by JoAnn Ross
She glared right back. “You are an annoying old man.”
Hugo exhaled noisily. He turned on his heel and, stepping over both Sara and Annie, stomped away down the hall.
Maisy’s shoulders drooped. Sara pushed to her feet and quickly hugged her. “Don’t worry. Dad will get over his mad.”
Maisy patted Sara’s shoulder. “I know.” Then she stepped back, straightened her dress and shoved her hands into the patch pockets on the front of it. “Sara, put a dressing on your brother’s jaw. Annie, go to the kitchen and tell George to give you a few of the muffins he made up at the community center yesterday morning. You need to eat.”
Then she turned on her heel and hurried down the hall.
“I don’t have the nerve not to obey,” Sara muttered. She picked up one of the wrapped packets Hugo had left on the desk and, peeling it open, stuck the dressing across Logan’s jaw. Then she brushed her hands down her thighs. Looked between Annie and Logan a moment longer, then hurried in the same direction Maisy had taken.
Annie started to push to her feet.
Logan was out of his chair in a flash, helping.
If he hadn’t touched her, there might have been some hope that she wouldn’t start shaking. But he did. And she did.
“Does it hurt?” Her fingers skimmed the edge of the self-adhesive bandage.
“Not as much as the javelin he shoved in my arm.”
“What were you doing to cut yourself with wire?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“In other words, it’s none of my business.”
He looked like a man at the end of his tether. “Where’s Riley?”
“With Kenny, most likely.”
“Then let’s go find her.”
Annie’s head swam a little, and it had nothing to do with feeling faint. “Logan?”
“We’ll tell her together.”
She pressed her palms against the sudden churning in her stomach. And then what? The question cried inside her head.
She didn’t voice it. She already knew the answer.
Two days. Now one.
Logan would leave.
Riley would go back home.
Annie would stay on Turnabout, with her herbs and her potions.
Nobody would be together.
But they’d all know the truth.
Just then, the value of that seemed almost out of her understanding. Almost.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll go find her.”
* * *
In the end, Riley took hearing the news better than Logan and Annie took delivering it. She stared at Logan across the little round table in the dining area that seemed to be their unspoken place for gut-wrenching moments when it came to the three of them. “You’re the reason I have blue eyes, then.”
Annie closed her hands together in her lap as Logan nodded.
The young set of blue eyes turned toward Annie. “Thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend. Not now. Not before.”
“He wasn’t. We—”
“We never had time to be boyfriend and girlfriend,” Logan cut her off. His gaze met hers. “But we were friends.” He barely hesitated over the statement.
“Then how come you didn’t know Auntie Annie was pregnant with me?”
Words failed her.
“Because I let her down,” Logan said in a voice as stark as the white bandage covering his jaw. “And I’m sorry.”
He spoke to Riley, but Annie knew the words were for her.
“I don’t need another dad, you know.” Riley’s voice was gruff. Defensive. “I don’t need another mom, either.”
Annie’s eyes burned. Not from what Riley said. She understood perfectly where Riley stood.
Logan nodded after a moment. “I know. You already have parents.”
“Makes it easy on you, huh?”
“Riley—”
“Well?” Riley shot Annie a look. “He never had to do anything hard about any of this. He just slept with you and walked. He didn’t even come to Turnabout on his own. He came ’cause my dad hired him to come and get me. Dad doesn’t know about you, I’ll bet. Otherwise he’d have hired somebody else.”
“You’re probably right.” A deep voice came from across the room.
Annie twisted in her chair to look. Riley jumped out of her chair so fast it tipped over behind her.
Logan stood, too. More slowly. He eyed the man across the room. Contained the urge to strangle him. “Hello, Will.”
Annie’s voice was hushed. “Riley, you can go and find Kenny again. I’m sure he’s still waiting for you.”
“But—”
“Please.”
Riley subsided. She stuffed her fingers in her pockets and walked over to her dad. “I’m still mad at you,” she said.
“Figured as much.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“At home. Waiting for us.”
Riley absorbed that. Then she sidestepped around Will and headed to the doorway, only to look back. “I’m warning you, Daddy. Be nice.”
The adults waited until the sound of Riley’s boots against the tile faded to nothing.
Annie had turned around to face the table again, her elbows bent, head propped in her hands. “How much did you hear?”
She posed the question far more calmly than Logan might have. He watched the other man loosen his tie several more inches as he walked closer to the table. “Enough.” He warily watched Logan as he bent down and righted Riley’s toppled chair and sat.
After a long moment, Logan sat, too.
Finally, Will broke the silence. “Who would think there was this much coincidence in the world?”
“Not me,” Logan said flatly. His boss’s handiwork was all over this, and it infuriated him that he hadn’t seen it sooner. “Why’d you go to Cole?”
“They recruited you while we were in school?”
“That’s not an answer.”
