A Daughter's Story

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He was wearing a T-shirt. In September. And sweating profusely. Envisioning a kid in his parents’ house.

  Where? His parents’ room hadn’t been touched since the day they’d been killed. The wood floors in the house needed refinishing. There were splinters where the washer had overflowed into the kitchen a few years back.

  He was never there. He couldn’t have a kid at his home.

  A vision formed in his mind. Eyes—brown eyes like Emma’s—staring at him accusingly. Disappointment there. All the things he’d felt toward his father during his growing-up years—until he was old enough to join the old man on the boat.

  Then he saw his mother’s eyes. Directed at him. She’d forbidden him to leave her as his father had. Later, she’d begged. For Sara’s sake.

  He turned, faced the door. The air was stifling.

  “It means there’s an elevated amount of human chorionic gonadotropin in my system.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A hormone that’s present in a woman’s body during pregnancy.”

  He knew it. God help him.

  “The test was positive?”

  “No, there wasn’t enough HCG to indicate pregnancy.” The tranquility in Emma’s eyes calmed him. “Look, Chris. It says here that the levels could be higher right before my cycle. I’m probably going to have a period soon.”

  “So that’s it? We just wait? For how long? You said you were irregular. When will we know?”

  He needed a drink. On the deck of the Son Catcher. Far out in the water. He wasn’t in control out there, either, but at least on the ocean he understood the rules.

  “It recommends waiting a week and retesting. It also recommends a blood test. I’ll call my doctor in the morning.”

  He didn’t feel a damn bit better. “Have you ever thought you were pregnant before?”

  “No. Except for that one night with you, I’ve always been extremely careful.”

  “But you aren’t on the pill.”

  “There’s a history of blood clots in my family. The pill increases the risk, so my doctor wouldn’t prescribe it for me. I wouldn’t have taken it even if she had—not with the risk.”

  Emma turned off her computer and headed for the door. He followed her back downstairs. He should go. He could still get some work done on the boat by spotlight.

  In the living room, he saw the couch where he’d spent the night. A surprisingly restful night.

  And he wondered why there wasn’t a man, sharing it with her. It didn’t make much sense. Emma was in a class all her own. Her beauty and body aside, she exuded everything good that was female.

  “You’ve got a white band of skin on your ring finger.” Like some kind of idiot, he stood in the middle of her living room, not leaving.

  “A broken engagement.”

  “Your idea, or his?”

  “Mine.”

  He nodded. Like Sara. “Lucky you got out before it was too late.”

  “I’m not so sure I did. We were together for five years.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Did you love him?”

  “I thought I did. I loved the life he represented.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “More like ‘who.’” She stood opposite him, her arms crossed, too. “More than one who.”

  “He cheated on you?”

  “Several times. But that was before we got engaged.”

  “You knew he’d been unfaithful to you and you agreed to marry him, anyway?”

  Shrugging, she said, “Like I said, I wanted the life he promised me.”

  “You wanted to be with a man who slept with other women?”

  “I wanted to be with Rob because he knows me. He knows my mother. He not only understood that our lives revolve around finding Claire, he took on the quest to find her, too. And…he was okay with pandering to my mother’s idiosyncrasies. And I truly believed, because he promised, that after we were engaged there would be no more fooling around.”

  “But there was.”

  “Yes.”

  “Recently?”

  “I found him in bed with someone, just before I went to Citadel’s that night. I gave him the night to get his stuff and get out.”

  Enlightenment. “Were you planning to stay in the tourist district that night?”

  “For the first time in my life I had no plans. And look where it got me.”

  He tried not to take that personally, considering why they were together that evening. But he couldn’t stop himself.

  “As I recall, you rather…enjoyed…yourself that night. I remember you saying something about never having had an orgasm before?” His body reacted to the memory. Or to the words. Or to her.

  He had a boat to fix.

  A life to live.

  She blushed. “I said that out loud?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember thinking it.”

  “You want to think it again?” He didn’t just say that.

  “I…I mean, I can’t, really, can I, since I…have…had, you know, one.”

  The woman entranced him. It had to be her youth, was all. He was getting old. Jaded. Used to the company of more weathered women.

  “You want to feel it again?”

  “Of course I do! Now that I know what… Well, clearly Rob wasn’t the right man. Next time I’ll know not to settle for… I’m sure I’ll find the right man and when I do—”

  “I meant now. Tonight. With me.”

  “With you?”

  “It’s not like we haven’t done it before. Or like either one of us is likely to be doing it with anyone else until we know for sure that we didn’t create a baby together.”

