“I thought so too until yesterday.” She plucked a leaf from a nearby branch, then crushed it in her palm. “It seems my father let the daughter of one of his friends adopt her. He’s been visiting her for years.”
“Ted Thompson’s wife?” he asked, still feeling as though he was wading through fog.
“His first wife. She died eight years ago of breast cancer. Lindsey lives with her adoptive father and his second wife.”
He digested the information. He’d spent the duration of Annie’s pregnancy in a study-abroad program in Spain. Since Annie wouldn’t take his calls, his mother had kept him informed of developments. She’d relayed that Annie’s father had been tasked with handling the adoption.
“What my father did was unforgivable,” Annie said. “You have every right to be angry with him.”
“Angry?” Ryan searched inside himself but anger wasn’t the emotion coursing through him. “I’m not angry.”
“Betrayed, then,” she said. “My father had no right to do what he did.”
Betrayal wasn’t what he was feeling, either. Something bright and buoyant burst inside him, so powerful it felt as though it was warming him from within.
“Your father was wrong,” Ryan acknowledged, then spoke what was in his heart, “but I sure am glad he was.”
“Excuse me?”
He grasped for the right words to explain. “Haven’t you ever passed a girl of the right age and wondered if she could be our baby?”
Until he asked the question, he hadn’t consciously acknowledged he’d ever done anything of the sort.
“All the time,” she answered slowly.
He felt the corners of his mouth lift. “I accepted a long time ago I’d never know where she was or who she was or whether she was happy. But now…” He shook his head at the improbability of it all. “…now everything has changed.”
He rose from the log, eager to get back to river raft headquarters. To get back to their daughter.
Their daughter!
“Let’s go.” He strode down the path, excitement fueling his steps.
“Wait!” she called. “We have more to talk about.”
That was an understatement. They still hadn’t discussed his culpability in the night that had changed both of their lives. Once again, however, the present was infinitely more important than the past.
“We’ll talk later,” he said. “Let’s go see Lindsey.”
He heard the crunching of leaves and her inhale and exhale, and then her hand wrapped around his arm, startling him into stopping. It was the first time she’d touched him in years, and the contact felt electric. She dropped her hand almost immediately as though she’d felt it, too.
She gazed up at him, her eyes pleading. “You can’t tell Lindsey who we are.”
He usually considered a situation from every angle before acting, but he had been so impatient to see their daughter he hadn’t thought past this minute. “Doesn’t she know she’s adopted?”
“She does, but her father and stepmother don’t even know I’m her birth mother. Only Lindsey’s mother knew and she’s dead.” Her eyes beseeched him. “Don’t you see? Telling her would only confuse things. She has a life that has nothing to do with us. In a couple of weeks, that’s what she’s going back to.”
The idealist in Ryan wanted to protest that the truth was never wrong, but the realist conceded they were discussing a minor. Neither he nor Annie had the right to make decisions for her.
“What do you know about her home life?” he asked.
“She lives in a suburb of Pittsburgh. She has two brothers and a stepmother who says she can be sullen and unhappy. I don’t know anything about her father.”
“If we tell him we’re her birth parents,” he ventured, thinking aloud, “he might decide that Lindsey should know, too.”
“What if he cuts her trip short instead?” she asked. “These next two weeks could be all the time I ever get to spend with her.”
He understood her position even though he didn’t fully agree with it. “I won’t tell her who I am, but I want to spend time with her, too.”
Annie exhaled, her shoulders visibly relaxing. “We can work that out.”
But could they?
Ryan didn’t speak on the walk back to raft headquarters; a question rattled around in his head. How could a thirty-year-old man legitimately spend time with a teenage girl who nobody besides Annie knew was related to him?
The potential roadblock slid into the background when they came upon Lindsey where they’d left her, examining the bicycles with Jason. Ryan barely afforded the teenage boy a look, his attention completely focused on Lindsey.
She jiggled a pedal, her long hair tucked behind her ears, her lower lip thrust slightly forward as she concentrated. The clock rewound a decade and he realized he could have been gazing at his sister as a teenager. Sierra’s hair was darker, but she had the same oval-shaped face and delicate features.
Lindsey looked up. Her eyes weren’t green like his sister’s, or hazel like Annie’s. They were blue like his.
“We didn’t find any more broken pedals,” Lindsey said, “but some chains are loose and a lot of the tires are low.”
Ryan could barely think of anything except Lindsey but found it strange that the rental bikes weren’t in better working order.
“This shouldn’t happen.” Annie tried to make sense of it, too. “We have the bikes serviced regularly. The technician was in last Thursday when I was out of town. Right, Jason?”
Jason rubbed his nose, his eyes looking everywhere but at Annie. “I, uh, forgot to tell you. He’s on vacation this month. He gave me the name of another guy we could call.”
“What?” Annie exclaimed. “That’s not something it’s okay to forget.”
Jason got to his feet, moving with what Ryan recognized as unaccustomed speed. “I’ll call him now.”
Annie started after him, but Lindsey jumped to her feet and headed her off. “Can’t you cut him a break, Annie? Everybody makes mistakes.”
