Forgotten Father (18 page)

But he didn’t try to hide the bouquet, knowing it
would only make him look sillier.

“Good morning,” the other woman said, staring at
him.

“I…thought Delanie lived here,” he said, hating the
gawky, teenager awkwardness flooding him.

“She does,” Connie said, glancing quickly at his
floral tribute. “Did you want to see her about something?”

“Yes. Is she up yet?” he asked, brazening the
situation out as cheerfully as he could.

“Sure,” Connie said awkwardly, stepping back to let
him in. “Come in and make yourself comfortable. Just step over the
baby toys.”

Mitchell halted inside the door, looking down at the
golden-haired, blue-eyed baby who sat on the floor surrounded by
brightly-colored plastic rings.

Squatting down, he smiled at the infant, holding out
his hand. “Hi, little one.”

The baby stared at him a moment, her gaze
considering. Then, rolling forward onto her hands and knees, she
crawled toward him, a wide smile on her face.

Delanie’s assistant pushed the door closed and
locked it. Turning to the baby, she cooed. “Jenna’s having a lovely
morning, isn’t she? Are you hungry yet, sweeting? Time for your
bottle.”

“Jenna?” he said. “That’s a beautiful name. Hello,
Jenna.”

The baby stopped in front of him, reaching out to
clasp a small starfish-hand around his finger. Pulling herself up,
she wavered at his knee.

“You’re very beautiful,” Mitchell told her before
glancing up at Connie. “I didn’t know you had a child.”

Connie looked at him curiously. “I don’t. Jenna is
Delanie’s baby.”

“Delanie’s!” Shock rolled through Mitchell as he
stared at the tiny bit of humanity in front of him, her blue eyes
questioning, a ready smile on her cherubic face.

Delanie had never mentioned a child, he thought
stupidly. Surely there was a mistake. Wouldn’t she have told him
something this important. Sometime just before or just after they’d
made passionate love?

“I didn’t know Delanie had a baby,” he said numbly,
his breath frozen in his chest as he stared at the child, blood
thundering suddenly in his head.

She had a child? Why hadn’t she said something? Why
hadn’t he heard about it? She’d told him she wasn’t married.

“I didn’t realize Delanie was married,” he said, his
voice sounding oddly normal to his own ears as he tried to pump
Delanie’s assistant for information. “Are she and her husband
separated?”

Connie glanced up swiftly, a hint of caution
descending over her already unreadable face. “She’s not
married.”

“Oh.” He glanced at the child, unable to sort
through all the thoughts running through his head. “It’s hard on
kids when their parents divorce.”

Mitchell looked at the woman, not sure if he wanted
her to agree with him and confirm his inference or not.

She shook her head reluctantly. “Delanie’s not
divorced, either.”

Damn. He found himself smiling at the baby while a
sick robotic part of his brain grappled with the information,
trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out how old the child
was.

“She’s crawling well. How old is she?” The words
seemed to echo hollowly in his head.

The woman stooped to pick the child up, kissing her
pink cheek. “Jenna’s ten months old. You’re a big girl, aren’t
you?”

Ten months old.

The baby was ten months old. Add that to a nine
month pregnancy and conception must have been….

Inwardly cursing his stumbling brain, he tried to
calculate the months since he’d slept with Delanie the first
time.

Dammit, he’d used a condom and he’d have noticed if
it had broken. The child couldn’t be his. Still, any fairly aware
adult male knew that condoms sometimes failed. Was it three or five
times out of a hundred? Either way, he couldn’t be absolutely sure
he hadn’t fathered Delanie’s baby.

Then it hit him. Could this child be his
grandfather’s? Was that why he’d left The Cedars to the girl’s
mother?

The thought hit Mitchell with a slam of nausea, a
cold shiver of revulsion bolting immediately through him. Delanie
hadn’t really slept with his grandfather, had she? He’d spent the
last month working with her, getting to know her as a person. On
some level, he’d come to doubt his original opinion of her.

He was almost certain she wasn’t like that, after
all.

