The Horseman's Son (3 page)

Oh, mercy. She felt the tears threaten, and she tried to blink them back. One escaped anyway, but she quickly wiped it away so there’d be no proof of the pain that had ripped her heart apart.

“Look at me,” Collena requested. “Don’t you see some kind of resemblance between Adam and me?”

It was a gamble, because Collena had no idea if her son did indeed resemble her.

But the gamble paid off.

Dylan combed his gaze over her. Studying her, hard. And at the end of several snail-crawling moments, he groaned and scrubbed his hand over his face. He dropped down in the chair across from her and raised his head.

“Adam has blond hair and brown eyes,” he admitted. “Like you.”

The relief washed over her. Not because she doubted this child was hers. No. She was positive of it. But the resemblance might go a long way to convincing Dylan of what she already knew.

It might also convince him to accept the deal she was about to offer.

“I won’t believe any of this until I see DNA results,” he added a moment later.

Collena had anticipated that, as well. “I already have DNA results to prove he’s mine.”

“You couldn’t.”

“But I do. You probably remember telling your adoption attorney that you wanted your baby’s umbilical cord to be stored in case it was needed in the future. Since the storage facility was also owned by Brighton, the police got a search warrant to have all the umbilical cords tested. The newborns’ identities were all in code, so I knew that one of the babies was mine, it just took a lot of DNA tests to figure out which one.”

He pulled in his breath. “And how do you know that you unraveled the code correctly?”

“Because all the other babies have been accounted for. All except Adam. He’s the last one on the list.”

Collena took the small DNA test kit from her pocket, opened it and wiped the sterile swab on the inside of her cheek. She put it in the plastic bag, resealed it and handed it to him.

“You can send it to any lab you choose,” Collena instructed. “Ask for a maternity study. Have them expedite it. Within forty-eight hours you should have the proof you need.”

“Need for what?” He stood and dropped the kit onto his desk. He pressed his thumb to his chest. “I love him. Adam is my son.”

Collena stood also, so she could make eye contact. “I love him, too. And he’s my son.”

He cursed, and it wasn’t mild. “I can’t give him up.”

“Neither can I.”

“I’ll fight this in court.” His stare turned to a glare. “I’ll have to.”

“Maybe not.”

Dylan blinked, and his forehead bunched up. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I know you’re a good father.” She motioned around the room. “And I can’t give Adam all the material things you’ve given him. Or the stability. Or the respectability.”

There was more.

She’d save that for later.

On top of everything else he’d learned, it might be too much for Dylan Greer to hear that they might both lose the precious child they loved.

“And I can’t overlook the fact that you’re the only parent that Adam knows,” Collena added, hoping that she was making her case. “To take him from you now would be as criminal as what happened to me at Brighton sixteen months ago.”

His glare softened. “Are you saying you won’t fight me for custody?”

“Not exactly.”

The softening vanished. “Then, what are you saying?” he asked.

Mercy, she only hoped this sounded better aloud than it did in her head. But it didn’t matter if it sounded insane. She had no choice.

“What I’m offering is more of a compromise,” Collena explained. “When you weigh all the options, when you think about how we can both have Adam in our lives, there’s only one thing you can do.”

His glare returned and intensified. “And what’s that one thing that I can do?”

Collena braced herself for his reaction. “You can marry me.”

Dylan hadn’t thought there could be any more surprises today, but he was obviously wrong. Collena Drake had just delivered the ultimate surprise.

“Marry you?” he questioned.

She nodded and moistened her lips. “I’m Adam’s mother. You’ve raised him, true, but we both love him. It seems…reasonable that we can both be his parents.”

“You don’t even know him,” Dylan tossed right back at her.

“He’s my child.
I love him.
”

He couldn’t dispute that. He’d loved Adam, too, from the moment that he learned Adam was his. Dylan hadn’t had to see him to know just how deep that love was. Still, that didn’t mean this woman had a claim to Adam.

“Neither of us wants to lose him,” Collena added as if that would change his mind. It wouldn’t.

“And you think the solution is for us to get married, even though we’re perfect strangers?”

She nodded.

He didn’t agree with her. It was an insane proposition. He couldn’t do it. Could he?

Oh, man. He hated to even consider it, but Dylan went through a mental list of reasons why he shouldn’t. He had no idea who this woman really was. And even if she proved everything she’d said, it would still mean a marriage to a stranger so that he could keep his child.

Dylan wasn’t sure he could go that far, nor was he sure he had to. There was rarely just one solution to a problem, even when that problem was as massive as this one appeared to be.

“And what if I say no to your marriage proposal?” Dylan asked.

She took a deep breath. “Then I’ll petition the courts to return Adam to me. In my car, I have all the documentation to prove that he’s mine and that the adoption was illegal. I’ve already retained an attorney. He could file my petition as early as tomorrow morning. In nearly all the Brighton cases, the illegally adopted children have been returned to the birth parents. And in those cases where they weren’t, it’s because both birth parents were dead.”

