Her Sister's Child

He stepped back and sat down, forcing himself to take it slowly, and to think rather than simply act and feel. Feelings could be deceptive. Witness that uncanny electricity a few moments ago when their hands had touched.

Ms. Jonas had evidently decided to take things slowly, too, although he could tell that this was still far harder and more emotional for her than it should be.

“First,” she said, then stopped, buying time with a sip of coffee. Her sensitive, sensual top lip looked fuller as it closed over the white china. “Do you have any legal representation of your own in this matter?”

Short answer. No. But should he bluff and say he did?

Adam decided on the simple truth. “Not yet. I’m hoping we can resolve this amicably, since I’m confident of my own claim to Amy and I have other priorities than this custody issue, when it comes to her well-being. I would have preferred if the Fontaines had written to me personally rather than bringing a lawyer in to mess with the situation before each of us even knows where the other is coming from.”

Meg Jonas allowed herself a little smile, and he saw a glint of pearly white between those pretty pink lips. Lips that he was finding it hard to look away from. “You don’t like lawyers?” she said.

“I didn’t say that,” he growled, bristling like a big cat.

“You didn’t have to,” she pointed out dryly, then took a deep, steadying breath. “Look, as you’ve said, I should clarify a few things first. For a start, my clients are not named Fontaine. It was a natural assumption on your part, since they’re her parents, but Fontaine was Cherie’s professional name, which she began using in child beauty pageants at the age of five. You need to know that I’m acting on behalf of Burt Jonas and his wife Patricia.” She waited silently for a moment, correctly anticipating his reaction.

“Jonas?” he echoed. “But that’s your—!”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Burt Jonas is my father, Patty is my stepmother and Cherie is…Oh, damn…was…my younger sister.”

“What do you mean ‘was’?” Adam demanded hoarsely, his heart beginning to thud with sickening heaviness in his chest. Were those tears she was blinking back?

This was coming from way out in left field. Another tragedy, and, impossibly, yet another threat to Amy. Aside from any other issues of grief and loss, if something had happened to Amy’s closest blood relative, what did that do to her own chance of living?

“I’m sorry,” Meg Jonas said, and it was clearly an effort for her. The words were jerking from her mouth. “We could tell from the wording of your letter to Dad, asking him to put you in touch with her, that you didn’t know. Cherie was killed about six months ago, while on a modeling assignment in the Caribbean. A light plane crash. Another model, the photographer and the pilot all lost their lives. It was very difficult for Dad. It still is. For over a year, he hadn’t known where she was, what she was doing, how to reach her…”

“That sounds like Cherie,” Adam agreed shakily. “I had the same problem with her more than once.”

“She was…erratic,” Meg agreed. “We all know that. But then, within weeks of her getting in touch again and letting us know, at last, that she was doing fine and getting her modeling career back on track, came her death.”

Adam swore softly. “It must have been—I mean, dammit, even for me it’s—”

Meg Jonas nodded silently, and they both sat for what must have been several minutes, wrapped in difficult thoughts. She was the one to speak first. “Mr. Callahan, I—”

“Doctor,” he corrected automatically, staring into the distance.

“Dr. Callahan? You’re a doctor? A practising medical doctor?”

“Yes.” He looked up. “A third-year resident in pediatrics. Why? Is that a surprise?” he demanded. She was leaning forward, examining him with unnerving intensity.

“Yes,” she admitted bluntly. “I—A couple of things Cherie said about you…”

“Cherie told you about me?” Now he was surprised. Their involvement had only lasted about two months. Just a fleeting blip on Cherie’s emotional radar screen.

“Not much,” Meg Jonas said.

“But nothing about Amy?”

“No. Until Dad got your letter two weeks ago, we had no idea she had had a baby. Absolutely no idea. She never said a word. Another shock.” The faint, tired smile didn’t reach those pretty eyes.

“Too many of them,” Adam agreed. His thoughts swirled in his brain like bats in a cave, and he knew that for Cherie’s sister, perhaps the biggest shock was still to come…when he judged the time was right to deliver it.

