And Then Came You (6 page)

Didn’t matter, she thought. Nothing mattered now. Nothing but Emma.

“I sent you a letter, Jeff. Telling you about the baby. You sent it back to me. Unopened.”

“Bullshit.”

“And,”
she added, as if he hadn’t spoken at all, “you sent along a set of divorce papers.”

He shook his head, but something in his eyes shifted, changed, softened from anger to suspicion. “No I didn’t.”

“
Somebody
did,” she snapped, leaning toward him. “And I’ve still got my returned letter to prove it.”

He scraped one hand across the back of his neck. “Assuming that such a letter exists,” he said tightly, “why the hell would you keep it?”

“As a reminder.”

“Of what?”

She looked up into his eyes. “It reminds me of the mistake I made in trusting the wrong person.”

He winced.

She didn’t care.

“Show me,” he said.

“I don’t believe this,” Jeff said, clutching the unopened, nine-year-old envelope. But he did. Dammit, he did. Standing in Sam’s old bedroom in the Marconi family house, he half-expected one of her sisters to charge into the room swinging a chain saw. And right this minute, he couldn’t even say he’d blame them.

They’d left Emma back at the inn. The owner’s sixteen-year-old daughter had been happy to earn another twenty bucks babysitting. And this was definitely something he and Sam had to do alone. Just the two of them.

For years, he’d told himself that he and Emma had been lucky to escape Sam. She’d divorced him and given their child away. She hadn’t wanted either of them in her life. And he’d made peace with that long ago. Now he was forced to face the idea that all of it had been a lie. That his own mother had orchestrated everything from behind the scenes. “Damn her.”

“Huh? Damn who?” Sam’s voice, insistent, cracking, as if she were about to snap in two. All that was holding her together were the tight bands of anger he could practically
see
.

His hand tightened on the still-sealed envelope and
his gaze fixed on the too-familiar scrawl across the front of it. “My mother.”

God, how it cost him to admit this. To acknowledge that Eleanor Hendricks would go to such amazing lengths to get her son away from a woman she’d always considered unsuitable. Rage swept him like a brush fire consuming a hillside. It kept climbing, burning hotter and hotter, and there was no way of stopping it.

“Your—” She stared at him for a long count of ten and then stomped past him toward the window that overlooked the wide expanse of front lawn. An ancient oak stood in the center of the yard, sending gnarled, twisted branches out into a canopy of papery leaves that danced in the ever-present wind. From below came the muted music of a wind chime moving lazily in the breeze.

While she stared blankly out the window, Jeff stared at
her
. Nine years and she looked even better than he remembered. And God knew, he remembered way too well—on those rare occasions when a memory of her flitted through his mind. He tried to
not
remember. What was the point, after all? But with Emma growing into a miniature version of her mother, was it so surprising that thoughts of Sam kept cropping up?

Those few, amazing weeks of their marriage had been the one and only time in his life that he’d let go. That Jeff hadn’t allowed himself to be ruled by the Hendricks dogma, “What will people say?” At nineteen, he’d discovered passion and the freedom of being himself—or at least being the man he’d become when he was with Samantha.

She had staggered him.

Literally.

The first time he saw her, she’d run him down in her successful attempt to catch a wildly thrown football. When she helped him up, he’d looked into her pale blue eyes and fallen all over again.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to see past their own passion far enough to know that the only thing waiting for them was pain.

And now the past had come back to bite him on the ass.

Feeling as though he were in enemy territory, he took a quick look around. He’d only been in this room . . .
her
room . . . once before. The night they’d come to tell her folks they were getting married.

The room hadn’t changed much, either. The walls were still painted a deep green and bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks were painted a paler shade of the same color. Her bed was covered in a quilt that looked homemade and the same framed posters of Paris and Hawaii hung on the walls. He remembered teasing her about the disparate pictures, but she’d told him then that fantasy trips all had one thing in common. The fantasy.

But Sam had been
his
only fantasy.

And look where that had gotten them.