Dylan felt the knot in his stomach tighten. Collena had obviously given this plenty of thought, but then, according to what she had said earlier, she’d had three days to absorb it. He was still trying to come to terms with it, and for him, it was a nightmare.

The adoption attorney he’d used had sworn to him that there were no birth parents in the picture, that they were both deceased. Well, it seemed that either the adoption attorney had been wrong or he was a criminal.

Or maybe this was simply a case of someone on the Brighton staff lying to his attorney.

“In other words, if I don’t jump at the chance to marry you, you’ll try to cut me out of Adam’s life,” Dylan mumbled. “This is blackmail, pure and simple. If it’s money, you’re after—”

“I’m not after your money. In fact, I’ll sign a prenup agreement and won’t use any of your income or resources for my own expenses. What I’m after is far more important than money. I want a decent life for my child. A life that includes me. You were born and raised here. You don’t know what it’s like to be considered trash.”

That set off some alarms. Dylan stared at her. “And you do?”

“I do.” She glanced away for a moment. “I had the misfortune of not being born in the right family. My son has the chance I didn’t, and I don’t want that chance taken away from him.”

Neither did he. Nor did he want to consider what his own life would be like without Adam. Some way, somehow, he would keep him.

“I trust that you don’t need an answer right now,” Dylan said.

“Of course not.” She stood as if prepared to go.

Dylan heard the slight static sound then, and he groaned. Someone was listening on the intercom. He’d forgotten to turn it off earlier when he’d rushed out to find the intruder.

“This is private conversation,” he called out. He pointed to the intercom speaker so that his guest would know why he’d said that. No one confessed to the eavesdropping, but Dylan added, “Ask Jonah to come to my office. He’ll need to escort Ms. Drake to her car.”

Dylan turned back to face her. “I need some time to think this through.”

She nodded. “What you mean, is you need to consult your attorney.”

“That, too.”

“Go ahead. Talk to your attorney. I’m sure he or she will tell you what I’ve already told you—that I have a legal right to claim the child that was stolen from me.” She glanced at the picture that he’d turned facedown on his desk. “May I see Adam?”

Dylan didn’t even have to think about it. “No.” He wasn’t ready to share Adam with this woman.

Heck, he might never be ready to do that.

She stared at him, as if she might challenge his decision, but she didn’t. “When we were by the stables, you said something about a killer. Is there some kind of threat to Adam?”

Oh, hell.

Dylan didn’t want to go there, because this was exactly the kind of fodder she could use if she challenged him for custody. “I’m a cautious man,” he said. “Adam is safe.”

“But you said your fiancée and sister were murdered,” she reminded him.

“I believe they were. But they have nothing to do with Adam.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely,” he lied.

But the only thing that was absolute was that the two people he loved the most—his sister and fiancée—had been murdered.

Another girl, his high school girlfriend, had been viciously assaulted after Dylan had taken her to the prom. The incident had so traumatized her that she’d moved away from Greer. Dylan, too, had moved away for a while. To San Antonio, right after he graduated from college.

For all the good it’d done.

A woman he’d dated there had also been assaulted one night when putting her recycling bin on the curb. The police hadn’t been able to find the person responsible. Ditto for his prom date—no suspects and no arrests. And the local sheriff had ruled his sister’s and fiancée’s deaths accidental.

But Dylan knew better.

Those two car crashes had not been accidents. And neither had the other assaults. They were connected to him. He was the only common denominator.

Since he was aware of that, he’d learned to take precautions, and he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Adam—accidental or otherwise. In fact, that’s the reason he hadn’t been seriously involved with any woman since his fiancée’s death five years earlier. For whatever reason, it seemed as if someone didn’t want him to be happy in love.

“If there’s a threat to Adam,” he heard Collena say, “then I need to know about it.”

And Dylan decided to turn the tables on her. “You said someone tried to kill you after you gave birth.”

She nodded. And swallowed hard.

“Then maybe whoever it was will try to come after you again and finish what he started,” he pointed out.

“No. The Brighton criminals were arrested. Some are dead and some are in jail.”

Because he thought there might be doubt in the depths of her brown eyes, he pushed harder. “You’re absolutely positive that the police rounded up all of them?”

“I’m as certain of it as you are of the fact that your sister and fiancée’s killer has nothing to do with Adam.”

Touché. Under different circumstances, Dylan might have liked her.

“So, why suggest marriage?” Dylan asked.

“On paper, it’s the best solution. Adam will have two parents who love him. He’ll want for nothing. No shared custody. No one weekend with you, the other weekend with me. And if we’re married, if you legally adopted him, then there’ll be no way that anyone can cut either of us out of his life.”

