Morgan's Child (10 page)

Chapter 5

Two weeks later Kate opened the kitchen door one afternoon and found a wrathful Gump tapping his foot impatiently on her doorstep. She invited Gump into the sitting room for a visit and listened horror-struck while he poured out a story about being accosted on the dock by a man named Tony Saldone, who pretended to know Kate.

"He bought me a drink or two in the tavern, and I told him more than you'd want him to know," Gump said mournfully.

Kate froze while she digested Gump's words. "And then what?" she asked carefully.

"I realized after a while that I'd made a mistake and told the guy to leave me alone. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and shrugged his shoulders, and then he rambled off along the dock. I wish he'd slipped on a loose board and fallen in the drink," Gump said.

"There's only one thing this can mean. Morgan Rhett has hired someone to check up on me. He wants to know if there's any chance that someone else could be the father of this baby," Kate said. She should have known that Morgan would be thorough. Still, she was angry, and certainly not with Gump, whose weaknesses at the Merry Lulu were well-known to her.

"I'm pretty sure I set that fellow straight about that," Gump said, but his face became serious. "What if this Morgan Rhett doesn't take the baby?" he asked.

"Morgan
has
to take the baby," Kate said. "He has to."

Gump was silent for a moment. "Any luck yet in you finding a job?" he asked.

"How can I expect anyone to hire me after the big flap at Northeast Marine Institute? In case you've forgotten, I testified against my superior in front of Congress, and his position was upheld. My reputation is nil."

"I didn't think you cared about your reputation," Gump retorted.

"Scientific reputation is one thing," Kate said. "Personal reputation is another. I couldn't care less what Willadeen Pribble and the rest of those women on the mainland think of me."

"Not that they ever lack for gossip," Gump said, shaking his head unhappily as he prepared to leave. "Goodbye, Kate. If any more of Morgan's people come calling, I'll clam up."

"Send them to me, and I'll give them a piece of my mind," Kate said. She folded her arms across her belly as she watched Gump depart, thinking that the person she'd really like to tell off was Morgan Rhett.

* * *

At that moment Morgan was pacing back and forth across the floor of his office at Morgan Rhett & Company.

"So the ferry captain told you that Kate never has male visitors?" he asked Tony Saldone.

"That's about it," Tony said.

"And how did you pry that information out of him?" Morgan asked skeptically.

Tony winked. "A couple of cups of grog at the Merry Lulu Tavern. But when I asked this guy Gump to explain the Sinclair woman's pregnancy, he shut his mouth and said he didn't want to talk about it. Changed the subject, in fact. He started rambling on about Kate's mother and how she left when Kate was nine years old. Said he felt responsible."

"I know, Kate mentioned that her mother had abandoned her," Morgan said, waving away this extraneous information as if it were a pesky fly in his face.

"Well, you want to hear a good story, this one's all that and a bag of peanuts. Eloise, Kate's mother, ran off with some guy on a motorcycle and never came back, even after the guy cracked up the bike and killed himself. After that, Eloise departed for Africa and joined some do-gooder health organization."

"All that is irrelevant. You turned up no dirt on Kate Sinclair?"

"As far as her personal life is concerned, no dirt—in spades," Tony said with a laugh. "Even though the woman is enormously preggers with no man in sight."

Morgan rubbed his chin. "How about her professional life?" he asked.

"Now that's a possibility," he said, leaning forward in his chair. "You told me that Kate nursed her father while he was ill. You said that she'd lived on the island with him for two years."

"That's what Kate said."

"The bartender at the Merry Lulu told me that her father had only been sick for about a year before he croaked. What I think we should look into is, why did Kate come home from her job with that big research outfit in Maine long before her father was diagnosed as terminally ill?"

"Good question." Morgan said. He sat on his chair and stared out at the harbor. Today the water looked almost the exact shade of Kate Sinclair's eyes.

"So what do I do now?" Tony implored.

"See what you can find out," Morgan said.

"Righto. How far do you want me to take this investigation?"

"Till you can't go any further," Morgan replied.

"Okay, that wraps it up. I'm off to Google her."

"Meaning?"

"I'll find out what I can about Kate Sinclair from the Internet."

"Fine, Tony. On your way out of my office, pass Go and collect two hundred dollars," Morgan said.

"Two hund—? My fee's probably going to be considerably more than that before we're through," Tony told him.

"That's what I figured," Morgan said.

"Glad to help you out," Tony said jauntily, hustling off to present his bill for services rendered to date.

Morgan waited until Tony was well down the hall before he opened the middle drawer of his desk and withdrew a manila folder. Inside was a report from the fertility lab, which he read and read again.

When he had finished, he slid it into his briefcase. It was time to call Bryan Oates, his college fraternity brother. He was sure they could work out a deal of some kind. Morgan considered himself a genius at making deals.

* * *

The third week after she went to see Morgan Rhett, Kate began to have nightmares about running up and down deserted streets with a baby in her arms, knocking on doors and asking people if they'd adopt it. The dreams were a reflection of her concern: what if Morgan Rhett refused his own child?

