Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Let me see that. I haven’t seen my birth certificate since that day at the hospital. I was pretty out of it.”

  “Let’s face it, you were blitzed,” Jake teased, thinking back to the day they’d all found out Kit’s mother was really Gloria Chambers Gandis.

  But Baylee wasn’t listening to the chatter. She’d only thought to pick up the paper and hand it off to Kit. But now what she read had her jumping back. “Oh, my God. Kit, did you look at your birth certificate? I mean really look. Did you see this? We were so focused on looking at what it said about your mother we completely overlooked Box 3 and 3A.” Kit peered over Baylee’s shoulder. When Baylee pointed to the box in question, and Kit saw what it said, she snatched the paper out of Baylee’s hand.

  Now it was Baylee nudging Kit to show her where to look. “It says you were a twin. Skip over to the right of the box where it asks, if twin, what was the order of birth? See the 3A box is marked 2ND. According to that, you were a twin, Kit, born second.”

  “Could that be right? Could they have made a mistake?” Kit blinked, and kept trying to focus on the paper, including every box until she got down to Box Number 3 and 3A.

  Everyone gathered around Kit, who stood there, speechless, trying to determine if Baylee was kidding or not.

  When her eyes found the box in question, she dropped into one of the dining room chairs. Over her shoulder Jake studied the birth certificate line by line. “Alana and Jessica didn’t just steal Kit, but apparently there were two babies. What happened to the other baby?”

  Kit finally found her speech. “Jake, could that be Ben, the one you found living in Galway, the one you’ve been looking for on the Internet, the same one Quinn remembered my father mentioning that day when we were kids at the beach? Did you look at his date of birth? Could it be him, or is there yet another brother out there somewhere I’ve never seen?”

  “It didn’t occur to me to look at his birth date. But I will.” Jake turned to Dylan. “I need your laptop.”

  “No problem.” The two computer geeks headed out into the living room where Dylan had set up his makeshift office area after giving up his personal space to Sarah.

  After booting up, and logging on, Jake furiously tapped keys, searching, hitting database after database until he found what he was looking for.

  “I’ll be damned. He’s twenty-four years old just like Kit, and won’t turn twenty-five until the eleventh of October. They’re twins, Dylan. I should have spotted that before now.”

  “So this brother, this Ben Griffin, was taken to Ireland? Jake, that’s crazy. Let’s say Alana and Jessica just decided to ship the kid to Ireland. Why would they do that?”

  But Kit had already formed her own theory. Standing off to the side with Baylee, she concluded, “My father had to be in on it from the beginning. He didn’t just show up after the fact and take the baby out of the country. He did it so Gloria would never know she had a son. How despicable can two people be?”

  Baylee pointed out, “But you were born second. When Jake and I confronted Gloria that morning, I’m positive she didn’t say a thing about another baby. She was pretty convincing, Kit. Gloria only knew that she’d had a little girl. She said nothing about another baby.” She turned to Jake for confirmation.

  Jake nodded. “She didn’t say a word about giving birth to twins, that’s for sure.” He kept staring at Baylee. “We would have remembered something like that.”

  “I haven’t been through childbirth. But you have,” Kit said turning to Baylee. “Could she have lost consciousness at some point, passed out during delivery and only heard them talk about the baby girl, not the boy.”

  “It’s possible, I guess.”

  “She told me that at one point she kicked up quite a fuss because they wouldn’t let her see me. Maybe shipping Gloria three thousand miles away was to prevent some nurse from slipping up and mentioning twins.”

  “So you’re set to give Gloria the benefit of the doubt on this?”

  “I am. This needs to come from me. And I don’t think it’s something she should hear over the phone.” Kit turned to Jake. “I’ll give Gloria a call. Tell her we’re stopping by with some news. Tell her we’ve set a date for the wedding. Somehow I’ll work this latest bomb into the conversation, sort of like good news bad news. Good news is we’re getting married. Bad news is you’ve got a long lost son, my twin, who’s living in Ireland, a baby boy you’ve never set eyes on.