Will’s lips twisted. “No. It always bugged me that you disappeared the way you did. But I wasn’t inclined to do anything about it. Noelle married me, but she’d dated you first.”
Annie lifted her head, her face shocked. “What? I never heard about that.”
“Yeah, we dated,” Logan said evenly. “Then she met your fair-haired brother and never looked back.” He’d been fine with it then, he was fine with it now. And he still had the strong feeling that they’d all been manipulated. “How’d you meet Cole?”
“You’re not the only person H-W talked to when we were in school.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. Then he sat back, laughing softly. “No damn way. You’re too public, Will. They’d never use you.”
“No. They didn’t. But they kept tabs. Cole would call now and then. We traded favors occasionally. The guy’s only a few years older than we are, but—” Will broke off, shaking his head. “When Riley ran away, I automatically thought of him.”
“You told him that Riley was adopted.”
Will nodded. “I thought he was coming down here, himself. I wanted him prepared. I didn’t know what mother had done. What she’d told Riley. I only knew I was getting threatening letters, and I wanted my daughter safe.”
“But Cole didn’t come himself. He dragged me into it.”
“Delegation seems to be his style.”
A twisted sense of humor was more like it. “Every one of Cole’s crew undergoes analysis. Mandatory. More often, even, during the first few years after going in.”
“So?”
“So it was in my record from the start.” Logan’s teeth were clenched. “Logan Drake’s weaknesses. Namely the betrayal he committed by sleeping with his best friend’s little sister.”
Annie’s hands spr
ead across the small table, one on each of the men’s tense arms. “Stop. This isn’t getting anywhere.” She sent Logan a pleading look. “You didn’t betray anyone. Tell him, Will. He didn’t.”
“If he tells me that he didn’t seduce you because I got Noelle.”
Annie’s hands drew back. She seemed to shrink into herself. “Well. Everyone’s always wanted Noelle most. My brother. My...daughter. And you.” Her gaze slid to Logan.
Then she pushed back her chair and strode from the room, not hesitating a single step, even when Logan called her name.
“Are you going to contest it?”
“What?” Logan stared at Will.
“Our custody of Riley. You can, you know. It’s only fair to tell you. You have grounds.” Will looked grim. “I’ll fight you, though.”
“Did you even notice Annie just now?”
“She left. It’s what she does. Leaves when things get too tough for her.”
Logan’s fists curled. “You know, Will, Annie’s been insisting all along that Riley belongs with you and Noelle. That you’re the best parents she could have. I never doubted that before. Until now.”
* * *
He ran into Riley before he found Annie. She was bounding up the stairs outside Maisy’s Place as he was racing down them.
She took one look at him. “You and my dad aren’t friends so much anymore.”
His life was not pretty and he never wanted any of it to touch this girl. This unexpected child. “Not so much at the moment,” he agreed. “It doesn’t have to be that way forever.”
Her chin lifted, but her blue eyes were swimming. “I shouldn’t have come to Turnabout. Nobody would be mad at anybody, then. ’Cept Grandma Hess. I think she’s mad at everyone in the universe.”
“You’re probably right on target where Lucia’s concerned. But it’s not your fault that everyone is upset right now. We’re the adults. Not you. You were only trying to get answers.”
“Auntie Annie says it’s okay for me to love all of them. Guess that probably includes you.”
Logan’s chest ached. “You don’t have to love me, Riley. There’s no requirements here. You don’t even know me.”
“She loves you, though. She told me she did.”
The words cut deep.
“Dad’s not going to leave Turnabout without me, you know. He thinks Auntie Annie is a flake.”
“He’s wrong.”
“I know. But I don’t like leaving her alone.”
There was that protective vein again. And she was watching Logan, obviously expecting him to assure her that Annie wouldn’t be alone. “Annie wouldn’t want you worrying.” He had to push the words past the unreasonable instinct to grab this girl, grab Annie and run. To find a place where nothing and no one could hurt either of them.
Which was impossible.
His life was ruled by a world that required such organizations as Hollins-Winword, such people as Coleman Black. That world and this one here—Annie’s world—weren’t made to mesh.
Riley’s lips pressed together for a long moment. “I better go see my dad before he splits an artery or something.” But her boots didn’t move toward the door.
“Don’t pierce your lip like Kenny did,” Logan said after a moment. “And stay on Will’s case about spending too much time on the campaign trail. And don’t go to bloody Bendlemaier unless you want to.”
A tear slipped down Riley’s smooth young cheek. His hand shook as he dashed it away. “And don’t ever forget that you’re as beautiful as both your mothers are.”
Riley sucked her lip. She nodded and started to back toward the door.
Then she took Logan’s breath when she reversed her steps and hugged him. Tightly. Briefly.
He caught a flash of tears when she quickly turned away and slipped through the door of Maisy’s Place.
He let out a long breath and sat down right there on the step. He couldn’t have moved just then if his life depended on it.
He propped his elbows on his knees and stared at his hands.
