The Housekeeper's Daughter

by Laurie Paige

  Patsy could feel her flesh tingle. “Nettle Creek?” She’d nearly forgotten about the McGrath homestead where Joe had been raised. She hadn’t been there and had no desire to go to that godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere. Prosperino was bad enough, thank you very much! “You fool, Pike. It’s Nettle Creek. She must have gone to her uncle Peter’s place.”

  “I know all about him. As I see it, all I have to do is mosey on up to Nettle Creek, find the McGrath place, and bingo, we’ll have the kid.”

  “Well, do it,” Patsy instructed. “And hurry. Things aren’t looking good on this end.”

  They made arrangements to talk in three days’ time and hung up. Patsy slipped the tiny cell phone into her pocket. It produced a pulse she could feel against her thigh instead of ringing, so no one knew when she got a call. Joe didn’t even know about the phone. She’d gotten it under a fictitious name.

  Smiling with delight at fooling Joe and his watch-dogs—that hateful Peter McGrath and his daughter Heather, now married to that nosy detective, Thaddeus Law, and Joe’s stupid kids—she danced around the room. When her elated mood passed, she went over the situation again.

  Letting Emily Blair Colton live after the accident ten years ago had been a mistake. She should have bashed in the brat’s head after she’d forced Meredith off the road and into the ditch.

  But she’d had to get rid of Meredith at the time. Unable to take the chance that a body might be found and discovered to be the real Meredith, she’d hit on another, quite brilliant plan.

  Meredith hadn’t known what was happening when Patsy delivered her to the clinic for the criminally insane where she’d once been held. That had worked out great.

  In fact, other than the glitch of getting pregnant with Teddy, life had worked out according to plan. Everything had been going fine until Joe’s birthday party.

  Whoever had shot at him had ruined her plans. Joe’d been all ready to drink his glass of champagne—which contained a nasty little birthday present from her personally—when that idiot had fired…and missed! Joe had dropped the glass without touching a drop.

  It was discouraging. With Emily’s increasingly frequent nightmares about the accident and insisting there had been two Merediths at the scene, one good and one evil, Patsy had no choice but to get rid of the girl, who was now a young woman. That was why she’d had to hire Snake Eyes.

  All this extra worry left her with no time to concentrate on getting rid of Joe and finding her sweet baby, Jewel, and looking for a house of her own. Maybe in San Francisco. One of those mansions down at the marina perhaps, or in Pacific Heights. Lombard Street, the block billed as the crookedest street in the world, was elite, but there were all those tourists to deal with. Nob Hill, of course, was quite passé.

  She sighed as she settled on the silk brocade lounge chair. Her life was too complicated by far. She liked the current notion of simplifying things. Which was exactly what she was trying to do. With Joe and Emily—and Snake Eyes Pike—out of the way, her life would be much simpler. She laughed and laughed at the idea.

  Emily Blair Colton studied herself in the mirror. A natural chestnut redhead, she wondered if she should dye her hair to make it harder for anyone to trace her. The kind trucker who had given her the ride to Wyoming might easily recall a redhead, but could he identify her if she were a blonde or brunette?

  Turning, she paced the room.

  Was she being paranoid about her adoptive mother and the evil twin? Perhaps the creep who had tried to murder her had no connection to her nightmares concerning the accident years ago and her dreams, or memories, of seeing two Merediths, one dazed and shaken from the auto wreck, holding her head where she bled from a cut, and the other Meredith, a gleeful smile on her face, coaxing the injured Meredith into the unknown vehicle that had swerved at them and forced their car off the road.

  Emily had passed out then from her own injuries. When she’d come to, safe in the hospital, there had only been one Meredith. Everyone had assured her she was suffering hallucinations, but there was one thing—her mother had never called her “Sparrow” again after that. She didn’t seem to recall the nickname she’d given Emily.

