One

Calhoun Webster's mouth fell open, then he slammed it shut.

His attorney and friend, Hammond Kyle, gave a semblance of a smile. "It's easy to understand why you're speechless. Under the same circumstances, I'm sure I would be, too."

"Are you jerking my chain, Kyle?" Cal demanded in a rough tone. "Because if you are, you're a pretty sorry bastard."

"Chill, Cal. I wouldn't jerk your chain about something this serious." Hammond ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair and narrowed his eyes. "Like I just told you, you're a father. You have a child. A son, to be exact."

Cal blew out his breath, feeling the color recede from his face followed by an extreme weariness. Since his stint in Colombia, he wasn't anywhere back to his normal self. He tired easily. "Mind if I sit down?"

"Actually, I was about to suggest that." Another smile of sorts crossed the attorney's lips. "I'd hate to think of a grown man hitting my office floor in a dead faint."

Cal gave him a go-to-hell look before practically falling into one of the plush chairs in front of Hammond's massive desk. A million and one questions were charging through Cal's head, but he couldn't seem to process them, much less organize them enough to talk intelligently.

He had a son?

No way.

Couldn't be.

Impossible.

No, not impossible.

A mistake. Pure and simple.

Cal's mood lightened at that last thought, and, forcing himself up straighter in the chair, he hammered his friend with brighter eyes. "It has to be a mistake." A blunt statement of fact.

"You know better than that." Hammond spoke quietly and with conviction.

"But Connie's dead," Cal countered in an argumentative and almost desperate tone. "At least that much leaked through to me."

Hammond gave him one of those exasperated looks. "Your ex was pregnant when she left you but apparently chose to keep that to herself." He paused with a deep sigh. "Happens all the time, which makes the poor chump of a father feel and look like an idiot, when, and if, he ever finds out."

Cal gritted his teeth and at the same time he squeezed the padded edges of the chair arms until his knuckles turned white. "That bitch," he muttered more to himself than to his friend.

"You knew that when you married her," Hammond pointed out, his brows bunching together, giving him a fierce look.

"You're right, I did." Cal battled his weariness. "Still, I don't know why she chose not to tell me she was pregnant." His tone had regained some of its vibrancy, reeking with pain and anger.

"We both knew she was a piece of work, especially you," Hammond added, again with pointed frankness.

"And I married her anyway." Cal's tone was bleak.

"Well, at least you didn't have to find out about her death and the baby simultaneously." Hammond paused. "If that's any comfort."

Cal's features turned grimmer. "Who was she with when she got killed? I know she wasn't alone."

"After Connie left you, she hooked up with some biker. They were both killed in the accident."

"Were they married?"

"Not that I know of," Hammond responded. "Rumor had them shacking up together."

"Then how do I know the kid's mine?"

"Your name's on the birth certificate," Hammond pointed out bluntly.

Cal lunged out of his chair, reaching for the legal document his attorney held out to him. After perusing the birth certificate, seeing his name stare back at him, he didn't so much as flinch. Instead he walked to the window and stared into the glaring sunshine.

It had been over a year now since he'd been free to do something as simple as stand in front of a window and not fear for his life. Working undercover as a government investigator forced him to live mostly in the underbelly of society, in the dark and dank places of the drug world.

Before he'd gone undercover, he'd thought of himself as a fairly normal guy—maybe wilder and more head-strong than most. But still normal. Then he'd married Connie Jenkins, and immediately he'd begun to question whether he was normal at all, realizing he'd made the biggest mistake of his life so far.

Now, thank God, he was free to begin his life over, to hope that he had rejoined the ranks of normal people living normal lives. But underneath his outward calm, fear festered. Since he'd been living and dealing with the scum of the earth, he was no longer sure where he belonged or even who he was. Hell, maybe he'd become one of the scumbags himself. Only time would tell.

One thing he did know, he would never go back into the dark, which had nearly driven him over the edge. He winced inwardly, recalling the lighted stick of dynamite that had just been dropped in his lap.

Hell, if this child was his—and he wasn't ready to admit or accept that yet—he wasn't fit to be a parent. He could learn to be, if it turned out this baby had his blood flowing through its veins.

He might be a sonofabitch in many ways, but he was never one to shirk his duty, and he wasn't about to start now.

"Cal, are you with me?"

He let go of a pent-up breath, then whipped around and met his friend's inquiring gaze. "My mind's still trying to process what you just told me."

"You can get a DNA test done, of course," Hammond said. "Probably should, since that's within your rights since she lived with another man."

Copyright © 2006 by Mary Lynn Baxter.