“Do you really have to go? I know Uncle Bryan would want you to stay,” Nicki said, still sounding worried.
Bryan. He had so much to answer for. Had it all been an act, then? And for what? What had driven him to use her like this? To be so cruel. And she’d hoped he loved her. Just as she’d hoped Billy had, and Tommy. Oh, God, she couldn’t go through it all again.
“I’ll call him when I get home, honey. Promise me you’ll lock up after me?” She had no idea where she got the composure to answer the child.
“I promise.” Nicki was standing just inside the door. “Hope you feel better.”
“I will,” Jennifer said, all but running to her car.
Two blocks from Bryan’s house she stopped to put down the top on her convertible. She needed more air.
The picture was in someone else’s photo album. Nicki’s photo album. Her picture. Of her baby.
She pulled onto the expressway, pressing the accelerator to the floor. The warm night air hit her skin, numbing her as she drove, going somewhere, anywhere, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. She couldn’t care. She didn’t dare.
Until she found herself in the parking lot of Innovative Advertising. Then, suddenly, when she knew she’d be facing Bryan in a few short moments, she cared. Far too much. The pain rose to choke her again as she thought of his duplicity. But only for a second. Then the familiar numbness was back, sealed into place.
The outer door was unlocked and Jennifer pulled it open, welcoming the cool air as she stepped into the deserted lobby. She heard Bryan talking and headed toward the sound of his voice, the only door with a light shining beyond it. She walked into the room, his office, judging by the sketchbooks lying around. He was on the phone. He turned when he heard her, his face lighting up when he saw who was there.
His face lit up for her. As if she really mattered to him. She saw his eyes skim over her body, saw his look change from welcoming, to slumberous, to the heated sensuality that had melted her blood. A sudden mind-destroying pain ripped through her. He’d used her.
“She’s mine,” she said, grasping for the numbness that was going to get her through the next hours, the next years.
Bryan spoke hastily into the phone.
“Nicki’s mine.” She hardly dared say the words. She approached Bryan’s drafting table. “Tell me.”
He hung up the phone, his eyes worried as he tried to take her in his arms. But it was the guilt she saw flash across his face that was her undoing. Standing right there, in the middle of his office, she fell apart.
Tears streamed down her face as she lashed out at him, hitting him on the shoulders, the chest. “She’s mine, isn’t she?” she cried. “Isn’t she?” She didn’t even recognize the shrill voice that screamed at him.
Bryan grabbed her arms, but she kept hitting him.
“Yes.”
He spoke softly, yet the word slammed into her with the force of a blast. Burning up with pain, she slapped him and then turned to run back out the way she’d come.
Bryan grabbed her before she made it to the door. He tried to hold her, to soothe her.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice was cold, foreign.
He dropped his hands immediately.
It was that more than anything else that finally reached Jennifer, the way he did as she said without question, as if he respected her right to be left alone. She sank onto the only chair in his office, put her head in her hands and sobbed. It just didn’t make sense. The world had lost its mind. Nothing went together.
Nicki was hers. That adorable, precious, beautiful girl was hers. Her daughter.
And Bryan had betrayed her. He’d used her. In the basest way possible.
He stood in the middle of the room, silently. She sensed him there, but she couldn’t reach him. He was outside her personal storm. He’d caused it.
“She has my hair,” Jennifer finally said. She looked out the window behind his drafting table.
“And your eyes.” His voice was thick, hoarse.
Jennifer’s gaze flew to him, her heart aching when she saw the raw emotion he wasn’t bothering to hide. But he’d betrayed her.
“Why?” she finally whispered.
“She wanted to find you, had to find you. She was losing her grip and no one could reach her. I had her to doctors, to counselors—nothing helped. I was afraid of suicide. She wasn’t interested in anything— except finding you.”
Jennifer swallowed as a fresh flood of tears trickled down her face. Her poor baby. She’d suffered so much. And she was so young.
“So you found me.”
“It wasn’t easy, but yes, after six weeks of professional searching, I found you.”
Six weeks of professional searching. He’d been mighty determined. But then, so would she have been in his position.
“That night at the gallery…”
He nodded. “I knew.”
“And the campaign…”
“My ‘in’ with you.”
At least he wasn’t trying to worm his way out of any of it. Jennifer remembered how easily she’d fallen in with his plan, how easily she’d fallen, period. She felt sick again.
“Why?” she asked.
She saw by the look on his face that he knew exactly what she was asking.
“A rejection would very probably have been the last straw for her. I saw how you avoided kids. Listened when you told me you weren’t any good with them. I didn’t have a choice but to wait until something changed.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“What, and have you go to her? Have you explain who you were, let her know it was nothing against her, it was just you, but that you didn’t want her? Hell, as conscientious as you are, I could see you setting up some bank account for her, providing generously for her, while withholding the one thing she really wanted—you. And all because you didn’t believe in yourself. You’d have thought you were doing her a favor. But she wouldn’t have seen it that way at all.”
