The Secret Father (The Calvert Cousins 1)

  “You must be Olivia Kendall.”

  His voice was as thick as if he were thinking of making love to her. He clearly was not, but Zach’s low, I’ve-waited-for-you-all-my-life tone had seduced her when they’d met the first time.

  She’d been unable to forget him. He obviously hadn’t bothered to remember.

  Seeking composure, she crossed to his desk and offered her hand. “Call me Olivia.” For their son’s sake she had to feel out the situation and wait for the right moment to remind Zach of their past.

  When he closed his fingers around hers, memories flooded back, images of his hand on her waist, at her breast, the scent of him as he lowered his head to kiss her. She gritted her teeth, recognizing the texture of his palm as if she were touching her own skin.

  Why had this man remained such a part of her? As if what she wanted to feel didn’t matter. She backed up a step. He had to release her. Curiosity flickered in his gaze, but not recognition.

  Her first love had forgotten her.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, and to the Calvert family. You’re about to meet three cousins who find love in their own Smoky Mountain backyards.

  Put yourself in Olivia Kendall’s shoes. You thought your son’s father, a Navy pilot, died five years ago during a training mission. Then you see him on the news, a small-town sheriff, foiling a bank robbery in Tennessee. You’ve gotten over him—or have you? You’ve made a life that doesn’t include him. You could even choose not to tell him about his son, but a man has a right to know he has a child.

  And besides, where’s he been?

  Now think about Zach. He lost one of his best friends and his memory in the crash that ended his Navy career. He lost his ability to believe he had a right to life or happiness. When Olivia comes to town he discovers he has a five-year-old son and a lover he doesn’t remember. Together, Olivia and Zach find love that heals the wounds of their past and forges the family that is their future.

  I’d love to hear what you think. You can reach me at anna@annaadams.net. Come back to Bardill’s Ridge in November when Zach’s cousin Dr. Sophie Calvert abandons her bodyguard groom, Ian, at the altar.

  Best wishes,

  Anna Adams

  The Secret Father

  Anna Adams

  To Debbie, my cousin, but much more—my sister

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  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

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  Six Years Ago

  OLIVIA KENDALL HAD three problems. She was pregnant, she couldn’t find her baby’s father, and the moment her own father—James Kendall of Kendall Press—found out, he was bound to fire her to avoid the shame of her unwed motherhood.

  Six months out of Columbia’s School of Journalism, she’d spent the summer and fall learning Kendall Press from the mail room up. She couldn’t afford to get fired. Even if she found Lieutenant Zach Calvert, she’d need a salary to support her unborn child.

  Behind her the door opened, and every head in the room bent toward the monitors in front of them. After his daily management meeting, her dad always hunted her down to remind her she was wasting her time and his with her learn-it-all attitude. He crossed the quiet, equipment-filled room. “Any news today?”

  Her job this week was her favorite—scanning the wires for good stories. “Plenty.” She clipped the word, tugging down the hem of her blouse. She couldn’t be more than seven weeks along, but James Kendall hadn’t reached the top of the media heap by ignoring other people’s secrets.

  He stopped beside her desk and pulled up a chair. “You’re always defensive at work because I’m right.” Lowering his voice so that it was covered by the computer’s hum, he flicked the screen she was reading. “You shouldn’t distract yourself from your true job with these menial tasks.”

  “Learning how Kendall Press runs is my job, Dad.”

  “I’ll teach you. My father taught me.”

  “The same father who suggested you park me with him and Grandma while you sowed more wild oats?” Her mother had died in childbirth. Her dad had never remarried.

  “Father may have appreciated the value of a good nanny, but he left me a strong company and I’m passing you an empire. Who else can show you how to nourish it?”

  He was in his CEO frame of mind. Olivia inched away from him, too stressed to deal with her dad or her curious co-workers. “I’m busy.” And their same old argument meant nothing compared to the fact that her child’s father had disappeared. A Naval pilot, Zach had embarked on a two-week training mission over a month ago.

  The weeks had passed. He hadn’t called. He hadn’t shown up. She’d left countless messages on his cell phone. He’d never given her a number for his apartment or his office. She couldn’t even say where he worked for sure. They’d always arranged to meet somewhere neutral. He’d been in Chicago since the end of summer to train on some sort of equipment he’d avoided discussing. She’d seen his apartment once, and only because they’d been desperate for each other and her father had been home that night.

  Zach had been more than reserved about his life. He’d been secretive.

  Working on very little sleep and even less food, she felt queasy, frightened and idiotic for getting herself in this fix. She refused to leave one more message begging Zach to call her.

  Suddenly her father took her arm and turned her to face him. “What’s really wrong with you, Olivia?”

  “I don’t want to argue about work.” She avoided his dark brown eyes. “I understand how you feel about Kendall Press. I love knowing what’s going on in the world before anyone else. It’s a rush of power, but I have to learn the job my way.”

  “Why don’t you trust my judgment anymore?”

