His Secret Son Read online

  Dangerous Attraction

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Books by Jacqueline Diamond

  Title Page

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Copyright

  Dangerous Attraction

  Dirk couldn’t believe he’d let Joni get that close to danger. He should have foreseen it or done more to prevent it.

  Something had changed between them lost night. Joni had plugged into a long-buried need, connecting him to her and, in an inexplicable way, to himself. The prospect of harm coming to her was intolerable.

  Heck, how much more of an explanation did he require? She was the mother of his child, essential to Jeff’s happiness. If for no other reason, Dirk would have gladly laid down his life to preserve hers.

  “I’m staying tonight,” Dirk said. “I’ll sleep on the sofa bed.”

  Long lashes curtained Joni’s eyes as she considered. She faced him across the den. “You don’t have to stay on the sofa.”

  His body responded instantly, viscerally. After last night, he knew how warm her mouth would be and how quickly she would come to heat.

  But he didn’t dare let down his guard again.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jacqueline Diamond spent a year after college traveling and writing in Europe. Since then, she’s a news reporter, a TV columnist, the author of more than twenty Harlequin romances and, above all, a wife and mother.

  Books by Jacqueline Diamond

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  435-AND THE BRIDE VANISHES

  512—HIS SECRET SON

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  196—AN UNEXPECTED MAN

  218—UNLIKELY PARTNERS

  239—THE CINDERELLA DARE

  270—CAPERS AND RAINBOWS

  279—A GHOST OF A CHANCE

  315—FLIGHT OF MAGIC

  351—BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS

  406—OLD DREAMS, NEW DREAMS

  446—THE TROUBLE WITH TERRY

  491—A DANGEROUS GUY

  583—THE RUNAWAY BRIDE

  615—YOURS, MINE AND OURS

  631—THE COWBOY AND THE HEIRESS

  642—ONE HUSBAND TOO MANY

  645—DEAR LONELY IN LA...

  674—MILLION-DOLLAR MOMMY

  667—DADDY WARLOCK

  716—A REAL LIVE SHEIKH

  734—THE COWBOY AND THE SHOTGUN BRIDE

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the tollowing address for Information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Welden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

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  His Secret Son

  Jacqueline Diamond

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Dirk Peterson-Bent on investigating the murder of his brother, Lowell, he has a secret that refuses to stay hidden.

  Joni Peterson-The evidence says her ex-husband was stalking her and that she killed him in self-defense. She almost believes it herself.

  Kim Delong-She broke up Joni’s marriage, but then Lowell dumped her. Did she kill him for revenge?

  Basil Dupont-A moody boss, he takes a lot of interest in Joni’s welfare.

  Herb Peterson-He appears to mourn his grandson’s death, but could he be a little too devoted to his great-grandson?

  Charlie Rogers-As a soccer coach, he’s a winner. But losing at love makes him lose something else: his self-control.

  Fred and Kathryn Owens-They’re the best friends a single mother could want. But are they hiding problems of their own?

  Terry MacDougall-The murder of one of the town’s leading citizens makes hi eager for a quick arrest, and all the evidence points to Joni.

  Celia Lu-The lonely lady next door turns up at the most inconvenient moments. Maybe that isn’t entirely by chance.

  Chapter One

  Joni Peterson was removing her TV dinner from the microwave oven when the phone rang. Reaching for the plastic container with pot holders, she let the answering machine pick up.

  “Hi, it’s Joni! If you’re calling me or Jeff, please leave a message!”

  She wasn’t surprised when the caller hung up.

  Through the kitchen window, she could see the twilight fading across her patio and small backyard. A crisp October breeze ruffled her roses and the brush on the hill beyond.

  Near the edge of the dense woods above the house, a neighbor’s gray-striped cat prowled, then vanished into a shadow. Seconds ticked by, but there was no further sign of it.

  When she bought the house last year, Joni had relished the privacy. Now the remoteness of the place made her uneasy.

  A few drops of steaming sauce from the fettuccine Alfredo plopped onto the back of her hand as she set the plate on the table. Instinctively, Joni lifted the burned spot to her mouth to take away the sting.

  Maybe she should have grabbed the phone. It might have been her eight-year-old son, Jeff, calling from his friend Bobby’s house half a mile away to tell her he’d forgotten something for his sleepover.

  But if it had been Jeff, he would have left a message, she told herself firmly. Besides, he spent the night at Bobby’s so often that he kept an extra toothbrush and sleep shirt there, so what could he need?

  She scooted into her chair and picked up the newspaper to read while she ate. As usual, she’d barely had time to glance at it in the morning before leaving for her job as public relations assistant at Viento del Mar Community Hospital.

  The phone rang again. Joni picked it up. “Hello?”

  A click, followed by a dial tone. Darn him! The man knew exactly how to irritate her. Although she’d signed up for Caller ID, the man had his number blocked.

