Because You're Mine(8)

Alanna’s knees threatened to give way when she realized he meant what he said. And he had the power to carry it through. She had to figure out a way to thwart him before the baby was born.





Four


The eejit!” Ciara fumed as she jerked the car into gear and tromped on the accelerator. “You okay?”

Alanna still felt shaken, too upset to drive. She’d rushed from the house with a strangled promise to think things over. There was nothing to think over, of course, except how to get out of Ireland as quickly as possible to protect her child. But Thomas wouldn’t let an ocean get in his way. She knew him too well. All he had to do was pull the strings to get her visa cancelled, and she’d be back here under his thumb.

“He’ll do what he says,” she said in a trembling voice. “You don’t know him, Ciara. He always gets what he wants. He knows I was raised by the Travellers. The courts will take one look at his lovely mansion and compare it with my circumstances and upbringing. It will be all over. I won’t have the weapons to fight him if he forces me back here.”

She couldn’t let her child have the same upbringing that Liam did. He’d often talked of how differently he would treat his children—with warmth and unconditional love, not chilly perfectionism. If it hadn’t been for Sheila, Alanna would have felt justified in keeping her pregnancy from them.

She saw Ciara bite her lip and knew her mate wanted to offer encouragement, but the reality was Alanna was right. Thomas held all the advantages. “I’m going to go back to America right away. Barry is connected. Maybe he will have a suggestion.”

“I hope you’re right.” For once Ciara’s tone didn’t indicate disdain. “Barry’s an attorney. He might be knowing some tricks to foil Thomas.”

Alanna stared out the window. Around the curve, the field opened up and revealed a ragtag assortment of trailers and ramshackle cottages. Dozens of dogs ran through the dirt between the trailers. It was the Travellers’ community the private investigator had mentioned in his letter.

The camp was much like the one she remembered from her childhood. Constant commotion: yelling people, barking dogs, shouting children. Hearing those same sounds through the open car window brought back the desolation she experienced when she realized she’d been abandoned by her mother. Other women had cared for her, but always with impatience. She remembered being lonely, so very lonely, while surrounded by people. The day she met Liam had changed everything, and the moment she left the community had been the happiest day of her life.

“Ready?” Ciara asked after putting the car in park.

“Right.” She shoved open her door and stepped out into a light breeze that brought the smell of cooking stew over an open fire to her nose.

“Where shall you be starting?” Ciara asked.

“With that group of women around the fire.” Alanna realized she had left her shoes in the car. With her feet in good Irish dirt, she was a child again, but it wasn’t a good feeling.

She walked toward the group of six women. Dressed in brightly colored clothing and jewelry, they stood around the campfire chatting in a language she hadn’t heard in over ten years.

She greeted them in Cant, amazed it came so easily to her lips. “I’m Alanna Costello, daughter of Maire. I heard she passed this way recently.”

The oldest woman, her hair wrapped with a red kerchief, looked Alanna over, glaring from under heavy brows. “You have the look of Maire,” she said grudgingly. “She was here.”

Alanna couldn’t hide her disappointment. “She’s not now?”

“She left two weeks ago. Went back to America.”

“America? Has she been living there all these years then?”

The woman nodded. “Twenty-five years now, she said.”

She’d deserted Ireland totally. Not even concerned about the three-year-old daughter she left behind. What could cause a woman to leave her child? Alanna couldn’t imagine leaving the baby she carried under any circumstances. She wanted to ask if her mother had asked after her, but she knew the answer.

She reminded herself that her mother cared only about Neila. “Did she have her daughter with her?”

“You were saying that you are her daughter.”

Alanna’s fingers curled into her palms. “I am, but I have a sister. Neila. Did you see her?” Though Neila would be in her midthirties, Travellers often lived together all their lives.

The woman shook her head. “She was alone.”

Of course she was. She’d probably abandoned Neila along the way somewhere too. Alanna would never find her. “Do you have any idea where Maire lives?”

The woman bent over to stir the stew and her ornate necklace dangled perilously close to the pot. “Somewhere in the South.”

Alanna felt her last grasp at hope slipping away. “The South is a large area. You wouldn’t know what state? She said nothing that might indicate where her home is?”

“From something she said, I think she was near water, maybe the Atlantic.”

The woman’s tone held an air of dismissal. She took a bowl from the woman on her right and began to ladle up the stew. “We eat. You go now,” she said. “I cannot help you more.”

Alanna nodded. “Thank you for the information.” Near the Atlantic and in the South. She could research Travellers’ communities there and see how many she could find. Surely there weren’t more than a dozen, if that many.