But even she doubted her decision to leave. Was running away the right route for the person she was now? After driving across the desert, weeping inside, she didn’t feel in the least triumphant for having escaped again, like she had the first time. She had a nagging suspicion that running away wasn’t helping at all. She simply knew that Syrene couldn’t lead a normal life, and Donal deserved one.
Syrene hadn’t crippled the obnoxious reporter. Pippa had. That had felt good.
“I don’t think Vegas is my kind of place,” Gloria said with a sad smile. “After all these years, I don’t know how to roam. Let’s figure out where we’re going tomorrow.”
Tomorrow and tomorrow into eternity. Pippa guessed it was better than the alternative, but she was starting to question that—for both of them. Her mother needed a home, a place she felt safe. Pippa had a home she loved and didn’t want to give up. Did abandoning those out of fear make sense? Was hiding from those she loved what she wanted?
It had been the right thing to do when she’d been eighteen, terrified, rootless, and heartbroken. She wasn’t that abandoned child any longer. She was strong now. She was learning control—of herself and those who would harm her. She had friends who were counting on her and who would keep her from harm if they could.
She would be an idiot to run away from the only man she could be herself with.
Pippa didn’t want to be a helpless, terrified idiot again. Hope wiggling its way into her heart, she switched to another station and saw Oz staring right into the camera while hugging his son. The stunned, grieving look behind his smile twisted a knife to her heart. She was an idiot.
She dragged out her laptop and turned it on. First, she needed to know her mother would be safe. That knowledge warmed her with joy. For the first time in her worthless life, she realized she wasn’t alone, that she had people she could trust, and that she was needed.
***
Lizzy glanced up in surprise when Oz stalked into the Blue Bayou the next morning.
“I need to use your bar for a news conference. Is that okay?”
She wiped the bar and watched him warily. “Where’s Pippa?”
“Running away. I need to get her back.” Oz scanned the setup through his producer’s eyes and began shifting tables and chairs as if Lizzy had already agreed. “The media will be arriving shortly. Get pizzas ready.”
“If this is how you talk to Pippa, it’s a wonder she hasn’t flung you off a cliff.” Lizzy put her rag back under the bar.
“Pippa knows not to argue when I’m desperate. You want my crew to keep working up here?” Oz straightened and glared back at her.
“Where’s your little boy?” Lizzy didn’t move.
“At the day care. I’ve got a security team working with them.” He glanced out the newly sparkling window. “News vans can’t park in this narrow alley. One’s already pulling up on Main Street. Are you calling up the pizzas or not?”
Lizzy started to open her mouth, apparently saw the desperation in his expression, and turned around to yell an order at her cook. The cook yelled back, unprepared for an early lunch crowd. Oz ignored the byplay.
He opened the door for his sound crew, showed them where they could run cable for their generators, orchestrated the production, and made things happen, as only he knew how. He wasn’t an actor. He wasn’t a publicity freak. He didn’t give speeches.
To get Pippa back, he’d have to be all of the above. And be damned good at it.
He knew how to give sound bites, but this time, he’d promised the media an entire interview. He’d stayed up all night working with Conan and a speech writer. What he needed was a fiction writer, like Pippa. She could convince a bull to sit down and drink tea from a china cup, he was certain.
Convincing Pippa to come home might be equally difficult. If he had any of the persuasive talent of an empath, he’d best put it to use now.
Audrey, the understudy, arrived, along with Nick Townsend and the show’s publicity director. They’d all been hastily coached this morning. Oz knew he should have waited until tomorrow to perfect the act, but he didn’t want Pippa to get too far away.
He was running on hope and nothing more. He had his son back, but it wasn’t enough. He was a greedy bastard, but Donal deserved more than an empty shell of a father.
“Am I serving beer?” Lizzy asked, bringing out mugs.
“Soft drinks, water. This crowd doesn’t need alcohol at this hour,” Oz said, scraping tables out of the way. “Charge me for renting the building for the day.”
