Family Secrets

by Michaels, Leigh

  “You don’t treat me like that.”

  “Didn’t you know, Chase? I’m absolutely in awe of you.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide with what she intended to be mock hero-worship. But when her gaze met his, something turned over inside her heart.

  He picked up a lock of her hair and used it like a paintbrush to trace her profile. “Right,” he said dryly. “So you’re saying if I make the first friendly gesture, these people will be more likely to take me to their hearts?”

  “Yes. In fact, that’s a really good –”

  He leaned closer. She thought he was going to whisper something he didn’t want the remaining kids to hear, so she leaned toward him, too. The scent of his aftershave made her nose tingle, and she hoped he couldn’t see the way her pulse was jumping madly.

  He kissed the corner of her mouth, long and softly, and relaxed once more against the tree, obviously pleased with himself. “How was that, as friendly gestures go?”

  Amanda had to swallow hard before she could smile at him. “I didn’t mean toward me,” she said finally. “I was thinking more about asking the guys who are playing volleyball over on the sand court if you could join them.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re sending me out to play to get me out of your hair. So much for awe,” he complained, and went off to join the volleyball game.

  Amanda herself got involved in a game of hide-and-seek which was interrupted by Nicky throwing a tantrum. He was red-faced and screaming because another child had a ball he wouldn’t share – but mainly, Amanda was convinced, because he’d had a little too much of a good thing. “Come along,” she said, and led him back to the shady spot under the big tree.

  Chase appeared within half a minute. “We’d better go.”

  “Just time for a rest, I think.” Nicky put his head down in her lap, and she stroked his dark hair. “It would be a shame to take him back inside. He needs the fresh air. Would you get the blanket out of the back of my car?”

  “You’re prepared for all eventualities, aren’t you?” Chase spread the blanket and helped ease Nicky onto it. Even in his sleep, the child clutched a fold of Amanda’s playsuit.

  Chase did not go back to his volleyball game, as Amanda had expected he would. He lounged beside her instead, stretched almost full length on the grass.

  Watch out, Amanda told herself. She could so easily get used to having him there beside her. And as for the way he was behaving – as if she were an attraction more spell-binding than anything else in his life.... Well, it was time to remind herself of reality. “Have you hired a nanny yet?” she asked softly.

  Chase grimaced. “No. I’ll call the registry again tomorrow and see what they’ve found. If they’ve got someone, she could be on her way tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What are you going to do with Nicky in the meantime?”

  “I don’t have to be on the set till noon.” He chewed a stalk of grass and looked at her, big brown eyes pleading. “But after that...I hate to ask you, Amanda. But if I could impose on you for another half-day –”

  “Of course.”

  There was a pause, and then Chase said softly, “He’s been so happy with you, Amanda. I can’t thank you enough.”

  She looked down at Nicky. She hadn’t even been conscious of it, but her fingertips were stroking his hair as he slept. She was already so deeply attached to this child that it was going to break her heart when he left. Nothing could make that any worse. And Chase was right; Nicky was happy with her...

  “Why not just leave him with me?” she said. “Until it’s time for you to go.”

  Chase’s hesitation was obvious. “Nicky would be thrilled. But you’ve done too much for us already.”

  Amanda shrugged. She wasn’t going to beg, that was sure – even if she’d like to.

  “Of course,” Chase went only slowly, “if it doesn’t work out, all you have to do is let me know. I can always make other arrangements. And it is only a couple of weeks more.”

  He said that as if it were an advantage, Amanda thought, or as if he was trying to convince himself that it wouldn’t last forever. She could understand how he felt; to Chase, a few weeks in Springhill must sound like a lifetime. But to her, two weeks with Nicky... two weeks with Chase... looked like the blink of an eye.

  Still, in two weeks – if she tried very hard – she could store up a whole lot of memories to keep her warm for the lifetime which would follow, after they were gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Amanda came down to the lobby the next morning, the desk clerk said with a smile, “I can’t believe it. Are you free at last?”

  “For the moment.” Amanda picked up the morning’s mail and flipped through it. “Is the new chambermaid I hired here yet?”

  Tricia inclined her head toward Amanda’s office.

  “I’ll take her upstairs and start training, then. Unless there’s something else needing my attention?”

  “No,” the clerk said. “We’ve all gotten pretty good at handling things without you.”

  Amanda considered that and decided not to respond. The inn was apparently running just as smoothly as ever, and she congratulated herself; her policy of delegating responsibility wherever possible was working out just fine.

  Training the cleaning staff was always more difficult when there wasn’t even an empty room to practice on, and so it was nearly noon when Amanda came back to the lobby. The first thing she saw was Chase, sitting at a table next to the glass wall of the little restaurant with a coffee cup cradled in his hand. He looked abstracted, Amanda thought, as if he was already thinking about the afternoon’s work which lay ahead. Across from him, still toying with a grilled cheese sandwich, was Nicky.