Annie wasn’t a flake.
She was stronger than all of them combined.
Eventually, he heard the distinctive whine of a golf cart motor and looked up when the wheels crunched to a stop in the gravel a few feet from him.
“Maisy seemed to think you might want a ride to Annie’s.”
“So?”
Hugo shrugged. Studied his cigar for a moment. “She’s a bossy woman,” he said after a moment. “You getting in, or not?”
Logan got in. Hugo set off with a lurch.
“You’re a grandfather.”
Hugo didn’t seem surprised. “Sara told me how things were. About damned time. About the grandchild part, I mean. You’re no spring chicken.”
Logan shook his head. “You’re annoying as hell.”
“So I’ve been told.” His gaze slid Logan’s way for a moment and there was the faintest of smiles playing about his lips. “Runs in the family.”
Logan barely waited for Hugo to stop the cart when they got to Annie’s place. He jumped out and headed straight inside.
She was sitting on the couch, the photo albums she’d cried over stacked beside her. She didn’t so much as jump or turn a hair when he went inside. “Go away, Logan.”
Not yet. He rounded the couch and sat down in front of her. “I didn’t care when Noelle fell for your brother,” he said bluntly.
She lifted a shoulder. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”
He reached for her hands. They were cold. “It does matter. You don’t really think Riley is choosing her over you.”
“No. Yes.” Her fingers flexed. “No. They’re the only parents she’s really known. And I’m not fit—”
“Don’t.”
“It’s true.” Her throat worked. “I failed my own child in the worst possible way.”
“You were little more than a child, yourself, then. You’re not a child now.”
“And it’s too late.”
“Is it?”
Her gaze flew to his. Her lips parted for a moment.
“Say the word, Annie. I’ll help you fight them.”
“And if we won custody of her? What then? What would you do?”
“I’d—”
“Still leave,” she challenged huskily. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
But he couldn’t.
He lowered his head. “I’ll make sure building supplies and food are delivered. Get Diego a bloody boat that isn’t forty years old and leaking like a sieve.” He’d never used his connections for anything but the job, but he would now.
“The town council is taking care of all that.”
Irritation tightened inside him. “The town council would pretend that Turnabout doesn’t belong to anything but itself—not California, not the United States—if they could get away with it. It’s been that way for at least fifty years and it’ll be that way for fifty more. If you wait on them to do something productive, you’d better plan on growing more than lavender and marigolds in those fields of yours or you’ll be going hungry.” There was an old orange grove on the island that still produced fruit, but it was hardly in prime condition.
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
He lifted his head, his eyebrow cocked. “Yeah?”
“Well. Maybe not.” She moistened her lips. “I’m sorry about your mother. About all that Maisy said.”
“Me, too.” He thought about that carved box sitting on the barrel outside Hugo’s clinic. “Nothing’s the way it seemed. Not with my family. Not with yours.” He looked at her. “What if you’re pregnant again?”
She paled. “We used protection.”
The first time he had. But not the last. Not when th
ey’d wakened at dawn and she’d slid over him.
He’d been as careless then as he had all those years ago when he’d wakened in a guest room at George and Lucia Hess’s palatial estate to find their wayward daughter naked in bed with him, her mouth on his mouth, her innocently awkward fingers circling his erection.
“What would you do, though?”
“Nothing. It’s not—”
“If you were. What would you do?”
“I’m not interested in being a single parent and somehow I can’t see you coming home in time for dinner and homework.”
“Annie—”
“I’d do a better job than I did the first time!” Her voice rose. “Are you satisfied now?”
“You did a good job already. You loved Riley enough to do what you knew needed to be done. So stop blaming yourself for it.”
“Well, it’s the wrong time of the month, anyway.” Her face was drawn. “So stop worrying.”
Was he worrying? Or looking for an excuse?
He heard a sudden roar overhead. Saw by Annie’s face the moment the sound registered. “Was that a helicopter? He’s taking her away right now, isn’t he? Without even letting her say goodbye.” She scrambled off the couch and out the door, running out in front of her house. She craned her head back, shading her eyes with her hands. “Is it already gone?”
Logan knew the chopper would circle again. “Will didn’t come by helicopter, Annie.”
“But—” She straightened, and realization settled on her face. “It’s for you.”
“Yeah.” The helicopter bulleted across the sky again. It was circling. Looking for a clearing. He didn’t have to guess where the chopper would land. There was only one clearing large enough. The old Castillo estate.
His remaining day had just shrunk down to minutes. Despite Cole’s obvious manipulation in putting Logan in the same place as Annie and their daughter, business called too urgently to be ignored. He looked back at her little beach cottage. Less than a week, yet it felt like the only home he’d known in way too long. He went inside long enough to grab his leather jacket and shrugged into it. It, too, had been through a storm and it looked it. Then he grabbed one of the albums and flipped back the cover. Baby pictures. He exhaled roughly and shoved the album under his arm.
