Hidden Legacy (14 page)

Briana nodded, played three of her five cards and discarded.

“How come?”

“Because she didn’t know about the game. She said she didn’t like it.”

Yet, she had done nothing to report the kidnapping, nothing to help Briana, or relieve Juliana’s own anxieties. The slow flame of anger sparked inside her. She curled her fists into her lap, rubbed her knuckles against the coarse material of her jeans.

“What did you do while you were at Willy’s?”

“We watched movies.”

Lucas tapped the video case on the table. “
The Princess and the Frog
?”

“Yeah, that’s my favorite.”

“What part do you like best?” Lucas played his turn.

“The beginning.”

“How come?”

“Tiana she likes to cook, just like me.”

Lucas’s face animated with exaggerated surprise. “Hey, me, too! Spaghetti is my favorite.”

“Yeah, me, too!”

In that moment, Briana’s face looked so much like Lucas’s, Juliana’s breath faltered. Father and daughter should have been this way from the start. She should have tried harder to find him after Briana was born. Her brother would have helped her, but she’d been too proud to admit she’d made mistakes, too hurt to ask for help.

Briana leaned forward over her fan of cards and whispered conspiratorially. “Willy told me
five
bedtime stories.”

Five bedtime stories. She must have been in heaven! Briana devoured books, and the librarians knew her well, kept back special books they thought she would enjoy under the counter for her. Knew her well enough to help a stranger kidnap her from her safe home. Anger sparked once more. Then flamed higher. She tried to squelch it, tried to remain calm, but the heat of it radiated outward, her breathing got shallower. She couldn’t let go of the betrayal, of how easy it had been to steal away her daughter.

“Five. Wow! He must be really good at telling stories,” Lucas continued.

Briana nodded. “Yeah, really good.”

“What else did you and Willy do?”

“We played Skip-Bo.” She wrinkled her nose. “Willy’s not very good at cards. I won every single time. We cooked for Bijou. That’s his dog. She’s little. I can hold her in my lap just like a cat. She’s old. I think she’s going to die. Just like Whiskers.”

“Whiskers?”

“My old cat. He died.”

They played a few more rounds in silence.

“What does Willy look like?” Lucas asked, pretending fierce concentration on his play.

Briana’s gaze narrowed. Her head tilted as she pondered the question with a finger on her lip. “He kind of looks like Mr. T.”

Lucas slanted Juliana a questioning look.

“Albert Tilton,” Juliana clarified. The Phantom’s resemblance to Albert had been another way to gain a child’s trust. Another way to scramble the lines between stranger and friend. She shackled her explosive need to lash out at someone. A knot lodged in her chest. “Briana calls Albert and Ella Mr. and Mrs. T. because she couldn’t pronounce Tilton when she was younger.”

Lucas placed a twelve on the stack. Briana swept the finished pile away and placed it to the side.

“What kind of game did Willy want to play with your Mom?” Lucas asked, drawing more cards.

“She likes to play hide-and-seek with me, so Willy said we’d make a really big game and when I yelled ‘surprise!,’ Mommy would be happy.”

A game! To the Phantom this had been nothing more than a game. To Briana this had been nothing more than hide-and-seek. To Lucas this had been nothing more than an opportunity to catch a thief.

Juliana’s control over her anger snapped. Heat spread through her like a wildfire, speeding her breath, racing her thoughts, clouding her judgment. How could they all think of this as a game, when to her it had been the worst two days of her life? If she’d lost Briana….

“I was happy, honey,” Juliana said. She reached for her daughter and hugged her tightly. Her throat ached from the bitterness of her resentment against her naiveté. Fooling them both had been so easy. “I really was. But I don’t think I want to play a big game of hide-and-seek ever again, okay?”

“Okay, but Mom, you’re hurting me.”

Juliana loosened her hug and grasped Briana’s shoulders, suddenly desperate to make Briana understand the enormity of what had happened. “This wasn’t a good game. You have to understand. This can’t happen again. Ever. You know better than to go anywhere with a stranger.”

Briana frowned up at her. “Willy’s not a stranger.”

Juliana shook Briana’s shoulders slightly. “I’ve told you and told you that you have to ask permission before going anywhere with anybody.”

Briana’s bottom lip drooped into a pout. “It was a surprise, Mommy. You like hide-and-seek.”

“I don’t like the idea that someone can take you away from me so easily.”

Briana’s gaze dropped to her cards. Her lower lip trembled.

Juliana’s grasp tightened. “Do you understand, Briana? Do you understand how worried I was? How scared I was?”

“Juliana—”

“No, you stay out of this.” Her gaze snapped to Lucas, and she unleashed her arsoned feelings at him. “This is between my daughter and me. I’ve taught her. I’ve told her. She knows better than this. Yet he took her away from me.”

He rose. “Juliana—”

She ignored him. Tears stung her eyes. “I thought you were never coming back, Briana. I don’t ever want you to do anything like this again. Is that understood?”

Briana’s gaze narrowed and hardened. “It was a game!”

“It was a
bad
game.”

Briana threw her cards on the table, knocking over the glass of milk. As she got up to run from the room, her forgotten magazine tumbled from her lap to the floor.

Her sobs, as she stomped up the stairs toward her room, were like a slap in the face. The fire gushing through Juliana’s veins quenched instantly, leaving behind a sick feeling.

She had hurt Briana.

