“Go on,” Andrew said eagerly.
“Ever since Ted won the baby bet about his daughter, Patty, the daddies have been the ones to predict every single baby born into the family. Isn’t that weird? When a pregnancy is announced, everyone looks at the daddy-to-be and says ‘Well?’ and—shazam—Dad nails it. What a hoot, huh? I love it.”
“That’s a great story,” Andrew said, smiling at her warmly. “It really is. I’ve…I’ve never known a close-knit family like the MacAllisters.”
“They’re very special,” Kara said, matching his smile. “Oh! Now there’s a bachelor bet going on. Can you believe that? Jack told us about it when he arrived here from visiting his friend, Brandon, in Arizona.
“Jack was a confirmed bachelor, as Brandon had once been, and Jack told Brandon to bet all he wanted to, but Jack MacAllister wasn’t doing the marriage bit.
“By the time Jack left Prescott, Arizona, he was married to Jennifer, became father to Jennifer’s son, Joey, and now there’s a little Jack on the way. Jack has already said that Jennifer is having a boy. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that it will be a baby boy.
“Someone in Prescott—the sheriff, I think—is targeted for the bachelor bet and so is my brother, Richard. Jack said he tried to throw me into the pool, but he guessed they weren’t including bachelorettes. Oh, my, being a MacAllister is such fun. I’m so blessed to be able to call them my family.” Kara paused. “They’re your family, too, Andrew.”
“Don’t go there, Kara,” Andrew said with a sigh. “Not tonight. I’m enjoying being with you. I’ve even laughed out loud, which is the first for that since I hit town. Thank you for inviting me here into your home, sharing this evening with me.”
“You’re very welcome,” Kara said softly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Without being totally aware that he’d done it, Andrew covered one of Kara’s hands with one of his own on the coffee table and began to stroke her soft skin with his thumb.
Kara looked away from Andrew, then drew a wobbly breath. “Do you want the last piece of pizza?” she said.
“The what?” Andrew said, releasing Kara’s hand and frowning slightly. “Oh! The pizza. Last slice. Yes, it is, isn’t it? The last…Damn it, Kara, you’re turning me inside out here. I have never…never in my entire life desired a woman the way I do you.” He stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, then looked at her again. “That sounded as phony as a three-dollar bill. I sure as hell wouldn’t buy into that line.”
“But it isn’t a line, is it?” Kara said, more a statement than a question. “I…I just can’t believe you’d lie to me, Andrew, try to seduce me.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” he said, his voice rising. “I’d never do that to you. You’re too important to me, too…Ah, hell, what a mess. You’re looking at a very confused man, Kara MacAllister.”
“And I’m a very muddled woman, Andrew Malone,” she said, then sighed. “I tell myself that I’m overreacting to you, to how much I want you, how much I…care about you because of the circumstances under which we met.
“We’re in a volatile situation where emotions are running in high gear, and nothing is quite like it normally would be. I’m hanging on to that theory like a lifeline, because otherwise I would be totally overwhelmed by…” She stopped speaking and shook her head.
“Well, aren’t we a pair?” Andrew said, smiling slightly. “Nuts and nuttier or whatever.”
Kara laughed. “That about sums it up, I think. Eat that last piece of pizza. It’s calling your name. Would you like some more soda?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” Andrew said, picking up the slice of pizza. He polished it off in short order, then drained his glass. “Fine meal. Good company.” He paused. “Kara, you said you believe that I wouldn’t lie to you. That implies you are coming to trust me. It that true?”
“I know where you’re going with this,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “You’re waiting for me to tell you why I was a foster child.”
“You said the key word, Kara—waiting. I’m not pushing you. It may sound like I am from what I just said, but I’m not.”
“And that means a great deal to me, Andrew, it really does.” Kara diverted her gaze from his and fiddled with her napkin. “Of course, I’m waiting for you to share with me, too. To tell me why you confronted Uncle Robert now, after all these years, and what you hoped to accomplish by doing that.”
