Paternity Unknown

by Barrett, Jean

  “Now,” he asked him, “you want to tell me what you’re doing here in the middle of nowhere, Foley?”

  “Heck, and here I am wondering the same about you.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Mine is a short one. Had to escort a witness, who refuses to fly, to Missoula. I’m heading back after delivering him.”

  “This is some detour.”

  “Yeah, well, the department owes me some R and R, so I figured I’d drive my van up here and give this rail trip through the Rockies a shot. I hear it’s something pretty good. What about you two? On vacation yourselves?”

  “Not exactly,” Ethan said. “Look, how long have you been here?”

  “Too long. I pulled in just before five o’clock hoping there’d be room on the seven-fifteen train. No such luck. It was booked full. The station agent was still here then, so he was able to give me the last bedroom on the ten-o-five. Guess these runs are that popular.”

  Buddy must have acquired his accommodation before the cancellation of the bedroom Vicky was able to obtain for us, Lauren decided.

  “Have you been hanging around the station since then?” Ethan asked him.

  “Yeah, except for stretching my legs with a walk along the main street. Town doesn’t offer much.”

  “You happen to be here when the seven-fifteen arrived?”

  “I was.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me something. Did you see a couple with a baby board the train? The woman would have had blond hair.”

  Buddy had looked only mildly curious up to this point. But now, clearly puzzled, he glanced from Ethan to Lauren. “What’s this all about?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Ethan said. “Did you see them?”

  Buddy nodded. “I noticed them.”

  Then we didn’t make a mistake, Lauren thought with relief. They are on their way to Windrush with Sara. She knew that Ethan must be equally satisfied by this validation of their decision that, until now, had been questionable.

  “The man,” he pressed Buddy. “What did the man look like?”

  “I said I noticed them. I didn’t say I paid any attention to them, so I can’t tell you what either one of them looked like. It was just a couple with a baby, that’s all.”

  It wasn’t a certainty, then, that this was their couple, Lauren thought, although it must have been them. She longed to ask Buddy if he’d been able to tell whether Sara was being looked after properly, but she knew he couldn’t give her that. He was a cop, yes, but a cop on vacation. He would have had no reason to suppose that her daughter’s kidnappers were other than what they appeared to be, a couple of parents traveling with their baby.

  “Now do I get that explanation?” Buddy asked.

  He would have to wait for it, because at that moment the lights at the nearby crossing began to flash. They were followed by the descent of the gates. The ten-o-five was arriving in Ida.

  Buddy reached for his bag where he had slid it under the bench and joined them at the edge of the platform as the silver-and-blue retro streamliner pulled into the station.

  The conductor emerged when the door rolled back, checked their tickets, and directed them to the car they were assigned to. Buddy was to occupy not only the same car but a bedroom near theirs.

  “Look, I have an idea,” he said, stopping them in the vestibule after they had boarded. “Either of you hungry?”

  It was only then that Lauren remembered she and Ethan had eaten nothing since noon, hours ago, and for her that had been no more than a bowl of soup. Neither of them had had either the time or the appetite, but now…

  “I could use something,” Ethan admitted. “Lauren?”

  “Yes, but they wouldn’t be serving in the dining car at this hour.”

  “There’s a lounge car behind the dining car,” Buddy said. “The folder I picked up says there are sandwiches and drinks available until eleven o’clock. I want to hear that explanation. How about it?”

  Ethan nodded. “I guess we could meet there after we get settled in our rooms.”

  “Got a better plan. Why don’t you two go ahead right now to the lounge and check out the menu? I’ll get the attendant for our car started on making up our berths and join you there.” He turned to the conductor, who had followed them into the vestibule. “All right to leave our bags here for the attendant to collect?”

  The train was under way again when Ethan and Lauren arrived in the sleek, art deco–style lounge car. Late though the hour was, a party was in progress. It consisted entirely of a group of older women. From the snatches of conversation Lauren overheard between the whoops of frequent laughter, she learned the women were all longtime friends traveling together on an annual reunion.

