The Mother Of His Child

He continued ruthlessly, “If it’s been thirteen years since you’ve made love with anyone, you’re long overdue. And I know I am.”

Marnie stood very still, and of all the emotions churning in her belly, she couldn’t have said which was uppermost. Desire? Fury? She said, finally, “That would be so easy for you, wouldn’t it? Your daughter in Burnham and your mistress in Faulkner. Everything compartmentalized.”

“Easy? No. But I can’t deny that I want you. And I want you as my mistress far more than Kit needs you as a mother!”

Although born in England, SANDRA FIELD has lived most of her life in Canada: she says the silence and emptiness of the north speaks to her particularly. While she enjoys traveling, and passing on her sense of a new place, she often chooses to write about the city which is now her home. Sandra says, “I write out of my experience; I have learned that love with its joys and its pains is all-important. I hope this knowledge enriches my writing, and touches a chord in you, the reader.”

The Mother Of His Child

Sandra Field

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

MARNIE Carstairs pulled her car over on the shoulder of the road; the motor gave its usual asthmatic wheeze, then settled down to a low grumble. From her vantage point on the crest of the hill, she could see the town of Burnham spread out below. Her destination. The place that might answer—at least partially—some of the terrible questions she’d lived with for nearly thirteen years.

No wonder her hands were ice-cold and her throat tight with anxiety.

Burnham was a pretty town on this sunny Sunday in late April, situated as it was around the shores of an inlet of the Atlantic. Its houses and shops were painted bright colors, while its church spires pointed cheerfully to the high-piled clouds and the wheeling gulls. A few yachts admired their own reflections in the silky water, their hulls crisply painted white and blue. On the wooded hills that overlooked the town, Marnie could pick out the stone buildings of Burnham University. Did Calvin Huntingdon work there? Perhaps his wife did, too.

It was their names that had brought Marnie here today. Calvin and Jennifer Huntingdon of Burnham, Nova Scotia. Two names, a place and a date: the date of birth of Marnie’s child all those years ago, the child who had been, against her knowledge and her every wish, adopted. The child she had not seen or heard of since then.

If her mother hadn’t died at fifty-two, a death that no one had anticipated, least of all Charlotte Carstairs herself, Marnie would never have found that single piece of paper in a plain white envelope in her mother’s safe. She was sure of it. Her mother would have destroyed it.

The Huntingdons’ names had been printed on the paper in Charlotte Carstairs’s angular script, along with the birth date and the name of this little town: a discovery that had rocked Marnie to her roots.

The Huntingdons must have adopted her child. What other conclusion could she come to?

Briefly, the town blurred in her vision. She stared down at the steering wheel, noticing that her fingernails had dug tiny crescents into the vinyl covering, and that her wrists were taut from the strain of her grip. She had very strong fingers and wrists; for the past five years she’d been learning how to rock climb. Making a deliberate effort to relax, she blew out her breath in a long sigh, checked in the rearview mirror and engaged the clutch. No point in sitting here. She’d come this far, she’d at least follow through on the rest of her plan.

If you could call it a plan.

As she pulled back on the highway, she noticed that the bank of clouds to the southeast had lowered over the hills, the edges of the clouds swabbed with a theatrical blend of purple and gray. Storm clouds. Then a gust riffled the water and the yachts swayed uneasily at their moorings.

It wasn’t an omen. Of course it wasn’t.

The Huntingdons’ address was engraved on Marnie’s mind; she’d found it, all too easily, in the phone book. Her plan, such as it was, was to drive past the house and check it out; at least that way she’d see where her child was living.

And was she praying that a twelve-year-old girl would run out of the house just as she drove by?

Basically, she didn’t have a plan. She’d come here because she couldn’t possibly have done otherwise. No force on earth could have kept her away. Even though she was afraid that her action would tear open old wounds better left alone.

