by Jaycee Clark
She still didn’t turn, even as she knew he stood just behind her, felt the warmth from his body.
“He didn’t come home that night. I know; I sat up all night on the couch telling myself it would be okay. He came in the next afternoon, looking horrible. I was worried and scared. The damned check still sat on the counter.” She remembered the mass of feelings for that stupid boy. And he had been a boy. “He was just a boy, I suppose, just didn’t get it. I didn’t see it until then. He walked to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, Ella. I’m so sorry,’ and then he walked back to our bedroom. I still thought, poor man. To have parents like that. I think maybe I even said something like that. He said nothing, just got the bag out of the closet and started packing. I realized at some point he was talking to me, telling me that he’d talked to his parents, that he’d bought the apartment for me and it was paid for. I could keep it. And he’d see about getting me more money, so the baby and I wouldn’t ever have to worry.”
“Bastard,” someone said.
She just looked out the dining room window to the courtyard beyond. The setting sun painted the sky periwinkle and peach.
“For a minute, I remember I didn’t understand. He just finished packing, his face a face I didn’t understand. I asked him about the baby. How could he do this? In this century? It wasn’t like we were in the fifties or sixties or whenever. People made their own lives all the damned time now. It was the freaking age of dot-commers, for God’s sake.” She shook her head. “He just looked at me and said, ‘With my family, it would never work. I’m sorry.’ He was sorry. He just left.” She swallowed. “I was so upset. So upset. I remember shaking, thinking some way I could fix this. I could . . . Trying to figure out how I could be better for him. So that I’d be good enough.” She shook her head, felt Quin’s hands settle on her shoulders.
“He was a stupid idiot. And he wasn’t even in the realm of good enough for you.”
“Oh, I know that now, but then I didn’t. The pains woke me up. The bed was bloody. I called an ambulance and Lance. I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.”
“Your mom?” Quinlan asked.
She shook her head. “No, she’d died my sophomore year of college. Left work and someone . . .”
“Killed her, you told me that. I’m sorry,” Quinlan told her.
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “I woke up in the hospital and there was Lance. The doctors were kind, the nurses kind. He just kept saying he was sorry.”
She frowned. “But then, I’d seen, hadn’t I? He wasn’t the man I thought he was. Just a boy who didn’t want to disappoint Mom and Dad, and I wouldn’t want him to, not if I wasn’t important enough to him. I didn’t care at that point. I’d lost my baby.” She turned back to Quinlan. “His parents had the marriage annulled—quietly, of course. They didn’t want anyone to know of his little indiscretion. I kept the money. Sold the apartment and then, later, went back to finish my degree. Bought the house in the Quarter and just . . . cruised along. Loved my life, was content.”
She smiled at him. “Until you. You slammed into me, literally, and nothing was the same after that. I told myself I was stupid. Didn’t I learn the first time? I guess I figured if I left first, then you couldn’t leave me. What he did to me wasn’t easy . . . I remember being so lost. Lance broke my heart. But you—you could have shattered my soul and I knew it from the first. So I left, before I got hurt. Though that was a lie, too. When I asked if you’d told anyone . . . Even though I knew the answer . . . I wanted you to be different, and then I saw, even as I knew and it hurt.” She took a deep breath.
“When I found out about the baby, that was one hell of a surprise. I picked up the phone to call you I don’t know how many times. But I always chickened out. I saw myself making the same stupid mistakes. A man, a hasty wedding, a baby he might not want, a rich man, a woman his family wouldn’t approve of.”
“To us, family is sacred. You don’t know my family. And clearly you don’t know me.”
“Oh, I believed my own BS for a while. Then,” she said on a shrug, “I don’t know, I got caught up in the Nursery. I realized there were bigger things out there than me. I wanted to help. I wanted to be me and make something of myself, make a difference, be someone not only I was proud of, but maybe you would be too,” she finished, noticing how soft and fractured her voice still was.
Quin had leaned closer to hear her. His eyes met hers. “I was proud of you. I loved everything about you. I kept going back to New Orleans, Ella. We were married.”
“I know and I almost . . . but I didn’t. Then when I moved here and found out about the baby, I didn’t call you. If I came to you then, you’d always wonder if it was only because of the baby, when as soon as I drove away from New Orleans I knew I should be going to you and not leaving. I just didn’t trust myself.”
“You’d be better off not thinking for me,” he said, his eyes intense on hers.
She nodded. “I know. Now. Now, though, doesn’t do us any good. Sometimes, now is too late.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Now is not too late. It’s simply now, Ella, and what we make of it, or what we let go.”
She tightened her arms around him. “There’s so much more, though. More that has absolutely nothing to do with us or me or the baby. It’s the Nursery. I’d planned to tell you, even helping them and then everything went to hell. I saw . . . I saw . . .”
The bag being drug across the ground . . . She shivered.
“Then things got complicated and I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe I was imagining things. But I thought they were watching me. Thought maybe . . .
