Carly Bishop - No Baby But Mine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Early Bishop's novels are praised for their 'sensuality, riveting emotional appeal and first-class suspense' as one reviewer put it. She was a RITA finalist in 1996 for her Intrigue" novel Reckless Lover, and she's won numerous awards and critical acclaim throughout her ten- year writing career. Early lives in Colorado and regularly uses the great Rocky Mountains as the backdrop in her stories.
The stone cutters were behind in their labors.
It would be at least six weeks before Lane Montgomery's name and the dates circumscribing his life--his birth and death--would be carved in stone. The soothing voice commending her murdered husband to eternity droned on. But as Kirsten McCourt stood through the graveside service in the freezing rain, focused on the blank face of the granite marker, it was her own epitaph she imagined.
Should have known better. Lane Montgomery had betrayed her, and it had cost her everything she held dear. Everything. Right up to the moment. She would have chosen to leave his burial to the state-- whoever took care of burying the bodies of criminals and miscreants. But she hadn't been given the choice. The mourners were outnumbered by the undercover cops who had forced this graveside charade on the off chance that one of Chet Loehman's Truth Sayers vigilante bullyboys would attend. If nothing else, it was believed, but to thumb a nose at them all.
Deputy Assistant U. S. Attorney John Grenallo,
short, balding, holding a hat in his hands, stood across the casket from Kirsten. He knew her argument backward and forward, inside and out. She had a professional responsibility, an ethical obligation, and now a personal stake in battling back. She couldn't let Lane's betrayal go unanswered. She'd begged Grenallo for the chance to help rebuild the case against Loehman.
Grenallo had refused. He knew her desperate mood, knew what it would mean to her to be given the chance to earn back the trust and respect of her peers. But he couldn't do it. His office had been severely compromised; his own leadership in question, but this debacle all finally funneled down to her judgment, or lack of it, first personal, and then professional.
She was, more or less, the singular cause of the collapse of their undercover operation. If she hadn't fallen for Lane, hadn't believed his buttery-smooth lies, hadn't trusted faulty instincts, hadn't allowed him where he should never have been, the case against Loehman and the operation he ran would be in the bag now.
Reason told her Lane would have found another way if not through her.
Logic even Grenallo espoused conceded the possibility. Lane Montgomery had been charged with document security throughout the Federal Building, and that included the photo files Kirsten had built up, the digital computer backups and the portfolios she'd prepared for trial.
But it was on her watch, in her wake, that the destruction had occurred.
Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. For as long as Kirsten could remember, images captured on film had been her passion. Moments seized and held forever. But early on, the disparity she sometimes saw between the captive image and the truth laid bare the lie, so it wasn't to commercial photography that she'd turned, but to forensics.
She had a gift, a talent, a rare ability, no matter whether for photography or videography, for seeing in an image what was true and what was not. What accurately reflected the subject and what had been tampered with. And beneath her talent lay an even deeper, more abiding commitment to ferret out the lies and produce in her images evidence of the truth.
Kirsten McCourt was perfectly suited to her place in the judicial scheme of things. But since she should have known better, should have ferreted out the deceptions delivered with stunning accuracy and Lane's perfect pitch--to make her believe she was loved beyond measure--she was also perfectly positioned to facilitate her own downfall.
Still, she was not down for the count.
She was the daughter of a Boston cop who, after walking a beat for twenty years, had finally been promoted to detective--only to lose his wife in a gun battle in their own home. The death of Kirsten's mother hadn't stopped Fitz McCourt.
No way.
/ will fear no evil. Nothing would have stopped Kirsten, either. Not even this crushing loss of confidence. There were scapegoats, and then there were scapegoats, and she was one. But Grenallo's doubts not only dictated the end of her career, they echoed the judgment of her own heart. Should have known better.
The drizzle turned to pelting sleet and in the course of the brief ceremony, the somber gray Seattle skies blackened.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Or not.
the mercury was a Seattle hot spot, a dance club built into the Marquis, a five-star hotel bordering the posh Seattle suburbs. Her room--for she would never return to the houseboat she had shared with Lane-- was at the far end of the seventh story. But on the first floor, the deejays rocked all night long with seventies music, and on the second, the eighties.
She chose the first floor for the sheer distance in time from this dreadful night, and worked her way to a corner booth meant for two.
Still dressed in her simple black sheath, she draped her coat over the back and sat sipping wine, trying to lose herself in the music until she was fairly certain she'd had one too many goblets of the warm, fragrant, sensual Bordeaux.
One too many wasn't enough yet, to compensate the losses.
She knew perfectly well that even if she managed to pass out cold, she would not reach that point.
