The words ripped through her. She swung around, and her voice was barely audible with the force of its soft anguish. “Don’t you think I know that?” she sobbed. “I gave up my rights to her seven years ago, whether I wanted to or not. She’s a happy child. I’d rather die than spoil that.”
He studied her for a moment, gauging her eyes for something he could trust, something he could believe in, then dropped his focus to his tennis shoe. “How do I know I can believe you? You’ve lied to me about everything so far.”
“I’m not lying about this. What more have I got to lose?”
What more have I got to lose? Heaven help me, Wes thought. Amy was all he had left. Absolutely all. He focused his misting eyes on the ceiling and bit his lip until he drove out the color. “I want you to stay away from her. You’ve got your precious pictures, but I don’t want you anywhere near her again.”
“Don’t worry,” Laney said ruefully. “She thinks I’m a criminal now, remember? She saw the police taking me away yesterday.”
“Just the same, I want you to stay away from her.” He clenched his hand and pressed it against his mouth. A vein in his neck throbbed, and the muscles in his temples tightened. “If it wasn’t to take Amy, then why did you come back here?”
Her shaking hand went up to dry her eyes in vain, and she walked across the room to drop onto the sofa. “Because it’s my home. I grew up here.”
“What about your work?”
“I quit my job in Houston. I worked in the advertising department of a department store, and I do freelance photography on the side.”
“So you came back here without a job, just because it’s where you grew up? Why now, after seven years?”
Laney dried her face with both hands and met his piercing gaze. How could she tell him that her father’s death had triggered her need to right things, that until he died she had been emotionally dead and dictated over, even though she hadn’t seen him in years. “As long as I leave Amy alone, Mr. Grayson, it’s none of your business why I came back here. The fact is that I’m staying.”
Wes took a few steps closer and leaned over her, the pulse in his neck throbbing visibly. “I don’t like it. I want you out of this town. I have enough problems without worrying what you’ll do next.”
“Take my word for it,” she choked. “You’ll probably never even see me again.”
“Take your word for it,” he repeated with disgust. “Under the circumstances, that’s a little easier said than done.”
“Try,” she said. “I’d never hurt my daughter by trying to take her from the only family she knows.”
Wes shifted and began to pace the floor, studied her at each turn, then slowed to a stop. “It looks like I don’t have a choice. I can’t force you to leave or to sign in blood that you’ll make no claim on her, can I? You’ve backed me into a corner, and I have to trust you.”
“That’s right,” she said quietly. “You have to trust me.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin, and she noted the brown stubble that looked surprisingly dark against a complexion growing pastier by the moment.
“I hope you’re a decent person,” he said on a ragged sigh.
“I am,” she said, lifting her chin with an unmistakable degree of pride. “It took me a long time to believe that, but I am.”
Their eyes locked for a moment, and she knew he wanted desperately to believe her, to leave her house and not look back. He had to trust blindly, the way she had had to do when she left Shreveport seven years before, praying the adoptive parents were decent people. Wes swallowed with great effort, as though all his anger and fears were trapped at the back of his throat. Finally he nodded his head and started toward the double oak doors.
“Mr. Grayson?”
He stopped, leaned against the door, then reluctantly turned back to her.
Laney struggled with the question, but finally it stumbled out. “Does Amy know she’s adopted?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her hands for a moment. Bringing her misty eyes back to his, she shrugged. “She’s so beautiful and so well-adjusted. Happy.” Her throat filled, raising her pitch, but the words had to be said. “You and your wife are doing a wonderful job with her. I’m very grateful for that. Would you … would you thank her for me?”
Wes Grayson’s own eyes glossed over, glimmering with a deep sadness Laney didn’t understand until he spoke. “My wife’s been dead for a year,” he said. Then he opened the door and was gone.
Laney lay in bed that night staring into the darkness, fresh misery weighing on her heart for all the tragedies she had encountered in her life. Her mother’s death came back to her, and the nights she lay in this bed awake for months afterward, groping for some reason that she deserved such severe punishment. She remembered the years that followed when her father’s inability to love her had kept him distant, and the way she had tried so hard to please him in everything she’d done. But he had been a hard man, and during those years she had succeeded at nothing except failing him.
She wondered if it was that way for Amy—if she lay in bed at night weeping for her mother until she fell asleep. She wondered if Wes Grayson was the type of man who could be both mother and father to a little girl, or if Amy, too, would never quite measure up to all the things he demanded in return for having to raise her alone. She tried to put herself in Amy’s shoes, and tears sprang to her eyes again. Did the little girl—who knew one mother had given her up and that a second had been taken from her—have any faith in relationships at all? Was she able to trust love, or would she grow up wary of attachments, just as Laney was? Did Wes Grayson have that wisdom in his heart that could heal the child and allow her to accept something that could never be explained? Or would she, like Laney, hand herself over, heart, body, and soul to the first boy she met who offered her the slightest hint of affection?
