The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,45

of the kiss. She shouldn’t have such a reaction to anything Owen might say, but her mind immediately went in a bad direction.

But then she shook her head.

Owen didn’t know about that.

“It’s probably another threat to get you to marry him,” Dallas mumbled, and he clicked on the attachment that Owen had sent with the message.

It seemed to take an eternity for the page to load, and it wasn’t a photograph as Joelle had originally thought. She wouldn’t have put it past Owen to show them more so-called evidence that would send them to jail.

But it was a document of some kind.

“What the hell?” Dallas said, and he positioned his phone closer so he could have a better look.

Joelle went to his side so she could do that same thing, and when she saw the wording at the top of the document, all the air vanished from her lungs. She staggered back, and in the same motion, she caught onto Dallas’s wrist. Trying to stop him from reading it.

Oh, God.

It was too late.

Dallas’s gaze slashed to hers, his eyes already narrowed while he shook his head. Everything about him was demanding an explanation.

“It’s a birth certificate,” he said.

She had no choice but to nod. Joelle tried to speak, tried to explain, but her throat clamped shut.

Dallas had trouble speaking, too. The shock and maybe the outrage had turned his jaw to iron. He got right in her face. “You have a baby?”

Chapter Thirteen

Dallas felt as if someone had punched him.

He wanted Joelle to look at the document on his phone and shout out a firm denial that she had a child. He wanted her to say it was another of Owen’s tricks. A lie meant to tear them apart so he could get some measure of revenge for his failed attempt to get Joelle to marry him.

But Joelle didn’t deny anything.

She just stood there, shaking her head, while every drop of color drained from her face.

Hell.

It was true.

Joelle had a baby.

Cursing, Dallas forced himself to look at the document again, and his attention zipped over the lines. It was a birth certificate, all right.

Amber Reese Tate.

Joelle was listed as the mother. The info on the father had been left blank, but Reese was Dallas’s middle name. Then he quickly did the math. The baby had been born fifteen and a half years ago.

Seven months after Joelle had left Rocky Creek.

And him.

“She’s my baby,” Dallas heard himself mumble. But not a baby. A teenager.

Joelle was still shaking her head, and tears spilled down her cheeks. Normally, those tears would have sent him reaching for her. So he could comfort her. But he didn’t want to comfort her now. He wanted to wring her neck.

“You kept my child from me,” he said.

“I didn’t,” she said, her voice hoarse and raw.

He showed her the document again and dared her to repeat that lie.

“I didn’t keep her from you,” Joelle repeated.

She yanked something from her blouse. The heart-shaped locket, and she opened it. On the left side of the heart was a baby’s picture. His picture was on the right, exactly where he’d put it sixteen years ago when he’d given it to her.

So it was the same locket.

Before he’d seen that birth certificate, Dallas might have asked her why she still wore it after all these years, but there was only one thing he wanted to know now.

“Where is she?” he demanded, pointing to the picture.

Joelle’s breath rattled in her throat. “She died.”

Nothing could have prepared him for that.

Nothing.

Dallas stumbled back and probably would have fallen to his knees if he hadn’t caught on to the counter.

“Amber was born nearly two months early,” Joelle continued, speaking in a whisper. “She only lived a few hours.”

The tears were coming faster now, streaking down her face, but Dallas still couldn’t go to her. The pain was almost unbearable. He’d fathered a child. A child he’d never seen, never known about. And he couldn’t do either of those things, ever.

Because his child had died.

Dallas had so many questions firing through his head. Why hadn’t Joelle told him? And why the hell had he learned about this from Owen? How had Owen gotten his filthy hands on the birth certificate? Dallas had wanted answers to all of that—but dealing with Joelle was first on the list.

“The doctors did everything they could to save her,” Joelle went on. She blindly fumbled behind her, located the chair and sat back down. “But she was just too weak.” Her voice