And Then Came You

by Maureen Child

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Frustration bubbled inside and Sam had to react. She wanted to throw something, kick something, and if he came one step closer, she’d be happy to use him for target practice.

  Thankfully though, he seemed to have a pretty good memory of their time together, too, because he stayed just out of kicking range. Sam didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed.

  Standing up, she walked across the postage-stamp portion of grass to the iron railing at the edge of the cliff. She closed her hands over the cold, damp bars, and held on as if the earth were being tipped harshly to one side and those bars were her one grip on reality.

  Unfortunately, “reality” was six feet three, with broad shoulders, long legs, and thick black hair that made a woman want to run her fingers through it. She glanced over her shoulder at him. Even if it was just to hold his head still while you banged it against a door.

  “I know that look,” he said warily.

  “Then go away.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Won’t.”

  “Whatever. We’ve got to talk and it may as well be now.”

  She snorted and ignored the flash of pain inside, concentrating instead on the ripple of annoyance riding atop it. “There’s that king-to-peasant tone I admire so much.”

  “You’re a snob, Sam.”

  “What?” Sheer dumbfoundedness had her gaping at him. She felt her mouth drop open and her eyes bug, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  “You heard me.” Jeff stepped up alongside her and grabbed hold of the iron railing, his left hand way too close to her right. “You’re the one who was always making a big deal about my family being rich.”

  She fisted one hand, and in self-defense he quickly dropped his own over it.

  “Easy enough to say money means nothing when you’ve never had to go without it.”

  “I guess it is.”

  She yanked at her hand and practically snarled, “Let go.”

  He laughed shortly and tightened his grip. “Not a chance. You’ve got a mean right hook, as I remember it. And since I can’t hit you back . . .”

  Scowling, she told herself not to notice the well of heat building up beneath his touch. She tried desperately to ignore the scattershot of lightning-like sparks that shot up her arm and into her chest. But her breathing hiccuped and her heartbeat started a trip-hammer pounding that made her head swim.

  So not fair.

  That Jeff Hendricks would be the one man who could do this to her.

  Nine years since he last touched her and it was as if it were yesterday. Memories rushed through her brain and nearly staggered her. She had to get some distance. Had to keep Mike’s warnings in mind and take charge of the hormones screaming at her to let go and enjoy.

  “Fine,” she grumbled, relaxing her hand under his. “No hitting. Just . . . let go.”

  He almost did. Then thought better of it and instead rubbed the pad of his thumb across her knuckles, sending waves of sensation rocketing around inside her. Dammit, he was doing it on purpose. Had to be. Was he really using her own body’s reactions against her in an effort to get his own way?

  “Jeff . . .”

  “I missed you.”

  “What?”

  He sighed and kept his gaze focused straight down, to the froth and foam of the waves as they crashed onto the cliff rocks and the small crescent of beach below. There was a handful of surfers, astride their boards, waiting for a good ride in, and just as many seals, diving slick bodies beneath those waves, looking for a meal.

  The past swirled around him, cloaking memories in a velvety fog that made everything look a little softer, cleaner, kinder than it actually had been. But in the midst of those memories, Jeff was forced to stop and consider a harsher, more recent memory, as well.

  Cynthia.

  Trying to convince him that Sam had never wanted Emma. That she still didn’t. That all of this scrambling to spend time with her daughter was merely to save face in front of her family.

  But he couldn’t believe that.

  Not of the Sam he used to know.

  But hell. Had he ever really known her? Hadn’t she given away their child?

  “You missed me?” she asked, breaking the chain of thoughts threatening to strangle him.

  “Hell, yes.” He smiled tightly. “In London, there was no one to shout at me. No one to throw a lamp at my head.” He looked at her. “No one to lock me out of the house in my underwear.”

  Her lips twitched.

  “So yeah. I missed you.”

  She blew out a breath and Jeff knew he’d surprised her. A brief flicker of pleasure spurted inside him, then was smothered again just as quickly. It had never been easy to surprise Sam. She’d always been too quick. Just one step ahead of him.

  A little out of reach.

  Just like now.

  “You never said so.”

  He shrugged and tried to remember himself, nine years ago. Crazy about Sam. Worried about the future and so damn scared he was going to fuck up his life and hers along with it . . .

  “Young and stupid,” he said, as if that explained it all.

  “If you hadn’t gone . . .”

  “At the time,” he admitted for the first time in, well, ever, “I thought if I didn’t leave, then you would.”

  “What? Why would I?”

  He turned his gaze on her and lost himself in the pale blue wash of her eyes. The sun kissed her hair, teasing out red streaks and spotlighting the few freckles crossing her nose. If possible, she was even more beautiful than she’d been then. And back then, she’d stolen his breath away every time he looked at her.

  But just because he’d been crazy in love, that hadn’t meant sunshine and roses. “Jesus, Sam, we fought all the time.”

  That had been new to him. In his family, discussions were held in moderate tones. Voices were never raised and passions were kept just as tightly under wraps. His parents had maintained a cool, restrained relationship with no highs or lows to complicate matters.

  Sam was a revelation.

