Her Soldier's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  But first, she had to take care of her past.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHILE THERE WASN’T a lot of crime on Shelby Island, there was plenty of it in Charleston, which was where Pierce worked. With the harbor and the beaches, the moderate temperatures and South Carolina charm, the city attracted all kinds. From drug users to homeless, vacationers to the rich and famous, illegal immigrants to some of the nation’s most respected leaders, Pierce, with his fellow officers, walked among them. Determined to keep the peace.

  When a call came in, he put himself on the front line as often as he could. He was trained for all kinds of warfare. Had reflexes that outranked those of most officers.

  And no fear of dying.

  Some thought he was a bit too into danger and shied away from partnering with him. Others put in requests to ride with him.

  He preferred going it alone.

  And would have liked to stay on for a second shift when his was up Friday afternoon. But instead he parked his vehicle and headed out right on time. With Eliza gone, he had evening social hour welcoming duties at the bed-and-breakfast. He wasn’t good at it. Figured he probably put as many people off as he made feel welcome, but his wife didn’t seem to get that.

  She had a full-time assistant. And a part-time one, too, for times like these when she couldn’t be at Rose Harbor B and B herself. The weekend’s meals were all prepared and in the refrigerator, ready to heat. As cooking was Eliza’s passion, she did all of it herself.

  Someone would be at the house to check in guests and tend to unforeseen needs: a pillow that was too hard or too soft, an allergy to a particular kind of soap, menu preferences that a guest might have forgotten to fill in ahead of time.

  Pierce’s job was simply to be present. To welcome Eliza’s guests into their home as though they were friends. To chat with them and assure them that they were happy to accommodate their needs.

  And to fix anything that might be broken. A toilet with a flush valve gone bad. A leaky faucet. Things Eliza could do, too, in a pinch.

  His wife, a Harvard graduate, had a lot of surprising talents. He thought of her, and the fact that it was still early afternoon in California, as he drove home. Had to toss his cell phone to the backseat while he drove in an effort to stop himself from calling. And he concentrated on the evening ahead.

  They had four of their six rooms filled that weekend. Two to families in town for a reunion. One an older couple who visited at least once a year. And the fourth to a recent widow, traveling on her own.

  Other than the mingling, Pierce was happy to be a part of Eliza’s venture. To contribute.

  Mostly he was happy to be her self-appointed sentry. Checking out as many of their guests as possible, assessing, making certain that there were no signs of risk.

  And if there were, to investigate further. Without anyone being the wiser, of course.

  He was there to serve the woman he loved.

  For as long as he could be of use to her.

  For as long as he was more help than hurt.

  * * *

  ELIZA WAS SHOWN to a counselor almost immediately. Probably because there’d been no one else in the waiting room that late on a Friday afternoon.

  “Mary says you’re here to ask about one of our clients?” the woman, Mrs. Carpenter, said as she shook Eliza’s hand. She told her to take a seat before sitting back down herself.

  The counselor looked to be in her mid-forties, with short, dark hair and a reserved but friendly smile. She was well-dressed in a gray suit with a maroon silk blouse. Eliza hadn’t seen her shoes before she sat down behind her desk, but figured them for fashionable heels.

  “I received a letter from your office,” Eliza said. “Just before Christmas.” And that was when she’d started looking around for a reason to visit California without arousing Pierce’s suspicions—and had come upon the Family Secrets auditions.

  Sort of. She was a huge fan of the show. And had been trying to figure out a way to pursue the letter when she’d been watching Family Secrets one night and had seen that there were going to be auditions in Raleigh the week between Christmas and New Year’s...

  She’d seen that as a sign. In her imagination, as she’d watched the show over the past couple of years, she’d fancied herself a contestant many times—without ever expecting the chance to make the fantasy a possibility.

  Without ever believing she’d have the moxie to actually pursue such a thing.

  Until that letter arrived.

  She’d told herself she’d try out. If she did make it, it would be another sign. She was supposed to pursue the letter.

  But Mrs. Carpenter didn’t need to know any of that. The last thing she wanted was for the woman to think she was some kind of kook.

  “I got a letter,” she said. As heat spread up her body, causing the outbreak of an instant sweat, she stood up. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Carpenter. This was a mistake. I should never have come. I’m sorry for bothering you...wasting your time...”

  The older woman stood, as well. Came around her desk to take Eliza’s hand, and then placed her other hand on Eliza’s arm. “Please, sit down,” she said, maintaining physical contact as she lowered to the chair next to Eliza’s. “You aren’t wasting my time. This is exactly what I’m here for.”

  This. Eliza hadn’t even told her what this was. And just as she’d thought, Mrs. Carpenter had four-inch spiked heels on her shoes. They were gray. Patent leather. And definitely real leather.

  Eliza liked shoes. Always had. An inexplicable weakness for one who’d always eschewed her parents’ penchant for keeping up appearances in their upper-middle-class crowd.

  Pierce, the son of a single father who was a happy drunk, hadn’t been good enough for them.

