by Jill Shalvis
“Oh, Daddy.”
“You already said that.” Stone moved away, heading toward the back of the workshop where he did most of his designing. “You never told me what your hurry was.”
“My album,” she said in a soft dreamy voice that made him turn back to look at her. “I want my photo album to be complete when Mommy comes back.”
His heart stopped. A new wave of rage at Jenna hit him. “Honey...” Hard to talk when his lungs wouldn’t expand, he discovered. “Sara—”
“It’s her birthday today.”
“Yes,” he managed.
She met his unsteady gaze with eyes wise beyond their years. “I know what you told me,” she whispered from the other side of the store, but he caught every word. “That you don’t think she’s ever coming back.”
God. “I’m sorry, Sara—”
“And I know you don’t want me to think about her, but I can’t help it. I want her to come back.”
“Oh, baby.” He sighed and moved toward her. Thankfully he had no meeting, no customers, so there would be no nosy ears listening to this. Gently he took Sara’s shoulders and waited until she looked at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about her?”
“Because it hurts you.” Sara, her wide eyes sheened with unshed tears, sniffed loudly. “I hate it when you hurt.”
She hadn’t cried about her mother for some time, and Stone was furious at himself for not noticing sooner that she needed him. “Sara...” Was it possible to feel such overwhelming love for a small child, so much that it was a physical pain? “I don’t want you to keep things inside, ever.” He cupped her chin and kissed her nose. “Even if you think it’s going to hurt me.”
“Then why don’t we talk about her?”
How to explain? How to tell his precious and yes, dammit, sheltered daughter that she’d been abandoned at birth by a mother who had been little more than a child herself? That he’d been too young to take on both the baby and the mother? That even if he could have managed, it didn’t matter because Jenna had run?
But Sara needed to know, needed to understand, and he couldn’t fail her. “I’ll talk about her to you anytime,” he promised, knowing that promise was likely to kill him.
“Why did she go away before I was out of the hospital?”
“She had to go, Sara.” Defending the woman who had nearly destroyed him was easy only because Sara needed answers. Kind ones. “She had to. She had no one to love her, and so she ran away.”
Huge blue eyes waited for more. Jenna’s eyes. They were a more brilliant blue than his, and framed by lush lashes—just like Jenna’s. “I would love her.”
Unable to trust his voice, Stone squeezed her hand.
“Why couldn’t she just have made a family with us and be ours forever? Why did she have to go?”
Solemnly, patiently, she blinked at him, and Stone swallowed hard. His own anguish came back so easily, he discovered. “She was scared, honey. Very scared.” And to be fair to Jenna, there’d been evil forces that had pushed her to leave. Forces he hadn’t been able to protect her from. She’d been betrayed, horribly and cruelly, by her own mother in a single event that had changed Jenna’s life forever. Still, she could have, should have, trusted him to help, and she hadn’t. “She was young, and alone and petrified.”
“But you were with her, and you can fix anything.”
God bless this child who had never wanted for a thing. Stone, with his ruthlessly stubborn streak and single-mindedness, had seen to it. But for the sake of memories and a heartache that had never died, he had to try to make Sara understand. “Yes, she had me,” he told her. “But I was young, too.”
“You were in college. At a fancy expensive school.”
“Yes.”
“And your mommy and daddy got mad at you and never spoke to you again. You had to transpose.”
“Transfer,” he corrected with a small smile. “To the local college here. I wanted you with me, Sara.” His parents had disowned them both, the boy barely a man, and the infant without a mother, all because he had “ruined his life” by keeping his baby. The baby he’d been responsible for.
Neither his mother nor his father nor his brother, Richard, Stone’s childhood hero, had spoken to Stone or Sara since.
Regret wasn’t a part of this. He could never look into Sara’s beautiful face and regret one part of what had happened. But it did bring up his worst nightmare, and remind him of the stoic way Sara accepted the fact that they had no family willing to acknowledge their existence.
For what would happen to his daughter if something happened to him? Who would take care of her, love her?
“It’d be nice to have grandparents.” Sara’s casual tone didn’t fool him. “Or...an uncle.”
She wasn’t talking in general, and he knew it. She meant his own parents and his brother. At the wistful tone in her voice, he actually felt murderous toward his own family. “They don’t understand, Sara. They can’t see past their own stubborn noses. But I love you and I’ll never stop. ’Kay?”
She smiled. “’Kay.” Tipping her head, she studied him. “Has she ever been back?”
“I’d tell you if she had. I’ve always promised you that. You don’t ever have to wonder.” He didn’t add that he’d spent more than a small fortune trying to find Jenna over the years. That occasionally he still tried, although now it was completely for Sara’s sake, because he had the feeling he would always be far too angry at Jenna ever to want her in his life. He refused to add to his daughter’s pain, but he couldn’t stand the thought of her waiting expectantly for something he’d become convinced would never happen. And if a small part of him wondered if there’d ever be a woman in his life who could make him truly forget Jenna, he ignored it. He didn’t need another heartbreak. “I’m afraid she’s not coming back, Sara.”