  There’d been other changes, too, little things too numerous to overlook, but not obvious enough to warrant an investigation. Anyhow, how did you investigate a feeling that things weren’t right?

  Her best friend and cousin, Liza Colton, had believed her from the first. Now Rand, the oldest Colton son, seemed nearly convinced, too. He’d asked Austin McGrath check out their mother. Mother? Emily thought of her as the evil twin from her nightmares.

  Pain pierced her heart. What had happened to the good Meredith, the tender woman who had adopted her and saved her from a life of loneliness and fear when she was orphaned?

  Whatever the cost, she knew they had to find out the truth. She needed to call Rand and see if Austin had learned anything more about Meredith’s past. She’d always been rather silent about her youth.

  Emily put on her new heavy coat and started off for work. Her job as a waitress gave her the means to stay in Keyhole, where she felt safe. Sort of.

  Rand thought she should come stay with him, but she was afraid she’d be traced too easily to her oldest brother. He agreed everything was in a mess concerning her disappearance and she was still in grave danger.

  Someone had collected the ransom money Joe had paid for her safe return, but who?

  The supposed kidnapper was pretty bold to demand ransom when he didn’t even have a victim. Was he or she a mere opportunist? Or was the evil Meredith in cahoots with someone else?

  Tears burned as Emily trudged to the café, entered the back door and hung up her warm clothing. There seemed no end to the nightmare her life had become.

  Toby Atkins was at the café counter when she started on duty. “Hi,” he said, putting his coffee cup down.

  The young law officer was blond and handsome in a boyish way, although Emily had to admit his lanky, six-foot frame wasn’t boyish in the least. He contributed to her feeling of safety in the small town, but his attention was troublesome, too. He was both suspicious of her and interested in a man-woman way.

  There was certainly no room in her life at present to even consider that kind of thing. She was doing her best just to stay alive!

  Drake entered the kitchen where Maya and her mom worked quietly together in the manner of women who had long done so. He found it comforting in a way his own family life had rarely been. There was a graciousness in the Ramirez family dealings with each other, their caring for each other always forming the backdrop of their relationship.

  The dark cloud of past mistakes seemed to draw closer as he thought of the Coltons. An ominous sense of foreboding gathered inside him. He wasn’t sure if it was due to his past or to the present worries. He’d talked to Rand last night, but neither had any new information.

  Today was Wednesday, the first day of March. He’d arrived on the sixth. Almost a month.

  Whenever he came upon Maya, an incredible burst of anticipation overrode common sense. He wanted to go to her, to kiss her until they were both breathless.

  Although he knew better than to expect total happiness, being with her and the baby brought a new dimension to his days. True, life had a way of slapping a person down and reminding one of the grim realities, yet he was aware of a lightness to his step whenever he headed for the house, knowing his two girls were there.

  His?

  The scar on his hip throbbed, as if his body wanted to caution him about expecting too much of the future. “I’m going to my room to change,” he told the two women. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  “Right.” Maya watched him go, her heart righting itself with an effort. It was scary to love someone so much and know your happiness was in his hands.

  “It will work out,” her mother said unexpectedly.

  “Will it?” She didn’t see how. Hearing Marissa whimper through the baby monitor, she hurried to her room.

>   The baby cried during the diaper change, but stopped when Maya sat in the rocker and played hand-clapping games and talked nonsense with her. After stimulating Marissa into wakefulness, she nursed the baby, her thoughts in limbo as she stared out at the rolling land and hills surrounding the ranch.

  Outside, it was a cold, clear winter day. Friday was supposed to be misty, according to the weather report that morning. A chill attacked her heart, and she wished for the warmth of summer. She’d always assumed she would be a June bride. She smiled at the mockery of it all. Here she was a mother without ever being a bride.

  After nursing Marissa, she put the baby in the bassinet. Her father had gotten her old crib from the attic of their house and was in the middle of repainting it. He’d promised it would be ready by the end of the week.

