If I Trust You (If You Come Back To Me #4) (10 page)

“I don’t know why I did it exactly—they would be mad at me for getting out of bed—but I got my crutches and left my room anyway. There was something really strange about Dad coming home. The atmosphere in the house seemed charged. I wanted to see Dad, to make sure everything was okay, even if I did get in trouble. I loved him so much….”

Nick cradled the back of her head with his hand and kissed the top of her head. “You don’t have to go on if it’s too upsetting to you,” he said gruffly. She realized belatedly that she’d dropped into a whisper and finally faded off as she told her story.

“No. I want to tell you,” she said, her voice stronger now. She’d never done this before, never spoken aloud the details of the night that had changed her life forever. She’d told some of the crucial details to Lincoln, but had kept things brief out of respect for his weakened condition and his profound love for Brigit Kavanaugh.

“The door was partially open to my parents’ bedroom,” she continued. “It didn’t take long for me to recognize I shouldn’t go barging in there. My dad wasn’t shouting, but I’d never heard him sound the way he did that night. Tense. Desperate. I remember the tone of his voice scared me, even before I understood the details of what he was saying.”

A thought occurred to her and she lifted her head, staring at Nick’s shadowed face. “I was going to say, ‘do you know what it’s like to hear something and feel like your entire world was just yanked away from beneath your feet?’ and then I realized of course you know exactly how that feels. You lost your parents.”

He reached up and slid his thumb across her cheek, drying her tears. His serious, compassionate expression gave her the courage she required to continue.

“I listened to my father accusing my mother of having an affair. I heard him telling her that I couldn’t be his biological daughter and he sounded so hurt...like he was wild with the pain of it. He didn’t say anything about Marc, Colleen or Liam. Just
me,
” she said in a pressured whisper. She put her cheek back on Nick’s chest. “
I
couldn’t be my father’s daughter. Then, my mother admitted there was a chance it was true.”

“You must have been so confused...shocked.”

“I felt like I was dreaming.”

“But your mother didn’t mention she’d had an affair with Lincoln DuBois specifically?”

Deidre shook her head. “All she said was there was a chance I was another man’s child. Then my father told her in no uncertain terms there wasn’t just a chance. His and my blood types proved it as an unassailable fact. I didn’t know the identity of my biological father until Liam completed his investigation last summer. I’ve learned since that my mom told my father the name of the man she’d had an affair with on that night, but that was after I’d fled the scene. I asked my mother afterward. Many times. She refused to tell me my natural father’s identity for all these years.”

“It must have devastated you, hearing that as a kid,” Nick said.

“I was confused. Disoriented. I remember I went back to my room and just lay there, staring up at the ceiling. I heard my father leave and thought I should do something. Go and demand the truth from my mother...something. But I was numb. Scared. I didn’t want to believe it was true. Being a Kavanaugh was such a central part of my identity. I adored my father. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening to me...my family...the whole structure of my life.

“I eventually couldn’t stand it anymore, lying there helpless. I grabbed my crutches and my keys and headed out. My mother heard me leaving, but I had a head start on her. I got in my car and drove. I’m not even sure where I went that night, but I had to get away. I learned later that my mother had also driven the streets and country roads, looking for both of us—Derry and me.”

She paused, lost in her memories. “I eventually returned home...but my dad never did.”

Nick’s body tensed beneath hers. She felt the pressure of his hand on her chin and she lifted her head to meet his stare.

“Do you mean to tell me that was the same night as the accident? Your father died
that
night?”

She nodded. Pain tightened his features.

“Ah, Deidre...” he muttered, his voice thick with regret and compassion. He drew her tighter into his embrace and held her while she wept.

Later, after her tears ebbed, he laid her on her back and leaned over her. He kissed her cheeks, drying her tears. His lips on her mouth were tender as well, but Deidre laced her fingers through the hair at his nape and deepened the kiss, needing his passion at that moment...starved for it.

He lifted his head after a while and stared down at her. “You must have felt orphaned on that night,” he said.

“I don’t want to compare my experience to yours, but I did feel orphaned, in many ways,” she admitted.