The Huntingdons would be wealthy; Charlotte Carstairs would have seen to that. No, Marnie had never worried about the material circumstances of the baby she had never seen. It was other concerns that had haunted her over the years. Was her daughter loved? Was she happy? Did she know she was adopted? Or did she believe that the two people bringing her up were her true parents?

Calvin Huntingdon her real father, and Jennifer her only mother.

Stop it, Marnie, she scolded herself. One step at a time. Check out the house first and then go from there. This is a small town; you can buy yourself a pizza at the local hangout and ask a few discreet questions about the Huntingdons. Stop for gas down the street and do the same thing there. No one can hide in a place the size of Burnham. You grew up in Conway Mills; you know all about small towns.

As if on a signal, the sun disappeared behind the clouds, Burnham’s narrow main street darkening as if a blanket had been thrown over it. Or a shroud, she thought with a shiver of her nerves. If this were a movie, they’d be playing spooky music right now, the kind that warns you something really scary’s going to happen.

She made it a policy to stay away from horror movies. The footsteps-coming-up-the-stairs-and-you-know-it’s-thebad-guy-with-an-ax kind of movie.

On impulse, Marnie turned into a paved parking lot to her left, which surrounded a small strip mall and an ice-cream stand decorated with little flags that were now snapping in the wind. Spring had come early to Nova Scotia this year. The day was unseasonably warm, and Marnie adored ice cream; it was number two on her list of comfort foods, right up there with barbecued chips. A flea market was going on in the mall, so the parking lot was fairly crowded. She drew up several rows away from the ice-cream stand, grabbed her purse and hurried between the parked vehicles. In front of the stand, half a dozen girls in jeans and anoraks were arguing about their favorite flavors; Marnie’s heart gave a painful lurch, her eyes racing from one to the other of them. But they were all younger than twelve.

She didn’t even know what her own child looked like.

Marnie bit hard on her lip and forced herself to scan the list of flavors. Another gust rattled the striped awning, and the last of the six girls took her cone from the attendant and put down her money.

“I’ll have a double, please,” Marnie said. “Cherry swirl on the bottom and mocha fudge on top.”

It wasn’t the time to worry about calories. She needed all the help she could get now that she was actually here in Burnham and she’d go for a jog on the beach when she got home tonight.

With a snap like a pellet, the first raindrop hit the awning. “Gonna have a little storm,” the woman said affably. “But that’s April for you. ’Bout as dependable as a kid on rollerblades.”

The rain now sounded like a machine-gun attack. “Maybe it won’t last long,” Marnie offered.

“On again, off again, been like that the past few days. There you are, miss, that’s two dollars.”

Marnie paid, grabbed a wad of paper napkins and took a hefty bite from the mocha fudge. To give herself courage, she was wearing her new denim overalls with a turquoise turtleneck and matching turquoise flats. The sweater emphasized the unusual color of her eyes, which were also turquoise, rather like an ocean shoal on a summer’s day. Her earrings, big gold hoops, were almost hidden by a tumble of bright chestnut curls. The wind caught in her hair, tossing it around her head, and hurriedly she stepped back under the awning.

Although the rain showed no signs of abating, now that she was this close, Marnie craved action even if it was only to see the house. She said to the attendant, “Can you direct me to Moseley Street?”

“Sure thing. Go right through town to where the road forks. The left turn’s Moseley. Wow—hear that thunder?”

“Thanks,” Marnie said, lifting her face to the sky. All nature’s excesses tended to exhilarate rather than frighten her. In a surge of optimism, she thought, I’ll see where my daughter lives, I’ll find out she has the best of parents, and I’ll go home with my mind at rest. Knowing she’s loved and happy.

Peace. Closure of a kind. She was long overdue for both.

She took another big hunk out of the ice cream and plunged out into the rain, her shoes slapping on the wet pavement. Raindrops stung her face, almost as if they were hail, her sweater sticking wetly to her skin. Head down, she raced for her car. Luckily, she hadn’t bothered to lock it.

