Uncertain Past

by Roz Denny Fox

  “Nothing.” Riley checked to make sure the main door was locked before he ushered Emmy into his private office. “Emmy, there’s something I want to get straight before we start. I’m doing this as a favor. The subject of money is closed. However, I’m going to try one last time to talk you out of continuing.”

  Worry lined his face as he relieved her of her purse and dropped it on a love seat in one corner of his office. Placing two fingers on her lips to stay her response, he turned her to face a large oval mirror. Stepping to the side, he tilted her chin, giving her a complete view of herself. Of him, too, but he clearly wanted her to study her own reflection. “Take a good, long look, Emmy. No matter how you’ve changed your hairstyle, the color is unique. It reminds me of old-fashioned vanilla ice cream. You have a distinctive widow’s peak, and darker eyebrows with a little arch. Most people’s eyes are made up of several colors. Call yours grass-green, emerald-green or plain green. The green is unmistakably pure.”

  Emmy fidgeted under Riley’s scrutiny. “Your point is?”

  “I knew you to the age of thirteen. Outside of slimming down and shooting up, you look essentially the same. Chances are, there are strong genes running in your family. Except for a short hiatus, I’ve lived here forever. I have clients in all the neighboring towns. I attended college less than seventy miles away. It’s a hell of a thing for a guy to admit, but I’ll say it flat out—yours is an image I’ve carried with me for three-fourths of my life. You think that if I’d seen a younger version of you, or an older one, I wouldn’t have made the connection?”

  Emmy felt pressure behind her eyelids. Riley was saying he didn’t think she’d find her roots in or around Uncertain. She refused to consider what that implied. It suggested someone, her mother presumably, had traveled a distance to First Monday Trade Days for the express purpose of dumping an unwanted baby. Emmy started to shiver. She couldn’t help it.

  Riley saw, and he drew her into his arms. “I’m not trying to hurt you. Lord, sugar babe, I just want you to be happy as the person you are.” He kissed her shimmering eyes closed. Gathering her tight, he tried coaxing her to relax with kisses. He didn’t ease his onslaught until he felt her grow limp against his chest.

  A cold emptiness that had opened in Emmy’s stomach began to slowly warm. She felt herself sliding toward weightlessness—toward the same combustible flashpoint she’d hit the night Riley made love to her on her back porch. Shameless though it might be, given her reasons for being in his office tonight, she welcomed the prospect of their making love again.

  She’d imagined these kinds of stolen moments so many times. Vivid dreams had her and Riley doing it in some pretty inventive places. At the beach under a moonlit surf, in an airplane set on autopilot, on the back of a galloping horse. A law office actually seemed tame. Although the rattle of the wind as it buffeted undraped windows added a dimension of excitement.

  Emmy slid her hands up Riley’s chest, easily divesting him of his sexy suspenders before returning to clasp either side of his strong neck. Not giving him a chance to catch his breath, Emmy kicked off her sandals and leaped up to circle his lean hips with her bare legs.

  Riley fell backward over his wastebasket. He took Emmy with him, though fortunately his fall was stopped by the edge of his cherry wood desk. He felt it crease his back pockets. A lightning desire to possess this woman slammed like a hot meteor into his stomach. “Emmy, Emmy, Emmy!” He repeated her name over and over while each rained kisses on the other.

  Riley’s desperate need hammered and pulsed through every part of his anatomy. In mere seconds he had Emmy’s short sundress scooped up around her waist—out of his way. The scorching fire at her center locked onto him like a heat-seeking missile.

  She sighed—an incoherent sob. Or maybe a plea for deliverance.

  “Oh, Emmy, baby. Making love to you has been on my mind since that night at your place. Only,” he said, pulling back with a great deal of effort, “I don’t want you accusing me of setting out to distract you from your mission.”

  “What mission?” Emmy bit Riley’s lower lip sharply. Her hands moved from his face to the button at the waistband of his slacks. The backs of her fingers brushed the erection ready and waiting behind a straining zipper. Maybe at this moment she did need validation that her background didn’t matter to Riley. So what?