He nodded once. “You’re not alone, Deidre. You’re not alone.”

She watched his dark head, spellbound, as he leaned down to kiss the upper curve of her right breast. He opened his mouth over the turgid crest. Pleasure and warmth inundated her. His tongue laved her nipple, and the sad memories scattered to the periphery of her consciousness. Only the present existed...and Nick.

She sighed his name and surrendered to the magic of his touch.

* * *

After they’d made love again, Nick drifted off to sleep, his head resting on her chest, his arms surrounding her. Deidre lay there for a while, drowsy and transfixed by the sensation of his warm, even breath on her breast.

After a while, she very carefully extricated herself from his arms, taking pains not to awaken him. She grabbed her robe and quietly left the bedroom. The forms for the Vivicor acquisition lay exactly where Nick had tossed them on the coffee table.

She bit at the top of the pen, hesitant for only a moment, before she placed the tip to the paper and signed her name.

* * *

Deidre awoke the next morning slowly, swimming in a sea of drowsy, sensual lassitude.

She smiled, her eyes still closed, when she recalled last night in vivid detail. She’d returned to bed after signing the forms and drifted off to sleep with Nick’s scent in her nose. In the middle of the night, she’d been awakened by his touch. They’d lost themselves in one another again. Nick made love like he was reputed to do business. He was astonishingly patient at times, demanding and relentless at others, so brilliantly talented at his task that it made her toes curl beneath the sheets to remember.

She quickly turned over, both nervous and eager to see the man she’d grown so close to during the night in the light of dawn. Her heart seemed to drop an inch in her chest cavity when she realized she was alone in bed.

“Nick?” she called.

Something about the flat, answering silence told her she was utterly alone in the cottage. Where had he gone? She scooted to the opposite side of the bed when she saw a note propped against the lamp. She quickly scanned the note written in a narrow, slanting hand.

You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t have the heart to wake you.

I noticed you signed the papers. You didn’t have to do that, but thanks. I need to fly up to Detroit for a meeting, but I’ll be back late this afternoon. Will you have dinner with me at The Embers tonight? Seven o’clock? I’ll pick you up at six forty-five.

Nick

P.S. I should feel guilty about keeping you up last night when I know how much you need your rest, but I’ll admit I’m having a hell of a hard time regretting it.

Deidre smiled. She sprang out of bed, suddenly feeling as energetic and cheerful as a sixteen-year-old girl on the morning of her first date.

The first thing she did when she walked into the living room was turn on the lights on the Christmas tree. The second thing was turn on some holiday music. Not even her doubts about the wisdom of sleeping with Nick—of exposing her soul to him—could dampen her mood.

She took a hot shower; dressed in jeans, a fitted T-shirt and a flannel shirt; and called Colleen at the Family Center.

“I have a clothing emergency,” Deidre said.

“Clothing emergency?”

“Yes. I need something to wear to dinner tonight at The Embers,” she said, referring to the upscale restaurant in the Starling Hotel.

“Are you talking about a date?” Colleen demanded.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” Deidre mumbled. Colleen had insinuated she should consider Nick as more than her adversary. Deidre was a little embarrassed to admit to her sister just how drastically she’d altered her viewpoint of Nick. Maybe Colleen would be concerned that she’d taken things too far.

They arranged to meet at Colleen’s house during her lunch hour. She said goodbye to her sister and was hanging up her phone when she heard a knock on the front door.

Her heart lurched with excitement. Had Nick decided not to go to Detroit? The knock came again. It wasn’t Nick’s bold knock, Deidre realized, but a crisp, feminine one.

“Mom,” she mouthed soundlessly when she saw Brigit Kavanaugh standing on the porch.

Chapter Seven

B
rigit smiled. “I thought I better come and see you in person. Apparently, you’re not much of a phone person,” her mother said, arching her eyebrows.