Gritting his teeth, he said, “You sent this letter to me, my mother returned it to you along with the divorce papers.” Just like Sam’d insisted at the inn. Saying it aloud didn’t make it any easier to handle. But there it was. “When you signed and returned them, Mother forwarded them on to me—with your signature on them.” He shoved one hand through his hair, then let it drop to his side. Helpless. God, he’d always hated
that feeling and right now it was choking him. “I thought
you
wanted the divorce.”

She laughed shortly, harshly and the sound slapped at him. “Perfect.”

He walked up behind her. Close enough to touch. But of course, he didn’t. “She played us both.”

“And Emma?” Two words—a world of feelings. She kept her gaze locked on the nearly hypnotic dance of the leaves beyond her window. It was as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Her hands fisted and unfisted at her sides as if she were subconsciously looking for something to grab onto—and couldn’t find it.

Jeff moved to one side of her, keeping a safe distance from the energy and fury pumping off her in thick, emotion-packed waves. He leaned against the wall and watched her as he said, “Mother brought Emma to me right after she was born.”

“God.” She swayed slightly and he almost reached out to steady her. Would have if he’d thought for a minute his touch would be welcome. Yet Jeff knew she’d rather topple onto the floor than take any help from him at the moment.

“She said you gave her the baby. Said that you didn’t want any part of me.” And the pain he’d felt that day came racing back to remind him just how much caring for someone that deeply could hurt. Even beyond his too-stupid-to-live teenage pride, Sam had torn something from him he’d never gotten back. She’d taken his belief that he could be wanted for his own sake.

Sam’s gaze snapped to his. “And you believed her?”

He stomped on the rise of temper inside. “Why wouldn’t I? I tried to call our apartment but you were gone.”

“I moved out when you left.”

“So I guessed.” But he didn’t tell her how her leaving had terrified him. “I called here, but your sisters wouldn’t give me a number to contact you.”

“I told them not to.”

“So.” He nodded sharply. “We were running in circles, going nowhere . . .”

“And your mother swooped in on her broom and finished us off.”

“I’d argue with that, but it’s too close to true.”

“Close?”

He blew out a breath of pure frustration. “What do you want me to say? I’m
sorry
that I got Emma? I’m
not
.”

She shook her head hard enough that her hair swung out in an arc around her head. The last of the sunlight caught it and inflamed the strands, making that reddish-brown mass look like dark fire.

“You
left
me,” she said.

“It was a break,” he argued, feeling the futility of it even as he kept right on swinging.

“Right.” She snorted a laugh. “Four months in London.
Without
your new wife. Heck of a break.”

“I took a course at Cambridge, for chrissake.” Jeff came away from the wall. He shoved both hands into his pockets. He hated feeling as though he were treading water in a tank where the water level kept rising. “We needed time apart. You know that.” When she refused to acknowledge the truth of it, he snapped, “I needed space.”

“Time away from me, you mean.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe that’s what it boiled down to. Hell, I didn’t know what else to do.”

She looked up at him, old pain and accusation glittering in her pale blue eyes. “We should have communicated. You should have talked to me.”

The absurdity of
that
had him laughing out loud, though it didn’t make him feel any better. “Jesus, listen to you. I was nineteen,” he said, keeping a tight rein on the anger churning within. “I didn’t
do
talking.”

“You could have tried.”

But back then, Jeff knew, he hadn’t been interested in talking. Any time he was near Sam, all he’d been able to think about was stripping her out of her clothes and tossing her onto the nearest flat surface. Amazing how
some
feelings never really go away.

With that thought came blind panic and he surrendered to the adult version of sticking his tongue out. “Yeah? Well, so could you.”

Astonished, she blinked at him. “Are you seriously going to try to say that to me?”

He knew what she was talking about and he had an answer for it. “Yelling doesn’t count as communicating.”

“It does in my family.”

“
My
family’s different.”

“Ha. Well, I guess that’s a fair statement.” She grabbed the envelope from the dresser top where he’d tossed it and shoved it back into the top drawer of an antique chest. “My family shouts. Yours lies and steals children.”

