Cathy Thacker - The Texas Cowboy's Baby Rescue

Cullen held up a staying hand. “Before you continue, you both should know, he’s not mine.”

Frank and Rachel exchanged concerned looks.

Finally, his stepmom cleared her throat and said kindly, “What we’re trying to tell you, Cullen, is that it would be okay, if he was. A McCabe is a McCabe. Part of our family, no matter how they come into it. Whether it’s by marriage.”

“Or illegitimacy?” Cullen challenged.

Frank leveled Cullen with a disappointed look.

Silence fell once again, more awkward and fraught with emotion than ever.

Finally, Cullen bit out, “Have you talked to Dan?”

Frank nodded. “He said attempts are being made to find the mother, but without her DNA, the child’s true parentage may never be known. And that would be a shame, son. For everyone.”

His words hung in the air, simultaneously an indictment and a plea to come clean.

Uncomfortable, Bridgett rose. “I really don’t think I should be here for this.”

Cullen put a hand on her shoulder. “This concerns you, too.”

Not wanting to contribute to what increasingly felt like an emotional melee, Bridgett eased back into the chair.

Cullen turned back to Frank and Rachel. “I am not dissembling when I tell you and everyone else the child could not possibly be mine. Obviously, I’ve been tapped to be the responsible party. Why, I have no clue. Yet. But I will figure this out. And when I do—” he turned back to his parents and finished heavily “—you-all will be the first to know.”

* * *

“ARE YOU OKAY?” Bridgett asked, short minutes later, after his father and stepmother had left.

His broad shoulders flexed against the soft chambray of his shirt. Exasperation colored his low tone, resentment his eyes. “What do you think?”

Knowing that he needed her support, whether he realized it or not, she ignored his curt reply. “You really don’t have any idea who did this, do you?”

An awkward silence fell. “You’re just now figuring this out?”

Hating the fact he thought she had betrayed him in some way, she gave in to impulse and caught his arm before he could turn away. “I can see why the accusation—never mind an anonymous one—would be upsetting, Cullen.” The hard curve of his biceps warmed beneath her fingertips. “But I can also see it goes much deeper than that.”

He didn’t take his eyes off her. “Let me guess,” he muttered. “You want to talk about my illegitimacy, too.”

She blinked, taken aback. Dropped her grasp and moved away. “Were you born illegitimately?”

“You don’t know?”

“How would I?” When he’d been a junior in high school, she’d been in sixth grade. Way too young to hear that kind of talk.

His dark brow furrowed. “I thought everyone in the county knew.”

“Obviously they don’t,” she returned, equally blunt, “or I would have heard about it.”

A skeptical silence fell.

She folded her arms in front of her. “All I do know is that you’re Frank’s son, conceived several years before he married Rachel, and you came to live with him after your mother died when you were a teenager. That you were here for almost two years, went off to college, lived elsewhere for most of the last decade and then came back.”

His eyes held hers for a long, discomfiting moment.

Ignoring the fluttering in her middle, she trod even closer. “I had no idea your mother and father were not married when you were born, but really, Cullen, in this day and age, is that such a big deal?” After all, she was attempting to adopt as a single parent! There were plenty of families where the parents were divorced, too.

Jaw set, he spun away and strode toward the front of the house where his office was. “It is a huge deal, even in this day and age to have ‘unknown father’ on your birth certificate.”

Okay, she thought, reeling at the implications. Maybe that was a little different. She watched him check the security screens, find nothing amiss. “Are you saying your mom didn’t know who sired you?”

Cullen dropped down into his desk chair, deep frown lines bracketing his mouth. “No. She knew. She just didn’t want anyone else to know that she had a child by one of the Texas McCabes.”

Bridgett leaned against the front of his desk, facing him, and took a moment to absorb that. Her denim-clad thigh almost touching his, she peered at him closely. “So, what did she tell you then?”

He rocked back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him, looking sexy as all get-out. “Nothing—except that it wasn’t important who my biological father was. She was parent enough.”

“And that was a problem because...?”

“She refused to accept the shame in the continued public perception that she ‘had no idea’ who her baby daddy was, and instead, cast herself as the lead in some romantic, ongoing stage play of life.” He shook his head in obvious regret. “Raising me on her own was all part of the drama and the angst.”

“She made you feel like a burden?”

“It wasn’t her intention. But it was definitely the outcome.” His expression didn’t change in the slightest, yet there was something in his eyes. Some small glimmer of sorrow. “My mother worked as a ranch-house chef. She never had a problem getting jobs, because she was very talented. But she never stayed in one more than a year or so, because by then her romance of the moment would have fizzled out, and she would need a fresh start and move on.”

Bridgett began to see how this had all played out for Cullen. “Taking you with her.”

He gave a terse nod. “To another small, rural town, often in yet another state, where I would again have to register for school.” His lips thinned in frustrated remembrance. “And to do that, I would have to provide my formal birth certificate. The administrators would see I had ‘no known father.’ My mother would tackle the subject head-on. Treat it as a joke and wear it as a badge of honor.”

Gently, Bridgett said, “That must have been difficult for you to deal with at such a young age.”

Cullen accepted her empathy with a downward slant of his mouth and a harsh exhalation of breath. “Pity was the most common reaction.” He shook his head sadly, recalling, “I just felt embarrassed and degraded. To the point I begged my mother to tell me the truth.”

The pain in his eyes matched his voice.

“I wanted her to get the name on the birth certificate and be done with it. I even promised her I would never contact my father.” He walked to the windows overlooking the front of the house, then paced to another window, another view. “I just didn’t want to go through the rest of my life wondering who I was, where I came from. But—” he spun around and flung out a hand “—she wouldn’t budge.”

Bridgett’s heart broke for him. Yet she had to ask, as she edged closer yet again. “Is it possible she really didn’t know?”

Cullen shook his head, certain. “No. She was very much a one-man woman for as long as she was with someone. That was part of her own moral code. And, besides, I knew her. I could see that she knew my father’s identity. She just wasn’t going to tell me.”

Bridgett stood opposite him, her shoulder braced against the window. She hadn’t expected him to reveal this much about himself. Now that he had, it had opened up the floodgates of emotion within her, too. “Then how did you end up with Frank?” she asked curiously.

“My mom died in a car accident when I was fifteen. I was put in foster care for about a year, which was a horrendous experience, mostly because I was so angry about the fact that now I was never going to know who my dad really was or have the chance to meet him.”