“Want me to take over?”
“I think Livie’s more secure when you’re beside her.”
He crouched beside his daughter in the roadside multiplex. “Would you like Erin to sit by you, Livie?”
The child looked puzzled until it clicked who he meant. She grabbed another beanie creature off the shelf and beamed. “Playammals?”
Morgan straightened with a few years coming off his face. “That was her first action verb. I haven’t the heart to correct it.”
After his wall of silence, that tiny confidence almost brought tears. “I suspected as much.” She handed him the keys and got into the back. His laptop lay on a container beside her, and she slipped it into its case and set it somewhere safer. Glancing up, she saw him watching in the rearview mirror.
“You can use it if you want.”
“What for?” She settled next to Livie and sighed.
Coming into Santa Barbara in the dark, he felt the acute vivisection once more. The drive had been a sort of torture he didn’t want to experience again, but what came next had the potential to be far worse. He hadn’t stepped inside his house since the day of Jill’s funeral.
Coastal air swept in when he lowered the car window and keyed the code that opened the gates guarding his enclave. He drove reluctantly to the third of five homes perched on the edge of the country. Taking Livie and her blanket from her car seat, he kissed her soft cheek. “How’re you doing, sweetie?”
She blinked in the lantern-lit courtyard. “Where is this?”
“Daddy’s house. Want to see inside?”
Erin shouldered her purse, waiting. He owed her about a thousand apologies but managed only, “Ready?”
Her face told him little as she followed him across the tiles to the mission-style doors. When he reached for the iron handle, the door flew open.
“Ay!” Consuela’s cry would terrify the neighbors. “Señor Morgan! You did not tell me you were coming. Why would you not—” She saw Erin behind him, her affront increasing. “You bring a guest and don’t warn me?”
It would have been an easy phone call to make, and if he had to apply motive to his decision not to, it might have been a little payback for her refusing to come when he summoned.
“Consuela, this is my wife, Erin.”
Giving him the evil eye, she pushed past, grasped Erin’s shoulders, and kissed her on both cheeks. “Lo siento for Señor Morgan’s terrible manners. If he had told me I would have prepared something very special. And you.” She turned. “This niña preciosa is my little Olivia?”
Unused to anyone making so much noise, Livie shrank into him.
Consuela’s eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t know me. You, Señor Morgan, have broken my heart.”
“She just needs a little time.” And quiet. Why was Rick’s house so quiet? Except for Liam, of course.
Consuela tossed her head. “Erin, you come in. Let me look at the one Morgan has chosen. Está muy hermosa. And so tiny.”
“I’m a little travel worn.” She pulled off the clip, her hair tumbling free.
“Oh, such beautiful hair should not be trapped.”
He totally agreed, but Erin only shrugged.
“Come with me. I will make you a bath.”
Morgan stopped and instructed her in Spanish to prepare a guest bath and bedroom. Confused, Consuela gave him a dark look but nodded. He shifted his daughter. Livie was tired and needed her bed.
The one that awaited was in the nursery he and Jill had prepared and decorated in lace and flowers. Climbing the stairs, his heart began to pound, his chest closing down as though constricted in a python’s coils.
“Daddy.” Livie squeezed his neck.
He squeezed her back, drawing strength from her love, his tiny savior. Even though she was only a newborn the last time she’d inhabited the room, the bookcase held a treasure of books, schoolteacher Jill convinced she’d read before she walked. When he flipped on the lamp beside the rocker, Livie squirmed loose and ran to the shelves.
“Read to me, Daddy.”
“Of course.” They wouldn’t consider sleeping without a thorough bedtime ritual.
This nursery adjoined the master suite, and when he kissed Livie the final time and tucked her blanket like a soft cocoon all around, he went through the door into his room and pressed his hands to his face. No way he’d sleep there tonight.
Erin sank into the hot scented water, feeling her body relax. With the tension of their escape, the frost and fire of Morgan’s moods, the beauty of his home—what she’d seen of it outside and her trip up the stairs behind Consuela—she’d left the house of mirrors and boarded the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Still at last, she leached every bit of comfort from the bath, then dressed in the soft pajama pants and chemise someone had laid on the guest bed. Guest. She might not be as fluent as Morgan, but she’d caught his instruction to Consuela. She should be glad, yet she suddenly felt lonely.
From her carryon, she took the photograph of Pops and his two Quinns. With a sharp longing, she set it on the nightstand, then quickly unwrapped the jewelry box and set it beside the picture frame. Putting the carryon down, she saw a corner of something peeking out of a side compartment. She unzipped it to remove an envelope.
It held a thank-you note written in RaeAnne’s bold round script. At the end she included all her contact information—so you can reach me any way, any time. Holding the note to her heart, Erin rode the wave of emotion, then called with her disposable cell phone before she realized she was on the West Coast and RaeAnne on Central time. “I’m so sorry!” she said when RaeAnne’s groggy voice answered.
“Quinn?”
“I totally forgot the time difference.” It was even late in California. The series of cross-country and international flights and two long days of driving had fuzzed her normally keen sense of time.
“Quinn, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been trying and trying to reach you.”