“She didn’t steal Emma.” Christ, had he really come around to trying to
defend
his mother? “You gave her up.”

“God,” Sam muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and holding on tightly enough to make her
knuckles white. “I could cheerfully kill your mother right now.”

“Too late,” he said tightly. “She died a couple of years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

“No,” she said, nodding. “I’m not. I’m frustrated. I’d like to look her in the eye and then spit in it. I’d like to run her down in the street, then back up and do it again. I’d like to—”

He understood. Hell, he’d like nothing better than to face down the old bat himself. But he couldn’t. And since it was pointless and he knew Sam, Jeff interrupted the litany before she could get on a roll. “Why’d you give Emma up?”

She blew out a breath and tightened the death grip on her own arms even further. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“No choice?” he countered. Waving both hands to encompass the big old house and the family she’d told him so much about, he said, “What happened to the great Marconis? They wouldn’t support you? They
made
you give Emma up?”

“No.”

That wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted more. Wanted to get into the head of the eighteen-year-old girl she’d been and find out just why she’d thrown everything away. Why she’d been so eager to lose not only him, but their child. He told himself it shouldn’t matter to him. It was nine years ago. They were different now.
He
was different, now. But it did matter.

Too damn much.

“Then why?” he demanded, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her around to face him. “Why would you
give her up? You used to talk about having a houseful of kids. I remember because it terrified me. I can’t imagine anything making you walk away from your child.
Our
child.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.” She released her death grip on her own arms and used both hands to push at his chest until she was free of him. But Jeff could still feel her. His fingertips still hummed with that too-brief burst of electricity that arced between them.

It had always been like that with Sam. Instant awareness, the buzz of lust and the thirst for more. Once had never been enough when it came to Sam. They’d walked through most days like sleepwalkers because they’d been awake half the night devouring each other. Those memories were suddenly all too vivid in his mind, and with a hell of an effort, he deliberately shut them down.

Get a grip
, he told himself. This wasn’t about him and Sam. Not now. It hadn’t been for a long time. There was no “them” anymore.

“Maybe you don’t,” he admitted, his voice cool, reserved, as he fought for his legendary control and then found it, wrapping it around him like a cashmere blanket. “But you sure as hell owe Emma one and I’d like to hear it.”

She stiffened. From the tips of her toes to the top of her head. It was as if she’d suddenly been nailed to a wall. She was so still, the only way he was sure she was drawing breath was that she hadn’t toppled over from lack of oxygen. Her features were frozen, but her eyes were alive with memory. With pain. Regret.

And for a minute, Jeff felt bad about asking. But
dammit, didn’t he have a right to know? He’d spent the last nine years thinking that the woman he’d thought he knew had been a stranger. He’d believed that what they’d felt, shared, enjoyed, had been a lie.

Didn’t he at least deserve to know the truth? Didn’t they
both
deserve that?

She inhaled sharply. “What have you told Emma about me?”

He sighed. Apparently, her truth was going to wait for another day. Pushing one hand through his hair again, he answered, “I said her mother wanted to keep her, but she couldn’t. I told her you loved her.”

Sam’s shoulders drooped as if the weight of the world had just slipped off, leaving her exhausted. “Thanks for that much.”

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Emma.”

She nodded. “Thanks anyway.”

“You’re welcome.”

She leaned forward, unlocked the window, and lifted the sash. Instantly, a cold sea breeze darted inside, as if it had been poised on the other side of the glass, awaiting its chance. The muted roar of the ocean sounded like a heartbeat and the wind chime jangled with abandon.

“I want to see her,” Sam said, never taking her gaze off the gnarled trunk and branches of the tree in front of her.

“You have seen her.” Stupid. He knew just what she meant and he should have been expecting it. But then, how could he have? He’d assumed all these years that Sam wasn’t interested in their daughter. Now . . . things were different. Now, she’d want to know the child. Spend time with her.