Andrew began to trace the letters on the pizza box that spelled the name of the parlor. One minute passed, then two, with the only sound in the room being the dreamy music coming from the stereo. Andrew finally raised his head slowly and met Kara’s gaze.
“I didn’t know the identity of my father,” he said quietly, “until just before I came to Ventura, to that party at the hotel. My mother told me early on there was no need to know my father’s name, and I accepted that.
“I realized years ago that Clara, my aunt, knew what my father’s name was, but I never asked her, nor did she divulge it. Then the article about the MacAllister family reunion came out in the newspaper, accompanied by the photograph of all of you.”
Andrew got to his feet and settled onto the sofa, a deep frown on his face as he stared at the far wall. Kara’s gaze was riveted on him, and when she felt a sudden pain in her chest, she reminded herself to breathe.
“Clara arrived at my apartment drunk,” Andrew said, “ranting and raving and waving that newspaper in front of my face. She went on and on about how my father had a large family, who no doubt worshiped him, and how unfair it all was.
“She dropped the newspaper on the floor, and when I picked it up, I thought of my mother, her wishes to keep my father’s identity a secret, and I folded the newspaper closed over that picture. I didn’t allow myself to read the caption beneath that would tell me all the names of the people in the photograph.”
“That…that must have been a very difficult thing to do,” Kara said softly.
Andrew shifted his gaze to meet hers. “Yeah, well, the willpower it took was all for nothing, because Clara, who was still raging on, yelled out my father’s name. There it was. After all these years. Robert MacAllister.”
“Oh, my,” Kara said, her eyes widening.
“Something came over me, Kara. I don’t know how to explain it, really. So many emotions were coming at me at once. I managed to send Clara on her way, then I looked at the photograph in the newspaper and read the article that accompanied it.
“Memories from my childhood were slamming against me. The shabby places we were forced to live in, how hard my mother worked to make ends meet. I didn’t appreciate until I was older how difficult it all was for her. She’d drag herself out of the apartment, bone tired, to play ball with me or to take me to the park or whatever. She was a wonderful mother, but she was attempting to be a father to me, too, and it was a rough road to go.”
Kara nodded, then shook her head slightly to dispel a sudden image of the baby boy she hoped to adopt, which flashed before her mental vision.
“Anyway,” Andrew went on, dragging a hand through his hair, “I guess I sort of lost it as I stared at that newspaper photo. I was filled with hot fury at the way Robert MacAllister had treated my mother, how he abandoned her when he found out she was pregnant with his baby, just turned his back and walked away.”
Andrew narrowed his eyes, looked into space once more, and when he spoke again, there was a steely edge to his voice.
“I didn’t want anything from Robert MacAllister, not one damn thing. Not his name, not his money, not his social status, nothing.
“But, by God, he was going to accept responsibility for what he had done. In front of his whole family, he was going to admit that he had deserted my mother when she needed him most. He was going to say the words that I was determined to hear—Sally Malone mattered.”
Tears filled Kara’s eyes and she pressed trembling fingertips to her lips. Andrew turned his head to look at her again, pain radiatin
g from the depths of his dark-brown eyes. MacAllister eyes.
“My mother was a beautiful human being,” he said, his voice rough with emotion, “both inside and out. Robert was going to acknowledge her existence.
“I became obsessed with the need to hear him say that my mother mattered, that she…Ah, hell, this sounds so damn crazy. It made sense to me at the time, but…I nearly killed a man because of what I had to hear Robert MacAllister say. No one in your family will understand why it was so important to me.”
“I understand,” Kara said, as tears spilled onto her cheeks. “I truly do, Andrew, because—” a sob caught in her throat “—because when I was sixteen years old, when Mary and Ralph took me home as their foster child, I didn’t feel, I didn’t believe, that I…that I mattered to anyone in the world.
“I know what you wanted from Uncle Robert for your mother, because it was what I received from Mary, Ralph, Jack and Richard for myself. Oh, yes, Andrew, I really do understand why you went to the party and confronted Uncle Robert. I…” Kara stopped speaking and shook her head as tears closed her throat.
