After Dark by Beverly Barton Page A

her hold on the boy’s arm—the boy who meant more to her than life itself. He was all she had in this old world. Lane’s son. Oh, she knew that Miss Lane hadn’t nurtured him in her body, that she hadn’t given birth to him, but he was her child all the same. Will belonged to Lane as surely as if he had grown inside her. Together she and Lane had loved Will, sacrificed for him and protected him at all costs. But in the end, they hadn’t been able to protect him from the truth. Or from Kent’s vindictive rage!
    â€œI think I know who he is,” Lillie Mae admitted, as she released her tenacious hold on Will’s arm. “I sent for him, to help your mama.”
    â€œIs he a lawyer? Somebody you think can do a better job for Mama than James can?”
    â€œWe’d best wait and let your mama answer your questions.”
    Will narrowed his eyes, squinting them so that the expression on his face was identical to the look she had seen on Johnny Mack’s face a hundred times in the years she’d known him as a boy and a young man. Such an angry, embittered young man. But then he’d had a right to be all that and more. Life had dealt him a pretty sorry hand, and he had played it the best way he’d known how.
    â€œI hate this!” Will gritted the words through clenched teeth. “More secrets! That’s all my life has been—ugly, dirty secrets.”
    â€œNow, you stop that!” Lillie Mae shook her bony index finger in Will’s face. “There’s nothing ugly or dirty about your life. You’re a good boy. Not one thing that has happened is your fault. Do you hear me? Just like your mama has told you, you’re the only innocent one in all of this mess.”
    Will’s face flushed crimson. “Maybe I’m not so innocent. Maybe I’m the one who…who—”
    She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “I don’t want to ever hear you talking such nonsense. Let your mama and me and…and that man out there—” she inclined her head in the direction of the foyer—“handle everything. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to you. Not ever again.”
    â€œThat man out there—” Will mimicked her head nod. “What’s he got to do with us? Why would he help you and Mama handle things?”
    â€œBecause he owes your mama his life.” Lillie Mae released her tight grip on Will, then lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “He’s come back to Noble’s Crossing to pay a long overdue debt.”
    â€œHow’d Mama save his life?”
    Lillie Mae saw the curiosity in Will’s eyes. What would it hurt if she told him about Johnny Mack, about what happened that long-ago September night, without revealing the man’s relationship to Will? Sooner or later, Will would have to be told, but it would be up to Lane to decide when to tell Will who the stranger was and to introduce father and son.
    â€œCome on back in here and sit down while I put on that fresh pot of coffee.” Lillie Mae motioned for him to sit at the kitchen table. “You stay in here with me and I’ll tell you about how your mama brought home a half-drowned man who’d been badly beaten and dumped in the Chickasaw River.”
    With his attention focused solely on the tale yet to be told, Will pulled out a Windsor oak chair from the round table and sat.
    â€œWhen did this happen? How old was Mama?”
    Lillie Mae grinned. She could kill two birds with one stone—keep Will occupied so Lane could talk to Johnny Mack and at the same time give Will some insight into Lane’s past relationship with his biological father.
    While busying herself with preparations for the coffee machine, Lillie Mae let her mind drift back to that night nearly fifteen years ago when Miss Lane had dragged a half-dead Johnny Mack through the back door. She had never seen a sorrier sight. His face