Deidre stepped back and waved her mother inside. She studied her unobtrusively as she took her coat and hung it. Brigit looked healthy and vibrant dressed in a dark blue sweater and a scarf with gray dress pants. Her mother had always been chic and effortlessly lovely, but her health had recently been a source of concern for her sons and daughters. When Marc had told her about Brigit’s mild heart attack last year, Deidre had had a wild urge to jump on a plane and return to Michigan. To this day, Deidre didn’t know if she hadn’t because she was still angry or because she was afraid she wouldn’t know what to say to her mother after all these years.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Deidre asked awkwardly.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Please, sit down,” Deidre said, nodding toward the breakfast nook.

“Odd that it should come to this,” Brigit said with a small smile. “Mother and daughter, talking to one another like acquaintances.”

Deidre paused in the action of filling the teakettle. “Odd? Maybe. Understandable though.”

“You were a girl when you left Harbor Town,” Brigit said, twisting in her chair to face Deidre. “You’re a woman, now. Surely time has given some perspective to your hurt about what you discovered on the night of Derry’s death. Or maybe I can’t help but be hopeful that it has.”

Deidre set the teapot on the lit stove and approached Brigit slowly. “Are you suggesting that my anger at learning that I wasn’t Derry’s daughter was the melodramatics of a teenager, Mom? Dad died later that night because he’d discovered the same thing. Dad was a grown man, tough as nails. He was
destroyed
by that news.”

“No...no, of course I’m not suggesting that,” Brigit hurried to say. Her elegant throat convulsed as she swallowed. She waved toward a chair. “Sit down, Deidre. We haven’t spoken to one another in private for a long, long time.”

“Not since the night before I left Harbor Town, the night you refused to tell me my biological father’s name,” Deidre agreed, a hint of a challenge in her tone. Nevertheless, she sat down at the table next to her mother, her backbone rigid. Brigit met her stare and gave her a trembling smile.

“You have no idea now happy I was to see you at Liam and Natalie’s dress rehearsal,” she said feelingly.

“You shouldn’t assume anything by it beyond the obvious. I came for Liam’s wedding.”

Brigit shook her head slowly. “No, Deidre.”

“What do you mean,
no?
”

Brigit placed her hand on top of hers. It felt soft and warm next to her skin...a kind touch, a mother’s touch. “We may be acting like strangers, but that’s a lie. You’re my daughter. I know you as well as I know my own name. Don’t you think I remember how fierce you can be, and yet how generous?”

A band seemed to tighten around Deidre’s throat. She didn’t know if she was generous or forgiving. She didn’t know
what
she was.

“Remember Leslie Warden?” Brigit asked.

Deidre blinked, surprised by the question and the name from the far past.

“She and her friends bullied you nonstop one summer between your third and fourth grade year. You stood up for yourself, though. You never backed down. And when Leslie pushed too hard one day, you gave her a bloody nose,” Brigit recalled, caressing her hand.

“You and Dad grounded me for three weeks when you found out,” Deidre remembered in a tight voice.

“We found out because you confessed it to us. You were beyond regretful. You were distraught. Between your sobs, Derry and I finally figured out that you were horrified you’d caused all that blood...all that pain. After that, you made it your mission to make things right with Leslie Warden. Your father and I never said a word to you about it. We didn’t have to. You were fixed and determined about making up with that girl. And you did. The two of you were friends after that for years, even though she was a Harbor Town year-rounder and you only came during the summers. You may be fierce in your anger, Deidre, but you also possess one of the most forgiving spirits I’ve ever known. You wouldn’t have returned to Harbor Town if you wanted this rift between us to continue.”

“A lot can change about a person in half a lifetime,” Deidre said, holding her mother’s stare. “Circumstances can stretch a person’s ability for forgiveness beyond tolerance.”

“Like Lincoln’s death, for instance?”

“Like Lincoln’s death after I’d only had the chance to know him for three months,” Deidre corrected. The teakettle began to whine. Her mother leaned toward her, her blue eyes moist.

“I can’t change it, Deidre. I’ve wished I’d done things differently a thousand times over since you left Harbor Town. I’ve made myself sick with regrets. I know you probably don’t want to hear it, but I thought I was doing what was best for you and Derry. Think of the heartache I’d have caused by confessing about the affair.”

