The Housekeeper's Daughter

by Laurie Paige

  Immediately, visions of his six-one, sinewy frame flooded her mind. She’d touched him all over, discovering every mole, every tiny imperfection…and every scar that spoke of a life lived dangerously close to the edge.

  There’s no place in my life…

  He’d made love to her, then written those words as she lay sleeping, innocently believing in a future that included them and their children and a lifetime of sharing. The table blurred. She held the anguish in by dint of will. No one would see her cry, she had vowed eight months ago, after that first awful storm of grief had passed.

  She ate the delicious meal without tasting it. Every time her eyes met Drake’s over Teddy’s blond curls, a shiver rushed through her. His gaze boded no good for her.

  Drake stood at the window of his dark room and stared at the windows across the central courtyard patio. Maya’s room. He knew it well. Once it had been his.

  A flurry of emotion ran through him. Need. Anger. Despair. Loneliness. Name it and he’d felt it during the past eight months, even during hot nights in the humid jungles of Central America when he should have been concentrating on the business at hand.

  His mission: rescue an American diplomat kidnapped by drug dealers and held in a mountain stronghold. He’d nearly lost two good men on that trek, but in the end, the mission had been a success.

  A new scar from a bullet wound suddenly throbbed in the fleshy tissue of his hip. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed his pelvic bone by half an inch. With a shattered hip, he wouldn’t have made it out.

  He laughed silently, sardonically. Yeah, he led a charmed life. There was just one problem at present. Maya.

  Past emotions hadn’t held a candle to the ones he’d felt upon seeing her on a runaway horse. Fear had clawed its way to his throat and stayed there until she was safe and secure in his arms.

  Safe?

  From her condition, she obviously hadn’t been very safe in his arms eight months ago.

  The irony of the note he’d left on the table beside her bed struck him. He’d told her his job was too dangerous, his life too busy, to include a wife.

  Right. What about including a child? He shook his head, unable to answer that question just yet.

  Staring at the window across the way, he set his jaw and headed out. It was time they had a serious talk. He entered the long hall running along the other wing of the house and rapped on the door.

  Every nerve in Maya’s body jumped when the knock sounded. “No rest for the weary,” she muttered, a gallows attempt at humor that did nothing to lift her spirits.

  She’d supervised the boys’ studies, then read to them after their baths. Their mother demanded they be in bed and the lights out at nine. Maya was careful to comply. To fail was an invitation to wrath from Ms. Meredith.

  Upon returning to her room, Maya had half expected Drake to be there, waiting for her. Finally, after almost an hour of fruitless study, she’d closed her textbook and prepared for bed. She should have known better. Coltons were a stubborn, unpredictable lot, and Drake was no exception.

  She would live through this, she told her flagging spirits. She’d lived through his leaving and finding that awful note, then realizing she was pregnant and telling her parents. What more could life throw at her?

  Warily, she approached the door after tightening the belt to her robe. She opened it and peeked out.

  “I want to talk to you,” Drake announced in a low tone.

  She considered locking the door. He probably knew how to unlock it without a key. The room had once been his before he struck out on his own.

  Last summer, lying in bed with her, he’d told her of his childhood escapades, of sneaking in past curfew, of the hiding his father had once given him that had caused his mother to cry, making him feel so bad, he’d stopped skipping school and started studying. Now he slept in a room across the patio in the other wing of the house, a guest in his former home.

  Surprised by an unexpected rush of sympathy, she moved back. He entered and closed the door.

  His eyes, dark in the soft lamplight, as unyielding as a granite cliff, roamed over her. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

  The question annoyed her. “Yes.” Her answer seemed to stir his temper.

  He scowled. “Only a fool would be out on a horse in your condition.”

  “The doctor said I could continue all my normal activities,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly as resentment swept over her. “I always ride with the boys—”

  “That was stupid. If you’d been thrown—” Drake stopped, unable to block the image of her lying on the ground, hurt, dying.

  “Damn you,” he muttered. “If you can’t think of yourself, think of the child. You’re going to be a mother. You have an obligation to take care of the baby.”

  She moved away. “I know very well what my obligations are,” she said coolly.

  Then she walked over and sat in the old rocker that had been used to soothe many a Colton baby, including himself.

  Drake stalked over to the desk chair, pulled it around and straddled it, his arms resting on the back while he observed the woman he’d returned home to see, the woman his father had mentioned in his last letter, telling Drake of Maya’s pregnancy and suggesting that he come home.

  An inner contraction, so strong it was painful, reminded Drake of last June and the week he’d spent at the ranch, home from his job with the Navy SEALs to celebrate his dad’s sixtieth birthday.

  What a memorable visit that had been. Someone had taken a potshot at his father. Shortly after that Drake had made love to the dark-haired Madonna who now watched him warily. “Inez says you’re at least eight months along.”

  Her eyes widened. “You talked to my mother?”

  “Yes. Since you refused to discuss it, I went to the one person I knew would tell me the truth. Why didn’t you write?” he asked, changing tactics abruptly.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  The challenge hit him right between the eyes. “I was off the beaten path most of the time.”

