Lilian Darcy - Her Sister's Child

Now her heart was racing. She had no clue as to how she would report this meeting to Dad and Patty, even though she knew they’d both be hovering by their phone in San Francisco tonight, waiting for her call. And she had a growing suspicion that there was something vital Adam was holding back, the most potent ingredient of all in this sizzling emotional mix.

They’d both been silent now for more than a minute. She sipped her rapidly cooling coffee, just for something to do with her mouth and hands, then saw that he was gulping his for the same reason. His eyes, almost as dark as the bitter black drink, were narrowed and he was thinking, calculating.

Thoughts that were painful, almost desperate, if his expression was any guide. There were lines scored from each corner of his mouth, and tight little balls of muscle at his jaw. Lines of strain around his eyes, too.

And she had the most impossible need, suddenly, to go over to him, kneel in front of him, take his head in her hands and smooth away all that tension with her fingers. Crazy! She was already far too involved emotionally, with her own side of this brewing custody dispute. To feel anything but the strictest professional distance and neutrality about Adam Callahan would be a nightmare!

She forced herself to ignore what she could read in his face. Instead, she took another shaky sip of her coffee, then watched as he brought his own cup to his lips once more. His hands were strong and lean and well-kept as a doctor’s had to be. They were folded around the thick white cup as if he needed the heat, yet it wasn’t cold in here. In fact, Meg herself felt steamy hot in her suit, and very conscious of the state of her body.

For her own protection, this silence had to be broken, and broken soon!

“How long had you been trying to track Cherie down, then?” she asked quickly, then added, “No wait! Can we go further back? How long since you lost contact with her in the first place? I’m not clear at all about the progression of your relationship.”

He laughed harshly. “I don’t think there was a progression. Or a relationship. We were only together, truly, for a couple of months.”

“A couple of months?” Meg echoed, fighting to keep her voice neutral. This didn’t remotely gel with what Cherie had said, but if she’d caught Adam Callahan out in a lie she didn’t want him to realize the fact. “Okay…” she added blandly, inviting him to go on.

He did, wrapped up in remembering. She controlled a sigh of relief. He hadn’t guessed that she’d spotted his inconsistency, which gave her time to think—frantically, without answers—about what the inconsistency meant.

“She disappeared within a month of us discovering she was pregnant,” he said. “Wouldn’t consider marriage.”

“You wanted to? You did?” Again Meg tried to hide her disbelief.

Not very successfully this time. He looked up. “Yes. For a while. For Amy’s sake. Until I saw how impossible it would be. Why? What did Cherie tell you?”

“Nothing.” Nothing that meshed with Adam’s story, anyway. And she had to remind herself, as she was reminding Adam, “I had no contact with her at that time, remember?” And Cherie was adept at changing her stories as time went by. Maybe it wasn’t Adam Callahan who’d got it wrong…

No! Why am I feeling this need to find ways to trust him?

“Then what are you—” he began.

“I’m implying nothing.” She fudged quickly. “I guess it doesn’t fit the stereotype, that’s all. Usually, it’s the woman who wants marriage and security for her child, while the man ducks it with every strategy he can think of.”

There was a tell-tale beat of silence. “You’re a lawyer. I keep forgetting,” Adam said with a snort. “Cynical is your middle name.” He hadn’t thought about Garry in recent years, but even in hindsight, the guy’s attitude still stank.

“It’s not cynicism.” She bristled. “It’s statistics. I don’t like those statistics any more than you seem to. I’m—well, impressed that you have such a responsible, caring attitude, okay?”

“Okay,” he conceded.

And maybe it was okay for him. Meg herself was horrified. She’d practically given him a medal of honor, let him know straight out how much he was rising in her estimation. In other words, she’d just kissed goodbye her last vestige of professionalism.

One of the key arguments in her dad’s planned custody claim for his only granddaughter was always going to be that Amy’s biological father was unfit to care for a child. Less than an hour ago, that had seemed quite a reasonable assumption, with the mental picture she and Dad and Patty had built of Adam Callahan, based on Cherie’s extravagant, erratic words.

But the reality was turning out to be so different…

Just get off the subject before it eats this whole case alive. Move on. Knowledge is power, so get some facts, Meg coached herself inwardly. Mentally, she back-tracked, while wondering just why she was finding it so difficult to keep her focus in Adam Callahan’s presence. Even now, filled with renewed determination and hostility, she kept noticing the way he tapped his foot rhythmically and silently on the floor, unconsciously drawing attention to the lean, strong length of his legs.

But that wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about! “So your relationship didn’t last long?” she asked, trying to get a handle on the timing, at least. This definitely wasn’t what she’d understood from Cherie.

