He watched Erin as she competently moved through the kitchen, transforming a bare table to a convivial setting with effortless ease. The aroma of the dish she’d removed from the oven to stand on a trivet on the table spoke volumes to her ability as a cook. Even now, his mouth was watering. It all seemed to come so easily to her and reminded him uncomfortably of how natural she’d been with Riley when he’d entered the kitchen, following the sounds of the baby’s cries.
Seeing the baby at her breast had brought home a whole new range of emotions. Erin offered sustenance to her son from her own body. It was perfectly natural, and yet he’d never even stopped to think about the baby’s level of dependence upon her as his mother. He wondered if Laura would have been the same—if she’d have nursed their child. They’d never even taken their discussions that far. Instead, their focus had just been on the business of getting pregnant. That focus had been consuming to the point of excluding almost everything else.
Guilt swamped him anew, making him feel disloyal to his late wife’s memory. It seemed like a betrayal to Laura to be here, to be holding this child who might be his but not theirs. To be watching Erin Connell and not Laura. If he’d only been on time to pick Laura up for their appointment instead of insisting on attending to just one more issue that had cropped up at the office. One more issue that he’d since been forced, by his injuries, to learn to delegate. But it was far too late now. Too late for Laura and too late for the child conceived for them at the fertility center.
Even surrogacy was out of the question. As far as he knew, their viable embryos had been destroyed in the clinic failure that had resulted when several anomalies had been discovered in their business practices. Anger licked at the edges of his mind. A wasted emotion now, he knew. But, according to clinic records, one of those mistakes could mean that this child in his arms had been conceived with his sperm.
“Everything okay?”
Erin’s voice broke through his reverie, jolting him free of the pain of the past and dragging him, all too willingly, into her company and the warmth and welcome of her kitchen.
“Yeah, I’m fine. That smells great.” He nodded in the direction of the table.
“You didn’t specify any dietary requirements, so I hope this will be okay.”
She ducked her head shyly, making him realize he’d been staring at her for far longer than was probably polite. Erin took Riley from him and settled the child in his rocker, where he played and gurgled happily while they sat at the table.
“This is incredible,” Sam said as he tasted the casserole she’d ladled generously onto his plate. “Where did you train?”
“Train?”
“To cook like this.” He lifted another piece of succulent and richly flavored beef to his mouth.
She initially said nothing, just watched as he ate. For some reason, having her watch him wasn’t uncomfortable, unless you counted the state of semi-arousal he’d been in from the moment he’d arrived here.
She averted her eyes from his face and focused instead on her plate. “I’m self-taught, pretty much. Connell Lodge had a cook here when I arrived, but she preferred plain food without much seasoning. I started to experiment with a few dishes, and when she retired soon after I got here James offered me the cook’s role full-time.”
“You were staff here?” That was something that hadn’t been in the dossier his private investigator had put together for him. Mind you, the man had barely had a week to gather information about her, and at Sam’s insistence was still on a quest for more.
“Initially, yes.” A bittersweet smile crossed her face. “I was a bit of a cliché, really—marrying the boss.”
A sharp pang of envy lanced through him. Sam pushed it away ruthlessly. He had no right to feel any envy for the relationship Erin had enjoyed with her husband. He himself had been very happily married—hadn’t even so much as looked at another woman in the years he and Laura had been together, and in the aftermath of her death, he’d sworn he never would again.
Erin continued. “The rest, as they say, is history.”
“So, what brought you here in the first place?” He was keen to fill the gaps in what little he knew of her past.
“I applied for work—general house duties. It was heading into winter and one of their regulars had fallen and broken her leg, leaving them short staffed. I was staying at a hostel about half an hour from here and saw a notice in the local paper, so I hitched out and applied for the job.”
“And never left,” he commented. “What did you do before you came here?”
Her expression changed, the friendliness in her eyes disappearing as effectively as if he’d just stolen her most precious possession. And, he suddenly realized, wasn’t that what he was here to do, after all?
“Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that,” she answered evasively. “Nothing important.”
Clearly, she didn’t like to talk about her past. More, he had the instinctive sensation that she was hiding something there that she would rather not have brought into the open. That instinct was what had led him to be where he was today. It had driven him to the top of his field in software development because he was never satisfied with simple answers. It made him all the more determined to discover everything he could about her. This irrational attraction toward her aside, he found he needed to know whatever it was that Erin Connell was hiding. Any secret could be a weapon to get him his son.
Three
Erin carefully sealed the envelope addressed to the San Francisco city law firm acting for Party A. Inside it was her very cautiously worded letter in which she requested more information to support Party A’s request. She could only hope that the mail would take several days to reach them, even though deep down she knew it probably wouldn’t take more than a few.
The past couple of days had made it easy to put the whole matter out of her head. She had been busy taking care of her guest—keeping his rooms tidy and clean, providing his meals for him and shamelessly enjoying his male company while she did so. And then there was Riley, who was growing and changing daily—she could hear him gurgling happily through the monitor on her hip. She’d left him on his play mat in her sitting room while she dashed to the office to get the envelope.
Yes, it was a busy life and she loved it. She didn’t want to lose it.
She had an appointment in South Lake Tahoe midmorning with Janet Morin to see if she could get a better idea of where she stood in this whole business. Janet had been more than happy to make time to see Erin when she’d called and loosely explained her situation. The woman said she’d be happy to advise, pro bono, and Erin’s relief had been palpable. Now, something that had filled her with dread was not so scary after all.
Erin started to put the envelope in her handbag and turned to leave the small office she’d adopted as her own when she’d taken over the administration side of running Connell Lodge a couple of years ago. She walked straight into the solid wall of male muscle that was Sam Thornton—her bag and its contents flying in one direction, the envelope in the other.
She reached out to steady herself, her hands coming to rest on a broad expanse of chest, the fine cotton of Sam’s shirt doing little to hide the definition of lean muscle behind it. At the same time, strong warm fingers closed around her upper arms. She could smell the clean scent of him, the slightly spicy tang of his cologne a subtle fragrance that was purely male and as intoxicating as hell.
Her breathing became uneven as she looked up into his eyes—eyes that were dark and stormy and bored straight back into her own. For a crazy second, Erin almost thought he was going to kiss her. The thought filled her with both terror and intrigue.