Dangerous Deception

by Beverly Barton

  “Yes, you are,” Dom said. “I’m having Daisy, at Dundee’s, fax them all the verification they need to prove we’re who we say we are. And Berton Oliver has a colleague who is an expert in adoption laws and I’ve asked him to represent us.”

  “Us?”

  “Us,” Dom said. “May’s mother and father.”

  “Oh, Dom.” Fresh tears sprang into her eyes. “You really are too good to be true.”

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the Grissoms’ large, split-level brick house in Jasper, Larry Grissom met them at the door. He was tall and rotund, with a heavy gray beard and a welcoming smile on his rosy-cheeked face.

  “Y’all come on in. Brenda’s sister took the other kids over at her house for the afternoon,” Larry said. “We thought it would be better if there wasn’t so much going on when May meets you folks. She’s a real friendly, out-going little girl. Got a fantastic personality. Never meets a stranger and can talk a blue streak. Everybody who knows her adores her.”

  Larry surveyed Lausanne from head to toe. “I can sure tell you’re our little May’s mama. She’s the spitting image of you. Got that same curly red hair and little button nose. She’s a beauty, our May.”

  “What have you told her about us, about me?” Lausanne asked.

  “We just told her that some really nice folks were coming by to visit and y’all were real eager to meet her.”

  A tall, skinny woman with short black hair and sparkling hazel eyes entered the room. A small, delicate little girl was holding tenaciously to the woman’s hand.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Brenda Grissom.” She eased the child from her side to stand in front of her, keeping her hands gently clasped to the little girl’s shoulders. “And this is May.”

  “Hello, May,” Lausanne said, barely managing not to cry. “I’m Lausanne.”

  “Hi,” May said, lowering her head, casting her gaze downward.

  “And this is Dom.” Lausanne grasped Dom’s hand.

  “Lausanne and Dom have come here this afternoon to see you, May,” Larry said.

  May squinted as she lifted her gaze, as if the light hurt her eyes. “Why do you want to see me?”

  Dom squeezed Lausanne’s hand and when he realized she couldn’t speak, he urged her forward, leading her across the room to where May stood in front of her foster mother.

  He squatted down in front of May. “I own a ranch out in Texas. I’ve got a niece about your age and a nephew a little older. They live on a ranch just down the road from mine. We’ve got horses and cattle and—”

  “And dogs?” May asked.

  Dom chuckled. “You bet. We’ve got lots of dogs.”

  “I like dogs, but Brenda is allergic, so we can’t get a dog.”

  “May, how would you like to visit Lausanne and me, out on our ranch in Texas where you can play with all our dogs?” Dom asked.

  May’s beautiful little face, which was indeed a miniature of Lausanne’s, lit up. She smiled from ear to ear, showing off a set of perfect white teeth. She reached out and ran her fingertips up and down Dom’s face, looking him over quite thoroughly.

  “I don’t know if Brenda and Larry will let me go all the way to Texas,” May said. “But I sure would love to play with your dogs.”

  “What if the first time you visit, Brenda and Larry come along with you?” Dom asked.

  “And all the other kids, too?” May pressed her little fingers over Dom’s lips.

  He clutched her hand in his. “You bet, honey.”

  May lifted her head, her eyes not quite focusing as she asked, “Can we, Brenda?”

  “I think maybe we can,” her foster mother replied.

  “Lausanne and I are getting married very soon,” Dom said. “We’d like all of you to come for the wedding. And if May wants to, we’d like for her to be a flower girl, along with my niece.”

  “What’s a flower girl?” May asked.

  Lausanne finally found her voice. “That’s a very important job. The flower girls walk down the church aisle in front of the bride and they strow flower petals down for the bride to walk on.”

  “Oh.” May frowned.

  Lausanne knelt down beside Dom, reached out and took May’s hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “I probably can’t do that,” May said. “I don’t see very well. I’m not totally blind, but—”

  “You wouldn’t be walking down the aisle alone,” Dom told her. “My niece Maureen would be at your side. You could hold on to her arm. How would that do?”

