His dark gaze met hers, challenging her to argue. “Your turn. How did you get to know her?”
“She answered an ad I’d put on the bulletin board at the corner market. She wanted to rent a room in my house.”
His eyebrows went up at that. “Sorry, Counselor, but you don’t look as if you need to take in boarders.”
“I didn’t do it for the money.” She clipped off the words. Her instincts warned her not to give too much away to this man, but if she wanted his cooperation she’d have to appear willing to answer his questions. “My husband had died a few months earlier, and I’d taken a leave from my job. I’d been rattling around in a place too big for one person. The roomer was just going to be temporary, until I found a buyer for the house.”
“How long ago was that?” It was a cop’s question, snapped at her as if she were a suspect.
“A little over a year.” She tried not to let his manner rattle her. “I knew she was pregnant, of course, but I didn’t know she had a heart condition. I’m not sure even she knew at first. The doctors said she never should have gotten pregnant.”
“What about her family?”
“She said she didn’t have anyone.” Tina had seemed just as lonely as Anne had been. Maybe that was what had drawn them together. “We became friends. And then when she had to be hospitalized—well, I guess I felt responsible for her. She didn’t have anyone else. When Emilie was born, Tina’s condition worsened. I took charge of the baby. Tina never came home from the hospital.”
His strong face was guarded. “Is that when she supposedly told you about me?”
She nodded. “She talked about the time she spent in Bedford Creek, about the man she loved, the man who fathered Emilie.”
He was so perfectly still that he might have been a statue, except for the tiny muscle that pulsed at his temple. “And if I tell you it was a mistake—that she couldn’t have meant me…?”
“Look, I’m not here to prosecute you.” Why couldn’t he see that? “I’m not judging you. I just want your signature on the papers. That’s all.”
“You didn’t answer me.” He took a step closer, and she could feel the intensity under his iron exterior. “What if I tell you it was a mistake?”
It was all slipping away, getting out of her control. “How could it be a mistake? Everything she said fits you, no one else.”
He seized on that. “Fits me? I thought you said she named me.”
She took a deep breath, trying to stay in control of the situation. “While she was ill, she talked a lot about…about the man she fell in love with. About the town. Then, when we knew she wasn’t going to get better, we made plans for Emilie’s adoption.” She looked at him, willing him to understand. “I’ve been taking care of Emilie practically since the day she was born. I love her. Tina knew that. She knew I needed the father’s permission, too, but she never said the name until the end.”
She shivered a little, recalling the scene. Tina, slipping in and out of consciousness, finally saying the name Mitch Donovan. “Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth clamped firmly on the words. “I’m sorry, sorry about all of it. But I’m not the father of her baby.”
She glared at him, wanting to shake the truth out of him. But it was no use. It would be about as effective as shaking a rock.
“You don’t believe me.” He made it a simple statement of fact.
“No.” There seemed little point in saying anything else.
Mitch’s jaw clamped painfully tight. This woman was so sure she was right that it would take a bulldozer to move her. Somehow he had to crack open that closed mind of hers enough for her to admit doubt.
“Isn’t it possible you misunderstood?” He struggled, trying to come up with a theory to explain the unexplainable. “If she was as sick as you say, maybe her mind wandered.”
For the first time some of the certainty faded in her eyes. She stared beyond him, as if focusing on something painful in the past.
“I don’t think so.” Her gaze met his, troubled, as if she were trying to be fair. “We’d been talking about the adoption. Certainly she knew what I was asking her.”
“Look, I don’t have an explanation for this.” He spread his hands wide. “All I can say is what I’ve already told you. I knew the girl slightly, and she was here at the right time. I don’t know how to prove a negative, but I never had an affair with her, and I did not father her child.”
Something hardened inside him as he said the words. He didn’t have casual affairs—not that it was any of Anne Morden’s business. And he certainly wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. If there was anything his relationship with his own father had taught him, it was that the Donovan men didn’t make decent fathers. The whole town knew that.
“If you were to sign the parental rights termination…” she began.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that really what you want, Counselor? You want me to lie?”
Her soft mouth could look uncommonly stubborn. “Would it be a lie?”
“Yes.” That much he knew. And he could only see one way to prove it in the face of Anne’s persistence and the mother’s dying statement. “I suggest we put it to the test. A blood test.”
That must have occurred to her. It was the obvious solution. And her quick nod told him she’d thought of it.
“Fine. Is there a lab in town?”
“Not here.” He didn’t even need to consider that. “We can’t have it done in Bedford Creek.” He hoped he didn’t sound as horrified at the thought as he felt.
“Why not?” The suspicion was back in her eyes.
“You’ve obviously never lived in a small town. If the three of us show up at the clinic for a paternity test, the town will know about it before the needle hits my skin.”
“That bad?” She almost managed a smile.
“Believe me, it’s that bad. Rebecca Forrester, the doctor’s assistant, wouldn’t say a word. But the receptionist talks as much as my dispatcher.”
“The nearest town where they have the facilities—”
“I’d rather go to Philadelphia, if you don’t mind.” She shouldn’t. After all, that was her home turf.
“That’s fine with me, but isn’t it a little out of the way for you?”
“Far enough that I won’t be worried about running into anyone who’ll carry the news back to Bedford Creek.” It was a small world, all right, but surely not that small. “I have a friend who’s on the staff of a city hospital. He can make sure we have it done quickly. And discreetly.” Though what Brett would say to him at this request, he didn’t want to imagine.
“This friend of yours—” she began.
“Brett’s a good physician. He wouldn’t jeopardize his career by tinkering with test results.”
She seemed to look at it from every angle before she nodded. “All right. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, it is.”
He forced his muscles to relax. Tomorrow, if luck was with him, a simple screening would prove he couldn’t possibly be the child’s father. Anne Morden would take her baby and walk back out of his life as quickly as she’d walked in.
He should be feeling relief. He definitely shouldn’t be feeling regret at the thought of never seeing her again.
Chapter Three