The girl stared down at the last photo of herself, the one where she was decked out in painter’s attire, grinning broadly as she painted her room a somewhat sickening shade of yellow-green. Completely unaware of how much every part of her—her laugh, her carefree attitude, her easy affection—all reminded Stone of Jenna.
“She is coming back,” Sara whispered. “I just know it.” She met her dad’s worried expression and hugged him hard. “Well, she is.”
Holding her close, Stone stared over her head at the calendar.
Ten years.
He was far from the frightened twenty-year-old left with no family and an infant he didn’t know how to care for. As a result, he’d long ago hardened his heart to the memory of the wild needy Jenna who’d so completely stolen his affections. He’d long ago moved on. Yet in spite of all his lingering rage, he’d forgiven her for what she’d done to him. Or so he told himself.
But as he kissed the top of Sara’s head, he had to admit the truth to himself.
He hadn’t forgiven Jenna for what she’d done to their daughter. Hadn’t even come close.
Jenna’s chest hurt. It had nothing to do with any lingering injuries and everything to do with the sight in front of her.
She sat on a tier of stands in the gymnasium of the school watching a basketball game.
Sara—it was really her this time, not some cruel dream her mind had conjured up to tease her—was playing basketball with all her little ten-year-old heart. Her tongue was squeezed between her teeth, her eyes narrowed in fierce concentration as she dribbled—okay, tripped—over the ball.
Her daughter. It had to be. Jenna had seen no pictures over the years. How could she have when she’d so completely disappeared no one could have found her even if they’d been looking? And she wasn’t hopeful or foolish enough to think that anyone had been looking.
“Go, Sara!” came a chorus of cries from the crowd gathered around Jenna.
Sara. Her name really was Sara.
Which meant Stone had kept his fervent promise that day in the hospital, when Jenna had named their baby before vanishing.
She was incredible, with
beautiful long dark hair, bright laughing blue eyes and a sweet infectious laugh. A perfect little replica of Stone. Jenna’s heart squeezed as her arms crossed over herself in a mime of the hug she yearned to give her child.
Looking at her, Jenna couldn’t remember why she’d stayed away. None of the reasons she’d thought so important all those years seemed to matter now.
Tears welled in her eyes, but Jenna ruthlessly blinked them back. She had no right to cry, none at all. But Lord, it hurt. She’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted her little girl.
“That’s it, Sara,” someone shouted. “Run, run!”
It was an achingly familiar voice that made Jenna’s heart all but stop. Stone, his hands cupped over his mouth, was giving directions to his team, and God, he looked good. When she’d seen him the day before at the beach, she hadn’t been fully prepared for the sheer physical jolt of being near him again, but the long years of separation peeled away as if they’d never been.
There didn’t seem to be an unsure bone in that tall, toned body. There was something raw and earthy and generally untamed about him, despite the casual athletic clothes.
His shoulders had widened greatly, now physically a match for the weight of the burdens he’d always carried. He shifted back and forth on long muscular legs as he paced courtside, his arms constantly in motion as he directed the team.
Nope, he certainly wasn’t a kid any longer, but a fully mature, incredibly sexy man.
“Down court!” he yelled now in the smooth tone she remembered so well. He leaped into the air and whooped with abandon when Sara passed off the ball to another girl, who pivoted and made a basket.
The stands, full of parents and siblings, erupted as the game ended.
Pride nearly overwhelmed Jenna. She’d had no idea she could feel such a thrill, such joy, from watching a game she didn’t even understand. But it was her daughter down there. Her daughter.
On the court every girl on the team threw herself at the coach. Stone tossed back his head and laughed, hugging each of them back.
There’d been a time in Jenna’s life when seeing Stone smile and laugh like that had caused every productive thought to fly right out of her head, and she discovered with little surprise that hadn’t changed.
Watching Stone live as she’d only been able to dream about suddenly felt like a knife to her chest. She nearly staggered with the pain of it, with the gut-wrenching regret.
How had this happened? How had she allowed so much time to go by without a word? And what would happen now that she’d come back?
Knowing she deserved nothing, not even a fraction of the warmth she was experiencing now, didn’t help. With that dismal thought, the gates of her mind opened and flooded her with unwanted memories of her past.
Her absent father.
The mother she could never please, so she’d finally stopped trying. Instead Jenna had depended on her wild behavior to get attention.
Her perfect sister, the one Jenna’s mother constantly wished was her only child.
Everything had always seemed to be Jenna’s fault back then, even when she’d been merely a victim of circumstances. And a victim she’d been. Yet she’d been blamed and, unable to accept it, had rebelled.
She’d been wild, even before then. Hopelessly, pathetically out of control. Moody. It was all she knew how to do, for she could never get her mother to care unless she was furious about something Jenna had done. Without the bad-girl image Jenna had cultivated, she had no identity. No worth.
She’d been on the fast road to nowhere when Stone Cameron had come into her life. The star athlete and town darling, he was by far the most popular kid in school. Everyone adored him. He came from the rich side of the tracks and lived in one of the biggest and prettiest houses Jenna had ever seen. His parents and brother loved him.
His life had seemed perfect.
She’d hated him for that alone.