Jennifer felt the blood drain from her face as she realized the truth of his words. He knew her well. And a month or two ago, she really might have done what he’d just said. Because she hadn’t believed in herself, not outside Teal Automotive. Until their trip to the beach, she probably would have thought she didn’t have anything to offer Nicki but her money.
He took a step toward her, but stopped when she drew farther back in the chair.
“Think about it, Jen. If I’d told you from the beginning who I was, what I wanted, would you have agreed to meet Nicki and get to know her?”
His hands clenched inside his pockets. She stared at the bulge of his knuckles, focusing on them, as if seeing only them could make the rest go away.
“I don’t know,” she finally whispered. But she had a feeling she did know. As much as she’d have wanted to be there for Nicki, she wouldn’t have believed herself capable of helping any child, let alone an emotionally disturbed one. But she’d have insisted on providing for Nicki, just as he’d predicted.
“I wasn’t sure, either, and I couldn’t take that chance. You didn’t know her then, Jen. She did nothing but sleep and cry and have nightmares. She couldn’t have handled another blow. I could’ve lost her. She was putting everything on the hope of finding her birth mother.”
And Jennifer had believed herself to be anything but mother material.
“I guess I should thank you for hanging in there long enough to show me that I could be for her what she needed me to be.”
“It’s what you needed, too.”
Jennifer conceded the point with a bowed head.
Bryan knelt in front of her, close, but not touching her. “I intended to tell you, Jen, tonight when I picked you up for dinner. I want to marry you. I want for the three of us to be a family.”
Jennifer couldn’t bear to hear the words. They were a mockery of all she’d been foolishly hoping for such a short time before. “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” she asked.
Bryan looked taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“If you really loved me, me, not Nicki’s mother, how could you make love to me without truth between us? The rest I can understand, but not that.”
“I didn’t intend for that to happen.”
Rather than soothing her, his words only deepened her wound. She’d intended so much for that to happen that she’d cold-bloodedly walked into a store and purchased the birth control that would allow it to happen. He hadn’t intended it at all.
“What was it—the wine?” she asked. “No, don’t answer that. It’s bad enough that our relationship had so little significance that you were willing to risk it like this. You know me well, Bryan, very well. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t care about having sex when there were still lies between us?”
“No.”
“But you made love to me, anyway, making a mockery of what we were sharing.” She stood up, brushing by him. “Damn you!” She turned, her look strong enough to kill. “I gave you everything…” She was horrified when she started to cry again. The man didn’t deserve her tears.
He had no words to defend himself. He stood before her, proud, tall—and guilty as hell.
“It’s all so clear to me, you know,” she said, her voice soft now, sad. He can’t help what he is.
“Then maybe you’ll explain it to me, because I can’t think of a single way to help you understand that what I feel for you is completely separate from the fact that you’re Nicki’s mother.”
He almost got her with that. Almost, but not quite. Even then, even when everything was resting on it, he hadn’t told her what, exactly, he did feel. He still hadn’t told her he loved her.
“You’re a rebel, Bryan, a wanderer. You need your freedom like the rest of us need air to breathe. When you got Nicki you lost that, didn’t you? You were cramped beyond your imagination by having the sole responsibility for an emotionally distressed child. So you meet me, you find me attractive and, bingo, you have your solution. Marry me, and you’ve got an instant mother for Nicki, someone who’d obviously feel bound to take on that responsibility since she’s partly mine, and in the process relieve you of some of the responsibility that’s choking you.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then how was it?” She wished she could believe it was anything else.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Bryan racked his brain for something, anything, that would prove the lie to her words, but he couldn’t find it. He was ashamed to wonder if maybe there was an iota of truth in Jennifer’s words. Maybe the reason he’d never felt claustrophobic with their relationship was because, subconsciously, he had seen it as a means to an end all along. He didn’t believe he was capable of such a course of action, but she’d hit a raw spot. His track record gave too much truth to her words.
“Answer me this,” Jennifer said. “If you didn’t have Nicki, would you still be asking me to marry you?”
He could tell her yes. He might even be able to convince her. But could he live with her, could he live with himself, if he wasn’t sure? His life had changed so much in the past year he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. She deserved the truth. She always had.
She didn’t say a word.
Weary, and feeling more alone than he’d ever felt in his life, he cleared up his office, wondering as he did if he’d ever see her there again, or if this was it, the one and only time she’d be there, standing silently, hating him. He didn’t know how it had gotten so out of hand. He only knew that he felt it all slipping away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“SO NOW WHAT?” Bryan looked at Jennifer in the darkness of the parking lot. She’d been silent the entire time he’d closed up his office and. they’d walked down to their cars.
“I want to meet my daughter.”
Bryan nodded. “I’ll tell her tonight. Why don’t you come by first thing in the morning?”
“I’m coming tonight.”
He watched her open the door of the Mustang. Not only was it unlocked, she’d even left the top down. Damn! He’d never wanted to hurt her.
And he might not be done yet. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, Jen. You’re upset. She’s bound to be upset. Let me talk to her first, and I’ll give you a call tonight, no matter how late it is.”
“She’s my daughter. I’m coming with you.”
I don’t need her anymore, Uncle Bryan.
