Joan Johnston - Shattered

Kate shuddered at the thought of Texas Ranger Jack McKinley confronting Wyatt Shaw with his gun drawn. She didn’t want Jack killing the father of her sons. Or Wyatt killing the man she loved.

“We need to talk,” Shaw said.

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

He lifted an arrogant brow that accused her of the terrible wrong she’d done him. But said nothing.

“You can’t have them.” Kate knew the instant the words came out of her mouth that she shouldn’t have spoken them.

“By them do you mean my sons?” he said, the sudden menace in his voice raising the hairs on her nape.

She tried to slam the door, but he was too fast for her. He simply caught the frame with his palm, waited until she let go, waited another moment until she stepped back, then strode inside and closed the wooden door with a quiet snick behind him.

She turned to face him in her tiny living room like a lioness defending her cubs, even though the twins were at school and wouldn’t be home for another hour. “You can’t have them. They’re mine.”

“And mine,” he said inexorably.

She could see that denial was futile. Somehow he’d found out the truth. “Who told you?”

“A private investigator hired by your mother-in-law.”

Kate groaned and lowered her face into her hands. She suddenly lifted her head and asked, “Does Ann Wade know?”

“I have no idea. The P.I. who contacted me was killed shortly after he left my office.”

Did you kill him? The words stuck in Kate’s throat. There was no sense asking, since he was unlikely to tell her if he had.

“When did you know the twins were mine?” he asked.

Kate felt a frisson of fear skitter down her spine. She had never been a good liar. The telltale pink blotches on her creamy skin always gave her away. But she was terrified of what the man standing in her living room might do if she told him she’d known within weeks of that fateful night that she’d gotten pregnant during their liaison.

The same day she’d gotten a positive result on a home pregnancy test, she’d seduced J.D., who’d gloated at how brief her sex boycott had been after she’d caught him in bed with another woman.

“You were a stranger I met in a bar,” she said to Shaw. “I didn’t know your name. I didn’t know how to contact you.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” he said, anger simmering in his eyes. “When did you know?”

“I couldn’t be sure my husband wasn’t the father,” she lied. And felt the sudden heat on her throat and cheeks.

His eyes narrowed. “It’s a simple question.”

Whenever she’d felt guilty over the years that she hadn’t sought out the stranger from the bar to tell him the truth, she’d reminded herself of the circumstances of their encounter. It was a night out of time.

She’d felt vindicated when she’d discovered who he was.

“What did you expect me to do when I found out I’d gotten pregnant while having sex with a perfect stranger?” A stranger accused of graft and corruption, of extortion and murder. And that was before a woman was found strangled to death in your bed.

His brows arrowed down at her admission that she’d known from the start what he’d just learned.

“You could have gone back to the hotel,” he said. “There were people there who knew me. You could have found me.”

“To what purpose?” she demanded. “I was married. For all I knew, you could have been married, too.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I didn’t know that. Besides, there was always the chance that my husband—”

“You’ve cheated me out of knowing my sons for eight years.”

Kate’s blue eyes flashed up at him. “I notice you never came looking for me!”

“I couldn’t find you. And not for want of trying.”

Kate was startled. He’d searched for her? Why? “Just because the sex was good—”

“The sex was fantastic. But that wasn’t why I came looking for you.”

Kate knew she’d regret asking, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Why, then?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Irritated by his reticence, she snapped, “So why are you here? What do you want?”

He met her gaze with annoying calm and said, “I want to meet my sons.”

“No.” Kate’s throat was tight with dread, but she forced herself to add, “They believe J.D.—my husband, who was killed serving in Afghanistan—was their father.”

“I don’t want my sons growing up without a father.”

As he had, Kate realized. The first time she’d seen Shaw on TV was the day he consoled Dante D’Amato on the steps of the federal courthouse in Houston after his two grown, legitimate sons had been killed by a car bomb. The mob boss was on trial for RICO-related offenses, and the reporter suggested that D’Amato’s sons had been murdered in an effort by underlings to wrench control of the mob from D’Amato’s powerful hands, in expectation that he would be convicted and go to prison.

When a roving TV reporter asked a grieving D’Amato who would take the roles in his business left vacant by his sons’ deaths, D’Amato slid his arm around Wyatt Shaw’s broad shoulders and said, “I have all the help I need right here.”

The news anchor at the station had explained that Shaw’s mother had been supported by D’Amato, who’d bought her a home in Houston, but they’d never been married. Thereby suggesting, without actually saying, that Wyatt Shaw was Dante D’Amato’s illegitimate son, and that he might be expected to take over the mob if his father was convicted.

The film clip that followed showed a grim-faced man with silver-winged black hair shoving his way through a crowd of reporters as he left the federal courthouse.

It was the man she’d picked up in the bar of the Four Seasons, a man passionate beyond her dreams and tender beyond belief.

Kate had blanched with horror at the discovery that she’d lain with a man who’d been accused, along with his mob boss father, of having business competitors maimed and murdered. She’d followed the trial on TV. Neither Shaw nor his father had been convicted. The witnesses had all recanted or disappeared.

The pictures Kate had seen in the tabloid newspapers of that poor strangled woman had put an end to her romantic fantasies about the stranger with whom she’d spent a precious night of lovemaking.

She’d viciously squelched the memories that arose whenever she compared that single night of passion to sex with J.D. She’d comforted herself with the knowledge that her husband might be a selfish lover and a womanizer, but at least he wasn’t a criminal.

Or so she’d thought.

“You don’t have to worry about Lucky and Chance growing up without a father,” she told Shaw. “I’m involved with someone. I love him very much, and we’re going to be married.” She was certain Jack wouldn’t mind if she stretched the truth in a good cause. They hadn’t discussed marriage yet, but she was sure it was only a matter of time before they did.

Jack’s divorce would be final within the next month. And J.D. was…no longer in the picture.

“Since I’m going to be married,” Kate began, “I—”

Shaw was already shaking his head. “No, you’re not.”

“You can’t stop me!”

“We both know your first husband isn’t dead. Which precludes your marriage to another man.”

Kate’s face blanched. “How could you possibly…? Why would you think…?”

“I’ve done some investigating of my own in the week since I discovered I’m a father. You can’t marry another man, because you’re still married to J.D. Pendleton, who isn’t buried in Arlington Cemetery after all. He’s alive and well and left the country for Brazil the day after you were shot.”