His Lost and Found Family, page 1
Mariah glanced at him.
Held his gaze in the moonlight illuminating the room.
And...he wanted to make love to her.
What the hell!
Harper was settled down.
Michael sat up, intending to go upstairs, to take the steps three at a time, but the little girl lifted up.
Frowned at him.
And he lay back down, pulling the fleece around him and turning his back to the two females who were upending his entire life. One bringing out all kinds of protective instincts and a soft but fierce love. The other...well, he had no idea what all Mariah was doing to him, but he knew he had to ignore it.
Every heavenly-appearing twist and turn on that road would lead him straight to hell.
Dear Reader,
I’m so excited to welcome you to Sierra’s Web! This brand-new series centers around a firm of experts who travel all over the United States to help people in tough situations. The firm was founded by seven college friends who were bound together for life when they helped solve the murder of one of their close friends, Sierra. Each of the friends are now experts in their own fields, and the partners also hire experts from all over to fit client needs. Some stories are suspense and will be published by Harlequin Romantic Suspense, and some, like this one, are emotionally intense family and relationship stories, all published by Harlequin Special Edition. Every book in the series stands alone—and yet they’re all connected by a love that never dies. His Lost and Found Family is proof of that love and is the perfect book to show you what Sierra’s Web is all about. I look forward to the long-standing friendships we’re all about to embark upon together!
Tara Taylor Quinn
His Lost and Found Family
Tara Taylor Quinn
Having written over ninety novels, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and a seven-time RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.
Books by Tara Taylor Quinn
Harlequin Special Edition
Sierra’s Web
His Lost and Found Family
The Parent Portal
Having the Soldier’s Baby
A Baby Affair
Her Motherhood Wish
A Mother’s Secrets
The Child Who Changed Them
Their Second-Chance Baby
Her Christmas Future
The Daycare Chronicles
Her Lost and Found Baby
An Unexpected Christmas Baby
The Baby Arrangement
The Fortunes of Texas
Fortune’s Christmas Baby
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
For Jeanine—you’ve been gone too many years but remain as alive in my heart as always. From reading our first Harlequin romances together before we were old enough to drive, to weddings and then being godmother to each other’s daughters, you are my best friend forever.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Excerpt from Alaska Dreams by Jennifer Snow
Excerpt from A Chef’s Kiss by Nina Crespo
Chapter One
Michael O’Connell collapsed. Straight down, with a hard thump, to the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. Knees weak, using his free hand to loosen the knot of tie at his neck, he just stared at the registered letter that had been waiting for him upon his return to the States. It dangled, limply suspended, from his shaking fingers.
June was dead.
He’d wondered. Suspected. But to know for sure...
His sweet baby sister turned into a drug addict by their abusive drunk of a father...
His thoughts didn’t complete. Just reached stopping points and hung there.
Pointing to a fact that was always with him. He should have done more.
What, he didn’t know.
But something.
More.
June was dead.
The letter teetered there at the end of his drawing hand. Bearing unread revelations. Late on that early-September Thursday afternoon, he wasn’t ready to hear about the where, or how. Didn’t want to know if she’d been arrested for drug possession and prostitution and God knew what else, if she’d died in prison like the old man should have done.
Didn’t want to know he was too late to give her a proper burial.
He most definitely didn’t want to look at the years during which he’d climbed to the top of his profession without being in touch with her.
Didn’t matter that that choice had been hers. And hers to make.
Or that the last time he’d tried to see her she’d called the cops and threatened a restraining order if he didn’t leave her alone.
He’d wanted her to complete the rehab program he’d enrolled her in. She’d wanted the right to make her own damned choices.
Her right had trumped his love for her and he’d been forced to walk away.
Leaving her with his cell phone number.
And never leaving home without the phone.
Not ever. In all the years since, she’d never called.
But he did stop procrastinating. Lifting the letter, he read it in its entirety. Twice. Parts of it a third time. And grabbed that phone he was never without to call his own lawyer.
“Len, I got a certified letter here from an attorney in Marietta, Oklahoma. Says I’m guardian to a four-year-old child. Can that be right? Can I be made a guardian without consent? Or knowledge?”
“What kid?” Len asked, and followed the question with, “Whose kid?”
“June’s.”
What in the hell was June thinking? She of all people knew that he was no good for raising a child. Or being family to anyone.