“Bring Pippa back, and the pizzas are on the house,” Lizzy retorted.
“My wife concurs,” Nick said dryly, holding onto a microphone while the crew set up a podium. “She wants to know if you were sitting on your head instead of using it when you let her go.”
“Dammit all!” Oz shouted. “I’ve known her less than three weeks! What did you want me to do, put a collar and chain on her?”
A television crew walked in, cutting off any reply. Besides, Oz already knew the answer. He should have told Pippa he would run and hide in Outer Mongolia with her if that’s what she needed to feel safe. She’d returned Donal. She’d given up her privacy and security for his son. He’d stayed up what remained of the night after his staff left, watching the boy sleep, just to be certain he was real. He’d cried. For the first time in his adult life, Oz had wept like a child.
He owed Pippa his life. And she thought she owed him? They were both nuts. Or incapable of relating on a normal basis, at least—but they understood each other at the most important levels.
What he was about to do wouldn’t fix the way they connected, but he hoped it would fix a lot of other things he’d broken in his bullheaded haste to have what he wanted.
Publicity hung a blow-up poster of Donal waving at the camera. Oz wasn’t about to subject the kid to the media, but the world deserved to see his happiness, to know that this year of searching and praying hadn’t been wasted.
As the tavern filled to capacity with equipment and reporters, Oz gestured for Audrey to take a place behind Lizzy’s bar. Audrey had had her hair cut short and dyed like Pippa’s, not that anyone yesterday would have seen much underneath the hat. But he wanted the illusion out there, a public face that wasn’t Pippa.
She wore Pippa’s bright red lipstick and a loose sundress with a gauzy shirt over it. Pippa was about the same height and slenderness, without Audrey’s breast enhancement. The camera couldn’t tell through the loose clothing.
Oz wished Pippa was here if only to calm the noisy crowd. Reporters who knew him were already shouting questions. He shook his head and waited for Nick to test the microphone. Ignoring requests that he wait for cameras to be positioned or lights turned on, Oz stepped up to the podium as soon as Nick introduced him. He wanted this over. This was just one tiny inkling of what Pippa would endure should she return right now. He had to show her that he understood that.
He thanked everyone for coming, thanked everyone who had aided in Donal’s search, referred to the handouts publicity had prepared with the facts about the kidnapping—the ones that were public information. He needed to talk to Pippa about the rest. The police didn’t need to know about Malcolms and the Librarian, not yet.
With a solid ground of verifiable facts and information laid, Oz stepped into fabrication territory. “I’d like to introduce the star of our new children’s show, Audrey Ephraim. Some of you may recognize her from the stage production last year of Wicked. She’s a talented actress, singer, and dancer, and we’re very fortunate to have her. Audrey, would you step forward?”
Questions flew. Oz could see the journalists didn’t want to believe they’d been misled. Syrene returning would be a story they could work for weeks. Years. It would be like Elvis returning from the dead. When the questions got louder and more demanding, forcing Audr
ey to give up and look to him, Oz did what he did best—made things happen.
He nodded at the sound crew, and the music from “The Silly Seal Song” began to play. Recognizing her cue, Audrey smiled and began to mouth the words. Another speaker fastened discreetly in the pocket of her shirt kicked in so it sounded as if Syrene’s voice was coming from her. The reporters stood there, dumbfounded, as Audrey gestured like Syrene, lip-synching.
Movie magic.
***
Sitting in the Little Angels day care with Donal on her lap, Pippa smiled at the computer video Conan had hooked up to the press conference.
“Look, your daddy does magic too,” she whispered in the boy’s ear.
Most of the other kids had wandered off to finger paint, but Donal sat enraptured. “That’s not you,” he crowed, understanding without communicating clearly.
“Nope, I’m Pippa. I like staying home and singing. Audrey likes going on stage and singing.”
“I like your song. Heidi played it for me. The Librarian gave it to her.”
One more clue to her layers of knowledge. Pippa bounced him up and down. “I sang that song just for you,” she said, reassuring the boy as best as she could over the loss of his nanny.
