there.”
He didn’t bother to take offense at her tone. Hell, he agreed with her.
“Have you—” His heart was beating harder than it had on the airstrip at Kabul. His palm was sweaty on the receiver. “Have you said anything to him about me?”
“No. I see no point in raising the child’s hopes unless and until it is established that you are indeed his father. Are you?”
He was dimly aware of Nicole behind him, moving away to the other end of the bar. To give him more privacy?
“I don’t know,” he said.
He sure hadn’t thought about becoming a father seven years ago when he was making it with shy blond Betsy every chance they could both sneak away. Or when her mother figured out what they were up to and her daddy put a stop to it. Or at the end of that summer, when he’d joined up and shipped out, or in any of the intervening years since. But he’d given it plenty of thought in the last twenty-four hours.
“I could be,” he said.
“Then your first step should be a paternity test,” Jane Gilbert said briskly. “There are home kits, of course, but it would be better if you had the test done at a collection center, to establish a proper chain of custody. In case your claim to Daniel were to be questioned in court.”
His only previous court experience had been as a defendant. He wondered what her lawyership, this Gilbert woman, would make of that.
Daniel’s grandparents have expressed interest in adopting Daniel and appear ready to pursue all legal avenues to do so.
Hell.
“What do you need?” he asked. “Blood?”
“No. The technician will take a buccal swab—a sample of skin cells from the inside of your cheek.”
“How much?”
“How large a sample? I’m afraid I—”
“No. How much is this going to set me back?”
The lawyer’s voice chilled like vodka over ice. “The cost can probably be recovered from Elizabeth Wainscott’s estate. However, a test of the child and alleged father can run anywhere from $450 to nearly $800.”
“Why the difference?”
“I haven’t decided yet whether to subject Danny to the normal testing procedure or to collect a special sample.”
It was too much to take in.
He should have suggested he call her back, this afternoon, maybe, when he had more time to think.
And fewer distractions. Even with the length of the bar between them, he could still smell the light, expensive scent of Nicole’s perfume, could still hear the soft click of her computer keyboard, rappity-tap-tap behind him. He so did not want her getting the drift of this conversation. Which was dumb, since it wasn’t like he was going to make it with her anyway.
He pulled his mind back. “What kind of sample?”
“Chewing gum,” Jane Gilbert said simply and unexpectedly. “The lab can extract Danny’s DNA from well-chewed chewing gum. I’m told Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit works best.”
“So then he wouldn’t know what was going on.”
There was a little pause. “In a case such as this, when a child may already be feeling upset or abandoned by one parent’s death—”
Mark didn’t need a lawyer to tell him about children’s feelings of abandonment.
“Do it,” he ordered.
“Excuse me?”
“Get the special thing. I’ll pay for it.”
“It will take a week longer to process,” the lawyer warned.
Mark had already spent—what, six years? seven?—without knowing that he was a father. If he was a father.
“I can wait,” he said.
“Very well.” Did he imagine it, or had the lawyer’s voice warmed ever so slightly? “There’s probably a lab or doctor’s office near you that could take the sample. However, if you choose to have the test done in Chicago, we could meet. To discuss Daniel.”
To see if getting him mixed up in the kid’s life would be in the best interests of the child, she meant.
“Yeah,” he said. Rappity-tap-tap, went Nicole’s fingers behind him. “Yeah, that would be good. When?”
“Next week sometime?”
“Sure.”
“Thursday? Four o’clock?”
“Fine.”
He hung up the receiver, annoyed to note that his hand wasn’t steady. When he turned, Nicole was watching him with narrowed blue eyes.
“You got a problem?” he asked.
Swell, DeLucca. Make it a perfect day. Pick a fight with the boss.
Her slim shoulders squared. “Not necessarily. Do you?”
He could almost like the way she didn’t back down. Almost.
“Not necessarily,” he said, mocking her. “I need next Thursday off.”
“All right. I—did you say Thursday?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. I have a previous commitment that night.”
Mark shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll switch hours with Joe.”
“And if he’s not available?”
“I’ll work something out.”
“I need someone who can close the register.”
He was unwillingly pleased that she trusted him with her money. But that didn’t give her the right to command his time.
“So, you do it.”
“I told you, I have plans for that evening.”
He might have just dismissed her as a spoiled rich girl. But her voice was stiff with distress. Her shoulders were rigid.
He frowned. “What kind of plans?”
“If you must know, I’m attending a party with my parents.”
Any temptation to feel sorry for her died. “A party is that important to you?”
She sighed. Some of the starch left her shoulders, like the wind abandoning a sail. “No. My parents are important to me. Their