“Ah, man,” Andrew said, lunging to his feet. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Kara. I’m sorry.” He closed the distance between them and drew her up from the floor and into his arms, holding her tightly. “I’m so damn sorry that I made you cry.”
“Oh, no, please don’t apologize,” she said, her voice muffled as she buried her face in Andrew’s shirt. “It’s just that what you were saying brought back so many painful memories.”
Kara lifted her head to look at Andrew, and he nearly groaned aloud as he saw the tears glistening on her cheeks and in her dark eyes.
“Some of the MacAllisters will understand why you were compelled to do what you did, Andrew,” she said. “Maybe they won’t all be able to grasp it, to realize how important it is to know that you matter, that you count, but some of them will, I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But if I could turn back the clock, I wouldn’t have gone to the party. My mother has been dead since I was fifteen. I was hell-bent on collecting on a debt that I felt was owed to her, not one that she ever expressed a need to have satisfied. What I did was wrong, very very wrong.”
He sighed and tightened his hold on Kara.
“But I’ll tell you this,” he said, his voice raspy. “The fact that you understand why I did it, forgive me in a way for my actions, means more to me than I can ever begin to tell you. Thank you. Thank you so damn much.”
Kara nodded, then sniffled.
“Come on. Sit down next to me on the sofa,” Andrew said. “It’s my fault that you’re upset, that you were flung back in time to a painful part of your life. Let me hold you, just hold you, give you the comfort you’ve just given me.”
They settled onto the sofa, Andrew’s arm snugly around Kara as she nestled her head on his shoulder. Kara began to gather her courage, feeling as though she was drawing additional strength from Andrew’s solid powerful body. She shifted finally so she could sit upright but still remain in the circle of Andrew’s arm, as she looked directly into his eyes.
“My parents…” she started, then cleared her throat and lifted her chin. “My parents left me in a movie theater in Chicago when I was three years old. I was found curled up asleep in a chair with no one else around me in the row. There was a note pinned to me that said my name was Kara and that they didn’t…didn’t want to be parents any longer.”
“Ah, man,” Andrew said, tightening his hold on her. “I’m going to say that I’m sorry, but I realize that doesn’t come close to cutting it. Do you remember them at all? Your parents?”
“Not really. They’re just vague blurry shapes in my mind. I remember that I had a favorite teddy bear, but I didn’t bring it with me that day, and later when I was placed in a foster home, I cried and cried for my bear. I don’t believe that my parents were very loving, nurturing people, because I cried for my teddy bear, not for them.”
Andrew frowned as he nodded.
“So, there I was, just one more of a multitude of case numbers in the foster-care system. I was given the last name of Smith, then shuffled around a great deal. As the years passed, I grew angrier and angrier, had no self-esteem, covered my inner pain and feelings of inadequacy by acting out, being a very difficult child, then an even more rebellious teenager.”
“That’s understandable,” Andrew said.
“When I was sixteen, I met a boy while I was hanging around a mall with my friends from school. He was cocky, very sure of himself, and all the girls were crazy about him. I was thrilled when he singled me out to be his girlfriend. He picked me over all the others, wanted me.”
Kara shook her head and sighed. “I was so pathetic, was willing to do anything he asked of me, so he would continue to love me. He took drugs. I can recall hesitating when he told me to take some drugs he offered me and how angry he became over my initial reluctance. Was I his girl or not? Was I part of his scene or wasn’t I? I was terrified of losing him, of not being loved by him, so I started taking drugs.
“Rick—that was his name—became very excited about the fun we could have in California. He’d go on and on about how great the party scene was out here. That’s what we would do, he told me, we’d drive to the Coast in the car he’d saved up to buy. I ran away from the foster home where I was living and off I went with Rick.”
“What did you two live on?” Andrew said. “I mean, did Rick even have a high-school diploma?”