He puzzled over that while the reporters in the video began shouting about the previously unknown Syrene recording. Dogs with their teeth in a bone wouldn’t let go, Pippa observed, marveling at how well Oz was dealing with the hounds, wondering how he intended to settle this little problem. Her life pretty much depended on him waving a magic wand and making Syrene disappear. If he couldn’t, she’d have to consider running again. But she was trusting the man she loved to solve this problem. She’d been tragically wrong before. This time, she prayed her trust wasn’t misplaced.
On the monitor, Oz replaced Audrey at the podium. “Ladies, gentlemen, if I had a good explanation for the song that started all this, I would give it to you. The truth is—we don’t know. The recording arrived via an anonymous email that FBI experts have been unable to trace. We were told to play the song in Bakersfield. As you all know, that’s Syrene’s hometown. Perhaps it was an old song recorded when she lived there as a child. We simply don’t know who sent it or why. Your guess is as good as ours.” He waited a moment for the shouts to quiet.
“Originally, we’d hoped to have Ms. James, the author of the Ronan book, read her books for the show,” he continued, “but once we had the song, she declined. She’s neither actress nor singer, and we needed both for this performance. Audrey filled in perfectly.
“All I can tell you is that this song brought back my son, and I am eternally grateful to Syrene, if this is truly her work. Thank you for coming, and you may send any unanswered questions to my office. You’ll understand that my son and I need some time alone, and I will be out of touch for a while.”
Watching the webcam, Donal wriggled in Pippa’s lap. “I missed my daddy,” he said. “Heidi said he was dead like my mama. He’s not going away again, is he?”
The poor kid thought he’d been abandoned. Pippa hugged his grubby, paint-scented little boy body. “I am one hundred percent, a-posititutely certain that he’s not likely to let you out of his sight for far longer than you’ll like.”
She tickled him, and he giggled, tumbling from her lap, reassured even if he had no understanding of what she’d just said.
The conference ended, and the video connection snapped off. Pippa wanted nothing more than to run over to the Blue Bayou and fling her arms around Oz’s neck and thank him for his wizardry. But she would ruin everything by appearing in public after he’d worked so hard to make her disappear, so she refrained.
Oz’s RV was still in the parking lot. She didn’t want to place any significance on that, but she hoped and she waited and she read to the children while Donal happily dismantled Conan’s computer.
***
Hours later, Oz dragged into the RV feeling battered, bruised, and in desperate need of a nap or a drink before he rescued Donal from the day care. Between working on the news conference and staying up to watch over the kid, he hadn’t slept all night.
An apparition in silky white floated out of the shadows in the rear of the vehicle. The scent of roses preceded her.
He wasn’t so tired anymore. “Pippa?” he asked, unwilling to believe his eyes.
Long fingers reached around his neck to ruffle his hair, and a tall, slender form leaned into him, filling his arms with glorious warmth and curves. He could taste roses when he lowered his lips to hers.
He didn’t want more questions. He didn’t even want answers. He simply wanted Pippa. Without a word, he lifted her onto the narrow mattress that passed for a bed and covered her with his body so she couldn’t escape. Or evaporate. Or whatever the hell the woman could do when she wanted.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he warned.
“I know,” she murmured against his mouth, brushing kisses everywhere she could reach. “I’m sorry. I never would have done it if I hadn’t feared I’d cause more trouble than I was worth.”
Oz leaned his forehead against hers and took a deep breath, trying to settle his pounding heart before speaking. “You need to know that you’ll never be more trouble than you’re worth to me. I didn’t tell you that before, so I can’t blame you for running—although I still want to scream and holler and demand that you never leave me again. But I’ve learned from my mistakes, so I’m telling you now so you’ll excuse the shouting later. I love you. I want you in my life. In Donal’s life. Any way we can have you. If it’s okay with you, I want to make love to you now.”