She knew on a rational level that this was the epitome of bad decision making and poor judgment. Why not just buy a bottle and take it to her room?
She'd been hassled a couple of times by would-be Lotharios. She was getting hassled again, this time to dance. But anything, even this, was better than facing the awesome, impersonal silence of the hotel room she'd rented, where she could only think, Should have known better.
"C'mon, babe. Don't be a drag. Dance with me. Whatever's wrong, I'll make it right." The guy was big and drunk, his complexion florid, a beefy fist already reaching for her when he was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder from behind.
"Exactly what part of 'no' is a mystery to you, friend?"
Kirsten stared, wide-eyed, dumbstruck by all the wine, more by the hard-edged, impossible dark good looks and don't-screw-with-me tone of the man behind the man hassling her.
"Oh, Lordy-loo," the drunk snarled.
"Look what we've got here. A han' some dude. A friend. A real hero."
"Hey! You kidding me?" Shouting over the music now, making light, in an instant the hero had gone from threatening to jovial.
"You really don't remember?" The hero offered his hand to shake as if the two really were old buddies and the dull- witted drunk, confused now, reflexively stuck out his own oversize mitt to shake.
Kirsten really didn't get what happened in that handshake, but the big dumb drunk broke out in a cold sweat inside of a few seconds, and in a few seconds more, bowed out, mumbling apologies--or obscenities.
Didn't matter. He was gone.
The hero was left standing alone over her small table. She swallowed, shivered hard, and swallowed again to keep from asking him from her tipsy unguarded state if he knew what an utterly compelling nose he had. What an implacable jaw, intriguing cheekbones.
What deep blue eyes, commanding forehead. She noticed those things, noticed the details and the bigger picture, what didn't fit, what suited so exquisitely.
He wore a suit that matched her sheath in degrees of mourning black, but his near-black burgundy tie hung slack, his cuffs undone, his stiff white collar unbuttoned. Dark hair, sparkling in the strobes, curled at th
e parted placket at his throat.
"I... um" -Her fingers fluttered to her own throat, to her hair. She tucked a strand behind her ear. The strobes flashed, neon streamed, the music rained down hard, the candle on the table flickered softly, but beyond this man, suddenly nothing else seemed real.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Did you hurt him?"
His eyes never left her. She had no idea what color they might be.
"His ego hurts more than his hand."
"Was that necessary?"
He blinked.
"You tell me."
Her chin went up.
"I could have handled it."
"That isn't exactly the point." Her wits felt so dulled she couldn't tell if he believed her or not.
"Mind if I sit?"
"No." She did mind. She wanted to be left alone, but an objection wasn't what came out. He put down his drink, something dark and amber and undiluted,
and sank loose-limbed into the booth. She had to move her knees to avoid the heat of his.
"So, what is the point?"
"I'm offended when a woman has to deal with that kind of behavior."
"Oh, then you are a hero," she blurted, overcompensating because her foolish heart was going pitapat. So smooth, so genteel-slash rugged- slash- manly. So evolved. He was either a real hero or a more dangerous man to her by far than the drunk. With her history, she should know better.
"That was really very good."
"Yeah, that's me." His smoky, dark voice painted images of broken glass.
"Really very good."
"Whose hero are you usually?"
His amazing jaw cocked sideways. She blinked. Swallowed. Her head dipped low as she tried awfully hard to convince herself that it was wine impacting her impression that it was raw pain she saw in the sudden asymmetry, grief in the quirky angle. Her question had somehow come at him with the unwitting precision of a surgeon's scalpel. Was it the strobe revealing tears in his eyes, or only her imagination?
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean" -- "Sure you did." He swallowed in one long gulp the remains of the liquor.
"No, really. I'm an idiot for saying that. I just came from burying" -"It's just that I buried my wife today."
"--my husband." Had she said that already, said she'd buried Lane?
"I've had too much too drink and-What did you say?"
"I said..." His jaw tightened again. The tears glittering in his eyes were no artifact of the light.
"I said I buried my wife today."
"Oh my God, no-" He shrugged.
"Apropos of whose hero I thought I was." But his voice broke over the sarcasm like sea foam over the jagged reach of driftwood buried beneath the sand.
"I'm so sorry..."
He swore softly. His jaw locked. A tear spilled. His hands formed fists till his knuckles shone white.
She couldn't bear to watch him, couldn't take her eyes off him. She knew he hadn't heard her. It was on the tip of her tongue to repeat that she had buried her husband as well, to offer that sliver of comfort, of empathy. / know what you 're going through. I'm there. I'm going through it, too.
But she wasn't. Her emotions were of another ilk.
