Anna Adams: Her Daughter's Father

“India? Are you all right?”

She couldn’t tell Jack what was on her mind, so she bit back her questions about her daughter’s first days with him and Mary and changed the subject. “I love to look at photos, but I always want to know the stories behind them.”

“Colleen is like that, too. Unfortunately, we couldn’t tell her much. Mother Angelica only told us Colleen had a normal delivery. You don’t seem surprised to hear she’s adopted. Has she already told you?”

India nodded in time to the beat of her own heart. Jack’s question tempted her again to enter a dreamworld, where Colleen would get used to the idea of her true identity, and Jack would forgive her for her lies.

“J-Jack,” she stuttered, “Colleen’s birth mother could tell you all about her birth. Have you never wondered about her?”

His vehemence gave away the depth of his feeling about the “birth mother.” “No. Mary was Colleen’s mother. That’s all I need to know. For years, we dreaded the idea of some woman trying to take our daughter away from us. I still think about it when I hear one of those stories on the news….”

His voice trailed off, and India tried to hide her utter dismay. Averting her face, she scrambled for composure. He’d given her a swift, detailed answer. If she tried to tell him the truth, he’d think she’d come to steal his child.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna Adams grew up battling for position with four brothers and five male cousins. Her grandma, concerned when Anna built a tree house that resembled a condo for a family of four, gave her the gift of a Harlequin romance novel and told her that young women (Anna was twelve and—please—no longer a “girl”) could combine other, even more exciting adventures with their architectural accomplishments.

With wholehearted joy, Anna plunged into a world of strong women and loving men who knit their lives together no matter what obstacles stood between them. Now Anna can’t believe she’s lucky enough to add her stories to the ones that came before her. She hopes to bring the same delight she’s known to other readers. She just wishes she could share that cool reading spot, too.

Anna lives in Georgia with her jazz guitarist son, Colin, her swims-like-a-fish daughter, Sarah, and her hero of twenty-one years, Steve.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Mamie—who gave me that first book.

To Colin and Sarah—may life bring you the love

you’ve given me.

And to Steve—I still listen for your voice on the phone,

your key in the door. You love like a hero.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, in the basement of St. Genevieve’s Home for Unwed Mothers, India Stuart gripped a small flashlight between her teeth and bent over a locked filing cabinet. Seconds ticked like frantic heartbeats in her head.

She’d learned how to pick locks from a book, but her hands hadn’t trembled this way when she’d practiced at home. Like the attorneys she’d consulted and Mother Angelica, who’d run the home since before India had come here to give birth, the lock remained firm.

She didn’t take burglary lightly. Fifteen years ago, she’d stepped outside the rules and made one mistake that had taught her never to rebel again. She glanced at the window she’d climbed through. Headlights on a waiting car flashed twice.

Her father, encouraging her. He was only trying to help, not alert the local police. “Dad!” She redoubled her efforts. A bead of sweat trickled down her nose. Had he flashed the lights before? Even at a time like this, she and he did not know how to communicate.

She tightened her moist fingers on the tools. Any minute Mother Angelica might materialize to engulf her in voluminous black robes. No, at night, Mother Angelica only ventured from her room to investigate the sound of a gallon of ice cream bouncing across the kitchen tiles. India still remembered.

Inhaling a shaky breath, she started over. Use a gentle touch. Persuade the lock. Don’t force it.

With a metallic thunk, it finally gave and sprang outward. Astounded, she stared at the cabinet. A moment of truth. Fifteen years of hopes and dreams and regrets, all concentrated in one shattering second.

She yanked the handle on the S drawer.

Smith, Smith, Smith—how many frightened young women had borrowed that name? Finally, a Smythe and two Snyders. She ran her fingertips over the folder tabs. Sprayberry, Spritzer? At last, a Stewart, and another, and then—Stuart, India. Even in the dim light her folder looked old.

Fifteen years.

She tugged at the file. Wedged between the others, it stuck. She tugged harder, but left it halfway in, so she wouldn’t have to figure out where it belonged when she finished with it.

Prying the folder open enough to see the writing on the pages inside, India shone her small flashlight on Mother Angelica’s spidery scrawl. She searched for the name she’d tried to imagine for too many years, the name of the child she’d given up for adoption.

Colleen Stephens.

India squeezed her eyes shut, holding in terrified joy. This moment was worth any danger. She shook herself, remembering her father outside. Getting him arrested wouldn’t improve their strained relationship.

She dug a small notebook out of her pocket. Her knees wobbled as she wrote down her daughter’s address. Arran Island, Maryland. So close. She’d always been so close. India stared at Colleen’s adopted parents’ names. Jack and Mary Stephens. She hoped they loved Colleen the way she’d wanted to. She vowed not to hurt them as she jotted down their names and then threaded the file back into its slot.

She shut the drawer and pushed the lock back into place. Quickly she turned off the flashlight and stowed it in her pocket. Across the room, her father’s wrench, upright and gleaming in the moonlight, still braced the window open.

She clambered to the window ledge and eased the wrench out. Then, she forced a space large enough to wriggle through and tumbled out onto the grass. As she leaned back to tug the window down, her father gently revved his car’s engine.

She scrambled up the slight rise and pushed through shrubbery that grabbed at her clothes and skin. Gravel scrunched under her heels as she skidded to the front passenger door and yanked it open. Breathing hard, she slid into the seat. The man behind the steering wheel, all in black, his hair a shock of steel, tilted his head in a silent question.

“Colleen Stephens. Arran Island, Maryland.” India choked on the words, amazed she had gone to such lengths, but unbelievably glad.

For a moment, Mick Stuart’s eyes reflected her happiness. He sobered abruptly. “So you found out her name. Let it go now. Get back on a plane for Seattle and take that job. Hire someone to find out if she’s all right.”

The last plane she’d boarded for Seattle had broken crosswise on the runway, burst into flames and changed her life forever. Dragging herself through smoke so thick she almost had to chew it, she’d seen her bland life for the safe picture of responsibility she’d created. She’d thrown away her parents’ love and hidden her own for them so deep she didn’t know how to find it anymore. Since Colleen’s birth, she’d kept herself from loving anyone.