Kitabı oxu: «The Biological Bond»

Chapter One

“There’s a Mr. Winslow here to see you, Rebecca.”

Rebecca Martinson set aside the file she’d spent the morning reading and looked at her secretary. “A new case?” she asked Laura, wondering whatever happened to marriages that lasted forever. As a family law attorney, she’d seen the uglier side of marriage and, in some instances, humanity as well. She knew from her myriad of clients that happily-ever-after was nothing more than fodder for fairy tales. The only bright spots in her chosen profession were the adoptions she handled. Nothing could compare to the happiness on the faces of the adoptive couples or the love they gave to the child who’d been chosen. Her adoption cases gave her hope.

“He won’t say, and he doesn’t have an appointment.” Laura wiggled her eyebrows. “But he’s the most drop-dead-gorgeous specimen I’ve seen around here in ages.”

Rebecca smiled. “I’ve got a few minutes before the staff meeting. I’ll see what he wants, then you can get started on whatever paperwork we might need.”

Laura nodded, opened the door, and Mr. Winslow walked into the office. For once her secretary hadn’t exaggerated. This man was truly a sight to behold. He had “cowboy” written all over him, and Rebecca’s insides fluttered. Rough-hewn features and broad shoulders teased her feminine senses. She glanced away. She hadn’t been that affected by the male species since…well, in a very long time.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Winslow?” Laura asked.

“No, thank you.” His deep voice commanded attention, not to mention the jeans that emphasized long legs and strong thighs. He had the kind of well-tuned body Rebecca appreciated just a little too much.

Forcing her mind on business, she rounded the desk and extended her hand. His rough, callused hand clasped hers firmly. This was a man who worked with his hands for a living, she thought. Powerful hands.

“I’m Rebecca Martinson, Mr. Winslow.” She motioned to a chair. “Won’t you sit down?”

He nodded, then crossed the office and sat in the chair opposite her desk. A deep-brown corduroy jacket, complete with elbow patches, matched the color of his hair—a tad too long for a label like clean-cut.

She returned to her own chair and looked at him expectantly. “What can I do for you, Mr. Winslow?”

The cowboy shifted and glanced around her office, taking time to examine the multitude of diplomas and awards on the wall behind her desk. When his gaze fastened on her, she smiled, hoping to set him at ease.

“Why don’t you start by telling me why you need a lawyer, Mr. Winslow.” She pulled a legal pad from her tray and wrote his name at the top.

He cleared his throat and looked at her with deep, chocolate-colored eyes. His lips were drawn in a thin line. He looked so serious, and a little angry. Not an unusual emotion in her line of work.

She set her pen on the pad, growing a little uncomfortable under his intense scrutiny. “Mr. Winslow, the initial consultation is free, but I have to warn you, I have a full schedule today. Perhaps you’d like to do this another time when you’re more comfortable—”

He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. Some emotion she couldn’t define sparked his gaze. “You gave a child up for adoption, right?”

For the breath of an instant her heart stopped beating. If someone had sucker-punched her midsection, she couldn’t have been more shocked. No one, not even her closest friends, knew about the decision that had been made fourteen years ago. How could this man, a total stranger…

“Who are you?” she demanded, rising.

“My name is Sam Winslow. I adopted a child fourteen years ago.”

Breathe. Just breathe.

This couldn’t be happening, she thought, sucking vital air into her lungs. She waited in vain for the rapid cadence of her heart to slow, but the pounding continued.

I adopted a child fourteen years ago.

Maybe it was a coincidence.

I adopted a child fourteen years ago.

There was no other explanation. There could be no other explanation. Hadn’t her father seen to it that no one would ever learn the truth?

“My daughter has a condition called aplastic anemia,” Sam Winslow continued in a matter-of-fact tone as if he hadn’t just tipped her world upside down. “If she doesn’t have a bone-marrow transplant, she’ll die. We haven’t been able to find a match, so I petitioned the court to open her adoption records. You’re listed as her birth mother.”

The room spun. Rebecca clutched the edge of the desk to steady herself. She’d prayed, hoped and dreamed that her child would one day want to meet her. At odd times she’d find herself wondering whether if things had been different she could have kept her child. Only things hadn’t been different, they’d been impossible.

Mr. Winslow’s words penetrated the fog surrounding her, and she looked at him. A daughter! She had a daughter. She hadn’t even known whether the child had been a boy or a girl—until now. She’d given birth, and the nurses had whisked the baby away, but not before she’d heard that first cry of life. A sound that had been haunting her dreams for fourteen long years.

Now that child could very well die. Her heart broke all over again.