  So far, he’d been careful. The calls hadn’t been frequent enough to spark any action by the phone company. The other harassment—roses cut from her bushes and left on the porch to wither, a pair of sunglasses taken from her unlocked car and set on her patio—wasn’t threatening enough to concern the police, an officer had told Joni when she called.

  No one was going to arrest Lowell Peterson for anything less than a major crime. As the owner of Peterson Printing, one of the largest companies in the central California town of Viento del Mar, her ex-husband wielded a lot of power.

  As she rinsed the plastic tray and tossed it in the recycle container, Joni kept expecting the phone to ring again. Where was he calling from anyway? His home? His car?

  The shadows deepened on the hill behind her house.

  On the patio, a breeze rattled the loose pedal on Jeff’s bike. She made a mental note to tighten it and to remind him to put his bike in the garage. Maybe she should put it away now, but there was no rain in the forecast. A night outside wouldn’t hurt it.

  Joni retreated to the den, their combination guest room and electronic haven. Kneeling by the video rack. she picked out an old favorite, The Sound of Music.

  As she stood up, she found herself face-to-face with a group of photos on the wall. The largest, taken three
years ago, was a formal portrait of her, Lowell and Jeff. She’d hung it there in an attempt to keep her son’s life as normal as possible.

  The photographer had posed them on risers so that the gap in heights wouldn’t be so apparent. Even so, Lowell had a commanding presence. Tall and blond, with a piercing light blue gaze, he’d swept Joni off her feet when she was a nineteen-year-old clerk and he was the son of the company’s owner. Five years her senior, he’d already been pushing for a dynamic expansion of Peterson Printing.

  Studying his photograph, she could feel the excitement of being singled out by him. Her amazement at discovering the intensity of his interest had enabled her to hold her head high on their early dates, even though she knew she didn’t fit in with his country-club friends.

  Joni wasn’t sure what he’d seen in her. She’d been described as interesting-looking, with her high cheekbones and slightly crooked nose, but never beautiful. Certainly it hadn’t been her rather boyish figure that attracted him.

  How much had she really loved Lowell, and how much had she been awed by him? It was a bit late, Joni told herself ruefully, to worry about that.

  Slipping the video into the VCR, she sat back to enjoy Julie Andrews and the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. Half an hour later, she realized to her relief that the phone hadn’t rung again. Maybe Lowell had better things to do tonight than make a pest of himself.

  She was immersed in the movie when the wind picked up loudly enough to be heard over the TV. Storm coming, she thought absently. The forecasters had been wrong, as usual.

  A crash from outside set her heart racing. The metallic jangle reverberated down to her bones.

  The bike! It must have blown over. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Joni grumbled aloud. The last thing she felt like doing was going out into the nippy air and hauling Jeff’s bike to the garage. Yet if a storm really was starting, the patio’s cover wouldn’t offer much protection.

  Joni turned off the VCR. In the service hall by the back door, she pulled on an old sweater and stuffed her feet into a pair of canvas slip-ons. As she let herself out, she flicked on the patio light. Its glow penetrated no more than a few feet into the gloom.

  “Here, bikey, bikey.” The wind tore away her feeble attempt at humor. Moist and chill, it blasted through the sweater as if it were a cobweb.

  She should have remembered to bring a flashlight, she thought, but going back inside was silly. She wanted to get this chore finished as quickly as possible.

  In the faint light, the patio chairs stretched grotesquely. Unable to distinguish between shapes and shadows, Joni banged her thigh against the glass table. She let out a couple of swearwords she would have suppressed had Jeff been home.

  Wind gusted against her back, bringing the first drops of rain. Strands of shoulder-length hair whipped free of her bun and scrambled around Joni’s face as if attempting to flee.

  By the time the breeze quieted, her eyes were adjusting to the dark. She could make out spoked tires and twisted handlebars lying on the concrete a few steps away.

  Another blast of wind hit, and something arced through the air. As Joni dodged, she recognized the object as the hummingbird feeder she’d filled this morning.

  The glass globe had been a Christmas present last year from Lowell’s grandfather, Herb, who doted on Jeff and remained Joni’s friend. It was a beautiful feeder, but if she hadn’t moved so quickly, the darn thing would have beaned her.

  Near the garage, a shoe crunched on concrete. The hairs on her neck stood on end.

  “Who is it?” Beyond the patio, she couldn’t see a thing.

  “It’s me.”

  She recognized the tenor voice and the footsteps coming toward her, firm and confident, with an occasional scuffing noise as if he were impatient to be moving faster.

  A tall shape loomed into the porch light. She stared in dismay at her ex-husband.

  No wonder he hadn’t made any more phone calls. He’d come to confront her in person.

  “Joni, are you all right?” A frown creased the face worthy of a men’s magazine. Strong, symmetrical, rugged.

  Lowell wore a designer suit and an open-collared silk shirt. What the well-dressed man wears to stalk his ex-wife, she thought furiously.

  “What are you doing here?” Rain misted her face and the wind tugged more hair from its knot On the hillside, bushes swished.

