Dedicated to Deirdre

by Winston, Anne Marie

  No, not hers. Her Ronan was a journalist.

  But contradictions, nasty little memories, kept surfacing. He’d been strangely uncomfortable any time she’d mentioned his work, but she’d taken it as a sign that he wasn’t having a lot of luck selling. Hah! The money he’d been so blasé about shelling out—

  Oh, God, the money. She didn’t even know how much he’d eventually paid Mr. Briggs, the child finder, but she knew it was more than she could easily raise. And to Ronan, it must have been peanuts. No, peanut shells. The agent’s words hammered in her head again. The original offer was for five. Five million? Even as she shrank from it, she knew it had to be so.

  Ronan, the man who’d made love to her, the man who had invaded her heart the first day he’d hunkered down in the dirt to talk to her sons, was R. J. Sullivan, national bestselling author of five—or was it six?—suspense novels. He made more money in one phone call than she would in her entire life.

  Waves of betrayal battered her. The bag of cookies dropped from her hand and lay, a broken pile of pieces at her feet. He’d lied to her. From the very first day they’d met again, he’d lied to her.

  He’d lied about his job.

  He’d surely lied about needing a place to live.

  And his lovemaking, all the wild and passionate, tender and caring moments he’d shared with her...all those had been a lie, too. They must be. She wasn’t the kind of woman a celebrity would seek out.

  Except for a little convenient sex.

  She stuffed her hand into her mouth as a sudden, loud sob broke free. But nothing could contain the ache in her heart that grew and widened and swelled until she was weeping steadily: harsh, gasping breaths that left her throat raw; hot, boiling tears that set her eyes on fire. She pressed the heels of her palms against them, but the tears squeezed out, anyway.

  She crawled down the steps, one painful inch at a time, and made her way from the stable, her whole body convulsed. She’d trusted him. Finally, she’d thought, after paying for the mistake of her marriage for so many years, she’d finally found someone to love. To love her.

  And she’d been stupid enough to be taken in by a liar for the second time.

  The boys woke up two hours later. From the kitchen she heard them on the portable monitor. The first stretch and rustle was Lee. He climbed off his bed and she heard little footsteps making a beeline for his brother’s room.

  Quickly she grabbed the bowl of peas she’d picked up at the local market, and headed for the back porch, setting her sunglasses on her nose to cover her swollen eyes. She felt dull, disoriented. If only she could simply go to bed and not be bothered by the world for a few hundred years. Maybe then, the exposed nerves of her feelings would be deadened enough for her to pretend normalcy.

  As she settled in the rocking chair, Murphy heaved his bulk out from beneath the lilac bush and came up the steps to lie at her feet. Oh, how she envied him! If only she could just lie down without a care in the world.

  But she couldn’t just go to bed. She had two little boys to take care of. Two little boys who’d had a very traumatic experience yesterday, two little boys who needed her. The bowl of peas awaited, but she just sat there, staring into nothing.

  Nothing. That’s what her future held.

  “Hey, Mom, can we have a snack?”

  “There are strawberries in the refrigerator.”

  “Huh?”

  “There are strawberries in the refrigerator.”

  Lee appeared at the back door, Tommy and Gumsy trailing behind. “Mom, you sound funny. What’d you say?”

  She repeated herself again, and the boys paraded back into the kitchen. Lee was right. She did sound funny. She was hoarse, courtesy of two hours of crying. Hoarse to the point of barely being able to make a sound.

  She picked up a pea and shelled it, tossing the pod into a paper bag on the floor. Automatically she repeated the motion, trying to block out all thought except ones that pertained to the vegetables in front of her.

  Her sons came back outside with the strawberries and sat on the steps.

  Murphy leaped to his feel with a bark of greeting, giving her a second’s notice before Ronan came around the corner of the house.

  She surged out of the rocker, the pea bowl dropping to the floor. Peas rolled across the porch, but she didn’t even notice. She hadn’t heard him return and she wasn’t ready for this. Her stomach jolted; panic stole her breath. She couldn’t face him yet.

