Loe raamatut: «Nighthawk's Child»
Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!
When had touching Summer, holding her, begun to feel so right?
Scowling at the thought, Gavin tried to convince himself he was imagining things. Their marriage was a business arrangement, nothing more or less, and even if it hadn’t been, he wasn’t looking for a relationship.
But knowing that and remaining indifferent to Summer were two different things.
Continuing to scowl, he vowed to keep his hands to himself from that moment on, and just that easily, he set himself an impossible task. Because now that he’d decided not to touch her, she only had to shift slightly in her seat beside him for him to want her.
It was, he decided grimly, going to be a long year.
Nighthawk’S Child
Linda Turner
MILLS & BOON
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LINDA TURNER
started reading romances in high school and began writing them one night when she had nothing else to read. She’s been writing ever since. Single and living in Texas, she travels every chance she gets, scouting locales for her books.
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
Epilogue
Prologue
The previous August
G avin stared down at the message that he was wanted in his boss’s office as soon as possible and swore under his breath. He didn’t have to know what this was about to know that it wasn’t good. Whatever else Michael Preston was—and as Chief of Surgery at Whitehorn Memorial Hospital, he’d been called more than a few choice names over the years—he wasn’t insensitive to the pressure of the work his surgeons performed. He wanted them calm, cool, and collected when they walked into the operating room, so he made sure any discussions he had with his residents was restricted until after surgery. Or at least, he always had before.
But then again, he’d never had one of his surgeons accused of murder before, either.
His square-cut face set in harsh lines, Gavin was tempted to ignore Michael’s missive and to meet with him later, after surgery. Whatever beef Preston had could wait. Gavin’s patients came first with him. Since his arrest, work was the only thing that kept him sane. With the rest of his life in turmoil, he couldn’t take a chance on screwing up his residency. Scowling, he strode down the hall to Michael’s office.
Seated at his desk, the older man was waiting for him, his expression grim. Gavin greeted him with a curt nod. The nerves in his stomach clenched in a fist, but he had no intention of letting Preston or anyone else see him sweat. He’d learned the hard way to protect his thoughts. His own face impassive, he shut the door behind him and stood stiffly in front of Preston’s desk. “You wanted to see me?”
To his credit, Michael didn’t try to lighten the moment with frivolous chitchat, but instead got right to the point. “Sit down, Gavin. A situation has arisen that I think you need to be made aware of.”
He preferred to stand, but this wasn’t the time to draw lines in the sand. Dropping into the chair positioned across from Michael’s desk, he stretched his long legs out in front of him and mentally braced for whatever was about to come. “You might as well give it to me straight. This has something to do with the trial, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “You know the hospital’s policy regarding the charges against you. You’re innocent until proven guilty.”
“If you called me in here to tell me the hospital knows it’s only a matter of time before that happens, you wasted your time,” he said flatly, irritation flashing in his dark eyes. “I know the evidence looks damning, but I didn’t kill Christina Montgomery. And somehow I’m going to prove it.”
“I hope you do,” the other man said honestly. “You’re a damn fine surgeon. We need you around here. The problem, though, isn’t the administration. It’s your coworkers. More than a few of them have doubts about your innocence.”
He wasn’t telling Gavin anything he didn’t already know. He was aware of how a majority of the staff felt about him. As had most of the people in town, they’d rushed to judgment the second they’d heard he’d been charged with Christina’s murder. Trying and convicting him, they hadn’t stopped to consider the fact that all the evidence against him was circumstantial or that he wasn’t a violent man. He was a doctor, for God’s sake, and in the business of saving lives, not taking them.
And if he was going to kill someone, it certainly wouldn’t be the mother of his baby girl. He’d never loved Christina—their relationship had been little more than a one-night stand—but he certainly hadn’t hated her or wanted her dead. If anything, he’d felt sorry for her and had only tried to help her once he’d found out she was pregnant. And because of that, people now thought he was a murderer.
“I can’t control what people think,” he said curtly. “If they want to believe I’m a murderer, that’s their problem.”
