the testing done. And why, at the moment, Amy was asleep in the crib she’d slept in for the first five weeks of her life.
And the reason Karis Pratt was sleeping in the attic above his head? That wasn’t because of the way she looked, he assured himself. Or because he was buying into the rest of her sob story.
That was so she couldn’t hightail it out of Northbridge before he knew whether or not Amy was his and leave him with a baby that probably wasn’t his.
So maybe he wasn’t being conned for a second time, he told himself.
Even if the image of Karis Pratt, in all its glory, had popped into his head a hundred times during the night to remind him just how incredible looking she was.
No, this was about knowing once and for all if Amy was his own flesh and blood.
And if, in the meantime, he figured out whether the rest of Karis Pratt’s story was true or false?
He’d be interested to know. But beyond general curiosity, he was definitely not investing anything in her. Not financially and not anything of himself, either.
Lea Pratt had been the most embarrassing, costly episode of his life and it would be difficult enough if he did prove to be Amy’s father and ended up raising a child who shared her genes. He certainly wouldn’t add a sister who shared them, too, to the mix.
At least if Amy was his, half of her genes were his. If he raised her, he could teach her to be honest and aboveboard—a good, decent, honorable person. But a full-blooded sister raised by the same people in the same environment? As far as he was concerned, that could have bred the same kind of person Lea had been, through and through.
No, thanks. He wouldn’t risk it.
So while he might have to suffer Karis Pratt’s temporary presence in his house and in his life, that was as far as he was willing to go. No matter how she looked.
And if she kept creeping into his mind’s eye when he least expected it and didn’t want it?
He’d shove her out again with thoughts of Lea.
There was no repellant stronger than that.
Which meant that Luke wasn’t worried about having Karis Pratt around for the time being.
Even if she was so damn beautiful that the mental image of her made wrapping the towel around his waist impossible.
Karis made sure she was up early that morning. To shower and shampoo her hair. To put on her jeans and a beige V-neck sweater she wore over a white camisole top. To dry her hair and give it the few turns of the curling iron it required to curve under on the ends. To brush on a little blush and a little mascara.
She wanted to be ready by the time Amy woke for the day.
But Amy was still sleeping when Karis had accomplished it all and so she was left waiting. She didn’t leave the attic bedroom, because she wasn’t eager to face Luke Walker’s disdain any sooner than necessary.
As she waited, she perched on the window seat of one of two dormers that provided light and air to the slanted-ceilinged room. For the first time, she faced the second reason she’d come to Northbridge—the big, stately, brown-brick house that stood atop the hill at the end of the street.
It was two stories with a steeply pitched slate roof and a large turret that ran along one corner of both levels. A wide, covered porch wrapped the front and side of the house from the turret, shading large-paned glass windows and an oversize front door, and dropping to the sloping front yard by eight stone steps bordered by well-tended bushes.
Multiple windows lined the upper level, all of them flanked by dark shutters and fanlights above them.
It was a lovely, old house that had clearly never seen a day’s neglect. The home of her father’s original family.
And Karis’s single, solitary asset.
Looking at the house put a knot in her stomach, the same knot that had been forming there for the past few weeks whenever she thought about it or researched it. The same knot that formed every time she thought about how the house had come to be hers or what she was going to have to do to get it.
She had no right to it and she knew it. Just as her seven older half siblings would know it. And resent her for the way the house had come to be hers.
“Why did you have to put me in this position, Lea?” she whispered, as if her sister were there to hear.
But when it came to the house, in this, too, Karis didn’t have a choice. The best she could do was vow to make the situation as painless as possible for the seven people she’d never even met.
But still, she was going to have to tell them how things stood. For Amy’s sake. For her own sake. For the sake of other, innocent, trusting people who hadn’t deserved what had been done to them, either.
It just didn’t change the fact that in all of her fantasies of coming face-to-face with this part of her family, she had never imagined these circumstances.
“And now you’re all going to hate me.”
With good reason.
Amy was an even-tempered, easygoing baby. Karis always wondered if that was her nature or if it was just that she’d learned, with Lea as her mother, being demanding didn’t get her anywhere.
Regardless of the reason, the baby didn’t wake up fussy in the mornings. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t impatient to have her needs met. She merely sat in her crib and entertained herself.
Knowing that, Karis had opened the door to the attic bedroom, as soon as she was dressed, to listen for the sounds of her niece stirring. When she heard them, she abandoned her melancholy study of the Pratt family home and left her room, heading down the stairs, being careful to walk softly in case Luke Walker was still asleep.
She only made it to the third of the steps, however, before she paused in her tracks.
Luke Walker was already at Amy’s bedroom door.
He was just standing there, not venturing in, only watching from a distance.
Karis couldn’t see past him into the room but, from the sounds of Amy’s jabbering, Karis assumed the little girl hadn’t noticed him. And he didn’t notice Karis, standing stalk still.
It gave her a moment to do some observing of her own.
He had already showered and dressed. Not in his uniform this morning, though. He had on a pair of time-aged, faded jeans. They fit him so well he had to have bought them years ago and broken them in. So well that her gaze was drawn inescapably to the back pockets that rode his rear in divine symphony with the tight glutes behind them.
She looked upward when she realized she was again staring at the man’s butt.
He had on a stark-white long-sleeved, mock-neck T-shirt that left little to the imagination. The shirt encased wide shoulders, muscular torso and hard biceps every bit as appealingly as those jeans covered his lower half.
The faint scent of his cologne wafted in the air. A clean,
