“According to the weather report I heard the snow is supposed to end by nightfall. If that happens, then first thing in the morning the locals will get out and clear the streets.”
“It can’t happen fast enough for me,” she replied. She looked up from Sammy, her blue eyes dark and troubled. “I’m sorry I can’t get out of your hair right now. I know when you offered me a place to stay last night you had no idea that I’d still be here today.”
Dalton shrugged. “We’ll just have to make the best of it.”
“I just hope if they get the streets cleared in the morning then the bus comes tomorrow afternoon.” There was a thrum of desperation in her voice.
“Surely your sister will understand the delay.”
“Of course.” She averted her gaze from his and focused on her son in her arms. “I’m just anxious to get gone.”
“Is this a vacation trip?”
She kept her gaze firmly on her son. “Yes. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my sister and she hasn’t met Sammy, so I thought it would be nice to take a trip to visit her. I suppose it was foolish to plan a trip in late January. But babies are only babies a short time.”
She was rambling, and it was Dalton’s experience that people who rambled were usually hiding something. She seemed to realize what she was doing for she suddenly clamped her lips closed and frowned.
Getting up from the table she started to grab for her plate. “I’ll take care of that,” he said.
She gave him a grateful nod, then once again disappeared from the kitchen. Dalton remained seated at the table. He sipped his coffee and looked out the window. Although he stared at the snow, his mind was filled with those blue eyes of hers.
At thirty-three years old, Dalton had worked the family business for twelve years. He’d spent that time studying people, and the assessments he made of those people sometimes made the difference between life and death.
Jane Craig was lying. He’d seen it in those impossibly blue eyes of hers. Secrets and lies. There had been something in her eyes that had looked not only like quiet desperation, but also screaming fear.
His mind whirled with all kinds of possibilities. Who in their right mind planned a bus trip in the Midwest in January? Especially with an infant? He could write off the appearance of the knife the night before as a wary woman in the home of a stranger. But what was she doing with a wicked-looking knife like that in the first place?
Secrets and lies. What he was suddenly eager to find out was whether her secrets and lies could be the difference between life and death, and whether the snowy conditions had suddenly made him a player in a drama he wasn’t prepared to face.
* * *
Sheriff Brandon Sinclair stared out the window and silently cursed the snow. He’d been in a foul mood since the day before, when he’d gone back to the diner to have a little chat with Janette and discovered she’d up and quit her job, just like that.
He’d been on his way to the little rattrap trailer where she lived with her grandmother when a six-car accident just outside of town had required his immediate attention. By the time he’d finished up, the ice had begun to fall in earnest.
He tried to ignore the sound of his three daughters playing in the middle of their living-room floor. He hadn’t thought about Janette Black since the night they’d had sex over a year ago.
Then yesterday morning he’d heard the rumor that she had a little baby boy, a rumor that had been confirmed when he’d spoken with her at lunch.
Since that moment, he couldn’t get her—or more precisely the boy—out of his mind. His son. He knew in his gut that the kid was his.
“Brandon, honey, your breakfast is waiting,” Brandon’s wife, Sherrilyn, spoke from someplace behind him.
He grunted but didn’t turn around. Sherrilyn was a good woman. She’d come into the marriage not only crazy about him, but with the kind of respectability and a trust fund that Brandon had desired. She kept the large house neat and tidy, tried to anticipate his needs before he knew them and was an adequate if boring bedmate.
She loved being the sheriff’s wife, and while Brandon was feared and respected by the community, Sherrilyn was loved for her charity work and big heart.
But, when it came to giving Brandon what he’d wanted most in life, she’d failed miserably, pumping out three girl babies instead of the boy he desperately wanted.
“Mommy, Susan won’t share,” Elena, his youngest, whined from the living room. She was always whining about something. Girls whined. Girls cried, and he had three of the whiniest, weepiest girls in the county.
He narrowed his gaze as he turned away from the window and headed for the kitchen. As soon as the snow stopped, he’d get that boy. He didn’t much care what he had to do, but eventually that little boy would be living with him, being raised by him. Boys needed their daddies, and if the only way to get that kid was over Janette Black’s dead body, well then that could be arranged, too.
Chapter 3
Janette stayed in the bedroom with Sammy for most of the morning. She played peekaboo with him, laughing as he grinned and squealed at her antics. When he started to get sleepy, she picked him up in her arms and sat in the chair near the window, rocking and singing softly to him until he fell asleep.
She placed her lips against Sammy’s downy hair, drawing in the sweet baby scent of him. He was her heart, this little boy. Before his birth she had loved him, but nothing had prepared her for the depth of her love for him now.
Her heart squeezed as she thought of the threat that felt ominously close, a threat to this baby and their future together. She would do whatever it took to keep him safe and away from the man who was his biological father. She shoved aside thoughts of Sinclair, unwilling to allow the chill that thoughts of him always produced to consume her.
She was conscious of the sounds of Dalton in the next room. It was a good thing he’d told her about his family before she’d confessed what was really going on.
She should have known it wouldn’t be safe to tell him the truth. Bodyguards probably had to work closely with law enforcement officials. For all she knew, Brandon Sinclair could be a drinking buddy of the entire West clan.
When Sammy was sleeping soundly, she gently laid him in the middle of the big bed and tucked the pillows around him to stop him from rolling anywhere. She stood for a long moment staring down at the baby who owned all of her heart.
She would do whatever it took to keep Brandon Sinclair away from Sammy. She would run to the ends of the earth, hide for the rest of her life if that’s what it took.
You’re nothing but trailer trash, Janette. Nobody is going to believe you if you ever tell. Those were the last words she’d heard from Sinclair that night on the highway. He hadn’t spoken to her again or even looked at her until yesterday in the café when he’d told her he knew she had a son.
She’d tried to be so careful during her pregnancy. Thankfully she’d gained little weight and had been able to hide her condition until her eighth month. It was only then that she’d told the people who’d noticed that she was pregnant that she’d had a fling with a man passing through town. Because she believed Sinclair—nobody would ever believe her if she told the truth.
Tired of being cooped up, she finally left the bedroom and entered the living room, where Dalton sat in a chair reading a book as a saxophone wailed the blues from the stereo. She wasn’t concerned about the noise waking Sammy. From the time he’d been born he had slept like the dead, undisturbed by loud noises.
Dalton looked up and nodded at her.