B.J. Daniels - A Father For Her Baby

Sanders snatched up the sheets from the printer and scanned down what read like a résumé. It was very impressive.

“I wonder what happened,” Rustan said thoughtfully. “Looks like he was good, really good. Then suddenly he drops out. Four years later he’s building furniture out of his shed in Podunkland. Believe me, there’s a story there. Something.” Rustan rubbed his jaw. “Makes you wonder what happened. Want me to try to find out?”

Sanders shook his head. He couldn’t care less about the man’s past. He was more interested in the man’s relatives. A brother named Jason. And Luke St. John’s current address: Big Sky, Montana. How about that?

Sanders carefully folded the papers and put them in his pocket. “How much do I owe you?”

“Don’t you want me to just put it on the bill I send to your brother?”

“No,” Sanders said, pulling out two hundred dollars from the wad Derrick had given him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my brother.”

Rustan shrugged and took the money. “You say you don’t want me to keep looking for Kit Killhorn, right?”

“Right.”

“But you want me to keep looking for Jason St. John, but you want me to bill you instead of your brother?”

Was the man stupid? “I believe that’s simple enough.”

“Oh yeah, it’s simple all right. Just interesting.”

“Maybe you should try to curb your interest in other people’s affairs,” Sanders suggested.

Rustan laughed in his face. “People’s affairs are my business. It’s how I make a living, digging in other people’s lives. I’ll let you know if I find the answer to Luke St. John’s past.” He held up his hand before Sanders could protest. “It’s on the house. A freebie. Sometimes I just like to satisfy my own curiosity.”

Sanders left, his mind alive with worry. He didn’t like the P.I. and suspected Rustan would call Derrick the moment he left the office and sell him the same information. But he didn’t want any other outsiders involved in Killhorn business. Besides, he had more important things on his mind than Matthew Rustan. Why would this Lucas St. John kidnap Kit and the baby? Was he looking for his brother and thought Kit might know where Jason was? Or did he believe Jason had met with foul play?

Sanders felt his heart hammer harder. If Kit repeated that story about Derrick killing Jason…What would Lucas St. John do if he thought Derrick had killed his brother? Would he use Kit to try to get back at Derrick?

The possibilities terrified him. Then a new thought stopped him cold. What if this Luke St. John had kidnapped Kit to protect her from Derrick? Instantly, he rejected that theory as ridiculous. No one had to protect Kit from her own husband, nor the baby from his own father. Derrick might be a little out of control on occasion, but he’d married Kit, so he must have loved her. And more than anything in the world, Derrick wanted his son back.

Sanders glanced at his watch. By now Derrick was in Big Sky, waiting for his call.

* * *

LUKE ST. JOHN led the way up the steep wooden stairs. Before he reached the door, it flew open and a matronly woman wearing an apron took the baby from Luke’s arms and ushered them quickly inside.

Kit stepped into the warmth, surprised to find the place homey. A fire crackled in a woodstove in one corner, surrounded by an odd collection of comfortable-looking chairs. The opposite was lined with built-in bunk beds, with each covered with a worn handmade-looking quilt. Beside the bottom bunk was a white crib.

The kitchen took another corner of the room, where a delightfully spicy scent bubbled up from a huge pot on the stove. At the center of it all, a muchused high chair sat pushed up to a table set for three. Kit remembered seeing Luke on the car phone as they were leaving Galveston. They’d obviously been expected.

“I was getting worried about you,” the woman said as she looked down at the baby. “Oh, what an adorable child.”

Kit reached for Andy, surprised he wasn’t howling his head off. He usually didn’t like strangers, but he seemed to be intrigued by the woman’s wide, open face and her deep southern accent.

Before Kit could take Andy from the woman’s arms, Luke reached for Kit’s wet raincoat. She shrugged out of it, and he hung it on one of the hooks by the front door. “Aunt Lucille loves babies. Aunt Lou, meet Kit Kil—”

“Bannack,” Kit said quickly, surprising herself at the vehemence she heard in her tone.

Luke’s gaze flipped up to hers. “Kit Bannack,” he corrected, studying her. “And her son, Andy.”

“Well, come on in,” Lucille said, eyeing her nephew curiously. “I hope you’re hungry.”

Luke said nothing, but Kit felt her stomach growl. When was the last time she’d eaten? She started to relax just a little. Derrick hadn’t jumped out of any closets, and she was beginning to believe he wasn’t going to. The only question that remained was what Luke St. John hoped to accomplish by scuttling her and Andy off to this place.

“The gumbo is ready,” Lucille said, stealing another look at her nephew, worry on her face.

Andy began to whimper. “He probably needs to be changed,” Kit said.

“Oh, please, let me,” Lucille said. “If you don’t mind.”

Kit looked into the woman’s face and found herself nodding. Andy had taken to her right away. But Kit didn’t miss the look the woman gave her nephew—almost a warning look—before her gaze settled on Kit.

“Why, look at her, this woman is soaked to the skin,” Lucille exclaimed. “Go warm up next to the fire,” she told Kit. “Luke, get her a change of clothing,” she ordered as she headed for the crib with Andy.

Luke obeyed, going to a built-in drawer and pulling out a pair of sweats. He held them up for Kit to inspect. They looked soft and comfortable, warm and way too large.

She went to take the clothes from him, knowing they would swallow her small frame. Which made them perfect. They would hide her figure, which was just fine with her. She’d always been thin. Since the baby, she felt too rounded, too full in places she’d never been full-figured before. She felt at odds with this new body, as if she hadn’t yet grown into it—and might never do so.

Luke pointed her to the back of the house. She stepped through a doorway into what appeared to be a combination artist’s studio and bedroom. Watercolors lined the walls, along with photos of weddings, baptisms and newborn babies. She stopped before a photograph, recognizing the man in the picture as the one now in the next room.

The photo had been taken on the beach—and not that long ago. And what made it so unusual was how different the smiling Luke St. John looked in the photo. The eyes weren’t hard-as-steel gray, but soft, almost seductive. His rugged features weren’t etched in unforgiving granite. He was handsome in a strong, very masculine way that had a strange effect on her. But it was the look on his face that drew her in, in a way she would never have expected. Luke looked happy. And that expression on Luke St. John was the most alluring of all.

Is this what he’d been like before his brother’s death?

Then she saw the photograph next to it, and her heart thudded in her chest. It was of Jason at about age sixteen, squinting at the camera as he held up the huge fish he’d caught. He looked too serious for his age.

* * *

“SHE SAW HER HUSBAND kill Jason,” Luke said the moment Kit had left the room.

Lucille covered her mouth with one hand, and her eyes swam with tears. “Dear God. You’re sure?”

He nodded and reached over to take his aunt’s hand. He squeezed it, then pulled back, as unable to give comfort right now as he was to receive it. “Jason’s dead. Murdered.” His jaw tightened. “And she saw the whole thing.”