Unexpected Daughter

“Brijette.” The voice of the pharmacist at the back counter brought her mind into the present.

Thankful to be able to stop herself from that line of thinking, she grabbed the nearest bottle of lotion and hurried to the rear of the store where Elliot Arneaux, the pharmacist and owner, bagged several bottles of pills for the elderly Mrs. White. The lady waved at Brijette when she left, and Elliot motioned for her to come behind the counter.

“What’s wrong, Elliot?” She leaned her hip against the cabinet.

“I won’t keep you long, but I wanted to show you this.” He held a piece of paper in front of her.

It was a prescription written from one of the clinic’s pads with her signature at the bottom. On closer inspection, however, she saw that it wasn’t her signature but a fair likeness. A sick feeling started to grow in the pit of her stomach.

“Elliot, this is for OxyContin. You know I don’t write scripts for narcotics like that. DocWheeler writes those.”

The pharmacist frowned. “I thought so, but I figured with Doc Arthur sick, you might have done it without thinking. I didn’t know the guy who brought it in. I told him I’d have to check with the clinic before I could fill it. He wandered around the store, like he was waiting for me to call, and the next thing I knew he was gone.”

Brijette passed him the prescription, trying to keep her fingers from shaking. “You’ll have to report this.”

“I’m going to. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Thanks. This could get me in trouble if it’s happening in other towns. You guys do monitor these narcotic scripts, right?”

“Yeah, we report excessive narcotic prescriptions from individual doctors. But we’re small, and I know most of the people who come in here. In some other town this would’ve been filled without a question.”

The sick feeling in her stomach began to spread. She didn’t need another problem to add to her list. A prescription with her name on it that she didn’t write definitely fell in the territory of trouble, especially when it was for a narcotic with a very nice street value. Brijette decided she’d have to talk with Matthew Wright as soon as possible. If this had been happening in other pharmacies, the sheriff of Cypress Landing would know, and if he didn’t, he’d check with the city police. Noticing the time on her watch, she hurried to the front to make her purchases. It was late and she still had to pick up Dylan.

GRAVEL CRUNCHED under her tires as Brijette began the quarter mile trip off the highway to her house. The small white clapboard was like a hundred others in the area. Most had been part of a larger plantation at one time or another. She and Dylan had lived in different phases of remodeling for the past three years, while they turned the once ragged place into a comfortable home for the two of them. The blue Tahoe bumped hard in a rut in the drive and Brijette made a mental note to borrow the neighbor’s tractor and box blade to grade the road this week.

“Isn’t that Mr. Robert’s truck?”

Brijette glanced toward Dylan, who she’d just picked up from Norma’s, then she spotted the dual-wheeled truck parked in front of her house. That was convenient. She wouldn’t have to go to Robert Hathorn’s house to ask permission to borrow his tractor, she could ask him now—although the reason he was here would likely cause her to go to his house anyway, or at least to his barn.

Shoving the SUV into Park, she lowered the window. Dylan hadn’t even bothered to undo her seat belt. “That crazy horse of yours get loose again?”

The older man stuck his upper body through the window of his truck and banged his hand on the door. “I don’t know how he did it. Jumped the fence this time, I guess. Think you could help me find him?”

“Sure, I can help you. How long has he been gone?”

“Maybe two hours. I put him in the field and went to town. When I came home, he was gone.”

Brijette waved to him before raising her window to follow the man to his house, not far from Norma’s.

Beside her, Dylan sat straighter. “He should get rid of that horse. He runs away all the time.”

She could see the light in her daughter’s eyes. Despite her complaining, Dylan was obviously excited to have a change in what must have been a boring day for her. The girl reminded Brijette of herself when she was younger. When her grandmother used to take her into the woods to trail an animal, or frequently a person, her senses would be firing, trying to decipher every nuance of her surroundings.