  The excuse sounded flimsy even to his ears. Her gaze flashed to him, then away, clearly expressing her disbelief.

  He realized he’d grown up with this person, yet he didn’t know her. He was three years older and had traveled the world; she’d spent her life here on the ranch. So why did she suddenly appear to be the one who was older and wiser?

  Impending motherhood had changed her. It was more than the fact that her breasts were fuller and her tummy rounded. He sensed a primordial knowledge within her that hadn’t been in the innocent young woman he’d loved, then left.

  “My mission was dangerous,” he tried to explain. “I move around. There’s no future…I told you in the note I left.”

  “I believed you.”

  The simplicity of those three words threatened his self-control. They spoke of trust once given and now lost. Despair opened like a pit leading straight to the hell within him.

  He exhaled heavily. He’d lived with the darkness for a long time. It was an old enemy, one he knew well. Standing, he thrust his hands into his pockets and paced to the window and back. “The child changes things.”

  “It isn’t yours.”

  He stopped in front of her, not quite certain he’d heard right. She stood and faced him with that calm, older-than-time composure she’d recently acquired.

  “It isn’t your child,” she repeated the denial.

  The silence buzzed around them like an angry swarm of killer bees. She returned his hard stare without blinking, then she smiled slightly, not in amusement but as if the whole situation was one of supreme irony.

  This distant, world-weary attitude baffled him more than her not bothering to write and tell him the news. He considered the conversation with her mother and remembered a name. “Then it’s Andy Martin’s?”

  “Is that what my mother said?”

  “Yes.”

  She tilted her chin in that stubborn way she had. “It’s my bab
y. Mine and no one else’s.”

  He’d been in enough standoffs with desperate people to know an impasse when he hit one. “Right. A virgin birth,” he scoffed. “Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I came home to find out the truth. I mean to know it before I leave.”

  “How did—” She clamped her lips together.

  “How did I know about the baby? My father wrote. He said you were pregnant and that I should come home and get my affairs in order.”

  “Affairs,” she repeated. “That’s the operative word with you Coltons, isn’t it?”

  At that moment, he could have wrung her neck…or kissed her until she stopped this charade she’d decided to act out and responded to his kisses as she had last summer. His body went hard in an instant. Last June she’d been all sweet fire and sexy innocence, as eager to explore him as he had been her.

  “You know me better than that,” he said, the words coming out husky, the hunger evident.

  Her hand flew to the neckline of the robe, which she pulled tightly closed as if fearing he might rip it from her lush body in a fit of uncontrollable passion.

  “Do I? Maybe we don’t know each other at all anymore,” she suggested.

  The sudden bleakness in her eyes struck a tender place under his breastbone. He thought of the woman who had told him her plans to finish her degree and teach school in Prosperino, or maybe start her own business and work with the troubled kids over at the Hopechest Ranch where she tutored students in remedial reading. It was her optimistic vision of the future that had forced him to write that note. It was a future he couldn’t hope to share.

  Abruptly he headed for the door. “You’re right. Maybe we don’t know each other now, but once we did. Your mother said I shouldn’t upset you, but don’t think this is the last of this conversation.” He left quietly and headed outside for the steps that led down to the shore.

  Maya rubbed her back and paced restlessly about the small room. Was her back hurting worse? Had she injured herself during the ride? She bit her lip against the pain and loneliness of the midnight hour. And the hunger that ate at her since she’d felt Drake’s arms around her once more, strong and sure and capable.

  How long before she forgot those moments last summer? Months? Years? A lifetime?

  Unable to sleep lately or to sit for long periods, she walked the floor for hours. Most of the time she was confident of her ability to care for herself and a child, but sometimes, like now, her courage faltered.

  Drake was a complication she hadn’t foreseen. After his leaving last summer, with only a note to explain that they had no future, she hadn’t thought he would even care if she was carrying his child.

  The pain of that moment rushed over her anew, nearly causing her to cry out. She gritted her teeth and waited for it to pass. She’d learned, during the past eight months, that one could endure.

  Sitting in the rocker and leaning forward as far as she could to relieve the pressure on her lower back, she knew she would have to admit the truth.

  Unless there was a way to hide the truth…

  She picked up the phone and dialed a number in L.A. When her sister answered, Maya spoke quickly and in a low voice.

  “Lana, this is Maya. I have a question for you. Are you alone? Can you talk?”

  “Well, hello, baby sister,” Lana said in surprise. “Yes, I’ve just given my patient her final medication and was heading for bed. What’s happening?”

  Maya took a careful breath. “Drake Colton is home. His father told him about…about…”

  “The baby?” Lana finished helpfully when Maya faltered.

  “Yes. Listen, I know a DNA test would reveal the identity of the father, but no one could do anything to the baby without my consent, could they? Like take blood?”

  “Is Drake threatening to take the baby from you?” Lana demanded indignantly.

  “No, no, nothing like that. He doesn’t know he’s the father—I haven’t told anyone but you—but he thinks he could be.”

