His Brother's Fiancée

by Jasmine Cresswell

  Shawn had been the graduate student, sports jock, Big Man on Campus who'd initiated Emily into the wonders of sex, then taken her on a swift ride through love and romance, getting her pregnant along the way. The final stop had been the point of abandonment her birth mother had once faced. Unlike her birth mother, though, fate had stepped in, and twenty-one-year-old Emily had miscarried her unplanned baby when she was five weeks pregnant.

  Those few weeks of unplanned pregnancy had been quite long enough for Shawn to make it plain that, as far as he was concerned, abortion was the only acceptable answer to the situation Emily found herself in. A situation for which he refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever…

  "You told me you were on the pill," he said angrily, when she informed him that the home pregnancy test was positive.

  "I was, Shawn. You know that the last thing I wanted was to get pregnant. I took the pill correctly, I promise. I never forgot, or took it too late in the day—"

  "Then you can't be pregnant," he said flatly.

  "Pills aren't a hundred percent effective as a method of birth control," Emily said miserably. "Nothing is. About two women in a thousand will get pregnant, even taking the pills exactly as prescribed."

  She wanted to cry, but she had too much pride to break down in front of this cold-faced and angry stranger. A stranger who had taken her virginity, shared her bed for the past four months, sweet-talked about the future. And had, apparently, never cared for her at all.

  Shawn glowered at her. "So how come we get to be the unlucky couple who prove the statistics?"

  "I don't know. Somebody has to be the one who gets pregnant, I guess. Honestly, I would never have chosen for this to happen, Shawn—"

  "Then end it. Shit, Emily, if you need money for the abortion, I'll help you out. Anything else, and you 're on your own. You know my situation, and I never pretended I was ready to settle down. My dad walked out on us when I was twelve. When he left, my youngest brother was still in diapers. My mother doesn't have a dime to spare, and there are three more boys to put through school. I need to get my career established and pay off my tuition loans. There is zero room in my plans for a kid right now."

  "I realize that—"

  "There won't be room for years, maybe never. I'll be honest with you, Emily. After raising three younger brothers, the idea of having kids does absolutely nothing for me."

  "I understand your situation. Truly, I do. I'm not asking you to marry me. I just need you to give me a little emotional support."

  Shawn clicked his tongue impatiently. "You don't need emotional support, whatever the hell that means. What you need right now is smart advice. And here it is. Have an abortion. Put this pregnancy behind you and get on with the rest of your life."

  "I can't, Shawn." Emily choked back a sob. "I'm not going to have an abortion or put the baby up for adoption. " Shawn's total lack of understanding was making her angry. "I'm going to keep her. Or him. It's my baby and I'm not going to give my baby away. I just can't."

  He shrugged. "Okay, have it your way. It's your pregnancy, Emily. Your call. But it's not a smart decision, in my opinion. And I'm telling you now, up front, I want no part of it, and I'm not going to give you one penny of support."

  His words effectively ended their relationship and destroyed any romantic dreams Emily had been cherishing about Shawn playing an active role in raising their child. She'd still been working up the courage to tell Raelene and Sam the truth when she'd started to miscarry the baby.

  Strangely, even though she'd dreaded everything about her pregnancy and been terrified of the prospect of single motherhood, Emily was devastated by the loss. She knew that she wasn't ready emotionally, financially or any other way to care for a child. But reason didn't have much to do with what she felt as she watched her baby bleed out of her womb.

  Grief had kept her shut in her room, not eating, not sleeping, not even crying, and the Emily Sutton who emerged from the dorm just in time to take her final exams was a very different woman from the Emily Sutton of five weeks earlier…

  Emily felt the brush of Jordan's finger against her cheek and realized she was crying. Crying, she discovered, for old hurts that had never healed properly, because they'd been buried deep for more than six years, festering instead of healing.

  "What is it?" Jordan asked. "You left me. You were about a million miles away."