  Riley required no other invitation. He easily flipped their positions, ending with Emmy’s shapely bottom on the desk. And though he still tried to kiss her, he lost no time shucking tangled suspenders, followed by his loafers and suit pants.

  At the same time, she worked to unbutton his shirt, which wasn’t easy as the straps to her sundress kept slipping over her shoulders to bind her arms.

  Riley realized the bodice of her sundress hid the quarter-size rainbow he’d begun to think of as his at odd and inopportune moments. Like in the middle of serious meetings, or yesterday when he stood before a fully robed, humorless judge. Only when he held her like this did the troubled years roll away.

  Ignoring the winking cursor on his computer monitor, he swept file folders, blotter and keyboard aside, his hands shaking as he watched her unzip her dress and slither daintily out of it. She was wearing the smallest scrap of red lace underpants he’d ever had the good fortune to see up close and personal. “Something I always knew about you, Emmy Monday,” he growled as he stripped away the last barrier, “was that given a few years, you’d torture a guy out of his ever-loving mind.”

  Her accepting, womanly laughter sent warm prickles along his spine as Emmy lay back on his desk and welcomed him fully into the saddle of her thighs. Pale thighs that glowed like fresh cream against his darker skin. Riley didn’t know if he’d ever be able to do a lick of work at this desk again—at least not without remembering and longing to repeat this moment. From now on his secret weapon to pass the time in boring meetings would be to run his fingers over the exact spot where Emmy’s pot of gold had left its invisible mark.

  As if reading his mind, she said as much.

  Riley marveled that they could be so uninhibited.

  Especially him. From the first, his and Lani’s coupling had been in bed. In the dark. Brief. The word duty intruded seconds before his control shattered, and he and Emmy floated together somewhere above the satiny wood desk. Duty would never be a word he’d attach to making love with Emmy. More like spontaneous combustion, he thought, smiling all over.

  Except for the hum of the computer and their combined breathing, the room was silent; the normal downtown sounds had faded. Even the wind had died down. It struck Riley that what he’d experienced in his marriage couldn’t compare to the joy he felt when Emmy tickled him and whispered in his ear quite graphic suggestions as to where and how they might try this next.

  The next surprised them both.

  It occurred when Riley tugged Emmy into his closet-size shower after they’d finally untangled from atop his desk.

  “You know we can’t show up at a restaurant until we make ourselves presentable.”

  Rising up on tiptoes, Emmy smiled and pushed Riley beneath the spray. She kissed him thoroughly while behind his back she adjusted the nozzle to a fine, warm spray. “This saves time,” she murmured against his lips. “Don’t think you’ve dissuaded me from having a look at your friend’s information, however.”

  Riley paused in spreading soap over her breasts. His thumb idly traced the colorful arc of her rainbow. “We’re going to go back out there and sit, fully dressed, side by side at my desk?” He had the oddest look on his face.

  “You’d rather sit there naked?” she asked mischievously, taking her sweet time soaping from his belly to the point where his most private part sprang erect again. “I suppose we could,” she mused, stretching the length of him to nibble his ear. “I guess you didn’t happen to glance into the next building—the one with an office that looks directly into
yours? I’m afraid you mooned the cleaning lady. If we went out as we are now and turned on the lights so we could see the computer, I expect she’d die of heart failure.”

  Riley tensed. He reared back from licking the rivulets of water trapped along Emmy’s collar bone. “You’re kidding. Someone saw us? Tell me you’re joking.” He gave her a little shake.

  “God’s honest truth. Well, look at it this way,” she said, grasping his neck to lift herself high enough to settle over his erection again. “The side she saw of you won’t be identifiable as yours.” Emmy’s delighted laughter filled the cubicle, mingling with steam that rose from their connected bodies. Riley braced his hands against the back wall and gritted his teeth to keep from exploding too soon. He’d always suspected life with Emmy would never be boring. He’d just never dreamed how truly daring it could be.

  Forty minutes later, they were clean, dry and dressed, seated next to each other in front of the computer.

