Never Again Good-Bye (3 page)

Chapter Three

L
es’s rage vanished as an expression of complete shock leached the blood from his face. He dropped his hand and stumbled back, then ran a shaky hand through his tousled hair. “You,” he whispered after a moment. “You were her mother?”

Laney wiped her tears and turned away, pressing her face against the wall. Her voice was a high-pitched, broken stream of words. “The birth certificate … and the adoption papers … are on the table with the pictures. They’re proof.”

She heard him shuffling papers behind her, his uneven breath that of a man whose worst fears had been realized. He groaned when he saw the proof. “How? How did you get these? The file was supposed to be sealed.”

“I have money.” Her voice steadied to a lifeless monotone. “I used it.”

The seconds ticked by, and she felt him reviewing the signs that told him she was no imposter. “I should have seen it,” he whispered brokenly. “She looks like you. Black hair, dark eyes, small frame, the trace of Indian heritage …” He turned away and expelled a jagged sigh. “You can’t have her back. She’s mine.”

The words ripped through her. She swung around, and her voice was barely audible with the force of its soft anguish. “Don’t you think I know that?” she sobbed. “I gave up my rights to her seven years ago, whether I wanted to or not. She’s a happy child. I’d rather die than spoil that.”

He studied her for a moment, gauging her eyes for something he could trust, something he could believe in, then dropped his focus to his tennis shoe. “How do I know I can believe you? You’ve lied to me about everything so far.”

“I’m not lying about this. What more have I got to lose?”

What more have I got to lose?
Heaven help me, Wes thought. Amy was all he had left. Absolutely all. He focused his misting eyes on the ceiling and bit his lip until he drove out the color. “I want you to stay away from her. You’ve got your precious pictures, but I don’t want you anywhere near her again.”

“Don’t worry,” Laney said ruefully. “She thinks I’m a criminal now, remember? She saw the police taking me away yesterday.”

“Just the same, I want you to stay away from her.” He clenched his hand and pressed it against his mouth. A vein in his neck throbbed, and the muscles in his temples tightened. “If it wasn’t to take Amy, then why did you come back here?”

Her shaking hand went up to dry her eyes in vain, and she walked across the room to drop onto the sofa. “Because it’s my home. I grew up here.”

“What about your work?”

“I quit my job in Houston. I worked in the advertising department of a department store, and I do freelance photography on the side.”

“So you came back here without a job, just because it’s where you grew up? Why now, after seven years?”

Laney dried her face with both hands and met his piercing gaze. How could she tell him that her father’s death had triggered her need to right things, that until he died she had been emotionally dead and dictated over, even though she hadn’t seen him in years. “As long as I leave Amy alone, Mr. Grayson, it’s none of your business why I came back here. The fact is that I’m staying.”

Wes took a few steps closer and leaned over her, the pulse in his neck throbbing visibly. “I don’t like it. I want you out of this town. I have enough problems without worrying what you’ll do next.”

“Take my word for it,” she choked. “You’ll probably never even see me again.”

“Take your word for it,” he repeated with disgust. “Under the circumstances, that’s a little easier said than done.”

“Try,” she said. “I’d never hurt my daughter by trying to take her from the only family she knows.”

Wes shifted and began to pace the floor, studied her at each turn, then slowed to a stop. “It looks like I don’t have a choice. I can’t force you to leave or to sign in blood that you’ll make no claim on her, can I? You’ve backed me into a corner, and I have to trust you.”

“That’s right,” she said quietly. “You have to trust me.”

He rubbed a hand over his chin, and she noted the brown stubble that looked surprisingly dark against a complexion growing pastier by the moment.

“I hope you’re a decent person,” he said on a ragged sigh.

“I am,” she said, lifting her chin with an unmistakable degree of pride. “It took me a long time to believe that, but I am.”

Their eyes locked for a moment, and she knew he wanted desperately to believe her, to leave her house and not look back. He had to trust blindly, the way she had had to do when she left Shreveport seven years before, praying the adoptive parents were decent people. Wes swallowed with great effort, as though all his anger and fears were trapped at the back of his throat. Finally he nodded his head and started toward the double oak doors.

“Mr. Grayson?”

He stopped, leaned against the door, then reluctantly turned back to her.

Laney struggled with the question, but finally it stumbled out. “Does Amy know she’s adopted?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her hands for a moment. Bringing her misty eyes back to his, she shrugged. “She’s so beautiful and so well-adjusted. Happy.” Her throat filled, raising her pitch, but the words had to be said. “You and your wife are doing a wonderful job with her. I’m very grateful for that. Would you … would you thank her for me?”

Wes Grayson’s own eyes glossed over, glimmering with a deep sadness Laney didn’t understand until he spoke. “My wife’s been dead for a year,” he said. Then he opened the door and was gone.