“No, neither of us did, and we soon ran out of money. We did odd jobs. I was a waitress for a while, but I was fired because I went to work high on drugs. We ended up sleeping in parks, watching out for the police. It was a nightmare. I was torn, a part of me wishing I’d stayed at the foster home in Chicago and the other part of me holding on to Rick any way that I could. Then…”
Kara stopped speaking and stared into memory-filled space. Andrew waited, not speaking, his heart thundering in his chest.
“Then,” Kara continued finally, “Rick started talking about the money we could make if I would go on the streets, sell myself to men who were willing to pay for what I could offer them.”
“What?” Andrew said. “He…he wanted you to become a…”
“Prostitute, yes,” Kara said, forcing herself to look at Andrew again. “I knew I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. But before I told Rick that, I discovered I was pregnant with his baby. He was furious, said I had wrecked any chance I had of being attractive to men. To make a long grim story shorter, he demanded that I get rid of the baby. I refused and he left me. I never saw him again.”
“Damn him,” Andrew said, a pulse beating wildly in his temple. “What did you do then?”
“Well, I certainly didn’t take any more drugs, as I was determined to have and keep my baby. I would have someone who really loved me and who I could love in return—my child. I kept on the move so the authorities wouldn’t find me, going to free clinics for checkups, staying a night here and there in community shelters, spending other nights in parks.”
“Ah, Kara,” Andrew said, taking her hand with his free one.
“I was here, in Ventura, when I went into labor six weeks early,” she continued, speaking very softly. “I gave birth to a beautiful little girl. I held her in my arms once, in the delivery room, and I’ll never forget…” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ll never ever forget her tiny face, how exquisite she was. But—” a sob caught in her throat “—oh, Andrew, she died.
“My baby died the day after she was born. I had taken drugs before I knew I was pregnant, hadn’t been able to eat properly in the following months, she was born too early and…She didn’t have a chance, I didn’t give her a chance to live and she…she died.”
“Oh, God.” Andrew dropped Kara’s hand and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to him as she cried. “I don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry, so sorry, you went through all that.”
Kara raised her head again and And
rew shifted enough to take a clean handkerchief from his back pocket. He dried her tears slowly, gently, then pressed the soft linen into her hand.
“I named her Gloria,” Kara said, tears echoing in her voice. “That’s what she was—glorious, a miracle, so precious and—”
“Kara, stop,” Andrew said. “You don’t have to do this, relive this. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“No, no, I’m all right. I need to finish telling you this. You trusted me, shared with me about why you sought out Uncle Robert, and I’m returning that trust in kind, Andrew.”
He had never in his life felt so humble, so special, so…Man, he couldn’t even put a name to all the emotions tumbling through him, one into the next. What an incredible gift this woman was giving him. And what a rare and wonderful woman was Kara MacAllister.
Kara drew a trembling breath before continuing her story.
“I was still in the hospital and I couldn’t stop crying about my daughter’s death. I just wept on and on. I was so alone, in such pain, felt there was no purpose to my life. I was worthless and evil and…No one would miss me if I wasn’t there, because I didn’t matter to anyone. I just didn’t matter.”
“Which is why you understand what I was trying to do for my mother by confronting your uncle.”
“Yes,” Kara said, nodding. “Oh, yes, I truly do understand.” She paused. “Then Mary MacAllister walked into my room, introduced herself, said she was a volunteer at the hospital and sat down next to my bed. She told me to go ahead and cry until I had no more tears, then she wanted to tell me something. She just settled back, folded her hands and smiled at me.
“Oh, I was hateful. I bit her head off, wanted to know what do-gooder mission she was on. Mary just kept smiling, then reached over and took one of my hands. She said I was coming home with her and explained that her husband’s name was Ralph, and that my two older brothers—that’s how she put it right from the start—my older brothers were Richard and Jack.
“Then she said that on the way to the house we were going to stop at a place and order a proper headstone for my daughter’s grave, because Gloria deserved that and, she said, so did I.”
The Baby Bet: His Secret Son (The Baby Bet #5) Page 10
