“You’re hoping to adopt her?”

“I’m planning on it,” Fern said with satisfaction. “As long as the birth father doesn’t show up, I’m golden.”

He cocked his head to one side. “You don’t want her father to find her?”

“It’s not like that. He’s shown no interest in her for four years, so it’s hardly likely he’ll show up now. But we had to publish announcements for a few weeks to make sure he doesn’t want her.”

Carlo’s head spun at her casual dismissal. He wanted to argue that just because a dad wasn’t around, that didn’t mean he was a deadbeat. Some dads didn’t even know they had a child. But there was no need to argue with the woman who’d treated a stranger so kindly. “Mercy’s kind of an old-fashioned name,” he said instead.

She smiled. “Oh, that’s just what I call her sometimes. Her mom did, too. Her full name is actually Mercedes.”

The word slammed into his aching head with the force of a sledgehammer’s blow. He had, indeed, blundered into the home of his own child.