She got out of bed and went back to the dining room to the photographs still scattered on the table, and as it often did, her mind strayed to the boy she had been in love with over seven years ago until he had offered her money for an abortion then abandoned her when she refused.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the image that reeled inevitably through her mind: the coldness in her father’s eyes as her body had changed from month to month; his quiet determination to take the matter out of her hands the moment the baby was born; the horror of the empty hospital cradle where her baby was supposed to be. She had never gotten over the helpless feeling of her father’s betrayal and the finality of her loss.
It was her punishment, she admitted, wiping her eyes and looking down at the pictures again. She had bought into the lie that free love had no price and that one night wouldn’t make a difference. She had believed that it was her body, her life, her future, and that the choice the two of them had made that night wouldn’t harm anyone. Now there was a child across town who had lost two mothers.
Abandoning the pictures, Laney went back to her bedroom. The dusty pink shades of dawn invaded her room, lifting the dark and bringing with it a longing to set things right. She had promised Wes that she wouldn’t make a claim on the child, and she had meant it. But that was before she’d known that Amy was being raised by a single father. That changed everything.
She lay down on her side, staring at the phone beside her bed. More tears of confusion and turmoil rolled out of her eyes. She wanted her baby back, she thought. She wanted to hold her and help to heal her grieving little heart. She wanted more than anything for Amy to know that she still had a mother.
A my’s mother, Wes thought as he sat in the rocker in his bedroom watching dawn color the walls. His arms were securely wrapped around his sleeping daughter, who had awakened crying during the night. He had brought her into his room and rocked her until she fell back to sleep. They had both struggled with the lonely void left in their lives since Patrice had died, and they were just beginning to get past the pain. But times like this, when disaster struck and fears
and worries threatened to overwhelm him, Wes missed her most of all.
Closing his eyes, he rested his chin on Amy’s head and reached with his heart toward the only true source of comfort he knew.
“Please protect my little girl, Lord,” he whispered. “She’s had so much pain.”
Tears rolled down his face, and he looked helplessly up, as though he could see right through the ceiling into heaven. As though it had been poured into him, he felt a terrible compassion for the woman who’d been pregnant at eighteen, and spent the next seven years wondering about her child.
“Take care of Laney,” he whispered. “Give her peace. Let her know she did a good thing by giving Amy to us.”
He looked down at his daughter, her sweeping fringe of black lashes, her full, pink lips, her trailing black hair that his wife had rarely cut, her dark complexion. Amy would grow up to look exactly like Laney, he thought. She would be beautiful.
The telephone rang, and he picked it up before a second ring could disturb Amy. “Hello,” he said quietly.
“Mr. Grayson, this is Laney Fields.”
He swallowed and didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry to call you so early, but I’d like to meet you somewhere this morning. I’ve been thinking, and we need to talk.”
He hesitated. “I thought we’d covered everything.”
“I’d still like to meet you.”
Wes tightened his hold on his daughter, as if that would keep them both safe. “What about?”
“About Amy, of course.”
She’s changed her mind, he thought, his heart collapsing. His hand instinctively stroked Amy’s arm. “You said I’d never see you again. You said—”
“I know what I said, Mr. Grayson,” Laney whispered. “But there were things I didn’t know then.”
“Things?” he asked, his lips tightening. “What kinds of things?”
“I’d rather discuss this in person,” she said. “Can we meet somewhere at ten o’clock?”
“I have a daughter,” he bit out. “When you’re a parent you can’t just pick up and leave when you want to. I’ll have to get a baby-sitter.”
She was silent for a moment, letting him know she had felt the blow. “Will you be able to meet me or not?”
“All right,” he said, realizing she wouldn’t stop tormenting him until he did. “I’ll get a baby-sitter and meet you at ten. At Brittany’s Cafe on Third Street.” He heard her hang up, listened for the dial tone, and stared at the receiver. She had changed her mind, he thought with a climbing sense of panic, just like he knew she would.
But if it cost him every ounce of strength he had, he would not let Laney Fields disrupt the life he had maintained for his child.
Laney sat in the quiet restaurant scanning the Saturdaymorning diners, who spoke in soft tones about seemingly insignificant things. Hanging plants colored the atmosphere, and soft music gave the impression of peace. Laney was anything but relaxed. A shredded napkin lay before her, tiny pieces of evidence that, within, her emotions were at riot.
She saw Wes Grayson through the glass doors before he walked in. Quickly she gathered the shreds into a pile and wadded it up. It wouldn’t do to let him know just how distressing this conversation would be for her, she thought. As calmly as she could manage, she lifted her coffee cup to her lips and peered at him over the rim. She saw him single her out and start toward her. His face was as pale as it had been yesterday, and his eyes were as red and tired as hers.
“Morning,” he said when he reached the table.
Laney offered a wan smile, and he pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, a wary expression tightening his features.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
“No,” he said, setting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands in front of his face.
“Want to?”
“No,” he said again with growing impatience. “Somehow I get the feeling I won’t have much of an appetite in a few minutes.” His eyes locked with hers, deep, searching, and when she couldn’t deny the observation, he picked up the salt shaker and seemed to study it. “If you don’t mind, I like directness. Why don’t you get to the point?”