  “Tell Ronan I’m sick,” she said to the boys as she yanked open the door and dashed into the house.

  She went straight to her bedroom, where she sat on the edge of her bed with her hands clasped in her lap to keep them from shaking. Her insides felt jittery, as if she would throw up if she thought much about it, so she concentrated on taking deep breaths. Deep, calming breaths.

  She absolutely could not deal with seeing him right now. Eventually, she knew, she would have to. And “eventually” probably meant tomorrow, if she knew Ronan.

  You don’t know him, a little voice in her head reminded her with brutal frankness. He deliberately lied to you, told you he was something he wasn’t. And you fell for it. Hard.

  The boys’ footsteps pounded up the stairs and headed down the hall toward her room. What was she going to tell them about Ronan? How were they going to feel when he left?

  Deep, calming breaths.

  “She’s in here,” said Tommy as he appeared in the doorway. He was pointing triumphantly at her, and her heart tore completely in half, raggedly ripped right down the middle, when Ronan followed him into the room.

  Seven

  “Thanks, guys,” Ronan said to the kids, forcing a note of normalcy into his voice, although he felt anything but normal right now. “You can go back outside now.”

  Lee looked from Ronan to his mother, clearly uncertain. The child was picking up the high-voltage emotion running around the room, Ronan figured, and he knew something didn’t feel right. “What are you gonna do?” Lee said in response.

  “I need to talk to your mom for a few minutes, and then I’ll take you down to the creek if it’s okay with her.”

  “All right!” It was Lee’s favorite expression of delight; Ronan had heard it dozens of times in the weeks he’d lived here. As he had hoped, the promise of a dip in the creek was enough to divert Lee’s attention from the adults. “C’mon, Tommy.”

  Both boys trotted off, sufficiently bribed, and in a minute he heard them heading down the stairs, sounding more like a troop of elephants than two little kids.

  He looked across the room at Deirdre, sitting on the edge of her bed, and he realized they might as well be miles apart. Her face was white, and even through the sunglasses she still wore, he could tell she’d been crying. Hell! Of all the lousy timing—he’d been going to tell her yesterday, and the opportunity simply hadn’t arisen. He’d been going to tell her today....

  “You heard, didn’t you? You heard the message.” His chest felt like somebody had forced him to swallow rocks.

  She nodded, staring at him as if he might attack her any second.

  “Dammit!” He slammed his fist against the solid wooden door frame so hard the thunk shook the wall.

  She jumped, a harsh gasp forcing its way past her swollen vocal cords.

  “I was going to tell you,” he said, flexing his fingers to check for broken bones.

  She turned her head away, staring out the window, swallowing visibly.

  “Baby, talk to me.” He knew he was pleading but he didn’t care. How the hell could he fix it when he didn’t know what was broken?

  “I don’t have anything to say.” Her voice was a scratchy whisper, and still she didn’t look at him.

  “Are you feeling bad? Your voice sounds terrible.” Maybe she was so upset because she was sick. When he didn’t feel good, little things got blown all out of proportion—

  “No.” She turned her head then and looked at him, and the total lack of life in her eyes was a knife in hi
s heart. “I was crying earlier. Someone I cared for died.”

  He winced, knowing full well what she meant. “Deirdre, let me explain. It’s just not as simple—”

  “Get out!” She might not have volume but there was enough vehemence in her poor ruined voice to shake him right out of his shoes. “You lied to me.” Tears began to roll out from under the sunglasses. “I trusted you, and you lied to me.”

  “Baby.” He was across the room in two strides, reaching for her. She fought him, silently fighting against the bands of strength he wrapped around her, twisting and heaving until the sunglasses clattered to the floor, sobs rushing in and out as she tried to get away. But he wasn’t about to let her go, and finally she stopped struggling. He’d pulled her into his lap in his efforts to keep her from landing a solid blow; he tucked her head under his chin and rocked her as he had last night when the thought of Tommy without his alligator had broken her determined effort at control.