  “It’s not what you think.” He stopped a dozen feet away.

  “What is it I supposedly think?”

  “That I’ve been harassing you.”

  “So here you are, sneaking around my patio after dark,” she retorted. “Obviously, this disproves the whole idea.”

  “Where’s Jeff?” he asked abruptly.

  Joni’s alarm deepened. Why did he want to know? Was he planning to attack her? If he thought their son was home, he might not risk it. “Asleep,” she said.

  “No, he’s not. I saw you come home alone.”

  He’d been watching her. Goose bumps crept along her skin. “Lowell, please leave,” she said. “Jeffs at Bobby’s house. They’ll be bringing him home any minute.”

  He eased forward. The hunter, not wanting to startle his prey. One large hand reached toward her arm.

  “Joni, surely you don’t believe I would—”

  A blast of chill air ripped away the rest of his words and a thrashing noise from the slope made Joni turn sharply. As she did, something bashed into the side of her head with a crunch.

  The world spun madly and her mind filled with pain beyond enduring. She barely felt her ribs hit the spokes of the bike as she fell.

  Chapter Two

  Joni’s head ached and her side throbbed. The patio was a jumble of dim light and confusing, lumpy shapes.

  She wondered if this was a dream. Then she became aware that she was soaked and profoundly chilled.

  She ought to go inside. She had to move.

  Her numb hands flexed with difficulty. In her right palm, she discovered, lay something slender but hard. When she gripped it, it felt like the haft of a kitchen knife.

  “Hello? Are you here, Joni?” The voice with a Chinese accent belonged to her neighbor, Celia Lu. From the sound, she was walking up the rise from her yard.

  Joni tried to answer. All that came out was a grunt.

  A flashlight beam swept through the mist. “Hello, anyone?” Celia called. “Who is here?”

  This time, Joni managed to prop herself up enough to catch the light in her eyes. Pain sliced into her head and she fell back.

  “You are hurt?” Celia hesitated at the edge of the patio. A childless woman in her fifties, she had moved next door about six months ago. Lonely during her husband’s absences on business, she came over frequently to chat. “I call for help?”

  Joni hated to involve the police or paramedics. In view of Lowell’s prominence, the incident would be sure to make the newspaper. But she couldn’t handle this alone. “Yes, please,” she whispered.

  “Someone else is here? I hear noises. A shout.”

  “Lowell. I guess he’s gone.” But why would he leave her here, injured?

  Celia played the flashlight across the patio. It wavered and stopped on a dark shape. Her mouth opened and out came a high-pitched needle of sound that went on and on.

  The scream merged with the throb in Joni’s head, pulsing at the same frequency. Consciousness shattered into a thousand shards, and silence returned.

  WHEN JONI AWOKE, two men wearing light blue jackets knelt beside her, one holding an umbrella while the other checked her pulse. Brightness turned the patio a violent white against a rippling silver curtain of rain.

  Her clothing was soaked with a sticky substance that Joni recognized as hummingbird nectar. Her head must have smashed open the feeder.

  To her right, she glimpsed figures bending over something. There were three people: a uniformed officer, a man in a plaid sport coat who scribbled on a pad, and a woman taking photographs.

  “What happened?” sh
e muttered, and caught a startled look from the paramedics.

  “Detective!” one of them called. “She’s awake!”

  The man in the plaid coat continued making notes. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there.”

  When he moved, Joni saw a crumpled shape on the ground beyond. A portable floodlight picked out disarrayed blond hair and the expensive weave of a gray suit jacket marred by a dark stain.

  “Lowell?” she asked.

  The detective skirted some broken glass and crouched beside her. “Mrs. Peterson? I’m Detective Terry MacDougall.”

  All she could murmur was “Lowell—is he all right?”

  “I’m afraid he’s dead,” the man in the plaid coat said.

  Joni didn’t hear whatever he said next. A rushing noise filled her brain, a combination of dizziness and disbelief.

  Lowell? Dead?

  Their divorce two years ago had been bitter, following Joni’s discovery that he was having an affair. That had been the last straw after years of his sarcasm and domination.

  And yet he could be warm and funny, especially with Jeff. Lowell had been a towering figure in her life. She couldn’t accept that he was gone forever.

  Right after she left him, he’d harassed her a few times with phone calls and petty vandalism. That had soon stopped, though. After Joni asked for only reasonable child support and agreed to generous visitation rights, Lowell had even apologized.

  A few months ago at his request, they’d begun having dinner together occasionally to discuss Jeff and reestablish a friendly relationship. It had lasted until a few weeks back—when the harassment resumed. Lowell denied being behind it, but the actions were exactly the sort of thing he’d pulled right after they separated. Joni just wished she knew why he’d started in again.

  Now he was dead, and she might never know. Even though she’d felt anger and resentment, she’d never wished Lowell any harm.

  His death would hurt people she cared about—Jeff and his great-grandfather, Herb. It was going to affect a lot of other people, too, in ways she couldn’t even begin to think about.