L
aney lay in bed that night staring into the darkness, fresh misery weighing on her heart for all the tragedies she had encountered in her life. Her mother’s death came back to her, and the nights she lay in this bed awake for months afterward, groping for some reason that she deserved such severe punishment. She remembered the years that followed when her father’s inability to love her had kept him distant, and the way she had tried so hard to please him in everything she’d done. But he had been a hard man, and during those years she had succeeded at nothing except failing him.

She wondered if it was that way for Amy—if she lay in bed at night weeping for her mother until she fell asleep. She wondered if Wes Grayson was the type of man who could be both mother and father to a little girl, or if Amy, too, would never quite measure up to all the things he demanded in return for having to raise her alone. She tried to put herself in Amy’s shoes, and tears sprang to her eyes again. Did the little girl—who knew one mother had given her up and that a second had been taken from her—have any faith in relationships at all? Was she able to trust love, or would she grow up wary of attachments, just as Laney was? Did Wes Grayson have that wisdom in his heart that could heal the child and allow her to accept something that could never be explained? Or would she, like Laney, hand herself over, heart, body, and soul to the first boy she met who offered her the slightest hint of affection?

She got out of bed and went back to the dining room to the photographs still scattered on the table, and as it often did, her mind strayed to the boy she had been in love with over seven years ago until he had offered her money for an abortion then abandoned her when she refused.

She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the image that reeled inevitably through her mind: the coldness in her father’s eyes as her body had changed from month to month; his quiet determination to take the matter out of her hands the moment the baby was born; the horror of the empty hospital cradle where her baby was supposed to be. She had never gotten over the helpless feeling of her father’s betrayal and the finality of her loss.

It was her punishment, she admitted, wiping her eyes and looking down at the pictures again. She had bought into the lie that free love had no price and that one night wouldn’t make a difference. She had believed that it was her body, her life, her future, and that the choice the two of them had made that night wouldn’t harm anyone. Now there was a child across town who had lost two mothers.

Abandoning the pictures, Laney went back to her bedroom. The dusty pink shades of dawn invaded her room, lifting the dark and bringing with it a longing to set things right. She had promised Wes that she wouldn’t make a claim on the child, and she had meant it. But that was before she’d known that Amy was being raised by a single father. That changed everything.

She lay down on her side, staring at the phone beside her bed. More tears of confusion and turmoil rolled out of her eyes. She wanted her baby back, she thought. She wanted to hold her and help to heal her grieving little heart. She wanted more than anything for Amy to know that she still had a mother.

A
my’s mother, Wes thought as he sat in the rocker in his bedroom watching dawn color the walls. His arms were securely wrapped around his sleeping daughter, who had awakened crying during the night. He had brought her into his room and rocked her until she fell back to sleep. They had both struggled with the lonely void left in their lives since Patrice had died, and they were just beginning to get past the pain. But times like this, when disaster struck and fears and worries threatened to overwhelm him, Wes missed her most of all.

Closing his eyes, he rested his chin on Amy’s head and reached with his heart toward the only true source of comfort he knew.

“Please protect my little girl, Lord,” he whispered. “She’s had so much pain.”

Tears rolled down his face, and he looked helplessly up, as though he could see right through the ceiling into heaven. As though it had been poured into him, he felt a terrible compassion for the woman who’d been pregnant at eighteen, and spent the next seven years wondering about her child.

“Take care of Laney,” he whispered. “Give her peace. Let her know she did a good thing by giving Amy to us.”

He looked down at his daughter, her sweeping fringe of black lashes, her full, pink lips, her trailing black hair that his wife had rarely cut, her dark complexion. Amy would grow up to look exactly like Laney, he thought. She would be beautiful.

The telephone rang, and he picked it up before a second ring could disturb Amy. “Hello,” he said quietly.

“Mr. Grayson, this is Laney Fields.”

He swallowed and didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry to call you so early, but I’d like to meet you somewhere this morning. I’ve been thinking, and we need to talk.”

He hesitated. “I thought we’d covered everything.”

“I’d still like to meet you.”

Wes tightened his hold on his daughter, as if that would keep them both safe. “What about?”

“About Amy, of course.”

She’s changed her mind, he thought, his heart collapsing. His hand instinctively stroked Amy’s arm. “You said I’d never see you again. You said—”

“I know what I said, Mr. Grayson,” Laney whispered. “But there were things I didn’t know then.”

“Things?” he asked, his lips tightening. “What kinds of things?”

“I’d rather discuss this in person,” she said. “Can we meet somewhere at ten o’clock?”

“I have a daughter,” he bit out. “When you’re a parent you can’t just pick up and leave when you want to. I’ll have to get a baby-sitter.”

She was silent for a moment, letting him know she had felt the blow. “Will you be able to meet me or not?”

“All right,” he said, realizing she wouldn’t stop tormenting him until he did. “I’ll get a baby-sitter and meet you at ten. At Brittany’s Cafe on Third Street.” He heard her hang up, listened for the dial tone, and stared at the receiver. She
had
changed her mind, he thought with a climbing sense of panic, just like he knew she would.

But if it cost him every ounce of strength he had, he would not let Laney Fields disrupt the life he had maintained for his child.