  She and Ethan chose a table at the quiet end of the car, to which they carried their soft drinks and sandwiches from the bar. Buddy joined them there minutes later.

  Lauren let Ethan relate their story. Although she offered no objection, she did wonder how wise it was to confide in Buddy like this. He was, after all, a cop, and she and Ethan had disobeyed the police in their quest for the couple who had taken their daughter. But Ethan seemed to trust Buddy, and he did listen sympathetically.

  The women continued to celebrate at the other end of the car while the train rocketed through the night, angling northwest into the heart of the Rocky Mountains toward its ultimate destination of Prince Rupert on the Pacific Coast.

  Munching on her chips and chicken-salad sandwich, Lauren wished she could be as carefree as those women. Instead, she sat here in a helpless silence, able to do nothing but anxiously wait for their arrival tomorrow in Windrush.

  Would they be able to overtake Sara’s abductors in time to prevent…what? They had no clue, only a terrible certainty that something was to happen at Windrush that mustn’t happen.

  It was after eleven when Lauren and the two men found their way to their assigned car toward the front of the train. They parted in the corridor. Wishing them a good night, Buddy disappeared into his bedroom, which was one compartment removed from theirs.

  The car attendant was nowhere in evidence, but he had prepared Lauren and Ethan’s bedroom for them. Their bags were waiting for them side by side on the floor, both the wider lower berth and the narrower upper berth were made up, and the lights had been turned low.

  Lauren stood just inside the door, feeling absurdly nervous. Maybe it was the setting itself, with the suggestive gleam of the sheets on the beds and the soft lights contributing to a mood that was definitely intimate.

  Or maybe it was Ethan. She had never been so aware of him. His tall body seemed to fill the room, making it difficult for her to breathe.

  In all fairness, with the space so confined, there was nowhere else for him to be but close beside her. He must have sensed she was awkward with the situation.

  “Look,” he said, “why don’t I wait outside while you get ready for bed?”

  She welcomed his offer and didn’t argue with him when, just before slipping into the corridor, he insisted she have the lower berth and he would take the upper.

  There had been no pajamas in her size back at the discount store in Elkton, so she had purchased a nightie. It hadn’t seemed to matter at the time. But now, changing into the gown, she was conscious of how much it revealed.

  She could see Ethan was conscious of that, too, when he returned a few moments later and found her kneeling on the berth to lower the shade at the window. Those heart stopping blue-green eyes of his darkened at the sight of her in the thigh-length nightie. She could read his candid desire as their gazes meshed.

  “Uh, I’ll just take my turn in here,” he said. To her relief, he vanished into the tiny water closet.

  She was still struggling with the shade when she heard him emerge after a couple of minutes. “This thing doesn’t want to stay down,” she complained, turning her head in his direction. “I don’t know what’s wrong with—”

  She got no further than that. Her discovery of
his long body clad in nothing but a pair of snug briefs robbed her of speech. He was all muscle and lean flesh. Tantalizing flesh.

  Though in no way self-conscious about himself, he was aware of her dismay. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t own a pair of pajamas. I usually sleep in the raw.”

  If he had meant the briefs to be a concession to modesty, then he had failed. They left nothing to the imagination.

  “Trouble?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “The shade. Here, let me do it.”

  Before she could prevent it, he had squeezed onto the berth beside her. She could feel the heat of his big body as he leaned across her, reaching for the catch on the black shade.

  “You have to lock it in place,” he explained. “By turning the catch like this. Okay?”

  No, it wasn’t okay. With the shade secured, he sought an acknowledgment of her understanding by turning his head to look at her. Their gazes collided again. There was a long moment of silence, nothing but the muted sound of the train wheels clacking over the rails beneath them.

  Ethan ended the silence between them with a husky “Lauren?” It was a simple, direct question of her willingness.