  She took refuge in the glowing screen in front of her. She’d changed because she was going to have Zach Calvert’s baby, and when her father knew he might force her out of her livelihood and her home.

  Home. A place Zach had described with a softness so unlike him. He’d longed for the farmhouse and the relations he loved in Tennessee. His hunger for family felt foreign to the only child of an only child.

  “Olivia, tell me what’s got you on edge.” Losing patience, her father spun her chair.

  She stared at him, but her head was with Zach. What if he’d gone home? To Bardill’s Ridge and all those Calverts. The possibility tempted her to confess everything. If anyone could find a guy in a small Tennesseean town, her dad could.

  “Good God.” Realization lit his eyes. “That pilot dumped you.” He’d always said Zach, at twenty-six, was too old for her, his job too dangerous. What he’d meant was he didn’t want her to love someone whose work could take her away from the family business. “Olivia?”

  “Yeah.” She’d told James about the training mission. “Zach was supposed to come back weeks ago. If he’s home, he’s avoiding me.”

  “Have you called? Did you go to his apartment building?”

  “I only have a cell phone number he doesn’t answer and I’ve leaned on the buzzer at his building so many times I think his doorman’s about to set the police on me.”

  Her father’s head went back as if she’d struck him. “How serio
us are you about this guy?”

  She barely kept from touching her belly where their baby grew, but the truth—that she loved Zach—wouldn’t come out of her mouth either. Not even she trusted true love at twenty-one. She blinked back tears that seemed to stun her dad.

  “Exactly where was he training? The address.”

  “He couldn’t tell me.” Maybe he just wouldn’t.

  “What do you know about his family?”

  “I saw pictures at his apartment and I asked about everyone in them.” His grandparents, hugging each other in photos on his mantel and his cousins, Sophie and Molly, who’d been his surrogate sisters. His mom, Beth, he’d seemed anxious about. She’d also never remarried after his father’s death, and he thought she was lonely.

  If his mother’s loneliness mattered to him, wouldn’t his lover’s?

  “You believe he had the training assignment?”

  She nodded. Except for the moments when he’d made love to her, his mission had occupied him as if he was already gone. She took a deep breath and applied some logic. “Maybe he took leave and went to Tennessee. He was homesick.”

  “That’s where he’s from? I’d give you time off to go see him if you’d get over this guy and concentrate on work.”

  “He didn’t invite me.” He’d made her want to know his “people.” He’d made her love the place. He’d needed the blue-and-green misty mountains that backed every photo on his wall and each memory in his love of home. The air and the soil and the Smoky Mountains that formed Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, ran in his blood like the blood of his family.

  It wasn’t her way or her father’s. They cared for their North Shore entry in the National Historic Register, but it was entrusted to them. It owned no part of her soul. Zach was rooted in those Tennesseean hills.

  She turned back to the monitor on her desk. A headline, something about a pilot caught her eye. She clicked to read it.

  A photo took shape. Even though she was thinking of Zach, she never expected to see his face.

  But there he was. The full headline burned itself in her mind. “Pilot Lost On Mission—U.S. Navy Refuses Comment.”

  Loss slammed into her. Her muscles clenched. Olivia splayed her fingers across the picture. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe, praying she’d imagined his face. She made herself look again.

  Zach. Dear God, Zach. “No.” Shaking her head, she sucked a breath out of dwindling oxygen.

  “Hey.” Her dad caught her just in time to keep her head from slamming into the monitor.

  In that second life changed. Forever.

  She straightened, though her body felt ten times its normal weight. Tugging free of her father’s helping hands, she crossed both arms across her flat stomach. Her baby took precedence over a freefall into grief.

  Zach was gone. She’d be their baby’s only parent, and she’d never know whether Zach had loved her even a little bit—enough to want their child.

  “Dad.” His name broke in pieces in her mouth as she stared at her dead lover’s face. “I’m pregnant.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  A BLUNT FINGERNAIL PRODDED Sheriff Zach Calvert’s shoulder from behind. “You’re the law,” said a woman’s voice. “Can’t you order those tellers to speed up?”

  Zach turned, and Tammy Henderson, who co-owned Henderson Seed and Feed with her husband, tucked a brown deposit envelope beneath her elbow.

  “How many times have I asked you and Mike to call me before you bring that?”

  She elbowed the zippered bag closer to her body. “We took your advice and started making three deposits a week.”

  That was about the best he could hope for in a town where the citizens believed crime happened everywhere except here. He checked the clock above the gray granite counter. “Is that right?” It was two minutes slower than his watch. “This is my weekend to have Lily.”

  Tammy twisted her own watch and then nodded at the clock. “Tennessee Standard Bank and I match. What time do you have to be at Helene’s?”

  “Six o’clock.” Or his ex-wife would make a stink in front of their four-year-old daughter. Helene liked to punish him for imagined transgressions and she had an advantage. He’d do anything to keep from hurting his child.