  "Not quite that far." Emily banished Shawn and her miscarriage to the past. Maybe she needed to take some of those feelings out and examine them again, but this wasn't the time or the place.

  Emotions once again under firm control, she spoke briskly. "Jordan, we've spent a terrific week together, you and I. I've had a great time, and I've really enjoyed your company. We only have one more day together and then we have to go back to San Antonio and face our friends, our work. This last day here is special. Let's not complicate things between us. Please?"

  Jordan looked down at her, his gaze dark, his expression inscrutable. "It's a deal," he said. "We won't complicate things between us. As a matter of fact, I've always believed in keeping things simple."

  For some reason, Emily didn't find his answer one bit reassuring.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  During the years he worked undercover for the Dallas police force, Dylan Garrett had been too busy staying alive to waste much time wondering if he enjoyed his work. The height of his ambition had been to avoid getting killed, while putting criminals behind bars where they could do no further damage to law-abiding citizens.

  Since establishing Finders Keepers with his twin sister, Lily, his arms had become more diffuse, and in some ways more difficult to achieve. He still wanted to make a difference in people's lives, but he wanted to enjoy himself in the process. When he and Lily discussed their goals in starting the agency, he had even mentioned his hope that he might actually find time for a personal life.

  That hope quickly proved an illusion. Ever since he'd taken on the case of Julie Matthews Cooper, the missing wife of his friend Sebastian Cooper, Dylan felt as if he'd been spinning his wheels, running at top speed simply to crash into one frustrating dead end after another.

  It had reached the point that he couldn't even think about Julie without getting a knot in his gut the size of a huge fist. Although having his gut tied in knots wasn't too much of a change where Julie was concerned, Dylan thought wryly. She'd been driving him quietly crazy since he met her during his junior year in college, and her power to mess with his emotions had increased exponentially ever since.

  It had been bad enough two years ago when she married Sebastian Cooper, his longtime friend. It was even worse now that she had mysteriously disappeared. Dylan couldn't—wouldn't—consider the possibility that Julie, the golden girl of his fantasies, might be dead.

  The San Antonio police were convinced that she was the victim of some unspecified accident and, in Dylan's opinion, they weren't putting enough resources behind the investigation of her whereabouts. He had just come from a meeting with Bill Myers of the San Antonio homicide division, a cop who'd qualified as detective at the same time as Dylan himself. Bill was a good guy, a hard worker, but he lacked the spark of imagination that was necessary for cracking the really tough cases. Bill worked by the rules and followed the instruction manual to the letter, so Dylan hadn't been surprised this morning when Bill insisted the latest reassessment of the evidence pointed to the firm conclusion that Julie Cooper was dead.

  Listening to the detective's verdict, Dylan had bitten his tongue, shoved his hands into his pockets, counted to a hundred, and just managed to avoid telling Bill that the cops were being played for suckers. Far from being firm, the evidence for Julie's death was vague, conflicting and inconclusive. In Dylan's opinion, it was precisely the sort of evidence somebody might plant, hoping that the authorities would be dumb enough to fall for it.

  The police seemed to have obliged by tumbling headlong into the traps set for them, but Dylan wasn't so easily fooled. And it wasn't just
because he was still so much in love with Julie Cooper that his heart damn near stopped beating every time he considered the possibility that her body might be rotting at the bottom of the San Antonio River. No. His reasons for doubt were a smidgen more professional than that. In his considered opinion, the evidence of her death was simply too circumstantial to be convincing.

  Given that he clung to the belief that Julie Cooper was alive, the question Dylan found most urgent was who wanted to convince people that she was dead? Was she being held against her will, for some as yet unspecified purpose? Or had she disappeared voluntarily? And if she'd chosen to disappear, what the hell reason could she have had for causing her husband and friends such terrible worry?

  The harder Dylan wrestled with that problem, the further away he seemed to get from finding any acceptable answers.