“Children don’t take these kind of surprises well, honey. It threatens their security to have any major changes in their lives. They say things they don’t mean—”
“And they have a million questions,” Jennifer said, smiling bitterly. “See? I’m learning already. But in this case, Nicki has a right to her questions, and I’m the only one with the answers. It’s not me I’m thinking of Bryan, it’s Nicki. I’m coming with you.”
“Okay. I’ll follow you,” Bryan said, unlocking the Jeep.
He pounded his hand on the steering wheel as he watched her pull out of the parking lot. He cursed the Fates that had brought him to this point, that had brought the two people he cared for to this point. His sense of foreboding was so strong it was strangling him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He was following the woman he wanted to marry into hell, and he couldn’t stop her.
Nicki met them at the front door. “Oh, Jennifer, I’m so glad you’re back. Are you feeling better?”
“A little.” Jennifer smiled weakly in Nicki’s direction. She still looked sick and worried and scared out of her wits.
Banking on the fact that she wouldn’t make a scene in front of Nicki, Bryan put his arm around her and led her into the living room. She needed someone to lean on whether she wanted to admit it or not, and at the moment, he was it.
“Come in here, Nick. We need to talk to you,” Bryan said after settling Jennifer on the couch.
“What?” Nicki came in. That damn look was back in her eyes, the “frightened fawn with nowhere to run” look. “What’s the matter with her? Is she going to be okay, Uncle Bryan?” Nicki’s voice wobbled with tears.
“She’s going to be just fine, honey.” Leaving Jennifer, he crossed to Nicki, gave her a quick hug and led her to the couch. He sat her next to Jennifer. Please, God, if you never hear another word I utter, hear these. Don’t let this be the end. They need each other. And I need them. Nicki looked from Bryan to Jennifer’s bent head and back again. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her fear evident.
And now that the moment was upon him, Bryan didn’t have any idea what to say. How did you tell a twelve-year-old child that the woman she thought was her friend was really the mother she no longer wanted to meet?
“Well, Nick, it’s like this. Remember when you asked me to—”
“I’m your mother.”
The bald words fell into the room, leaving a deafening silence in their wake.
Bryan watched Nicki, ready to grab her up and take her away from a situation she wasn’t ready to handle. He wanted to take her to a place where only good things happened and children were always happy. She sat frozen, staring at Jennifer, a look of disbelief on her face. Jennifer’s head was bowed, as if she couldn’t bear to see the shock on her daughter’s face. Nobody moved. Nobody said a word.
As if sensing that something was horribly wrong, Lucy ambled over to Nicki, nudged the girl’s limp hand, then raised her paws to Nicki’s knees.
Slowly, almost unconsciously, Nicki started to stroke the dog. Her movements grew faster, harder, until she buried her face in Lucy’s fur and started to laugh.
What the hell?
Bryan’s gaze met Jennifer’s, their eyes identical pools of worry.
“I thought you said you were my mother,” she said, speaking to Jennifer, but looking at the dog.
“I did.” Jennifer’s words were as gentle as a spring breeze.
But they didn’t have a gentling effect on Nicki. “No!” t
he girl cried, jumping up. “You’re not! You’re wrong!” She burst into tears.
Bryan pulled the distraught child into his arms, rubbing her back, soothing her with the meaningless platitudes he’d spoken over and over to her during all the nightmares of the past year.
She looked up at him, her face streaming with tears. “Please, Uncle Bryan. I don’t want her to be my mother. Please make her go away.”
“Shh. It’s okay, Nick. Calm down. It’s okay.” His gaze sought Jennifer’s over Nicki’s head. He’d never seen such raw pain. Dry-eyed, Jennifer was dying right before his eyes, and there was nothing he could do to help her.
“Come on, Nick, calm down,” he said, his voice low.
“Make her go away, Uncle Bryan! I thought she was my friend. Make her leave. I don’t ever want to see her again.” Her words cut into Bryan. He could only imagine what they were doing to Jennifer.
“Shh. You don’t mean that, honey. I think you half love her already.”
“I don’t. I hate her!”
“Nicki! Don’t talk like that.” His tone was rough now, reprimanding. No matter how upset she was, he couldn’t allow her to go that far.
She jerked away from him. “Why not? It’s true. And I hate you, too!” She turned and ran from the room. Bryan stood there in shock until he heard her bedroom door slam.
He looked over at Jennifer. She was staring at the hallway where Nicki had fled.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “She’s never acted like that before.”
“It’s not her fault.” Jennifer’s eyes were dead. “I don’t blame her for hating me. It’s what I expected.”
Bryan sat down beside her, warming her cold hands between his own warmer ones. “She doesn’t hate you, Jen. She loves you. She just needs some time.”
Jennifer looked straight at him. “I gave her away.” Her words, delivered in a lifeless monotone, cut him to the quick.
“You were barely sixteen!”
Jennifer shrugged off his defense of her and got to her feet. “She deserves to know the truth. If it’s the only thing I can give her, at least there’s that. I’ll leave as soon as I’m finished.”
The Birth Mother Page 20
