Free Crime and Passion by Marie Ferrarella Page B

felt as if he could have easily been knocked over by a moderate-size feather. Especially since his father had given voice to the question floating in the recesses of his own mind.
    Stopping dead in his tracks, Clay looked at his father.
    “You know I don’t like to pry—”
    Clay snorted. “Yeah, right, and you’re also a misguided leprechaun.”
    Amusement played on Andrew’s lips. “Whole other discussion, boy. Now—”
    “No.” Time to nip this thing in the bud before his father got carried away.
    Arching the same eyebrow that each of his children were prone to raising, Andrew looked far from convinced. “No?”
    “No, he’s not my son,” Clay said firmly. He didn’t want to have to tell his father to butt out, but he would if it came to that. “Alex is four. I wasn’t seeing her five years ago. We’d broken up by then.”
    Andrew leaned against the wall, his arms crossed in front of a chest that still looked powerful. “Kind of big for four.”
    Clay found himself playing devil’s advocate, taking the exact oppose stance from the one he’d mentally taken earlier. “Some kids are.”
    “Boy has your coloring.”
    Clay saw the end of his temper in sight and struggled to hold on to the rope. “That narrows it down to about a quarter of the kids in Aurora.” And then he laughed. No, he wasn’t Alex’s father, for all the reasons he cited and more. If he’d gotten Ilene pregnant, she wouldn’t have kept something like that from him. She would have told him. She was nothing if not honest. “I get around, Dad, but I’d have to sweep through the town like a broom to leave that much of myself around.”
    “I’m not asking about the town, I’m asking about a woman who looks at you as if this isn’t the first time she’s seen you.”
    When he’d asked his father if Ilene could stay at the house, he hadn’t mentioned that he’d known her before, much less that they’d been involved. He hadn’t confided in his father back then. Maybe because Clay had known from the start that this time was different.
    Now Clay just shook his head. “You should have never retired from the force, Dad. You need something to occupy your mind.”
    Andrew grinned as he looked past Clay’s head toward the room they had just walked out of. “Might say I’ve found it.” And then he glanced at his watch. “Where the hell is your sister?”
    His father didn’t have to say which sister he was referring to. Teri was at the motel, still playing decoy with Shaw. Even if she hadn’t been, Teri was the reliable one, just like Callie was. His father hardly ever worried about either of them. Rayne was another story. “Relax, Dad, Rayne’s a big girl now.”
    Andrew gave him a penetrating look, as if to ask how that was supposed to be a comfort to him. “That’s exactly why I can’t relax. That new leaf she turned over might want to blow itself back someday.”
    At least the conversation had gotten away from the subject of Alex’s paternity. But once his father got started on Rayne and her escapades, Clay knew he could go on forever. A retreat was called for.
    Clay pretended to stretch. “Well, it’s been a long day. I’m going to turn in.”
    Just as he moved to pass his father, Andrew commandeered his arm. Keeping a firm grasp on it, he directed his son toward the kitchen where lengthy conversations were coaxed out with rich, hot food and, according to Callie, the best coffee this side of heaven. “Not before filling me in you’re not.”
    Clay blew out a breath. “Dad, I already told you, he’s not mine.”
    “I know, I know, the timing’s off. I mean fill me in on the particulars about this case.”
    You could take the man out of the police force, but you couldn’t take the police force out of the man. Clay shook his head, knowing he was in for an even longer night than he’d anticipated. But that was all right, he decided philosophically, because he had a feeling that sleep would not come easily