That last part sounded reasonable, but the whole picture had flaws the size of Texas. “And what about a loveless marriage? Do you really want that?”

Collena made a soft sound of amusement. “From my experience, love is vastly overrated.”

“You’re too young to be so skeptical,” he commented.

“I’m a lot older than my age might imply.” She shifted her position. “Look, I’m not some starry-eyed gold digger, Mr. Greer. I don’t want a husband, a lover or someone’s shoulder to cry on. I don’t even want someone to support me or pretend that I matter to him. I just want the best possible life for my son. A life where no one is pointing fingers at him because he’s different.”

Dylan didn’t let himself react to the emotion. To the truthful tone of that obviously painful confession. “If you wanted that, you should have stayed away from him,” he challenged.

“I considered it.”

And she was serious, too. Serious enough to bring tears to her eyes. It was the second time today that she’d teared up, but even with that track record, Dylan didn’t think she was a woman accustomed to showing her feelings. Those tears looked out of place.

“You considered staying away,” he paraphrased. “Yet, you came anyway. Lucky me.”

“I tried, but I can’t give him up.” She moistened her lips, looked away. “I lost him once, and I can’t survive if I have to go through that again.”

Unfortunately, Dylan knew what she meant, but he pushed aside the camaraderie he felt. It was best to keep his feelings toward Collena Drake as detached as possible.

He checked his watch and realized it’d been a good ten minutes since he’d asked Jonah to return. Dylan hit the intercom button on his desk so he could be heard in the kitchen.

“Jonah?”

“He left,” Dylan heard Ina, the cook, say. “He said he had another call.”

Well, that was just great. Jonah wasn’t finished with
this
call. For all the deputy knew, Collena Drake could have been a killer. At a minimum, she’d trespassed, and Jonah should have waited around long enough to see if he was going to have to arrest her for that. Not that Dylan planned to have her thrown in jail. But Jonah didn’t know that.

“I can see myself out,” Collena insisted. She was heading for the door before she turned back around to face him.

She probably hadn’t realized how close they were when she turned around. Mere inches apart.

Both of them stepped back.

“Please think about what I’ve said,” she added.

“Oh, I will.” In fact, he would think of little else.

“I’ll get my car and drive back to drop off the papers that prove Adam is my son. Or I can have someone bring them to you if you’d prefer.”

Dylan didn’t want anyone else involved in this just yet. He went to the closet and grabbed his coat and car keys. He wanted to see what kind of evidence she had so he could start looking for flaws in it. He didn’t know what he would do once he’d found them, but he wanted all the information about this situation and the woman who’d proposed marriage and then threatened to take Adam away from him.

“I’d also like my gun back,” Collena said.

“It’s in my pocket. You’ll get it back when you’re off my property.”

Figuring that he needed to go on the offensive, Dylan picked up his phone and pressed in some numbers. “Sorry to bother you on Thanksgiving,” he said to the man who answered. “But it’s an emergency. Call me the second you have any information on Collena Drake. And I have a DNA test kit that I need you to pick up ASAP and take to a lab.”

“Your lawyer?” Collena asked when he hung up the phone.

“A P.I. I want as much information about you as you think you have about me.”

And he would get it.

He needed all the ammunition possible to stop this woman who’d intruded into his life.

They went back outside, and Dylan could have sworn the temperature had dropped even more. The snowflakes had picked up, as well. They weren’t steadily falling, yet, but it would happen soon. Despite everything that was going on, he couldn’t help but think of how Adam would react to building a snowman.

“You’re smiling,” Collena mumbled.

He put on the stoniest face he could manage. It was easy to do. He was riled at this woman who’d come in unannounced and threatened to tear his life apart.

Dylan motioned toward his truck and unlocked the doors. “I can walk,” Collena assured him.

“I don’t doubt that, but this will be warmer.”

But not faster. She could actually walk across the pasture quicker than taking the roads around the ranch to get to her car, but Dylan wasn’t sure how steady she was on her feet. She’d eaten a few bites in his office, but she was still pale and seemed unsteady.

And it irritated him that he was even remotely concerned about that.

This woman could cost him everything.

He wanted to hate her.

What he didn’t want was to believe that she was telling the truth. Because if she was, if someone had truly stolen her baby and left her for dead, then she’d been through hell, something that Dylan totally understood.

“I suppose Adam can walk?” she asked.

He groaned. He didn’t want to talk about Adam, not to her, but it’d be petty to withhold such simple information. Still, he considered it before he finally mumbled, “Yes.”

“And he can talk?”

He bit back another groan. “He can say a few things.”

Collena nodded. “Thank you. I know that wasn’t easy.” She watched as he drove out of the wrought iron gates that fronted the ranch. “I came today, hoping I’d get a glimpse of him through one of the windows. I really hadn’t planned on intruding on your Thanksgiving day.”