  He was a heel. Using the pregnancy she was sure didn’t exist to get her back in the sack. He’d never sunk so low. What in the hell was the matter with him?

  He’d blame it on the beer.

  But there hadn’t been any.

  He was stone-cold sober.

  And hard as stone, too.

  So he said, just to be clear, “I would very much like, with your permission, to make love with you again. Tonight.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EMMA BURNED FROM the inside out. Her skin felt hot. Beneath her skin was hot. She was hot in private places that nice girls didn’t share with many people.

  “You have my permission,” she choked out. She wasn’t drunk. Or being pressured.

  She wanted to have sex with Chris Talbot. Needed to feel the exquisite sensation again.

  Without Chris, her life was all about hurt. And worrying about more hurt. Hers. Her mother’s. Her sweet baby sister’s.

  God help her, Chris took the hurt away.

  He moved. She saw the T-shirt and torn jeans. The flip-flops. His toes. And remembered the office upstairs, the reason he was there.

  “Wait.” She didn’t step back when his chest touched her breasts.

  His hands remained at his sides. “What?”

  “Do you have a condom?” Rob had taken their supply.

  “In my wallet.” They were nose to nose, so close she could feel the movement of his lips.

  Then their lips were touching. Emma opened her mouth, melted her tongue against his and prayed that her mother would forgive her for having sex with a man from the docks.

  * * *

  CHRIS HAD ALWAYS gotten up after sex. Sara had been the only woman to complain about i
t, but he figured there’d been others who would’ve preferred he lie with them for a while.

  He just couldn’t seem to make himself do it. Once it was over, he was done.

  And he told himself to get his naked ass up from the bed of clothes they’d made on Emma’s couch. He had a long drive ahead and an early morning. There was no reason to linger.

  With one palm, he cupped her belly. “It’s so flat.” Strangely, the idea of his baby growing there didn’t bring forth the usual panic. He felt too good to feel bad at the moment, he supposed.

  Or maybe he was too weak to muster the energy. Probably why he was still lying there, cradling her naked body half on top of his.

  “You don’t have to worry, Chris.”

  “I wish I was as certain of that.”

  “Trust me, if I thought, for one second, that I was carrying a child, I’d be the first one to panic. An unplanned pregnancy would be disastrous for me, but to be pregnant with a fisherman’s baby? I can’t think of much worse.”

  Not sure what to say to that, Chris lay there, his hand stilled. “Mind explaining that?” he finally offered.

  She leaned up on one elbow, studying his expression. Her eyes shadowed. “I’m so sorry,” she said, frowning. “I just realized how that sounded.”

  He was still waiting for an explanation.

  “You said your father was a fisherman,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And yet, you don’t think you can be a father because you fish.”

  “I’m old-fashioned enough, hell, just plain old enough, to believe that a man and a woman should be married to have children,” he said.

  “I’m with you on that. Completely.”

  “The life of a fisherman does not lend itself to healthy marriages. Some people make it work. A lot don’t. In my experience, most don’t. So many times they live separate lives in the same house. I wouldn’t be good with that kind of relationship.”

  Marta and Jim were the exception. Somehow they’d managed.

  And Trick and his wife.

  There were a few others he knew of.

  “Is that what happened with your parents?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I’m asking you what you say to that.”

  She was asking him to tell her things he didn’t talk about. Not even to Sara.

  “I was twelve when I caught my mother in bed with another man.”

  He made himself look her in the eyes, compelling brown eyes that turned compassionate.

  “It wasn’t the first time it had happened.”

  “Did your father know?”

  “Eventually. I’m not sure when he found out. Or how. Nothing was ever said to me about it.”

  “Did he divorce her?”

  “No, he pretended he didn’t know. As near as I could tell, he felt responsible, which is crazy if you ask me. Yeah, he left her alone, all day every day for weeks and weeks at a time. But it was a flaw in her character that allowed her to give herself over to the arms of another man. At least while she was still married. She’d made vows to my dad.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy. Growing up knowing that about your mom. But it must have been hard for her, too. Did she and your dad do things together when he wasn’t fishing?”

  “By the time he got home at night, he was exhausted. And every single time he went out on the boat, not only was he unavailable in case of an emergency, but he was also putting himself in danger. She’d worry, every day, that this would be the day she’d get the call. Even when the sun was shining and the waves were kind. When she got to the point where she couldn’t stand it, he promised her he’d cut back, that he’d be home more, fish fewer days. But every morning, when he woke up, he’d hear the call and off he’d go.