  Riley didn’t know when he’d last felt so totally loose and happy. Still, every so often he couldn’t resist snatching a quick peek over his shoulder at the cleaning lady who seemed to be spending an unusual amount of time dusting the office furniture across the alley. Thank goodness he didn’t recognize her. Not that he’d change what had happened between him and Emmy, but he’d hate it if people in town spread rumors about her. And they would, if word leaked out. In small towns, men could get away with having their dalliances. Their partners were chewed to pieces in the gossip mill.

  Emmy jabbed him with a sharp elbow. “Earth to Riley. I’ve read the introduction twice. It sounds pretty simple. Skip on to section two.”

  “Why?” Riley scrolled past even as he asked.

  “It deals with locating someone who’s served in the military. Oh, stop a minute. Back up. There. An address.” She pulled over a legal pad Riley had given her and copied the data from the screen. “Jed and I think Will may have joined the military. He mentioned it once or twice. Maybe Jed could draft a letter explaining our situation and we’ll be able to trace Will.”

  “What if Will doesn’t want to be found?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? I think he’ll at least want to hear what’s happened to Mom Fran.”

  “They were close.” Riley wished he felt easier about all this proposed digging into people’s private lives. He wasn’t a religious man, but he’d always had a strong belief in predestination. A belief that everything happened in a particular order for a reason. What Emmy was proposing tampered with that order. But what could he do? Sitting here, seeing her eyes bright with hope as she filled her legal pad with notes—he already knew he was helpless to refuse her anything. Mentally giving in, Riley edged his chair closer and curved an arm around her. They sat for some time in silence as he worked the mouse with his left hand, moving the cursor down through the questions. The fingers of his right hand brushed idly over the soft flesh of her upper arm, as he read the checklist aloud.

  There were a few ideas that made sense, like creating a search journal so as not to keep covering old ground. A lot of the advice had to do with adoptees, such as retrieving a copy of the final adoption decree. Stuff like that. Of course there were practical suggestions like checking phone books, old newspaper articles, county and state records in and around the area where the searcher lived—for information on marriages and divorces. Except it wouldn’t work with Emmy, because you needed a name and Emmy’s name was totally made up.

  Unless maybe it wasn’t made up.

  “These hints are pretty sensible. Visit hospitals and churches in the area where the baby—in this case, you—was abandoned. And revisit people who lived there at the time. Old-timers who might know more than they let on to social workers. Oh, this, too. Check college and high school yearbooks in the years preceding your birth—looking for similarities in faces.”

  Emmy nodded. She had several pages filled with neatly penned notes by the time she sat up straight and flexed her cramped fingers. “This last part seems logical. I’ve taken a lot of notes, but now I need time to really digest them. To decide whether or not I should pursue any of these ideas.”

  Glancing at his watch, Riley was surprised to find that more than an hour had passed. He hadn’t expected to be drawn in. “Let’s shut down. Here’s a folder for your notes. We’ve got barely thirty minutes to get to the Lake House or risk losing our reservation. We’ll need to hurry.”

  “Are we taking separate vehicles?”

  “I don’t mind swinging past here afterward to pick up your truck. That way I’ll be able to follow you home.”

  Emmy’s eyes twinkled. “That sounds promising.” She laughed as Riley’s arms got stuck in his suit jacket sleeves. “Oh, dear. I suppose you’re thinking I’m insatiable.”

  “Are you joking? I’m wondering how fast I can eat.”

  “We could skip dinner,” she said nonchalantly. She slipped the folder under one arm and smiled as she ran a hand up his chest. “Call me shameless if you want.”

  He curled her fingers in his. It broke the connection and cooled the heat her touch had created. “I shouldn’t be surprised, and I should be flattered . . .”

  “But? I hear a but coming, Riley. What? Am I being too forward? Did I read more into our encounters than is there? Tell me, please. I feel like we’ve lost half a lifetime together. If you don’t feel the same, all you have to do is say so.”

  “Do I act like a man who needs hog tying? If you want to know the truth, I’ve thought of little else since that first night but how soon I could get you alone again.”

