by Isla Bennet
Marin came forward, stabbed her finger into his chest. “I deserved my cut. And you’re a success now—a doctor. Thank me for that.”
A hollow feeling expanded inside him. “Thank you,” he said slowly, “for showing me that this is over.”
“Lucy was willing to help me, just like her mother was. Why persecute me but not that con artist bitch Valerie, when we’re actually cut from the same cloth?” Marin took the cup of vodka to the sink and poured its contents down the drain. “Know what? I feel so good I don’t even need a drink.”
Peyton studied her, unable to find even a trace of the mother he’d loved despite her neglect and lies. “Why didn’t you tell me that she’d bribed you to leave?”
“To see her squirm, to make her crazy wondering how long I’d keep her secret.” Marin saw the flash of primitive rage pass over his face, but it seemed only to goad her. “She was a stranger but Estella just took her right in, while I got the cold shoulder. Valerie knew she’d struck gold with you, that’s all.”
She placed her hands along his cheeks, and searched his eyes. “I’ve got to know—did she at least give her boyfriend his walking papers before dropping her drawers for you? Or did you two just keep doing it behind his back?”
“Enough.” He removed her hands from his face, but held them. “I’ve got to let you go.” And it hurt like hell to do it, because he’d loved her even when he hadn’t wanted to.
“Peyton. No.”
“For years you’ve popped in and out of my life. Part of that’s my fault, since I never made you choose. Now I’m choosing for you. You’re out.” He released her hands and it physically hurt to finally let his mother go.
Peyton didn’t storm out of the apartment, just shut the door calmly behind him and headed to the stairs. But halfway there he bent his head and rubbed at the burn of tears.
“A young man shouldn’t be so upset,” an elderly woman said, sharing a kind smile as she hobbled past him to an apartment with a welcome mat on the hallway floor in front of her door. “Nothing can be that bad.”
It was though. And all he could think about was escape.
VALERIE LOST HER daughter at the hospital. She’d stepped away from the waiting area near Helene-Ming Fish’s office for only all of ten minutes to freshen up in the restroom, and then returned to discover Lucy missing.
After searching the mental health ward and the children’s library, she went to the emergency room.
Beyond the sliding doors was Lucy in her shorts and cap-sleeved top, sporting a careless topknot and a Bohemian handbag. Perched on the bumper of an ambulance, she looked to be in deep conversation with the young man seated beside her who had longish blond hair and a cleft chin, wore scrubs and was hunched over with a cigarette in one hand and a foam coffee cup in the other.
“Sawyer Reed,” a nurse offered as Valerie waited near the doors, observing. “Emilia Webber’s boy.”
“Isn’t her son with the fire department?”
“That would be Axle, the older one. Not to gossip, but neither one is well liked. Even Emilia Webber deserved better sons. Surely you’ve heard that though—and what I’m telling you isn’t gossip if you’ve already heard it elsewhere.” The nurse followed Valerie’s gaze to the ambulance. “Sawyer’s not one to let folks disturb his bumper-coffee-and-cigarettes, but your girl was nosing around and decided to find out for herself just why he smokes so much.”
Valerie went out, ignoring how similar this moment felt. She’d been sitting on an ambulance bumper when she’d told Peyton the truth that had ended them. “Two seconds to get back inside and into an elevator, Lucy. We’re late.”
Frowning, her daughter scooted closer to Sawyer. “Good, ’cause I don’t want to go.”
“’Mornin’,” the doctor greeted stiltedly, as if he’d appreciate it if they hashed this out as far away from him as possible.
“Our health class had a lesson on nicotine,” Lucy went on. “I was telling Doctor Reed all about it.”
“Info I’m sure he already knows,” Valerie said neutrally. This was the doctor who’d gone AWOL, and his choice to sit in a parking lot smoking his way to sanity wasn’t her business.
When Lucy stomped into the hospital, Valerie offered a short nod to Sawyer, who silently saluted her with his coffee cup and bent his head to take a deep draw from the cigarette.