She imagined her phone ringing in the men’s room trash. “I had to change my number. Someone was hassling me.”
“Don’t you hate solicitors?”
“Yeah.” She pictured Markham’s spiteful face. “Did I wake your husband?”
“He’s still out of town. Wish you were here to make brownies.”
“Me too.” She smiled, remembering.
“And, sugar, any time you call is a good time. I’ve been wanting to tell you I know who my dad is.”
“Is?”
“Yes, he’s alive. Raymond Hartley. And the thing is, I know where to find him.”
“You’ve been busy.” If it was that easy, how long before Markham was back on her trail?
“I have. And, Quinn, it means, if I want, I could try to see him.”
Standing by the dark window, she pressed a hand to her heart. “Do you want?”
“I don’t know. It’s driving me crazy going back and forth.” RaeAnne groaned. “What would you do?”
Erin thought of her own dad. If something happened to him before she made this right, could she live with it? “I wouldn’t want something to regret. I think you’ve been given an opportunity.”
“I knew you’d say that. You’re so good with relationships.”
She expelled a breath. “Why do you think that?”
“Look how nice you’ve been to me. I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
And she didn’t know her at all. Not the facts. Not even the biggest thing she could tell her. Remember Morgan? Oh, by the way, I married him.
“How’s your business going? Did you unload the stuff from Mom’s cellar?”
The pang was inevitable. “Not yet.”
“Morgan doesn’t mind?”
“He’s in California.”
“Oh.”
“But back to your dad . . .”
RaeAnne groaned. “I think I have to at least try.”
“Will it break your heart if he says no?”
“It’ll just prove Mom was right to stick hi
m in a locket and leave him there.”
Erin laughed. “I like that.”
“So, here’s the thing. He lives in Juniper Falls.”
“No. Way.”
“Yes way. I think that’s why Mom moved up there.”
Erin sat on the chair. “You can’t be serious.”
“Well, I don’t know, but it’s a little much for coincidence.”
“You think they reconciled?”
“Maybe.”
“Wouldn’t she tell you?”
RaeAnne sighed. “Vera wasn’t like other people. She didn’t just march to another drum, she made the drum and didn’t care if anyone marched to it at all.”
“But you must have visited.”
“We talked practically every day. But I didn’t get out there that often. Maybe three times all the years she lived there. She came to see me a few too, but mostly we just talked on the phone.”
Not being close to her own mother, Erin understood. Gwen Reilly had been mortified when she got pregnant after the respectable age for those things. She never really connected with her inauspicious daughter.
“The good thing is, I’ll get to see you. And maybe you could go with me. We’d meet him together.”
Erin pressed a hand to her forehead. “What about your husband? Wouldn’t John—”
“No. He travels so much, the only other place he’ll go is a beach. And, Quinn, I haven’t told him about, you know, the cougar thing. Would you find my father with me?”
“Well, yes, but I’m not . . . in Juniper Falls.”
“I’ll wait until you get back.”
“But, RaeAnne, I’m . . .” All alone in such an awful predicament.
“Quinn?”
Erin slid her hand down her face. More than anything she hated lies. “If I tell you something, you can’t tell anyone else in the world.”
“I’m gregarious by nature, but I know when to keep my mouth shut. Got both from my mother.” She laughed.
Heart racing, Erin half whispered, “I’m in California with Morgan.”
“Morgan Spencer?”
She waited for the incredulity to wear off, but RaeAnne was anything but incredulous. “I knew it. I just had that feeling about you two.”
“RaeAnne . . . we . . .”
“I know I sounded like it about Vera and my dad, but I’m no judge and jury, Quinn. If you and that lonely man . . .”
“We’re married.”
“Whh-at?” The word sounded like wind in her ear.
“He’s protecting me from the reason I changed my phone number. And you can’t tell anyone.”
“Oh. Sugar.” RaeAnne was finally at a loss for words.
While terrified at having told, it also felt good to have one person not connected to Morgan in this with her. “I’m praying you’re the friend I think you are.”
“I would never do something that hurt you.” The conviction in her voice soothed the fear. “So . . .” RaeAnne cleared her throat. “How does it work?”
“That—” she expelled her breath—“is an excellent question.”
Morgan half expected Erin to come looking for him, even though Consuela said she’d laid out nightclothes and turned back the bed. This was an awkward situation, and she might want clarification—as though he could give any. But Erin didn’t come. When enough time had passed, he realized she wasn’t going to.
He turned when Consuela entered the atrium. “Do you need anything else, Señor?”
“No, Consuela. Get some sleep.”
“Would you like something special for breakfast?”
“Everything you make is special. I’ve missed your cooking.”
She clasped her hips. “You say that so I won’t ask why your wife sleeps in another room. Or are you joining her?”
“No. We’re still working out the kinks.”
“Kink?”
“Issues.”
“Oh.” Her eyes softened, thinking of Jill, no doubt. Let her think it was grief that made the wedge. Maybe it was.
“There are no ghosts here, Señor Morgan. I would know.”
“Thank you.”