A dark green Cherokee was parked next to it. As she lunged for the door handle of her own car, a man suddenly appeared from behind the Cherokee, traveling fast, his head bent against the rain. Marnie yelped a warning, stopping in her tracks. The man looked up, but his momentum carried him forward so that he drove her hard against the driver’s door. He was a big man. Her ice cream inscribed a neat arc in the air and plopped onto the hood of the Cherokee, leaving her holding the empty cone. Runnels of pink and brown splattered the shiny green paint, along with walnuts and little chunks of bright red maraschino cherries.

Marnie began to laugh, gurgles of infectious laughter that made twin dimples appear in her cheeks. “Oh, no,” she gasped, “cherries on the Cherokee. I am sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going and…” She broke off, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

The man still had her jammed against the door of her car. Water was dripping onto his forehead from his black hair, which was cut short and had a tendency to curl. His eyes were blue, so dark a blue as to be almost gray, and deep set. Like a quarry, Marnie thought, a slate quarry. His nose was crooked and his cheekbones wide-spaced: details that gave his face character. For he was—and she had decided this in the merest instant—the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

Attractive? He gave a whole new dimension to that word. Drop-dead gorgeous would be more like it.

He also seemed to have been struck dumb. His silence gave her time to feel through her clothing his lean muscularity and to appreciate his height—several inches taller than her five foot nine. He looked, she realized belatedly, as though he’d had a severe shock; nor had he, even momentarily, laughed at the ludicrous sight of her airborne ice cream. Suddenly frightened, she shoved against him and repeated, “What’s the matter?”

Slowly, he straightened to his full height, his gaze glued to her face. She could feel her cheeks flush from more than her headlong run through the rain. In a hoarse voice, he demanded, “Who are you?”

It wasn’t the response she’d expected. Distant lightning flickered across his face, shadowing the lines of strain around his mouth. He was pale under his tan and his eyes were blank: as though he’d been shaken to his foundations. Into the silence between lightning and thunder, Marnie countered, “What do you mean, who am I?”

He ran his fingers through his wet hair, disarranging it still more. “Exactly what I say. I want to know your name and I want to know what you’re doing here.”

“Look,” she said forcefully, “I’m sorry we bumped into each other and I’m sorry I got ice cream on your nice new car. But I’ve got enough napkins here to clean up four cars, and you bumped into me just as much as I bumped into—”

“Just answer the question.”

Thunder rumbled melodramatically overhead. Marnie’s eyes darted around her. No one else in sight. All the sensible people were indoors waiting for the rain to end. Which was precisely where she ought to be. “I don’t have to answer any of your questions,” she retorted. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“I’ve got to know who you are!”

Exasperated, Marnie announced, “I’m not in the habit of telling strange men my name—especially ones as big and dangerous-looking as you.”

“Dangerous?” he repeated blankly.

“You’re darn right.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Listen, can we start over? And in the meantime, why don’t we get in my car? You’re getting soaked.”

“Not on your life.”

“You’re reading me all wrong,” he said, making an obvious effort to speak more normally. “I’m not trying to abduct you or harm you in any way—that’s the last thing on my mind. But I’ve got to talk to you and we’re both getting wetter by the moment. Here, I’ll give you my car keys, then you’ll know we’re not going anywhere.”

He fished in the pocket of his faded cords and produced a key ring, then passed it to her. Marnie took it automatically, although she was careful not to touch him. The keys were warm from his body. “I’d rather get wet, thank you very much,” she said. “No way am I getting in the vehicle of a total stranger. What do you think I am, nuts?”

For the first time, something like a smile loosened the taut lines of his face. “If I didn’t feel as though I’ve just had the rug pulled right out from under me, I might even see this as funny,” he said. “I’m an entirely respectable citizen of Burnham who’s never once in the past fifteen years been seen as remotely dangerous. Not even around university administrators, who are enough to make a saint contemplate homicide. Although, when I think about it, there might be a few gun-toting guerrillas in Third-World countries who’d agree with you.”

