It Takes a Family

The sight of her there, cuddled against his chest, her long lashes resting on her chubby cheeks, cracked the wall he’d erected around his heart. And suddenly he was flooded with memories.

He clamped his eyes shut, fighting the emotions, the images of Amy at that moment, the images of them both at different intervals in the future, that horrible hope that he didn’t want to have.

She isn’t mine…. She isn’t mine…. She isn’t mine….

He took a deep breath and returned Amy to her crib, relieved that she remained asleep as he covered her.

But there was another moment when he couldn’t make himself move away from her bed. When he stood there watching her sleep.

When, just for that one moment, he couldn’t help wondering, what if?

What if she was his…?

Dear Reader,

It struck me a while ago that in a lot of families there’s someone who does most of the cleanups—and not just the ones that involve dirty dishes after holiday meals. Someone who is always there to lend a helping hand.

That started me thinking, what if? (That is always where the books come from.) And this time I began to think, what if the responsible person had some really, really big life-altering catastrophe to clean up after? What if it had managed to completely rock her own world, to the point of losing everything? And what if, with no one to turn to, she was left in such a bind that she had to turn to a stranger? A stranger who had had to do some cleanup of his own because of that very same mess-maker?

That’s where this story was born. And since my little town of Northbridge, Montana, seemed like a good place to take a life that needed starting over, that’s where we are in It Takes a Family.

I hope you’re as glad to be back as I am.

Happy reading!

Victoria Pade

It Takes a Family

Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VICTORIA PADE

is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion—besides writing—is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form. She loves romance novels and romantic movies—the more lighthearted, the better—but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.

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 One

“Okay, sweetheart, we made it. We’re here,” Karis Pratt said.

There was no response from the back seat and Karis glanced over her shoulder at the fifteen-month-old baby girl buckled into a child carrier behind her and to her right.

It was late for Amy to be awake and Karis wouldn’t have been surprised to find her niece asleep. But instead Amy was peering out the side window, her two middle fingers in her mouth, kicking her feet up and down the way she did when she was tired.

There was absolutely nothing about the scene that should have brought tears to Karis’s eyes, but there they were anyway. Hot and stinging.

She blinked hard and swallowed to keep them from falling.

“You don’t know how much I don’t want to do this,” she told her niece. “How much I don’t want to do either of the things I’ve come here for. If there was anything else I could do—”

Karis’s voice cracked and she paused to clear her throat, to fight for some control.

When she had a semblance of it, she sighed and said, “But there isn’t. And there’s nothing else I haven’t already done, or we wouldn’t be here.”

Here, in the middle of a snowstorm that had made visibility so slight they’d been driving for the past two hours at a snail’s crawl to the place Karis’s sister had called a “one-horse town, hick hole-in-the-wall.”

Northbridge, Montana.

It was after nine o’clock on the last Friday of October and Karis hadn’t intended to arrive so late. If she was going to show up on someone’s doorstep, she thought it should probably have happened earlier in the day or evening. But she couldn’t turn back time and she also couldn’t risk keeping Amy with her overnight. Not when she was going to have to sleep in the car. So she resigned herself to get started on what she was dreading and unbuckled her own seat belt.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, unsure whether the reassurance was for herself or her niece. “This is for the best.”

Karis got out of the compact sedan and peered through the snow at the red brick house she was parked in front of. It was a moderate-sized two-and-a-half-story structure with a covered front porch and big black numbers running vertically alongside the door, letting her know she had the right address. The address she’d used to answer the sole letter her sister had sent when Lea had lived here.

Karis was glad to see the buttery glow of light in the curtained front window. Hopefully that meant the man her sister had been married to for barely ten months was inside and she wouldn’t be taking Amy into this cold for no reason.

She pulled her own coat close around her, smoothed her chin-length auburn hair behind her ears and went around the car.

Amy raised big, trusting blue eyes to Karis the moment the door opened and Karis felt her heart clench.

How am I going to do this…?

But just then a frigid gust of wind hit her from behind and once more the thought of spending the night in the car was all the motivation she needed. She ducked inside, pulled up the hood on Amy’s coat to cover her short reddish-brown curls and to keep her tiny ears warm. Then she unfastened the seat from its moorings, and took out baby and carrier.

Karis didn’t hesitate to rush for the house then. To climb the four steps to the porch. To ring the bell.

While she waited, she bent over and kissed Amy’s forehead and again said, “It’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

The door opened a moment later and Karis straightened, peering through the screen at the man who stood there. Tall, broad shouldered, imposing—that was about all she could make out with the light coming from behind him.

“I’m looking for Luke Walker,” she said.

“That’s me,” he answered with curiosity in his tone.