  “I’m not saying the blame was all Mom’s. She was sensitive. And emotional. She needed a man around her to feel safe.”

  “He left even knowing that she was turning to other men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t love her enough.”

  “The one and only instance I saw my father cry was one rare night we got home early—in time to see a truck pulling out of our driveway. I was about sixteen. I knew what was going on, but I hadn’t known that he did. He asked me to get out of the truck, to tell my mother that he was going to buy cigarettes, and then he backed slowly down the drive. I saw the tears when he glanced up at the house.”

  “But he came back.”

  “As soon as he got the cigarettes he said he was going after. He came in the house, kissed my mother hello and asked what smelled so delicious. She’d had a casserole cooking in the oven for our dinner while she’d been having sex with another man.”

  Chris heard his voice. Recognized it. But nothing else about himself was familiar at the moment. He’d taken complete and total leave of Chris Talbot.

  “My father was a fisherman.”

  “What?” All his thoughts fled as he stared at her. “From Comfort Cove? Who is he? I must know him.”

  Good God, whose daughter had he just slept with?

  “His name was Dale. Dale Sanderson. He was from around here, but he wasn’t from a fishing family. He helped out at the docks for a couple of summers.”

  “Before you were born?”

  “And after.”

  “So that would have been twenty-nine years ago,” Chris said. “I was eleven and not really allowed down at the docks yet then, but Manny was there.”

  “From what I understand, my father worked on an older man’s boat.”

  “Does you mother know about us?”

  “Absolutely not! She’d be a wreck if she knew I’d been anywhere near the docks. I heard about the docks and the men who hung out there pretty much every time I went out from the time I hit puberty until I left for college. I wasn’t supposed to drink or do drugs, but most especially I was not to venture anywhere near the docks. They aren’t a safe place for girls.”

  “I agree with your mother.” Honor forced him to speak up. He wasn’t good for her. Not in the long-term.

  Emma laid her head against his chest. “Mom’s understandably neurotic,” she said, “but she’s also right a lot of the time. My father married her when she was pregnant with me. And then, when she got pregnant with Claire, he was offered a job in Alaska, working at sea full-time, with the promise of his own boat after a couple of years.”

  “Your mother didn’t want to live in Alaska all alone.” He knew the drill. Understood. Sara couldn’t stand the thought of living in Comfort Cove, the town where she grew up, where her family and most of her friends still lived, all alone. She hadn’t wanted sole responsibility of raising their children.

  “He didn’t want to take us. He filed for divorce and took off.”

  “He paid child support, though, right?” The near darkness of the room held them in a cocoon that was apart from real life.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever heard from him? Did he get his boat?” And was the boat worth sacrificing his family for?

  Chris was afraid he knew the answer to that one.

  “He didn’t live long enough.”

  “What happened?”

  “The classic bad-boy story,” Emma said, her tone dry. “Shortly after arriving in Alaska, he got involved with a married woman and her husband came looking for my father. He found him drunk in a bar. There was a fight. My father ended up unconscious and later died. He’d sti
ll had my mother listed as next of kin on his life-insurance policy.”

  “So your mother got support money in a roundabout way.”

  “The payout was barely enough to cover the cost of the funeral.”

  “What about his parents? Did you know your grandparents?”

  “I don’t know anything about them. He was in foster care from a pretty young age, which is how he ended up in Comfort Cove.”

  “What about your mother? Do you have grandparents nearby?”

  “No. They disowned her when she turned up pregnant with me, but they came around after I was born. We lived with them after my father left until Claire was born, but I don’t remember that time. Mom had her teaching degree by then and had met Frank, whom they loved. But after Claire was taken…everything just went crazy, you know? Mom shut everyone out. My grandmother fell apart. She couldn’t do anything. She cried any time she saw either one of us. Eventually she and my grandfather moved to Florida. My grandmother died a couple of years ago.”

  And he thought he’d had a hard life. Emma Sanderson was stronger than he’d ever had a hope of being.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He’s still down there, living in the retirement community they lived in together. He golfs all the time. Last year he married a widow he met at their resort. They came up for a couple of days over Christmas. Harriet’s a decade younger than him and she adores him. I guess she had a rough first marriage. And no children, although she always wanted them. Anyway, I liked her. So did my mother.”

  She had family. Any child she had would have family.

  And most clearly, he, a man of the sea, would not be welcome. He’d digest the knowledge later, when he wasn’t feeling so complacent.

  For now, he’d best take his freedom, and his pants, and get out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “MS. SANDERSON?”