  And in the end, Eliza hadn’t been, either. The summer after her sophomore year of high school, they’d shipped her, their only child, off to her grandmother and bought a four-bedroom home on a golf course in Florida.

  In their defense, they’d expected her to join them eventually. To graduate from high school in Florida. Her mother had decorated a suite just for her, with her own bathroom. Eliza was the one who’d opted to stay in South Carolina. They’d agreed to let her do so as long as she agreed to get good enough scores in high school to be able to attend Harvard.

  She just hadn’t been able to picture Pierce coming home to that house in Florida.

  As it turned out, he hadn’t come to South Carolina, either. Not until a long time later.

  “That’s it. Just breathe. Calm will come,” Mrs. Carpenter said. Which was when Eliza realized the woman was still holding her hand.

  She felt like an idiot. Slipped her hand out from the counselor’s and sat up straighter. “I had a baby.”

  The sky didn’t fall.

  “I’ve...actually never told anyone...not since the day they took him away from me.” She’d been sixteen. Had been in labor for almost two days. Had been certain she was going to die—that she was paying for having sinned so horrendously. She’d been delirious before it was over. “I never even saw him.”

  She’d been told he was perfect.

  “Was that your choice?” Mrs. Carpenter’s tone was soft.

  It had been her parents’ choice. They’d also insisted that she be homeschooled during her pregnancy. Which was why she’d been shipped to her grandmother. Her mother’s mother had been a schoolteacher before she’d retired to go into the B and B business.

  “It was for the best,” was all she said. Her parents had given in to her need to stay, permanently, with the grandmother who’d saved her life that year—emotionally if not physically. But their acquiescence had come with cost. After her baby was born, she was never to speak of it again. Not to tell anyone. Ever. When she’d started attending her new school her senior year, she was ju
st a new girl. They said to handle it. Any other way would brand her as someone who couldn’t control herself. Who didn’t make wise choices. Who was irresponsible.

  There was truth to that.

  “So...you’ve never told anyone you had a baby?”

  The caring in Mrs. Carpenter’s tone brought tears to her eyes. She shook her head.

  “I notice you’re wearing a wedding ring...” The words trailed off.

  Eliza looked over, meeting the counselor’s compassionate gaze. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  She expected some reaction to that. Horror. Disgust. Shock, at least.

  Judgment.

  “So, tell me about this letter.”

  “I didn’t realize that Family Adoptions had sister agencies,” she said, naming the agency her grandmother had chosen in South Carolina all those years ago.

  “We’re one of the few licensed nonprofits with offices around the country. It opens our pool of birth mothers and adopting families to suit everyone better, while still allowing us to do on-site home studies over the course of a couple of months for each one.”

  Up until a month ago, Eliza hadn’t known the ins and outs of adopting a baby. She’d trusted her grandmother to make certain her son had a good home. She’d trusted the agency she’d visited one bleak day that horrible fall.

  She knew now how families were vetted. The paperwork and legalities and home visits. The social workers assigned to prospective families. All of it had comforted her. She wished she’d done the research sooner.

  And yet, how could she research something that, for all intents and purposes, had never happened?

  She’d borne the child but had no rights to him. At all.

  “I gave up all rights,” she said now. Except the one her grandmother had insisted upon. “Except that he’s allowed to know who I am. If he ever asks.”

  Mrs. Carpenter nodded.

  “His family got him through this office,” she said.

  Feeling slightly woozy, muddled, Eliza stared at the gray patent leather shoes. Wondered how long she’d be able to walk in them if she owned a pair.

  “Has he asked to see you?” The soft words broke into her consideration of crunched toes, foot cramps and blisters. None of which were likely to be a problem for her.

  Because she’d been wearing heels since she was seventeen. And because she wasn’t likely to be wearing four-inch ones any time soon. She was an innkeeper. The owner of Rose Harbor Bed-and-Breakfast. Making a home away from home for hundreds of people every year.

  “No,” she said now. “The letter just told me that he’d contacted your office to inquire about my identity. I guess I had the right to know that they’d given him what information they had on me. My name, where I was living at the time of the adoption and the office through which he originated.”

  Nothing else. It was so...open-ended.

  But tightly shut, too.

  What if he wanted to find her and couldn’t? She’d married. Her name was different.

  And the address was, too. Back then, her grandmother had lived in a separate house off Shelby Island. She’d managed Rose Harbor in those days. But the year Eliza had graduated from high school, when her grandmother had turned sixty and had been able to access her retirement fund without penalty, she’d used it to buy Rose Harbor.

  What if he found her, came knocking on the door, and Pierce answered?

  “I...came here to find out...”

  She broke off as she started to shake. And get too warm again.

  “If, as you say, you gave up all rights, I can’t give you any information on him.”

  Swallowing, she attempted a smile, one she gave to reassure an agitated guest, and failed. “I know,” she managed. “I’m not asking. I just...wanted to know if you could maybe find out...somehow...if he wants to see me.”

  Please, God. Yes. Let me meet my baby boy. Finally. Please. Just to touch his hand once. To look in his eyes one time before I die.