He’d found her in a tall tree along the beach one night when she been her most vulnerable, shaking after a particularly nasty fight with her mother—a fight in which Jenna’s mother had refused to believe that the man she was seeing had touched Jenna. A man not only cheating on his wife to sleep with Jenna’s mother, but a man who was a highly respected member of their community.
Scared and alone, Jenna had hidden in the only place she could think of. Without hesitation Stone had climbed up the long branches, sat next to her and smiled. In return, Jenna had called him names and had tried to push him out of the tree.
He refused to fall—or give up.
It’d been the start of the first meaningful friendship in Jenna’s life. Stone cared for her, more than anyone. He was the first to encourage her to stop doing stupid reckless things that would only get her hurt. He worried, he’d told her, and that knowledge had warmed Jenna’s heart and soul for the first time in her life.
But the man who’d victimized her had turned the scandal around, claiming Jenna had seduced him. In the face of the town’s disgust, Jenna folded. Despite Stone’s love and support, she let herself be destroyed.
Sitting there now, wallowing in the memories, agonizing over them, Jenna was gripped by panic.
Could Stone ever forgive her?
She looked down at the basketball court and found Stone’s glittering eyes on her, eyes that had perhaps seen too much to ever be surprised by anything again.
She’d done that, given the most open loving boy she’d ever met that slight cynical edge.
Ashamed, without stopping to think, Jenna grabbed her purse, ran outside the gym, jumped into her car and escaped, feeling no braver than when she was seventeen.
Over the next couple of days, Jenna gained some badly needed perspective. She could do this, she coached herself. She could, she would.
Again she went to one of Sara’s games, and again held her breath the entire time, completely immersed in how it felt to watch her daughter run, laugh, live.
At the end of the game, which Sara’s team won, Jenna looked down from the stands—and her heart simply stopped.
Staring at her from the side of the court was Stone, holding a basketball in one hand and his daughter’s hand in the other.
As the crowd thinned around them, neither of them moved, held there by an invisible string of unspoken questions. Stone was obviously drawn to Jenna, although he could have no idea why—or that she was a nightmare from his past about to resurface. She cringed at that thought and felt more than saw Stone’s gaze narrow in a mixture of concern and curiosity.
Still, he held the connection, and Jenna wished she would see a flash of recognition in his eyes. She knew now she wouldn’t, not with ten years, plastic surgery and dubious maturity on her side. Well, nothing had ever come easily to her, and it seemed this wouldn’t, either.
If she wanted Stone to know the truth, she was going to have to tell him.
Her goal hadn’t changed; she still wanted to atone for the things she’d done, such as deserting her own daughter. But if she told Stone who she was now, she knew he would turn from her, his eyes icy and distant.
But as Cindy Beatty, a complete stranger to Stone and the town she knew would never welcome her back, she could do anything.
Stone continued to maintain eye contact. Jenna couldn’t have torn her gaze away to save her life, leaving her no doubt that their always instant sizzling attraction still lived. It had unnerved her then, just as it did now, for though they’d always been drawn to each other, even as kids, she had never understood what Stone saw in her.
Connected to him this way, by just his gaze, caused an awareness to unfurl from deep within her. And she knew by his slight frown, by the very power of what shimmered between them, that it was the same for him. Only he could have no idea that this...thing between them was not new, that it had been there since the very beginning.
He remained unsmiling, that wide, sexy mouth serious. She felt panic rise.
You’re not seventeen anymore, she told herself firmly, even
as her feet shuffled, prepared to run, as was their lifelong habit. You’re twenty-seven and here to right your wrongs. Turn your life around. Do it!
Far below, Sara’s lips moved and Stone nodded in response, but he did not break eye contact with Jenna.
Jenna smiled feebly. It was all she could manage, but Stone’s intense stare didn’t waver. Neither did Sara’s.
Tell them, an inner voice urged. Just go down there and tell them who you are.
Of their own accord, her legs took her down the stands she’d climbed up an hour and a half earlier—when she’d been driven by a need to see her daughter and hadn’t known how else to go about it other than to watch her from afar. And when she’d read the banner listing the names of the all-city fifth-grade champs, she’d been surprised to find Sara Cameron listed. After seeing that, fire-breathing dragons couldn’t have kept Jenna from the games.
“Hello,” Stone said when she got within hearing distance. That warm lazy baritone made her shudder with memories. For years she’d dreamed about that deep silky voice of his, and hearing it now brought her vividly back in time. Shockingly another memory surfaced.
Stone, making love to her the way he spoke, as if he had all the time in the world.
Jenna blushed wildly. Where had that come from? There was more to Stone than the way he’d once touched her, far more. He’d have fits if he knew her thoughts, for he wasn’t smiling now, not the way he had when the game had ended favorably or when Sara had flung herself into his arms for a hug. Jenna had to clear her throat twice before she croaked out a hello in return.
“I saw you at the game the other day,” he said in that voice like dark honey. “You ran off before I could talk to you. It’s...Cindy, isn’t it?”
He remembered her name, or that horrible pretend name Jenna had given him at the beach. She wanted to laugh and, instead, nearly cried.
Tell him the truth.
“Yes,” she murmured, sealing her fate with yet another lie. “It’s Cindy.”