“Far too many,” Meg said. “I never felt I knew Cherie very well.” She was speaking slowly, staring down at her desk so that he couldn’t see her gray eyes, just her thick creamy lids edged by those dark lashes.

“Mom and Dad split up when I was eight and Cherie was three,” she went on.

Adam listened, amazed. Lawyers didn’t bare their souls like this, to someone on the opposite side of the legal fence from their own client. But it was obvious by now that this wasn’t a situation this particular lawyer had been in before. And as for Adam himself…

“They agreed they’d each take one of us. I went with Dad,” she said, “while Cherie stayed with Mom. I’ve always felt guilty about that.”

“Guilty?”

“I got the better deal. I don’t know if she told you much about her childhood…”

“Bits,” Adam replied. “Like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Snatches of color and tone that I couldn’t ever put together as well as I wanted, because she never gave me the whole picture.”

Again, Meg gave that faint, weary smile. “That’s Cherie. Mom was the same. Constantly in search of some new dream, but never slowing down long enough to explain to anyone quite what it was. It took her all over the country, with Cherie in tow, moving once, even twice a year. Dad got frantic at first. He never knew, when he called, if the phone would be disconnected. He never knew if his plans to see Cherie during school vacations would get cancelled at the last minute because they’d moved on again and hadn’t given us the new address. At some point, I think, he gave up.” She stopped.

“Gave up?” Adam prompted. He was learning an incredible amount about this complex, sensitive woman just from the way she was telling the story. He could feel his attitude and his emotions changing every minute. Right now, he was too caught up in Meg’s words to think about what that really meant.

“Kind of encased his love for Cherie in a thick layer of cement so it couldn’t do him damage. Like nuclear waste, or something.” She spread her fine hands helplessly, as if asking him to indulge the clumsy comparison.

“I think I understand.”

“It just hurt too much,” she went on. “He’s an organized, sensible man, while my Mom—she died several years ago—was…” She looked up again, and this time her smile was wider, though just as complicated. The wisdom in what she said belonged to someone much older. “Well, let’s just say, don’t let anyone tell you that opposites attract!”

“No?” Adam was thinking of Cherie. Cherie and himself and that first, chance meeting of theirs in a Philadelphia shopping mall. A disastrous quirk of fate in so many ways, yet how could he wish it had never happened? He couldn’t.

“Well, okay, maybe they do attract,” Meg conceded. “In the beginning. That was the case with Mom and Dad, at first, and they were as opposite as it comes. But opposites can’t make it last, when it comes to a relationship.”

“That, I agree with.”

“So I grew up not knowing my sister, and hardly knowing my mom. It was…incredible to find out that Cherie had a child. How did you track Dad down? We were confused, at first, because you’d gotten the name wrong, and all.”

My turn to bare my soul, Adam thought.

But some instinct told him not to, just yet, not fully. For a start, he definitely wasn’t going to talk about Amy’s illness yet, and what she needed. There was time for that, and it was too important to get it wrong. He distrusted this lawyer, he reminded himself firmly. Despite the endearing fact that she couldn’t serve coffee and that she could speak to a stranger like him from the heart.

Scratch the surface, and she was probably cut from the same cloth as his former college roommate, Garry, who seduced my girlfriend behind my back and then laughed when I found out and told me to “join the real world,” he remembered.

The guy was a celebrity defense lawyer now. “The guiltier my clients, the happier I’ll be,” he used to say. “They’ll pay more that way.”

For this woman, did it come down to money, too?

“I needed to get in touch with Cherie,” he said, deliberately avoiding detail. “But I didn’t know how. I tried her old modeling agency, but they hadn’t kept any records and they didn’t want to know. They weren’t exactly a top-flight establishment. They only had a few staff members to handle all their clients and their wannabes. And I think they’d written Cherie off.”

“Perhaps a few of us had,” she came in quietly. “You, too?”

“I…didn’t think to try a bigger, better agency, no,” Adam admitted. “After Amy was born…or even before…Cherie seemed like she was headed on the opposite trajectory. Down, not up.”