Brijette had learned more about the woods and the land when she was young than many people would ever know. Some people said she had a special gift, or “the sight,” because she could follow a trail so easily and so well. Brijette considered her ability more akin to having very good intuition—at least, that’s what she liked to label the feeling she got when she was on a hard track. She’d moved away from here to go to college where she’d discovered organized search-and-rescue groups and she’d begun adding professional training to her home-taught knowledge. Now she was a member of Cypress Landing’s volunteer search and rescue team, which often meant local people came calling for her help when they needed to find lost pets—and high-dollar horses, of course. But the lessons she’d learned from her grandmother were important ones that she wanted her own daughter to appreciate, lessons that couldn’t be bought with money.

When they came to a stop at Robert Hathorn’s house, Dylan leaped from the truck and bounced on her toes.

“Ready?”

She nearly laughed at the girl, who took off toward the wooden fence. “Don’t step in front of the gate, Dylan. There’ll be enough tracks there already. We don’t need to add more.”

Dylan paused to glance at her. Brijette didn’t have to be close enough to see her to know that she was rolling her eyes. “I know that, Mom.”

All three of them stopped at the edge of the gate. Robert waited behind them while she and Dylan squatted to get a closer look at the ground. Over time the grass had been worn away, leaving only dirt, which was helpful for her.

She tapped Dylan’s shoulder. “Let’s take a walk around.”

Dylan straightened and they started a slow march along the perimeter of the fence that surrounded the pasture. Brijette knelt several times to study the grass or a weed that was bent at an unnatural angle. When they’d made it all the way around, they checked inside the pasture area and finally returned to where Robert waited patiently. Dylan stuck her hands into her pockets. Brijette knew her daughter was glad she didn’t have to tell Robert the bad news.

“That stallion is worth a lot of money, isn’t he?”

Robert frowned at her, pushing back his red hat to scratch his forehead. “Of course he is. He’s one of the top quarter horses around here. I get several thousand dollars stud fee and I could easily sell him for four or five times that. Why?”

“The horse didn’t jump the fence, and he certainly didn’t open this gate and close it by himself. He was stolen. See this—” Brijette motioned for him to come closer, then pointed “—these aren’t your boot tracks. Someone came here, went in the pasture and got the horse. They circled him around and shut the gate, which was really stupid, because if they’d left it open you’d have been more likely to think he’d gotten away on his own.” She took a breath, caught a glimpse of Robert’s wide eyes and stopped. He must have been more attached to that horse than she’d thought.

She put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t you go call the sheriff? Dylan and I will follow the trail to see where it goes. They probably put him in a trailer, farther away from here. I’ll take my cell phone and call you when I find where.”

Robert started toward his truck. He stumbled once and Brijette wondered if she should check on him. But he righted himself.

Turning toward the field, she saw Dylan nearly at the woods. “Come on, Mom. They went this way. That’s Mr. Robert’s favorite horse and he paid a whole bunch of money for him.”

Whoever had taken the horse had also taken the path of least resistance in their escape. The trail led straight to a worn path that followed the creek along Robert’s property. In a few minutes they passed Norma’s yard. Dylan raced ahead of her, and she was satisfied to let the girl lead the hunt herself. However, Dylan picked up the pace considerably and, before she realized it, her daughter was out of sight. Brijette increased her speed. She wasn’t afraid Dylan would get hurt in these woods, but she didn’t want her to stumble onto a horse thief.

Farther ahead, she heard Dylan’s voice shouting. The words brought her to a dead stop. Pure fear sent her into an instant run, ignoring the thin tree limbs that slapped her face and body. Her daughter was saying the name “Cade” and another voice answered—a deeper one.

Brijette broke through the last of the bushes onto the thick carpeted grass of Cade’s yard. Or at least she guessed it was Cade’s. Robert Hathorn had been trying to sell the house, a piece of the family property his great-great-grandfather had built. It had been on the market for months since he’d had it remodeled. She’d never imagined Cade would be living here, but he could certainly afford such an extravagance. Lord knows he had the money.

On the patio, Cade Wheeler stood next to a smoking grill watching Dylan gesture wildly. Even from here Brijette could hear the rumbling of his laughter at her daughter’s antics. Dylan could be quite dramatic in a hilarious kind of way when she embarked on sharing a story, especially one that involved tracking. Brijette hurried toward them. She had to be careful now, for Dylan’s sake as well as her own.