“No,” he answered. “Or not as far as I was concerned. Cherie disappeared, then turned up again begging for another chance when she was nearly six months pregnant.” Adam was simplifying it a little. Cherie had actually run out on him twice. “I gave it to her,” he went on. “I tried. And while she needed me, while her pregnancy was slowing her down and keeping her out of action, it was okay. I was at Amy’s birth, which was great…amazing…terrifying.”

“Terrifying?”

He met her challenging look. “I guess you don’t know that Amy was a couple of months premature. She was in hospital for weeks, and it was touch and go whether she’d be okay.”

“No,” Meg answered starkly. “You’re right. I didn’t know.”

But she could see in the man’s face even now what Amy’s difficult start had cost him. How old was he, exactly? Only in his early thirties, surely, yet there were lines of strain etched around his eyes and mouth.

“I spent my whole life at the hospital,” he went on. “Between doing my pediatric residency there and being with Amy. Cherie wasn’t interested. Anyway, I didn’t even know where she was. So I started making plans to raise Amy myself. But the day before she was ready for discharge from the hospital, Cherie just came and took her, and for two and a half months I had no idea what had happened to either of them. Until my brother’s wedding day last July. My new sister-in-law found Amy just lying on the bed in my parents’ spare room, with her diaper bag all packed. Baby formula. A couple of outfits. And a note from Cherie saying she couldn’t handle her anymore and Amy was mine. It was the last I ever heard from her, and Amy never saw her mom again.”

“But you waited nine months to try and find Cherie?” Meg asked, deliberately applying the pressure. There had to be an inconsistency here, if not a downright lie, and she was determined to understand it.

“Yes,” he nodded, then took a deep, controlled breath. “You see—”

But she didn’t let him finish, and attacked openly. “What, because now you ‘couldn’t handle it’ and were hoping it was Cherie’s turn? Is this baby of yours like a tennis ball to you, or something? You think it’s fine if she just gets batted back and forth?”

Okay, Meg, she coached herself again as she watched Adam and waited for the building explosion. This level of anger and hostility wasn’t particularly professional, either, but it was the best she could do. Far better than feeling her heart go out to him as she understood more and more every minute about what he must have been through over the past year and a half, and more.

As she’d expected after her accusations, he was struggling for control. What she hadn’t expected was that he would win the struggle. But he did.

“I didn’t try to get in touch with Cherie for nine months,” he answered her quietly, “because, from experience, I didn’t think any input from Cherie in Amy’s life would be good for her.”

“No? Her own mother?”

“Yes, a mother who disappeared and came back again without warning, and whose plans went from green to red and back again in the space of twenty-four hours. Even if Cherie had gone on to have the success she deserved and was starting to find as a model, I doubt that aspect of her character would ever have changed,” he argued forcefully. “Kids need continuity. I believe that. Maybe you don’t. Obviously, you don’t, if you’re prepared to—”

He broke off, and Meg didn’t know why he’d suddenly thought better about completing his sentence. She could have completed it for him, and once again had to fight the idea that there was truth in it. Was she prepared to work toward taking a little girl from the only parent she had ever known?

But this is what he wants, the inner legal coach reminded her. Of course he wants to trick you into seeing it all from his point of view! You only have his word on any of this, that any of it happened the way he says it did. People will go to any lengths when it comes to custody, legal or illegal. Lying is par for the course. Some people kidnap their own children and take them out of the country. And where are his facts? How do I know he is who he says he is? Meg Jonas, do not concede one inch to this man yet!

“Anyway,” Adam growled now. “This is all irrelevant.” He laughed, but it didn’t seem like he truly thought that there was anything funny in the situation. It was an almost painful sound, his laughter, straining tightly through his throat.

“What’s irrelevant?” Meg questioned, needing to challenge him further.

“The whole issue of who gets custody of Amy.”

“Irrelevant?” She was right! He did have some devious thing going. She’d sensed all along that he was holding something back.

Suddenly, she felt sick at how close she’d come to trusting him, falling for his lines, even…yes, she could admit it now…thinking that she could be attracted to him. “Irrelevant?” she repeated on a furious squeak, rising from behind the deceptive protection of her desk to pace the office and claim it for herself again. He had dominated the space too much today.

“What on earth are we here for, what has this all been about, if custody of Amy is irrelevant? I can assure you, Dr. Callahan, in the strongest possible terms, that to my father and stepmother the issue of who has the right, the legal right, to raise and care for Amy Fontaine Callahan is the most relevant issue in their lives at this time, and will remain that way until the matter is settled to their satisfaction.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he answered, his deep voice suddenly sounding inexpressibly weary. “But of course you can’t understand it yet.”

“Understand what?” she snapped.

“Look, there’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Really? Then tell me now. If there are facts pertaining to this case that—”

“Yes. Of course. Spare me the legalese, okay?” Still that weariness which dominated and shadowed his voice. “It’s after six, and I don’t want to discuss this in your office. It isn’t a professional matter.”