he wasn’t a big-city cop. But he’d had a fair amount of police training and pretty good instincts. Despite her very attractive packaging, this woman was hiding something.
“Except for knowing my birth name, what other proof do you have that these babies are any relation to me at all?”
Chapter Two
Laura’s head snapped up, her eyebrows arched in surprise at his question. “Trust me, Sheriff Oakes, there is no reason in the world why I would lie to you about that.”
“But that doesn’t mean what you’re saying is true. How well did you know the woman who said she was my sister?”
“Half sister. You and she had the same mother. I’ve known Amy since she was ten years old.”
“That long?” The more a witness talked, the more likely they were to get their story confused, if they were lying. Eric wanted this woman talking. He wanted the truth.
Rebecca started to fuss, and Laura picked her up, holding her against her shoulder, patting her back. “My mother took Amy in as a foster child when I was about twenty and going to college. I was still living at home, so I was around a lot.”
Something dark and painful rose in Eric’s chest. “Where was her mother?” His mother, if what she was saying was true.
“Amy was being both abused and neglected. Child Welfare removed her from her home and placed her with my mother for her own safety. It was the best thing that could have ever happened to Amy.”
God, remembering what had happened to him as a kid, Eric could believe that. “Where is her mother now?”
Laura softened her voice slightly. “She died about five years ago. I’m sorry.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I see. You realize I can check your story, don’t you?”
She made an impatient sound and plucked a baby bottle from the diaper bag. “Be my guest. The detective’s business card is in the truck. And my mother would be happy to give you the name of Amy’s former case worker.”
Either she was telling the truth, as she knew it, or she was a damn good actress. But the whole story could still be a scam.
Eric sat down on the arm of the couch and watched while Laura slipped the bottle into Rebecca’s hungry mouth. She did it with such ease, he guessed she’d done it a thousand times before. Probably. He also noted she wasn’t wearing a ring, which likely meant she wasn’t currently married.
“What about the twins’ father? You know where he is?”
“She never gave me his name. I’m not sure if I knew who he was that I’d go looking for him. She’d gone off with him about a year ago. From what she did tell me, he was abusing her. After she got pregnant, she ran away.”
“Smart woman. But if he knew about her pregnancy, he could still show up and claim his parental rights.” Eric couldn’t think of anything worse than losing his own children. But he couldn’t imagine abusing a woman, either.
“I think it’s unlikely he’ll show up, whoever he is.”
“If Amy knew I existed, I wished she’d tried to find me sooner. I might have been able to help.” With a restraining order…or something a little more personal and persuasive.
“She didn’t know about you, not until shortly before her…death.” Her voice caught on the word and her chin trembled slightly as though experiencing a painful memory. “She was going through some old papers of her mother’s. That’s how she…we learned about you.”
Amanda began twisting and turning on the couch like an eel. Almost immediately she registered her displeasure about something. Eric didn’t have a clue what.
“There’s another bottle in the bag,” Laura said. “Mandy’s has a blue top. Can you feed her?”
Panic spiked him in the chest. “Uh, sure, I guess.”
He found the bottle, gave it a little shake as he had seen Laura do, then stuck it in Amanda’s mouth. She started sucking eagerly.
“It would be better if you picked Mandy up and held her while you were feeding her. Cuddling is important to an infant’s emotional and intellectual development.”
“Right.” His brow tightened into a frown. It looked so easy when Laura held and fed Rebecca. In contrast, he didn’t know quite where or what to grab on to, and it irritated him that Laura sounded like a baby-care expert.
“You do this for a living?” he asked. “Taking care of babies.”
“Bigger babies.” She smiled slightly. “They can cry louder. I’m a high school history and government teacher.”
“Oh.” Adjusting his position, Eric picked up the baby, bottle and all, cradling her in his arm. She looked up at him with big blue eyes, trusting him as though he could walk on water.
God, did he dare believe these two babies were really related to him? That they were family? That he had a legitimate claim to be their father and raise them?
“What makes you so sure these records you’re talking about weren’t forged or something.”
“Have you always been this much of a skeptic? Or is it that babies make you that nervous?”
“Come on, you waltz into my life with some crazy story about a sister I never knew I had? Wouldn’t you have some doubts, too?” Less than a year ago a woman had shown up at his brother Walker’s house with a baby in tow and claiming to be his new housekeeper. A totally phony story, which had worked out well in the end, he admitted. “A desperate woman looking to find a decent home for her baby can come up with a very convincing lie.”
She leveled him a look that would make most men back off in a hurry. “I personally guarantee if you don’t want to raise Rebecca and Amanda for any reason at all, they will always have a good home—with me.”
The intensity of her words brought him up short. This woman was not fooling around. “You want to adopt the twins?”
“With all my heart.” A fine sheen of tears appeared in her eyes, but she didn’t let them spill over.
“Then why did you bother to track me down? I never would have known otherwise.”
“Because I promised Amy I would.”
That simple truth, stated with such conviction, had more power than anything else she could have said. She wanted to be the twins’ mother. She loved them. Eric was standing in her way. And still she had kept her word to a dead woman—her foster sister.
Removing the bottle from Rebecca’s mouth, she lifted the baby to her shoulder again, rubbing her cheek against the infant’s blond, fuzzy little head and patting her back.
Assuming the twins were related to Eric, did he have any right to take them away from a woman who so obviously loved them even if it had been their mother’s wish that he raise the pair? What the hell had made her—or him—think he was qualified for the job?
Rebecca gave a very unladylike burp, and milk drooled down her chin.
“I brought along the box of records and snapshots Amy discovered. It’s in the back of my truck.” She laid the baby back down on the couch and wiped the dribble from her lips with the edge of the blanket. “If you’ll watch the twins, I’ll go get it. Some of the pictures are of you and your mother.”
That news drove the air from his lungs. He had nothing of his mother except memories. Some good, some bad. All of which he had tried to repress because the very last memory was of her abandoning him.
LAURA MANAGED to get outside before her chin began to wobble again. She didn’t want Eric to see how strongly his interrogation had upset her. It had taken all of her courage to come