“That may have been true until I was a teenager, Mom, but what about after Dad died? I can’t
believe
you were
never
planning to tell me the identity of my biological father. You knew Lincoln would have wanted to know me,” she burst out heatedly.

“I considered telling you, but you’ve refused to speak to me all these years. You wouldn’t come home. When I understood from your brothers and sister that you’d never revealed to them what you’d overheard on the night Derry and I argued, I assumed I was doing what you would have wanted by not speaking of it. I thought that
my
secret had become
yours
.”

Deidre just stared, taken aback by her mother’s pressured admission.

Brigit leaned back in her chair and gave a sigh thick with regret. “I caused worse heartache by having things come out the way they did,” Brigit continued in a quieter tone. “I
know
that. I have to live with that—knowing I hurt you and Derry and Lincoln. I live with that every day, every hour. I’m not asking you to alleviate that pain, because no one can. That’s my burden to bear.”

“Lincoln forgave you,” Deidre blurted out, surprising herself.

Brigit nodded slowly.

“You knew?” Deidre whispered.

“He contacted me after you went to his house in South Lake and told him what Liam had discovered.”

“What did Lincoln say?”

“Just what you said. That he forgave me for what I’d done. And that...”

“What?” Deidre prompted when Brigit’s voice faded.

“That he wanted to see me again,” said Brigit, now staring out the breakfast nook windows toward the vast lake.

“Did you? See him again?” Deidre asked, dazed. Surely she would have known if her mother had come to The Pines while she was there.

Brigit blinked and met her stare. “I never spoke with Lincoln. Not once since I left him years ago in Lake Tahoe. I never broke that vow to myself. He left a message on my answering machine at the house a few months back. That’s how I knew he’d forgiven me.”

“You
wanted
to see him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” Brigit replied with a sad smile.

“Why didn’t you go then?”

Brigit sighed, seeming to search for the words. It struck Deidre her mother was having difficulty expressing herself because she’d never spoken her feelings aloud.

How lonely she must be.

“Lincoln was my dear friend. He loved me unconditionally. I didn’t deserve that. Not after I refused to see him again and reconciled with Derry. Not after I’d deprived him of you.”

Deidre stared. Her mother was saying she believed it was her punishment to be deprived of the unconditional love of a man who had always adored her. Part of Deidre agreed with Brigit’s self-imposed penance. Another part ached for her mother so much it nearly stole her breath.

Brigit touched her hand again. “Something Lincoln said in the message he left a few months back made me think he’d accepted you as his child.”

“He did,” Deidre whispered. “He’s made me his heir, to his fortune and to his company, along with Nick Malone.”

Brigit gasped.

“You truly loved Lincoln, didn’t you?” Deidre asked, reading the truth in her mother’s startled expression and haunted eyes.

Brigit gripped at her hand, and Deidre found herself clutching back this time. “I loved both Derry and Lincoln, but not in the same way. Derry was my soul mate, my only true love. But Lincoln was unwaveringly loyal, the dearest friend of my heart. He understood me, maybe better than Derry ever could. It would have been a comfort to bask in Lincoln’s love and forgiveness. But it just wasn’t meant to be.

“What’s between us is different, Deidre,” Brigit said after a tense silence.

“How so?”

“I could punish myself further by forsaking the incomparable treasure of a daughter. Maybe I would, if it weren’t for one thing. You need me. I can’t imagine how distraught you must be feeling following Lincoln’s death, and then to find out this huge thing—that he’s made you his heir. You must be overwhelmed,” Brigit said feelingly. “A mother is the thing that grounds us, reminds us of who we are. I know I haven’t been that for you for a long, long time, but I want to be that for you again, Deidre. I’ve never known a young woman who needed a loving mother more. And I do love you,” she said hoarsely, her gaze entreating. “Please know that. I feel like a part of myself was cut away when you left my life all those years ago.”

Emotion swelled in Deidre, clogging her throat. She stood abruptly, but Brigit tightened her hold on her hand, halting her.