  Oh. God. No. Have him be happy. Fulfilled. In want of nothing. Including the need to see the woman in whose body he was created.

  Mrs. Carpenter shook her head. “If there’s something in his file that indicates that he’s open to seeing you, I can pass on your information. But generally, if that were the case, the letter you received would have indicated as much.”

  The counselor took her name anyway. The case number that Eliza had memorized from the letter that she’d shredded. Taking a bottle of water from the small refrigerator under a counter across from them, Mrs. Carpenter handed it to Eliza, asked if she’d be okay for a few minutes and, at Eliza’s nod, left the room.

  Eliza wasn’t okay. Her fingers shook so badly, she dropped the cap of the water bottle after opening it. And in her black pants and white cropped jacket, Eliza dropped to her knees to reach under the desk it rolled under.

  Back in her seat, she pulled out her phone. Read Pierce’s text telling her that he was home and that everything was on course for social hour.

  He didn’t include any silly emoticons or anything that could indicate how very much in love he was with his wife.

  But those words, reassuring her, read like an avowal of undying love.

  Longing for the life she’d built, the adrenaline rush of being in her own parlor with guests who were happy with her accommodations, happy with the hors d’oeuvres she’d served them, Eliza wished she’d stayed home. Auditioning, traveling across the country like this...it had been a mistake. She should be home, basking in the knowledge that when her guests retired for the night, she’d be going to bed with Pierce. To fall asleep in the arms of the only man she’d ever loved.

  She wanted to answer the text. Typed. Deleted. Typed. Deleted. She couldn’t lie to him. Couldn’t tell him where she was. Or why she was there.

  She hated not being able to tell him.

  Fear shot through her as she considered the Pandora’s box she’d opened.

  But she hadn’t opened it.

  Her baby boy had opened it. He’d asked about her.

  There was no way she could ignore any possibility that he needed her.

  No way Pierce would want her to.

  And no way she could tell him that she’d given away the only child he would ever father.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LILY ELIZABETH MCCONNELL had been married thirty years. “Not long enough,” the fifty-something, salt-and-pepper-haired woman told Pierce as she stood, a china plate holding a couple of Eliza’s miniquiches in her hands. “You take it for granted, you know?”

  Her eyes were glassy with emotion, but her voice was calm. Pierce respected the control. “I do know,” he said wholeheartedly. “Sad, isn’t it, that you have to lose something to realize what it meant to you?”

  He hadn’t meant to speak that last bit out loud. But the woman’s need tapped into the vulnerability he normally had buried so deep he could pretend it didn’t exist.

  He was always a bit off when Eliza was gone.

  The well-dressed widow tilted her head. “You’ve lost someone, too?” she asked.

  He’d walked right into that one.

  Music played softly from good-quality speakers resourcefully hidden among the genuine antiques that filled—and garnished—the room. Classical piano. He recognized Pachelbel’s Canon only because it was Eliza’s favorite and she had what seemed like a million renditions of it.

  He didn’t want to offend the guest, but he wished the couple in the corner enjoying the free wine were more open to socializing. Or that the families he’d been told had checked in would come downstairs.

  “I have,” he told Mrs. McConnell, taking a sip from the glass of iced lemon water he’d poured before leaving his and Eliza’s private section of the mansion to do his duties as host.

 
; There. They could have mutual understanding, as the strangers they were, and move on. Glancing over her shoulder, he noted the still-empty stairway. No families coming down yet.

  Lily Elizabeth McConnell seemed as interested in his hand as he was in the staircase.

  “You’re wearing a wedding ring,” she said when she caught him noticing her stare.

  Awkward. And the reason he hated these things.

  “Yet you’re here alone. Did you lose your wife?”

  He knew how to parry a come-on. And did. Every single time he was faced with one. This wasn’t a come-on. If the woman’s tone hadn’t told him so, the pain in her eyes did.

  “No,” he said. No playing with fate on that one. “I just assumed everyone here knew... Eliza’s away being a contestant on Family Secrets every weekend this month. This is our home, but the bed-and-breakfast, that’s all her doing. I’m strictly support staff when it comes to Rose Harbor.”

  He helped her with the books, too. She ran all decisions by him. But the house was hers. Eliza had been running the successful B and B long before he’d come back into her picture.

  Mrs. McConnell nodded. Looked down at her sensible, almost flat black shoes. He wasn’t the most sensitive guy around, but even he could tell that her pain, in that moment, was acute.

  “What about kids?” he blurted. People her age relied on their kids. Didn’t they?

  She shook her head. And he’d have gladly escaped to keep from saying anything else that didn’t help. “We... Harley and I...we never had kids. It wasn’t that we didn’t want them. It just never happened. And neither of us wanted to pursue other avenues. We figured if we were meant to be parents, we’d get pregnant.”

  Were it him, he’d have pursued every avenue there was and any dirt lane, too. But this wasn’t about him. “I get what you mean about not being meant to be a parent,” he said before realizing that they’d ventured outside guest-welcoming territory.

  “You and your wife don’t have children?” she asked. And he just stood there. Staring at her.