“I know you don’t know me…”

How could he when they’d never met? But she was loath to tell him who she was. For Karis this entire trip and the two ugly errands she had to do were just added humiliations heaped on a whole pile of them that had made up the nightmare she’d found herself in the past several weeks.

But with Amy in mind, she shored up her courage and said, “I’m Karis Pratt. Lea’s sister.”

His first response was to reach for the edge of the door he’d just opened, as if he were going to slam it in her face.

But he didn’t. Instead he kept his hand on it as his head dropped enough so, even though Karis couldn’t see his eyes, she knew he’d looked down at the baby carrier she held in front of her with both hands.

He muttered an epithet under his breath that certainly wasn’t welcoming, and then pushed open the screen door.

“Come in out of the cold,” he commanded, as begrudging an invitation as she’d ever received.

But Karis was in no position to be particular about the amenities. She took Amy into the warmth of the entryway, moving far enough to the side of the door for Luke Walker to close it.

He turned to face her and Karis felt the faintest hint of relief. Her sister’s taste had sometimes leaned toward men who could be rough around the edges, and Karis knew she would never have been able to go through with what she’d come for had that been the case with Luke Walker.

But if he had rough edges, they were nowhere to be seen. The man had runway good looks, sable-brown hair cut short and neat. A ruggedly masculine bone structure made his lean face a collection of planes and angles and sharp edges, which worked together to make a masterpiece. A slightly longish but perfectly shaped nose. A mouth that was neither too big nor too small. And eyes that were vibrant and intelligent, penetrating and piercing, discerning and disarming all at once. Teal-green eyes that were remarkably thick lashed.

And all atop a body that just wouldn’t quit—shoulders and chest a mile wide, narrow waist and hips, and long, tree-trunk-mighty legs.

Karis had known he was a local police officer, which was why she’d held out hope that he might be different from Lea’s other men, but this man standing steady and strong before her exuded a kind of trustworthiness that helped ease Karis’s mind. Not much, but some. And some was something these days.

She bent over to set the baby carrier on the entryway floor, noting that wide-eyed Amy was surveying Luke Walker almost as intently as Karis had been.

Then she straightened, noting the dark blue uniform that told her he’d just gotten off duty. His face showed no signs of warmth; instead, he was glaring at her and steadfastly not looking at Amy.

“Why are you here?” he demanded, notably not suggesting they move any farther into his house. In fact, with his legs planted shoulder-width apart and his arms crossed over his chest, he was a towering wall-of-man, keeping her from even seeing into the living room behind him.

Karis saw no point in sugarcoating her answer. Obviously Luke Walker bore no tender feelings for her sister, and with good reason. So she said, “Six weeks ago, in Denver, there was an explosion that killed Lea, our father and the man Lea left here with.”

Her sister’s ex-husband offered no condolences. His only response was a slight crease that appeared between his eyebrows and a tightening of his jaw.

“It’s a long story that you’re probably not interested in,” she went on. “But because of things that led up to that, I—” Karis stalled, choking on the words she needed to say.

But she did need to say them, she reminded herself. She didn’t have a choice.

She swallowed hard. “I can’t keep Amy. Not right now anyway or for a—”

“She isn’t mine,” Luke Walker said bluntly. “Even though she was born while I was married to your sister, Lea made it clear when she took off that Amy belonged to—”

“I know what she told you,” Karis said, afraid that if she let him say what he wanted to before she refuted it, he might shove her out the door and never give her the chance. “I know she told you that she was leaving with Abe because Abe was really Amy’s father. But Lea told me that she wasn’t absolutely sure that was true. That she only said it to cut the ties with you so she could go back to Abe. And her addictions. She did things like that. But it is possible that you’re Amy’s father.”

“Bull.”

“I don’t know whether you think Lea was lying to me or I’m lying to you, but that is what she said. If I didn’t think there was any possibility you’re Amy’s father, I wouldn’t be here. But the fact is I do think there’s the possibility—”

“So even you’re saying there’s only a possibility.”

Karis looked him square in the eye. “Yes,” she admitted.

“And probably not a very good one.”

Karis didn’t want to acknowledge that, so instead she said, “I knew my sister. The ups and downs of her. Sometimes, if she was desperate—or determined—enough, or if she wanted to get out of something she’d gotten herself into, she’d say something that suited her purpose. But the thing is, it didn’t suit any purpose to tell me Amy might be yours.”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t strictly the case. Karis had voiced her disapproval of what Lea had done and it might have caused Lea to say what she had to to defend herself, however feebly. It was just that Luke Walker was Karis’s last resort, and even though she understood his doubts and didn’t blame him for having them, she had to hope that for once Lea might have been telling the truth, that she hadn’t known who Amy’s father was and that he might be Luke Walker.

“But apparently it suits some purpose for you, now, to believe it,” the big man guessed, making it clear he wasn’t easy to put anything past.