  “Could be!” Lana’s tone was shocked and angry. “How many affairs does he think you carry on at one time?”

  “Never mind that. What about the DNA test?”

  “I’m a private duty nurse, not a lawyer, but I think he could. I mean, a court order would do it.”

  “And the Coltons can afford the best lawyers in the world,” Maya said, then sighed. She felt physically and emotionally exhausted.

  She waited patiently as Lana tried to reassure her on her maternal rights, then said good-night.

  The future seemed dark and even more uncertain all at once. How could she have been so foolish? she’d asked herself a thousand times during the intervening months.

  She knew the answer. Love. The stuff of dreams.

  Well, she was awake now, she mused ruefully, forcing a smile at her once idealistic self. Reality was a backache and an inability to find a sleeping position that her body accepted. Reality was also Drake Colton.

  Unlike her longtime friend Andy Martin, Drake hadn’t mentioned marriage. If she told him the baby was his, what would he do—insist on marriage or simply offer to support the child…or try to take it from her?

  She had no idea what “putting his affairs in order” meant to him. She again fought the despair that darkened her spirits at unguarded moments. She had known Drake all her life, but she truly hadn’t a clue about his intentions.

  Sighing, she got up and paced some more.

  Two

  Drake hunched his shoulders against the chill and thrust his hands into his jeans pockets. The wind off the ocean had calmed, so the night wasn’t as cold as expected.

  He stalked along the rough shore, occasionally stumbling over a large rock mixed with the coarse sand and rounded pebbles of the beach. The moon cast a feeble light on the land, but it was instinct that led him to an alcove hidden among the boulders at the base of the cliff.

  Folding his legs under him, he settled on a rise of sand that formed a bench under the rocky indentation and buried his face in his hands. He and his siblings had played at being pirates and sea captains in this alcove. He’d made love to Maya here.

  Darkness overtook him, that desperation of the soul that had been his companion for most of his life. Since his twin had died under the wheels of a car.

  A shudder ran through him, as hot and painful as the bullet that had sliced through his hip.

  “Drake, we’re not supposed to go out on the highway,” Michael called.

  Drake pedaled his bike up the hill that overlooked the main road. “Come on. Let’s go look for arrowheads on the other side of the road where the creek cuts through.”

  “Dad will kill us if he finds out.”

  “So how’s he to know? I’m not going to tell. Come on, chicken. We won’t be long.”

  His dad hadn’t had to lay a hand on them. Michael, riding behind him, hadn’t seen the car come speeding around the curve. Drake had. He’d yelled and run off the side of the road. Michael had been watching him, puzzled, right up until an instant before he’d been hit.

  Drake groaned and lifted his head. He watched the turbulent roll of the waves onto the shore, each one a reminder of the past. His father had told him Michael’s death wasn’t his fault. The child psychologist his father had called in had said the same.

  Drake’s adult reasoning assured him this was true in the sense that he hadn’t meant harm. But in his heart… In his heart, he would forever be calling for his brother to “Watch out” and knowing, even as he did, it was too late.

  Shaking his head, he wondered why, with all his other worries, this one had come back to haunt him now.

  Abruptly he pushed to his feet, needing movement to dispel the memories of a past too powerful to forget.

  Back at the house, he paused on the patio before going to his room. The light still shone in Maya’s window. A shadow moved across the drawn shade.

  Why was she still up?

  He saw her stop and bend forward. She was in obvious pain
. Panic shot through him. He rushed to her door and entered without knocking.

  “Are you all right? Is the baby coming?” he demanded.

  She brought herself up straight and stared at him as if he were out of his mind. “No. Go away.”

  Pushing a lock of hair behind her ear, she moved away from him, her hands on her back. Insight came to him. “Your back’s hurting.”

  She sighed and didn’t answer.

  “Stay here,” he advised as if she might disappear into the night. “I’ll be right back.”

  Maya turned as quickly as she could, intending to tell him to leave her alone now and forever, but she faced only the door. He was already gone.

  Glancing at the clock, she knew she had to get some rest. She slipped out of the robe, got in bed and turned out the light. Lying on her side with a knee drawn up to support her midsection, she firmly closed her eyes.

  She’d counted three hundred sheep when the door opened and the light was switched on again. “What is it?” she snapped.

  “Liniment,” Drake said in a tone that implied this explained everything. “Stay still. I’ll rub your back.”

  Shock rolled over her. “You’ll do no such thing!”

  She’d die before she let him see her in her nightgown, her stomach round as a roly-poly.

  He snatched the covers down and sat on the edge of the bed. “This will help you sleep,” he assured her, as if that was the only concern about him being in her room at…

  “It’s almost one in the morning,” she said.

  “Yeah. You need your rest.”

  He pushed her gently down on the bed, then opened the bottle. The pungent scent of horse liniment filled the room. With one hand, he pulled the straps of her gown off her shoulders and down her arms.

  “Slip this down to your waist—”

  “No!” Panic was beginning to muddle her thoughts. She was entirely too aware of his warmth next to her hip and of the hour and of the yearning, the remembered hunger, that flooded her from deep within.