Leaning back in his chair, Michael sighed heavily. “I wish it was that simple, Gavin, but it’s not. They’re refusing to work with you.”
Surprised, his dark brows snapped together in a scowl. “Who is?”
The older man gave him a speaking look. “I won’t name names, but suffice it to say, it’s enough people to create a problem with scheduling. That’s why I wanted to speak to you before you went into surgery. You can’t operate this morning. I couldn’t put together a surgical team that was willing to work with you.”
Gavin couldn’t have been more stunned if Michael had reached across the desk and backhanded him. No one wanted to work with him? How could such a thing have happened? He was a good surgeon. A damn good one! He’d worked hard to get where he was, and he was proud of that. Unlike his white colleagues, he’d come from the wrong side of the tracks—the reservation—and had to fight every step of the way to make something of himself. It hadn’t been easy. Not that he was looking for accolades, damn it, he assured himself with a scowl. He wasn’t. He just wanted some respect from his peers. And now Michael was telling him that no one wanted to work with him. So much for respect.
It was over, he thought numbly. The career he’d spent years building, all the hard work, the life he’d mapped out for himself as a leading surgeon…it was all over. Unless he could find a way to clear his name, the dreams that had gotten him through college and medical school were dead.
Disheartened, disillusioned, so frustrated he wanted to rage at the world, he could think of nothing to do but accept the inevitable. As long as he had a murder charge hanging over his head, he couldn’t work.
“I won’t quit,” he told his boss coldly. “I know there are some people in this hospital who would like to see the last of me, but I’m not quitting. I’ll take a leave of absence instead and return to work the day after I’m acquitted.”
If Michael thought there wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening, he wisely kept that to himself. Instead he nodded in agreement and rose to hold out his hand. “That’s fair enough. I wish you luck, Gavin.”
It went without saying that they both knew he was going to need it.
One
Two months later
T he Hip Hop Café was the place to be when gossip was running high, so Summer Kincaid wasn’t surprised to find the place packed to the rafters when she stopped in for lunch. Ever since Gavin Nighthawk’s arrest that was all anyone was talking about. The second Summer stepped inside, the gossip, rife with speculation, hit her right in the face.
“I always knew there was something not quite right about that boy. He always seemed so full of anger. It’s because he’s Indian, you know. He wants to be white. Everyone says so.”
“And he’s so big. I bet he killed that poor girl without even breaking a sweat.”
Across the diner, Judge Kate Randall Walker sniffed in irritation and said loudly, “That’s what’s wrong with this country. People rush to judgment without waiting to hear the facts of a case, and I think it stinks.”
Not surprisingly, that didn’t sit well with a majority of the diners, especially Lily Mae Wheeler, the queen of the town gossips and a general busybody who was, as usual, holding court from the first booth inside the door, which she considered “hers.” She’d been known to make up news on a slow day just to have something to talk about, but that wasn’t necessary today. There was nothing she enjoyed more than putting a negative spin on things and destroying someone’s reputation.
Arching a plucked brow at the judge, she narrowed beady little eyes at her. “Are you saying he’s not guilty?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kate replied coolly. “That’s for a jury to decide. In the meantime, the man has a right to live in peace.”
Tossing her head to draw attention to her permed curls, which she’d died the outrageous color of cotton-candy pink to match what she claimed was her sweet personality, Lily Mae waved her hand and just that easily dismissed the old-fashioned notion that a man was actually innocent until proven guilty. “Well, of course you would think that. Everyone knows you’re a liberal. Personally, I don’t think Doctor Gavin Nighthawk should be allowed to walk around free, let alone with a scalpel in his hand. I certainly wouldn’t let him operate on me or someone I loved!”
Taking a seat at the counter, Summer could only privately shake her head at the asinine remark. Lily Mae had a well-known reputation for saying whatever came into her head. The more educated people in town didn’t take her seriously, but there were, unfortunately, others just like her who believed that Gavin was a dangerous man who needed to be locked away from decent society.