  She liked the idea of having the bed for her baby. Then she wondered where she and Drake and Marissa would be by the end of March. So much seemed to have happened already—his return, the birth, now a new element had entered their relationship. He stayed close to them, holding the baby and rocking her, helping with bathtime. There was that new undernote of happiness in him, too.

  It almost made the darkness disappear. Almost.

  “Mom, the monitor is on,” she said through the intercom. “I’m going to go over Joe’s math homework with Ms. Meredith. Yell if you hear the baby.”

  Her mother answered through the central unit. Maya picked up the school papers from her desk and headed for her boss’s quarters. She really dreaded facing the woman, as her mood swings were completely unpredictable.

  Just as she started down the hall of the south wing, she saw Drake slip into his mother’s room.

  Maya slowed, wondering if she should interrupt. However, Ms. Meredith had given orders for a daily report on Joe’s progress with percent problems. Maya walked on. At the closed door, she hesitated again, then knocked.

  No answer.

  The hair prickled on the back of her neck. She knocked again. Still no answer. All was silent.

  Drake’s being in his mother’s room when she apparently wasn’t there struck Maya as odd. She quietly opened the door. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Drake was bending over an open drawer of Meredith’s desk. He jerked around with a glare, then smiled.

  “Caught in the act. I must be getting careless,” he said, then shrugged. “I’m obviously going through my mother’s things.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m out of pocket money and thought I’d steal some?” he suggested.

  “Huh.”

  “You won’t go for that?”

  “No. What are you looking for? Where is your mother?”

  “She decided to go to San Francisco for the day. I’m looking for clues.”

  Maya laid Joe’s math homework, graded and returned by his teacher, on Ms. Meredith’s desk. “To what?”

  “Anything. I don’t really know,” he added at her frown.

  “Does this have to do with the questions you asked me before, the ones about your mother?”

  “Give me a minute, then we’ll talk.”

  Maya shut up and watched him thoroughly go through the desk, including checking every drawer and the desk itself for hidden compartments, she supposed. He looked through a file drawer, whistled when he saw the duns and the amount of money she owed to various merchants, then moved on. He then proceeded to search the rest of the room just as thoroughly.

  “Nothing,” he said at last. “Let’s go.”

  Taking her arm, he ushered her into his room. Maya wasn’t at all sure about being alone with him in his bedroom. It was a familiar place and brought back remembered ecstasy. And remembered pain.

  He closed the door and leaned against it. “Trapped,” he murmured without a smile to show he was teasing.

  The latent fire in his eyes warmed her clear through. “What were you looking for?” she asked.

  “Evidence that my mother isn’t the woman she claims to be.”

  Maya recalled their previous conversations about the changes in his mother, about the fact that she’d had a twin. But he’d told her the twin had died. The implications became clear. She clutched a hand to her chest. “Surely you don’t think… You can’t possibly believe…”

  “What?”

  “That this twin… No, it’s too preposterous!”

  “Is it?” He paced the room. “Things have changed, but when did it happen? Mother was different after the accident that time when she was taking Emily to visit her biological grandmother.”

  “When Emily thought she saw two Merediths.”

  “Yes.”

  Maya had never seen Drake look so grim. “Have you talked to Sophie or Amber about this?”

  “No, only Rand. As you said, it’s too preposterous.”

  “But it could be true.”

  “Then you believe me?”

  “Of course,” she said, giving it no further thought.

  He stopped in front of her. “Thank you. Sometimes it seems as if we must be crazy, that no one could carry on a charade for ten years.”

  “Unless you were an identical twin.” She considered her studies of personality types. “Con artists are very good at insinuating themselves into people’s lives. They’re like chameleons. They take on the protective coloring of their surroundings. How can I help?”

  A muscle moved in his jaw. “Just by being here,” he murmured, his eyes boring into hers.

  She didn’t move when he slipped his hands behind her neck and, using his thumbs, held her face up to his. She knew his intention, but she stayed still.

