Ultimatum: Marriage / For the Sake of the Secret Child. Yvonne Lindsay

he was out of the city and had returned to his boyhood refuge. Despite the familiar roar of bull alligators, locusts and frogs, he felt like a stranger in a foreign land. His leaden heart kept him alienated from all that should have been familiar and dear.

      Images of a big-eyed, pale Alicia in the patrol car, the dull stares of his employees after he’d let them go, Cici’s and Logan’s radiant smiles at their wedding bombarded him in a never-ending loop. The thick heat of the swamp pressed too close, making him feel trapped by business and personal problems—and most of it was the Butlers’ fault.

      The air was dank with the stench of rot and mold. He would have preferred to be rock climbing in Utah or Alaska rather than hanging out in the swamp. Still, this was the wild and life was always simpler in the wild. He kept a cabin south of Denali National Park in Alaska that he visited every summer. Too bad he didn’t have time to go there now. It was the one place that was far enough away from his real life so that he could count on solitude there clearing his mind.

      Grabbing the bowline, he spread his legs so that he stood in the middle of the eight-foot aluminum flatboat as it drifted silently through the mirror-black swamp water toward the houseboat.

      A night to himself even in this wild place wasn’t long enough to sort it all out, but it was a start. If Alicia was pregnant, he couldn’t abandon his kid—even if she was Mitchell Butler’s daughter.

      He thought about the families still living in three-room trailers to whom he’d promised homes before the funds to build them had vanished—because of her father.

      Wrapping the line around a rusting cleat, Jake made sure the flatboat was snug against the used tires Bos had nailed as crude fenders along the side of the houseboat. Then he ran his gaze over the shabby structure.

      The houseboat had two tiny bedrooms, a kitchen, no bath. Surprisingly, the place didn’t look any worse for wear. It must’ve been a good ten years since he was last here. Bos had been ill of late, but when Jake had visited him a month ago, he’d told him he’d managed to do what was necessary to maintain it.

      “Not that I get out to the houseboat much these days,” Bos had said. “You’re welcome to it—just like always, anytime. The fishin’s still pretty good even if the water in the swamp gets saltier every year.”

      Bos was another man who felt the need to get away from civilization upon occasion.

      With a frown Jake set his gear down beside Bos’s stacked crab traps. After opening the door to the cabin, he pitched his backpack inside.

      This fish camp was located between the Claibornes’ ancestral mansion, Belle Rose, and Bos’s less developed properties to the south of Belle Rose. Pierre, Jake’s grandfather, had never approved of Jake hanging out at Bos’s camp in the swamp when Jake had been a kid. The truth was, his grandfather had detested Bos with an irrational passion. The old man had considered Bos, who’d run a bar and fought cocks, a bad influence, so most of the time Jake had chosen to sneak off, willingly risking the consequences of Grand-père’s rage later.

      A rebel from birth, Jake had been as fascinated by Bos’s bad reputation as his grandfather had been repelled by it. Not that Bos was really such a bad sort once you got to know him. Bos had adopted his orphaned niece Cici, hadn’t he? He’d understood what it was like not to feel you fit into your family, and he’d taken Jake hunting and fishing and crabbing without even so much as asking a single prying question about his need to escape his domineering grandfather and cocky older twin.

      Bos had encouraged him to learn to fend for himself in the wild, so as soon as he’d been old enough, Jake had explored the endless marshes and bayous on his own, hunting doves and ducks and swimming off forested islands.

      Back then Noonoon, his nanny, used to fuss at him, saying she couldn’t keep a glass jar in the house because Jake was always borrowing them to house his crabs and frogs and minnows and turtles.

      Jake smiled briefly at the memory of Noonoon’s dark face until concern about Alicia alone in his house intruded.

      She was fine, he told himself. She was a big girl. He’d showed her how to set the alarm. Hell, he’d even sent Vanessa over to his house to make sure Alicia had everything she needed.

      Alicia was fine.

      Why couldn’t he forget how pale and shaken she’d looked in that patrol car?

      His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t brought any groceries.

      Forget her.

      He was hungry. If he was going to eat, he had to shoot something or catch something.

      Whatever she’d expected when she’d come to Jake’s house, it wasn’t kindness and concern.

      “If you don’t need anything else, I really do have to get home to my boys.” Vanessa’s voice was crisp and hurried and yet there was a maternal compassion in her dark brown eyes that reminded Alicia of her own mother.

      Alicia caught herself. This woman was a stranger. She had a life and didn’t have much time to deal even briefly with her boss’s personal crisis. Mothering her sons was her top priority.

      “I’ll be fine,” Alicia whispered. “Thanks for sending that man over to board up the window.”

      “You could spend the night with me and my boys if you’re afraid to stay in such a big house all by yourself.”

      “What a sweet offer, but really, I’ll be fine,” Alicia said. “It’s just the night.”

      “I’d enjoy some adult companionship,” Vanessa coaxed.

      Alicia shook her head.

      “Okay, then. He told me to tell you to set the alarm. And if you get lonely—call.”

      Nodding at the older woman, who Jake had paid to take care of her, Alicia held on to the two sacks of groceries as Vanessa shut the front door and then locked it firmly behind her.

      Clutching the grocery sacks to her breasts, Alicia walked back to the kitchen. Mechanically she removed the lunch meat and cereal boxes, a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk and set them on the counter. It was nice of Jake to send food.

      The last rays of the setting sun gilded the edges between the shades and the windowsill. Soon it would be dark outside. She had the rest of the evening to think about her problem. At least Jake had listened and said he would assume his share of the responsibility. He hadn’t thrown her out.

      She wished he was here, and that confused her. She’d felt so wonderful when he’d held her and kissed her. That perplexed her, too. How could she feel this powerful connection to a man who’d made love to her and then had turned her father in to the feds?

      Maybe it was being in this house, where they’d talked and laughed and made love. They had so much fun together that first night.

       Don’t think about it!

      Okay, enough! I have things to do. I’ll make supper, clean the dishes, get ready for bed, hunt for Gus, watch some TV, set my alarm.

       Is it really so important to set an alarm when my doctor’s appointment tomorrow isn’t until noon?

      Just do it.

      She called to Gus, who for once came running. Slathering mayonnaise on two pieces of bread, she made herself a turkey sandwich. When she sat down at the table, Gus hunkered over his bowl and ate his tuna.

      Her thoughts turned to Jake and what she’d said to him before he’d left.

      “But why do you have to go away?” she’d whispered. “I feel guilty running you out of your own house.”

      “Don’t. It’s what I do sometimes—when I need to think.”

      “Think about what?”

      “About what the hell we’re going to do if you’re pregnant.”

      “What