And that frustrated Summer no end. As a child of mixed heritage, she had, thanks to the insistence of her white aunts, spent her summers on the Laughing Horse Reservation getting to know the Native American side of her family, and there she’d had a chance to watch Gavin from afar. They’d never been close enough to even be called friends, but there’d always been something about the tall, gangly boy that she’d admired. He’d had a kindness to him that some of the other rougher boys hadn’t had, an inherent gentleness that came out whenever he came in contact with those who were weaker or slower or older and in need of help.
He had, however, never made any secret of the fact that he couldn’t wait to leave the reservation and its poverty behind. He’d had dreams, and he hadn’t let anyone or anything stand in his way. Through hard work and determination, he’d earned a full scholarship to college and left the day after he graduated from high school.
Summer had lost touch with him then and had no idea that he’d gone on to medical school, just as she had, until he’d returned to Whitehorn for his residency at the same hospital where she worked. Thrilled, she’d thought at first that fate had had a hand in bringing them back together, but it didn’t take her long to discover that there was little resemblance between the kind, gangly boy she had known on the Laughing Horse Reservation and the bitter, brooding man he had become. She didn’t know this new Gavin, and honesty forced her to admit that she wasn’t sure she wanted to. While she was comfortable with who she was and her Native American heritage, he had turned his back on his people to make a name for himself in the white man’s world, and that angered her. Still, she only had to remember the boy he had been to know that he would have never been able to take a life.
Anyone who doubted that only had to look at his work. If ever a man was born to be a surgeon, it was Gavin Nighthawk. As an immunology resident at Whitehorn Memorial Hospital, she’d observed him in the operating room numerous times and had nothing but admiration for his skill. Unlike other gifted doctors she knew, however, he wasn’t one of those arrogant, holier-than-thou surgeons who forgot about his patients once he worked his magic on them on the operating table. He truly cared about his patients and was a gifted healer.
No one seemed to remember that, however, when it came to Christina Montgomery’s murder. Before she’d died, everyone had known that she was sad and lonely and pregnant, in spite of her best efforts to hide her condition. The whole town had speculated on who the father of her baby was, but she’d taken that information with her to her grave. It wasn’t until months after her body was discovered in the woods that law enforcement officials discovered that the man who impregnated her was also the same one who’d delivered her baby and was the last one to see her alive—Gavin Nighthawk.
For months he’d kept his silence about the whereabouts of the baby and his own involvement, and that was enough to condemn him in most people’s eyes. The fact that everyone knew that he’d never cared about Christina but had turned to her on the rebound after his affair with Patricia Winthrop went sour had only made things worse.
“He’s going to prison, anyway. He might as well resign now.”
“Do you think the state will revoke his license? Do they let murderers practice medicine after they get out of jail?”
“Who said he’ll get out? He killed the mother of his baby. No jury in their right mind is going to let him off with anything less than life for that.”
All around her, people speculated on Gavin’s fate as if he was just some character on a soap opera and not a real man at all. And Summer hated it. She longed to stand up and shout at his detractors, to make them see him as he really was, but she was a quiet, unobtrusive woman, and that wasn’t her way. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. She couldn’t control what people thought, couldn’t make them see him for the boy he had once been. To them, he was a hard, angry Indian with a chip on his shoulder who didn’t make friends easily, and they had little sympathy for his fate.
And that, more than anything, was what scared her. She’d done everything she could to help him by convincing her uncle Garrett to hire Elizabeth Gardener, one of the best lawyers in the state, to defend him, but now Summer wasn’t sure that even Elizabeth could save him. The tide of public opinion had definitely turned against him, and unless something drastic happened, he appeared to be a doomed man.
The bell on the door rang merrily then, signaling a new arrival, and everyone instinctively turned to check out the newcomer. When Gavin Nighthawk himself stepped into the café, silence fell like a rock.
“Speak of the devil.”