She was almost on top of them when she heard Dylan say, “It’s my mom.” Cade turned toward her, and for the second time today the color drained from his face. She wondered how many of these shocks his heart could take.

Dylan was pulling at her, dragging her closer to him.

“Mom, this is Mr. Cade. I met him when I was fishing. He’s going to work with you. Have you met him yet?”

“What are you doing here?” The words came out with far more force and heat than Cade had intended, effectively stopping Dylan’s chatter. From the corner of his eye he could see that she had gotten very still. The little trespasser, his fishing partner, was Brijette Dupre’s daughter?

“I guess you did meet her at the clinic.” Dylan ground her toe against the patio concrete and Cade cringed slightly. It wasn’t the kid’s fault her mom was…well, what she was. A word that would adequately describe Brijette defied him.

“That’s right, Dylan, I work with Dr. Wheeler at the clinic. Now come on, we’ve got to finish tracking Mr. Robert’s horse.”

The girl tossed her mother a look that Cade wouldn’t have thought kids learned until they reached at least seventeen and believed they knew everything.

“Get real, Mom. You don’t think I dumped the trail like that, do you?” The girl snapped her fingers when she said the word “that” and Cade had to fight to keep from smiling. She pointed to the yard behind his garage. “The trail ended right there. A truck and trailer were parked where you couldn’t see them. Maybe Mr. Cade stole the horse.” She winked at him.

This time he couldn’t stop the smile. “Dylan, I told you it’s Cade, no ‘mister,’ all right? And no, I haven’t stolen a horse or even seen one.”

Brijette moved to the grassy area Dylan had pointed to. The young girl hurried over to her and motioned for Cade to follow. He obeyed without a second thought.

“See, Cade.” Dylan pointed to the grass, which he could now see had been flattened.

“Mr. Wheeler or Dr. Wheeler, Dylan,” Brijette interrupted, and Cade reminded himself to be angry, though with Brijette’s daughter around it was difficult. Oh, well, that was all it took. The fact that she was Brijette’s daughter immediately made him fume again.

“He told me to call him Cade.”

Brijette glared at him. “You haven’t seen anyone around today?”

He shook his head. “No, but I was at the clinic at eight this morning and didn’t get home until six.”

“Your house okay? Nothing missing, nobody broke in?”

“Everything’s exactly as I left it.”

“Probably thought the house was still empty.” This she mumbled more to herself than to him. She retrieved a small cell phone from the chest pocket of her scrubs and dialed a number while walking away from them. Cade hurried to the patio, remembering that he hadn’t even put his steak on the grill yet.

“I’ll tell my mom we’re eating supper with you as soon as she gets off the phone.”

Damn, he’d completely forgotten he’d given the invitation.

“Mom, Cade invited us to eat with him, okay?”

Brijette dropped the phone into her pocket, and at last he got to see her look shocked. “I’m sure you misunderstood Dr. Wheeler, Dylan.”

Dylan’s lips curved into a pout. “No, I didn’t. He said me and my mom should stay for supper. He said it right before you got here.”

“Hmm. I really don’t think we should impose on Dr. Wheeler. Come on, let’s go.” She focused her attention on him. “The sheriff will be around to check the area.”

Brijette began to stride across the yard toward the creek.

“But, Mom, he invited us and he’s new here. He needs to have company so he won’t have to eat all by himself.”

“Dylan, I told you once and I’m not going to say it again. And since when did you start whining?”

Dylan didn’t move from where she’d positioned herself next to him. Brijette frowned at her from across the yard. Were those tears he saw in the girl’s eyes? He sighed and shuffled like a prisoner until he was in front of Brijette.

“I did invite Dylan and her mom for supper. It won’t take long to get two more steaks ready, so stay. Seeing as we’re going to be around each other a lot the next few months, we might as well get used to it.”

Brijette glanced past him to where Dylan awaited the verdict on the patio.

“You didn’t know I was her mother when you gave that invitation or you wouldn’t have done it. I don’t want her to think she can start whining and get her way.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t have given the invitation if I’d known who her mother was. But I did give it, because I like Dylan. And I still do, despite who her mother is. She seems to be a good kid. Wonders never cease, do they?”

