Legal alarms sounded in the back of his head. “What kind of a paper?”
“It’s called a Petition of Relinquishment and Consent.”
He thought for a minute, his mind skimming first-year law. “Isn’t that part of the adoption process?”
For a moment she didn’t move. The tip of her tongue peeked through her unadorned lips and dampened them. “Yes.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you need my signature?”
“I’m in the process of adopting a baby. And she is a…distant relative of yours.”
He leaned forward as though she pulled him on a string. “A relative of mine?”
“She’s your…your niece.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have a niece. I have two brothers and neither one has children.” Unease trickled through his veins, but he dismissed it. If Colin or Quinn had fathered a baby, he’d know it. They had no secrets, nothing they didn’t share with one another. Could this be a ploy for money? A hoax? “I think you’ve made a mistake. Who is the child?”
“There’s no mistake,” she insisted. “She’s definitely your niece.”
“I’m utterly certain I don’t have a niece.”
She raised one beautifully shaped brow. “Don’t be utterly anything until you’ve heard the facts.”
Objection sustained. “Who is the father?”
“Her father’s entirely out of the picture, and anyway, he’s not related to you. It’s her mother. Her mother is— was—a woman by the name of Katie McGrath.”
As if he had a Rolodex in his mind’s eye, he flipped through every distant McGrath cousin he could remember. No Katie. “I’ve never heard of her.”
Slowly she crossed and uncrossed her legs. “No, you wouldn’t have. You’ve never met her. But her mother is Christine McGrath.”
His gut squeezed into a knot.
“And that is your mother,” she said calmly. “So Katie is your sister. Or was. On both counts, I’m sorry to say.”
“No. I couldn’t have a—” He was speechless.
He couldn’t have a sister? Of course he could. An odd numbness began to make his arms and legs ache. He recognized the sensation. He’d first felt it when he was nine years old, the day he watched his mom climb in a station wagon and drive away, leaving a husband and three sons forever.
But he’d gotten so very, very good at making that ache go away. Sheer mind-over-body control was all it took, and if Cam was good at anything, it was control.
Her words replayed. Katie is your sister. Or was. On both counts… “Where is my—Christine McGrath?”
“I’m afraid she and Katie were both casualties in the earthquake.”
He waited for a rush of emotion, but nothing came. No surprise there. He’d killed any feelings for his mother years ago. He felt Jo’s gaze locked on him, waiting for a response. “Sorry to hear that, but I have no relationship with my mother. If this is the same woman who—I really have no connection with her whatsoever.” He wanted his point to be crystal clear.
“Then it shouldn’t be any problem whatsoever to sign this paper,” she said, pulling an envelope from her oversize handbag.
“Whoa. Wait a second, there.” He held his hand up. “I’m a lawyer. We don’t sign anything.”
“If you need proof that she was your mother, I have it. I expected you’d want to see that.”
He stared at her, trying to fit the jigsaw puzzle together. Slowly, he reached for the envelope.
“Christine McGrath left our home twenty-six years ago and moved to Wyoming,” he said, slowly opening the paper.
“No. She didn’t.” At his sharp look, she clarified, “Move to Wyoming, that is.”
According to his father, she had, and none of the McGrath boys had had reason to question him. Not that discussion of his mother’s whereabouts was dinner conversation at their house.
She squared her shoulders and regarded him with the bracing gaze of a judge about to hand down a harsh sentence. “She went to Sierra Springs twenty-six years ago, had a child named Katie and, eleven months ago, Katie had a baby. Callie McGrath.”
His throat closed up, and his fingers froze on the unopened paper. Was this possible?
“I’m going to adopt Callie, Mr. McGrath. But I can’t do that until her closest living relative signs this document and relinquishes any rights to her. I can’t spend the rest of my life worrying if you’ll show up and want custody of her.”
Want custody? Of a baby? “Sweetheart, I don’t want custody of a goldfish.”
“Great.” She stood quickly, tapped her hat back in place and nodded toward the paper in his hand. “All you have to do is sign it and you’ll never see me again. I can assure you of that.”
Part of him wanted to do just that. The part that always crushed any memories of his mother, the part that taught him years ago to have complete control over his environment, his life, his emotions.
But another part heard a nagging little voice that he really would have liked to ignore. But he couldn’t.
You’re going to heal the hurt in this family, Cam McGrath. His grandmother’s Irish lilt was as clear in his head as the first time she made her pronouncement. You’re the oldest. It’s your job. You’ll heal the hurt.
He’d forgotten that prediction. Just as he and Colin and Quinn had forgotten the hurt. Or learned to fake that they had.
But here stood a woman with the answers all of them had secretly craved for twenty-six years. The answers that might make three McGrath men finally, once and for all, close the holes that had busted wide open in their hearts so many years ago. The answers that might rid them of the memory of the day they’d crouched at a second-story window and watched their mother blow out of Pittsburgh. For Wyoming. Or California. Or somewhere.
Evidently, he had to make another choice tonight. And the recriminations could be far worse than missing the first few innings of a baseball game.
He could sign the paper and forget Jo Ellen Tremaine ever graced his office. Or he could get some answers from the cowgirl mechanic.
This could be his only chance to heal the hurt—for Gram McGrath, and for his brothers.
He would just never, ever let this woman know that’s what he was doing.
He stood and gave her a slow, lazy grin. “So, Jo. Do you like baseball, by any chance?”
Jo resisted the urge to let her jaw drop. Cameron McGrath stood a full six foot something and gazed down at her with what could only be called a glint in deep-blue eyes.
Baseball? Was he serious?
“I think it’s dull as dirt,” she replied.
The glint disappeared and the eyes narrowed to disbelieving slits, feathered with eyelashes that, she couldn’t help noticing, were just as long and thick as Katie’s had been. “Dull as dirt?”
Did he really want to discuss the merits of baseball four minutes after she told him his long-lost sister and mother had recently died and that he had a baby niece whom she planned to adopt? Could he be that cold?
Of course he could. Jo had read the letters from Katie’s mother to this man’s father. The letters he’d sent back with a scratchy “Return to Sender” note on the front. Jim McGrath had vinegar in his veins and evidently, that blood type was dominant