  Her temper was a living, breathing, fire-spitting dragon that held nothing back. She shouted and cursed and flung whatever happened to be handy. Yet when the dragon went to sleep, the fire remained.

  “Sure we fought. People fight,” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe that he still didn’t understand that. “But we always made up.”

  “There is that.” When the dragon of her temper went dormant, the fire remained and her passion was all-encompassing. Jesus, he remembered those wild makeup sessions in the cramped bedroom of that tiny apartment they’d shared in Berkeley. There’d hardly been room enough for both of them in that bed, so they’d slept locked together, neither of them sure where one of them began and the other one ended.

  It was the one time in his life he’d felt as though he’d found his place in the universe.

  With Sam.

  And then he’d lost it all.

  “You should have stayed.”

  “Maybe.” That was something he’d tortured himself with plenty of times over the years. If he’d stayed, would it have been different? Would it have gotten better? They’d never know. But he hadn’t been the only one to make mistakes. “And maybe,” he said, “you should have told me about the baby.”

  “I tried,” she said stiffly, clearly indicating that this little cruise down memory lane was over. “Your mother hijacked the letter.”

  Not something he was going to forget. Ever. The trickle of anger inside him quickly became a flood with nowhere to go. It dammed up in his chest, backed up into his throat, and made it hard to draw breath. Eleanor Hendricks had escaped the consequences of her interference—as she had most of her life. Even from the grave, his mother was still reaching out to screw with him.

  “Okay, forget my mother,” he said tightly, though he knew that he’d never truly be able to forget what Eleanor had cost him—and Sam. “Hell, forget me.”

  �
�Be a lot easier if you weren’t standing there every time I turn around,” she muttered.

  He ignored the comments, too intent now to stop, to be distracted.

  “Why, Sam?” he asked, knowing that this one question had to be asked. Had to be answered before they could go any further. “Why are you so interested in having Emma back in your life now? If you want her so badly, why’d you ever give her up?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Make me understand,” he said, turning her in his grasp, his hands tight on her upper arms, pulling her close enough that she had to tip her head back to look up at him.

  She shoved at his chest, but he wouldn’t let go. Not now. Not until they had this much at least out in the open. Where it always should have been.

  “Explain it to me. You owe me that much.”

  “Owe you?” she echoed as she wrenched free of his grasp in a wild, frantic move. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “Maybe not,” he conceded, his gaze locked on hers so that he could see the emotions churning in her eyes. He heard the hitch in her breath and spoke up quickly to cut her off before she could burst into a tirade. “Maybe you don’t owe me now. But you owe the me from nine years ago. Tell him.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Oh, Sam really didn’t want to go back there again. But hadn’t she been steeped in the past for the last couple of weeks, anyway? Hadn’t she been reliving every decision and revisiting every ache and pain?

  She stepped back and away from him, needing the distance, and was desperately grateful when he didn’t follow. Turning her back on the ocean, she walked the few steps to the beat-up red table and snatched up her coffee cup. She took a long swallow, using the caffeine as someone else would have taken a shot of whiskey for liquid courage.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe she did at least owe him an explanation of everything that had happened so long ago. At the very least, didn’t she owe it to herself to finally be able to say everything she’d wanted to tell him back then?

  With the heat still roaring through her, Sam took her first tentative step into the cold fog of memory. “After you—I mean your mother—sent me the divorce papers, I didn’t know what to do.” Her fingers tightened on the cardboard cup and she concentrated on the warmth soaking into her palm. She clung to it as she would a life preserver tossed to her in a black, stormy sea. “I came home to tell the family.”

  “And they didn’t want the baby?”

  He sounded stunned and she couldn’t blame him. If nothing else, the Marconi family was a close one. They would never have turned their backs on her and her child.

  Sam sighed. “They would have. But I didn’t tell them. Not until after.”

  “Why?”

  Why. She looked at him and just for a minute saw the boy he’d been behind the eyes of the man. And her heart wept for everything that was lost.

  “Because when I got home, I found everything falling apart.” She gulped at her coffee again, but the heat didn’t reach her this time. Just slid down her throat to churn in the pit of her stomach. “They hadn’t wanted to worry me before. But Mama was sick. Cancer.”

  “Sam—” He took a step closer and she held up one hand to keep him at a distance.

  She just couldn’t handle the sympathy. Not now. Not if he really wanted her to finish. “With Mama sick,” she said, and hurried her words as if rushing through the story would make the pain somehow briefer, too. “Papa had his hands full, trying to take care of her and keep the business running.”

  Rubbing at the spot between her eyes, she tried to tame the headache brewing there. But it was already raging and nothing could stop it.

  “Jo left college, to come home and help out. Mike . . .” She shook her head and gave him a half-smile. “Mike decided to avoid dealing with Mama’s illness by running away. When the police brought her back, she’d run again. The whole place was in turmoil. Mama was dying and it felt like she was taking the whole family with her. She was the center. The heart of us. And every day, we lost another piece of her.”

  He shifted position, dipped his hands into his pockets, and an instant later, she heard the coins and keys rattle together. She didn’t even stop him. Somehow, that little irritation was almost a comfort as she kept talking.