He spun on his heel. This round went to him. Brijette’s tight jawline and partially opened mouth gave him a slight feeling of satisfaction. He chose to ignore the other feelings seeing her again caused.

Stopping on the stairs to the patio, he looked back. One more thing he had to get straight. “Oh, and Brijette, my name is Cade, not Mr. Wheeler, not Mr. Cade and damn sure not Dr. Wheeler. People who know each other as intimately as you and I don’t usually use that kind of formality.”

THE THREE OF THEM finished their meal much faster than Dylan would probably have liked. When Cade offered them a ride to Mr. Robert’s to get their car, Dylan was thrilled, but Brijette would rather have crawled through the woods on her hands and knees than spend more time with him. He’d acted as though she’d said they were going to wade off into the swamp when Brijette told him they’d go through the woods back to their car. In the end it had been easier to agree than to try and explain her reluctance to Dylan.

Dylan wanted to sit up front by him, but he held open the back door and motioned for her to get in, forcing Brijette to take the passenger seat. Dylan asked him questions from the back seat during the ride. He didn’t seem to mind and Brijette was just thankful that she didn’t need to join in. When they stopped at Robert’s, the house was dark and his truck was gone.

“Do you think Mr. Robert is trying to find who took his horse, Mom?”

“He’s probably at the sheriff’s office. Now, thank Cade for the supper so we can go. It’s late.” She was desperate to extricate herself from this situation.

Dylan already had her seat belt off and she pushed herself between the front seats. “Thanks for the supper, Cade. We’ll have to do it again soon. Maybe you can come eat with us one night.”

Brijette pushed her into the back. “Dylan, good grief.”

Her daughter wasn’t the least perturbed by the reprimand. She was grinning herself silly in the back seat while Brijette was trying to decide if she could take a leave of absence from work. But there’d be no avoiding Cade. She had to work with him, but she didn’t want her daughter to be so awestruck by him. That could only lead to trouble. Brijette reached for the door, but Cade caught her arm. “Wait, Brijette. Dylan, go wait in the car. I need to talk to your mom about a patient and we have to do that in private.”

Dylan nodded and slid from her seat, kicking gravel all the way to their SUV. At least he’d made her mad in the end. She hoped Dylan would stay miffed at Cade for, oh, the next six months.

The lights from the dash glowed on Brijette’s skin and Cade had to tell himself twice to take his hand off her arm. Some things never changed and that shotgun-blast feeling he got from touching Brijette Dupre was one of them. He didn’t want to remember how her skin felt under his fingers, but he did. She faced him and he could feel his body leaning toward her, something about those dark eyes… He forced himself to straighten and put more distance between them. Thankfully, she spoke and that bewitching spell broke.

“Thanks for being so nice to Dylan. I’ll try to make sure she doesn’t worry you at your house.”

“Dylan doesn’t worry me, and I didn’t ask you to stay in this car so you could thank me.” At last he could get his brain on track and onto the most important question he’d ever asked.

“Right. Which patient did you want to discuss?”

“I don’t want to talk about a patient. I wanted to speak to you in private.”

She squirmed in her seat and he imagined she knew what was coming. “I want you to tell me who in the hell is the father of that child.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE QUESTION she’d dreaded most, and it was coming from the last person she’d ever expected to say those words. Brijette didn’t try to answer right away. Nothing good could come of this. But, if she could keep Cade from learning the truth, then he’d leave and her life would be normal again, maybe. But how normal would it be for Dylan? In just a minute she would deny her child her father. A man who could buy her things, take her places Brijette never could. But would he teach her to love and care for other people, to give back to the community that raised her? Probably not. He hadn’t wanted a child with her years ago and she couldn’t imagine that he or his stiff-and-proper mother would want one now.

“She’s not yours, that’s for sure.”

His features seemed to crinkle in the dim light.

“How old is she?”

His words were softer than she expected. She might have described them as sad if she hadn’t known better.

“She’s almost ten.”

His eyes slammed on her with a force she could feel and she dug her back into the seat.

“So she could be mine. Unless you jumped into bed with someone else as soon as you got rid of me.”

“I think you know where I spent the three months after you left.”