She knew by the unguarded flicker of pain over his features that his grief had only to do with an unendurable loss very unlike hers, owing nothing to shame or guilt, blame or regrets or the betrayal she felt.
God help her.
What she saw in her hero's eyes, in the hard angle of his strong jaw, was evidence of deep, abiding love for his wife. All she had ever wanted for herself. Proof of what she had sacrificed everything for.
Testament to the heart's desire she would take to a lonely grave with the epitaph Should have known better.
All she wanted was a man who loved her as much as this man had loved his wife.
The should-have-known-better part of her wanted to stand back and debunk the evidence of true love for a lie. She was beyond tipsy, unguarded really. Vulnerable. His tears might be real, but she might be mistaken. Maybe he'd cheated on his wife. Maybe he hadn't really loved her at all and felt really rotten about that.
The beat of the music pounded up through the floor, through her feet and legs. Her body thrummed. Her judgment seemed on permanent holiday, but she knew the should-have-known-better part of her couldn't even begin to comprehend a real hero.
She had no illusions left to shatter.
He danced with her awhile, the slow, steamy riffs. Her hand fit wholly in his. He drank more Wild Turkey, then switched to brandy with her.
She had the impression the woman he buried that afternoon was only the last in a string of burials, of devastating losses, but he wouldn't elaborate.
She understood why. Accidents happen, people die, people you love so much your heart will never quieten, people you grew up with, people you only knew a few years but came to love.
Losing the woman he loved and expected to love forever was not the final blow, but the surest.
She understood through her over warm clouded thoughts that some crucial juncture was met and then passed between them. What happened in those hours happened out of time and space, beyond reality, into a cocoon where his incomprehensible loss could be assuaged, and her overpowering loneliness defeated, if only for the moment.
She needed what she had never known. He needed what he would never know again.
She learned his dead wife's name, never his. Nor was there ever a moment, Kirsten knew, when it wasn't Margo on his mind, Margo in his mind's eye, Margo in his heart.
Or, eventually, Margo in his arms, the one to whom he made such a tender, aching farewell in Kirsten's bed.
But she could pretend, and she did. She had based her life and her judgment on the relevant facts for so long, only to learn what a lie a fact could be. So, if for one night, one precious scrap of fantasy could salvage her heart, then she would abandon the facts, and indulge, embrace the fantasy that she was loved.
On that long-ago night, Kirsten McCourt stole into the role of a woman who was well and truly loved, and she had no regrets. Ever after, she would know what that was, and what it wasn't. Even if ever after never came again.
Chapter One
Five years later
It wasn't the loincloth that got to them, but the rabbit skin decorating a loincloth over pajama bottoms, the naked chest of a four-year-old and a real medicine bag filled with treasures to ward off evil spirits.
Kirsten's son, Christo, the fiercest Indian in the Pacific Northwest came whooping, hurtling down the narrow staircase from his perch on the stair landing. It was all any of them could do to smother smiles and assume the necessary awe.
Her best friend, Ginny Wilder, on the eve of moving to a house she and her husband had already prepared near the Wyoming-Montana border, sat on the creaking old hardwood floor in Kirsten's Victorian house.
Setting aside her pie plate in the nick of time, she opened her arms and Christo flew into her ample, earth-mother body.
"So Christo-man, is there anything new inside your medicine bag? Would it be okay if I peek inside?"
"Christo-man," he intoned, infusing his name with the awesome authority of a cartoon superhero. Anything for his Aunt Ginny, who wasn't his aunt, but closer, Kirsten thought. Sure enough, Christo limited the exposure.
"Just only you can see. Be careful not to spill anything."
Burton Rawlings feigned mortal injury over being left out. An old colleague of Lane's, his best friend, and every bit as much betrayed as Kirsten had been, Burton had shown up uninvited, out of the blue.
If he knew he'd intruded on a very special evening, he was either insensitive enough not to care, or else hell-bent determined not to leave until Kirsten heard what he'd come to say.
Ginny's husband, Sam, a lumberjack-looking accountant, threw a fit at being excluded from viewing the contents of the medicine bag. Kirsten and Ginny shared a knowing look, for the act was little more than a ploy to get outside for a ci
garette.
Christo darted after Sam, but Ginny snagged him by the jammie bottoms and dragged him into her lap.
"Come here, you, and show me what you've got."
Christo put on a moue, echoing her tone and inflection perfectly.
"Come here, you, an' show me what you've got."
"This kid's eerie," Burton said.
Not even looking up, as if by rote echo, Christo copied Burton's words.
"This kid's eerie." But then he plucked out a piece of mica for Ginny to admire.
Looking thin and unhealthy, Burton asked, "Where'd he learn to do that?"
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