Nathan's Child by Anne McAllister Read Free Book Online Page B

be the ones Lacey didn’t ask. Her heart squeezed just a little.
    â€œWould it have mattered so much?”
    Lacey levered herself up on her elbows. “Of course it would matter! He’s my father! I want to know him. I’ve always wanted to know him!”
    The ferocity of her tone cut Carin to the bone. It challenged the most basic decision she’d made—not to tell Nathan about their child.
    And yet she knew, given the same circumstances, she would do the same thing again. Given who Nathan was and what he wanted to do with his life, she’d had no choice.
    He might think differently now. He might blame her now. But thirteen years ago, keeping her pregnancy a secret had been the right thing to do. If she’d told him, she’d have effectively tied him down to a life she knew he’d hate, to obligations he hadn’t chosen. If she’d told him, he might have married her.
    But he would never have loved her.
    He hadn’t loved her, even when they’d made love.
    She made herself reflect on that for a long moment because that had been the other fact on which she’d based her decision. Even when she’d found out she was pregnant, she knew she couldn’t have begged Nathan for marriage—not when she’d given him her heart and he’d only shared his body. It would have destroyed them both.
    In the end there had been only one thing to do. And the truth was, she admitted to herself, she had barely considered Lacey’s needs at all.
    Later she’d assured herself that it would be better for Lacey to have one parent who loved her than have two where one of them might resent her very existence.
    Now Carin took a careful, steadying breath and let it out slowly.
    â€œWell, he’s here now,” she said with far more calm than she felt as she smoothed the light cotton blanket overLacey, then bent to give her daughter a kiss. “So you can enjoy getting to know him.”
    â€œI will,” Lacey vowed, and settled back against the pillows again.
    On a normal night, once Lacey had gone to sleep, Carin would have finished up her bookwork from the store, then made herself a cup of tea and taken it out on the porch to sit in the swing and unwind from the day.
    Tonight she couldn’t settle. She tried to do her bookwork and couldn’t concentrate. She made a cup of tea and couldn’t sit still to drink it. She paced around the house, picking things up and setting them back down again.
    Finally she went outside and flung herself down on the swing, grabbed her sketchbook and tried to funnel some of her restless energy into ideas for her work. But all her drawings became sharp-featured, dark-haired men, and she ripped them out of the sketchbook, crumpled them up and tossed them aside, wishing it were as easy to get rid of Nathan.
    A creaking noise at the gate made her look up. A pair of yellow eyes glinted in the darkness. “Ah, Zeno,” she said as the gate was nosed further open. “Come here, boy.”
    A dark shape shambled toward the porch. He was a little taller than an Irish setter, a little wirier than a terrier, a little more spotted than a dalmatian, a little less mellow than a golden retriever. He had turned up one day, full-grown, and no one knew which visiting boat he’d come off.
    Her friend Hugh McGillivray, who ran Fly Guy, the island transport company, had begun calling him Heinz because he was at least fifty-seven varieties of dog. But Lacey had named him Zeno because he had appeared on their doorstep about the same time Nathan’s book, Solo, had come out.
    â€œHe looks nothing like a wolf,” Carin had protested.
    â€œLooks aren’t everything. Are they, Zeno?” Lacey hadsaid stubbornly, hugging the gangly animal who had grinned and furiously wagged his tail.
    â€œHe’s not ours to name.” Their house wasn’t close to big enough for a dog the size of a wolfhound.
    â€œHe’s nobody