For the Girls' Sake by Janice Kay Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

he was with a woman. "Where are you parked?"
    "My car is right out in front."
    He urged her forward, his stride so long she had to scuttle along like a tiny hermit crab just to avoid falling and being hauled ungracefully to her feet. Outside the hospital doors, Lynn balked.
    Adam Landry looked so surprised when she pointedly removed her elbow from his bruising grip that she might have been amused under other circumstances.
    "My car is right over there." She gestured. "I don’t see a purse snatcher lurking. I can make it on my own, thank you, Mr. Landry."
    "Adam."
    "Adam," she acknowledged. "I’ll see you Saturday."
    The lines around his mouth deepened. "We’ll be there."
    Neither moved for an awkward moment. Then he bent his head in a stiff goodbye and stalked away across the parking lot. With a sense of unreality she watched him go, wondering how she would have viewed him if they’d passed in the halls earlier, before she knew who he was.
    I would have thought he must be a doctor, she decided. He had that air of money and command, as though he could make life and death decisions before breakfast and assume it was his right.
    He would be a tough opponent, way out of her league.
    Then she didn’t dare let him become an opponent, Lynn thought again. Although she disliked the idea acutely, she must accommodate him, coax him, play friends—do whatever it took to stay out of court.
    Her stomach roiled. It was bad enough that a divorced woman with a child had to spend the next twenty years somehow getting along with her ex-husband. Now she, Lynn Chanak, had gone one better: she had to get along with a man she hadn’t chosen, even if foolishly. A man she’d never married, never been close to—a total stranger. All for the sake of the child they shared.
    For better or worse, they were tied together until Shelly and Rose were grown.
    How bizarre did it get?
    * * *
    L YNN MADE THE LONG , winding trip back over the coastal range to the Pacific Ocean and home. Her instinct was to collect Shelly right away, to reassure herself by her daughter’s presence that nothing would ever change, that they were a family.
    But there were things she didn’t want Shelly to hear, and she should make some phone calls first.
    She got Brian’s answering machine and started to leave a halting message, feeling like an idiot. Why was she always taken aback when the beep sounded and she had to talk onto a tape? But this time she’d barely begun when he picked up the phone.
    "Yeah, I’m here."
    "I, um, I told you I’d found her."
    "Our daughter."
    "Yes." She took a breath. "Today I saw pictures of her. She has your eyes. And my hair."
    Strangely, what flitted into her mind at that moment wasn’t the photo, but rather the potent way Adam Landry’s gaze had touched her and the grit in his voice when he’d said, "She looks like you."
    "How do you know this is the right kid?" her ex-husband, the true stranger, said with an audible sneer.
    Closing her eyes, Lynn said evenly, "We’ve had DNA testing done. And you’d know, if you saw her."
    He grunted. "So what do you want from me?"
    "Nothing." How glad she was to be able to say that! "I thought you should know. That’s all."
    "Uh-huh. Well, you do what you want." His tone changed. "Hey, my call-waiting beeped. Hold on." When he came back on a minute later, Brian said, "You don’t have her there, right?"
    "The man who has been raising her didn’t hand her over to me, if that’s what you mean."
    Brian being Brian, he stayed focused on all that he cared about. "Well, I’m not paying any more child support. I mean, Shelly’s not my responsibility. And I’m not paying this other guy, I can tell you that."
    How could she ever have married this man? How had she deceived herself, even for a while, into thinking she loved him?
    "You held Shelly and kissed her and changed her diaper. She thinks you’re her daddy. After all these years, don’t you love her at all?" Lynn asked, trying to