Kathleen Creighton - The Black Sheep’s Baby

“God, Devon, don’t you know?” He flung it at her, in a voice like a shovelful of gravel. “I came back because of you.” She was backing away from him, shaking her head, her eyes dark and rejecting. Every part of him wanted to reach for her, haul her back and into his arms, his whole body ached with the need to hold her. It took all the self-control he possessed to make his body still, his voice quiet and calm. “Once I’d gotten Emily to that safe house, I realized I had to come back, even if it meant going to jail. I couldn’t leave things the way they were between us.”

“There’s nothing between us!” She hurled it back at him like shards of broken glass. “It was once. We both said it.”

“Once isn’t enough for me, Devon.” He made his voice warm, warm as rain. Moving closer, he saw the beginnings of her melting… “I want more nights like that one, a whole lot more. A lifetime of nights.” He felt her face, cold and damp between his palms, and held it firm and fast when she tried to shake her head in frantic denial. “Yes-I’m going to fight you, Devon. That’s why I came back. I’m going to fight you…for us.” He paused to draw a knife-edged breath. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I love you.”

She uttered a cry as if he’d dealt her a mortal wound, and wrenched herself from his grasp. Crouched, she faced him like a wounded, cornered animal. “No-you don’t. You couldn’t possibly. If you think you do, you’re wrong.”

His crooked smile formed slowly. Was it more painful, he wondered, to have love rejected…or denied?

“Why can’t I possibly love you?” he asked, stalking her relentlessly. Backed against a stall, she could only whimper and turn her face away when he pulled her into his arms.

“You don’t know,” she whispered. “You don’t know…”

“I know you weren’t to blame for anything that happened to you,” he said, more roughly than he meant to. The pain in his throat, in his heart, was almost more than he could bear. Pain for her. “Don’t you even think about blaming yourself.”

But she was struggling against him again, pounding his chest with her fists and sobbing, great tearing sobs that must have hurt her throat…that hurt him to hear. “No-you don’t understand-you don’t know. You don’t know anything. I left her, don’t you understand? Susan…I left her there.” She stared up at him, now, with dry eyes, the green of them swallowed in darkness. Her mouth twisted with self-loathing. “She begged me not to. She begged me…and I…left…her…with…him. My little sister. What kind of person would do such a thing?” Her voice was a desolate whisper. “What kind of person am I?”

He didn’t know what to say to her. He tried to pull her close, to wrap her in his arms, but she shook her head and pressed her palms against his chest.

“I meant to go back-I did. I told her I’d come back for her, when I could. But I…I didn’t…I…don’t remember why…”

“You blocked it out,” Eric murmured. “Your mind erased it for you. You didn’t go back because you didn’t remember why you should.”

Her eyelids quivered down. He lifted her into his arms as her face crumpled.

He carried her into the stall and laid her down on the clean straw he’d put there only two days ago. He reached up and turned on the heat lamp and took off his jacket before he stretched himself out beside her. Then, carefully as he would have undressed Emily, he eased Devon out of her city coat. “Shall I tell you what kind of person I see?” he said as, gazing down into her hopeless eyes, he slipped his hand under her sweater and fanned his fingers wide across her stomach. “I see a woman who was once a little girl, a little girl who was horribly, terribly wounded by the very person she should have been able to trust to keep her safe.” His voice was husky, his throat ached with tenderness. His eyes burned with unshed tears as they held on to hers, held them as if there were a line stretching between, and she dangled from it over a yawning chasm. “And yet, she managed, that little girl, to grow up and make a life for herself in spite of her wounds. Managed to grow into a beautiful, successful woman, capable of warmth and kindness, capable of giving and receiving love-”

“How do you know that?” she asked him, breathless and disbelieving.

“I’ve seen you,” he told her softly. “With Emily…”

“I ran away from her! I was afraid to even hold her.” But he saw her eyes kindle with the beginning of hope.

Eric thought about what his dad had said and smiled. “I know,” he murmured, and leaned down and slowly, deeply kissed her. And kissed her, and kissed her, and while he kissed her he slowly, slowly undressed her, and himself as well. “I know,” he whispered, caressing her lips with the words, “that you are beautiful in all ways. And I intend to spend the rest of my life showing you how beautiful you are-as beautiful in your soul as you are here, and here, and here.” And with his mouth he showed her just where she was beautiful-her throat, her breasts, her belly and thighs, and all the sweet soft womanly places between…

When she was honeyed and wet and trembling on the edge of breaking, he surged up and over her and grafted her to him with one tremendous thrust, and in that union was all the power of his love for her and faith in her, all the strength of his will and conviction. He felt what resistance and doubt there was left in her melt away, felt her shatter, and then himself, too. Felt himself come apart with her, then form again, both of them whole, and at the same time, forever and ever a part of each other.

Afterward, she wept at last. “That’s right, cry, my love,” Eric whispered, kissing the tear-pools on each eyelid. Let the healing begin.

December 21-One Year Later

Los Angeles, California

“M r. and Mrs. Lanagan, say hello to your daughter. As of this moment, Emily is one hundred percent officially yours.” The family court judge beamed like a happy elf as he brought the gavel down. “Congratulations. Oh-and Merry Christmas. Now…let’s see. Who’s next?”

Mike and Lucy rose from their seats farther back in the courtroom as Eric and Devon turned from the judge’s bench, faces flushed with happiness and love, Emily squirming in her daddy’s arms, loudly demanding to be put down. She’d only recently mastered walking, and was eager to put her new skill to good use. Lucy watched with a grandmother’s indulgent smile as the baby swayed, found her balance, then took off-only to fall on her diapered bottom three steps later.

“Oh, Mike,” Lucy whispered as Eric swept his daughter up and settled her on his shoulders, then put an arm around his wife’s shoulders, “it’s going to be such a wonderful Christmas.”

“Even in L.A.?” Mike whispered back, raising an eyebrow.

Lucy jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “Christmas with our son and daughter-in-law and brand-new grandbaby-doesn’t matter where. Oh, Mike-what a wonderful gift Eric’s given us. The greatest gift a child can ever give his parents.”

“You mean…a grandchild?”

With glistening eyes Lucy shook her head. “He’s made us proud.”

has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history-but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.