LITMIR.BIZ

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tense.

       Molly stepped aside.

       “This way,” Florence said grimly.

       Keegan carried Psyche into her room, laid her gently on the bed. Bent to kiss her forehead.

       “Don’t forget your promise,” Psyche told him.

       “McKettrick-true,” he reminded her. He curved a little finger, and Psyche hooked it with her own.

       Then she smiled, closed her eyes and gave herself up to sleep.

      * * *

      MOLLY WAITED in the hallway outside Psyche’s room, longing to disappear but too stubborn to run.

       After a few minutes Keegan came out. Stopped when he saw her standing there. Narrowed his gaze.

       “Is she—is Psyche all right?” she asked.

       He hesitated, took a step toward her, stopped again.

       Molly stood her ground.

       “Bad news for you,” Keegan said in a scathing undertone. “She’s still alive.”

       Fury surged through Molly; trembling violently, she clenched her fists at her sides. If it hadn’t been for Lucas, and for poor Psyche, she might have launched herself at him, kicking and slugging.

       Psyche’s door was closed from inside with an eloquent little snap.

       Molly advanced, looked right up into Keegan’s outraged face. “Of all the reprehensible things to say!” she whispered.

       He grasped her elbow and shuffled her down the hall, well away from Psyche’s door—and Lucas’s. “You want to hear ‘reprehensible,’ lady? Reprehensible is sleeping with another woman’s husband, then having the gall to move into her house and take over raising her son!”

      He’s my son! Molly wanted to shout. But of course she didn’t. She simply stood there, drawing deep breaths and releasing them slowly until she knew she could address this impossible man without shrieking every word.

       Keegan only made matters worse. Jabbing at Molly’s collarbone with the tip of one index finger, he growled, “Get ready for the fight of your life, Ms. Shields. Psyche believes she’s doing the right thing, the honorable thing, letting you adopt Lucas, because you’re his birth mother. But there’s one flaw in her logic—one she’s too sick and too weak and too damn desperate to see. If you’d really wanted that baby, you wouldn’t have signed off on him the way you did.”

       Molly couldn’t have been more stunned if Keegan had struck her a physical blow. She felt light-headed, swayed and reached out to press a hand to the wall of the corridor, so she wouldn’t fall.

       Keegan was relentless. “I’ll stop you any way I can,” he said. “You may pull off this—adoption—but I’m the executor of Psyche’s estate, and you won’t get a plugged nickel of that kid’s money, so if you’ve got a boyfriend waiting in some tropical hideaway for your ship to come in, honey, you’d better just write this con game off as a loss and get on the next bus out of town!”

       That did it. Molly drew back her hand, and she would have slapped him, except that he caught her wrist in a hold that was just short of painful.

       Tears of dizzying anger and frustration rushed to her eyes. “You—don’t—understand,” she said, and it was as if someone else had spoken the words, from a distance.

       “I understand plenty,” Keegan snapped, flinging her hand free. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it, sugarplum. You’re in way over your head here. Go find another gravy train.”

       Molly rallied. “You listen to me, you obnoxious bastard!” she choked out in a whisper that scraped at her throat like a wad of steel wool. “I’m not a crook, and I’m not some airheaded little bimbo you can bully onto a bus, either!”

       He glared at her.

       She glared back.

       Both of them took deep breaths.

       “This isn’t over,” he said.

       “It sure as hell isn’t,” she replied.

       He turned and stormed down the hall to the top of the stairs.

       Molly just stood there, leaning against the wall, afraid her legs wouldn’t support her if she tried to walk.

       When she felt able, she made her way back into the nursery.

       Lucas slept, curled into a plump little ball in the middle of his crib, one thumb in his mouth. The windows were closed and latched, but a breeze ruffled his fine spun-gold hair just the same.

       Wild thoughts rushed through Molly’s head, an onslaught, sweeping all logic and reason before them.

       She could snatch him up in her arms, make a run for it.

       Disappear.

       Empty her bank accounts.

       Start over somewhere, with a new name. Dye her hair, and Lucas’s, too. Call him Tommy or Johnny…

      Stop, she thought.

       She couldn’t do that to Lucas, or to Psyche.

       She couldn’t do it to herself.

       She moved to the windows, looked down at the street just in time to see Keegan standing beside his car, staring upward. She could have sworn their gazes collided—she actually felt the impact—but of course that was impossible. He’d have no way of knowing which room she was in.

       She was certain of one thing, though.

       He was going to make trouble.

       Molly folded her arms and dug in her heels.

       “Bring it on, Mr. McKettrick,” she said softly.

       In the next moment, with a decisive, angry grace, he got into the Jag, slammed the door and drove away.

       Molly waited a few moments, then slipped out of Lucas’s room and into her own. Her cell phone was on the dresser, charging.

       She unplugged it, punched in a number.

       “It’s about time you called,” her assistant, Joanie Barnes, said. “Where are you?”

       “Indian Rock, Arizona,” Molly answered, suddenly weary, sagging onto the side of her bed. She’d told Joanie, and everyone else who inquired, that she was attending a writers’ conference in Sedona, trolling for promising new authors. Only one person in L.A. knew the truth, and that was her dad.

       “You didn’t make plane or hotel reservations,” Joanie accused. “I know, because I checked. And Fred Ettington said he drove you to the bus station.”

       Molly sighed, pushed back her hair. Fred ran a car service, and she kept him on retainer to ferry important clients and editors to and fro when they were in L.A. on business. Desperate to get to Arizona and see Lucas, she’d called Fred out of habit, never thinking that he might blab.

       Given a do-over, she’d take a taxi.

       “Atmosphere,” she said brightly.

       “What?” Joanie asked.

       “The bus. I rode it for atmosphere.”

       “You can’t beat a bus for that,” Joanie remarked sarcastically. “And what the hell are you talking about?”

       “I’m writing a book,” Molly lied.

       “Oh,” Joanie said, patently unconvinced and making no effort to disguise the fact. “Right.”

       “How are things going at the office? Any messages?”

       “Only about a thousand,” Joanie retorted. “Godridge didn’t make the bestseller lists, and he’s threatening to sign with some New York agent. And then there’s Davis. He’s called about fifty

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