She’d wanted to protect her daughter from all the pain of the world, and instead, she herself had hurt her.

Willy had played hide-and-seek with her. Lucas had played cards with her. She had been unable to control her fury and done the unthinkable—she’d lashed out at the most important person in her life. “Oh, God. What have I done?”

Chapter 8

Juliana sprang up to follow Briana upstairs, but as she passed Lucas, still standing beside his chair, he grabbed her wrist. She pulled, but he held her firm.

“Let her go,” he said.

“She’s my daughter. She needs me.” She tugged harder. His insistent grip did not waver. He moved slowly, deliberately, a wall now between her and Briana. A bullet of panic ricocheted through her.

“She needs to be alone for a little while,” he said. “And you need to cool down.”

She looked at her captive wrist, felt her pulse beat against the warmth of his skin, the steel of his determination. “She’s hurt. She needs her mother.”

“She’s hurt. She needs time.”

With slow, unerring precision, he closed the space between them. She stiffened against the sudden surge of need to be held, to be comforted. The scent of him, the heat of him, the memories of him twined with the guilt, the fear, the worry, making her dizzy. She tried to back away. He captured her other wrist.

“Give her a few minutes.” His voice, like music from a snake charmer’s flute, shivered down her spine.

She turned her head away, peered at the stairs, then closed her eyes, held her breath. She was twenty-two again, awkward, confused, needful. No, that part of her life was over, done. The intoxication of youthful passion had drawn her to Lucas. She knew better than that now. She was all grown up, a business owner, a mother responsible for a child’s welfare.

“How can you presume to tell me what’s best for my child?” Juliana said in an explosion of loosed breath. “What do you know about kids?”

“About Briana—practically nothing. About children—a thing or two.”

“How?” Turning her wrists over, she pressed her hands against his chest, intending to push away. Instead his heartbeat drummed under her right palm and she flattened her fingers against the strong familiar rhythm. Safe.

“My sister has four of them. She lives in Florida, and when I was in Miami, I spent a lot of time with them.”

“Briana has cousins?” Like a balloon pricked with a pin, something burst inside of her. The thought of nieces and nephews had never occurred to her.

“An aunt. An uncle. A whole family.”

Her mouth opened in a silent gasp. She’d deprived Briana, not just of a father, but of the thing she’d been trying to build since her own mother’s death. Family. Picnics and laughter and teasing. Holiday chaos. Love.

“A grandmother, too.”

Lips trembling, she looked into Lucas’s eyes. “A grandmother.”

Her own Grandma Bea had been a small imp of a woman who knew how to turn any occasion into a special memory. Sharing a birthday tea in a fancy Boston restaurant. Shopping for that special Easter dress. Baking gingerbread girls to hang on the Christmas tree. What was Lucas’s mother like?

“A grandfather?” she asked.

He shook his head. His eyes clouded with pain. “My father was killed while attempting to arrest a bank robber when I was fifteen.”

She hadn’t known. She should have known. A bruise nicked her heart. She knew small, inconsequential things about him. He squeezed the toothpaste tube from the middle. He liked spicy foods and ice cream. He was slow to fall asleep, fast to awake. But she knew precious little about what had made him who he was. “In Hopewell?”

“In Hopewell.” Hopewell was a small town, smaller than Aubery. If any place should have been safe, Hopewell was it. Was no place safe at all?

Lucas stroked the inside of her wrists with his thumbs. Heat spread through her like molten gold, settled low in her belly, and thrummed an echo of his caress. She meant to shift position, to create more space between them, but when her head moved, it slanted naturally into the crook of his neck and rested in the comforting spot seemingly created especially for it. Secure.

Tears wanting to shed burned in the knot in her chest. Her body sighed as it fitted snug like a puzzle piece against Lucas’s body. His answer was bold, unmistakably hard against her stomach.
No, no, no
, her mind rebelled.
Not now. Not with him
. But she could not move away from the comfort of his solid warmth.

“I hurt her,” she whispered, ignoring her body’s longings for the past, concentrating on the present. Her heart felt too heavy for her chest. Blinking, she tried to stop the tears from falling, but they ignored her and coursed wet and hot down her cheek. “I just wanted her to know how serious what she’d done was.”

She swallowed hard. In the heat of her anguish, she’d been cruel. Not once, but twice. “I hurt you.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her, but there was compassion in his eyes. “Deeply.”

She slipped her arms around his waist and held on tight, wanting with all her might to turn back the clock. “I never meant to.”

His hands cupped her nape, his thumbs tilted her chin up. A furrow of pain creased his forehead. “Why?”

“I thought….” She looked down, shook her head against his neck, felt his breath hot against her hair. “I thought I was doing what was best for all of us.” Mistakes. She’d made so many of them in her quest to protect her daughter. Her throat ached. Her chest felt as if it were bleeding. “It made sense then….”

“But not now.”

“I was wrong,” she admitted. “By the time I realized you had a right to know, you were gone. Your office… they wouldn’t tell me where you were. I thought you didn’t want me to find you.”

“I didn’t know.” He leaned back, separating them so he could look at her.

“After she was born.” She shrugged. “I wanted you to know. I wanted her to know you.”

“Yesterday?”

Was it only yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime. “You’re FBI. He’d told me not to contact the police. That he would hurt her. I was afraid for Briana’s safety. She had to come first.”