“I…I have a…a daughter?” she whispered, still reeling from Sam Winslow’s claim.

His expression tightened and he stood. “No, Ms. Martinson. I have a daughter.”

The truth stung and scraped along her raw emotions. He was absolutely right. She didn’t have a daughter. He did. Legally. Emotionally was an altogether different scenario.

And it did nothing to stop the myriad of questions swimming through her mind. From the sharp tone of his voice, she had a feeling Winslow wouldn’t be forthcoming with answers. “What’s her name?”

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “I don’t believe that’s relevant.”

Sam turned and strode to the window overlooking Wilshire Boulevard, fifteen floors below. He never cared much for big cities, especially ones like Los Angeles with its smog, crime and overcrowded conditions. Previous experience reminded him that a twenty-mile drive could take more than an hour during rush hour. Wide-open spaces and untamed land, land that provided for his family, were more his speed.

He shouldn’t have come here, but he’d run out of options. Mel needed this woman to save her life. He was completely helpless, and he hated the feeling. And the way Rebecca Martinson looked at him, with those damn big green eyes of hers, made him uncomfortable as hell. Eyes just like—

“Mel,” he said.

He didn’t know why he’d enlightened her, but the vulnerability and pain he’d detected in her eyes tugged at him. What harm was there in her knowing his daughter’s name?

“Mel? You named a girl Mel?”

She sounded like Christina, his ex-wife, and he bristled. Christina had despised it when he’d called their adorable dark-haired, green-eyed little girl Mel. Undignified, she’d called it. “It’s short for Melanie.”

Silence stretched between them. He wanted to leave, to hop on a plane and fly home where he belonged. But Mel needed this woman—her birth mother.

“How do you know I’ll be a compatible match?” Her voice sounded faraway, dream-like. But this wasn’t a dream—it was a nightmare—his nightmare.

He spun around to face her. “We don’t,” he stated. “The test is simple, and once it’s determined you’re a match, you can donate the bone marrow. I’m told the removal is a relatively simple procedure—”

“I know how it works, Mr. Winslow,” she snapped.

“Good. Then you agree?”

She stared at him, her eyes pooling with unshed tears. He didn’t want to see her tears. He didn’t want to care that she cried. All he wanted was to know that she was willing to save his daughter’s life.

“I need an answer, Ms. Martinson.”

She gave him a watery smile. “Call me Rebecca.”

“I need an answer, Ms. Martinson.” There’d be no Rebecca or Sam for them. If she was a match, she’d donate the marrow, then be out of their lives as if she’d never existed. Mel wouldn’t even have to know who had donated the marrow. “I’ve already made arrangements to have you tested as soon as possible. Today.”

She stared at him in stunned silence.

“To make this as simple as possible, I’ll have a phlebotomist come to your office,” he told her. “We can have the results in a few hours. I’ll call you as soon as we know something. When’s the best time?”

He didn’t know if she was going to deny him or not and decided not to take any chances. He had no trouble playing dirty if it meant saving Mel. He’d do whatever was necessary if it meant saving his daughter’s life, even asking the court for an order to force Mel’s birth mother to give his daughter what she needed.

He moved closer to the desk, braced his hands on the polished surface and leaned forward. “Ms. Martinson, my daughter could die. She needs your help. You gave her life,” he said, going for the kill. “A blood test could be all it takes to save her life.”

She bit her lip, and those eyes that reminded him too much of his daughter filled with emotion. “I have a staff meeting in a few minutes, then I have to be in court this afternoon. I can always get someone to cover for me.” Her long, slender fingers trembled as she lifted her hand to rub at her temple. “Whenever you can arrange it is fine.”

He calmly handed her a card indicating the name of the lab he’d made prior arrangements with before coming to see her. It had been a gamble, but he was past the point of playing it safe. He’d wanted all avenues covered before he’d approached her and was pleased that his instincts had paid off.

He moved toward the door, relieved the first step had been accomplished. In a matter of hours he’d have his answer.

“Wait!” she called as he reached for the door. “What happens if I’m a match?”

“Then you’ll need to check into a hospital to have the bone marrow extracted.”

Anxious to put some distance between himself and Rebecca Martinson, he reached for the door handle again.

“Wait!”

He glanced over his shoulder at her.

“Is she going to be all right? Will a transplant work?”

Her soft voice held a plea that touched his heart. “I hope so, Ms. Martinson.”

He opened the door and looked back at her one last time. He’d always wondered where Mel had gotten those big green eyes and raven’s wing hair. Now he knew.

She looked as if she wanted to say something. Sam didn’t want to hear it. “I’ll be in touch,” he said. As he strode out of the elegant law office, he wondered why he wasn’t relieved.