  She would forgive him. She had to. “I didn’t lie to you,” he started. “Well,” he amended, “I did, but not to you, specifically. When people learn who I am, they tend to want me to behave like they think a celebrity should. Although I’m damned if I know how. In the past couple of years, I’ve tried not to attract the attention of the public. Even so, it had gotten so there was always somebody at my condo wanting autographs, introductions... you can’t imagine what it’s like. Writers trying to get published even bring me their manuscripts and expect that I’ll have the time to read them and offer my opinions.”

  He stopped to gauge the effect of his words, but she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t giving off any signals, any clues to what she was thinking. That was a good sign. She was thinking over his words, seeing that this really wasn’t anything to fight about. “Several years ago I started getting some pretty kooky mail from a fan. The woman started showing up at my apartment, following me when I shopped or took a walk. One day I found her in my apartment, in my bed! She was arrested, finally, but I don’t want to go through something like that again. When I decided to move out of Baltimore, I—”

  “You expect me to believe you chose to move out of a condo—complete with doorman and maid service, no doubt—to live over my stable?” She shoved at his chest, catching him by surprise, stunning him into speechlessness as he gaped at this madwoman who had taken the place of his quiet, gentle Deirdre with the hidden flame that only he could fan into a wild, hungry blaze.

  She leaped away from him and whirled, poking herself in the chest for emphasis as she hurled the words at him. “I wasn’t just, ‘the public,’ Ronan.” She paused, and a deep shadow passed over her face. “But I guess I was to you. Just somebody to entertain you until you got tired of the simple life and went back to where you belong.”

  “Which is where?” He’d recovered the power of speech. And with it came a welcome anger, fury so great he was actually shaking. She had taken every word he’d said and twisted it into some alternate reality, and she’d closed her mind to anything he might say to challenge it.

  “Not here, that’s for sure!”

  “You’re not going to give me a chance, are you? Just because you had one lousy experience with a man doesn’t mean the next one will be the same. You told me you loved me last night. Was it true?”

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, backing away until she banged into the wall beside the door. But she didn’t answer him.

  “You accused me of lying,” he said, knowing he was holding himself in check by the slimmest of threads. “But you’re just as bad.” His eyes narrowed as he stalked her, moving across the room to look into her eyes, those beautiful emerald eyes in which he once thought he saw his future. The frozen tundra he saw now cut to the bone; he turned grief into self-protective rage, wanting—needing—her to see how little her rejection mattered to him. He’d been down this road once before with a woman he’d thought he loved; no way was he going to let Deirdre think she’d gotten to him, that she mattered.

  “You wanted sex, and I happened to be holding the lucky number. Women.” He spat out the word with all the contempt he could dredge up, ignoring the horrified sound that shoved its way out of her strained throat. “You want men for sex, for money, for power, and you dress up that hunger as ‘love.’”

  He walked through the door and down the hall, determined never to look back, in case she thought she’d hurt him. “Don’t snoop around the stable anymore. If you want to look inside the apartment, just ask. Landlady.”

  When was he leaving?

  It had been three weeks since the day Ronan had destroyed her dreams. Long, hellish weeks in which she’d had to force herself to perform even simple tasks. Caring for the boys took all her energy. At night she fell into bed, so exhausted that she didn’t even dream. Which she considered a blessing. Sweet oblivion. Her only regret was that morning came.

  They hadn’t spoken since he’d stormed out of her bedroom. The boys had acted as unwitting messenger service on the few occasions there’d been a need for contact.

  “Mom, Ronan says he’ll take us up in the meadow to fly the kite. Okay?”

  “Mom, Ronan said to tell you he’s going to be away for four days.” Where had he gone?

  “Mom, Ronan took Murphy for his walk.”

  “Mommy, Ronan told me to give you this.” “This,” was an envelope containing the month’s rent they’d agreed upon. She’d squashed the tiny flare of happiness that he would be here for at least another month.