“Look,” Karis said. “Something Lea did cost me everything I had—and I mean everything—to keep other people, people who trusted me, from losing their business. What you see before you, the twelve dollars in my purse, the car parked in the street loaded with my clothes, and one credit card that will be maxed out after two more fill-ups of my gas tank, are all I have left in the world. I’ve borrowed from and imposed on friends as much as I can, but with no place to live, no job, and no references to give potential employers, I can’t keep Amy with me right now. And since you’re listed on her birth certificate as her father—and may be her father—you have to step up.”

The man merely stared at her, those aqua eyes like hot lasers.

Karis continued anyway. “I think that for your own sake and for Amy’s, you should have DNA tests done to find out the truth. I know that takes time and if you’ll keep her during that time so I can just have a little while to dig myself out of this hole I’m in, then we can reevaluate the situation.”

Karis had come here imagining three possible outcomes. One, of course, was that he might just flat out refuse and turn his back on Amy completely. She didn’t think that needed to be said, so she only relayed her other two scenarios.

“If Amy proves not to be yours, I wouldn’t expect or ask anything else of you, and I’ll take her. Happily. Or maybe you’ll find out she is yours but decide you don’t want her because of Lea or because you don’t want to be a single father, or whatever. Again, if I’m up and running again, I’ll gladly take her to live with me and raise her and never ask another thing of you again because no matter who her father is, I love her and I want her with me and I certainly don’t want Amy to ever be with anyone who—”

There were those damn tears again, filling her eyes, cracking her voice, reducing her to something she didn’t want to be reduced to in front of this guy.

“Forget it,” she said, not certain where that had come from. Maybe from the last shred of dignity she had left.

She bent over to retrieve the baby, glad that somehow, even in the midst of the tension hanging thick in the air, Amy had fallen asleep and wasn’t witness to this.

“Hold on,” Luke Walker said then, sounding angry, annoyed and resentful, as if his back had been pushed to the wall.

Karis stopped short of picking up the car seat and straightened a second time, managing to blink away the tears once more, before they’d fallen. She raised a stubborn chin to Luke Walker and again met him eye to eye.

He didn’t expand immediately on his order for her to hold on, though. Instead, he continued to stare at her, studying her, taking her measure, maybe considering what to do next.

Karis endured the silence and the scrutiny, but if he was waiting for her to beg, he had a long wait.

Then, after she’d seen his jaw clench and unclench repeatedly, he finally said, “I’ll have the DNA tests done so I know once and for all if she’s mine, even though I don’t think she is.”

“And you’ll keep her in the meantime?”

There was another long silence before he shook his head. “Not without you here, too.”

Karis didn’t understand the edict, but rather than question it, she said, “I’m not leaving Northbridge for a few days. I have other business here.”

“If it’s with the rest of the Pratts, I’d tread carefully,” he warned in a way that held a bit of authoritative threat to it. “But just telling me you’ll be around town and only for a few days isn’t enough. If I let you out of my sight you could do what, for all I know, you planned to do all along—disappear and stick me with a baby you know isn’t mine.”

“Amy isn’t something to stick anyone with,” Karis said angrily. “You’d be lucky to have her. Lucky if she is yours. Amy is the only right thing my sister ever did. And as for my disappearing, I’m not Lea, and leaving Amy with you in no way washes my hands of her. Even if she is yours and you keep her I have every intention of finding work and someplace to live that’s as near to here as possible so that I can—”

Luke Walker cut her off as if nothing she said carried any weight. “There’s a room with its own bath in the attic. You can use it and put Amy in her old room—the crib is still there.”

“I can’t do that. I have to get a job. If I stay here, too, it defeats the whole purpose—”

“I’m not keeping her without you being right here until I sort out who she belongs to. If she isn’t mine—”

“Fine,” Karis said before he could say more, recognizing an ultimatum when she was given one.

His eyes narrowed. “That was quick. Did I just play into your hand?”

“Are you always this suspicious of everything and everyone?” she shot back.

“Of everything and everyone who has to do with Lea,” he answered without missing a beat. “I learned it the hard way.”

Karis swallowed her own anger. She’d known she wouldn’t be going into an ideal situation. In Lea’s wake, she never did.

“My résumé is out, I’ll do follow-ups on the phone from here and try to do any interviews that way, too, if I can. I can check want ads for jobs in Billings or some of the other towns or cities I saw on the road signs I passed getting here. It isn’t what I had planned, but I’ll make it work,” she said, thinking out loud.

