was good. But it wasn’t the doctor or her fever that had her attention now. It was the little boy in the picture. “Who’s Joey?” she asked.
Jack Whitley cursed under his breath. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She flinched at his hard tone. “The fever, I guess. But you already know that. Please tell me—who’s Joey?”
For several long moments, he didn’t say anything. Alana was afraid he might not tell her. For reasons she didn’t understand, it was suddenly critical that she know.
“Joey’s the baby you gave birth to eight months ago,” Jack informed her. “W-what?”
Jack leaned in and got right in her face. “Joey’s the little boy you abandoned at Willow Ridge Hospital.” He stabbed his index fingers at her. “And if you think you can get him back after all this time, then think again. Because Joey is mine.”
Chapter Two
Jack felt as if someone had dropped a mountain on him.
The same woman who’d already given him the surprise of his life eight months ago on Christmas morning.
Alana Davis.
Now here she’d turned up again like a bad penny. Driving a stolen car and rattling off a story about being held captive.
A story he wasn’t buying.
Alana had some explaining to do.
She didn’t look much different now than she had when he’d fished her out of that frozen creek. She’d been wet then. Shivering, and scared, too.
Of course, she’d had a darn good reason to be scared. She’d nearly drowned and then had gone into shock and labor at the same time. It’d been a miracle that Jack hadn’t had to deliver the newborn right there in the cab of his truck. Thankfully, he’d gotten her to the hospital and Dr. Bartolo in the nick of time.
“I had a baby?” Alana asked.
It was a question that confused and riled Jack. Of course, just about everything Alana had ever done had confused and riled him. Maybe it was the fever causing her to act this way. Maybe not. But it didn’t matter. She’d made her decision about Joey the minute she walked out on him when he was barely a day old.
Now she’d have to live with that decision.
She couldn’t have a lick of a claim to Joey. Jack had been the only father the little boy had ever known. He wouldn’t lose him now, especially not to the mother who’d abandoned him, and Jack was certain he’d be able to convince a judge of that. She might have some legal rights as the birth mother, but those rights could be taken away.
“You don’t remember giving birth to a baby,” he said. Jack made sure it sounded as if he was accusing her of a Texas-size lie.
Tears sprang to her china-blue eyes, and her bottom lip trembled. She awkwardly swiped at her wet shoulder-length brown hair to push it away from her face. “Why are you saying this? Why are you telling these lies?” The tears and the trembling increased. “If I’d had a baby, I would have remembered.”
But the stark fear on her pale face said differently.
“Oh, you had a baby all right. Six pounds, two ounces,” he supplied.
She only shook her head.
And Jack saw something in those blue eyes that he hadn’t wanted to see. Something familiar that he’d garnered from eight years of being the sheriff of Willow Ridge. The harsh reaction of a woman who just might be telling the truth.
Oh, hell.
Groaning, he sank down in his chair and stared at her.
“While we’re waiting for the doctor, maybe we should start from the beginning,” he suggested. Somehow, he had to make sense of all of this and arrest her for auto theft or send her on her way. “You said you remember your car going into the creek?”
Alana nodded. “I remember that. You pulled me onto the muddy bank and gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. You saved my life.”
So far, so good. “And then you went into labor.”
Silence. For a long time. He could see the worry lines bunch up her forehead. “I don’t remember that part.” It seemed to break her heart to say it.
It damn near broke Jack’s, too. Of course, he had more at stake than she did. Joey was his son in every way that mattered. And he wouldn’t ever turn his back on that little boy the way Alana had.
“I took you to the hospital that day,” Jack continued, wondering what he was going to do if he actually jogged her memory. “We got there, and you had the baby on the way into the examining room.”
He watched those blue eyes to see if there was any recollection of that. But there didn’t seem to be any. Only more tears. Disgusted with the sympathy those tears were producing in him, he grabbed a handful of tissues from his desk drawer and shoved them at her.
“Wipe your eyes,” he insisted.
She did. It didn’t help, though. More tears followed. So did a helpless-sounding throaty moan. “Why don’t I remember? Why?”
“To hell if I know. You didn’t seem to have a memory problem when you were there at the hospital.” But even then, he’d thought there was something fishy about her story of how she’d gotten into the creek. Or what she was doing in Willow Ridge in the first place.
Alana stared at him. Blinked. “Maybe I had amnesia from the accident.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to shake his head. “The doctor thoroughly examined you. No head trauma. No trauma of any kind except for a bruise on your shoulder from the seat belt. I never heard of a seat belt bruise causing amnesia.”
“Emotional stress, then.” She sounded desperate to come up with an explanation, any explanation, of why she’d done something so despicable.
“You were fine after the delivery.” Jack didn’t bother to answer nicely. Every moment with her was like another mountain falling on him. “You even filled out the hospital paperwork.”
Including the birth certificate.
“You nursed Joey,” he continued. “Ate Christmas dinner that my aunt Tessie brought in for you. You slept a few hours. And then a little after one in the morning, you sneaked out of the hospital.”
She repeated that last sentence under her breath. A moment later, a spark flared across those blue irises. “That must have been when the guard and the nurse kidnapped me.”
Jack didn’t bother to suppress a groan. So they were back to that story. Of course, he couldn’t completely dismiss it. After all, she was sitting in his office wearing just a nightgown. A wet one at that.
The flimsy cotton clung to her breasts. It was so clingy that he could see her nipples.
He
