by Robin Wells
Katie sighed as she set her purse on the counter. “Guess you heard, huh?”
“I’ve heard an awful lot of things.” She turned off the faucet, reached for a towel, and looked at her curiously as she dried her hands. “I don’t know which, if any, are true, but I’m dying to find out.”
“What did you hear?”
Bev raised her hand and ticked items off on her fingers. “That you have a daughter. That the hunk who came in here is the dad. That the girl is pregnant. That they’ve moved here so you can share custody.”
Katie nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
Bev dropped her hand and stared. “Holy mackerel, honey. Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know! Well, I knew I had a daughter, of course, but…”
Bev held her hand back up. “That’s the part I don’t understand. Why on earth didn’t you tell me you’d had a baby?” Her eyes held a soft reproach. “That’s the kind of thing a friend should know.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Katie had wanted to tell her, just as she’d wanted to tell Annette. She’d even come close a few times. But each time she’d started to say something, the conversation had changed or someone else had entered the room or the situation had somehow shifted. “It isn’t the kind of thing that just comes up in conversation. I never seemed to find the right moment.”
Bev gave a get-real look.
Katie threw up her hands in surrender. “Okay. That’s no excuse. We’ve worked together every day for years. But that somehow made it harder. The longer I went without telling you, the worse it seemed that I hadn’t told you, so the harder it got. But mostly…” Katie dropped her hands, closed her eyes for a second, and blew out a hard breath. “Oh, God, Bev, when it happened, I was all wrapped up in guilt and shame and secrecy. And that guilt and shame never really went away.”
“You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. You were just a kid.” Bev walked over and gave her a hug. Katie hugged her back, which kind of felt like hugging a scarecrow. Bev pulled away and looked down at her. “Were you afraid I’d think less of you?”
“I suppose.” Katie bent down and picked up the laundry basket of used towels. “I’ve never really settled in my mind what I think of myself. Adoption seemed like the best thing for the baby, but I’ve second-guessed that decision a lot.”
Bev pulled the disinfected brushes out of the sink and laid them out to dry. “I can’t believe you kept a thing like that secret this long. Especially in this town!”
Katie stepped through the door to the back room and dumped the towels into the washing machine. “Nobody knew where I’d gone except for the Methodist minister. He told me about the adoption center in Kansas.”
“Bless your heart. That had to be so hard!”
“Harder than anyone could know.” Katie added detergent, closed the lid on the washer, and turned it on.
“I can’t even imagine.” Bev watched Katie cross to her styling station and sit in her chair. “And you haven’t had any contact with your daughter until today?”
Katie shook her head. “It was a closed adoption. I had no idea where she was or what her last name was. And I certainly had no idea Zack was about to bring her here.” Katie gazed at the patch of sunlight shining on Rachel’s nail polish collection, illuminating the sparkles in the frosted shades and making the sheer tints glow. The rain had stopped a few hours ago, and since it was July, it wouldn’t get dark for another couple of hours. Still, it was weird, having the sun come out at the end of the day.
“I always hoped I’d hear from her someday,” Katie found herself saying. “Years ago, I registered with a service that helps reunite children and birth parents if both are looking for each other. But I always wanted the first move to be hers. I didn’t want to interfere in her life if she didn’t want me to.”
“And now she wants you to!”
“Not exactly.” Katie explained about the deaths of Gracie’s parents, the aunt’s requirements for relinquishing custody, and the less-than-warm reception she’d received from her daughter.
“It’ll all be fine, honey,” Bev said. “You two are going to end up thick as thieves. All you need is a little tincture of time.”
“I hope so.”
“Just you wait. These things have a way of working out.”
“In the movies,” Katie said dryly. “Or the soap operas.”
“This is like a soap opera, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah. Especially the way it’s being broadcast. Everyone at the retirement center already knew when I got there. Even Annette.”
“Annette. Oh, my.” Bev’s eyes narrowed with concern. “How did she take it?”
“Pretty well. She was shocked, of course, but it turns out Dave had already told her.”
“Dave?” Bev’s eyes widened. “I thought those two weren’t on speaking terms. The last time I saw them together was…”
At Paul’s funeral. Bev apparently caught herself before she said the words. Katie pressed her lips together at the memory. They’d sat on opposite sides of the church during the service and stood on opposite sides of the grave at the cemetery.
Bev sank into her chair beside Katie and looked at her in the mirror. “Well, I have to say, Dave’s sure changed for the better. Fergie Johnson was saying just last week that he seems like a different man since he started going to AA.”
“You’re not supposed to be talking about who belongs to that,” Katie scolded. “The second A stands for Anonymous.”
Bev flipped her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Nothing’s anonymous in this town. Not when you can drive by the Lutheran church on Thursday nights and see whose car is in the parking lot. I guess I’m not surprised Dave went to see Annette, but I’m pretty surprised Annette let him in the room.”
“That’s probably because she was in no shape to throw him out.”
“Annette and Dave talking, and you with a daughter.” Bev shook her head. “This really is a red-letter day.” Bev leaned forward, her elbows on her bony thighs. “So tell me about the hunk.”
Katie’s heart missed a beat. “There’s nothing much to tell.”