  In the meantime, the only solid fact he had to work with was one he didn't like at all: namely, that since the day Julie went missing, not one worthwhile clue had surfaced as to where she might be. Dead or alive.

  And if that wasn't enough to keep him awake at night, as an added bonus, Sebastian was almost driving him completely insane with daily demands for an update on the status of the investigation. At one point Dylan had thought Sebastian might be giving up hope, accepting that Julie would never come back. But his behavior lately had dispelled those doubts. Sebastian cared deeply about his wife, and would never rest until she was found. Which left Dylan in the ironic position of busting his gut to find the woman he loved so that he could have the dubious satisfaction of seeing her welcomed back into another man's arms.

  Trying hard not to dwell on any of these multiple ironies, Dylan strode along San Antonio's famous River Walk, anxious not to be late for his meeting with Emily Sutton. Two boatloads of tourists chugged past him in opposite directions, but he was so accustomed to the colorful sight that he barely noticed them, and the guides' running commentaries impinged as nothing more than background noise.

  Rounding a sidewalk tub of cascading petunias, he dragged his thoughts away from Julie's disappearance and made a quick mental inventory of the status of his search for Emily's birth mother—another case that was currently frustrating him. What should have been a routine investigation was proving to be a great deal more difficult than he'd anticipated. He'd arranged this meeting with Emily partly because he'd promised her an update as soon as she returned from her honeymoon, but also because he needed to find out if she had any clue as to who—apart from herself—might be interested in finding out the details of her birth. Because somebody had been poking around in the entrails of her past, Dylan was sure of it.

  With five minutes to spare, Dylan arrived at Perk at the Park, his favorite coffee shop on the River Walk. He took a seat under the welcome shade of a giant green-striped umbrella and read through today's handwritten menu.

  When he returned to San Antonio to open his own investigative agency, he'd started coming to Perk at the Park because the place was owned by Kelly Adams, an old friend, and he wanted to support her business venture. He continued to come because she sold the best coffee, sandwiches and home-baked cookies in San Antonio.

  He was just about to request a glass of ice water while he waited for Emily to arrive when he saw her crossing one of the bridges that spanned the river. He stood up and waved to attract her attention, and she sent him an answering wave, along with a quick smile. She looked fabulous, Dylan thought. The copper highlights in her thick, wavy chestnut hair gleamed in the sunlight, and her skin glowed with the sort of perfect light-bronze tan that usually occurred only in magazine advertisements for suntan lotion.

  Her honeymoon had agreed with her, Dylan reflected, watching as she came closer. At their first meeting, Emily had struck him as an exceptionally pretty woman, but she'd projected not an ounce—not an atom—of sexual allure, living up to her reputation as the elegant Ice Princess of San Antonio society. The elegance was still there, but now, even at a distance, she radiated an aura of subtle sensuality.

  Jordan Chambers must be almost as amazing a lover as his reputation suggested, Dylan thought with a touch of silent amusement.

  "Hi, Dylan. I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long?" Emily entered the welcome shade of the umbrellas, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head as she shook his hand. Despite his love for Julie, Dylan felt himself respond briefly to the tug of Emily's new sexual charisma.

  "Well, if it isn't Mrs. Chambers," he said, shaking her hand and smiling as he used her married name.

  She stared at him blankly for a moment, then gave a quiet laugh. "Every time someone calls me Mrs. Chambers, I have to resist the urge to peek over my shoulder to see if my mother-in-law is standing behind me."

  He grinned. "An old married woman like you should be used to it by now."

  "I think it might take more than a week or so to get used to being married," Emily said with feeling.

  "So I've heard." Dylan pulled out a chair for her. "My godparents celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary in May, and they tell me with that hurdle behind them, they're hoping to get their newlywed bumps smoothed out sometime real soon."

  Emily laughed and Dylan handed her the menu.

  "Have you had lunch already?" he asked. "I know it's late, but I haven't had time to eat anything since I grabbed a stale granola bar at six this morning."