He won't,
Kate thought one day as she pursued her self-appointed chore of picking up litter on the beach. And yet she knew he could. Morgan Rhett, she figured, could do anything he wanted to do.

She let her head fall back so that the wind blew into her nostrils. Her head filled with the scent of salt and seaweed and little sea creatures, of places far away. She hated picking up the careless leavings of the island's day-trippers and only did it because she couldn't bear to see the pristine beauty of the island marred by trash. At the moment she would have given anything to be back on the Northeast Marine Institute laboratory research vessel. Ah, well, those days were gone forever.

When she lifted her head again, she saw a figure walking toward her at the high-tide mark, carefully skirting clumps of dried seaweed.

She stared, determining that it was a man, and not only a man, but a man who was wearing a business suit. Her breath caught in her throat when she realized that there was only one person it could be.

"Morgan," she whispered, her heart falling to her knees and swooping upward again. She had thought that when the time came he would contact her through the mail. She'd never dreamed he would come back to Yaupon Island.

He was walking swiftly. She waited. As he drew closer, she realized that he was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and black wing tips, which made her want to burst out laughing. Who else but Morgan Rhett would appear on a beach on Yaupon Island in a getup like that?

She stood uncertainly, the water lapping at her feet, the trash bag hanging at her side. When he stood directly in front of her, he stopped and stared, his brow slightly furrowed and his lips drawn into a firm line.

"It's mine," he said without preliminaries. "I'm convinced the baby's mine. Pending DNA testing at a later date, of course."

"Of course." She stared right back at him. "The fertility lab corroborates everything I told you, right?"

"Right." His gaze held steady.

"And how about that detective you sent? Did he confirm that I haven't been entertaining men?" She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice.

"I'll adopt the baby, Kate. It's my duty and obligation," he said, neatly evading her question.

"Well," she replied on a long exhalation of breath. She wanted to slump with relief, but she kept her shoulders squared and her chin up.

"I want a healthy child. I want you to take care of yourself. I want—"

"And what Morgan Rhett wants, he gets, right?" Kate said cuttingly.

"Look, Kate, you've got what you asked for—someone to take this baby. Don't give me a hard time," he shot back.

Kate turned away and began to walk toward the lighthouse, spearing odd pieces of litter with her stick and giving a wide berth to what looked like a new turtle crawl. She didn't want Morgan to see the sudden stinging tears in her eyes.

"I'd hoped that you'd love the baby," she said, keeping her head turned away.

"Love? I told you I had no feeling for it," he said, walking beside her.

"It's your child," she said in a low voice.

"My responsibility. I believe in taking care of what's mine. I'll hire a good nanny. I'll see that it grows up with its little cousins—Joanna can provide a maternal touch now and then. The baby will be a Rhett in every sense of the word. It will have a family," he said earnestly.

Kate remained silent. She had what she wanted from him, but suddenly it wasn't enough. She had grown up without her mother, and it hadn't been easy, but her father's love had made up for her mother's absence. This baby might have a family and all the privileges of growing up a Rhett, but could that make up for a lack of love?

"I've moved into the hunting lodge at the other end of the island," Morgan said.

"You
what?"
Kate said incredulously. This alarming statement crowded all other thoughts from her head.

"Bryan Oates's family still owns the place, although they seldom use it anymore. He said that I'm welcome to camp out there as long as I want."

"Why?" Kate said. "Why are you moving here?"

"To keep an eye on you. You're always tramping around on the trails, leaning over in boats, and getting dunked in the creek. Who knows what you might do next? There's no one around to rescue you if you have a problem. I told you, I want a healthy baby," he said.

"What about your business?" she asked in a quavering voice.

"I'll check with my office by phone every day, even though that means going to the mainland to do it. As for my work load, it's light because I was planning on beginning a month's vacation in England soon, but that can wait until after the baby's born."

She looked at him. He was serious. She couldn't imagine Morgan Rhett living on this island, disturbing her, making problems.

"You can't go on living here alone," he said.

"I'm not alone," she said, her voice almost breaking. "I have your little bundle of joy to keep me company."

"That's exactly the point." Morgan gestured at the litterbag. "Are you sure you should be doing that?"

She twisted the top of the bag into a knot. "I'm going home," she said.

"Fine. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

"No, you won't."

"I will," Morgan told her. His eyebrows were drawn together in concern, and all at once a flood tide of sensation swept over her. His scent, English and leathery, blended with the salty, sun-dried scent of seaweed, spinning her away into another dimension where senses ruled and good sense did not. For a moment she felt wildly attracted to him, and she didn't want to think of him that way. Morgan was the father of the child she carried within her—period.

His gaze fell to her stomach. "How much longer do you have before the baby is born?"

"Eleven weeks," she whispered.

"Hopefully, you won't exceed your due date. I've always liked England better in the fall, anyway," he said. After a curt nod, he turned and walked away, his wing tips biting holes in the damp sand. He was clearly a man on whose shoulders the habit of command rested comfortably.

Kate headed back toward the lighthouse, head bowed in thought, litterbag bumping awkwardly against her legs.

How in the world was she going to survive Morgan Rhett's presence on the island for the next eleven weeks?