a purse was curled into a fist.

      She was beautiful, but he wondered how much more beautiful she’d been before her son’s disappearance damaged her in ways both visible and invisible.

      Needing to be battle ready, Nolan slid off the stool and stood before she reached him.

      He met wary gray eyes, which she hadn’t bequeathed to Christian. His were a warm brown.

      “Ms. Stewart.”

      “You’re guessing,” she said, in a distinctively throaty voice.

      “No.” He made a sound even he couldn’t decipher. “You look like him.”

      Pleasure showed on her face. “I do, don’t I? Thank you for emailing the pictures. I know you were annoyed at me—”

      “I’m not that petty,” he broke in.

      Her teeth sank into a full lower lip. “I...would have understood.”

      Nolan had to momentarily close his eyes to recover his resolve. I’ll fight dirty to keep you, if it ever comes to that. Of course it would come to that. No, he might not be petty, but inevitably, he would hurt this woman.

      “Christian is still in school.”

      “I assumed he would be. Someone at the inn—” she gestured behind her “—told me where to find you.”

      Nolan waited.

      “You don’t want me here.”

      “He’s not ready.”

      The pain in those eyes could rip him in two. “Mr. Gregor, do you know how long I’ve waited to see my son?”

      His jaw tightened. “Are your needs more important than his?”

      As if he’d struck her, she fell back a step, making him feel like an asshole. But then she squared her shoulders again and lifted her chin. “Do you have any concept of the connection a woman feels with her unborn child? And then when she sees him, holds him, nurses him? What happens to both of them when that connection is snapped?”

      His gaze lowered to her breasts, full despite her overall thinness. He saw her, a breast bared to a blond baby who had latched on. Her head was bent, her hair falling forward, her tenderness palpable.

      When his eyes met hers again, he wondered what his face betrayed.

      “If I hadn’t understood, I wouldn’t have put his DNA online,” he said roughly. “What you have to understand is the power of the bond he and I have. I’ve been his father in every meaningful way.”

      “Every meaningful way?” Dana Stewart’s voice could have cut glass. “You are not his father either biologically or legally.”

      He hadn’t meant to issue threats, not yet, but heard himself say, “The legal part is...still a possibility.”

      Temper glinted in her eyes. “We’ll fight you tooth and nail.”

      “We? I thought there was no longer any ‘we’?”

      “Divorced doesn’t mean we aren’t united as Gabriel’s parents. And I should warn you that Craig is a wealthy man.” She flicked a glance around the store, a suggestion of disdain putting his back up. “He can afford the best legal team.”

      That possibility had been worrying him, but Nolan still had investments he could tap into. During his years in the military, he hadn’t had much reason to spend. That didn’t mean he was rich, however.

      So fight dirty. “Has it occurred to you,” he said softly, “that if he wins, you lose? Is that what you want? Your son going home with your ex-husband? You don’t really think he’s going to spend his money for you, do you?”

      She flinched before regaining control. Knowing his aim had been dead-on made him once again feel like shit, but the devastating truth was that he would lose Christian if he was nice.

      “You’re wrong.” Her voice gained strength. “We loved each other. Craig wouldn’t hurt me that way.”

      Nolan shrugged. “Your risk.”

      As if his insolence had been a trigger, her eyes narrowed and she said fiercely, “Gabriel is my son. If you help me, I’ll allow you to maintain a relationship with him. If you don’t...?” Her turn to shrug, after which she whirled around and walked away from him.

      His gaze followed her until the door closed behind her, the bell tinkling cheerfully. And then he went to the front window and kept watching as she followed the path to the inn, a hundred yards away.

      That tall, slim body might look fragile, but he had a bad feeling her backbone and will both were steel. She had suffered for a very long time, but now the future that had been only a dream was within her reach.

      He didn’t have any doubt that she had meant her threat. Both her threats.

      Nolan stayed where he was long after she vanished inside the Lookout Inn.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE HOSTILITIES HAD blown up so quickly Dana hadn’t had a chance to ask whether Gabriel would go straight home after school or to Mr. Gregor’s business. Or whether, knowing she would be here, they’d arranged for him to hide out at a friend’s.

      Nolan Gregor had said, “I’m not that petty,” but as she paced her room at the inn, her stomach still ached from his vicious reminder that her interests and Craig’s were not the same. It was painfully true that they weren’t a family anymore. He had backed off enough to allow her to make this trip alone, but Gabriel was his only son. He might insist on custody.

      And what if Gabriel would be best off with him? He was most attached now to a man he saw as a father. If the woman who had stolen him really had been mentally ill, he might never have had a relationship with her that he could depend on. And, face it, however desperate Dana was to have her son, she knew she didn’t have the faintest idea what a preteen boy needed, how he thought and felt. Look how poorly they’d communicated on the phone!

      Yes, she would fight tooth and nail—she’d meant that—but unless she was willing to alienate her son, she needed Nolan Gregor’s cooperation. There had to be a way to use his love for Gabriel to help her. First and foremost, they both wanted Gabriel happy.

      But honesty compelled her to admit that her urgent need to hold her son again, to have him turning to her with love and trust, drove her so powerfully that separating that need from what was best for Gabriel would be difficult. She had no doubt the same was true for Nolan. And circumstances made it easier for him to convince himself that what he wanted was also what Gabriel wanted.

      Christian.

      She might have to force herself to use that name at first, but she would never, could never, think of her son as Christian. Her little boy was Gabriel, the name she’d loved, the name she’d chosen.

      Nerves jumping, Dana checked her watch. Elementary school students were released at three thirty, according to the inn’s front-desk