PROLOGUE
Sitting on her couch wrapped up in blankets, eating popcorn, and watching movies, India Dare was as snug as a bug in a rug. She had been looking forward to tonight all week. She was going to spend the night watching movies and eating junk like she used to do before she hit twenty-five. Back when her metabolism was a thing of beauty, and she could eat whatever she liked with little to no consequences.
Popping a buttered kernel between her lips, she rewound a scene she had chuckled at. Right as the scene restarted, her doorbell rang and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She had spent the first part of the night watching a horror film her friend, Justina, insisted on watching before she hit the road to head home.
Frowning, she reached for her remote and paused the movie. Her gaze immediately flew to the clock. It was just after midnight. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t stop by unannounced. She wasn’t someone who expected people to call before stopping by.
India lived alone, and while she had lived in the same neighborhood all of her life, her friends worried about her. They would occasionally drop in and check on her. She appreciated the thought.
Pushing her blankets off, she slowly slipped onto her feet. Her wool socks skimmed the surface of her grey stained hardwood living room floors, before she stood up fully. Dressed in a thick black terry robe and thick wool socks, India wasn’t exactly dressed for company.
Not that any of her friends would care about the way she was dressed. They knew her well enough to know she liked to be comfortable in her own home. Honestly, they had probably seen her wearing worse. When she was eight, she’d gone through a bell-bottom jeans phase. When she was twelve, she lived in baggy graphic tee-shirts.
Maybe Justina changed her mind about sleeping over instead of making the two-hour drive back to the city? The woman was in the thick of planning her mother’s fiftieth and was commuting to and from town daily in order to get everything done. She was always complaining about the lack of lights on the road to and from town. India had asked her to stay the night and leave in the morning, but she wanted to get home to her fiancé.
Cautiously approaching her front door, she peered through the keyhole. Seeing nothing but the empty stretch of road, she touched her doorknob. Maybe she should call the police. Westbrook was a safe town, but she was still a woman living alone. She was aware that bad things could happen anywhere.
Pulling the sides of her robe tighter around her body, she twisted the lock to the right. She could just ignore it. Go back to watching her movie and munching on snacks. Maybe it was a stray animal or a hungry raccoon. Right, cause it was completely possible for either one of those things to reach her doorbell.
Apprehension filled her as she firmly gripped the doorknob. She was beginning to feel like she had walked into the middle of a horror film. Was there a killer waiting on the other side of the door? This was why she did not like watching scary movies. It drove her paranoia into overdrive.
“Please let there not be a serial killer on the other side of the door.” India’s breath sped up a little despite her trying to remain calm and rational.
“Please let there not be a serial killer on the other side of the door.” She lived in a safe neighborhood. Everyone knew her and she knew them.
“Please let there not be a serial killer on the other side of the door.” She whispered over and over again.
Her breath caught in her throat as she eased the door open and looked around. Leaning her head further out the door, she still didn’t see anyone. India took a step back and had been just about to close her front door when a bundle of blankets caught her attention.
Kneeling, she reached out and picked it up slowly. The bundle trembled, and the corner of the bright yellow blanket wrapped around it slipped to reveal the sweet brown face of a tiny baby.
Gasping in surprise, she cradled the child in her arms and pressed him to her chest as she leaned back. A pair of dark brown eyes stared back up at her, as what she could only assume were small fists shifted beneath the blanket wrapped around it. She lifted a hand to the child’s soft cheek and gently caressed it with wonder. Who could have possibly left a baby on her doorstep?
CHAPTER ONE
“Your mother is going to have a stroke when she finds out what your sister did with her baby.”
“Nothing Noelle’s done shocks her anymore.” But this would defiantly be enough to at least give his mother heart palpitations. “Though I have to admit this was a whole new low for all of us.”
“I think this is definitely a cake topper.” Derrick Tate, his attorney and friend, joked.
“As long as we fix it before my mother or more importantly the press gets wind of things, it will all work out,” Alex repeated the reasoning he’d been following since he’d found out his sister’s secret.
Derrick looked over at his friend of nearly seven years. “We are about to walk into a courtroom to stop the adoption proceedings of Elizabeth Saint Clair’s first grandchild. A grandchild she had no idea existed because Noelle only told you about it right before your mom whisked her off to some rehab center in the Alps.”
Alex’s gaze barely lifted from his phone as he continued to work and walk. The fact that he had to come to court had not stopped the world from spinning and expecting things from him. Noelle had no idea what real work was. She just found new and surprisingly inventive ways of making more work for him.
“How long do you think this is going to take?”
“I’ve already contacted the Judge and explained the situation. You are lucky, your family name pulls so much weight in a town like Westbrook. It made things go much more smoothly than I am used to.”
Alex shrugged. “Occasionally, it works out in my favor.”
“The hearing was already scheduled, but Judge Adams said she would issue her decision on the adoption in her chambers to break the news to the adoptive mother gently.”
“It should never have gotten this far.”
“It took a while to find the right baby boy. We are lucky I found him before the adoption went through. It was a small miracle I found the kid within two weeks.”
“Why did it take you so long to find him?”
“It’s not like you gave me much to work with,” Derrick pointed out as they walked down the halls of the courthouse. “Your sister abandoned her son on a random woman’s doorstep, that wasn’t exactly much to go on when one thinks about clues.
“I gave you all of the information Noelle gave me. She was as high as a kite when she abandoned him. All she told me is that she left him on the porch of a house with an oak tree in the front yard that had a yellow ribbon tied around it.”
He could have killed Noelle in that moment, she was getting more and more reckless with age. Standing in front of him with tears in her eyes, Alex still saw the kid who would pull herself up onto her feet by grabbing his clothes and beg him to sneak ice cream with her. She wasn’t a kid anymore, Alex couldn’t continue to make excuses for her behavior.
Six years his junior, Noelle had been their parents’ only and favored daughter. Gifted and beautiful, she could have been anything she wanted. They had given her every opportunity. Instead, she had chosen to become a junkie.