And Then Came You (16 page)

The Marconis were adventure. They were fun, new, exciting. Emma’s daddy, on the other hand, worked in a
bank
. Boring. Especially to an eight-year-old.

“C’mon, Daddy,” Emma said, squirming to escape Sam’s hold. As she jumped up and down, Emma’s sneakers sent up tiny puffs of dust around her feet. “You have to see the goats and Aunt Jo and Papa and Uncle Mike and—”

Jeff inhaled sharply, deeply, and caught the gleam of humor in Sam’s eyes. Not surprising. She probably saw the hesitation on his own features. Talk about a minefield. Walking unarmed into the midst of Marconis couldn’t be a healthy thing. “Enjoying this?”

“I shouldn’t, should I?” Her mouth twitched. “But yeah. I am.”

“Good that one of us is,” he muttered.

“Daddy, don’t you wanna see the goats?”

Please his daughter or avoid having confrontations with the whole Marconi family on their own turf? Tough choice. But he wasn’t ready to leave yet anyway. “Sure, honey—” He broke off as Hank Marconi bulled his way through the crowd of people to join them.

Jeff steeled himself, knowing there was no way to get out now, without looking like he was running for the hills.

The older man glared at him through pale blue eyes that glittered with emotion. Jeff had been dreading this meeting. Nine years ago, Hank had been the one person
on Jeff’s side. The one member of either family who’d seen the love between Jeff and Sam and recognized that it couldn’t be fought. He’d offered friendship then, and now, Hank looked like he’d enjoy nothing more than stepping back in time to knock Jeff’s block off.

“Hank.” Jeff nodded, took the risk and held out one hand.

Sam’s father stared at him for a long moment. Tension simmered in the air between the men. An unspoken vow had been broken, he knew. Hank had trusted Jeff to make his daughter happy—and Jeff had failed miserably. It didn’t look as though Hank were ready to forgive and forget, either.

Finally, Sam took a step forward and laid one hand on her father’s arm. “Papa?”

He glanced at his daughter, then shifted his gaze to his granddaughter, staring up at him with a question in her eyes. Hank scraped one hand across his graying beard and rubbed his jaw like he had a toothache.

Jeff saw the older man crack. And he couldn’t blame him. No man alive would have been able to hold out against Emma
and
Sam.

Reluctantly, Hank took Jeff’s outstretched hand and shook it. “It’s good you’ve brought Emma home to her family.”

I’m her family, Jeff wanted to say, but clenched his jaw to keep from uttering the words. Like a child fighting over a toy, he wanted to stake his claim on his child. Wanted to tell them all that Emma was his. He didn’t want to share her, dammit. She was all he had. The only real family he’d ever known. And it cost him more than he could say to see the way Emma was being
sucked into the Marconi vortex. But watching his daughter with the people who loved her, he couldn’t deny any of them that connection.

“I’m glad Emma got a chance to meet her
other
family.”

Hank eyed him with a steely glare and solemnly nodded. Then he released Jeff’s hand and deliberately turned to focus on Emma. Patting her head with a surprisingly gentle, beefy hand, he said, “Come with me, little mouse. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“But I wanna show Daddy the goats.”

Jeff spoke up quickly. “It’s okay, kiddo. I’ll catch up.”

He watched as she waved and then skipped along beside her grandfather. The goats were there, wandering through a crowd of workmen who paused occasionally to swat one of them out of the way. Hank and Emma had joined an older woman wearing casually elegant clothes and dozens of ropes of beads around her neck. As he watched, the woman took off several of her own necklaces and presented them to Emma. The little girl preened, then did a quick pirouette while her grandfather beamed.

Even if Hank wanted to stomp Jeff into the ground, it was clear the older man was nuts about Emma.

“Well, that was pleasant,” Jeff said, still feeling the sting of Hank’s disapproval.

“You’re alive,” Sam pointed out. “So,
upside
.”

He choked out a laugh. “True.”

Tearing his gaze from his daughter, he looked at Sam. Dirt streaked her forehead. Dried lemon-yellow paint streaks decorated her dark green T-shirt. Her worn, faded jeans clung to her legs like a lover’s hands. Like
his
hands used to.

Great.