He had the decency to stop glaring at her after that. She opened her mouth to ask him why he was so concerned about a child he’d never wanted in the first place—a child he’d been more than happy to get rid of. But she froze with her lips barely parted. What if he’d never known she was pregnant? Doubt had entered her mind when Cade’s mother told her of his decision, but she’d tossed the suspicions aside. Mrs. Wheeler was his mother and a seventeen-year-old Brijette had no reason to think the woman would lie. He’d probably decided to pretend it never happened. That he’d never had a part in anything so ugly as paying her off to have an abortion—not him, not Cade Wheeler. If he wanted to feign ignorance, she’d be more than happy to go along. It served her purpose to ignore the whole incident.

She’d been presented with money for an abortion, then left to spend three months in a youth correction facility. Brijette wouldn’t allow Cade to show up now and start making waves in hers and Dylan’s lives. From the moment she’d had her daughter she’d been planning for the possibility of Wheeler interference, though she hadn’t expected it. Thank goodness she’d made the effort anyway, because she was about to put those plans into action.

“Dylan was born twelve months after you left here, and I have the birth certificate to prove it. Unless I’m a human oddity, that’s a couple months too late for her to be yours. I’ll show you the birth certificate if you’re that concerned.”

The steering wheel creaked under the pressure of his hands. “Left that place and jumped into bed with the first guy who came along, huh?”

Brijette thought she wouldn’t care what Cade said, how he saw her. She was wrong. It hurt to know he thought she had no morals. But then he’d believed her guilty of a lot things before now. He was staring at the front windshield and she was amazed that looking at him like this could still make her heart skip. Maybe it was just fear affecting her rather than the glint in his eyes or his slightly full lower lip that she recalled kissing indiscriminately. She’d kissed a few men since, but no one like him. Cade had been in a class by himself.

She didn’t respond and he continued. “Where’s her father? Does he visit, send money?”

She eyed the green light on the radio’s digital display and shook her head.

“Are you telling me he doesn’t know he has a child?”

Her breath caught deep in her lungs then came out in a gust. “I’m telling you he wasn’t interested in having a child. He took off and hasn’t had a thing to do with us since.” That statement was the most honest one of the evening. “I need to go now. I can’t leave Dylan sitting in the car by herself.” She fumbled with the door, but he caught her arm before she could get away.

“Bring that birth certificate to work tomorrow. I am that concerned.”

She stumbled from his truck to her vehicle, thoroughly confused. Cade continued to drill her with questions about Dylan’s father and the more he asked, the less she wanted to tell him. Maybe he regretted the decision he made then. If so, she didn’t care about his change of heart. But why didn’t he mention her pregnancy, their child, the abortion he thought he paid for? Her uncertainty multiplied and she rammed the heel of her hand against her forehead to stop her panicked speculation. With any luck his questions ended here. Now she needed to keep Cade and Dylan apart and hope no one else noticed the uncanny resemblance of the two.

THE CAR DOOR slammed, the engine hummed to life and the red taillights of the SUV disappeared. Gone again and good riddance.

Cade put his own vehicle in motion and tried to beat down the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was not disappointed. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself. But for an instant, just a moment in time, he’d thought the cute little blonde could be his, his own daughter. Then that witch had ruined it, like she’d ruined everything between them. Sharing a child with her would have been pure hell. His child couldn’t be raised by a woman like Brijette, untrustworthy, a liar. A host of even worse descriptive words butted into his brain but he swept them aside. It didn’t matter, the kid didn’t belong to him. Brijette had gone to bed with a lowlife who got her pregnant and took off.

How quickly things could change. At one time Cade had expected to spend the rest of his life, after medical school, right here in Cypress Landing, with Brijette. Then in an instant his plans had come apart. Brijette had been arrested while they were together and she’d been carrying a large package of prescription narcotics in her backpack. Enough to get her sent to that youth correctional facility a few hours away. Before she was sentenced, she’d told his mother she’d take money to stay away from him. He’d wondered what had happened to the girl he’d fallen in love with. But his mother had convinced him Brijette had just made a fool of him, acting as if she cared. So he’d left without another word to her. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her again, until now.