In the crowd that packed the restaurant, Summer couldn’t have said who made the comment, but whoever it was obviously meant for Gavin to hear it. Standing tall and proud at the entrance, his expression stony, he surveyed the throng of diners through cold, black eyes. Holding her breath, Summer wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d turned and walked out, but he was made of sterner stuff than that. Silently daring anyone to stop him, he strode down the long length of the café to the only empty table in the place.
The silence engulfing the place like a shroud broke the second he turned his back on the rest of the room and pulled out a chair. Hushed whispers flew about the café like angry bees. There was no doubt that he was the main topic of conversation, but he didn’t acknowledge the gossip by so much as a twitch of an eyebrow.
Still, Summer couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Everywhere he went, people no doubt treated him the same, as if he was some sort of social outcast with a horrible disease, and that had to hurt. Her heart breaking for him, she glanced over at him, noted the rigid set of his shoulders, and thought she had never seen such a lonely man in her life.
A wise woman would have left him alone, but Summer had never been particularly smart when it came to Gavin. There was just something about him that always drew her to him, and she couldn’t fight it now any more than she could at the hospital, where she wandered into the operating room observation area so she could watch him work. Without a thought to the consequences, she impulsively grabbed her iced tea and flatware and joined him at his table.
She couldn’t have shocked him—or herself—more if she’d appeared in front of him naked. Glancing up from the menu Janie Austin, the manager of the café, had handed him, he scowled at her as if she’d just lost her mind. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
At his low, angry growl, Summer asked herself the same thing. He obviously wanted to stew in his aloneness, and she’d invaded his space without bothering to ask his permission. He had every right to be irritated, but she didn’t intend to let him scare her off. “Joining you for lunch,” she said quietly. “You look like you could use a friend.”
If she expected gratitude, she didn’t get it. “I’m not the kind of man you want as a friend,” he said flatly, returning his attention to the menu. “If you don’t want to be tarred and feathered for associating with a murderer, I suggest you get your cute little butt up from this table and get away from me.”
Shocked—no man had ever mentioned her butt, cute or otherwise—she felt a blush climb into her cheeks and seriously considered leaving him in peace, just as he’d suggested. But when she looked around and saw the hostile looks she was receiving from the other diners just because she’d dared to befriend him, she knew she was doing the right thing.
Stubbornly staying right where she was, she settled back in her chair and watched him try to ignore her. “So,” she asked quietly, “how is Alyssa doing?”
That brought his head up, just as she’d known it would. The citizens of Whitehorn might not think much of Gavin as a man, but none of them could dispute the fact that he was crazy about his little girl. At the mere mention of her name, his face lit up with a love that couldn’t be denied.
“Rachel and Jack are taking good care of her,” he said gruffly. “I owe them for that.”
Rachel Montgomery Henderson, Alyssa’s aunt, was, in fact, devoted to the baby. After Rachel had launched an exhaustive search for Christina’s baby last winter, Gavin had removed the child from the home of Cheyenne elder Lettie Brownbear and left her anonymously on Rachel’s doorstep with a note to take care of Alyssa until he could come for her. When he was charged with Christina’s murder and the truth came out that he was Alyssa’s father, he’d arranged for the baby to continue to stay with Rachel and her husband, Jack. The decision had been a wise one. They loved her as if she was their own and saw that she had a loving, stable home.
Still, Summer knew that it had to be difficult for Gavin, knowing that someone else was raising his child. “Do you get to see her very often?”
“As much as my schedule allows,” he began. His mouth twisted into a grimace of a smile. “Of course, that was before the hospital staff decided they couldn’t work with an accused murderer.”
“You didn’t murder Christina,” she replied with quiet confidence. “Even if you didn’t love her, she was the mother of your little girl. You would have never hurt her, let alone killed her.”
No, he wouldn’t have, but he was surprised that she realized that about him. No one else seemed to. “Tell that to a jury of my peers,” he said bitterly. “If they’re anything like the clowns in here, I’m fried.”