Images filled his mind and he couldn’t shake them. Suddenly, the past was closer than the present and far more clear than a future that hung nebulously out of reach. He blew out a breath, and told himself to ignore the steamy visions clouding his brain. And he’d probably have as much luck with that as he would in telling himself not to breathe.

Pushing a stray lock of red-brown hair out of her eyes, Sam looked up at him. “So. You want to meet the goats?”

He stared into those pale blue eyes of hers and knew he should leave. Knew he should get far, far away from Sam and the memories she stirred within. “Yeah. I would.”

Cynthia made a careful note in her day planner, then tucked a fall of blond hair behind her ear. “Yes, I understand,” she said, nodding to the person on the other end of the phone. “That’ll be fine. We’ll be there Friday. About seven. Yes.”

The caterer was still talking when she hung up the phone. Now that the details were set, she really didn’t want to listen to the man tout his flair with salmon one more time. Besides, she didn’t want to have to try to convince the man again that Jeff would show up for this meeting. He’d already missed two and Cynthia was beginning to feel like an idiot, trying to explain why her fiancé was on the missing persons list.

Idly, she rested her fingers atop the receiver as it lay in its cradle and then tapped her manicured nails in a staccato beat.

Her nerves clanged inside her like a mission bell in
a hurricane and she suddenly couldn’t sit still a moment longer. Jumping to her feet, she crossed the living room of her apartment, pushed open the French doors to the balcony, and stepped out.

Instantly, a cold San Francisco wind slapped at her. The incessant growl of traffic from the street below rose up to greet her, and from a distance came the lowing bleat of a ship’s horn. On the horizon, storm clouds banked and gathered, swirling together until they were strong enough to make an assault on the city.

She sighed and dropped both hands to the cold iron balustrade, curling her fingers over the lip and hanging on as if it meant her life. “This is not supposed to be happening,” she murmured, squinting into the wind and blinking back the tears filling her eyes. “Jeff should be here. With me. Emma should be having her dress fitted. We should be
happy
, dammit.”

But she wasn’t.

Her fiancé was spending entirely too much time with his wife, for heaven’s sake, leaving all of the wedding details to her. All he was supposed to do was get the papers signed. Why was it taking so long?

Worry curled inside her, but she wouldn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she smiled, turned, and went back inside. Sitting behind her desk again, she picked up the phone and dialed.

“This place is amazing,” Jeff said, running the flat of one hand across a newly paneled wall.

“It really is,” Sam admitted, then shot him a quick look. “Though if you tell my sisters I said so, I’ll deny it.”

She’d been giving Jeff a tour through Grace’s Winchester
Wannabe house and it had been like seeing it all for the first time herself. Hard place to work on, considering Grace’s propensity for changing her mind all the damn time, but seriously, if you just looked at the house itself, it was great.

“See this?” she asked, bending almost in half to show him the detail work on the chair rail ringing the room. “She had this done by a woodworker up north.” Sam ran her fingertips over the intricate carvings. “He’s done stars and the moon and the sun in here, and then in the library he’s worked out symbols from fairy tales.”

“Incredible,” he said, running his fingertips alongside hers. “Makes my condo in the city look damn boring.”

Sam laughed and straightened up. “Anybody’s house looks boring in comparison to Grace’s. You should see the kitchens.”

“Kitchens? Plural?”

“Oh yeah. Three of ’em at last count, though Mike swears they’re multiplying at night.” Sam grinned as she remembered her sister’s colorful cursing only that morning. “She’s redoing the pipes and installing new sinks and countertops in the second kitchen.

“And Jo’s doing the new floor in the study.”

Sam led the way out of the room and down a set of switchback stairs, which, mimicking a set at the Winchester house, boasted forty-four steps, each of which were only two inches high.

“This is just weird,” he said.

“No, this is just Grace,” Sam countered and, grinning, looked over her shoulder at him. He was right behind her. The damn steps were so tiny that there was
hardly any distance at all separating them. Her grin faded as his gaze locked onto hers. She
felt
heat radiating from his body and told herself to hurry the hell up and get down those stairs. They were too alone, here. Too isolated. Too damn
close
.

“Sam . . .”