“I won’t throw you in the pool,” she promised with laughter on her lips as she ripped at his shirt buttons. “And no, I shouldn’t have waited for you to tell me anything. I’m perfectly capable of speaking for myself these days. But sometimes… I’m not perfect.”
Oz laughed, rolled over so she was on top, and yanked her floaty gown over her head. To his joy, she wore nothing under it. “You’re so absolutely perfect for me that you’re terrifying. I don’t believe in luck or magic, but I’m starting to believe in hope again.”
“Soul mates,” she declared, tackling his belt. “I can’t hurt you with my Voice. You can’t hurt me with your silly obstinacy. I’ll tell you no when others won’t.”
“That works.” He tugged off his clothes and rolled her under him again, and together, they launched their future.
Epilogue
Donal paddled happily in the pool while Gloria tossed balls to him. Fortunately the weather was warm, because Donal had dismantled the heating equipment and almost electrocuted himself before Oz flipped off the electricity. Gloria had recommended hiring an electrician to teach the boy. Donal’s scientific mind was beyond her ability to teach—although she promised Oz a few lessons in empathy he could pass on should Donal develop any woo-woo Malcolm tendencies.
Oz had declined her offer—for now. Pippa had a feeling he might need to tune his natural empathic instincts once he realized Donal had more of Conan’s scientific mind than anyone realized.
It had been almost a week since the news conference, but so far the media had respected Oz’s request to leave him and Donal alone. That didn’t mean the hounds weren’t baying around Bakersfield in search of Syrene and Donal’s story. Every minute of Donal’s life this past year was slowly unfolding on the news, as was Syrene’s childhood. And the poor nanny’s involvement.
The guy Pippa had nearly unmanned outside the school had turned out to be a local reporter who was convinced he’d been taken down by the criminal mastermind behind the kidnapping. He was tearing the nanny’s life apart in search of the connection. Pippa would happily kick every reporter she met if that was always the result.
But so far, journalists apparently had no reason to chase a children’s book author too shy to appear on stage when they had lovely Au
drey to question. Pippa’s agent was fielding inquiries about her books and requests for interviews, but none were particularly persistent.
Under the umbrella, she poured more strawberry smoothie into her glass and snuggled closer to Oz on the double lounge while he checked his email.
“What has Conan found out about Heidi that the media hasn’t?” she asked, unable to read the monitor at this angle, unwilling to sit up and lose Oz’s arm around her. He was good at one-thumb typing.
He squeezed her to let her know he was as aware of her as his work. “It’s a classic case as far as we can tell. Heidi’s family was back in Austria. She didn’t know anyone here. She was lonely. Her boyfriend ditched her. She lost a baby in a miscarriage. She’s been taking cash jobs to support herself so she didn’t need ID.”
She watched Donal happily adjusting to her home and knew he’d been well taken care of over this past year. The nanny hadn’t overtly harmed him. The story was plausible. “But she never attempted to let you know your son was safe. I’m not feeling the sympathy here.”
“She says I didn’t really care about my son.” Pain etched Oz’s voice as he scrolled down Conan’s report. “She claims I was too busy to bother with Donal and that she thought she was doing the boy a favor to give him a loving family.”
“She’s making excuses. Don’t believe her. Donal was thrilled to see you. That’s not the behavior of a child whose father neglected him.” Pippa squeezed his leg and handed him her smoothie. “What about the Librarian?” she asked, and Oz sipped the healthy drink. He was slowly adapting to her diet regimen.
“That’s the weird part,” he said, frowning. “Heidi stole the file of Donal’s birth and medical information from Alys’s records. I’ll give her points for planning ahead. But then she started hunting for Donal’s genealogy, just like Alys. What’s with women and genealogy?”
Pippa watched Donal climb from the pool to examine a security camera Oz had ordered installed to protect them from intruders. The boy couldn’t reach the camera. Yet. “I’m betting they want to know if Edison or Einstein is on the family tree,” she suggested with a laugh.
Lure of Song and Magic Page 28