  Either he read her long, trembling sigh as a form of assent or he was too impatient to wait. He reached for her then, arms wrapping around her to draw her up against his hardness.

  With the blood beating in her ears, its roar drowning out the sound of the wheels on the rails, she lifted her face to meet his mouth as it settled over hers.

  It had been eleven months since she had felt his lips on hers. She had forgotten how they could be both gentle and demanding as he kissed her thoroughly, deeply. Had forgotten how absolutely right those lips were, as if they belonged nowhere else.

  What Lauren hadn’t forgotten was the way her traitorous senses clamored for more of him. But had she been this hungry for him on that winter night in the cabin? And had he complied this eagerly, inhaling her, tasting her with his tongue?

  Even when he tore his mouth away from hers, he went on assaulting her. This time with words.

  “The fire,” he said gruffly.

  What was he trying to tell her?

  “This afternoon in the farmhouse,” he went on. “One or both of us could have perished in the fire. I haven’t been able to stop thinking of that. We might have lost each other.”

  “But we didn’t die.”

  “We could have,” he insisted.

  “What are you saying, Ethan?”

  “That time is too precious to waste. Let’s not throw tonight away, Lauren.”

  She understood him then. He was asking for more than kisses. He was asking her to let him demonstrate her value to him with his entire body, perhaps even his soul.

  She needed him. She admitted that. But her need conflicted with the memory of the despair she had experienced that cold morning when he had been taken away from her. Of all the despair she had gone on suffering in the long weeks that followed.

  “Ethan,” she pleaded with him, “I don’t think I could bear to repeat—”

  “Don’t,” he said, silencing her objection by placing his forefinger against her mouth. “Don’t let this push-pull thing between us matter. We’ll worry about all the complications when we have to, but not tonight.”

  Because there may not be another night for us. Was that what he was saying?

  “Nothing is real,” he said, “but what we’re feeling here and now.”

  If it was an irresponsible argument, she no longer cared. She wanted what he wanted. And, yes, the rest could wait.

  “I think,” she murmured, “that upper berth isn’t going to be occupied tonight.”

  Ethan needed no other invitation. Fitting his mouth over hers, he kissed her again. She responded with her own kisses, helped him to dispose of her gown. Parted from him briefly but reluctantly in order to permit him to shed his briefs, to clad himself with a feverish haste in a condom he removed from his bag.

  There were no barriers between them now. Nothing but the urgency they answered when his body joined with hers. The train sped on through the night, its swaying movements in concert with their own rhythms, heightening their pleasure in each other.

  And then, afterward, there was only the train, rocking them with the gentleness of a cradle. Snug in the cocoon of Ethan’s arms, Lauren listened to the steady clip-clip of its wheels on the rails.

  Ethan’s even breathing told her he was asleep. She wasn’t ready to close her own eyes just yet. Her mind was too active with remembering the endearments he had crooned into her ear, of the way his body had cherished hers as they’d celebrated each other in a blaze of joy.

  He had told her not to worry, that tonight was all they needed and they would deal with the rest later. She couldn’t help it. She was concerned, because there was something else she remembered.

  In the car on the way to Ida, she had told herself she couldn’t afford to risk falling in love with him again. But it was too late for denials. She knew she was in love with him again. Or maybe she had never been out of love with him.

  But was it enough? When all this was over and done with, would anything remain that was substantial enough to build something lasting for them? Or was Sara all they really shared?

  AT FIRST, Ethan thought it was a stretch of rough track that was shaking him out of his deep sleep. Then he realized it wasn’t the train. It was a hand on his shoulder rocking him back and forth in an insistent effort to rouse him.

  “Ethan, you have to wake up!”

  Lauren’s voice. Struggling to full awareness, he opened his eyes and lifted his head from the pillow. They hadn’t bothered to turn off the lamps. He could see her beside him, propped up on one elbow.

  “What time is it?” he muttered, trying to clear his head.