His deep voice seemed to echo in the nearly claustrophobic stairwell. It rattled through her body, shaking her bones and boiling her blood, and Sam told herself firmly to knock it off. She only wished she were listening.

She cut him off. “If you think this is something,” she said quickly, letting her words tumble over each other in the hopes of keeping him from speaking again, “wait until I show you the stained-glass windows in the ceiling.”

“Sam . . .”

He looked at her, really looked, and Sam felt the heat pour through her system like sunlight trickling through black clouds. Oh, she really didn’t want to be feeling any of this. Didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that Jeff Hendricks could still have any sort of pull on her. But here he stood and she felt every cell in her body standing up to do a little hip-hop.

“I have to go to San Francisco,” he said, blurting out the news as if the words tasted bad.

Not what she’d been expecting. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. Because all she could think was,
He’s leaving
. Sam’s heart stopped and a curl of panic opened up in the pit of her stomach. “You’re taking Emma away? Now?”

From outside, the whine of saws and the rhythmic thud of hammers sounded soft, as if it were the rush of
blood and the heartbeat of the house itself. Here in the stairwell, they were isolated and Sam felt confident enough to have her say without witnesses.

“You can’t take her away from me yet, Jeff. I’m just getting to know her. I’ve hardly had any time with her at all.”

“I know and—”

“I haven’t signed the papers,” she reminded him quickly, pulling out her big gun early. After all, when you had a decent weapon, why wait to use it?

“I know,” he said tightly, his features suddenly taking on the hard mask of marble. “I didn’t say I was taking Emma.”

Sam drew an easier breath. Panic receded just a bit. “What are you saying?”

“I have to go. Take care of some business that can’t be postponed any longer.” He shifted his gaze back to her and Sam read the frustration in those dark blue depths. He didn’t want to leave. And just how should she take
that
?

No way at all, that’s how, she told herself. It wasn’t
Sam
he was reluctant to leave. It was
Emma
.

“I’ll be back on Sunday,” he was saying, and Sam concentrated. “I thought,” he continued reluctantly, “Emma could stay with you while I’m gone. She’d like it, I know.”

“
You
don’t, though.”

“Hell no, I don’t,” he said. “Why would I?”

Bristling a little, she reminded him, “I’m her
mother
.”

He snorted.
“Now.”

“Cheap shot, but accurate.” She squared her shoulders and managed to look down her nose at him even though she had to look
up
to do it.

“I know.” He pushed one hand through his hair, stared at her for a long minute, then said, “Sorry. Don’t know why I said it.”

“Because this whole situation pisses you off?”

One corner of his mouth quirked. “I believe I may have mentioned that.”

“A time or two.”

He sighed and shook his head. Sam curled her fingers into fists to keep from reaching up and smoothing his hair back from his forehead.

“The truth is,” he blurted, “I’ve got things I have to see to in the city.”

“Like Cynthia?” Ouch. Now why’d she go and say the name? Sam really didn’t want to think about Jeff
seeing to
Cynthia.

“She’s part of it. But there’s also the bank.”

“Ah yes,” she said, shoving both hands into her jeans pockets. Surprise flickered inside her, but Sam hid it well. Nine years ago, he’d talked about breaking away from his family’s business. He’d talked about being an architect. Designing the buildings of the future. Making a mark that was all his own and
not
being just a part of the family legacy. Apparently a lot of things had changed. And since she was sad for it, she snapped, “The Hendricks family bank. Still making your own money in a back room?”

“Funny.” His features tightened.

“I could have done better,” she admitted. “But it’s been a long day.”

He blew right past her statement. “I’ve been doing what business I can on the phone and via the Internet. But I have to get back. Take care of a few things in person.”
He looked at her. “I can take Emma with me . . . or leave her here with you. Your choice.”

“I’ll keep her.”

“Thought you might.”

Sam watched him. He looked as though he hadn’t been sleeping and she wondered if his dreams were as frenetic as hers. She wondered if
she
haunted him as he did her. And she guessed she’d never find out. Which was probably a good thing. “Thanks.”

Something flickered in his eyes and was gone again in a heartbeat. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“I know.”

His mouth twitched, one corner tilting slightly. “This may be a breakthrough.”