Guerrillas? With guns? And he was trying to reassure her? She said tartly, “Respectable citizen? Huh.” In one quick glance, she took in the impressive width of his shoulders and the depth of his rib cage. “You’d look right at home having a showdown with a bunch of thugs.”

“I assure you, I lead a blameless life,” he said, a gleam of self-mockery in his slate blue eyes.

The lightning was a hard flash this time, much closer; Marnie’s overalls were, by now, clinging clammily to her legs. She added, “Anyway, you could have another set of keys in your other pocket.”

His smile grew wider and definitely more convincing. Yikes, Marnie thought, you shouldn’t be allowed out, mister. The woman isn’t born who could resist that smile. And she watched as he turned out both pockets and patted the pockets on his shirt to show they were empty. It was a blue shirt, now molded by the rain to his flat belly. “Please,” he said.

A raindrop trickled down the shallow cleft in his chin; he could have done with a shave, which added to his general air of unreliability.

Wondering if she was being a complete idiot, Marnie unlocked the passenger door of the Cherokee and pushed the button to unlock all the other doors. A peal of thunder battered its way noisily across the parking lot. As she gave him one last suspicious scrutiny, he yelled, “Aren’t you afraid of lightning storms?”

“No. It’s large, angry men I’m afraid of,” she yelled back. Then she climbed in the Cherokee, putting the keys in her pocket and waiting for him to get in. On the drive to Burnham, when she’d tried to imagine what might happen today, her wildest fantasies couldn’t have come up with this scenario.

As he opened his door, he said, “I thought all women were scared of thunder.”

“That’s a huge generalization. I love thunderstorms, hurricanes and blizzards. Shut the door, you’re letting the rain in.”

He climbed in, slammed the door and turned toward her in his seat, raking her features almost as though he’d never seen a woman before; the smile had vanished. In a voice charged with suppressed emotion, he said, “What’s your name, where are you from and what are you here for?”

“Why do you want to know all that?”

He hesitated perceptibly. “You…remind me of someone.”

As her brain, finally, swung into action, Marnie’s heart began to beat with sick, heavy strokes. There was only one reason why she should resemble someone he knew…wasn’t there? Clenching her fists against her wet dungarees, feeling more afraid than she’d ever been in her life, she took a giant step into the unknown. “Do I remind you of a twelve-year-old girl who lives in this town?” she croaked.

CHAPTER TWO

THE man’s mouth thinned. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions. For God’s sake, tell me who you are!”

“My name’s Marnie Carstairs. I live in Faulkner Beach—fifty miles down the coast.” Although his eyes were as hard as stones, giving as little away, Marnie forced herself to take a second momentous step. “Is your name Calvin Huntingdon?”

In a ferocious whisper, he demanded, “How do you know who I am?”

She sagged back against the seat. He was Calvin Huntingdon. This was the man who’d lived with her child for nearly thirteen years. This was the man her daughter would call father. Her daughter existed. Lived right here in Burnham.

Tears flooded Marnie’s eyes. She fought them back, she who had fought back so much emotion in her thirty years. Swallowing hard, staring at the rain that was streaming down the windshield, she asked her third question in the same tight voice. “Did you adopt a baby girl nearly thirteen years ago? She was born on the twenty-second of June.”

His breath hissed through his teeth. As Marnie’s eyes flickered over his features, she saw that once again he looked thoroughly dangerous. “How did you get my name?” he grated. “Adoption papers can only be accessed by the child, and only then as an adult.”

“Does it matter?” she asked tonelessly. “It was by chance, that’s all. Pure chance.”

“You expect me to believe that? Come off it—what’s the name of the game?”

Through the pain and confusion that was surging through her, Marnie felt the stirrings of anger. She scrubbed at her wet cheeks with the napkins that she still seemed to be clutching, sat up straighter and looked right at him. “There’s something very wrong with this scene. I’m not on trial here!”

With a deadly quietness, he said, “Then why are you here?”