  “Then I don’t understand.” Emmy shook her head as Riley turned off the office lights and they crossed the dark reception area.

  “I don’t understand either. Unless it’s that I catch myself thinking about you as if you were still thirteen.”

  “Thirteen-year-old girls who reside in Uncertain don’t proposition lovers,” she said lightly, clattering down the stairs ahead of him.

  “In my experience,” he said dryly, “neither do the thirty-year-olds I’ve dated. Granted, there haven’t been that many, but . . .”

  Something in his unfinished sentence poked a warning finger at Emmy. “Because I’m not acting like a shrinking violet, I guess you think I do this sort of thing all the time.”

  He jabbed the key into the door of his convertible without saying a word. He didn’t have to. When he held the door open for Emmy to slip inside, she saw the questions swimming in the depths of his guarded eyes. Disappointment clutched at her stomach. Or maybe it was simply hunger, after all. Riley hadn’t grown up in the system, where girls were fresh prey and the ones who were strong enough not to fall learned plenty of techniques to survive. She hadn’t let the system steal her self-respect.

  “I tend to forget that the pill allows a woman freedom. Our pace is slower here.”

  “Grow up, Riley,” she snapped. “I knew before I went on the pill that I’m responsible for me. I decided a long time ago that I’d never bring a child into this world—not until I can guarantee what’s in the poor kid’s background. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy sex. I’m sorry if that rocks your sensibility. Fact is fact.”

  Riley turned on the car’s lights. His exit from the parking lot was anything but smooth. “You’re saying you never intend to have children? What if your search doesn’t produce answers, Emmy?”

  “Then I won’t have kids. Anyway, at my age it’s more likely that I’ll marry someone who already has a family. Regardless, for the record, I don’t sleep around.”

  “Did I accuse you?”

  “Not in words, but it was on your mind.”

  “No. It’s just that I want more than sex from you, Emmy.” A heaviness settled in Riley’s chest. He took a hand off the wheel and rubbed his sternum, but the heaviness remained. Perhaps because Alanna loomed in his thoughts. He’d never intended for her to
be an only child. He wanted more kids. Yet here was the woman he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off matter-of-factly stating that the subject wasn’t negotiable unless she succeeded in finding a lineage which he was afraid was impossible.

  “It’s not a decision I made on the spur of the moment, Riley. Put yourself in my shoes. Kids ask questions about their family trees. If Alanna asked you to write in her grandparents and great grandparents, you could do that. Her tree would have branches. Mine has none. It’s a straight stick.”

  Riley would rather not be having this discussion. It was more or less what Marge had said to him the other day. Considering the way Riley had cut himself off from both sides of the family, he’d be the only branch on Alanna’s tree. “I think you’re blowing this family tree thing out of proportion. What kid would propose such a topic? Family trees aren’t common in casual conversation.”

  “It’s a hot topic in school. My first-grade teacher cut out brown trees. We glued them on construction paper and took them home to have our parents help us add branches. In Grade Four, we made albums for Mother’s Day. We were supposed to draw pictures of our moms, their parents and possibly one generation back if we knew our great grandparents. I was smarter by then. I drew Mom Fran and got her to tell me about her side of the family. But in first grade, I sobbed my heart out. I was the only kid in class without a tree on the board at parent-teacher night.”

  Something inside Riley shifted. He couldn’t stand the thought of anything or anyone hurting Emmy. And hadn’t he set his own daughter up for the same pitfalls? “I had no idea ancestry was such a big deal in school,” he muttered. “You always seemed remarkably . . . self-composed.”

  “You do what you have to do.” She shrugged. “But it’s far from satisfying to say What you see is what you get.”

  “Marge has been after me because I don’t have any pictures of Lani in the house. I didn’t tell her, but I never had a picture of my wife. We were married at her home in a traditional Indian ceremony. That should’ve been my first clue about things to come, but I thought Lani agreed to it to please her family. If I hadn’t filed papers at the courthouse, our marriage wouldn’t even have been legal.”