“You returned to Harbor Town. Isn’t everything we had before all the tragedy enough for us to at least begin talking again? I know I’m far from perfect. I’ve made terrible mistakes. But you’re my daughter. I’m your mother. Can’t we try to start anew?”

The teakettle continued to wail. Deidre started and swiped her hand over a damp cheek. She broke contact with her mother and moved toward the stove.

“At least agree to come for Christmas,” Brigit said. “Please?”

Deidre turned off the gas burner and reached for two cups, hardly aware of what she was doing.

“I’ve upset you. I’ll pass on the tea for now,” Brigit said quietly after a moment. Deidre paused in her senseless task of making tea and glanced at her mother over her shoulder. Brigit had stood and retrieved her coat. “Will you at least
think
about coming to Sycamore Avenue for Christmas?”

Deidre looked away, moved by the naked longing she’d seen on her mother’s face.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. She stilled beneath Brigit’s soft touch on her shoulder. A moment later, she heard the front door close quietly.

After her mother’s visit, she felt drained. Colleen noted her preoccupation later when they met at her house for lunch, mistaking it for exhaustion.

“You seem tired. I thought you said you were feeling much better when we spoke on the phone earlier,” Colleen said as she led Deidre to her bedroom.

“I am. It’s just...Mom stopped by the cottage earlier.”

Colleen paused in the entry to her bedroom, her expression tense. “She did? How did it go? Not very well, from the looks of things.”

Deidre waved her hand. “You can’t really expect a meeting like that to go
well,
can you? Maybe it’s enough that it went at all.”

Colleen gave her an understanding glance. “All right. I get it. You don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Suffice it to say that Mom asked me to spend Christmas on Sycamore Avenue, and I didn’t say no.”

Colleen’s brows arched appraisingly. “Now that
is
something.” She opened her mouth to say something else, but seemed to reconsider. She swept across the room to her closet. “But so is this date tonight with Nick Malone. We better focus on that.”

“Thank you for helping me. I’m a fashion disaster. I haven’t bought any new clothes since I first moved to Germany. I hate shopping,” Deidre explained as Colleen started pulling dresses off the rack.

Colleen laughed from the interior of her walk-in closet.

“What’s so funny?”

“Sorry.” Colleen grinned. “It just struck me as funny. An heiress who hates to shop.”

“I’ll be kicked out of the billionaire’s club for sure,” Deidre mumbled, rolling her eyes.

“Here. I have the perfect dress. It always ran small on me, but it’ll be just right for you.”

She admired the sophisticated black knit Colleen showed her.

“I’ll even throw in a pair of heels and earrings if you tell me one thing,” Colleen offered.

“Yes?”

“Are you falling for Nick Malone?”

Heat flooded her cheeks. She hadn’t been prepared for the blunt question, but she should have been, given it was Colleen doing the asking.

“I suppose you’d think I was a fool if I was,” Deidre said, holding up the dress and eyeing herself in the vanity mirror, trying to avoid Colleen’s stare.

“I’d think you were a fool if you weren’t,” Colleen corrected crisply. “Not a fool, actually. More like a robot or something. There’s no way a woman wouldn’t be affected by having a man that looks like Nick stare at her the way he stares at you. While we were in Tahoe, you showed a real flair for avoiding Nick. But on the phone this morning, you sounded practically giddy at the idea of a date with him. Something’s going on between you two. Something major.”

Colleen’s knowing glance informed Deidre she might as well forget dissembling. She sighed and tossed the dress on the bed. “All right. I’m...interested in him.” Her cheeks heated even more when she noticed Colleen’s arch expression. “Okay, I’m
really
interested. Am I crazy? Getting involved with Nick Malone, of all people? He may end up taking me to court. I don’t know up from down anymore. When did my life become so complicated? The most difficult thing used to be doing a week of night-shift duty. I’m not sure if Nick even trusts me completely.”

“He wants you though.”

“As if that matters.”

“Do you trust him?” Colleen challenged.

“Yes.” She met Colleen’s stare. “More than I ever have before. I think he’s been up front with me from the beginning. I may not have liked what he’s been saying, but at least he’s been honest.”