  “I’ve heard how Helene tries to keep Lil…”

  Zach lifted his brows. Tammy stopped, her mouth open, her weathered face reddening. When she looked away, Zach felt like a bully, but gossip bred like kudzu in Bardill’s Ridge. Being the number-one topic over the Formica tables at the Train Depot Café didn’t sit well with him.

  And how would Lily feel if she heard the talk?

  Zach tapped his holstered gun as the long black arm on the clock swept each second away, and the guy in front of him, a hunter in camouflage, twitched from foot to foot.

  Time to give up and eat the late fee on his car loan payment. But as he turned, the town librarian marched to the counter, her back ramrod straight with annoyance. The hunter took her place at the front of the line, yanking his jacket as if he couldn’t make it fit right over his shoulders. Three and a half minutes ran by before he crossed to the next teller.

  Another time check. Helene would explode in exactly twenty-two minutes. Unless he made it. Which he just might do if another patron walked away right now.

  The camo guy turned. Zach almost breathed a thanks heavenward, but the other man opened his field jacket and revealed the reason he was uncomfortable. A silver cannon—or a gun the size of one—rested on his hip.

  “Nobody move, or I’ll kill you all.” Something—fear?—sent his voice into an unnaturally high pitch as he pulled the gun out.

  Not good. If he was scared, he might shoot anyway.

  “Damn.” The word slipped out of Zach’s mouth as he eased in front of Tammy Henderson and her deposit bag. Any chance of reaching Lily in less than twenty minutes had just gone down the barrel of that gun. At least he’d caught the armed thief’s wild gaze.

  “I said no talking, and especially not you, Sheriff.” He used the back of his hand to wipe spit off the top of his lip. “I’m in charge here.” He swung the weapon, his finger tightening on the trigger. The gesture told Zach that pulling the trigger took pressure. A good thing or else half the customers would be dead now.

  The guy turned to the nearest teller, his gun veering in a silver arc that made Zach clench his hands in two fists. What kind of a coward did this to innocent people?

  “Don’t even breathe near the alarm. I can see all four sides of this building from the windows.”

  He nudged the nearest young woman with the gun barrel, shaking so hard the metal bumped her chin. Her eyes sparkled with tears, and Zach actually pictured himself snapping the other guy’s spine.

  “If a police car comes, you die. Anyone makes a move, you die.” The thief swept the other patrons with a scornful gaze and stamped his booted foot. “Put your damn faces on the floor!”

  Zach took his time, sparing a glance for Tammy, who was obviously trying to hide a third of a week’s profits. Zach grabbed the bag and slid it over to the thief’s feet.

  “Hey,” Tammy protested.

  “You want him to think you’re stingy?”

  “You got more, lady?” Camo guy scooped up the bag and then came over to kick the purse wrapped around Tammy’s arm. “Dump it.”

  Zach focused on the weapon while the robber looked to see whether Tammy was hiding any more money. As if he were reviewing a schematic, Zach saw exactly how to part the man from his gun and put him on the floor unconscious and on his stomach—bonus points for ease of cuffing.

  Noting that the citizens in his care had all reached the marble, Zach sank the rest of the way, calming his rage to prevent impairing his response. He angled his gaze to keep an eye on the gunman.

  “What are you looking at?” the guy asked. “I’m happy to start killing now. With you.”

  People cried out around him, but Zach waited, forcing a few more seconds to go by. Keep it low, non-con
frontational. No need to get anyone killed.

  “How do you plan to escape? The second you leave, the law will pour in from all the nearby towns where everyone knows everyone else. You’re going to stand out.”

  “Stand out?” This time he jabbed the gun in the direction of Zach’s head. “I didn’t ask for advice, Andy Taylor. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?” He nodded at the tellers. “Faster with the money—I want it now.”

  Zach smiled as he willed his body into the air. A fraction of a second later his foot connected with Camo Guy’s cheekbone. The thief rose off his feet, flew about a yard and landed on his face. Out like a light.

  And no one died in Bardill’s Ridge. But damned if he didn’t long to kick the punk lying at his feet for threatening his people.

  Instead, he leaned over the gunman, grabbed the weapon and took it apart. He’d flown helicopters in the Navy until he’d been trained to kill with the nearest weapon—or with his bare hands. A crash and a head wound had stolen his memory of that time and the two years preceding it. He sometimes discovered secrets about himself. Skills he shouldn’t have.

  Though he shouldn’t know squat about any gun except the one he’d fired to qualify on the range, he scattered the pieces of the cannon across the marble floor. Continuing on unnerving instincts, he picked up the gunman’s wrist to check his pulse.

  Still fluttering. “When you get out of the prison hospital, you should consider a different line of work.” He glanced at the closest teller. “Hit the alarm. Then get me Leland Nash on the phone.”

  Nash’s family owned Tennessee Standard Bank. He was also married to Zach’s ex-wife, a connection that had never seemed useful until today. With one phone call, Zach could arrange for Nash to inspect his property and also beg Helene to allow him to pick up Lily tomorrow.