REBECCA TRIED TO CONCENTRATE, but no matter how hard she attempted to focus on the cases the associates who reported to her had prepared to discuss at the weekly staff meeting, the more her mind drifted to her daughter and Sam Winslow. Now that she’d gotten over her initial shock, she had questions. Simple questions, silly ones really, like what her daughter looked like, whether or not she liked chocolate ice cream topped with fresh strawberries, a daily staple during her pregnancy. Did Mel wrinkle her nose at the sight of meat loaf? Did she like to read? Was she a math whiz? Did she have a desire to practice law like the rest of the Martinsons, or maybe she dreamed of studying medicine like her mother’s side of the family?

There were more questions, tougher ones she had no answers for and was even afraid to ask…like, did her daughter want to meet the woman who had been forced to give her up for adoption?

“Rebecca?”

She let out a frustrated breath and turned her attention to Jillian Thatcher, the newest associate in the family law department. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

“The Templeton adoption,” Jillian said, opening the file on her lap. “I was wondering if you were going to cover the bench trial.”

Rebecca sat up straight and tapped her index finger against her lips. There was a chance her client, Peter Grant, could lose his parental rights, which was a subject close to her own heart. His ex-wife had remarried, moved to South Carolina with her new husband, and had been difficult at best when it came to her client’s visitation. The former Mrs. Grant was alleging her ex-husband hadn’t exercised his parental rights in five years. This was a tough case, and one she didn’t feel the new associate was prepared to handle alone. And one that Rebecca wanted to win, not only for her client, but for herself, as well.

“When is the trial scheduled?” she asked, an idea skirting around the fringes of her mind. A dangerous idea with a steep price tag.

Jillian flipped through the file. “Two months. We have most of the pretrial discovery completed.”

Rebecca nodded. Two months would allow her to see the plan forming executed. “What about phone bills? Do we have them yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Get them,” Rebecca instructed. “We can use them as evidence that our client has attempted to maintain contact with his children. Also get in touch with the child support unit in the County Clerk’s Office. I want verification of all his support payments over the last ten years. Subpoena the clerk into trial if you have to. You’ll be second chairing this one.”

Jillian smiled, the excitement of stepping into a courtroom for an actual trial evident. She nodded, then jotted notes on a legal pad.

Rebecca checked her watch. If she closed the meeting now she might be able to catch Victor Furnari before he scooted out of the office for his standard two-hour lunch with the other senior partners. She needed her head examined for what she was considering.

“Is there anything else?” she asked, scanning the group.

When no one spoke, she stood and scooped a sheaf of papers into her out box. The associates took the action as a signal for the end of their meeting and gathered their files.

“I wanted to discuss the settlement conference on the Barker divorce.” Lee, the more senior of the associates, was close to becoming a junior partner. She liked him. He was ambitious and smart. He could be sympathetic or brutal in the courtroom, a skill that afforded him an excellent track record.

“Can it wait until tomorrow, Lee?” she asked, rounding her desk and heading for the door.

“Sure,” he said, following her. “We don’t go before Judge Holden for another week.”

“Check with Laura,” she said, closing her office door. “Tell her I said to squeeze you in tomorrow.”

She dropped a file on Laura’s desk, then went directly to the elevators that would take her up to the offices of the senior partners. She stepped off the elevator into the plush reception area with its soft gray carpeting and elegant furnishings. Understated artwork adorned rich mahogany-paneled walls. She nodded a greeting to the receptionist and turned left toward Victor Furnari’s office.

She approached the open door and peered inside. Victor stood before a miniconference table, a mug of coffee in his hand as he examined a variety of photographs. “Victor?” she called softly, not wanting to startle him.

He turned and smiled at the sound of her voice. “Come in, Rebecca. I was just trying to decide which of these would best sway the court into believing my client’s husband is hiding assets. What do you think? This thirty-thousand-dollar piece of horse flesh he ‘gifted’ his brother, or this receipt for a little five-carat bauble the tabloids reported he gave to his leading lady last week.”

She stepped into the office that had more masculinely elegant furnishings. “Why not both?” she suggested, coming to stand next to her boss.

“Because?” Victor challenged, indicating a chair at the table.

“Simple,” she said and sat. “I would attempt to establish Cristina Howard as the poor wife of a philandering husband.” She glanced at the blowup of the exclusive jewelry store receipt. “Go for the sympathy angle, Victor. No matter how sexist is it, especially since you have a woman judge. Another woman can easily relate to a woman who’s worked two jobs to put her husband through school. I doubt that it’d matter Mr. Howard chose acting lessons over med school.”