Outside Helene-Ming Fish’s office, the girl launched into whispered protests against therapy since the whole school would be calling her “Freakazoid Jordan” in a week flat on account of nobody in Night Sky knew when to shut up and mind their own beeswax.
“Lucy, the nightmares, cutting your hair … they’re real problems. I don’t even know what else you’ve done, or what you’ve thought about doing.”
“Maybe I’ll do what you and Dad do. Ignore what’s wrong, bottle it up—poof! Everything’s cool.” She rolled her eyes. “Except it’s not. Are we ever going to be all right again, and stop being mad and just be a family? You’re sad all the time and Dad’s …”
“How is he?” She craved to know if he was also sleep-deprived and on edge and missing what they’d found in each other.
“Find out for yourself.”
Before she could press further, Doctor Fish ushered Lucy in, and Valerie headed for the row of cushioned chairs in the outer office’s waiting area and closed her eyes. “Please help my daughter. I can’t lose her, too.”
Someone cleared their throat and her eyes shot open. “What’re you doing here?”
Though his jaw was dusky with stubble and his hair damp, as if he’d rushed to get out the door, Peyton looked well for a man who was living out of a suitcase in a hotel room. “Lucy called me.”
“She’s with Doctor Fish.”
He hesitated, then claimed the chair farthest from her. “I can wait.” A thick silence followed with the faint background noise of footsteps down the hall and pages over the intercom. Finally he broke it. “What were you doing just now?”
“Praying.”
“Thought you didn’t go for any of that. Choose your own destiny, right?”
She sighed, the sound coming out wearier than she’d wanted. “I …” she turned to find him watching her intently “… needed something to believe in.”
Peyton’s eyes widened slightly, recognizing the very words he’d told her once. “Understood.”
I can’t fix this without you. Meet me halfway. “Peyton—”
He leapt up from the chair, jamming a hand into his front pocket and jingling coins. “I’m gonna get a Coke or coffee or something. Want anything?”
How about our lives back, for starters? I want our daughter to be safe with both of us in her life forever. I want the impossible.
“Nothing,” she said.
In just a few strides he was down the hall and around the corner, out of her reach again.
And there she was, avoiding again.
Valerie stood and followed the path he’d taken, and found him inserting a dollar into a soda vending machine. The machine whined and, finding the bill to be not crisp enough, spat it back out.
“Damn,” he said softly. “Not enough coins.”
Valerie plucked a dollar from her purse and fed it to the machine. When a Coke tumbled down, she grabbed it and held it upright for a moment before giving it to him. “A soda for your thoughts?”
Peyton took the soda but didn’t pull the tab. Instead he went to the windows overlooking the courtyard. “I didn’t expect to see you. Lucy said you’d dropped her off here, and I didn’t want her to go through this alone. Guess she hasn’t gotten the hang of that ‘lying is bad’ thing yet.”
She stood beside him watching people mill about the courtyard chatting on cell phones and gathering at tables illuminated in sunlight. “It’ll be a tough habit to break—lying. It’s easy to lie, especially to ourselves.”
Peyton turned his face toward her. “I got the message you left the other day, about the DNA results being ready. The lab called me, to
o.”
“Have you gotten a report, then? I thought you’d be all over it.” She’d hated having to subject Lucy to a “checkup” in San Antonio that consisted of a doctor swabbing the inside of her cheek.
“Valerie, I don’t need a lab report to tell me what I already know. Lucy’s my daughter, and Anna was, too.” Peyton moved closer and she relished the masculine, familiar scent of him. There was raw pain in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have put you and Lucy through that. I’m so sorry.”
One step forward and he was close enough to lean on. But she couldn’t, not when he was still wandering at rock bottom. He hadn’t brought a sledgehammer to the cemetery and gotten himself thrown in jail again, but she could hear the conflict in his voice. “Thanks for helping me file the restraining order against Marin. I bet that was difficult to do.”
“Protecting my daughter?”
“Saying goodbye to your mother.”