And how could she answer that? When she herself didn’t know the answer. Hadn’t gotten any further in her planning than to drive past the Huntingdons’ house and to ask a few innocent questions of people who’d never link her with a child adopted all those years ago. And finally her mind made the connection that had been glaringly obvious ever since she’d collided with Calvin Huntingdon. “She…she looks like me,” she stumbled. “My daughter…she looks like me.”

Some of the tension eased from her body. A smile spread slowly over her face, a smile of such wonderment and joy that the depths of her irises were as translucent as the sea, and her soft, vulnerable mouth as gently curved as a new moon. Her daughter bore the marks of her true mother; was, in a very real way, her own flesh.

He said harshly, “Very touching. Are you an actress, Marnie Carstairs? Or do you just watch too many soap operas?”

Her jaw dropped. In a burst of antagonism, she snapped, “Do you treat her like this? My daughter? Doubting everything she says? Jeering at all her emotions? Because if so, then you’re not fit to be her father.”

“She’s not your daughter! You gave up that right a long time ago.”

“She’ll always be my daughter,” Marnie cried. “No one on earth can convince me otherwise—and certainly not you.”

“So what about the father?” he lashed. “Where’s he? Or are you saving him up for another day?”

“He’s none of your business.”

“Get real. Why have you turned up in Burnham thirteen years after the fact? What are you after—money? Is that it?”

To her own surprise, Marnie started to laugh. A ragged laugh, but a laugh nevertheless. “Right on—I’m after your money. Give me a million bucks or else I’ll turn up on your doorstep and raise hell.” Her voice rose. “How dare you? You don’t know the first thing about me and you dare accuse me—”

“I know you gave up your child nearly thirteen years ago. It seems to me I know rather a lot about you, Miss Carstairs.”

Marnie had gone too far for discretion. “She duped me, my mother. I thought I was going to marry my cousin Randall and all three of us would live together—me, Randall and the baby. Oh, God, it’s such a long story and I was such a stupid little fool to trust her, but—”

“I’m sure it’s a long story,” he interrupted smoothly. “After all, you’ve had a long time to come up with it, haven’t you? But oddly enough, it’s not a story I want to hear. Just answer me one question. Why did you come here today?”

“You know what?” Marnie retorted with deliberate provocation, flags of temper reddening her cheeks, her breasts heaving under her wet sweater. “I don’t like you, Calvin Huntingdon.”

“You don’t have to like me. And I don’t go by Calvin. The name’s Cal.”

“Oh, sure,” she said rudely. “So we’re on a first-name basis. Isn’t that just ducky?”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I’m beginning to realize where my daughter comes by her temper. And her red hair.”

“My hair isn’t red,” Marnie snapped childishly. “It’s auburn. Which is quite different.” The storm of emotion in her breast craving release, she gave him a narrow-eyed scrutiny. “And you just blew it—because you didn’t have the slightest intention of telling me one single thing about her, did you, Mr. Huntingdon?”

“No, I wasn’t going to tell you anything,” he said savagely. “But there’s something about you—you sure know how to get under my skin. So why don’t I go for broke and tell you something else I’ve discovered in the past few minutes? She’ll be beautiful, my daughter. Quite extraordinarily beautiful.”

Marnie wasn’t often struck speechless; she worked, after all, as a librarian in a junior high school where repartee was part of her strategy for keeping the lid on her students. But right now she couldn’t think of one word to say. To her intense dismay, she felt a blush creep up her cheeks all the way to her hairline. To her equally intense dismay, his compliment—for compliment it was—gave her a thrill of pleasure deep down in that place she never allowed a man to go.

Cal banged his fist on the steering wheel. “I don’t believe I just said that.”

Finding her voice, Marnie said shrewishly, “Your wife would be most impressed,” and tried to keep her mind off both his wife and his profile, which was every bit as attractive as the rest of him. His nose had a little bump in it, and his chin—well, arrogant would be one word to describe that hard line of bone. Arrogant. Masculine in the extreme. Sexy.