  “For God’s sakes, is there anything else those people have done that we should know about? What kind of person does this sort of thing?” She looked at Baylee. “I trusted my father, loved him, and the fact that he could be a party to something like this just makes me ill. And if it makes me sick, think how Gloria will take this latest news. This is going to hit her hard.”

  Dylan exchanged looks with Jake, who acted perplexed by her calmness. “I’ll say one thing for you, Kit, having all the chaos going on in your life makes you one helluva woman in a crisis situation, a woman who without a doubt thinks on her feet.”

  And that was an understatement, thought Dylan as he walked both of them to the car. All three women were unlike any he’d ever met before. According to them, they’d all had difficult, abusive childhoods, and yet, all of them were incredibly strong. Baylee joined him on the driveway with a wide awake Sarah just in time to wave them off, wondering how Gloria would take the news.

  “I can’t believe those two would steal Gloria’s babies like that.” She thumped her head with a free hand. “Duh. What’s wrong with me, they were cold-blooded killers who murdered an old couple in their sleep for the land and the money and I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around them stealing babies. Those two were capable of just about anything, weren’t they?”

  “You’re a mother. It’s hard to understand how women could be so…”

  “Heartless?”

  “Cold.”

  “Same thing.” She thought of her own mother, who’d left her without so much as a goodbye, and decided that maybe women back then were all cut from the same callous, merciless mold. Certainly not fit to be mothers.

  As they watched Jake’s car back out of the driveway, Dylan thought of something. “How about we go out for dinner? I know a great French bistro a couple of miles from here that looks out over the water.”

  The dimmer switch clicked on. Baylee didn’t get many offers, especially these days. In fact it had been almost two years since she’d gone out on a real date, an honest-to-goodness sit-down-to-dinner date. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew that trusting this player came with a warning label. She looked over at him standing there in his driveway and saw the charming, self-confident look on his face.

  Oh, what the hell, she thought, she hadn’t been to dinner in forever. It was just dinner for chrissakes.

  Grateful for the invitation, without having to think it into oblivion, she looked him straight in the eye and said, “Dylan, you’ve got yourself a date.”

  CHAPTER 9 Book 2

  In Agoura Hills, Gloria Gandis poured another glass of wine in celebration of the news that Jake and Kit had a wedding to plan. When she turned to hold up her glass in a toast she noticed the dour look on their faces. It was obvious they had something else to say. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Kit took the glass of wine from Gloria’s hand and set it down on the end table next to the sofa. “Come sit down. This won’t be easy.”

  “Then you aren’t pregnant.”

  Jake chuckled in spite of the somber mood. He looked at Kit.

  “Not yet,” Kit said, as her cheeks flushed pink. “We haven’t been trying all that long.”

  Gloria’s heart dropped a little learning Kit wasn’t pregnant. The idea of having grandchildren to spoil filled her with warm and fuzzy vibes she couldn’t hold back. But looking at their faces now, a bit of her intuition kicked in. This wasn’t that kind of news.

  “It’s about Ben Griffin.” Kit finally forced out the words.

&nbs
p; Gloria knew Jake had been trying to find Kit’s long lost brother, a brother that had surfaced when Jake had stumbled on information that he was the one receiving John Griffin’s residuals from his acting days instead of Kit.

  But now, Gloria sat down as Jake went into what they had discovered reading Kit’s birth certificate. “There were twins, Gloria. You delivered twins.”

  “What? Oh God, that can’t be. No. No. That just can’t be. How is that possible? I don’t remember that. They made a mistake.”

  “I’m sorry, Gloria.” Kit took out the birth certificate, handed it off to her. “Ben Griffin shares my date of birth. He was born first.”

  For several long minutes Gloria stared at the paper. “Alana and Jessica took two babies away from me.”

  “Yes. But there’s more. I don’t see any other way for the baby boy to have gotten all the way to Ireland without my father being in on the whole thing. John Griffin had to know, be part of it, because he had to arrange to get him there for an adoption or something.”