Except here was her child. All of ten months old.
And Donovan had left his half of The Cedars to Delanie.

Connie put the squirming child back on the floor,
kissing the top of her head.

Delanie had slept with his grandfather?

An echo of rage and betrayal spiked through him,
just as they had almost two years ago when he’d discovered who his
lover was. His beautiful goddess with the pink-tipped breasts and
skin the color of cream was the same woman from whose grips he had
sought to disentangle his grandfather.

Only lately, he’d begun to believe he’d gotten it
wrong before. As vibrant and tantalizing as she could be, he
couldn’t visualize Delanie selling her body to an old man for
financial gain.

Mitchell couldn’t tolerate the thought of his
grandfather’s wizen hands on her. God, she couldn’t have done that.
Slept with a man forty years older than she?

His thoughts racing, a new possibility sent a shaft
of disgust through Mitchell as he stared down at the beautiful
child patting his knee with enthusiasm.

Was the child some other man’s? After all,
women—some women—had so many lovers they didn’t know who
impregnated them.

He’d been Delanie’s lover for that one night.
Welcoming him in like an awaited Sir Galahad, she’d lain with him
and shown him heaven before she’d even told him her name.

If she’d made love to him so quickly, why not
others?

Could the child actually be his?
As jolting
as the thought was, it seemed preferable to some other nameless man
fathering Delanie’s child. Stupid. It was stupid to wish for
that.

Blindly, Mitchell took the child’s hand and guided
her over to a nearby chair. When she was steadied, he turned,
sitting the bakery bag and flowers on a nearby table.

He had to get away, had to think before he saw
Delanie again. With the doubt and dismay thundering through his
brain, he didn’t know what he’d do if Delanie came out of her room
now. He had no right to take her by the shoulders and shake her, no
right to demand her to explain herself and her child.

He needed time to think, to calm himself down.

“Don’t bother waking Delanie,” he told the other
woman in strangled voice. “I’ll talk to her later.”

Connie looked up from the baby, faint curiosity in
her face. “Are you sure? Delanie came in late last night from
taking care of the problems with the villa, but if you need to see
her--”

“No,” he said too abruptly. “It can wait. Thank
you.”

With one last look at the sweet golden-haired
infant, he made himself turn and go.

******

Prey to a bewildering array of emotions an hour
later, Mitchell stood by the window in his suite at The Cedars, his
hand clenched on a fold of drapery. He’d passed from his first
stunned reaction to discovering Delanie’s child and was now
struggling—and failing—to consider the situation logically.

He kept remembering their first meeting, how she’d
sent him up in flames with just her smoldering smile. What a sap
he’d been. No smarter than when Melinda Jo had given up her
virginity to him and his bank account.

Hadn’t he learned then? How stupid could one man be?
Hadn’t his own mother teach him about women and money?

He felt sick thinking about it, sick at his own
foolishness, his own blind hopes. Ripped apart from the inside and
left exposed.

But she’d seemed so different. So loving. And yet,
here he was again, facing a woman’s deceit.

Mitchell cursed the knot in his gut, struggling to
disentangle his emotions from what he knew to be true. What did it
matter that he had a sense that Delanie was a good woman? He had to
strive for objectivity now instead of swinging blindly between
denial and disappointment.

Rage and betrayal wouldn’t help him sort out the
mess anymore than hiding his head in the sand. Focusing his
thoughts into calmer channels with an iron will, he tried to
examine the facts at hand. Delanie had had a relationship of some
sort with his grandfather, had slept with Mitchell that one
night---and she now had a child.

But if Donovan had impregnated Delanie and been
aware of the fact, he’d have married her.

Mitchell knew his grandfather well enough to be
certain of that. He’d been too honorable a man to consider leaving
a child nameless in the world, despite the world’s growing
tolerance of such behavior.

And if Delanie had been impregnated by Donovan
Riese, surely she’d have told him. It made no sense for her not to
have informed him.

God, the thought of it, of Donovan and Delanie!
Mitchell heard the sound of fabric tearing. Opening his fisted hand
and loosing the drape, he stared out the window unseeing.