  "I already had lunch with my parents, thanks. But you go ahead and eat, Dylan, and I'll keep you company with an iced coffee. I saw a man at the table next to us order one for himself, and it looked great."

  "Kelly makes the best coffee in town," Dylan said. "And customizes it to taste. Do you like yours extra strong? With extra milk? Extra ice? Want to indulge in a scoop of mocha ice cream?"

  "I'll pass on the ice cream, but some extra foamed milk would be wonderful."

  "Coming up," Dylan said. "Excuse me for a couple of minutes while I give Kelly our order, will you? This place is strictly self-service."

  Dylan ordered himself a roast beef sandwich and a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade, carrying his meal back to the table along with Emily's iced coffee.

  "Okay, let's get straight to business," he said, offering her the sugar and then unfolding his napkin. "I'm very glad you could find time to meet with me today. I have some news for you—"

  "You've found my mother?" Emily turned pale beneath her tan, her coffee spoon suspended in midair.

  "No, not that," he said quickly. "I'm sorry to have raised false hopes." Putting down her spoon, Emily pressed her hand against her rib cage and drew in a deep breath. "It's okay. I jumped to conclusions. It was nothing you said."

  Dylan watched, relieved to see the color slowly return to her cheeks.

  "I never realized how important this search was to me until just now," Emily said. "I guess I really do care a lot about finding my mother. Funny, even though I hired you specifically to make the search, I never knew how badly I wanted to see her. To talk to her just once, you know? Even if she never wants to see me again after our first meeting…"

  Dylan sent her a sympathetic glance. "We'll get there, Emily. It takes time and perseverance, that's all. And right now, it looks as if it's going to take a little more time and perseverance than I anticipated. Let me tell you what I've done so far."

  "Yes, please."

  "In detective work, it's always smart to start with what you know for sure and work outward from there. We know two things about the circumstances of your birth with more or less certainty. Namely that your birth date is March 16, 1974, and that you were adopted through Lutheran Family Services of San Antonio—"

  "Which is now defunct, of course, so it's not a very useful piece of information."

  "More useful than you might think," Dylan said. "It wasn't hard to find a record of all the people who were working at the agency in the first half of 1974. Once I had a complete list of the employees, tracking them down was as simple as sitting in front of my computer and clicking the mouse a few times."

  She gave
a tiny grin. "Don't make it sound too easy, Dylan. You're ruining your mystique."

  "Hey, I'm going to build it right back up again. Finding out the current location of the employees was easy. After that it got difficult. Real difficult, real fast."

  "How so?"

  "Well, if you include three part-time clerks, two nurse-midwives and a receptionist who also answered the phone, there were twelve people working at Lutheran Family Services around the time you were adopted. That translates into twelve potential leads. Some employees were likely to know more than others, obviously, but all of them might be useful potential sources of information. I found current addresses for ten former employees, which isn't bad at all—"

  "Not bad? It sounds amazingly good to me," Emily said.

  "I was hopeful we were going to crack the case quite quickly when I found all those addresses," Dylan admitted. "Of course, in any investigation of this sort, the list of potential leads quickly narrows down, and this case was no exception. Two of the ten employees whose addresses I found are dead, and two have moved out of state. Another former employee is in Dallas, and one has moved to Lubbock, but that left four staff members still living here in San Antonio. And two of those four were actual case workers, not clerks, so I was optimistic that I'd be able to generate some information that would at least take me to the next stage of the investigation."

  "But from your tone of voice, I'm assuming that didn't happen?" Emily asked. She spoke coolly, and if Dylan hadn't spent his adult life trying to read what people were concealing, he doubted if he would have been aware of the longing ruthlessly subdued behind that calm facade. He wondered why Emily fought so hard to keep her feelings repressed, then spared a moment of sympathy for Jordan Chambers. He hoped the poor guy was well trained in the fine art of reading unspoken emotions.