“Look, I know it sounds crazy. And I don’t have any proof. I know that!” She pulled away and looked around him to the men at the table, to the agents, then back to Quinlan. “They’d tried to talk me into giving the baby up too many times.” She shivered again. “I knew what that meant. I knew. I knew,” she tried louder, but her voice broke again. “I tried to get away and I trusted the wrong person, Quinlan. I trusted the wrong person and look what happened. Look.”
Images slithered through her. Sharp, jagged, cutting and slicing across her chest.
She couldn’t stop the trembles. “I don’t blame you for being angry at me. I was her mother. Her mother!” The baby soft on her stomach, her wrists aching, reaching, begging . . .
She felt his hands on her arms, but she couldn’t bear to be touched. She jerked away. “Her mother, and what did I do? What could I do?” Tears shattered her words as she held up her hands. Her wrists were wrapped. “I tried . . . I tried so hard to get . . . I could hear her crying, Quin, she was crying and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”
She took a shuddering breath even as he stepped closer to her and cupped her face. “Look at me,” he said, his voice firm.
Her eyes locked to his. Look at me. Right here. Eyes on me, Ella.
“I’m so glad you came,” she whispered, tears trailing hotly down her face.
His eyes narrowed. “Ella, what the hell, do you think I wouldn’t? I’m telling you right now, you better damned stop comparing me to that bastard Lance, or you might not like the consequences. I’m not him. You were scared, terrified, that was all I knew at first, all I cared about. That and you’d dropped a huge fatherhood surprise bomb on me. The baby . . . I can’t . . . I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to get . . .” His hands tightened on her arms. “Damn it, Ella.”
Emotion clogged her throat, and she tried to swallow around it, tried to rein in her emotions that were all over the damned place. “She was mine. Mine and I didn’t keep her safe. I didn’t protect her! They just . . . Oh God . . .” Tears choked her and this time she didn’t pull away as his arms came up around her. “Oh God, Quin. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t . . . sooner . . . I should have . . .”
Sobs wracked her body and she didn’t try to hold them in any longer. There was no reason she’d had to go through all this alone, other than stupidity an
d some idealized notion of helping others. Who the hell was she to lend a hand when she couldn’t even breathe?
She felt him lift her, settle her down on his lap as he sat somewhere. His words were lost against her, but the timbre, the fact he was holding her . . .
“It’s going to be okay, Ella. We’ll find our daughter. We’ll get through all this . . .”
Chapter 31
Seneca, Maryland
“Jock,” she said, pulling him out of his musings.
“We are not rushing over there, Kaitie. The boys will take care of it and let us know. You’ll only worry yourself into a damned heart attack.”
She narrowed her gaze on him, stupid, stubborn man. The man she’d fallen in love with so many, many years ago and yet it seemed just like yesterday. So much had changed and yet stayed the same.
“You are not listening and I will damned well win this argument. I talked to Aiden.” She shifted on the bed, trying to get comfortable. “Poor girl didn’t think we’d like her.”
“Apparently our sainted youngest thought the same thing.”
She punched him in the arm. Propped up in bed, they were both wondering about tomorrow. The house was quiet, too quiet. Since Brayden and Christian married, they’d found their own place not too far from here, but she—and Jock, she knew—still missed seeing their granddaughter every day. It just wasn’t the same, but life moved on. She loved it when Ian and his family had lived here for a bit, but she knew that wouldn’t last longer than her son could stand it. The house might be stupidly large—she’d always thought so—but it was still Mom and Dad’s, and what son really wanted to live with them? None of them, and that was as it should be. The only reason Brayden had moved into the west wing was because of Tori, and she was glad they’d had the years with their son and granddaughter that they’d had. But he’d finally left home, thank goodness. Granted, she’d wanted Quinlan to stay a bit longer, she worried about him, but she’d known, too, he’d hate to be seen as weak. He always did. Even as a boy. He always felt like he had something to prove.
“Did you know, Quin asked me once if you were his father?”
Jock didn’t look up from his ereader. Instead he grunted. “Asked me the same thing years ago, think he was about ten. Said he looked nothing like me or his brothers.” He waggled his brows at her. “Something you want to share, Kaitie?”
Again she hit him in the arm. “Don’t be an idiot. I just can’t for the life of me figure out why the hell he didn’t tell us. What was he trying to prove this time? And nothing makes sense to me.”
“Kaitie lass,” he said, setting the reader down. “Nothing about the boys has ever made sense to either one of us. Half the time I just didn’t get what they did or the why of it, and the other half you didn’t. All in all, they turned out right and are good honorable men. We didn’t screw up too badly.”
She laughed. “No, I guess we didn’t.” She settled down onto her pillow and picked up her own reader, choosing the book she’d been reading. “We’re still heading out to New Mexico tomorrow.”
“Aiden asked us to stay here.”
“And you are doing what one of the boys asked you to do? Since when?”
He looked at her over the rims of his glasses. “Since I don’t want you to land in the hospital again.”
She scoffed. “I’m the doctor, last time I checked.”
He picked his reader back up. “Heal thyself, physician.”
“We’re going. I don’t want her to think we don’t want her as part of our family. I don’t know why the hell Quinlan hid her away to begin with, which only added to her fear, and . . .”