  “My guess is he left him with relatives. Ever done a family tree?” Jake asked.

  Kit looked stunned. “You mean…” She looked at Gloria. “Did he have family in Ireland, Glo? You knew him better than most.”

  Tears welled up in Gloria’s eyes. She simply nodded in answer and dropped her head in her hands. “Could he truly have been that mean, that callous, to be in on the whole conspiracy with Alana and Jessica from the beginning? My God, there was a time I thought he truly loved me. Instead, he must have plotted right along with them to steal you away from me. Only they got a huge surprise when it turned out to be not one baby, but two. And a boy at that. Alana wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with a boy. She used to say such disparaging things about Jessica’s sons. She’d have insisted John take the boy.”

  “We’ll know more when Jake finds him. Maybe this Ben holds the answers to so many of our questions. The truth is we may never really know why my father helped them do this. But it’s obvious to me he did.”

  “I’ve been unable to locate this Ben. If it comes to that, we’ll take a trip over there and do some legwork on our own. We’ll find him, Gloria, I promise you that.”

  The words were meant to be comforting. But kind words didn’t do much to harness the rage Gloria felt. If Alana weren’t already dead, John too, she might have considered doing both of them in, one after the other, slowly, she thought now, and let them suffer.

  They had taken away so much from her. She’d never been a vicious kind of person, never as cold and heartless as Alana had been. But how could her own sister, mean as she was, and the man she’d loved conspire to take her babies from her? How could they have been that calculating?

  The thought had no more than formed in her head when the house began to shake; the ground moved and rumbled beneath her feet. “Oh lord, what’s happening,” Gloria groaned as she became increasingly lightheaded.

  “Earthquake,” Jake declared, right before he grabbed Kit’s hand and Gloria’s arm to drag both of them over to stand under the dining room doorway. They stood there while the house shook and pictures fell from the walls and hit the floor. The rumbling lasted no more than twenty seconds but seemed a lot longer.

  When it finally stopped, Gloria looked at both of them and announced, “I guess that teaches me about thinking murderous thoughts, especially when it comes to my own sister and John Griffin, the man I loved and trusted. They’re both gone now anyway. If there’s a hell, I can only hope they both feel right at home there.”

  After Baylee fed the baby, she placed Sarah in her carrier and brought her into the bathroom with her before jumping into the shower, where she carefully shaved the fur from her legs, and tried to come up with an outfit to wear. She finally decided on a simple, white sundress she hadn’t worn in over a year.

  After the shower, as she studied the mirror, she realized it was time for the chestnut hair to go. But for tonight, she gave it a few twists and turns with the curling iron, before sweeping it up with a clip, leaving a few wisps of hair framing her face.

  She diapered and dressed Sarah in an apple green dress with purple gingham trim and clipped a matching bow to what few strands of hair the baby had on her head. When Dylan knocked on the bedroom door ten minutes later, she was as ready as she was likely to get. And as nervous as if she were going to her first dance instead of out to a simple meal at a restaurant.

  When she opened the bedroom door, Dylan took an appreciative look and whistled. “This is the first time I’ve ever taken such two beautiful women out at the same time on the same date.”

  Baylee put her hands on her hips. “Do you practice that bull or does it just flow from the tongue naturally? You really know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?”

  He grinned.

  And didn’t he look nice, sporting a pair of snug-fitting jeans with a light blue buttoned-down shirt and a navy blazer.

  But after they walked out to the living room, things got serious.

  Dylan watched like a rookie from the sidelines as the veteran mom prepared for departure. She loaded the diaper bag, making sure she brought an extra outfit, additional diapers, baby wipes, and a bottle of breast milk.

  Novice that he was, Dylan soon learned that taking a baby out for the evening was anything but a spur-of-the-moment event. Making reservations was a waste of time.

  A genius at code and no dummy, he caught on rather quickly that the exact time of departure depended on several things. The timing had to be right, preferably just after a feeding, which was spontaneous. Then there was load time to factor in, especially if you brought along the stroller, which added to load time, depending on how much the thing weighed and how easily it folded down and traveled. And if the infant carrier doubled as the car seat you were ahead of the game.