He tried not to think about it because it tore him in two, but the closer the trial drew, the harder it was to ignore the fact that the evidence piling up against him was damning. Thanks to the generosity of Summer’s uncle, Garrett Kincaid, he had a good attorney in Elizabeth Gardener, but he had a grim feeling that not even Elizabeth was going to be able to pull his feet out of the fire on this one. Too many people wanted to see him burn.
“I can take whatever they dish out,” Gavin continued, his face carved in harsh lines, “but Alyssa’s the one I’m worried about. If I’m convicted, I’ll either spend the rest of my life in prison or face the death penalty. Either way, Alyssa’s going to grow up without a father, and that’s not fair to her, damn it! She’s just a baby—she didn’t ask for any of this. But she’s the one paying the price for whoever killed Christina, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
He looked sick at heart, and Summer couldn’t say she blamed him. His daughter’s fate hung in the balance as much as his did, and that was the real tragedy here. Summer knew from firsthand experience what it was like to grow up without a father, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Her own father, Raven, had disappeared before she was born, leaving a hole in her life that had never been filled. To this day, whenever she looked in a mirror, she searched for him in her own features. Had his eyes been almond-shaped like hers? Had his hair been the same shiny black? Was he the one she had to thank for her wide, expressive mouth and quiet personality?
Because her mother, Blanche Kincaid, had died a week after she was born and no one knew Raven the way she had, Summer had been left with a legacy of questions about her father that she would never have the answers to. Her mother’s sisters, Yvette and Celeste, had raised her in a loving home and while they had never said a bad word against Raven, they had never been able to tell her why her father had left town when he’d known her mother was pregnant with her. Had he really been paid off by her uncle Jeremiah? Was Raven Hunter the type of man who would do such a thing to the woman he claimed to love and the baby they had created together?
Her aunts didn’t think so, and Summer wanted to believe them, but deep down inside, doubts lingered that she couldn’t banish. And her heart twisted at the idea of Alyssa growing up with those same kinds of doubts. She was an innocent child. She had a right to grow up knowing that her father was an honorable man who loved her—and the right to really know him. That wasn’t going to happen if he was convicted.
Her heart breaking for both Gavin and the baby, Summer wanted to tell him to have faith that the real killer would be caught soon, but he wouldn’t thank her for what would be little more than trite words to him. In the eyes of the police and D.A.’s office, they were satisfied that they had charged the right man with the crime. If the reaction of the other diners in the café was anything to go by, just about everyone else felt the same way. Which meant Gavin’s fate was doomed.
Seated three tables over from Gavin and Summer, Audra Westwood picked at the salad she’d ordered, pretending to eat, her green eyes sparkling with glee as she avidly listened to the heated comments flying around the café. All around her, people shot Gavin Nighthawk dirty looks and grumbled about the man’s audacity. He was nothing but a cold-blooded killer, and he had no business forcing himself on decent, law-abiding citizens. If he had any kind of conscience at all, he would confess to killing the Montgomery girl and save the county the expense of an extended trial.
Hardly able to contain the smile that kept tugging at her collagen-enhanced lips, it was all Audra could do to just sit still. Everything was working out just as Lexine had predicted. In the eyes of the majority of the townspeople, Gavin was guilty as sin. Now all she had to do was keep her mouth shut and wait for the trial to start. With all the circumstantial evidence against him, not to mention public opinion, Gavin wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d be convicted and lucky if he didn’t get the death sentence.
Poor baby, she thought wickedly. That was the breaks. He’d appeal, of course, but that didn’t concern her. Once he was found guilty in a court of law, the case would be closed as far as the local police were concerned. Gavin would be shipped off to prison, gossip would die down, and with time, the murder of Christina Montgomery would be forgotten. And no one would know that the real killer still walked the streets.
Holding that knowledge deep inside like a treasure, she fairly purred with satisfaction as she leaned across the table to Micky Culver, her live-in boyfriend. “Did you hear what that man behind you just said?” she whispered. Her smile sultry, she mimicked softly, “’I’m not paying six-fifty to eat with a murdering Indian.’ Can you believe it, Mick? Everything’s going to work out just the way we want it to!”
