Sandra Steffen - A Bride Before Dawn

The deep cadence of his voice hung in the air for a long time after he left. Lacey closed the door, but she moved around the cluttered apartment as if in a trance.

Noah Sullivan had a lot of nerve. It was just like him to threaten to break her door down if she didn’t let him in and then trounce off as if everything that had happened was her fault. He made her so mad.

She closed her eyes, because that wasn’t all she felt for him. She’d gone an entire year without seeing him, without talking to him or touching him, and then, bam, she’d spent one minute in his presence and wound up in his arms. Why did her body always seem to betray her when it came to Noah?

She knew the answer, and it had as much to do with love as it did with passion. She stomped her foot at the futility of it all.

From what she could gather from the little he’d told her tonight, somebody had left a baby on the Sullivans’ doorstep. It wasn’t clear to her why Marsh, Reed and Noah were uncertain which of them was the father. The entire situation seemed ludicrous, but if Noah believed the child might have been a product of their night of passion last year, the baby must be an infant.

What kind of a mother left her child that way?

A desperate one, Lacey thought as she looked around the old apartment where she’d spent her formative years. She understood desperation.

Shortly after her father died last year, the company she’d worked for in Chicago had downsized and she’d found herself unemployed. Her meager savings had quickly run out. Part-time and temp jobs barely put food on the table. Before long she was behind on her rent. And then things got worse.

She placed a hand over the scar on her abdomen, then just as quickly took her hand away.

She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She couldn’t change the past, and who knew what the future held?

Right now, what she needed was a viable means of support. What she had—all she had—was this narrow building that housed her father’s boarded-up bar and this ramshackle apartment above it. Although she’d promised herself that she would never move back to Orchard Hill, the deed to this property gave her a handful of options she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She could reopen the bar, or rent out the building and this apartment, or sell it all—lock, stock and barrel.

As she returned to her packing, she thought about Noah’s invitation. Okay, it had sounded more like an order. Dinner was at one tomorrow, he’d said. He expected her to be there.

She wondered what he would do when she didn’t show up. She spent far too much time imagining what would happen if she did.

There were two types of guys. Those who asked permission. And those who begged forgiveness. Why, Noah wondered, did he always land in the latter category?

He’d had every intention of knocking on Lacey’s door and asking her one simple question. “Is Joey my son?”

But he’d seen her tears, and he’d reached for her hand, and one thing had led to another. Now here he was, pulling into his own driveway, the remnants of unspent desire congealing in his bloodstream while guilt fought for equal space. Since there wasn’t much he could do about his failings right now, he pulled his keys from the ignition, turned off his headlights and got out.

The house was lit up like a church. Even the attic light was on. The windows were open, but other than the bullfrogs croaking from a distant pond and a car driving by, he didn’t hear anything. He hoped that was a good sign.

He went inside quietly, and found Marsh and Reed in the living room again. They were standing in the center of the room, staring down into the old wooden cradle between them. There was a streak of dirt on Marsh’s white T-shirt and Reed’s hair was sticking up as if he’d raked his fingers through it. Repeatedly.

Noah waited until they looked at him to mouth, “How long has he been sleeping?”

After glancing at his watch, Marsh mouthed back, “Four minutes.”

“Did you talk to Lacey?” Reed whispered.

Noah nodded and tried not to grimace.

As if by unspoken agreement, they moved the discussion to the kitchen. Keeping his voice down once they were all assembled there, Noah said, “Lacey didn’t leave Joey on our doorstep.”

“She told you that?” Reed asked.

“She didn’t have to. If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have realized it right away. If she’d been pregnant with my kid, she would have gotten in my face or served me with papers. She wouldn’t have left the baby on my porch and then crept away without telling me.”

“You’re positive?” Reed asked.

“Covert moves aren’t her style,” he said. “If Joey is a Sullivan, he isn’t mine.”

Marsh, Reed and Noah had personalities very different from one another. But one thing they had in common was an innate aversion to asking permission to do what they thought was best. Consequently, Noah wasn’t the only member of this family who sometimes wound up in the uncomfortable position of asking for forgiveness. Remembering all the times these two had been waiting for him when he’d broken curfew or worse, and all the times they must have wondered what the hell they were going to do with him, he felt an enormous welling of affection for his brothers.

“Obviously, you were both with somebody a year ago. Do either of you have an address or phone number?” he asked.

The first to shake his head, Reed was also the first to drag out a chair and sit down. “She was a waitress I met when I was in Dallas last summer. She spilled salsa in my lap and was so flustered she tried to clean it up. I stopped her before—Anyway, she blushed adorably and said her shift was almost over. She had a nice smile, big hair and—” His voice trailed away.

“What was her name?” Marsh asked after he’d taken a seat, too.

In a voice so quiet it wasn’t easy to hear, Reed said, “Cookie.”

Noah didn’t mean to grin. Marsh probably didn’t, either. It was just that the fastidious middle Sullivan brother normally went out with women named Katherine or Margaret or Elizabeth.

“What’s her last name?” Noah asked.

“I’ve been trying to remember ever since we brought Joey inside.”

Reed Sullivan had sandy-blond hair, but his whisker stubble was as dark as Noah’s and Marsh’s. Letting whisker stubble accumulate was a rare occurrence, so rare in fact that Noah had forgotten how dark it was. Scratching his uncommonly stubbly cheek, Reed looked beyond mortified. If he expected chastisement, he wasn’t going to get it from either of his brothers.

“You said she was a waitress,” Noah said, trying to make a little sense of a very strange situation. “What was the name of the restaurant?”

Reed said, “It was a small Mexican place near the airport. Now I wish I’d used a credit card so there would be a paper trail.”

Noah turned his attention to Marsh, who had grown unusually quiet. “What about you? Are you dealing with a one-night stand, too?”

Marsh shook his head. “Her name is Julia Monroe. At least that’s what she told me.” His voice got husky and took on a dreamy quality Noah had never heard before. “I met her on vacation last year on Roanoke Island. We slept under the stars and visited just about every coffee shop up and down the Outer Banks.”

“Have you talked to her since the week was over?” Reed asked, obviously as curious as Noah.

“The number she gave me was out of service,” Marsh answered.

That seemed odd to Noah, but there wasn’t much about this dilemma that didn’t seem odd. “What about the note?” he asked. “Does the handwriting look familiar to either of you?”

Marsh and Reed wore similar expressions of uncertainty. After a moment of quiet contemplation, Reed asked, “Why wouldn’t she have signed the note? Or addressed it?”