LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      “Hello. Is anyone here?” called a woman’s voice from the outer office. Then, in a more irritable tone she said, “No, Jennifer! Don’t sit on the floor! Justin, hold on to Aunt Lena’s hand!”

      These instructions were met with childish whimpers of resistance, leading Graham to surmise that his visitor had a couple of small kids in tow. He got hurriedly to his feet and headed for the door. It was noon and his secretary, Angela, had gone to lunch. She was the mother of three and an expert on kids, so Graham relied on her to protect the premises from being trashed on those occasions—rare, but memorable—when a client brought his or her offspring along.

      Graham was at a total loss when it came to dealing with children—an understandable deficiency, since he hadn’t spent much time in the company of small fry. The younger of two boys, he’d grown up with virtually no contact with infants or toddlers. It was silly, but Graham regarded the whole notion of fatherhood as extremely intimidating, feelings he always owned up to when questioned on the subject by women he dated.

      As he headed down the hall to the outer offices, he reflected on his unmarried state and wondered whether his candor on the subject of children had acted as a roadblock, preventing any of his romantic involvements from leading to marriage. He’d been thinking about this more and more since he’d turned thirty recently.

      Only once had he proposed, more than four years ago. The words “Will you marry me?” had popped out in a moment of passion during his most intimate relationship.

      He never dwelled on that memory, which still twinged.

      “Can I help you?” he asked from the doorway to the outer office.

      His unexpected visitor was a stranger, an attractive blond woman in her fifties who looked as harried as she’d sounded. Dressed smartly in a suit, she definitely wasn’t your stereotypical doting aunt, but he assumed, since she’d referred to herself as Aunt Lena, that the two preschool children with her must be her niece and nephew. Or, more likely, her great-niece and great-nephew. Both of them appeared to be unhappy campers, tugging to pull free of her firm grip on their small hands.

      “Are you Graham Knight, the architect?” she inquired.

      “Yes, I am—”

      She’d turned her attention to the children. “Justin and Jennifer, will you please stand still? If you’ll behave yourselves for five minutes, Aunt Lena will buy you an ice cream.”

      “I don’t want an ice cream,” Justin whined, tugging harder.

      “Me, neither.” Jennifer sank down on the carpet and proceeded to throw a tantrum, kicking the floor with her patent-leather shoes.

      Graham didn’t budge from the doorway. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the little girl’s loud wailing. “Would you care to make an appointment?”

      “What a fiasco!” His prospective client sighed. “I should have called you in advance or written a letter, I suppose. I’m Lena Booth.” She had to shout, too, over the racket Jennifer was making. “Heather Booth’s aunt. I believe you and Heather dated four or five years ago. You remember her?”

      “Why, yes, I remember Heather well.” She was the woman he’d proposed to, the woman who’d turned him down and broken off with him shortly afterward.

      “Jennifer and Justin are Heather’s children. They’re twins.”

      Heather’s children? Graham regarded the small girl and boy with new perspective, adjusting to their identity. Justin, brown-haired with brown eyes, didn’t resemble his mother, but Jennifer had Heather’s blond hair and blue eyes. She would probably be a pretty little girl if her face weren’t contorted with the fit she was throwing.

      “If I let you go, will you promise to behave for a few minutes while Aunt Lena has a conversation with Mr. Knight?” Lena Booth said, addressing her charges. “You can watch the pretty fish in the aquarium.”

      Jennifer promptly quieted, nodding.

      “I’ll be good,” Justin mumbled sulkily.

      When she had released their hands, the little boy walked over toward the aquarium, as prompted, but his sister sidled in the opposite direction, toward Angela’s workstation. Graham watched her nervously.

      “Heather never mentioned having an aunt who lived on the North Shore,” he said to Lena Booth, taking for granted she would understand that he was referring to the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

      “I don’t live in Louisiana. I live in Jackson, Mississippi. I drove here today specifically to meet you and introduce you to the twins.”

      Graham frowned at her in puzzlement. Why the dickens did she think he would want to meet Heather’s children? “Heather told you about me?”

      “Oh, yes. I threatened to contact you much sooner, when she came back to Jackson pregnant and pleased as punch with herself. But I didn’t. Now I wish I had. I regretted my mistake even more when I had you investigated recently and confirmed what a decent man you are. Justin, stop doing that! You’ll scare the fish!”

      Justin was slapping his palms on the glass front of the aquarium, making loud smacking sounds.

      “Why contact me? And why on earth did you have me investigated?” Graham asked in bafflement.

      “You really don’t have a clue, do you?” She shook her head, her expression oddly pitying. “Do your math. The twins are three and a half years old. Add nine months and then backtrack in time. Jennifer, leave the computer alone!”

      Graham glanced blindly over at the little girl, who was busy punching keys on Angela’s keyboard. “Now wait just a minute!” he exclaimed, wagging his hand at Lena Booth. “You’re not trying to tell me—”

      “I’m afraid so,” she said simply. “Heather had her heart set on being a mom, but she didn’t want the complication of a husband. Nor did she like the idea of using a sperm bank. She wanted to make sure she was getting sound genes for her child. She was planning on having one baby, mind you, not two.”

      Graham clutched both sides of the doorframe, shaking his head from side to side in denial. It dawned on him that Heather’s aunt was speaking of her niece with sadness as well as disapproval.

      “Good God, has something happened to Heather?” he asked.

      Lena nodded. “She was on vacation with the man she was dating. They’d gone to Italy. There was a terrible automobile accident. Neither of them survived.”

      Even in his state of shock and horror, Graham realized she’d carefully chosen her words so as not to state in the children’s hearing that their mother had died.

      “Poor kids,” he murmured. “They’ve been told?”

      “Yes. In euphemistic terms. They miss Heather, of course, but they spent most of their waking hours with a daytime nanny. As you can judge for yourself, they’ve been raised without any discipline.”

      Graham looked helplessly over at Jennifer, who was now busily pulling out drawers at Angela’s workstation. Justin had stopped banging on the aquarium but had his face pressed against the glass, mouth open and tongue hanging out.

      His kids? No way. There had to be some mistake. Please, God, let me wake up and discover this is a bad dream, Graham implored silently.

      “Of course, you’ll want some scientific proof,” Lena stated, as though reading his panicky thoughts. “Especially if you were extremely careful and took precautions yourself during your affair with Heather.”

      Graham figured his sick expression told its own tale, but he elaborated, “She told me she was on the Pill. And showed me a recent lab report giving her a clean bill of health. She said she’d just taken out a work disability insurance policy that required her to prove

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