A muscle twitched in his neck, but he said only “Where’s the ‘I told you so’?”
“You gave her another chance, is all, just like I’d given you. Despite all the crap Uncle Rhys put me through, I never really hated him. I wouldn’t have taken the ranch if I had. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Sully Joe said she quit and asked to be paid in cash right away so she could get out of this ‘dusty hellhole of a town.’ There’s nothing left for her here.”
Is there anything left for you in Night Sky? Valerie couldn’t say the words because she wasn’t prepared either to hear him say no or list all the reasons that didn’t include her. So instead she said, “Lucy wanted to know whether we’d be all right.”
Peyton retreated just a sliver, but it felt like he’d just put a mile between them. “I don’t have the answer to that. Not now. Neither do you.” Then he handed her the Coke, turned and strode away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FREEDOM HAD A unique sound, scent, taste, feel. Peyton curled his fingers over the handlebars and inched up the wide-shouldered Harley cruiser’s speed as it fired down the open road on the periphery of town. The sleek black-and-silver motorcycle roared in his ears, the moonlight and occasional streetlight reflected off the metal. Leaving this place years ago had saved him. Would it do the same now?
He drove—picking up speed, putting miles behind him … but not much perspective. And then he knew exactly where to go.
As the engine purred to silence, Peyton dismounted the motorcycle fully expecting to be turned away at this hour.
But Fatima Aturro opened the door to Bueno Eats in her housecoat, offering an understanding smile. “You need the gym. My husband said you’d be back.”
Diego appeared behind his wife with a kitten coffee mug. “First one I could find,” he said, handing off the mug so he could yank on a zippered sweatshirt. “Get to bed, mi amor. I’ve got it from here.”
An hour later, Peyton was alone in the gym and wired with adrenaline, and stood wrapping his hands for the speed bag when he heard the door open. Wryly he muttered with a glance over his shoulder, “Taken up an interest in training?”
Jasper entered, his footsteps quiet, his arms crossed over his dark vest. “Not quite. I called your cell—”
“Phone’s off.” Peyton wanted to take stance and start punching, but the man deserved his attention and respect. He finished wrapping and patted his face with a towel. “So you came looking for me.”
“I went to Bull’s-Eye first.”
Peyton couldn’t help being amused at the picture of spotless, buttoned-up Jasper taking a stool at Two-Bit Tony’s bar and turning up a Miller Genuine Draft. “Well, here I am.”
“Mister Peyton, you once told me the butler sees all. I see that you love Valerie and Lucy.”
Of course he did. That love was as vital to him as the blood in his veins. “Valerie had countless chances to come clean. She didn’t.”
“That applies to your daughter, too. If there’s one thing they have in common, it’s their love for you.”
“Your point?”
“A con’s a con, and it burns to be made a fool, but is it fair to see Lucy as a victim and Valerie as an accomplice? Are you sure it’s over because she made a bad decision out of concern for you?”
“My mother said she and Valerie were cut from the same cloth.”
“Do you believe that?”
Peyton shook his head, hooked the towel over his neck and went over to the speed bag. “Never. But I was a real asshole, Jasper. Think she’d forgive that?”
“Consider forgiving yourself.” Jasper came over, reached up and stilled the bag. “As for Valerie—” he hitched his chin toward the open doorway, where she stood backlit by the soft outdoor lights “—I think she already has.”
WHY DID I go along with this? Valerie hadn’t wanted to blindside Peyton, but after Lucy’s plot to bring them together at Memorial hadn’t panned out, the girl had recruited the one man who had a chance of getting through to them.
Word was Peyton had taken time off at the hospital, but Jasper had driven her there anyway to check. Sully Joe recalled seeing him filling up his Harley at the gas station. Then at Bull’s-Eye, Wayne Beaudine had hunched over the pool table, calculating his next shot, and hollered out over the noise that Peyton was probably “sweatin’ it out” at Aturro’s gym.
Peyton’s fists uncurled and he dropped his hands when he saw her. He wasn’t dressed to train, in a tee shirt and jeans, with his leather jacket and helmet on a weight bench. And it was later than late. Coming here had been impromptu, a restless, last-minute choice.