  Her days were quiet. She rarely left the farm except for necessary shopping, church and things like doctor’s and dentist’s appointments for the boys.

  Lee and Tommy hadn’t gone with Nelson on Sundays since he’d taken them to the hunting cabin. Her lawyer had filed a motion asking that he be denied visits on the grounds that he wasn’t reliable and that there was the potential for abuse. The judge had decreed that any future visits would be at her discretion, that Nelson wasn’t to contact her except through their lawyers and that he could not speak to the boys unless she so chose.

  A week and a half had passed peacefully afterward; Lee had finally realized in the middle of the following week that they hadn’t gone with Daddy on Sunday. The patent relief both her sons displayed made her sure she was doing the right thing, as she carefully explained that if and when they wanted to see Daddy, they could tell her and she would arrange it.

  “Nuh-uh,” said Tommy, shaking his short-cropped black head vigorously. “Daddy doesn’t like Gumsy.”

  Lee was more astute. “If we go with Dad, he might take us away again, right?”

  “It’s a possibility,” she’d been forced to admit. “But your daddy loves you, honey. He thought he was doing the right thing, even if we know he wasn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” Lee said, his lower lip puckering. “He scared me, Mom. So I don’t ever wanna go with him without you.”

  Her little warrior. Lee rarely cried; that the suggestion of a parental visit with his father should have him struggling with tears told her far more than words ever could have.

  “But I’d go with Ronan.”

  Five little words, uttered by a child too young to know the fresh devastation they left in their wake.

  She worked, because there was nothing else, and the children didn’t require her attention every minute. Even through a bout of the flu she hadn’t completely shaken, she worked. She finished the New York order and started one from an Ohio toy shop. Jillian also had given her a small order. Normally, she didn’t do quantities less than half a dozen, but this was Jill. She intended to use the little ghost and witch as a Halloween display in her children’s toy store in Downingtown Plaza, a store where Deirdre invariably spent far too much money any time she went near the place.

  Christmas was still half a year away, but toy stores all over the nation were gearing up for the big spending season. She was beginning to get calls from people she’d never heard of, people to whom one of her satisfied customers had shown her creations, people wh
o wanted her work in their stores. She should have been thrilled. Extra income meant that she’d have a cushion when things were slow, a cushion that didn’t exist at this point.

  But she couldn’t summon the energy to care.

  She was her own worst enemy. Every time she turned around, she was thinking of Ronan.

  One of her thoughts was practical, necessary. She had to pay him back for the money with which he’d hired the man to find the boys. No way was she going to let him assume that cost. They were her children, and it was her responsibility. And she’d pay him back somehow if it took every extra dime she ever made.

  Other thoughts weren’t so practical. She could barely stand to sit on the porch anymore... memories of that first shattering night he’d touched her reduced her to tears. Never mind that the evening had ended so badly. All she could recall now was driving need, frantic possession, lingering tenderness.

  But you might have another reminder one of these days.

  With determined concentration, she banished the thought and brought the pressure foot on her sewing machine down. She carefully guided the dark purple velvet that was evolving into a cape for a princess, her foot on the pedal sure and steady as she governed the needle’s speed.

  It wasn’t a new sewing machine. It had been a high-school graduation gift from her parents, back in the days when she’d still had stars in her eyes and the world awaiting her. Her throat grew tight as she realized that life had extinguished the stars, and the future was just one more thing to be gotten through.

  Absently she patted the sewing machine again, craving the innocence that came with the memories of receiving it. It had been a surprise, a gift that had thrilled her as no silver or gold ever could. She would never part with it, but sometimes she longed to walk into a shop and purchase a new one. There were machines out there today that could practically sew by themselves. All a seamstress had to do was program the internal computer correctly, an incredible time-saving device ensuring accuracy. She’d looked at them for several years, even asked for one for birthday and Christmas rolled together, but Nelson hadn’t seen the need to indulge her “little hobby.” And now...now she barely had enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month and set aside a tiny bit toward the boys’ educations. It would be a few more years before she could think about a new one.