“Must be something, if you two made a baby together.”
Katie lifted her shoulders. “It was a teenage summer thing.”
“Ahh. First love, huh?”
On her part, it had been. She’d been completely head over heels. She’d been so smitten, so young, so totally naive. She’d even told him how she felt.
Her face burned at the memory.
She was lying in his arms after their lovemaking, covered with a sheen of sweat, trying to regain the ability to breathe, her heart about to burst.
Zack stroked her hair. “That was amazing,” he whispered against her ear.
“You’re amazing.” The sailboat dipped on a wave—or maybe the earth moved. She gazed up at him, her heart in her eyes. “I love you.”
His fingers froze in her hair. His eyes took on a stricken look. “You don’t mean that.”
He didn’t want her to mean that; she caught on to that right away. Her heart felt like it had been stung by a bee.
“You have a crush on me, just like I do on you,” Zack said. “It’s not love.”
“Yes, it is.”
Zack ruffled her hair and tried for a light tone. “Yeah, well, I’m crazy about you, too.” He rolled over and rose to his feet. “It’s late. We’d better get back to shore so I can go pick up my cousin.”
Bev’s voice pulled her back to the present. “How did he react to the news you were pregnant?”
“He never knew.”
“What?”
“We were only together once, then he disappeared. I didn’t know how to contact him.”
The front door rattled. Bev cast a glance at the paned window in it, then threw Katie a sideways grin. “Looks like he has no problem contacting you.”
Katie turned to see Zack standing outside the locked door. Against her wil
l, her heart thudded against her rib cage. She walked toward the door, her legs feeling strangely stiff, her fingers awkward as she unfastened the lock and opened it. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” His eyes crinkled in that way she remembered. The lines around his eyes were deeper now, but they somehow only served to make him more attractive. He stepped into the room, smelling of rain and soap and that faint undernote she so distinctly remembered, the scent that was Zack, the scent of pure man. She stepped back, steeling herself against the disconcerting pull of it.
He waved at the older woman. “Hi, Bev.”
Bev beamed. “You remembered my name!”
He’d always had a way with names. And a way with women, Katie thought.
“Of course.” His smile widened as he regarded the older woman. “You’re unforgettable.”
Bev’s hand flew to her chest, and a goofy smile spread across her face. Apparently even Bev wasn’t immune to his charm. Wiping her hands on her pants, she made a big show of picking up her purse. “Well, I’m calling it a night. See you tomorrow, Katie.”
Katie felt a moment of panic at the thought of being alone with Zack. “Hang on, Bev. I, uh, need to talk to you about something before you leave.”
Bev looked from Katie to Zack, then back again. She gave that I-know-what-you’re-up-to-and-I-won’t-be-an-accomplice smile. “Oh, gee—I told George I’d be home twenty minutes ago. Talk to you in the morning!” Bev disappeared out the back of the salon.
The door banged closed behind her. The small salon suddenly seemed more crowded with just the two of them in it. Katie moved to her station, trying to put some distance between them. Zack followed her and stood unnervingly close as she sorted the supplies in her equipment cart.
“Sorry about that scene in the bookstore,” Zack said. “Gracie can be difficult.”
“She’s got a lot of anger toward me.”
He rubbed his chin. “Her adoptive mother kind of set that up.”
Katie looked up, wondering what he meant.
Zack picked up a silver hairclip and examined it as if it were a foreign object. “According to the aunt, Gracie’s adoptive mom had been adopted herself when she was seven. Her parents had a natural child a few years later, and Gracie’s mom always felt second-rate to the natural child. She didn’t want Gracie to grow up feeling inferior like she had, so she overcompensated.”
“How?”
He put down the hairclip and picked up a stray blue curler from the top of her cart. “She made a big deal of telling Gracie how lucky she was to have a mom who loved her and wanted her so very, very much, instead of being stuck with a mom who….” His voice tapered off.
“Didn’t love her or want her,” Katie finished for him. Her heart felt like somebody had tied a lead weight around it.
Zack toyed with the hair roller. “Long story short, you were painted as the bad guy so the adopted mom could look like a rescuing angel.”
Katie’s throat grew tight. “I gave her up because I thought it was best for her. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”
“I’m sure it was.” His eyes, warm and sympathetic, met hers in the mirror. “I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I’m just telling you where Gracie’s coming from. She’s seventeen, and she’s stubborn. All her life she’s been set up to think that her adoptive mom saved her from a life of neglect.”
Plus Gracie was grieving the only mother she ever knew, and was about to become a mom herself. Katie straightened the cans of mousse and hair spray on the counter. “I imagine she decided to keep her baby so she wouldn’t be a bad mom like me.”
“You weren’t a bad mom.”
“But in Gracie’s mind…” Her voice trailed off.
“She’ll warm up to you once she gets to know you,” Zack said.
How did Zack know so much about Gracie? An irrational spurt of anger shot through her. “Did she start out treating you badly, too?”
“She still treats me badly, just in a different way.” Zack bent to put the roller with the others on the bottom tray of her cart. “She tolerates me, but just barely. I think she views me as a necessary evil, because I’m the key to her getting what she wants.”