“This is for you.” She came over, held up the scrapbook their daughter had insisted she give to Peyton. “From Lucy.”
He unwrapped his hands, took the scrapbook wordlessly and they stood stock still.
Didn’t he feel it, too? That invisible pull that was tugging them toward each other though neither moved their feet?
“Go on,” she said to Jasper. “I’m okay here.”
Peyton’s eyes were hot and hard as they searched hers. “I almost left.”
“You didn’t, though. That’s what matters. You chose to stay.”
“For you and our daughter. But Valerie, I hurt you. I’m destructive.”
She poked the scrapbook. “The man in this book is who you are.”
The cover displayed a tree with apples bearing the names of his twin daughters—and a few blank apples. Inside, the beautiful pages highlighted his history and family in Night Sky and his aid work. There was even a page devoted to Pisces and her litter of kittens, which, when he saw it, brought a soft chuckle that curled around Valerie like a ribbon.
Closing the scrapbook, he was total seriousness and intensity. “Why didn’t you apologize for sending my mother out of town and keeping it from me?”
“I’m not sorry for wanting to protect you. It’s the way I did it that’s messed up.”
“Same here. When I left I thought you’d be better off with Sam Burgess … or anyone who wasn’t me.”
“We were completely off the mark, then.” She set the scrapbook aside. “Looking at this book, it’s all so simple. Lucy was right when she said that grownups just make things complicated. It wasn’t fair to give you that ultimatum—Doctors Without Borders or your family. You’re a hero. How could I take that from you?”
“No—”
“Yes, damn it. A hero. One who’s mulish and impulsive and hotheaded, and who can piss me off like nobody else.”
“And one who lied,” he ground out. “When I said I didn’t love you.”
Valerie felt the hurt and disappointment and mistrust liquefy, and stinging tears rolled down her face like tiny licks of heat. She didn’t think, just sprang, and he caught her with one hand splayed under her butt and the other gripping her nape. Her Aerosmith “Dream On” tee shirt was riding up her back and her heel had struck the back of his thigh, but neither cared. They were messy and wild together, and oh, God, she’d missed this. “I knew it,” she whispered as she brought dow
n her mouth on his, drinking in his regret … filling him with her hope. “Even when you denied it, I knew better.”
When Diego Aturro came in to lock up, Peyton put on his jacket and secured the scrapbook in one of the motorcycle’s saddlebags. Once he got on, he brought her close. “Validation? Forgiveness? A place to belong? Everything I was looking for, or didn’t think I deserved—I had it, with you. When we get to the ranch, it’s up to you whether I spend the rest of my life sorry for not seeing it from the start, or spend the rest of the night making it up to you.”
Valerie threw her leg over the seat and pressed her front to his back … her lips to his ear … and his body tightened. “Rev that engine. And let’s go home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THIS WAS WHAT she’d been waiting for. Valerie sank to the edge of the precipice of the Crest, relaxed her shoulders and breathed. It was here—untouchable beauty, purity, the surrealistic view of mountain meeting sky.
There was still a vestige of winter in the evening air, which she had expected when she’d decided to tackle the Crest during the first April weekend for her spring climb. By the time summer rolled around, she’d be itching to see the night sky from this mountain again. All around her darkness drifted over foothills and treetops, but in the pale yellow arrival of dawn she would see once again the vista of jagged limestone and talc and spurts of wild grass as she descended to her truck on the gravel auto touring road.
For now, with the gibbous moon high and seeming close enough to touch, Valerie dangled her feet over the cliff, leaned back on her elbows and was contented.
The stars came out of hiding as darkness continued to fall like spilled ink. They twinkled in their constellations, glorious clusters, and traces of silver-gray clouds swirled around them.
This spectacle had saved a man’s life.
She reclined on her sleeping bag, imagining the stars’ glittery residue drifting down on her. The wind whispered, and after a while she thought it called her name.