His brown eyes hard and his mouth compressed into a flat, angry line, Micky arched a scraggly brow at her. “What do you mean ‘we’?”
Far from offended, she only laughed. “C’mon, baby, you know you don’t mean that. You don’t want anything to happen to me. You love me.”
Grudgingly, he had to admit that was true. When Audra had come to him in despair, penniless after she’d been swindled out of her inheritance by her mother’s lover, he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Finally, he had a chance to prove his love for her! He’d taken her in, given her a home, and thought they would spend the rest of their lives together.
But lately he’d begun to have doubts. He’d known she was no angel—neither was he—but she was enjoying Gavin Nighthawk’s predicament more than she ought to. The man had a little girl, for God’s sake, and she needed him. But Audra didn’t seem to care about that. All she was interested in was getting her own butt out of a sling, and if that meant an innocent man would go to prison for a crime she’d committed, she didn’t seem to have a problem with that. But he did. In fact, it bothered him more and more each day.
Micky wanted to blame Audra’s cold-blooded attitude on Lexine. Ever since Audra had gotten involved with her birth mother and started visiting her in prison, she hadn’t been the same. She’d become harder and self-centered. But as much as he hated Lexine Baxter’s influence, he knew she couldn’t make Audra do anything she didn’t want to do. Audra was a grown woman, responsible for her own actions. Because of her, Gavin Nighthawk was in a tight spot, and she was delighted.
“Who are you?” he asked, truly puzzled. “I don’t know you anymore. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever did.”
“Don’t be silly.” Audra laughed, not taking him seriously. “Of course you know me, honey. I’m just like you. That’s why we get along so well.”
There’d been a time when he would have agreed with her. Neither of them had much use for the law when it got in the way of what they wanted. He’d done some time in jail and didn’t fool himself into thinking that before it was all said and done, he wouldn’t repeat the experience. But unlike Audra, he wasn’t proud of what he’d done. He was just weak sometimes, and when life closed in on him and he didn’t know where the rent money was coming from or how he was going to eat, he did stupid things. But he’d never physically hurt or killed anyone. He’d robbed from folks who could afford the loss and had insurance to replace what he’d taken. Still, he wasn’t pleased with himself.
But nothing seemed to bother Audra at all. Was she really that cold? That mean? He didn’t want to think so, but he couldn’t be sure. And that was what worried him.
“Are you really going to do this?” he rasped in a low whisper that didn’t carry beyond her ears. “Are you just going to sit there and let that man go to prison for something you know he didn’t do? Would you really do that?”
Surprised that he even had to ask, she all but laughed in his face. “Are you kidding? You’re damn straight, I would! It’s a tough world out there, baby, and a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. Anyway,” she said with a toss of her short, bleached-blond hair, “he’s only getting what he deserves. She was the mother of his baby—he should have married her and taken care of her instead of leaving her out in the woods by herself to get in trouble.”
“So it’s his fault that you came along and killed her?” he whispered incredulously. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Pushed into a corner, she shrugged. “Well…yeah. If she’d been where she was supposed to be, none of this would have happened.”
Unable to believe she could justify murder so easily, Micky actually felt nauseated. Pushing away the steak sandwich he’d barely touched, he threw down his napkin and abruptly rose to his feet. “Something in here’s making me sick to my stomach,” he said coldly. “I need some fresh air.”
And for the first time in their relationship, he walked out on her, leaving Audra staring after him in stunned surprise.
Laughing Horse Reservation was north of town and home to the Northern Cheyenne tribe. It was here that Summer had spent the summers of her childhood, getting to know her father’s people and their traditions. And it was here that she had first been introduced to medicine when she was taught the ways of tribal medicine. She’d loved it, loved caring for her people, and when she’d returned to Whitehorn after college and medical school for her residency in immunology at Whitehorn Memorial Hospital, one of the first things she’d done was open a clinic on the reservation.
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