  The kiss was gentle and sweet, so sweet. It flowed into her like warm syrup, soothing a place in her soul. She breathed deeply of him, drawing his scent into her lungs, filling herself with him, this man.

  Drake. Beloved.

  Lifting her arms, she held on to his shoulders, feeling the strength he kept in check as he pulled her closer. For some reason, she was reminded of their first kiss last summer, the tenderness of it, the questioning of the emotion behind the kiss, the hunger that went deeper than the mere physical.

  “I need you,” he whispered, pressing her cheek to his chest and planting kisses along her temple. “It’s always there, an ache that won’t go away.”

  She could have wept at the despair in his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to be happy,” she told him, clutching his shirt.

  He cupped her face again and nibbled at her lips in little hungry forays that didn’t near satisfy her need for the taste and feel of him. “You are my happiness.”

  She shook her head, knowing the darkness still possessed his soul, sensing it even as he touched and caressed her. She held him tightly, as if to give him her warmth, as if her love might brighten that dark area.

  “Maya,” he said, his voice hoarse with intensity. “My sweet lover, my dream come true. Let me hold you, just for a while. I’ve missed you.”

  The hunger swept up from that deep well of need that only he stirred. “This is no good,” she tried to tell him, even as she caressed and stroked. “We have to think—”

  He lifted his head, his eyes haunted. “Perhaps that’s been our problem. We think too much, you and I. I need to touch you, to remember how you feel in my arms.”

  “Why? We can’t go any further.”

  “Shh,” he said. “I just want to hold you, that’s all. It’s enough for now.”

  Shaking her head helplessly, she let him enfold her and felt the bitterness of the past few months fade from memory. She lifted her face to his, the sweetness of the moment filling her whole being.

  He kissed her deeply, with passion held carefully in check, his hands roaming her back, his strong fingers massaging her flesh as if finding the reality of her through his touch.

  Sensing his longing, she returned the kiss, satisfying her own yearning for him.

  “I miss those little cries you used to make,” he told her, nipping at her lips, her ear, her throat. “I wake
at night, thinking I can hear you, and realize it’s only a dream. Lying in a tent in the jungle, I think of you. On maneuvers in the desert. Parachuting onto an ice floe. It doesn’t matter. You go wherever I go.”

  “But only in your dreams,” she reminded him, feeling the hurt of his leaving all over again, even as she returned his kisses. “It’s never real.”

  “It was real last summer. We created a child.”

  Pressing her forehead against his chest, she swallowed painfully. “We were both foolish. We shouldn’t be again.”

  He opened a button and trailed kisses downward. Another button. More kisses. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing.

  “I’ve told myself the same thing. But holding you doesn’t feel foolish. It’s good, so good.”

  The husky passion thrilled her now as it had in June. When he sat on the bed, she went with him willingly, settling in his lap as the hot passion built between them.

  “So strong,” she whispered. “I never knew this could be so strong, the need so compelling.”

  “I know. It’s the same with me. Nothing, no one else, can begin to satisfy it.”

  “Yes,” she said on a gasp when he finished unfastening the buttons and pushed the blouse off her shoulders.

  “I need to feel you against me, skin on skin.” His eyes were molten, his expression one of intense wonder.

  Hands trembling, she helped him slip out of his long-sleeved shirt, an old flannel one he’d had for ages. He eased them gently down on his bed, until they were lying side by side, his arm under her head.

  “We lay like this the first time, remember? I was inside you, and we stayed together like this.”

  “Yes, I remember,” she said softly, lost in the past and all the wonderful misty dreams she harbored about them. “Being together…so new and wonderful.”

  “And magic. All that magic.”

  “I didn’t know you felt it.”

  “Every time I looked at you, touched you, it was the same. You glowed from inside, like some kind of fire I couldn’t ignore.”

  “It was the same for me,” she told him, spellbound all over again.