The Hunt For Hawke's Daughter. Jean Barrett
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him for a divorce,” Devlin probed, as if reading her. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“There was nothing left to save,” she murmured.
“No doubts about your decision? No guilt?”
“Before you told me I wasn’t legally married to Michael? Yes, I suppose then I was feeling some of both. But not now when he’s deceived me! Not after he’s taken Livie!”
She realized too late that her fierce admission could easily be misunderstood. That Devlin could define it as a kind of invitation. Whatever the impetus, the innocent embrace turned into something intimate and dangerous.
There was a sensual quality now in the way his splayed hands shifted against her back, his fingers stroking down her spine, then moving around her rib cage and up to the sides of her breasts. Karen felt her flesh sear under his slow caresses. She could hear his breathing quicken with his arousal, could scent his strong, masculine aroma.
A few seconds more and she would be tasting him. His mouth would be on hers, devouring her in one of those deep, prolonged kisses she remembered so vividly from almost four years ago. But it was not his intention that shocked her. It was her longing for it.
The whole thing must have shocked Devlin as well because he suddenly released her, almost shoving her away. They stared at each other, silently sharing the same thought.
This is a mistake. This must not happen again.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Your kid is gone, you’re sick with worry, and I go and—” He raked a hand through his dark hair. “Look,” he said, “this isn’t going to work. There are other P.I.s, and they’re right here in the Twin Cities. I’ll check them out, phone you with a recommendation.”
He started to back away toward the side door to the driveway. Karen knew he was probably right, that it would be safer for both her and Devlin if she used another investigator. Safer for them, perhaps, but not safer for Livie. She needed someone absolutely committed to recovering her daughter. And only Devlin Hawke had a reason for moving heaven and earth to find Livie. Maybe.
It was time to find out if he did. Time to give him the truth, whatever the risk. His hand was reaching for the doorknob when she stopped him.
“Devlin, don’t go! You can’t go!”
He gazed at her, impatient to make his escape. “Karen, this is no good. It’ll only lead to trouble for us if I stay and work with you. You saw that just now. You know it’s true.”
“You have to help me find Livie,” she insisted. “It—it’s your responsibility.”
He frowned at her, his hand now on the knob directly behind him. “And just how do you figure that?”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know how to tell him what he needed to hear. He was still frowning at her.
“You’ve been holding something back. What is it?”
As usual, the expression on her face must be giving her away, she thought. And he would be shrewd about reading people’s expressions. As a P.I., he would have to be. He waited, and still she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She simply didn’t know where to begin a revelation that was so potentially explosive. His shoulders lifting in a little shrug, he turned to go. But she couldn’t let him walk out that door! Desperation inspired her with the opening she sought.
“Devlin, wait! There’s something I have to show you!”
To her relief, his hand fell away from the knob. He even drifted toward her again a few steps. “All right, show me.”
She reached for her purse. “I told you at Dream Makers that I don’t carry a photograph of Michael,” she explained quickly, extracting her wallet and flipping it open. “But I do carry a photo of Livie.”
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, impatient again. “Karen, if you think showing me a picture of your kid is going to move me to—”
“Just look, will you?”
She came forward to where he stood, extending the open wallet. He took it and glanced down at the photograph inside the clear plastic sleeve while she watched his face, waiting for some sign of awareness. There was none. Not yet.
“Her hair wasn’t curled for the picture,” she said, trying to help him. “It’s naturally wavy, and even darker than it looks here. And her eyes—you can’t tell in this—but her eyes are a dark blue.”
“Uh-huh.”
He wasn’t interested. He hadn’t seen.
“Not like Michael’s blond hair and gray eyes,” she said, striving to encourage his recognition.
This time there was a flicker of suspicion on his face. He looked up, catching her gaze. “How old is your daughter?”
“She’s small for her age. I sometimes wonder if the asthma—”
“How old?” he demanded gruffly.
“Livie just turned three.”
“Which means she was born before you married Michael Ramey two and a half years ago.”
“Michael is her stepfather, Devlin,” she told him softly. “Not her natural father. He adopted her after we were married.”
Devlin’s gaze dropped again to the picture in his hand. He stared at it for a long time, a muscle twitching in his square jaw. And while she waited, she clasped her hands together below her breasts in that familiar pose she unconsciously adopted in moments of intense anxiety.
When she thought she couldn’t endure another second of his silent scrutiny, he lifted his gaze. There was disbelief in his eyes. “It isn’t possible. We took precautions.”
“Yes, and sometimes even the most careful precautions fail.”
“Are you sure that she’s mi—”
“Don’t say it,” she cut him off, her anger stirring, “because there was no one else!” Did he think she was so devious, so unprincipled that she would lie about his being Livie’s birth father just to enlist his help in finding her?
Uttering a savage obscenity, he snapped the wallet shut and slapped it down on the counter beside him. An action which could have been rejection or simply rage. Then he looked at her with those stormy blue eyes, his face rigid with accusation while fear swelled inside her.
She could bear his anger. If he never forgave her, she would understand and accept it. What terrified her was the possibility that he would utterly deny his daughter or, just as bad, surprise her by demanding rights she wasn’t prepared to surrender.
“And just when,” he growled, “were you planning to tell me about her? Or, if I hadn’t turned you down just now, would you have ever told me at all?”
“How could I tell you before now? You made it altogether clear back in Aspen that you wanted no part of fatherhood.”
“After knowing me only a month, how the hell could you be so certain exactly what I wanted or didn’t want?”
“Six weeks,” she corrected him. “We were together for six weeks.”
“Yeah, well, that makes it even worse.”
“It was long enough to realize that the responsibility of parenthood horrified you.”
Like it might have horrified the man who had fathered her, Karen thought. The man who had never been there for her. Had he learned of her existence and rejected her, leaving her mother a single parent? The possibility had haunted Karen her entire life. It was why she had turned to Michael Ramey to provide a father for Livie.
“I wasn’t the one who ran away from Aspen,” Devlin reminded her bitterly. “That was you, Karen. Remember?”
“Yes,