To give him the entire picture of why she hadn’t put up more of a fight, she said, “Am I thrilled with staying in a house with a man I don’t even know? No. But I need a place for Amy and if that’s the only way you’ll keep her, it’s the only choice I have. And if you want to know the whole truth, staying here is better than sleeping in my car, which was what I was going to do because I can’t afford a hotel room. Plus, at least if I’m here, I’ll still be with Amy. I can still watch over her and go on taking care of her, and she won’t wake up tomorrow morning in a strange place with only an unfamiliar face to greet her. If you call your invitation playing into my hand, then even though the thought of my staying here never occurred to me, yes, I guess you did. Want to change your mind?”

Again he didn’t hurry to answer, pinning her with his gaze.

Then, with resignation, he said, “No. But I’ll be watching you.” He held out his hand, palm upward. “And I’ll take your car keys so you can’t sneak out in the middle of the night.”

“How do I know you’re not some kind of maniac who’s going to keep me prisoner or something?” she said, reluctant to concede.

“You don’t. I guess we’re both having to act on some blind trust.”

“You don’t trust me at all,” Karis countered.

“No, I don’t.”

He had the advantage and he knew it. And since she’d never thought he was some kind of maniac or she wouldn’t have let him anywhere near Amy, she knew his motives really were what he’d claimed—not to allow her the opportunity to take off and stick him with a baby that might not be his.

But that didn’t mean giving him her keys wasn’t galling.

“I need things from the car and the trunk and then you can have them,” she said.

“Give me the keys and I’ll go out with you.”

Karis sighed, rolled her eyes to let him know she thought he was being ridiculous, and dropped her keys into the large hand waiting for them.

He closed his fist around them and motioned toward the door. “Ladies first.”

Karis opened the door and went outside to her car. She gave Luke Walker plenty of room to unlock the driver’s side door. She took Amy’s diaper bag and her own purse from behind the front seat, slinging both straps over her shoulder before popping the trunk with the lever beside the seat.

Luke Walker had returned to the curb, where he watched as she took her suitcase and the cardboard box that held the remainder of Amy’s things from the rear of the vehicle.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He closed the trunk’s lid and then took the box and suitcase from her, leaving her only the diaper bag and her purse as they returned to the house.

He still didn’t spare Amy so much as a glance when they got back, though. Karis picked up baby and carrier.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

She hadn’t. But something made her not want to admit it, so she said, “I’m not hungry.”

He didn’t pursue it; he merely headed up the staircase that rose against one wall of the entry.

Following him, Karis tried not to notice that right at eye level was a pretty fantastic derriere. This was not the time or place or person for that, she lectured herself.

When they reached the top of the steps, he motioned to his left. “The nursery,” he said as if the words stuck in his throat.

He’d left it up all this time? That seemed odd, but Karis didn’t say anything. She just went into the pink-and-white nursery adorned with cuddly bunny wallpaper and borders around a white crib, bureau, changing table and rocking chair.

She set Amy on the floor again as Luke Walker did the same with the suitcase and box. Then he went about putting a crib sheet on the mattress while Karis eased the sleeping infant out of her coat.

“I’ll put your suitcase in your room,” her surly host said, leaving her to tend to the baby alone.

Amy was barely disturbed by the diaper change or by having her pajamas put on. When that was accomplished, Karis put her niece into the crib and covered her, propping Amy’s favorite toy, a stuffed elephant, in one corner of the crib so it would be within reach if the fifteen-month-old woke up and wanted it.

“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” Karis whispered after kissing the baby on the forehead. Then she silently left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Luke Walker was waiting in the hallway, arms again crossed over his chest.

Without saying anything he led her up a second set of stairs to the attic. It appeared to have been the room of another young girl, because daisy paper lined the wall behind the double-size brass bed.

“Sheets and blankets are clean,” he said of the bedding at the foot of the bare mattress. “The armoire is empty if you want to put your stuff in it.”

Karis nodded again.

“Bathroom is through there—” He pointed to a door to the left of the cheval mirror. “Towels are in a cabinet—I’m sure you can find them. If you decide you’re hungry, there’s food in the fridge. The kitchen is downstairs, at the rear of the house.”

Karis nodded a third time, feeling like a new inmate being instructed by the warden. Thanking him seemed inappropriate so she didn’t do it.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked.

“No.”

And with that Luke Walker headed for the door.

“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, when he reached it and turned to look at her again.

“Unless I make a run for it,” she answered facetiously, not shying away from meeting his cold, hard expression.

He didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he said, “Don’t expect me to take care of her when she gets up.”

“You won’t have to,” Karis said, replacing her sarcasm with defensiveness.

Apparently satisfied with her response, he turned in the doorway and went out.

Before he closed the door behind him, Karis got another glimpse of that great posterior, and admiring it just came as a reflex.

A reflex she curbed the instant she realized what she was doing.

Because regardless of the man’s physical attributes, she reminded herself, they were of no interest whatsoever to her.