“Good choice,” Vic said, lifting his mug in salute.

When she’d first started at Denison, Ross & Furnari, Victor Furnari had been a brutal taskmaster, constantly throwing challenges in front of her. It hadn’t taken long for her to prove herself, and as a result she’d been given the esteemed honor of second chairing his trials. After Victor had taken ill during a particularly difficult case, Rebecca had stepped in and won the case and many that followed, resulting in her eventual status of junior partner. She loved her job, despite her father’s reference to her ambitions as wasted Martinson talent.

“So what brings you up here today?” He sat in one of the conference chairs and faced her. “Certainly not a burning desire to discuss the Howard divorce,” he added with a chuckle.

She gave him a thin smile. No, her purpose for breaching the walls of Mahogany Row were much more important than the divorce of one of Hollywood’s hottest actors. “I need to take a leave of absence.”

His salt-and-pepper brows pulled into a curious frown. “For how long?” he asked, setting his mug on the table.

“I’m not sure,” she said. She wasn’t certain her outrageous plan would see fruition, but she had to try. “I was thinking four weeks.”

“Four weeks?” His frown deepened when she remained silent. “Are you asking me to grant your request without asking for an explanation?”

She gave a humorless chuckle. “I had hoped.”

Victor stood, crossed the room and closed the door. “You’ve worked for me for a long time,” he said coming back to sit across from her. “You know whatever happens in this office stays in this office, but I can’t go to the other partners for approval without an explanation.”

This was one part of her plan she’d been dreading. There were court appearances to reschedule or shift to the associates under her supervision. She had a bench trial for support modification scheduled for next week, but she was confident Lee, or even Jillian, could handle the case without any problems. No, she dreaded telling Victor why she wanted, needed, the time away from work. If she were in his position, she’d definitely expect an explanation. The dread settling in the pit of her stomach stemmed from her admiration and respect for Victor Furnari. Could he understand the fear and desperation of a seventeen-year-old girl who hadn’t been given a choice? Would the compassion she’d always admired be extended to her?

She stood, nervous energy making her edgy. “First of all, I’m not certain I’ll need the time off,” she said, and moved to the window overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. “I won’t know until later today.”

She turned and rested her backside against the window frame, gripping the ledge with her fingers. Victor leaned back in the chair, his elbows resting on the arm, tapping his fingers together as he waited for her to continue.

“I may be a match for a child who needs a bone marrow transplant.”

Victor shrugged. “Okay, but donating marrow isn’t a month-long procedure. It’s not like donating a kidney, but only around a week-long recovery process at best.”

“I’m aware of that. But this is more complicated.” She pulled in a deep breath. “The child is my daughter.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at her with shrewd hazel eyes. “I didn’t know you had a child,” he said carefully.

“I don’t. Not legally,” she said and wrapped her arms around her middle. Legalities were the least of her problems. Right now the issues plaguing her were much more emotional. “She was given up for adoption when I was seventeen. Her adoptive father came to see me about an hour ago.”

She explained what little she knew about Sam Winslow and her daughter’s life-threatening illness, even going so far as to share with Victor the less painful details of the events surrounding the child she’d been forced to give away. He remained silent, until she said, “I want a chance to get to know my daughter.”

He stood suddenly and crossed the space separating them. Gently he laid a hand on her shoulder in a silent offer of comfort. “I’ve known you since you were fresh out of law school. You’re a very intelligent woman, Rebecca, and an excellent attorney. I’m talking to you as a friend, not your employer. Meeting this little girl is not the move of a smart person. Don’t do this.”

She knew he was right. The analytical part of her understood she was courting disaster, but her heart spoke another story, even if it meant she would accomplish nothing more than a broken heart. “I have to, Victor,” she said quietly.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “For God’s sake, why?” he asked, his voice filled with frustration.

“Because I didn’t have a choice. For some reason that I’m not willing to question, I’ve been given a chance now, and I have to take it.”

“Rebecca—”

“I can’t turn my back on her,” she argued, before he could issue further opposition.

He sighed. “I’m not saying you have to. Do whatever is required medically, but don’t go anywhere near this child. You know the risks.”

True, she knew the risks, but she was willing to take them. And all she had to do was convince Sam Winslow she was entitled to at least meet the daughter she’d been forced to give away fourteen years before. “I have to, Victor. She’s my daughter.”

He shook his head, his gaze filled with concern. God, she thought, if only her own father had been as compassionate, she might not even be having this discussion right now.

“No, Rebecca,” he said gently. “She’s Winslow’s daughter. And since you’re determined to go through with this, then you’d better remember that.”