And a four-year-old girl? Heels bopping a mile a minute, his feet were held in place by the soles of his hand-tailored black business shoes pressing into the floor. He felt the blood drain from his face as Len said, “In answer to your question, yes. Though it’s not at all advisable to do so without prior conversation and agreement, for obvious reasons, it is legal to appoint a guardian in the event of death and to do so without said guardian’s knowledge.”
There was a pause. Michael hung there with it until Len asked, “June’s dead?”
He swallowed. Jutted his chin. And eventually said, “Yeah.”
“Wow, man. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so mandates vary state by state, but for the most part requirements stipulate only that the guardian be a minimum of eighteen years of age, be of sound mind and not be in prison.”
He could do a stint in prison. Should do one for having abandoned his little sister to their abusive father in order to accept the full-ride academic scholarship he’d earned. Didn’t matter that the old man had never raised an angry hand to her prior to Michael’s leaving. Didn’t matter that he’d been the only one to earn his father’s ire, that he’d been the cause of all the anger in their home, and he’d hoped to give June a more stable home life by vacating. Or that she’d chosen to run away and live on the streets over telling Michael what had been going on after he’d left.
What mattered was that he hadn’t gone home himself to find out. And that he’d left town in the first place, taking away her immediate access to him.
Running a hand through his hair, he ended the silence that had fallen on the line. “Yeah, uh, Len, I need you to find out what it takes to transfer guardianship.”
“Seriously, Michael? This is June’s kid you’re talking about. You’ve spent ten years hating yourself for leaving her alone with your old man, ten years trying to gain back her confidence, to help her, ten years of throwing money away on rehab and tuition she never used, and now you’re going to give up her kid?”
He made a mental note, reminding himself to get a new attorney. One who wasn’t his former roommate and didn’t know every damned thing about him.
“Just get me whatever paperwork there is, tell me what I need to do, and how soon I can sign to make it happen.” He’d screwed up on a fifteen-year-old girl. No way he was taking on a four-year-old.
No way he could even figure out what June was doing, giving the child to him. Trying to trap him? Make him pay for leaving her?
She hadn’t been thinking clearly. The answer came to him quietly.
Grasping hold of a thought that finally made sense to him, his wave of return to sensibility diminished as Len said, “You’ll need to have someone else to name as guardian before any paperwork can be created, signed or filed.”
Whom did he know whom he could ask to permanently take in a little kid? To love her as though she was their own?
No names came immediately to mind. Except...
“What about you and Sarah?”
“We were going to wait to tell you until dinner over the weekend, but Sarah’s pregnant, Mike. They think it’s twins...”
His friends had been trying for years...to the tune of half a dozen miscarriages. His own challenges disappeared as he pictured the sorrow he’d seen on Sarah’s face the last time she’d lost a child. The three of them had been having dinner together and, her face ashen, looking stunned, she’d dropped her fork and run for the bathroom...
No way he was going to add any stress to a new pregnancy. “How far along is she?” he asked, knowing all of the pertinent markers from the last six attempts.
“Four months.” The jubilance in Len’s voice was a bit subdued, but Michael heard it. “We waited this time...haven’t told anyone...”
“Well, hallelujah,” he said, grinning. “Congratulations, man!”
“You’re going to be an uncle.” Because Len sounded as though he was grinning from ear to ear, Michael didn’t disabuse him of the moniker.
Neither did he take it on.
He was a friend. Only a friend.
In his own personal world, family meant screwups and pain. He wasn’t going to repeat the pattern. He’d promised himself, the last day he’d seen June, that he’d never, ever bring anyone else into a family with him.
The O’Connells just didn’t know how to do it right. His grandparents had split. And then his parents. And even when it had just been their dad and him and June, Michael had mouthed off, or forgotten something, or given a wrong look pretty much every day. June would tell him how good things were when he was away spending the night with a friend. And urge him to try to stay out of the way when he got home so they could all live in peace.
He hadn’t been able to do so. He’d been too busy thinking he had all the answers.
“Maybe she’s all you’ve ever needed,” Len’s voice came softly, referring to June’s child—as though just because they’d been friends for so long the guy thought he could read Michael’s mind. “She could be a big cousin in five months and we can fill the house with kids’ excitement on Christmas morning instead of just the three of us drowning in mimosas.”
He looked forward to the mimosas. They were a tradition that didn’t hurt. And he only went there because Len and Sarah didn’t have any family close, and they put up a tree. Michael didn’t own a single ornament. And liked it that way.
He’d seen enough of them broken as a kid.
He’d also seen enough of the travel wrinkles in his gray chinos. He should shower. Change.