  The child scrambled to his knees and gave Amanda a slightly greasy hug. Chase pulled up a chair for her and suggested, with a tiny smile, “Everybody needs a hug sometimes, so if you have an extra for me, Amanda...”

  She let herself think for one long moment about putting her arms around Chase and allowing her body to melt into his as completely as the cheese in Nicky’s sandwich had mixed with the bread. Then she sat down instead, and tried to keep her voice light. “Do you want to blow every fuse in Springhill’s gossip network? The kiss in the park yesterday was bad enough, thank you. Nicky, we have booster chairs if you’d like one.”

  Nicky shook his head.

  “He’s too grown-up for things like that,” Chase pointed out.

  “Of course. I must have lost my mind even to suggest it.”

  “You know, I think you have. What do you mean, the kiss in the park yesterday was bad enough? It was a very nice kiss – chaste, friendly and unexceptionable.” His eyes began to sparkle. “Unless that’s exactly what you had against it. In that case, I could try a different sort of– ”

  She shushed him as the waitress brought her coffee and refilled Chase’s cup.

  “Thanks, Kathy,” Amanda said. “I think I’ll try the corn chowder today, too, while Nicky finishes his lunch.”

  “He was very disappointed that you weren’t here when we came down,” Chase said. “I thought for a while he was going to stage a sit-down strike in the lobby to wait for you.”

  At least, Amanda thought in relief, they were off the subject of kisses. She tugged gently at one of Nicky’s curls and tucked his napkin a little tighter. “You’re beginning to need a haircut, young man.”

  Nicky dragged a carrot stick through a puddle of melted cheese and took a bite. “Where did you lose it?”

  Amanda was completely at sea. “Lose what?”

  “Your mind. Can we look for it this afternoon?”

  Chase started to laugh, tried to swallow the sound, and ended up almost choking. “I think perhaps I’d better go to work,” he said to no one in particular. Nicky gave him a kiss and turned expectant eyes back to Amanda, still waiting for an answer. Chase tousled Nicky’s curls and raised a hand to Amanda’s head as if he wanted to do the same thing to her flaxen hair. But he settled for patting her che
ek. “See you tonight, but I don’t know when.”

  A woman at the next table leaned over as soon as he was gone. “You have such a nice little boy,” she said. “I’m so glad to see a mother who teaches real manners.”

  Amanda smiled uneasily. She ought to correct the woman, and yet what difference did it make? She wasn’t one of the coffee-shop regulars; in fact, Amanda had never seen her before.

  Besides, she thought, it might be better for Nicky if not just everyone knew who he was. Secure and safe in her small-town world, it had not occurred to Amanda to ask Chase about security problems. Had Nicky’s string of nannies been as much bodyguards as babysitters?

  So she settled for thanking the woman for the compliment, and hurried through her soup. When she stopped at the cash register to pay her bill, Kathy shook her head. “Mr. Worthington told me to put anything you wanted on his bill. Room service and all.” She grinned. “So if you’re hungry for a piece of pecan pie for a snack this afternoon, I’ll sure save it for you.”

  “No, thanks. That’s the last thing I need. Well, Nicky? How about an hour in my office so I can get the bills paid?”

  She had been foresighted enough to dig out a large set of wooden blocks – cubes and arches and rectangles – and he played on the floor at her feet, building castles and bridges and giving her a running commentary of his progress, until the last check was written, the last receipt filed, and the calculator and account books put away.

  “Let’s take a break and go pick dandelion leaves in Central Park,” Amanda suggested.

  Nicky made a face. “Why?”

  “Because Floyd likes to eat them.”

  He gathered up his blocks, after just a little prompting. “Floyd’s funny. I wouldn’t eat dandelion leaves.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Nicky stopped stacking blocks, and his eyes rounded as if he half-suspected that she’d slipped some into his grilled cheese sandwich.

  Amanda laughed. “No, dear, I’d tell you what you were eating.”

  As they crossed the little park, she noticed a couple of city workers setting up chairs in the freshly-painted bandstand. She had forgotten there would be a concert tomorrow evening; perhaps if Chase was late, she’d bring Nicky. The band was composed of enthusiastic amateurs, but the music was lively, and surely Nicky wasn’t experienced enough to be a critic.

  The workers paused as she and Nicky climbed the steps. “I’m going to pick a few dandelion leaves from the flower beds if you don’t mind,” she said. “Nothing precious, I promise.”

  “Take every one you find,” one of the workers told her. “You’d be doing us a favor, believe me.”

  They crossed the expanse of grass to the elaborate, colorful flower beds, and Amanda showed Nicky how to find the dandelions, which sometimes hid under the edges of other, more desirable plants, and pick the smallest, most tender leaves. A couple of minutes later he brought her a half-dozen and said, “I like you lots, Mandy. You’re funny.”

  Her eyes stung a little. Don’t be silly, she told herself. It had been a careless compliment, definitely nothing to cry over.