Pushing aside his shudder of revulsion at the
thought of his grandfather touching Delanie, Mitchell forced
himself to consider whether or not the old man had been capable of
siring a child. His health had been declining in the last few years
due to a severe case of atherosclerosis.

Had Donovan even been capable of a sexual
relationship? That he’d been emotionally attached to Delanie was
obvious, but Mitchell couldn’t be sure the old man had retained the
capacity to engage in the reproductive act.

If he had been sexually involved with her, however,
and had believed Delanie’s child to be his, his grandfather would
have married the woman. He would also have left the baby a major
share of his estate which was considerably more than the
half-interest in The Cedars he’d bequeathed Delanie.

There’d been no mention of the child in his will,
either, which Mitchell would have expected. Of course, there was
always the possibility that the old man had felt a loyalty to
Mitchell and had divided his estate out of his feelings for his
grandson, leaving The Cedars to Delanie to enable her to care for
their child.

Mitchell shook his head as if to clear the circling
thoughts. None of the scenarios added up. It just seemed as if the
child had to be his own. Not Donovan’s or any other man’s.

Yet, of all Donovan’s holdings, why would he leave
The Cedars to Delanie? The century-old resort had been tied closely
to Donovan’s heart. Why would he give his mistress the very place
his beloved wife had cherished most in the world?

It didn’t make sense. Not if Delanie had been his
mistress.

She couldn’t have. Wouldn’t have slept with
Donovan.
Mitchell’s gut recoiled at the thought of her with any
other man.

But he had to force himself to be realistic, not to
let his swirling emotions dupe him further. Still trying to sort
logically through the situation, Mitchell set aside his grandfather
as Jenna’s father—

A sudden haunting picture interrupted his ruthless
assessment. He remembered the baby’s bright smile and the way she’d
crawled up to him, wrapping her hand around his finger, smiling up
at him. She couldn’t belong to another man.

Turning abruptly away from the window, Mitchell went
to his grandfather’s desk and sat in the chair behind it.

He had to face it. It was most likely that the child
had been fathered by one of Delanie’s other men. He, of all men,
had ample proof that she hadn’t been faithful to her elderly
admirer. Not if he looked at the situation realistically.

But if the child were born of one of her careless
intrigues, it was none of his business, Mitchell told himself,
aware of another irrational surge of anger.

Delanie’s reproductive irresponsibility with other
men was no concern of his, even if she was promiscuous. She didn’t
belong to him, no matter how he felt about it. They’d had great sex
on two occasions now, but no vows had been exchanged. He wasn’t
responsible for her or her progeny.

Since she had no commitment to him, he had no reason
to reproach her for becoming pregnant with another man’s child.

And if the child were his? Out of every hundred
condoms used, three to five failed. That added up to a fair number
of babies.

A memory blossomed in Mitchell’s head. Delanie, her
supple naked body mounted on his, her body clenching around him in
pleasure. That first night, the first time almost two years ago
when he’d stripped off her dress and uncovered the treasure of her
ivory body…. She’d climaxed once, twice, and then he’d made love to
her again.

Had
he
impregnated her that night and then,
the next morning, cast her out? The thought made him shudder.

Shoving aside the twinge of guilt, he instead
reminded himself of the deceit she was practicing on his
grandfather. Never mind remembering her betrayal of himself.

If the child were his, he thought, his hand clenched
on the telephone cord hanging off the desk, if the baby were
his—

Huge blue eyes and wispy blond hair. That wide smile
showing four tiny teeth. Could he actually have a child? His heart
constricted at the thought.

No child of his would grow up fatherless. He thought
of his own lonely childhood and picked up the phone, rapidly
dialing the number of his New York office.

He had to know the truth.

“This is Mitchell Riese. Let me speak to Beecham,”
he said into the phone.

Staring grimly ahead, he waited to be connected.

“Mr. Riese,” a voice at the other end said
respectfully.

“Beecham, I’ve got work for you. I want this
information immediately.”

It went without saying that the matter would remain
confidential. Beecham’s agency had done work for him before.