The Baby Switch! by Melissa Senate

Author:Melissa Senate [Senate, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-01-10T20:28:03+00:00

Chapter Nine

Liam had heard Shelby get out of bed because he’d been tossing and turning all night and his ears were trained on the nursery. But instead of hearing any middle-of-the-night cries from the babies, he’d heard Shelby get up and head to the kitchen. He’d thought about giving her privacy with her thoughts; he was sure it was the wedding—the entire idea of getting married—that kept her awake, but if he could ease her mind, he’d try.

“Couldn’t sleep again?” he asked, coming in the kitchen and taking a mug from the cupboard. “Is there enough water in the kettle for another cup?”

She nodded. “I’ve been tossing and turning for so long I figured I might need a few cups to help me back to sleep.”

He added a tea bag to the mug and poured the still-steaming water on it, then sat down next to Shelby. She held a letter, the old jewelry box his mother had given her beside her.

“Found something in the box?” he asked, adding cream to the tea.

“I did, Liam. A letter hidden away under the lining right in the main compartment.”

“Hidden away? A secret letter?”

She nodded. “It’s almost sixty years old.”

“What does it say?”

She took a deep breath. “Liam, I think you’d better read it. There’s a reason this music box was left on your parents’ porch. Someone wanted your father to find the letter. Or at least have the music box where the letter was hidden.”

“Huh? What does the letter have to do with my father?”

“I think it’s to him,” she said, handing it over.

Liam frowned and took the letter. It was signed Mama. Well, his mother didn’t refer to herself that way, so he doubted this was from his mother. Or to his father.

My dear son, he read, saddened by the first paragraph, by a mother-to-be wanting the best for her child and having to give him up.

At the second paragraph, at the line Mrs. Mercer says you’ll want for nothing and that you’ll be so loved that you’ll never know you weren’t her own flesh and blood, Liam shot up out of the chair. He quickly read the rest, then his gaze focused on the date. The year his father was born.

“My father was adopted by Alexandra Mercer?” he said, voicing his thoughts aloud. “He never told me. He never let on that he was adopted.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Shelby said gently.

He stared at her. “Jesus. Maybe he doesn’t.” His gaze fell on the music box. “This was in there?”

“Tucked under this lining,” she said, pointing at the pink velvet and showing how it edged away from the corners and could be inched over.

“So the box was his birth mother’s? And she left it on my parents’ porch? On the chance my rich, snobby parents might want some old music box and find a hidden letter? That hardly sounds plausible.”

Shelby sipped her tea. “I know. I’ve been running through possible scenarios and nothing quite makes sense. I have the feeling someone who’d been close to the birth mother put the box on your parents’ porch.

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