  “Do you wish you had a little boy, sometimes?” he asked.

  Amanda knelt in the bark mulch at the edge of the flower bed, heedless of the hem of her hunter green skirt, and smiled into his earnest hazel eyes. “Yes, Nicky,” she said softly. “Sometimes I wish I had a little boy just like you.”

  He smiled at that. His face almost glowed, and dancing lights appeared in his eyes, exactly like the careless teasing sparkle she had seen so often in Chase’s. But she didn’t have a chance to know what he might have said next, for a voice behind her said, “Well, look who’s here.”

  Amanda recognized the careless drawl. She sprang to her feet and put a protective hand on Nicky’s shoulder, drawing him close as she turned to face the tabloid reporter.

  “Mr. Smith,” she said coolly.

  “I’m flattered you remember me. That’s Chase Worthington’s kid, right?”

  Nicky slipped his hand into hers. Amanda nodded. It would be pointless to evade the fact; there were too many ways for Joe Smith to check.

  “I thought I recognized the shape of the face. Don’t you think the resemblance between them is amazing?”

  If it hadn’t been for Nicky confiding the fact of his adoption, Amanda might have carelessly agreed. But she was on her guard. “I hadn’t noticed it myself,” she said. “If you’ll excuse us...”

  “Oh, I don’t want to stop you from whatever you were doing, Miss Bailey. Picking flowers in the park? Isn’t that frowned on by the city fathers?”

  “I’m not picking flowers, just dandelion leaves.”

  “Well, that’s a new twist. For an art project, I suppose? Or are you giving the kid a nature lesson?” He dusted off the end of a nearby bench and sat down. “I heard Chase fired the nanny.”

  Amanda didn’t bother to answer that. For all she knew, he might have heard it directly from the nanny.

  He went on, thoughtfully, “For obvious reasons, I’d say.”

  The tone of his voice took her by surprise, and despite her determination to ignore him, she looked up from the dandelion she was stripping. The admiring light in his eyes startled her.

  “Yes,” Joe Smith said, and his voice was like a careless caress. “Very obvious reasons.” His thoughts were so clear that he might as well have said, Because he has you instead.

  Irritation burned a path through Amanda’s body. “Sometimes the things which seem most obvious are actually farthest from the truth.” She reached for Nicky’s hand. “That’s enough leaves to keep Floyd happy, Nicky.”

  “Who’s Floyd?” Joe Smith inquired.

  “No one you’d get any hot information from, believe me,” Amanda said over her shoulder.

  “I’d rather get my facts from you, anyway. If you’d like to talk–”

  She pretended not to hear him, and she hurried Nicky along a bit faster than he liked. “Why were you mad at that man, Mandy?” he asked.

  One of the park workers came down from the bandstand. “Was he annoying you, Amanda?”

  “Yes – but there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He thoughtfully flexed his biceps, but Joe Smith was already walking toward the far side of the park.

  Amanda laughed a little shakily. Chase hadn’t seen the man as a serious threat. So what was she afraid of, anyway?

  *****

  Nicky wanted spaghetti for dinner, so Amanda wrapped him in a red bath towel instead of tucking a napkin under his chin, and he plunged in with gusto. He’d been eating for almost a quarter of an hour when his father came in.

  Chase took one look and said, “Good lord, Amanda, he’s got more tomato sauce smeared on the outside of him than his stomach could possibly hold!”

  “But he’s having fun,” she pointed out.

  Nicky only grinned and said, “It’s good, Daddy.”

  Chase sighed. “Well, at least he’s washable.”

  Amanda dished up another plate and handed it to him. “That’s a very enlightened point of view. You might share it with the next nanny.” Then she bit her tongue. “Sorry. It’s none of my business who you hire.”

  Chase didn’t seem offended. “I’ll keep it in mind.” He twisted up a forkful of spaghetti.

  “How did the shooting go?” Amanda asked.

  “We finished the house scenes tonight, right on schedule.”

  “Darn, I was hoping to get a glimpse of the shooting while you were at Stephanie’s.”

  “We’ll still be working in the garden tomorrow, if the weather’s fair. Bring Nicky over.”

  “I might, if I can get away.” She looked down at the child. “Are you about to give up on the spaghetti?”

  Nicky shook his head and spooned up another bite. “Mandy,” he said thoughtfully, “if you’d like to have a little boy like me...”

  Amanda turned almost the same shade of red as the tomato sauce on
her plate, but before she could say anything, the child went on. “Why don’t you just get a chosen child like Daddy did?” His tone was matter-of-fact, almost practical.

  Amanda swallowed hard. “That’s an idea, Nicky,” she said as calmly as she could. “I’ll think it over. Now why don’t you tell Daddy what we did this afternoon?”

  But Nicky wasn’t easily distracted. “Daddy, how did you find me, anyway?”

  Chase ruffled the child’s hair, but he was watching Amanda. “You’re not surprised that he’s adopted.”

  She shook her head.