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“We don’t want this to go to court, Mr. Weatherly.” The firm tenor of the other man’s voice indicated that court wouldn’t be a good idea. “We want to settle out of court at the agency’s full expense, of course. They keep insurance for these sorts of things.”
“These sorts of things?” Had he just heard the man correctly? Was he implying that mistakes in adoptions weren’t a major exception? And that an error in judgment six years ago could mess up a child’s life now? “This can’t be happening. No, wait, let me rephrase that. This will not happen. The day I took that little girl into my care I promised her and God that I would do everything in my power to give her the life she finally deserved. Free from cancer, free from grief and sorrow, to the best of my ability. Her birth mother can’t simply waltz in, six years later, and declare herself wronged. There must be a statute of limitations in effect. This can’t possibly be legal.”
“There is a statute, of course. But this goes beyond criminal proceedings—”
Criminal proceedings?
“And straight to a civil suit that could cite the agency and your late sister and her former husband with fraud. And because that was only discovered recently, the statute of limitations isn’t called into play.”
A lawsuit against his deceased sister. A lawsuit that could twist Addie’s sweet life into a pretzeled mess. “No.”
“Mr. Weatherly—”
“How did she get this information? How did this woman, with her scandalous past, ferret out information about my sister, her husband and Addie? Something had to set this into motion, Mr. Sinclair. People don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, I think I’m going to look into something that happened six years before.’ Do they?”
A long stretch of silence marked the other end of the phone. And then James Sinclair said words that made both no sense and absolute sense, all at once. “She saw you there, in Grace Haven. With her daughter. And she wanted to know what happened to Ginger and Adam O’Neill.”
She saw him here? In Grace Haven?
His mind raced, and it raced in multiple directions, but he knew… He knew right off, because he’d seen the look on Josie’s face. He hadn’t understood it, but he’d seen it, and Addie had noticed it, too.
The hidden sadness. The sudden turnaround to take the Carrington lease offer. The kindnesses to Addie. The resemblance to Cissy Gallagher…
They’d known.
They’d known all this time and they’d played him like a fine-tuned Southern fiddle, weaving their ways around him, weaseling into his life. Into Addie’s life.
Josie.
Wild child.
That’s what Carly Moore had called her, and he could see it now, plain as day.
He wanted to throw up. He wanted this phone call to end. No, wait—he wanted it to never have occurred, because she’d not only fooled him, she’d made him care about her, care so much that he’d stupidly considered changing his life to suit hers. To woo her. To be part of her life.
His gut gripped tight. His hand shook.
She wanted to talk to him this afternoon, but that wasn’t going to happen. Josie Gallagher and her little scheme to win the heart of an innocent child, then wrench her from the only home she’d known for years, wasn’t going to get the respite of meeting on her terms.
“This is a lot to digest, Mr. Sinclair.”
“I understand, and we deeply regret that, Mr. Weatherly. Of course, we don’t want you to approach the birth mother. We need to keep the lines cleanly drawn for legal purposes.”
Not approach her? He almost snorted. “So she can launch an investigation but I can’t talk to her about it? I’m assuming we’re talking about Josie Gallagher, correct?”
Mr. Sinclair refused to confirm the name, but that was all right. He didn’t need to. “We’ll simply refer to her as the birth mother at this point until a suit is officially filed. And I caution you, Mr. Weatherly, not to do anything that would negatively affect your standing as Addie’s guardian.”
“Father.” Firm and cold, he let the solicitor know that his role wasn’t and would never be reduced to that of a simple guardian. “I am her father. And don’t you forget it.”