Laney shifted in her chair and folded her shaking hands in her lap. “There’s no need for hostility, Mr. Grayson. We have a lot in common, whether we like it or not.”
“We have nothing in common,” he threw back. “Absolutely nothing.”
“You adopted my daughter,” Laney said.
“She’s my daughter,” he volleyed. “Has been since she was three days old. You don’t have a daughter.”
The beginnings of anger heated her neck. “I’m her mother,” Laney said. “That may be difficult for you to grasp—.”
“You gave up the right to be her mother when you let us adopt her,” he interrupted savagely. “You should have thought about your maternal status seven years ago. It’s too late now.”
Laney looked down at her coffee, struggling to keep her voice low. “I wasn’t given the luxury of thinking about it.”
Wes didn’t know what that meant, so he ignored it. “You gave her up, and we became her parents.” He sighed at the pain in her eyes, and bending his head forward, he pinched the bridge of his nose. She was the enemy, he told himself, and Amy was their battleground. But it wasn’t any easier for Laney than it was for him. He allowed himself a second to consider her feelings, her despair, her loss. “Look,” he said in a softer voice. “I understand about regrets. And I’m not trying to be insensitive. From where I stand you did a good thing by giving her up if you weren’t emotionally or financially capable of raising her.”
“I was capable,” Laney whispered. “I was then, and I am now.”
The vein in Wes’s temple began to throb visibly, and compassion for her position fled. “Don’t threaten me, Laney. You can wipe that idea right out of your head because you’re not getting her back.” He realized he was drawing the attention of other diners and lowered his voice again. “You told me yesterday that you wouldn’t make any claim on her. ‘Take my word for it,’ you said.”
Laney took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I know. And I meant it yesterday. But that was before you told me your wife died.” She opened her eyes again and saw the deep pain illuminating his own eyes. “I know it still hurts,” she conceded. “And I’m not trying to be insensitive, either. But it makes a difference in all this. A child needs her mother.”
“Her mother is dead,” Wes growled.
“No, she isn’t. She still has a mother. She doesn’t have to be deprived anymore.”
“You’re crazy,” he whispered. “You’re a complete stranger to her, and you think you can waltz into her life and pick up where her mother left off? No one can replace Patrice to her, but she’s adjusting. I can give her what she needs.”
“No, you can’t,” Laney asserted. “I don’t believe that a man can be both mother and father to a little girl. A man is not able to give her all the emotional support she needs.”
“What do you know about parenthood?” His harsh whisper whipped across her like a physical blow.
“Nothing. But I know about childhood. My mother died when I was nine, and my father had to raise me. I suppose he did the best he could, but it was sadly lacking. I don’t want my child being raised that way.”
“All right,” Wes said, tossing his napkin aside. “So spit it out. What’s the bottom line here?”
Her face reddened, and she struggled to hold back her tears. “I just want to meet her. I want to be involved in her life, to visit her when I want, to be there for her when she needs me.”
Wes’s expression hovered between violence and helplessness. “That’s absurd,” he said. “She doesn’t even know you; how could she need you? She’s been through a rough time in the past year, and I will not make her more insecure by bringing some stranger into her life who claims to be her real mother.”
“You know I’m her real mother. You saw the papers.”
<
br /> Wes threw a quick glance at a passing waiter and made a valiant effort to keep his voice low. “But she doesn’t know. Motherhood goes deeper than biology. It has very little to do with whose womb a child was carried in. It has to do with being there to celebrate an A on her report card and nursing her through the chicken pox and knowing the names of her best friends at school. It has to do with comforting her when she wakes up afraid in the middle of the night, with loving her and protecting her from unnecessary heartache. I can be her mother, too, if she needs one. She doesn’t need you.”
The pain his words inflicted was multiplied when Laney let herself consider what this was doing to Wes. He’d lost his wife, and now he feared losing his daughter. To him she was like a live grenade in his pocket, and she didn’t want to be that. But it was for Amy that she went on.
Laney’s eyes were soft and compassionate when they locked with his, and beneath the pain they held the dull gloss of strength gained from years of struggle. “Don’t make me take you to court, Mr. Grayson,” she said quietly. “Please. Amy has a mother, so there’s no excuse for making her live without one for the rest of her life.”
Wes’s eyes were desperate. “You’d do that? You’d take me to court and upset her life that way?”
Laney leaned forward on the table, intent on making him understand. “I would never hurt her. She’s my little girl too,” she whispered. “I just want to know her, and I want her to know me. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
Wes tilted his head helplessly, and a long, heavy breath escaped him.
“It’s the most complicated thing in the world to Amy!” He coiled his hand into a fist and stared at it, then took a breath that only tied the knots tighter in his chest. “She’s just a little girl. I don’t want her traumatized.”
Laney’s resolve fell a degree. “Do you really think she will be?”
Wes brought his eyes back to hers and held them for a transparent moment. If only she didn’t care, he thought, he could manage to detest her. But when she grew vulnerable and concerned, he lost his stand. Their heartaches and fears were pitted against each other. Who hurt the worst? Who feared the most? But Amy’s pains and fears were all that mattered. “I honestly don’t know,” he whispered in answer to her question.
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