  “I don’t know. Late. A little after five, I think.”

  Which meant they were nowhere near their destination. So why had she awakened him in the middle of the night?

  “There’s something I have to tell you!” she said.

  This time he could hear it in her tone. Excitement mingled with urgency. Throwing off the last of his drowsiness, he sat up in the berth, almost bumping his head on the underside of the upper berth.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she cautioned him. “I don’t want them hearing us.”

  “Who?”

  In answer, she sat up beside him and placed her hand on the paneling at the head of their berth. “Them,” she said, indicating their neighbors on the other side of the wall that divided the bedrooms. “Ethan, they’re in there!”

  He stared at her, wondering if she was lucid.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” she whispered. “I’m not crazy, and I’m not imagining things! I heard her! I heard Sara crying in there!”

  Ethan tried to be patient with her. “I don’t know what you heard, but it couldn’t have been Sara. Lauren, they’re not on this train. They can’t be. You heard Buddy. He saw them board the seven-fifteen.”

  “I don’t know how it’s possible, but they’re here! Not only on this train, but right next door to us!”

  Ethan leaned back, pressing his ear against the paneling. Silence. “I don’t hear anything. Are you sure you weren’t—”

  “Don’t say it! I wasn’t having a dream! I was awake, and I did hear Sara!”

  “All right, I believe you. You heard a baby crying in there, but it has to be someone else’s baby.”

  She shook her head in a wild denial. “I tell you it is Sara! Why are we sitting here like this? We have to do something! We have to go after her!”

  Ethan attempted to reason with her. “Lauren, with a wall between us and that next bedroom, there’s no way you could know Sara’s cries from another’s baby’s cries.”

  He watched her drag her fingers through her auburn hair, an action that he recognized. It meant she was in an intense emotional state. He was concerned about her, thinkin
g she was so desperate by now to recover her baby that she was confusing her longing with reality.

  “I can’t, huh?” she challenged him.

  He saw her take a deep breath to steady herself. When she continued, it was in a calm but no less vital tone, as if she realized how essential a sane argument would be to convince him that she knew just what she was talking about.

  “After all the nights I woke up and went to her, do you think I wouldn’t know my own daughter’s cries anywhere, anytime, whatever the circumstances? A man may not relate to this, Ethan, but it’s a—a kind of primal thing, I guess. Mothers able to identify their young among all the others in a herd. It’s true.”

  “Lauren, I—”

  “You have that gut instinct of yours that we’ve both been trusting, haven’t you? Well, this is mine.”

  That was good enough for Ethan. If Lauren believed beyond a doubt that Sara was only a few feet away from them, then her certainty deserved his immediate action.

  Swinging out of the berth, he surged to his feet. He wasted no time looking for the pair of briefs he had tossed somewhere on the floor hours earlier. Nor did he bother with shoes or a shirt. All he needed were his jeans hanging on a hook just outside the water closet.

  Seconds later, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing nothing but the jeans he’d hurriedly donned, he unlocked the door and slipped into the narrow corridor. Ethan’s objective was the door immediately on the right. The bedroom behind it separated their own room from Buddy Foley’s compartment.

  His fist was in the air, ready to bang on the door, when he checked himself. How smart was this? Not smart at all, he suddenly realized. He couldn’t go pounding on the door, demanding to be admitted.

  If the bastard was armed, and Ethan had no way of knowing that he wasn’t, then this whole thing could end badly. He had Sara’s safety to think about, providing of course she and her kidnappers were even in there.

  On the other hand, what choice did he have except to knock and hope that one of the bedroom’s occupants would open the door? He had to get in there!

  So, all right, if he didn’t identify himself, they would have no reason to suppose he was anyone but the conductor or the car attendant. And once this door was cracked, he would force his way into the compartment and, if it proved necessary, manage somehow to disarm his opponent. Why not, when his special army training had equipped him with the skills to defeat an enemy?