“You sleep. And in the morning I will fill your belly.” She cast him a critical eye. “It needs it.”
He smiled. “Gracias.”
A fountain trickled down the wall of the atrium he and Jill had designed. Finches, though silent now, sang and flitted about the live trees around the circumference that branched across the glass-paned dome overhead. Jill had loved the space, and while he knew her ghost had no reason to linger, he felt her here, not in a sad and painful way, but happy, as she’d been.
He lay down on the cushioned chaise she called a fainting couch and imagined her nestled against him. Eyes closed he felt the love they’d shared, love he’d known with no one else. Desolation overcame him, but he didn’t move. He lay there and took it in, hurting as he hadn’t let himself hurt. Here where they’d been happy, he opened the wound.
CHAPTER
21
Erin sat up in the luxurious bed and looked around her. The room was more splendid in daylight than it had been the night before. Persimmon-colored walls that could have been garish were actually spectacular. Broad bands of dark wood trim, a dense pattern of bittersweet on the window treatments, and the dusky sage green bedding made her feel like Thumbelina in a botanical garden.
She went into the amber-tiled bathroom, where a salmon bougainvillea overflowed its pot on the long counter. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. After finger combing her hair, she went back out and heard a soft tap on the door. “Yes?”
“Some clothes for you, Señora.”
“Come in.”
Consuela entered with an armload of clothing from the boxes. “I bring you choices.”
“Thank you.”
The woman laid lighter-weight outfits on the bed, saying, “It is rainy today, but not cold like the Rocky Mountains. There will be no snow.” She said something under her breath, then added, “When you have dressed, come down to the kitchen and eat.”
“Is . . . Morgan up?”
“I haven’t seen him.” Her face softened, and she looked as though she might say something, then didn’t.
Erin dressed in fawn-colored jeans, a silk blouse that hung to her hips, and a thin, open vest of something shaggy. Where had he found these? She looked in the full-length mirror, taking in the transformation with amazement. If she weren’t Lilliputian, she could have walked a runway in the outfit. But could she walk out the bedroom door?
Her conversation with RaeAnne had grounded her. Quinn Reilly would face it head on. She hadn’t told RaeAnne she was Erin now, so, raising her chin, Quinn went out.
The house was filled with magnificent aromas. She put on twelve pounds just from the fumes. No wonder Morgan believed food should be an event. Consuela had prepared a banquet.
“Would you like juice?” Consuela held up a bowl of oranges.
She must mean fruit. “Yes, thank you.”
Instead of handing her an orange, Consuela cut them open and squeezed the juice. The first swallow was heaven, and it never diminished.
Consuela invited her to eat, but she said, “I’ll wait.”
A moment later, Morgan entered in the same jeans and shallow V-neck sweater he’d worn the day before. Seemingly, he hadn’t gone to bed. His eye sockets looked hollow, his cheeks sunken, but he said, “I promise not to bite.”
“Good.” She wasn’t up to date on rabies shots.
He started to request coffee as Consuela handed him a mug.
“A cup for you, Señora?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Morgan leaned against the marble counter, cradling his mug with both hands and drinking as from a holy grail. At the first sip, she understood why. What possible use had Morgan for her?
“You will eat now.” Consuela’s half question, half command mobilized them.
She and Morgan sat at the mission-style table set for two. Their chairs were a
cross from each other on the longer sides of the rectangle, and Consuela proceeded to fill both ends with small platters of roasted peppers, a delicious-looking meat dish, some kind of scrambled egg dish, sausage, mild salsa, hot salsa, melon and pineapple and strawberries. Erin looked at Morgan, who shrugged and smiled.
They bowed their heads, and Morgan and Consuela blessed the food in unison. Erin added silent gratitude. What other response could there be to all this? For a little person, she had a good appetite and thankfully a fast metabolism. Morgan didn’t comment, but Consuela looked delighted.
He said, “Sleep all right?”
“It’s a wonderful room. Thank you.”
He drank his coffee.
She took another bite. “I don’t know what half this food is, and I don’t care. It’s amazing.”
He picked up a strawberry and bit the end.
“Is Livie still sleeping?” She took a forkful of eggs.
He motioned to the intercom on the kitchen wall. “All quiet in her room.”
The unit looked like a command post. “Are all the rooms monitored?” She thought of her conversation with RaeAnne.
“They’re all on the intercom system, but the monitor is a manual setting for each room.” He set the strawberry on his fiesta-style plate. “We wanted to know Livie was safe in any part of the house.”
She chewed the spicy sausage Consuela called chorizo. “Are there cameras?” She knew firsthand how innocuous they could be.
“All the houses have one at the door and a monitor that shows the entry gate. I can install one in back if you’re concerned.”
She hadn’t meant that, but it brought reality home. How long before Markham would come knocking on the door? Or had they eluded him? She shook her head. “Not necessary.”
Morgan toyed with his strawberry.
“Won’t Consuela be sad if you don’t eat?”
“She’s used to it.”
Erin shook her head. “Then why does she make all this?”
“She likes to.”
“That’s such a waste.”
“She takes what’s left to the church.”
The Breath of Dawn Page 25