“Get going on the paperwork,” he said, more curtly than he should have done. “I’ll find someone to take her.”
He rang off, but didn’t put the phone down. Instead, he clicked and scrolled with one thumb, coming up with the name he’d wanted within seconds.
“Dan, yeah, Michael O’Connell here. I’ve got a job for you...” He’d pay whatever it took to be at the top of the man’s list.
Sitting impatiently, silent through the private detective’s greeting, nodding at the ten years it had been since they’d last spoken, he then said, “I need you to find out who fathered Harper Blackstone, a four-year-old girl living in Marietta, Oklahoma. And get me everything you can find on the guy and his family. By tomorrow, if possible.”
The child was in a shelter in Marietta. Michael had to claim her. Find someplace for her to stay, preferably with him for only an hour or two. One night at the most. He’d book a room in a hotel with a nanny service.
The little one would likely be afraid of him, a six-foot total stranger. And it wasn’t like he had one iota of experience when it came to dealing with kids. He’d have no idea how to assuage fears, or know what she should eat, or how to put a kid that age to bed. Did they just go? Did you have to...
“This have anything to do with June?” Dan’s question rescued him from his speeding thoughts.
“Yeah, the kid is hers.” Kid. Not little girl. Not child in need. Definitely not niece. Nothing that would make him feel personally protective of her.
He already knew he’d fail that one.
“You been in touch with her since we spoke last?”
Dan had been the one to find June every single time Michael couldn’t get a hold of her. He’d been there that last day, when June had called the cops.
“Nope.”
“How do you know about her daughter?”
Daughter. His baby sister had a daughter. Throat tight, he shook his head. He wasn’t going there.
And knew how to stay away. You controlled your thoughts. Ruled your mind instead of letting it rule you.
“I heard from her legal representation. She named me guardian of the child in event of her death.”
“June’s dead.” More confirmation than question.
The PI didn’t sound surprised. Michael didn’t blame him.
“Apparently.”
“You want me to find out what happened?”
He’d been trying to avoid the obvious. Knew it wasn’t going away. And couldn’t waste valuable brainpower on fighting it. “I want to know everything she’s had to eat in the past ten years,” he said. Or, at the very least, how she’d died.
He hoped to God she hadn’t suffered long.
“But I need the other first,” he said, standing at the high-rise window in his office, looking out over the city of Little Rock. “Find the father. And get me a dossier on his whole family.”
“By tomorrow, right, I got that,” Dan said. “You do know I own my own firm now, right? I’ve got a staff of people I can put on this.”
He hadn’t known. Should have known.
“I’ll pay you all double what you’d normally make,” he said.
And hung up a second time without saying goodbye.
He wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
Not to anyone.
But whether he said the words or not, he wasn’t going to change the facts.
* * *
“Where’s Mama?”
Slowing the rocking chair, child specialist Mariah Anderson looked up from the disaster relief resource book she’d been reading to see the small-boned but well-fed four-year-old—with her head still on the pillow of her temporary shelter bed—staring straight at her. Her big brown eyes bore shadows that Mariah would give anything to erase.
No matter how many times Harper asked the question—and she’d asked many times a day—the answer remained the same.
“Mama died,” she said softly, leaving her book on the rocking chair and brushing her hair back over her shoulder. She sat on the edge of Harper’s little cot and then adjusted the lightweight-fleece purple-and-white-heart-print blanket up to the preschooler’s chin. After three days of sharing the space with other displaced preschoolers, Harper had the room to herself as of that morning. All of the other children her age had been collected by parents who’d been treated and released or by other approved family members.
“What’s ‘died’?” The little voice struck a hole clear through Mariah’s heart. She was in too deep with this one. Couldn’t seem to find her professional distance.
She picked up one of Harper’s tanned little hands and lowered the blanket to put that small palm on the little girl’s unicorn-shirted chest. “You feel that beating?”
Harper nodded, still meeting Mariah’s gaze as they went through a process they’d repeated many times in the three days since they’d met. It was almost as though Harper knew she’d broken through the barriers that Mariah had to have in place in order to do her job. The young child just kept climbing deeper inside Mariah’s heart.
Without boundaries, Mariah would hurt too much to be able to do her job week after week, year after year.
“That’s your heart,” she continued softly. She moved Harper’s hand atop her green-shirted larger chest. “You feel my heart beating?”
The child’s nod was quick.
“That’s my heart. Bodies need hearts to beat to stay alive. Mama’s heart stopped beating,” she said then.
