Joan Kilby - Child of His Heart

Erin took a deep breath and started to walk away, heart pounding.

“Wait!” He strode after her and put a hand on her arm. “I don’t understand. What happened between Saturday evening and this morning to change your mind?”

Lifting her eyes to his, she answered, “I—I’ve had time to think. You know how people in small towns talk.”

“You’re not going to tell me you’re worried about the town gossips. What could anyone say that could possibly harm either of us?”

She conjured up a vivid image of herself hugely pregnant, and Nick cast unfairly as the father. She couldn’t put him in such an untenable position.

Nor could she bear to sit and wait for him to reject her.

She shrugged, forcing herself to appear nonchalant. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to get involved. Please accept my decision.”

Shutting her heart to the hurt and anger in his eyes, she put her chin in the air, straightened her shoulders and walked out of his life….

Dear Reader,

Kids—you gotta love ’em. They say that mothers always know who their children are, but a father can never be certain. Until the advent of DNA testing, that is. The idea for Child of His Heart came by playing around with the writer’s favorite creative tool—what if? What if suddenly you discover that the child you always thought was yours might not be?

Nick Kincaid’s wife confessed on her deathbed to having an affair around the time their daughter was conceived. The galling knowledge doesn’t diminish Nick’s love for his daughter, Miranda, but he does think twice about getting romantically involved with Erin Hanson, who is pregnant by her ex-fiancé. The last thing he wants is to raise another child that isn’t his. Or does he?

Child of His Heart explores what it means to be a parent. Is fatherhood purely genetic? Or is a commitment to a child’s welfare on a daily basis just as important, perhaps more so? I think any parent, biological or adoptive, knows the answer to that.

Erin figures out pretty quickly that Nick would make a better father to her child than the biological father, despite Nick’s protestations. Nick gets there in the end, with Erin’s help, but not before he risks losing those he holds dearest. It’s a happy man who knows that, child of his loins or not, the child he loves and cares for is a child of his heart.

I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did writing it. I love to hear from my readers. You can contact me c/o Harlequin Enterprises, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, M3B 3K9; or e-mail me at www.superauthors.com.

Joan Kilby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the children of my heart—Ryan, Gillian and Matthew

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

THE PHONE WAS RINGING when Erin entered her Seattle apartment late one Sunday night in early August. She longed for a hot shower and a quiet finish to the weekend with her fiancé, John.

Correction—her ex-fiancé.

“Hold on,” she muttered at the phone. “I’m coming.”

Slipping off her Prada slingbacks, she tossed her overnight bag onto the living room sofa and moved through the dark to the granite-and-oak kitchen. Three of her seven clocks chimed the quarter hour and she automatically looked at her watch—11:45.

The phone clicked onto voice mail. “Hi, Erin. It’s Kelly. Call me—”

At the sound of her sister’s voice, Erin snatched up the phone. “Kel? I’m here. I just got in.”

“Erin, thank God. I’ve been calling since yesterday morning.”

“I was away for the weekend with John. What’s up?” Stifling a yawn, she flicked on the lights and wriggled onto a bar stool, pushing back the spiraling blond strands that fell around her shoulders.

“It’s Gran,” Kelly said. “She’s fine now—”

“What do you mean now? What happened?” Erin hugged the cordless phone to her ear, one arm wrapped around her waist. Please, God, not Gran.

“She had a slight heart attack,” Kelly explained.

“Oh, my God.” Erin slid off the stool, her free hand pressed against her forehead. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She’s back home. She’s fine, honestly,” Kelly reassured her. “The doctors did all kinds of tests and they say there’s no serious damage to her heart. But I’m worried, Erin. When it happened, I was at work. She felt pain in her chest, and instead of going to the doctor she went around the house and penciled a name on the back of all her needlepoint pictures so we wouldn’t fight over them in case she died.”

“As if we would.” But Erin could just see Gran doing that.

“Well, Geena might,” Kelly said. “You know she’s always coveted the one of the lighthouse.”

Erin chuckled, and Kelly joined in. Laughing was okay because they both knew that like them, Geena wished Gran could live forever. No amount of needlepoint pictures would make up for her loss.

“I asked her to come and live with us,” Kelly continued. “She refused.”

“I’m not surprised—that house is her home.” Erin opened the fridge door and reached for the carton of orange juice. “She and Granddad built it over sixty years ago. I can’t imagine her living anywhere else. And we grew up there. I’d hate to see it go out of the family.”

“What should we do?” Kelly asked.

“I agree she shouldn’t be alone.” Erin pictured Gran suffering another heart attack, reaching for the phone and collapsing before she could dial 911. “Maybe we could get her a live-in housekeeper.”

“I suggested that, too. She doesn’t want a stranger in her house. I got her a Medic Alert tag, but she won’t wear it. I don’t know if she’s in denial or just forgetful.”

Erin drank some juice while she considered their options; there weren’t many. “I could come home,” she said slowly.

“But how?” Kelly objected. “What about your job? And John?”

Erin’s shoulders drooped. “John and I broke up.”

She barely finished speaking before clocks began to sound the hour from their various locations around the apartment. As she waited for the chimes to cease, her mind flitted back over the weekend at John’s cabin. She’d gone with the expectation that they’d plan the wedding; he’d come to tell her he wanted to postpone it—again. After two days of arguments, lovemaking and tears she was drained, emotionally and physically.

“Oh, Erin. I’m sorry.” Hesitantly, Kelly added, “To tell you the truth, I’m glad. He wasn’t right for you. But are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Erin put down her glass and moved into the darkened living room to stand before the picture window. From her twelfth-story apartment the lights of Seattle twinkled around the dark fingers of Puget Sound. “I’m running on empty, but I’ll survive. John’s not a bad guy—”

“He’s manipulative. I don’t know why you can’t see it. What did he do—put off the wedding again?”

“This is a bad time for him, workwise. As prosecuting attorney he has responsibilities, and now he’s thinking of running for Congress. Maybe I’m being too pigheaded. Gran isn’t the only stubborn one in the family.”