  By the time they got to the restaurant at seven-forty-five, they were both hyped up. And Sarah must have sensed their stress because she immediately went into a hissy fit. The louder Sarah got, the more keyed up Baylee became.

  Trying to think fast, she suggested, “She can’t be hungry; I fed her before we left. Could you get her pacifier out of the bag there, Dylan?” Dutifully, he dug into the bag with vigor, searched around before finally pulling the thing out, quickly handing it off to Baylee, who immediately tried to get it into Sarah’s wailing mouth. But the infant wanted no part of the pacifier, and let her feelings be known to everyone in the dining room and some that were dining in the restaurant across the street.

  After five long, loud embarrassing minutes, unable to calm the baby, and near tears herself, Baylee gave Dylan a frantic look and admitted, “I’m sorry, Dylan. I guess we need to take her back to your place.”

  “No problem,” Dylan conceded. To the bewildered waiter, who recognized him as a longtime patron, Dylan simply handed him a generous tip and said, “Grant, I think we’ll call it a night.”

  With that, Dylan promptly gathered up the infant carrier, grabbed the overstuffed diaper bag and followed a humiliated Baylee out the front door of the restaurant. But getting Sarah into her car seat while she was still squirming and crying proved to be almost as mortifying to Dylan and Baylee as the scene inside had been. The patrons coming and going in the parking lot looked at both of them as if they were a couple of child abusers bent on causing harm to a defenseless six-month-old. Why else would a baby carry on so?

  Once the car began to move, a red-faced, hot, and sweaty, Sarah finally stopped screaming. Dylan took advantage of the break and made a hurried exit out of the parking lot. Thankfully, on the way home, she calmed down all the way enough to fall asleep. The ten-minute drive was completed in stony silence. But for Dylan and Baylee, the excitement of the evening had disappeared in a huff.

  To make matters worse, as soon as they opened the front door and stepped inside, the first thing they both heard was yet another woman’s voice leaving a seductive message on the answering machine. “Dyl, this is Melissa, if you aren’t busy tonight why don’t we hoo
k up at The Cove, maybe make a night of it? What do you say, sexy? Call me.”

  Baylee tried to make a fast exit to the bedroom, but then she realized Dylan still held the carrier with a sleeping Sarah nestled inside. Baylee was mortified to hear her own voice quiver as she whispered, “Here, I’ll take her, Dylan. I’ll go put her down. You go call Melissa, salvage the rest of your evening.”

  But Dylan refused to relinquish the carrier. Instead, he stubbornly countered, “I’ve got her.” He declined to hand her off. Instead, they both marched solemnly down the hall to the room designated as Sarah’s and made their way to the crib. But it was Dylan who undid the straps on the carrier, picking up an exhausted Sarah and slinked her little body down into the depths of the bed before Baylee slipped a blanket around her.

  Once tucked in, the screaming child from the previous half hour took on the appearance of a miniature, sleeping angel. They both stared down at the baby as if seeing her for the very first time that day.

  The golden silence was a side benefit.

  Outside in the hallway, even though Baylee looked like she was ready to weep and make a mad dash into the spare bedroom, Dylan made the best of it. “How about Chinese? They deliver.”

  “Look, Dylan, I’ll be fine. It isn’t even eight-thirty yet. In L.A. the evening doesn’t even get started for hours yet. There’s plenty of time for you to hook up with Melissa.” She turned to dash into the room next door to change clothes. Instinctively, he latched on to her hand, entwining his fingers around hers.

  Dylan had no interest in Melissa. He wished to God he did. Melissa was uncomplicated, unlike Baylee Scott, who was dealing with more issues than Lindsay Lohan.

  He followed Baylee into the spare room and stood in the doorway. “I’m ordering Chinese; what do you want?”

  Disheartened, Baylee’s shoulders slumped. “Anything really. Surprise me.”

  After staring at each other for several awkward seconds, they separated slowly, unwillingly.