Chapter 6

“Take me to Isaiah’s house.”

Dorcas said it before the registry doors had finished closing behind them, her phone still in her hand and one word glowing on the screen. No. Under it, a small grey line: Read.

“No,” Desmond said.

“I wasn’t asking.”

“You have been Mrs Allen for four minutes. You haven’t eaten. You have a head injury, and he has just threatened you.”

“Then he should see I’m not frightened.” Her eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. “I know where he lives. I can take a taxi. Or you can drive me.”

It was not a decision he would have made for a client. He gave the driver the address.

In the car she sat with her hands in her lap, turning the gold ring around her finger. He had expected her to talk, or to cry. She did neither.

“Which three lawyers did you call?” he asked.

“I’ll give David their names tomorrow.”

“Someone told Isaiah’s side you meant to fight.”

“I know.” She kept her eyes on the road. “That’s why I’m going now.”

“My security man will walk you to the door,” he said.

“No.”

“Dorcas.”

It was the first time he had used her name. She noticed.

“They think I’m someone who needs managing,” she said. “If I walk in with a bodyguard, I prove it.”

He took a protein bar from the console and held it out. She looked at it as if she had forgotten food existed, then ate it in four bites without tasting it.

“And if Isaiah puts his hands on you again?”

She touched the bruise on her cheek, lightly. “Then you’ll have a very good reason to be waiting outside.”

* * *

The house stood behind an iron gate, white pillars lit up like a stage. Desmond told the driver to stop at the kerb and got out. His security man, Kane, moved to follow. Desmond shook his head.

“Sir, I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I. Wait by the car.”

Dorcas pushed the gate open and walked up the drive in her borrowed black dress, with one plastic hospital bag still looped over her wrist because she had refused to leave it in the car. She did not look back. He had priced her as fragile. He revised the figure.

He stayed at the gate, in the shadow of a hedge. The front door was tall and glass-panelled, and the hallway beyond it was brilliantly lit. He could see all of it.

She rang the bell once.

Isaiah opened the door in a pressed shirt, holding a glass. Desmond had seen the man’s face on a screen and in an investigator’s folder. Neither had prepared him for how ordinary it was. Good-looking, tired, entirely at ease.

“Dorcas.” Isaiah’s eyes moved over her dress, the bruise, the hospital bag. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to tell you two things.” Her voice carried clearly down the drive. “Stay away from me. And no more photographs.”

Emily appeared at his shoulder in a silk robe, and she was holding the baby.

Desmond felt, rather than saw, the change in Dorcas’s posture. The straight back stayed straight. But her hands went still.

“Oh, you came for the picture.” Emily smiled. “I thought you’d like it. He looks just like his father, doesn’t he?”

“Give him to me,” Dorcas said, very quietly.

“No.”

The baby stirred, found his fist, and made a small, creaking sound. Dorcas’s whole face changed.

“Emily—”

Emily took a step back, hitching the baby higher.

“Is that a funeral dress?” Emily tilted her head. “Whose funeral? Yours?”

“My husband’s grandfather’s.”

Silence. Isaiah’s glass paused halfway to his mouth.

“Your what?”

He came down the step toward her, close enough to touch. Desmond’s weight shifted forward on its own.

“You look terrible,” Isaiah said. “You should be in bed.”

Dorcas did not step back. Her hand moved, very slightly, toward her cheek, and stopped.

“Step back,” she said.

Isaiah blinked. Then, to Desmond’s surprise, he did.

“I got married today.” Dorcas lifted her left hand. The ring caught the porch light. “So you can stop sending messages. Anything you want to say to me, you say it to my lawyers.”

Emily laughed, short and delighted. “Married. Today. To who? Who would marry you? That ring’s probably plated.”

Desmond stepped out of the shadow.

He hadn’t planned it. He walked up the drive to the edge of the light, and stopped there, hands in his coat pockets, and let them see him. Behind him, Kane’s footsteps started and stopped.

Isaiah saw him first. The colour left his face and came back in patches.

“Allen,” he said. “Desmond Allen.”

“Good evening,” Desmond said. “Isaiah. I understand you have an investor meeting on Friday.”

Isaiah stared. “How do you—”

“I read.”

Emily’s smile slid. Her hand tightened on the baby. She looked from Desmond to Dorcas and back, doing a sum she did not like.

“You’re lying,” Isaiah said to Dorcas, but his voice had lost its shape. “You couldn’t have. You don’t even know him.”

“I know him well enough to sign something,” Dorcas said. “I never signed yours.”

Isaiah recovered. Desmond watched it happen, like a man pulling a coat back on. He set the glass on the hall table, and from a leather folder beside it he took a sheet of paper.

“Congratulations to you both. It changes nothing.” He held the page up to the light. Desmond saw a blue stamp, a court seal, a line of small neat type. “My lawyer filed this at the court this morning. The surrogacy agreement. You gave up all rights, Dorcas. He’s ours.”

“That signature isn’t mine. I’ll prove it in court.”

“With what? You have no money, no lawyer and no records.” Isaiah’s smile came back. “Prove it.”

He tapped the stamp. “Filed this morning. You can’t touch him.”

Desmond took one step forward, and stopped himself.

From the edge of the light, Desmond watched every drop of colour leave Dorcas’s face.