Ryan had long thought he and Annie had made a mistake the night Lindsey was conceived but no longer. It seemed miraculous that they’d created this special, beautiful child.
“I suppose I could let it go just this one time.” Annie seemed no more able to resist Lindsey’s plea than Ryan would have been.
Lindsey had a few more inches to grow but she was already taller than Annie, he noted. Although she looked more like a Whitmore than a Sublinski, she did have Annie’s nose: small and straight with a slight upturn.
“Thanks.” Lindsey looked from Annie to Ryan and back again. “Now who’s going to tell me what Annie said about me.”
Annie’s eyes flew to Ryan’s, her expression guilty as charged.
“I knew it!” Lindsey said. “I knew you two were talking about me.”
Somebody needed to deflect Lindsey’s suspicion and fast.
“You got us,” he acknowledged. “Annie wondered whether we should cancel our date tonight because you’re in town.”
Annie’s mouth dropped open.
Lindsey’s eyes widened. “You two are dating? Wow. I knew Annie thought you were hot, but I never would have guessed.”
He quirked an eyebrow, keeping his eyes on Annie’s reddening face. “Annie told you I was hot?”
“Of course not,” Annie protested.
At the same time, Lindsey answered, “I could just tell by the way she looks at you.”
“Then no wonder she asked me out.” Ryan waggled his eyebrows at Annie.
“Annie asked you out?” Lindsey repeated. Annie appeared incapable of speech.
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “I knew she wanted to go out with me, though, so it’s almost the same thing.”
“It is not the same thing,” Annie retorted hotly, her chest heaving in indignation. He felt an unexpected stab of lust that explained the origin of his idea—his attraction to her had survived the past.
Lindsey giggled at their int
eraction. “Don’t cancel your date because of me.”
“We’re not canceling,” Ryan said, then added the kicker. “We’re taking you with us.”
“WHERE ARE we going?” Lindsey asked excitedly after Ryan invited her on the fictitious date.
The traitor.
If Lindsey had declined the invitation, Annie could have wriggled out of it too. She could barely understand how her carefully orchestrated campaign to avoid Ryan had come to this. As of late on Friday afternoon, she hadn’t talked to him in fourteen years and now they had a Saturday-night date.
“It’s a surprise,” Ryan said.
“I love surprises,” Lindsey said. “But are you sure it’s okay if I come along? Wouldn’t you two rather be alone?”
“Of course it’s okay. We’ll have lots of time to be alone.” Ryan had the audacity to wink at Annie. “We’re dating.”
“Wait just a minute.” Annie raised her index finger. “Since when are we—”
“How about walking me to my car, Annie?” Ryan interrupted.
“But—”
“I know we talked about me going rafting today, but I have some paperwork I really should catch up on.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, which surprised her so much she lost her train of thought. He applied gentle pressure, ushering her toward the field with the flattened grass they used as a parking lot. She was stunned into walking with him.
“See you tonight, Lindsey,” he called.
“Bye, Dr. Whitmore.”
“I’m only Dr. Whitmore during office hours,” he said. “Call me Ryan.”
“Okay,” Lindsey agreed happily. “Bye, Ryan.”
He kept moving, the right side of his body touching Annie’s left, his heat transferring itself to her. He not only felt wonderful, he smelled fantastic, like shampoo, soap and man. Her bones seemed to melt, her physical reaction to him not much different than it had been in high school. And look where that had landed her. She stiffened.
She was about to tell him to take his arm off her when he dropped it. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t let you tell Lindsey we weren’t dating.”
“We’re not dating!”
“As of tonight,” he said, “we are.”
They reached his car, the flashiest one in the parking lot. It figured that the new young doctor in town would drive a Lexus. He leaned against it, looking cool despite the summer sun that beat down on him, appearing far too pleased with the situation he’d manipulated her into. It was time to set the matter straight.
“I’ll go out with you tonight,” she began, “but only because I understand the date thing is so you can spend time with Lindsey.”
“I appreciate that.”
She didn’t let his charming smile make her lose focus. “Now you need to be aware that there’s a difference between going on a single date and dating.”
“I do and what we’ll be doing is dating.” He frowned. “Unless you’re already dating somebody else. Are you?”
“Not now,” she said, noting his look of relief. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll date you.”
“Then how can I get to know Lindsey?”
“The same way anybody gets to know anybody,” she said. “By being around her.”
“Nobody in town except you knows I’m Lindsey’s birth father,” he said. “It wouldn’t look right for me to be around her unless I’m also hanging around you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to argue that his argument wasn’t valid, but she still saw his point. “There has to be some other way.”
“There is. We could tell her who we are.”
Her eyes snapped open. “No! We’ve been over this. We can’t tell her.”
He trained his gaze on her. For once, he wasn’t smiling. “Then what do you say? Will you let me get to know our daughter?”
Her throat hitched. Neither of them could afford to think of Lindsey as their own, not when they’d given her away and would soon have to say goodbye again. “I already told you. She’s Ted Thompson’s daughter.”
“Not while she’s in town. While she’s in town, she’s ours. If, that is, you’ll share her with me.” His voice was low and beseeching, his handsome features strained. Annie had hardened her heart against him long ago but felt the outer layer softening.