  May’s beautiful smile returned. “Yes, I could do that, but I don’t understand why you would want me to be a flower girl in your wedding. You don’t even know me.”

  The tears Lausanne had kept under control broke free and trickled down her cheeks. Unexpectedly, May reached out and touched Lausanne’s cheek.

  “You’re crying,” May said. “Are you unhappy?”

  “No, darling, I’m crying because I’m so very, very happy.”

  “Oh, that’s good. I’m glad you’re happy.” May continued studying Lausanne’s face with her fingertips, then lifted her hand to Lausanne’s hair. “Ooh, your hair feels just like mine. It’s thick and curly.”

  “And it’s red just like yours,” Dom told her. “And she’s pretty, too, just like you.”

  “Am I pretty?” May asked.

  “You’re the prettiest little girl in the world.” Lausanne barely managed to speak before she started crying again.

  “And we want you to be one of the flowers girls in our wedding because we heard how pretty and smart and how very special you are.” Dom looked up at May’s foster mother. “Isn’t that right, Mrs. Grissom?”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Shea.”

  Dom put his arm around Lausanne and lifted her to her feet. “We’d better go, but if it’s all right with you folks, we’d like to come back tomorrow.”

  “Absolutely,” Larry replied. “Y’all come back as often as you’d like and when you get that wedding planned, we’ll come out to Texas and bring you a very special wedding present.”

  EPILOGUE

  THANKSGIVING AT THE SHEA house was a three-ring circus, with kids and dogs and cats and visiting relatives running around in every direction. And that was just inside the sprawling two-story farmhouse that Dom and Lausanne had designed and built during the first year of their marriage. Outside cattle and horses roamed and often four-wheelers roared along the trails cut through the open range. When Dom had retired from Dundee’s and they moved to Texas a month before their wedding, which had been an early March event nearly seven years ago, they’d lived in a small trailer that had been set about three hundred yards behind where the present home was erected.

  After they first got married, they had flown back to Jasper, Tennessee, to visit May every other weekend during the next three months, letting her get to know them gradually. Before long she had come to Texas for a weekend with them. When they had told her they wanted to adopt her, to make her their little girl forever, she’d hesitated, voicing her doubts about leaving the Grissoms. So Lausanne and Dom had given May all the time and space she needed, extending her monthly visits to Texas from weekends to a week at a time.

  Eight months after their wedding, Lausanne discovered she was pregnant. And although she and Dom were ecstatic, they were uncertain how May would react when they told her.

  “I think it’s wonderful that y’all are going to have a baby of your own,” May had said, tears in her blue-green eyes. “I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t already adopt me or you’d be stuck with me.”

  Lausanne had wrapped her arms around her daughter and hugged her. Then in very simple terms, she told May a story about herself, about how when she’d been not quite eighteen, she’d given birth to a baby girl and how she’d given her baby away because she’d been told that a wonderful couple wanted to adopt her child.

  May had grasped Lausanne’s face between her open palms. “I’m really your little girl? I’m that baby?”

 
“Yes, sweetheart, you’re that baby. You’re my daughter and I want you to come and live with Dom and me and let us be your parents.”

  “Dom?” May had called out to him.

  He had grasped her little hand. “I’m right here, honey.”

  “Do you really and truly want to be my daddy?”

  “You bet I do.”

  And from that day forward, Dom had been May’s daddy, in every way that counted. When Rafe was born, fat and healthy and his father’s spitting image, Dom had continued lavishing as much love and attention on May as he did on their son. Lausanne learned that a man like Dom had an endless capacity to love. And it was a good thing, since eighteen months after Rafe came howling into the world, black-eyed, red-haired Ronan Shea made his debut.

  “Mama,” May called out from the kitchen. “The timer just went off. I think the turkey’s ready.”

  “Where’s Aunt Pilar?”

  “She and Uncle Hart went back to the truck to get more stuff,” May replied.