  “It was tearing Papa apart,” she said softly and walked to the nearest steel trash drum and dropped her half-full cup into it. For the first time in her life, coffee was turning her stomach.

  Then, facing the ocean, she stared out at the horizon and the clouds just beginning to gather as she continued. “He cried at night. When he thought we couldn’t hear him.” She shivered and blinked back a sudden sheen of tears that made the ocean blur and her head pound. She could still hear her father’s quiet tears and the pitiful grief in the sound was still enough to shake her to the ground. “He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known, yet he cried like a lost child at the thought of being without her.”

  “Sam—”

  She shook her head and swiped one hand across her cheeks, impatiently wiping away her own tears. “Mama told me, asked me, to take care of them. To help Mike and to make sure Jo went back to college.”

  The wind sighed past her, trailing cold fingers along her arms, sending chills racing through her. Jeff stepped up close but still didn’t touch her and she didn’t know now if she was grateful or sad for it.

  “Well,” she said on a choked laugh, “I got one of those right. Convinced Mike to stop running, but couldn’t sell Jo on going back to school. She was the oldest. She decided to stay home, help run the company. Nothing I said would change her mind.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Maybe not, but I still felt as if I were letting Mama down.” She sighed softly, remembering. “I told them about the divorce.”

  He winced.

  “Mama didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was disappointed. Marconis marry for life, you know.” Sam laughed a little, though there was nothing funny about any of this. “I couldn’t tell her about the baby, too. Couldn’t tell Papa. I thought about it.” She sighed and remembered. “God, I thought about it all the time. I wondered if maybe if they knew about the baby, it would give them all something to hold on to. If it might give Mama some happiness in the midst of all the misery. But then,” she said, shoving one hand through her hair, “I realized it would just make it harder on Mama. Knowing that there would be a grandchild she’d never see. Never hold. Never love.”

  Jeff opened his mouth to speak, but she rushed on. “Mostly, though, I thought about Emma. It wasn’t fair to give her a single mother who was falling apart.” Shaking her head, she shot Jeff a quick glance, then looked away again before she could read the emotions in his eyes. “I just couldn’t become the proverbial straw to the Marconi family camel.”

  He laid one hand on her arm and, oh God, Sam wanted to lean into him. Just for a minute. And since the yearning went bone deep, she forced herself to ignore it.

  “Sam, you should have called me—”

  A short bark of laughter erupted from her throat. “Right. Pick up the phone and call the husband that didn’t want me or my baby and say, ‘Hey, would you mind coming home from London? Mama’s dying and Mike’s missing, I sure could use the help.’ Sure. Good plan.”

  His features tightened and he shut up, which she was also grateful for. It allowed her the few minutes she’d need to get through the rest of it.

  “I was the good one, you know? The middle sister who never caused any problems. Mama used to call me that all the time. ‘Jo’s the artistic one, Mike’s the firecracker, and Sam’s my Good One.’ ” She laughed again, but this time, even she heard the misery in it. “The one time I went against the family was to marry you and look how well that turned out.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Good.” She inhaled sharply, drawing the cold ocean air deep inside her and holding it for as long as she could. “Anyway, ovarian cancer is fast, if nothing else. Mama died and
Mike stayed home. She stayed miserable, but she stayed home. Jo worked with Papa and I transferred to Long Beach State. Stayed with my aunt Mary. Papa’s sister. I managed to finish my courses, and graduate. Then I had the baby and—”

  “Gave her up.”

  Memories reached up from her heart with icy fingers and took hold of her throat and squeezed. She could still feel the incredible feathery weight of her newborn baby girl as they laid Emma in her arms. So tiny. So furious at being pushed into the world. Her eyes were screwed shut and Sam remembered wondering what color her eyes would be—and knowing that she would likely never find out. She’d counted every finger and every toe. She’d run a fingertip along her baby’s face as if imprinting her touch on the tiny child so that at least something of her would remain—if not in the baby’s life, then in her heart. And then the nurse had swept in, scooped Emma out of Sam’s arms, and walked away through a set of double glass doors and into a future Sam wouldn’t be a part of.

  Misery pumped through her bloodstream and made her want to fall to the ground under the weight of the pain. But she clung to the one truth she’d had to comfort her through the last eight years.

  “It was the best thing for her,” Sam said, not really caring now if he believed her or not. She’d believed it at the time and she needed to believe it now and that had to be enough. Her dreams were already haunted with her own doubts and guilts. She didn’t need to add Jeff’s regrets to her own list. There were too many now, as it was.

  “When I came home, I told them about Emma.” She still remembered the shock, the pain, on her father’s face as he realized he had a grandchild he would never see. “Papa said I should have told them sooner. That he would have raised my daughter. But it wouldn’t have been right, Jeff.”

  She was still sure of that. No matter what. It wouldn’t have been right or fair to ask her father to raise a child after his own were grown. When he was still grieving. When the foundations of the family were so shaken. “I was eighteen. I did what I thought was right. What I thought was best. For Emma.”