“Which is?”
“Money. And independence. At least, independence from her aunt.” He straightened and looked at her. “I made a point of telling Gracie that she’s got to get along with you, because the whole aunt thing hinges on our sharing joint custody. We have to call the aunt tomorrow, by the way. She wants to talk to you.”
“So she can evaluate my suitability?” Katie said dryly.
“Something like that.” He leaned against the station counter. “She’s relieved to have Gracie out of her house, but she wants a clear conscience about letting her go.”
“I’ll be happy to talk to her.” In the mirror, she could see Zack’s back. She took in the way his broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his polo shirt, the way his hair swirled to the right at the top of his crown, the way his jeans outlined his sexy buns.
Whoa. What was she doing, thinking about Zack’s buns? She hadn’t thought about a guy that way since Paul. Rattled, she moved from her station to the cash register.
Zack followed her. “I came by to see if you wanted to go to dinner with Gracie and me.”
The thought of going out and being ogled by everyone in town made Katie’s stomach twist, but she was dying to spend more time with Gracie. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you and Gracie come to dinner at my place?”
His smile seemed to go right through her. “Great.”
“Do you know where I live?”
“Yeah. I deliberately bought a house just a block away.”
She should have known the proximity was no accident. Few things escaped Zack’s notice.
“I figured it would make it easier for us to share custody if Gracie could just walk back and forth between our places. Do you have a room where she can sleep?”
“Sure.” The spare room was set up as a guest room, but Katie thought of it as the nursery, because she and Paul had planned to turn it into one when she had the baby they so desperately wanted. How ironic that it would now be used by the baby she gave away.
“As I said before, half the time Gracie can stay with you, and the other half with me,” Zack said.
“How do you want to structure this? Are we going to alternate weeks?”
“We can play that by ear. At first we should probably just alternate nights, because Gracie…” His voice trailed off.
“Won’t want to stay with me,” Katie filled in.
“She doesn’t know what she wants.” Zack shifted. “Can she stay with you tonight? The beds weren’t delivered, and I don’t want to make her sleep on the floor.”
“No problem.” The thought filled Katie with excitement. She would get her daughter all to herself. They’d spend some time together, Gracie would begin to thaw, and before she knew it, they’d be laughing and talking, and Gracie would be confiding in her, just like a regular mother and daughter.
“So what time do you want us to come over?” Zack asked.
Katie ran a fast mental inventory. She always kept the ingredients of an emergency dinner on hand: pasta and spaghetti sauce in her pantry, plus garlic bread, ground meat, and ice cream in her freezer. She had a fresh bag of mixed lettuce in her fridge. She wouldn’t even have to run by the store. “In, say, thirty or forty minutes?”
“Great.” He turned toward the door. “We’ll see you then.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Katie’s house was a taupe-colored cottage with a deep front porch, green-shuttered windows, and white, Victorian-style trim. It looked like Katie, Zack thought—small, pretty, and stylish. Gracie’s flip-flops slapped loudly as she climbed the wooden porch stairs beside Zack, her face set in a stubborn sulk.
The scent of cooking garlic and onions wafted out the door as soon as Katie opened it. “Umm. Smells delicious,” Zack said as he stepped into the house. He handed Katie th
e bottle of wine he’d picked up on his way home from her salon.
She took it from him, her eyes surprised. “Thanks.”
He looked around. The living room and the connected kitchen were painted a soft golden yellow and decorated with a mix of antiques and Pottery Barn–style furnishings. The overall effect was charming and inviting. “Nice place, isn’t it, Gracie?”
The girl tilted up her nose and ignored the question.
He should have known there was no way she’d be conned into saying anything positive.
“Where’s my room?” Gracie asked.
Katie gestured toward the back of the house. “Down the hall, to the right.”
Without a word, the girl clomped away, her purse slung over one shoulder, a backpack over the other.
“Make yourself at home,” Katie called.
A door closed with a hard thud.
“She’s not big on manners,” Zack said apologetically.
“It’s okay.” She looked at the wine bottle, then smiled up at him. “You more than made up for it. Come on in.”
He followed her into the living room and paused in front of an old black upright piano. “Do you play?”
“No. My husband did.”
Husband. The word knotted something in Zack’s gut. He glanced at Katie’s left hand and noticed that a wedding ring still sparkled there.
“He was teaching me, but I haven’t touched it since he”—her eyes darted away—“didn’t come back.”
“I’m really sorry. That had to be rough.”
“Yeah.”
That must be her husband in the photo on the piano. He looked like a nice enough guy—sandy hair, ramrod posture, and an easy smile. Zack’s gaze drifted to a large urn on the mantel. Oh, God—was that what he thought it was? He swallowed. Yeah, it probably was, because it was surrounded by smaller framed photos, and they all featured the same man.
Zack walked over and looked at them. A large photo in a heavy silver frame showed a man in a tuxedo, standing beside Katie as a radiant bride, beaming at her as if he’d just won the lottery. In the next one he stood with his arm around her in front of a Christmas tree with a bunch of other people. To the right, Katie and the man sat in a buggy drawn by a horse. On the left, they lounged on a white-sand beach.