  Lausanne finished arranging the flowers in the middle of the dining room table, then shooed three-year-old Ronan and his sidekick Sparkles, the family’s golden retriever, from under her feet. “Go see what Daddy and Rafe are doing in the living room.”

  “I don’t want to!” stubborn little Ronan said.

  Before Lausanne had a chance to say another word to her younger son, Brandon Shea scooped up his youngest grandchild, held him high in the air and soared him out of the dining room. Ronan giggled with delight.

  When Lausanne entered the kitchen, she paused in the doorway and looked at her daughter. May had grown into a strikingly beautiful teenager and already Dom was making fatherly noises about keeping his little girl under lock and key until she was at least thirty.

  Standing guard at May’s side, her faithful companion, Arlo, the trained seeing-eye Lab they had purchased for May when she came to live with them, lifted his head and stared at Lausanne.

  Dom’s sister Pilar flung open the back door, a huge box in her arms. Her husband, Hart, brought in an even bigger box. “That’s the last of it. Two hams, three pies, a cake and a sweet potato casserole,” Pilar said before dumping her box on the kitchen table.

  “Where’s Maureen and Jonas?” May asked.

  “Jonas is coming later and bringing his girlfriend,” Pilar said. “I can’t believe my son is old enough to date.”

  “The boy’s eighteen,” Hart reminded her. “He’s been dating for a couple of years.”

  Pilar sighed. “Maureen’s gone down to the stables to see Sunny Girl’s new foal. She said to tell you to come meet her and y’all could take a ride before dinner.”

  “May I, Mama?” May asked.

  “Certainly.” But please be careful, Lausanne thought. It had taken a long time for her to stop being overprotective where May was concerned. But thanks to Dom showing her how self-reliant their daughter was, despite her disability, Lausanne had gradually stopped hovering over her eldest child.

  “Don’t smother her,” Dom had said the first time he’d put May on a horse alone. “Let her spread her wings and fly.” And that’s just what she’d done. That had been four years ago, when May was twelve. Now at sixteen she was an excellent horsewoman, far better than Lausanne would ever be.

  “If you gals don’t need help in here, I think I’ll join the men in the living room.” Without further ado, Hart left before the women put him to work.

  “Any word from Marta?” Lausanne asked her sister-in-law while she pretended not to watch May put on her sweater and head out the back door.

  “Marta called last night. She can’t make it until Christmas,” Pilar said. “But Bianca is driving in from Houston with her new boyfriend in tow.”

  In the midst of all the hustle and bustle, Lausanne had little time to relax and truly count her blessings that day, but later that evening, when the whirlwind had passed and the children were asleep in their beds upstairs, Lausanne and Dom put on their jackets and went out onto their big front porch. Overhead a three-quarter moon shined down on them and twinkling stars winked at them, high up in the clear nighttime sky. She loved their ranch, Dom’s family and the family they had created together. Every day was a blessing.

  With Lausanne standing in front of him, Dom wrapped his arms around her and kissed her temple. “Happy, Mrs. Shea?”

  “Deliriously happy, Mr. Shea. How about you?”

  “Honey, if I were any happier, I couldn’t stand it.”

  “I’ve been thinking…”

  “Uh-oh.”

  She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. He grunted, then laughed.

  “As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me—I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m nearly thirty-five and if we’re going to have more children, we might want to do it sooner rather than later.”

  Dom turned her around to face him. When she looked up at him and smiled, he clasped her face between his open palms. “Are you pregnant?”

  “The stick turned blue,” she told him.

  Dom let out a joyous whoop. She reached up and covered his mouth with her hand. “Shh…If you wake up those boys, I’ll—”

  Dom pulled her hand away and then kissed her.

  When they came up for air, she laid her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. The past was a distant memory, a blurry vision of loneliness and misery. Most of the time, it seemed as if all those terrible things had happened to someone else. But not for one single, solitary minute did she ever forget to be thankful for her many blessings, which began and ended with the husband she loved with all her heart.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-0180-7

  DANGEROUS DECEPTION

  Copyright © 2006 by Beverly Beaver

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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