“I don’t know as he hid her away so much as she hid away.” He cleared his throat.
Jock worried about her, she knew that. She’d scared him a couple of years with all the stress with Quinlan and Ian and little Darya. She took a deep breath and laid her hand on his thigh. “Jock. He’s our son. His child, our grandchild, has been taken by God knows who to God knows where. We. Are. Going.”
He turned his head and speared her with a look he rarely used on her and one that she would completely ignore—when she normally didn’t. Maybe she could talk him around to her way of thinking. He stared at her hard and finally sighed, setting the reader aside and giving her his full attention.
“I don’t know that they’d want us there right now.”
“I don’t care. Quinlan will be angry, she must be worried sick. And with all she’s been through . . .”
Jock shook his head. “I know you said for us to stay out of the boys’ lives time and time again. It feels odd for me to say it to you.” He grinned at her and then continued, “Since Brice and Aiden, I have, thank you very much.” He held up his hand. “What if she married him for his money, Kaitie? And this is all some ruse?”
She snorted. “Seriously? You think the poor girl knocked herself up by planning it perfectly? Then didn’t tell him, kidnapped herself, held against her will and what? Paid people to take her baby?”
“Stranger things have happened. I just don’t understand why, or how, he didn’t know she was pregnant,” he mumbled. “I damned well knew and I didn’t let you run away.”
She hummed, remembering way back when.
Oh, she could understand. Sometimes the Kinncaid men—including her darling sons—were just . . . She shook her head. “You know, I don’t know why he ever questioned if he was your son. The others might look like you and Aiden takes after you all too much sometimes, but Quinlan . . . Quinlan has always reminded me of you the most.”
He grunted.
“You both hide who you really are behind façades to keep us on our toes, always guessing. Were you the carefree playboy or the serious businessman? You come off as all gruff and territorial.”
“I am territorial, in case it’s escaped your notice all these years.”
“—but really you’re just . . . you just care about your family. He’s the same way, just quieter and more reserved about it all. He might not have your bark, but he does have that cunning and never-give-up that you always have had.”
“Kaitie, the boys—all of them—take after you, and me. I know that. And what that all has to do with us not going out there is beyond me.”
“We are going out there. We are going to meet her.”
He opened his mouth and she held her hand over his lips. “And if it turns out she is in fact a gold-digging . . . liar with something to hide, then fine. We can all hate her. Well, no, she’s still the mother of one of our grandchildren and we will help them any way we can. However, I won’t see Quin hurt either. I don’t like when my boys hurt and neither do you.”
He narrowed his eyes on hers.
“Which is why we will be leaving in the morning to fly out to Albuquerque, and while the others are all about looking and doing and whatever else, we will simply be there for them because that is what family does. That is what we both taught our boys and that is what we are going to do.”
“Can I speak now?” he asked behind her hand.
He huffed out a sigh. “Kaitie,” he grumbled under his breath. “Fine. We’ll leave tomorrow after you see your cardiologist and he clears it. If he doesn’t, we are not going, I don’t care how upset you are with me. Period.”
She bit her lip to keep from grinning.
His eyes narrowed on her again. “I swear there will come a day when I will deny you something.”
“So you’ve said, many, many times, dear.”
He pulled her to him and kissed her lips. So many years and still he made her heart race like that of a young girl. “I’ll show you many, many times.”
She giggled. “Promises, promises.”
“Kaitie lass, if you ever learned anything about me through the years, you ought to know that any challenge, I’m more than capable of meeting.”
“Thank God for those little pills.”
“For that, I think I’ll just torture you.”
She laughed as he tickled her and
the laughter soon died away into desire and into passion. So many changes and yet so much had remained the same.
• • •
Albuquerque, Thursday morning
Ian stood in the doorway of the bathroom looking in at the mess. That would really depreciate the value of this place. Great location, great view of the mountains from the living room. Tile, tall ceilings, clean lines, top-of-the-line appliances, lots of room and storage. Nice place.
The dead body in the tub rather took away from the prime bit of real estate though.
Agent Sabino had called him about an hour ago to let him know they’d found Lisa Hammerstein. Looked like she’d been dead for about a day, by his own guess.
Detective Hudson had nodded at him as he’d come into the town house.
“Kinncaid, figured you’d turn up sooner or later.”
“Like an unlucky penny,” he told the man. Ian didn’t take it personally when the locals didn’t really warm to him. He figured it was par for the course. Hudson, for all his irritation, wasn’t a bad sort, just overworked and tired.
Hudson walked over to him and jerked his chin toward the tub. “That’s a dead end.”
“Leave it to Hudson to state the obvious,” Sabino said.
“Leave it to the feds to complicate the issue and stay vague,” Hudson returned.
“What have you got so far?” he asked.
Normally, he’d have brought Johnno along with him, but he’d left him at the hotel with the family. Rori was there but she was tired and worried about their own kids, even if she hadn’t said as much yet.
Sabino shook her head. “Well, as you can see, appears to be suicide. And if the fabulous slice-and-dice job on her wrists didn’t do the job, I’m sure the sleeping pills would have taken care of it.”