“Okay,” she said softly, knowing she’d regret the answer but unable to give another, acknowledging that a part of her had anticipated this would happen when she’d told him who Lindsey was. His eyes crinkled at the corners, the way they had all those years ago when he’d lied and told her he cared about her. Even though he hadn’t mentioned her birthmark, it felt as though it was searing her cheek.
“See you tonight,” he said. “I’ll pick you and Lindsey up at eight.”
He unlocked the Lexus with his remote, pulled open the door and hopped inside. Within moments, he’d started the ignition and pulled away.
She stared after him, furious at herself for reacting to him.
She reminded herself she was no longer a sixteen-year-old girl thrilled that one of the most popular boys in school was paying attention to her. She was a poised, self-confident woman who’d recovered from the blow of finding out the truth about their night together.
She’d go along with Ryan’s fiction that they were dating, but she intended to set down some ground rules.
He’d hurt her once.
She was determined it wouldn’t happen again.
THE TELEVISION in the family room of the gracious old house where Ryan had grown up drowned out his footsteps as he moved over the parquet floor, approaching the Queen Anne sofa from behind.
His sister, Sierra, sat with her back propped against the sofa cushions, her right leg, encased in a ski-boot-style cast, resting on a cherry coffee table.
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, then put the tissue to her nose and blew. On the television, a bright blue animated fish was swimming along with a smaller orange-and-white-striped fish in an idyllic-looking sea.
“Are you crying over Finding Nemo?” he asked.
Sierra’s head whipped around, guilt written plainly on features that instantly reminded him of Lindsey. She plucked the remote from the coffee table and clicked a button, causing the screen to go blank.
She wiped the tears from under her eyes. “I was not crying.”
“You were,” Ryan accused. “Who would have thought I’d find the Frost Queen bawling over a cartoon?”
“It’s an animated movie,” she said, “and don’t call me the Frost Queen. I don’t like it any better now than I did in high school.”
He sat on the arm of the sofa, enjoying this glimpse of his usually unflappable sister. “I’ll stop if you admit you were bawling.”
She glared at him. “A few tears is not bawling. And if you tell anyone, I’ll have to hurt you.”
“I should tell everybody. It’d soften your image.”
“My image is fine just the way it is,” she said. “Where have you been all day anyway?”
He let her get away with changing the subject, even though he disagreed with her self-assessment. Word around the office was that she was exceptionally bright but abrupt in her personal interactions, both with patients and staff. She wasn’t any different with Ryan. Although only sixteen months separated them, they’d never been close.
“At the office catching up on paperwork,” he said, reluctant to share the news about Lindsey.
He doubted Sierra, who’d been a freshman at Dartmouth the year Ryan studied in Spain, even knew Annie had been pregnant. Their mother had been adamant that nobody find out, and Ryan certainly hadn’t told her.
“Until seven o’clock?”
“I ran some errands, too,” he said.
She didn’t ask what sort of errands, probably because she wasn’t interested enough to find out. Ryan had moved back into their childhood home six weeks ago after Sierra had badly broken her right leg in a car accident. Most of the time they acted like polite strangers. It might have been di
fferent had their parents been present, but their mother had moved into a retirement community after their father’s death two years ago.
Ryan stood up, reached into the bowl on the coffee table and tossed some popcorn into his mouth. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Chad’s coming over and cooking dinner for me.”
Chad Armstrong was Sierra’s long-time boyfriend. A pharmacist at a local drugstore, Chad was a nice enough guy but didn’t say much. Scratch that. A mime could outperform Chad in a debate.
“You can join us if you want.” The offer sounded more obligatory than sincere.
“I can’t,” he said, glad he had a reason to refuse. “I have a date with Annie Sublinski.”
He wondered why he’d told her that. Sierra was back at the office on a limited basis so she probably would have heard eventually. He doubted she would have asked, though.
“Wow. Really? Did she ask you out?”
“I asked her,” he said. “Why would you ask that anyway?”
“Because of the huge crush she had on you in high school.”
That couldn’t be true. Annie had hardly said a word to him until the night he’d driven her home from one of the graduation parties that sprouted up every June like the yellow wildflowers over the mountainsides. He’d been watching her closely so had spotted her ducking out of the party after a classmate had made a drunken pass at her.
He’d followed, afraid another guy would try to take advantage of her. Once he realized she meant to walk home, he’d jumped into his car and caught up to her a short distance from the party. After she’d agreed to his offer of a ride, nothing about the evening went the way he thought it would.
Before they’d driven a mile, he’d relayed the entire embarrassing story of why he was spending his senior year in Spain. “It’s all in the numbers,” he remembered saying. “Three varsity letters. Two Cs. Two Ds. And an F.”
Annie had listened to his plan to forgo his senior year at Indigo Springs High for twelve months in a study-abroad program. She’d agreed with his parents about the need to prove he was serious about academics. She hadn’t laughed when he confessed the prospect of flying across the ocean made him nervous. She’d told him some secrets of her own, most notably about the mother who hadn’t cared enough to stay in her life.
The Secret Sin Page 6
